On Wednesday at nightfall, Jews across the world will gather around the seder table to celebrate the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, and how God saved them with “a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.”

The words come from the Torah’s description of the Exodus from Egypt and are repeated multiple times in the text of the haggadah, the book featuring the liturgy of the special Passover meal, the seder (Hebrew for “order”): “God freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents,” reads Deuteronomy 26:8 (translation by JPS).

But what if, hypothesizes Prof. Joshua Berman of the Zalman Shamir Department of Bible at Bar-Ilan University, the biblical tale was mockingly subverting an earlier Egyptian text?

“[In Egyptian sources, there are references to how] Pharaoh defeated his enemies, the Libyans to the west, with a mighty hand, or Pharaoh was walking and he discovered at his feet a diamond the size of his fist, and he picked it up with his outstretched arm,” said Berman, who hosts the university’s “Bible Bar” podcast.

“There are hundreds of references like these. It is clear that what the Torah is doing here is what we call ‘cultural appropriation,’ stealing the thunder of your opponent.”

According to Berman, one could expect the same wording to be used in many situations in which God performs miracles or saves the Israelites from their enemies. Yet it is not; it appears only in the context of the Exodus.

In the new “Echoes of Egypt: A Haggada,” curated by Berman and recently published by Koren, the scholar argues that the term “a mighty hand and outstretched arm” represents just one of the many examples where the Torah seems to employ tools of the Egyptian narrative or propaganda and use them against the very people who enslaved the ancient Israelites.

“Go tune into what was happening in Egypt when Israel was there,” Berman told The Times of Israel over a video interview.

In the academic world, some believe that the Israelites’ slavery and Exodus from Egypt never took place, while others suggest several possible datings. For Berman, the events occurred around roughly 1500 and 1200 BCE.

“I follow the school of thought according to which the pharaoh of enslavement was Rameses II [circa 1279–1213 BCE], and the pharaoh of the plagues and of the Exodus is Merneptah [c. 1213–03 BCE],” Berman said.

“The precise dates are not so important, but we are certainly talking about what is known as the Egyptian New Kingdom, the zenith of Egyptian civilization,” he explained.

“Echoes of Egypt,” which includes both the........

© The Times of Israel