The Exodus from Egypt, followed by the invasion and conquest of Palestine, lies at the heart of the Biblical account of Israel’s origins. A number of modern scholars, however, reject the entire story. It is, in their view, little more than a pious fabrication written hundreds of years after the events described. “The Scriptures,” as Robert B. Coote puts it succinctly, “do not contain an [accurate] historical account of Israel’s origin and early history.”¹ In the words of another exponent of this school of thought, Thomas L. Thompson, “Israel’s own origin tradition is radically irrelevant to writing … a history [of Israel’s origins].”²