Shavu`ot ping.
The author must have been watching a rerun of "The Ten Commandments" -- he clearly did not even glance at the Bible before making such an absurd statement.
Those who so often attack the Catholic Church for its traditions should question other traditions as well.
Although Exodus 12:37 refers to 600,000 adult Israelite men leaving Egypt with Moses, plus an unspecified but apparently large "mixed multitude" of non-Israelites; Numbers 1:46 gives a more precise total of 603,550.
If taken literally the total number involved, the 600,000 "fighting men" plus wives, children, the elderly, and the "mixed multitude," would have been two million or more, equivalent to more than half of the entire Egyptian population of around 3-6 million. The loss of such a huge proportion of the population would have caused havoc to the Egyptian economy, but no evidence of such effect has been found in the relevant time frame with the commonly held chronology. Archaeological research has found no evidence that the Sinai desert ever hosted, or could have hosted, millions of people, nor of a massive population increase in Canaan, estimated to have had a population of between 50,000 and 100,000 at the time. The logistics involved also present problems, with Eric Cline pointing out that 2.5 million people marching ten abreast would form a line 150 miles long, without accounting for livestock.
Hebrew University professor Abraham Malamat has proposed that the Bible often refers to 600 and its multiples, as well as 1,000 and its multiples, typologically in order to convey the idea of a large military unit. "The issue of Exodus 12:37 is an interpretive one. The Hebrew word eleph can be translated 'thousand,' but it is also rendered in the Bible as 'clans' and 'military units.' There are thought to have been 20,000 men in the entire Egyptian army at the height of Egypt's empire. And at the battle of Ai in Joshua 7, there was a severe military setback when 36 troops were killed." Therefore if one reads alaphim (plural of eleph) as military units, the number of Hebrew fighting men lay between 5,000 and 6,000. In theory, this would give a total Hebrew population of less than 20,000, something within the range of historical possibility.
Did I forget to ping you to this?
Chag Shavu`ot sameach!
Shavu`ot bump.