The Book of Numbers - The Number of the Sons of Israel

There are a number of arguments that those who deny the exodus would make. The term elep can mean a thousand, it also has other meanings such as tribe and military unit. Hyperbole is a figure of speech in every culture,. It was certainly used among the hebrews and other ancien near eastern peoples. So you could argue that this is what the biblical author is doing. He's using hyperbole to show that at the time of the exodus, israel had a powerful in force. But were not meant to take the number literally. And i've seen liberal, christian scholars citing secular jewish scholar citing scholarly consensus. I think that all scholars studying this area should