The Exodus: Did It really happen? There is little, if any, archaeological evidence for it. Therefore, many non-evangelical scholars do not believe it occurred. Even if the Egyptians did obliterate evidence of the cataclysms, surely, these scholars say, we should find some evidence.
The best approach is to wait and see. An argument from silence will be destroyed with the first trace of evidence. And then there might be evidence when one looks for it at the proper time in history. If the Exodus occurred 150 years earlier than most scholars think it did (at the Biblical date of ca 1440 BC), there may be evidence for it not recognized as such. (See the Summer 1989 issue of Archaeology and Biblical Research for the article on the true pharaoh of the Exodus by Joseph Lomusio. He presents evidence for the Exodus at the Biblical date.)
Various Interpretations of the Plagues
In the June 1990 issue of Bible Review is an article by Ziony Zevit on "Three Ways to Look at the Ten Plagues." Unfortunately, his conclusion undermines all that goes before and is typical of modern scholarship. He says, ". . . a historical kernel [but little more, Ed.] must underlie the Egyptian plague traditions preserved in the Bible. . . . The plague traditions, which were maintained orally by the Israelites until some time after the establishment of the monarchy, continued to be reworked in the land of Israel" (p. 42). Obvious in these statements is his position that the narratives of the plagues and the Exodus were not written by Moses, but were handed down for hundreds of years by word of mouth, and finally written down (with all their errors and accretions) by scribes during the late monarchy -- many hundreds of years after Moses. In his opinion, they could not possibly be ...