IMAGInInG ThE “ISrAElITES” • 169Zionism because it threatened to dislodge Muslims and Christians from
palestine and to replace the al- aqsa Mosque with a new Jewish temple.
he questioned aspects of the Jews’ religion, to be sure— even aspects as
fundamental as the provenance of their Torah— but he took for granted
that Jews once had a sovereign state in palestine.
The Bible in al-Hilāl and al-MuqtaṭafLike rida in al-Manār, the editors of al-Hilāl and al-Muqtaṭaf were
keenly interested in the Bible. as Christians in less overtly sectarian
journals, however, they approached the text in a way that was rather
different from rida’s approach. They frequently reported on contempo-
rary scholarship and discoveries that either confirmed or cast doubt on
biblical claims. In July 1906, for instance, al-Muqtaṭaf presented a six-
page article called “the exodus and Number of the Children of Israel.”
the article is a selective summary of a chapter by egyptologist and
archaeologist W. M. Flinders petrie in the newly published Researches
in Sinai.^120 the chapter, “the Conditions of the exodus,” argues that the
number of Israelites generally believed to have departed egypt in the
biblical Exodus is grossly exaggerated. Among the different proofs cited,
al-Muqtaṭaf mentions the claims that there is no archaeological evidence
for the exodus, that sources suggest that the Israelites were in palestine
(not egypt) at the time of the exodus, and that the Sinai peninsula does
not contain enough water to sustain the millions of people and their
animals that, according to the traditional view, fled Egypt with Moses.
If one initially suspects that this article aims to argue that the entire
exodus story was a nonhistorical fabrication, and thus to undermine an
important element of the Jews’ historical claim to palestine, one soon
realizes that this is not the intention of petrie or al-Muqtaṭaf’s editors.
Instead, petrie proposes a theory that interprets the census numbers
offered in the Bible in a radically different way, reading the hebrew
word typically rendered “thousands” instead as “tents,” that is, fami-
lies, thus yielding only a small fraction of the number of Israelites tra-
ditionally believed to have participated in the exodus. petrie’s opinion
in this “most difficult question,” al-Muqtaṭaf predicts, is likely to be
“rejected and discredited” by “most religious biblical scholars.” Such
scholars, al-Muqtaṭaf writes derisively, routinely “reject any new idea,”
construction of the holy temple, the temple of Solomon, peace be upon him. this is the
al- aqsa Mosque.” al-Manār 6:5 (May 1903), 197.
(^120) petrie and Currelly, Researches in Sinai.