Presented by Benjamin Sommer
Professor of Bible, Jewish Theological Seminary, Senior Fellow
Kogod Center for Contemporary Jewish Thought of the Shalom Hartman Institute

The most important event in the history of the Jewish people is the exodus from Egypt. According to biblical and liturgical texts, this event shaped the nation more than any other; it formed the foundation of Jewish identity in the ancient world and continues to do so today. But did this crucial event actually happen? Many voices in recent decades have claimed that the story of the exodus is a fiction and that the events it portrays did not in fact occur. In the popular press and other media, one often hears the claim that archaeological evidence disproves the exodus story.

In this lecture Professor Sommer will address these questions, showing, first of all, that people who make these claims are unaware of the nature of archaeological evidence and what it can and cannot prove. Second, people who make these claims seem to be largely unfamiliar with the actual archaeological evidence from Egypt in the second-millennium BCE. Professor will review some of that evidence, which shows that the biblical traditions about the exodus preserve facts about Egypt at that era. In light of the mass of much earlier information found in biblical portrayals of the exodus, it is overwhelmingly likely that the biblical texts preserve genuine historical data about an event in which ancestors of the Israelites escaped slavery in Egypt.

Cosponsored by The Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies. Arnold and Mary Hammer are proud to sponsor this program in loving memory of Rabbi Reuven Hammer.

Benjamin Sommer is Professor of Bible at the Jewish Theological Seminary and Senior Fellow at the Kogod Center for Contemporary Jewish Thought of the Shalom Hartman Institute. His book, Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition, received the Goldstein-Goren Prize in Jewish thought for 2014–2016 and was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award. Publishers Weekly selected it as a “recommended book” in religion, describing it as a “groundbreaking work...clearly written and broad in application.” A Hebrew edition of the book will appear in Israel in 2022. His earlier books, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel and A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66, also received multiple awards. He is currently editing the five-volume JPS Psalms Commentary, the first volume of which (by Professor Adele Berlin) will be published this coming year. Sommer frequently teaches rabbinic and lay groups in the United States and Israel. He and his wife, Jennifer Dugdale, are members of Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck, New Jersey. His children, Avraham, Sarah, and Eliana have attended Solomon Schechter Schools and SAR High School.

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