| The purpose of this paper is to encourage some interface between this basic conviction with a perennial issue raised by the modern study of the Old Testament: how ‘historical’ is the Old Testament? Another way of asking that question is: To what extent does an Old Testament narrative comply with notions of history writing prevalent in our world today? To solve this issue we are going to interact with three major evangelical works(Hoffmeier, Kitchen, Longman). We come to conclude that biblical narrative is to be better understood in terms of a perspective which may be called the ‘mythologizing of history’ as opposed to the ‘historicizing of myth.’ In other words, Exodus story is not a rehearsal of a mythic drama dressed in fictional historical garb; rather it is an historical event that is recounted in ANE mythic categories. |
