Did Moses Exist? What of The Exodus?

I was taught my first year of high school in Old Testament class that the Pentateuch was penned by none other than Moses, a legend of the Torah. And of the stories he told, none was more central to the faith than the story of the Exodus.

IT IS ALL BULLSHIT!

First of all, he didn’t write it and second of all it never happened.

For such a central figure in history, there is not one shred of evidence that this man ever existed. There’s no hieroglyphic mention of him, there’s no historical references to him nor any archaeological evidence that he led some revolt of Jewish slaves out of Pharoah’s control.

And what of the confrontation where supposed plagues were brought upon the land, the last and most severe of which was the death of all firstborn sons. You would think such a devastating loss in Egyptian history would’ve been captured in the hieroglyphic record. Likewise, you would expect the total annihilation of pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea to have also been captured. But none of it exists in their comprehensive record.

Millions of freed peoples wandering the Sinai desert for 40 years would’ve surely left some archaeological record, but none of that exists either—not one pottery shard, bone fragment, signs of dwelling, cooking utensils or tools. How did they leave no trace?

What scholars believe is that the whole narrative was concocted by King Josiah’s scribes during the Babylonian captivity in the sixth century BCE. At a time went enslaved peoples needed hope and a rallying cry for returning to their homeland, what better story than the Exodus story? God was going to restore Israel.

It blows out of the water everything I was taught since Sunday School and the notion I believed that ancient scrolls once held the laws of Moses. I assumed those scrolls were the basis of the Torah, not some nation-building king trying to bolster the morale of his enslaved subjects.

I covered this in a video on my channel in Fall 2024. (Correction: Dr. Richard Carrier is someone I follow. I called him James in the video.)

https://youtu.be/FOmRNGtXGKg?is=Wl6oxUKExlyepkHJ (link)