A biblical mnemohistory of 'Egypt' : Exodus as the legitimation of Israelite continuity

Abstract

The aim of this thesis was to chart the evolution of the tradition in the Hebrew Bible of a migration from Egypt as it relates to the development of Israelite identity, with a view to negotiating a position between the poles of 'maximalist' or 'conservative' scholars maintaining the relative historicity of the received form (that which we know as Exodus); and 'minimalist' or 'revisionist' scholars pushing the date for the composition of Exodus into increasingly later periods in the development of Judaism. I have argued for a 'mnemohistorical' approach to critical analyses of the historicity of the migration tradition, seeing Exodus as the final product in a long history of the development of a tradition integral to the preservation of Israelite identity. While this in itself is not a new concept, I have identified significant 'memory contexts' in which revitalised incarnations of the migration tradition appear to be associated with distorted memories of identity (re-)negotiation.