Nahum Sarna on Exodus and History

Nahum Sarna, a Jewish OT scholar, has an excellent commentary on Exodus in the JPS Torah Commentary series that he and Chaim Potok edited.  I enjoyed his brief discussion of history writing and the book of Exodus.  Here’s a blurb and summary.

“A close examination of the constituent elements of the Book of Exodus determines at once that we do not have a comprehensive, sequential narrative, only an episodic account.  Moreover, the time frame in which the varied episodes are placed is extremely limited.”  That is, continues Sarna, Jewish tradition holds that 140 years elapsed between Exodus 1.4 and 40.2.  Furthermore, the details of Israel’s long and brutal bondage are limited.  Also, we don’t know much of Moses’ life before he was eighty and called by God. “Further investigation reveals that the book really covers the events of just two years:” the exodus proper and the Sinai events.

“This limitation, together with the paucity of historical data, suggests a high degree of deliberate selectivity.  Both the selectivity and the disposition of the featured material stamp the book of Exodus as falling into the category of historiosophy rather than historiography: Not the preservation and recording of the past for its own sake, but the culling of certain historic events for didactic purposes is the intent” (p. xii-xiii).  Later, after discussing the options of the dates of the exodus proper, Sarna writes, “It must always be remembered that the biblical narrative is a theological exposition – a document of faith, not a historiographical record” (p. xv).

Though in different manner, Provan, Long, and Longman agree: just read the first few chapters of A Biblical History of Israel for a similar and more detailed case.  These authors indirectly – and directly sometimes! – chasten us for our modern arrogance, as if all histories must conform to the way we know them or think they should be.  In Dillard and Longman’s terms, the OT authors “were not modern historicists seeking the brute facts of history.  On the contrary, they were prophets who mediated God’s Word to his people.  They were the vehicles of God’s interpretation of his own holy acts” (An Introduction to the Old Testament [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994], 25).

shane lems

sunnyside wa