ReViews

Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition

James K. Hoffmeier (New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999) 280 pp., $18.95 (paperback)

Dust-jacket praise for James Hoffmeier’s book heightened my expectation that the author might actually make a reasonably strong case for the historical Exodus, something that has eluded other scholars. I was encouraged in my hope by Hoffmeier’s background in Biblical studies and Egyptology and by his recent fieldwork near Egypt’s ancient border with the Sinai.

Scholars have been long aware of a Semitic presence in Egypt. They have known that the city of Pi-Ramesses existed and that Pharaoh Merneptah mentioned “Israel” in his famous stele. This evidence satisfied believers that there was a historical Exodus, but the data have never been sufficiently clear or incontrovertible to convince skeptics that we can answer the major questions about the Exodus: “Who? When? Why? Where? How?”