Ben-gurion Claims Only 600 Israelites Had Left Egypt in the Exodus

Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was embroiled in a hot, new controversy today with Orthodox religious elements over a new version of the Biblical story of the Exodus which he expounded at a press conference.

Mr. Ben-Gurion said that only 600 Israelites had left Egypt in the Exodus and that the Israelites had lived in Egypt only two generations. According to the traditional version, the Israelites had remained in Egypt for 400 years and 600. 000 of them had participated in the Exodus.

The newspaper Hamodia, organ of the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel, denounced Mr. Ben-Gurion’s views as “heresies” and refused to publish them. It called him “a violator of the most sacred of Jewish values–the Bible. ” Dr. Jacob Unterman, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, also sharply attacked Mr. Ben-Gurion for his views.

Mr. Ben-Gurion asserted that even the Septuagint version of the Bible said that the Israelites had spent 430 years in both Egypt and Canaan–not only in Egypt Chapters of the Pentateuch and Chronicles, he said, described Moses as the son of Amram, the son of Kehat, the son of Levi. Since Levi and Kehat were among those who left for Egypt with Jacob. Mr. Ben-Gurion argued, it appeared that only Amram and Moses had been born in Egypt and, therefore, the stay of the Israelites in Egypt had only been for two generations.

As to the number participating in the Exodus, Mr. Ben-Gurion said, each son of Jacob brought up 50 descendants in two generations. By simple arithmetic, he said, that brought the number of Israelites at the time of the Exodus to 600. He suggested that the Biblical figure of 600, 000 was the result of a misreading of the Hebrew word “elef” meaning “thousand” but which could also mean “family.”