Well, or that there were some...exaggerations in Exodus. One of the main theories of the modern historical critical scholars is that there were many fewer people than listed, given that 600,000 people would be an enormous fraction of the Egyptian population, which seems pretty high given the lack of any documentation in Egypt. Losing a few hundred or a thousand slaves would be an easy omission. Hiding the economic impact of the exodus of a third or more of the population...harder. Also, there's no evidence of graves anywhere in the wilderness areas they'd have to have gone through, despite a lot of looking. While groups of people can of course leave no trace, it's much, much harder for hundreds of thousands of people to leave no trace, especially in the desert environment.
The various (three?) accounts of the exodus, too, hint that there might be some artistic license being employed in the story.
Ori, I think you missed the most significant part of the story. The midwife...she was named. :)
Hmm. There's an interesting take in Wikipedia from a Hebrew University professor that suggests a the numerical discrepancy is more a matter of misinterpretation (600 alaphim=600 units, not 600 thousands), in which case the Hebrews might have had ~6000 fighting men and less than ~20000 people total, which becomes within the range of plausibility for 2 midwives.
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The various (three?) accounts of the exodus, too, hint that there might be some artistic license being employed in the story.
Ori, I think you missed the most significant part of the story. The midwife...she was named. :)
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