This excellent article suggests very strongly that the Hebrew were originally 'Habiru', a name given to people living on the fringe of Egyptian society. That certainly would fit the Bible story and would explain why no evidence as yet has been found of the Hebrews' existence in Egypt before and during the Exodus period. Most atheists have reveled in the idea 'they weren't there!' but big stumbling blocks often have simple explanations.
It was at this point in time that I discovered the Habiru. Even though I was a professional historian, I had never heard of them until I began to study Jewish history. A hot topic in the small world of “Biblical scholarship,” their existence had remained almost completely unknown to everyone else. For 100 years, archaeologists had been unearthing clay tablets in the Middle East which made reference to a group of people variously described as “Habiru” or "Apiru” in the scholarly literature. Would the authors of the Torah have promulgated such an injunction unless they were themselves in actual fact descended, at least in part, from fugitive slaves? I doubt it, and therefore the fact that many of the Habiru were also fugitive slaves made a connection between the two groups appear highly probable in my eyes. Read more.
Brave man.
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