Table of Contents
On Matt Fradd’s program, John Bergsma defends the Exodus as history by looking for indirect traces. Royal Egyptian texts, he says, omitted defeats, so no confession should be expected. The wilderness tent shrine is his main case. Courts, hangings, and an inner seat with cherub figures match campaign tents of New Kingdom kings such as Ramses II, a plan known from art and echoed by a gold chest on poles in Tutankhamun’s tomb, though that chest carries Anubis. A fiction from Ezra’s century, he argues, would not fit thirteenth century Egypt so closely. Moses reused forms the former slaves knew, then allowed no statue, so the inner room held a god who could not be pictured. Treaty texts of Egypt and the Hittites supply a second parallel. History, chief laws, detailed rules, instructions for reading the document, then blessing and curse. Deuteronomy follows that shape, and a prince trained at court would have known it. Bergsma calls the matches accidental and therefore hard to fake.
Key points
- Bergsma does not expect Egyptian monuments to record a defeat of the king.
- He compares the wilderness shrine to New Kingdom war tents, with courts and a cherub throne.
- A gold chest on poles from Tutankhamun’s tomb is his picture of the same furniture, with a different god on top.
- A match to thirteenth century Egypt, he says, is hard to explain if the books were invented in Ezra’s day.
- The Israelite version, in his argument, keeps the familiar forms but removes every idol.
- Deuteronomy’s outline follows treaty texts of that age, which a court educated Moses could have known.
Short quotes
in King Tut's tomb we have something that looks like the Ark of the Covenant
John Bergsma, Bergsma on the Exodus
Bergsma points to a gold box in Tutankhamun’s tomb as a cousin of the ark. Watch at 3:16
a list of blessings for following the Covenant and curses for breaking the Covenant
John Bergsma, Bergsma on the Exodus
He finds the same closing blessings and curses in the old treaties and in Deuteronomy. Watch at 7:21
Video by Matt Fradd. Watch on YouTube.