Question from Avi:
Could 3 million ppl be wrong?
Judaism unlike other religions makes the claim that exodus was witnessed by the entire Jewish ppl.
In the case of Jesus walking on water, there weren’t all that many witnesses and it is therefore hard to be certain of its validity. But exodus was witnessed by 3 million ppl.
How do atheists explain this?
Answer by SmartLX:
The point I make when discussing 1 Corinthians 15, which says 500 people supposedly saw the resurrected Jesus, is that an account of X number of witnesses is not the same as that many witness accounts. The Torah says 600,000 adult males saw the Exodus and the total figure of 3 million was estimated in the 1st century CE based on that. This is not 3 million or even 600,000 claims but rather the claim of just one writer in the 5th or 6th century BCE, regarding a supposed event in the 13th century BCE (best guess so far, among those that think it happened at all). That’s 700-800 years on, in a culture which did the vast majority of its storytelling and record-keeping via word of mouth – proudly so, as they celebrate with events like the Passover Seder.
This vast distance between the event and the documentation does not speak well for the authenticity of the event, especially in the absence of any other substantial evidence for it, and even several factors actively contradicting parts of it. More details here.