DICK HARFIELD ON MOSES EXISTENCE
DICK HARFIELD RESPONSE
Historians took the biblical narrative for granted until the Rosetta Stone was deciphered at the beginning of the nineteenth century, enabling linguists to begin translating Egyptian hieroglyphics. There was the expectation that evidence of the Israelites in Egypt would soon be found in the copious ancient Egyptian writings, but this gradually gave way to puzzlement because there was clearly no evidence of any Israelites in Egypt, nor of the ten plagues of Moses or even the biblical Exodus.
Historians had to begin thinking the unthinkable: either there was no Exodus, or it was simply a minor event that did not really change history. Either way, there was no catastrophic series of plagues, loss of an entire army in pursuit of the Israelites, or even the dramatic economic downturn that one would expect after the loss of a huge number of productive slaves. The evidence is now in: nothing happened—there was no biblical Exodus` under the leadership of Moses.
Perhaps a small band of escaping slaves led to the development of the biblical Exodus story, and perhaps any such escape was led by a leader on whom the biblical Moses was loosely based, but otherwise, he was a person of myth.
MY RESPONSE
This is a well-written but overconfident argument, and it quietly slides from “we lack evidence” to “nothing happened.” Historians don’t actually make that leap. Let’s slow it down and separate what can be proven, what is debated, and what is overstated.
Has Moses been proven to exist?
No, not in the modern historical sense.
There is no contemporary Egyptian inscription that says “Moses did X” or “Israel left Egypt under Moses.” On that narrow point, the statement is correct.
But that is not unusual for Late Bronze Age figures outside royal elites. Absence of proof ≠ proof of absence.
Did historians once “take the biblical narrative for granted”?
That’s an exaggeration.
By the 18th–19th centuries, biblical chronology was already being questioned.
The decipherment of hieroglyphs (Rosetta Stone, 1820s) did raise hopes of corroboration, but historians quickly learned something crucial about Egypt:
Egyptian records are highly selective, propagandistic, and often silent about defeats, disasters, or social embarrassments.
Egyptian texts:
Do not record military losses
Do not record internal plagues
Do not record slave uprisings
Do not record humiliating escapes
So the expectation that Egypt would record the Exodus was always naïve.
“There is clearly no evidence of Israelites in Egypt”
This is misleading, not false—but incomplete.
What’s true:
There is no record of “Israelites” as a named ethnic group enslaved in Egypt in the 13th century BCE.
What complicates that:
Egypt enslaved Semitic-speaking peoples from Canaan continuously
Egyptian texts use broad categories like ‘Asiatics’ (ꜥꜣmw), not ethnic self-designations
The Brooklyn Papyrus lists dozens of Semitic slave names (some strikingly similar to later Hebrew names)
Semitic populations lived in the Nile Delta for centuries
So the archaeological picture is:
Semitic groups in Egypt? Yes.
Named “Israelites”? No.
That distinction matters.
“No plagues, no army drowned, no economic collapse”
This is where the argument becomes historically careless.
Egyptian silence does not mean events did not occur
We have no Egyptian record of:
The Hyksos expulsion (yet archaeology confirms it)
Major defeats by Sea Peoples (downplayed)
Internal revolts
The biblical account itself shows literary shaping
Plagues function as theological judgments, not journalistic reporting
Numbers (600,000 men) are widely recognized as symbolic or hyperbolic
The text reflects centuries of oral and written development
Most scholars today say:
If an Exodus occurred, it was smaller, messier, and later theologized.
That is very different from “nothing happened.”
“Either there was no Exodus, or it was a minor event”
This is closer to mainstream scholarship—but the tone overshoots.
A more accurate scholarly consensus would be:
No evidence for a mass Exodus of millions
Possible evidence for smaller-scale departures of Semitic groups
Israel likely emerged primarily within Canaan, not entirely from outside
Exodus tradition reflects a real memory, later expanded into a national origin story
Key point:
Foundational myths in the ancient world are usually rooted in historical kernels, not invented out of thin air.
Rome had Romulus.
Greece had Theseus.
Israel had Moses.
Was Moses “a person of myth”?
That’s an interpretation, not a conclusion forced by evidence.
Scholarly positions range across a spectrum:
Minimalist: Moses is a literary construct
Moderate (very common): Moses was a historical leader later mythologized
Maximalist: Moses closely matches the biblical account (minority view)
What cannot be proven:
That Moses existed as described
That Moses did not exist at all
The core problem with the argument
The fatal flaw is this sentence:
“The evidence is now in: nothing happened.”
That is not how historical reasoning works.
Historians say:
“We lack independent corroboration”
“The scale is implausible”
“The narrative is theological”
They do not say:
“Nothing happened”
“Therefore, Moses is fictional”
That move is philosophical, not historical.
A more balanced conclusion
A historically responsible version of this argument would read:
There is no direct archaeological or Egyptian textual evidence for Moses or a large-scale Exodus as described in the Bible. Most scholars believe the biblical account reflects later theological shaping of smaller historical memories, possibly involving limited groups of Semitic people leaving Egypt. Whether Moses was a historical individual remains unproven.
That conclusion is defensible.
The one you quoted is rhetorically strong but academically overstated.
