Richard Elliott Friedman's "The Exodus: An Epic Tale of Faith and Freedom"

Scott M.: I never write Amazon reviews, but since this is a subject that strongly interests me and pretty much always has, I wanted to write a review for this book the moment I finished it. As I am sure is true of many other readers, I first learned of Richard Friedman through his 1987 work, “Who Wrote The Bible?,” which was a great book that I first read back during my college days. I studied Judaic and Biblical Studies in college, and although I didn’t end up working in the field, Biblical Studies is still a big passion of mine and I try my best to keep up to date with findings and developments in it. What Friedman relays in this book about seeing The Ten Commandments in 1956 parallels an experience I had when I first saw The Prince of Egypt when I was 9 years old. Until recently, I had no idea Friedman served as a consultant on that film. That same year (1998), I saw a Discovery Channel/BBC documentary about the archaeology of the exodus called “Who Was Moses?” I loved that documentary so much that I bought a VHS copy of it later that same year — I still have that VHS today.

For many years, the dominant opinion in scholarship and archaeology was that the exodus was...

United States on Jul 04, 2022

Elia Zarcone: The book is well-written and contains a lot of interesting informations about the Bible and archaeology. However, the arguments in support of the book's main thesis are, in my opinion, unconvincing and often highly speculative: while I agree with Friedman that the Exodus probably concerned only one of the Tribes of Israel, he fails to bring sufficiently clear evidence that such group was the Tribe of Levi and not another one (William G. Dever, for instance, believes it was the Tribe of Joseph).
Friedman also argues that it was the Exodus group that brought the deity Yaweh and the idea of monotheism to the Israelites: while the first claim is, in my view, very probable (and has also been endorsed by Thomas Römer in "The invention of God"), the second is more dubious.
In any case, I would recommend this book as an important work in the effort to understand the origins of the Israelite people and of Jewish monotheism.

Italy on May 31, 2021

George C: This book is an absolute must read item. One of the best books I've read on Biblical studies. Very well written, with facts supported by research and archeological evidence. The exposition is very convincing. Lots of new facts that I learned about the Biblical story of Exodus which I read in the Bible so many times. It is really amazing how much small details in the text, which might be easily missed by a reader, can tell.

United Kingdom on Mar 31, 2021

Terry Zink: Richard Friedman's The Exodus is a textual critic's analysis of the current state of textual criticism of the exodus as recorded in the Bible. However, he departs from modern scholarship and instead says that it was a real thing, just not how it was recorded in the Bible.

* * * * QUICK SUMMARY * * * *

In case you're unaware, modern critical scholarship of the Bible (mostly) doesn't view the Hebrew exodus as an historical event. To summarize and massively oversimplify:

- The Israelites were based in the region of Canaan and their religion was similar to their neighbors. This was either polytheism (worshipping many gods), henotheism (worshipping one god while not denying the existence of others), or monolatry (worshipping one god and forbidding worship of the others)

- At some point in their history, the Israelites moved into monotheism (worshipping one god and denying the existence of any other), and that this was either during the Babylonian exile, or perhaps even later when refugees arrived back from Persia in the mid fifth century (around 450 BCE). Possibly there were some elements of monotheism before the Babylonian exile but this was a minority...

United States on May 02, 2020

Edward Stang: I read an interview on line where the Professor Friedman was interviewed and he responded to those who say there was no Exodus. I enjoyed the article so much that I had to read his book on the same topic. I hope to re read this book and I have also read other books by Professor Friedman.

Canada on Oct 25, 2019

G. Sivertsen: This is a brilliant piece of detective work which I highly recommend to anyone interested in Biblical historical investigation. There is nothing boring here, it reads like any top notch detective tale but this is real history. I feel glad to have this in my library.

United Kingdom on Aug 29, 2018

Yve Clark: Friedman is always a good and easy read. It is a pity he credits modern scholars with ideas that were proposed over a century ago but, still, he weaves those ideas into an interesting hypothesis. I rarely agree with Friedman but do find he stimulates my thinking and often provides evidence I can use to more fully explore these ideas.

United Kingdom on Oct 01, 2017