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* I really enjoyed "Did the Exodus Never Happen?" [Sept. 7]. I find the assumption that history as recorded in Scripture is myth unless it can be verified by secular sources to be laughable. Anyone who has tried to follow the news stories of the past few years knows that news disseminated in the mainstream press must be seen with a critical eye. The number of retractions of inaccurate and even bogus reports and stories have been frequent and numerous. Are we to believe that records of events written hundreds and thousands of years ago are to be taken uncritically simply because they were written on papyrus or etched in stone? "Let God be true and every man a liar."

One assumes the inaccuracy or falsehood of the Bible at one's own peril. It is the wise man that begins his research with the assumption that the Scriptures are true, and other types of evidence should be judged based on that assumption. I would much prefer to meet the Lord one day and have him perhaps call me on the carpet for taking his word too literally than to have to explain why I couldn't find the Scriptures plausible until I had verified them by other, human sources.

Keven Fry
Houston, Tex.

I wish to commend Kevin D. Miller for his timely and informative article on the Exodus. It should be noted that Kenneth A. Kitchen, who is the world's leading authority on Ramesses II, the pharaoh of the Exodus, and on the later history of Egypt, has detailed his reasons for defending the Old Testament in "The Patriarchal Age: Myth or History?" Biblical Archaeology Review 21.2 (1995). I addressed some of these same issues in Faith, Tradition, and History (D. Baker, J. Hoffmeier, and A. Millard, eds.). Professor Hoffmeier's colleague Alfred Hoerth has just published an excellent survey, Archaeology & the Old Testament (Baker), and I have edited Peoples of the Old Testament World (Baker, 1994), to which Hoffmeier contributed the chapter on the Egyptians.

Prof. Edwin Yamauchi
Miami University
Oxford, Ohio

* The article begins with a reference to my colleague Baruch Halpern, who is currently out of the country and unable to respond directly; it lists him among the so-called minimalists who deny the authenticity of large sections of the Old Testament narrative. It is misleading for you to confuse the skeptical, scholarly work of Halpern and others with the extreme minimalists like Thomson and Lemche, particularly when Halpern himself is the author of a widely read article which excoriates the minimalists for their cavalier treatment of historical evidence.

The mainstream scholarly position raises serious questions about the Exodus narrative but accepts the broad truth of the biblical account of the kingdoms attributed to David and Solomon, while the minimalists deny basically everything before the sixth century B.C. That is a basic and radical difference, and it is disturbing that your article does not make that distinction clear.

Prof. Philip Jenkins
Pennsylvania State University
University Park, Pa.

* When I was in graduate school I would have given all I owned to read an article like this, or a book like Hoffmeier's Israel in Egypt. I had to find out for myself that some of my professors were biased and did not decide on the basis of the evidence what to believe about the Bible. They made it clear to me that I could never be considered an intellectual unless I agreed with their biblical revisionism. In all my college teaching, I did my best to prepare students to face such professors without losing faith or courage.

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October 26 1998, Vol. 42, No. 12