My atheist friends on Facebook kindly recommended that I read a book by Joel S. Baden titled The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis.
Here is one paragraph from Chapter 1: The Documentary Hypothesis—The Four Documents, page 24:
In the Exodus narrative, we find the same situation. Only E tells the story of Moses’s birth; only J tells of Moses killing the Egyptian. According to J, Moses’s father-in-law is named Reuel; according to E, he is named Jethro. In P, Moses never leaves Egypt. These three documents describe God instructing Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Only J tells of the burning bush. In P and E, this theophany is accompanied by the revelation to Moses of God’s true name, Yahweh; in J, as noted, this name was known to humanity from primeval times. Only P and J tell the story of the plagues in detail, and though they agree on some of the plagues, they disagree on others: P tells of blood, frogs, lice, boils, hail, locusts, and darkness; J has blood, frogs, insects (not lice), pestilence, hail, and locusts. Only in J do the Israelites have to escape hastily and at night. P and J describe the Israelites’ escape from the Egyptians at a body of water but do so in entirely different terms (see case study IV). P, J, and D describe the giving of manna to feed the people in the wilderness; E never mentions manna. Only P and J tell the story of getting water from a rock; in J, this takes place before the theophany in the wilderness, whereas in P it takes place long after. Only E tells of the battle against the Amalekites, and only E and D describe the appointing of judges to assist Moses.[1]
This argument is flawed because it is based upon an arbitrary analysis of the documents pursued by assigning hypothetical authors discerned by which names of God they employ in their text.
The argument is flawed because no one has ever found any extant manuscripts which display such hypothetical documents in isolation.
The argument is flawed because it denies the historicity of the events (the Exodus itself) despite the historical fact that these events underly the whole of the Israel society as it is portrayed consistently throughout the rest of the Bible and witnessed to even today in the continuing institutions based on these events, such as the Jewish Passover.
Consider the following detailed text excerpted from The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, Volume 2, Page 698, at the end of Section J of the article “Exodus, Book of.”
The cumulative effect of the above data is to demonstrate the narrator’s familiarity with Egyptian culture. It does not of itself prove the authenticity of the stories as being actual reflections of a historic circumstance. It does, however, accentuate an unanswered problem that besets the above-cited hypotheses that deny those narratives any objective reality, namely, how and why the Egyptian episode came to be invented, if such was the case. The failure to deal adequately with the issue is particularly acute in light of the Genesis traditions that locate the origins of Abraham neither in Egypt nor in Canaan but in Mesopotamia, and that are consistent in describing the continued associations of all the patriarchs with that region. Moreover, this tradition is also emphasized in the biblical “credos” of Deut 26:5 and Josh 24:2. Another weakness of the radical theories is their lack of convincing explanation for what would be the gratuitous invention and successful transmission century after century of such an inglorious and embarrassing tradition as the slavery in Egypt. Even more perplexing would be how to account for the fact that the Exodus theme managed to leave an indelible impress on the national consciousness to the extent that it became paramount in the religion of Israel, shaped all its basic institutions, and dominated its conception of God. One would also have to explain how a literary fabrication would be repeatedly cited and celebrated in the variegated historical, prophetic, and psalmodic literature (Judg 6:8–9, 13; 1 Sam 12:6, 8; 1 Kgs 8:16, 51; Dan 9:15; Neh 9:9ff.; 2 Chr 7:22; Isa 10:24, 26; 11:15; 51:9–11; 52:4; Jer 2:2, 6–7; 7:21–24; 11:1–8; 34:13; Ezek 20:5–29; Hos 8:13; 9:3; 11:1; 12:14; Amos 9:7; Hag 2:5). Finally, without the cohesive force provided by a shared experience in Egypt and the belief in the covenant between God and Israel, what were the forces at work in welding heterogeneous population groups into a unified nation under central authority, contrary to the entire past historical experience of Canaan?[2]
There is much more in this article in this generally liberal resource that confirms the historicity of the major events recorded in the Bible regarding the history of Israel which to my mind confirm the assertions of Leslie in his “Four Reasons,” an argument which stands unaddressed and unrefuted, that I have discussed before.
Links to my previous discussions of Leslie’s reasons:
Daily Bible Nugget #671, Exodus 14:13
Daily Bible Nugget #600, 2 Peter 1:16
From my article on 2 Peter 1:16,
The object of Leslie is to show, from the nature of the case—for here we make very little reference to written testimony—that the matters of fact stated could not have been received at the time unless they were true, and that the observances could never have been originated except in connection with the facts. In showing this, he lays down four rules, and asserts that any matter of fact in which these four rules meet must be true, and challenges the world to show any instance of any supposed matter of fact, thus authenticated, that has ever been shown to be false.
An application to the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament: It would be impossible for the children of Israel, in that generation, to have believed that they passed through the Red Sea, or went out and gathered manna every morning, or drank water from the rock, or that the Mosaic Law was given with the terror and solemnity described in the Bible, if these things did not happen.
The last two rules secure us as certainly as the first two rules in the former case. For, whenever such a matter of fact came to be invented, if not only monuments or records were said to remain of it, but likewise public actions and observances were constantly used ever since the matter of fact was said to be done, the deceit must be detected by no such monuments or records appearing, and by the experience of every man, woman, and child, who must know that no such actions or observances were ever used by them.
Application to the books of Moses: At whatever time it might have been attempted to impose the books of Moses upon a subsequent age, it would have been impossible, because they contain the laws and civil and ecclesiastical regulations of the Jews, which the books affirm were adopted at the time of Moses, and were constantly in force from that time. They contain an account of the Passover, which they assert to have been observed in consequence of a particular fact.
If, then, a book had been put forth at a particular time, stating that the Jews had obeyed certain very peculiar laws, and had a certain priesthood, and had observed the Passover from the time of Moses, while they had never heard of these laws, or of this priesthood, or of a Passover, it is impossible the book should have been received. Nothing could have saved such a book from scorn or utter neglect.
[1] Baden, J. S. (2012). The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis (J. J. Collins, Ed.; p. 24). Yale University Press.
[2] Sarna, N. M. (1992). Exodus, Book of. In D. N. Freedman (Ed.), The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (Vol. 2, p. 698). Doubleday.
