In understanding the historical background of the Pentateuch must the date of the Exodus be considered?

Yes. If as is popularly supposed, the Book of Exodus was written by Moses himself during the Exodus from Egypt, then it must have occurred at just about the time that the biblical record says that it was. If the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) was written much later than is popularly believed, it places both its authorship and historical background in doubt.

The Bible makes it fairly clear from the genealogical lists that the Exodus from Egypt occurred approximately 1440 BCE and that by 1400 BCE the Israelites were swarming across the Jordan River to conquer and destroy all the Canaanite cities in their path. Yet archaeologists see no significant change in the size or makeup of the population of the Palestinian hinterland until around 1250 BCE, when there seems to have been a peaceful influx of people.

The Amarna tablets, which date from the mid-fourteenth century, contain many letters from Egyptian officials and local princes all over Palestine, addressed to their Egyptian overlord. The local princes were busy with squabbling and infighting, but there was no mention of a new military power that had either settled in Palestine or was seeking dominion over their cities. This is convincing proof that Palestine and Syria (Damascus) were under Canaanite rule, subject to Egyptian military control, long after the supposed conquest of Palestine.

The Israelite arrival in Palestine was much later than the biblical account suggests and archaeologists say that there does not seem to have any military conquest. Moreover, Israel Finkelstein says that over ninety per cent of scholars do not believe that there was an Exodus from Egypt as described in the Bible. The Pentateuch now has to be understood in the knowledge that much, if not all, of it must have been legend.