← Back to the front page

Let My People Go! – The History and Historicity of the Biblical Account of the Exodus

Khalid Elhassan May 31, 2025 17 min

6. Mixed Origins and Social Revolutions

The Merneptah Stele. Patterns of Evidence

Another theory is that some Israelites may have originated in Egypt, while others were Canaan natives. Exodus could reflect the collective memory of a minority group that migrated from Egypt and later merged with Canaanite natives. Over time, the smaller group’s story became central to the national narrative. Yet another theory is Social Revolution in Canaan. It argues that Israel did not invade Canaan from without, but emerged from within: a revolt of Canaanite peasants against city-state elites.

Exodus could be a later theological construct retrojecting a story of divine liberation onto earlier socio-political transformations. The Merneptah Stele, an Egyptian inscription, circa 1207 BC, offers tantalizing evidence. It contains the earliest non-biblical reference to “Israel”, describing it as a people settled in Canaan. The reference implies that some group called Israel existed by the late thirteenth century BC. However, the stele says nothing about Egypt or an exodus.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.