There's a lot of distance between having claims in the account not supported by evidence and it being an "entirely fictional account."
I wouldn't be surprised if truth is that it has a factual core with significant embellishment, to the point where the boundary is not discernible by history/archeology.
The Hebrew language came long after the exodus. We have no earlier records of it that aren't written in Hebrew.
So what we have is writings written hundreds of years later documenting an event with no earlier writings verifying that documentation.
It's possible that a small group of slaves escaped egypt and that was the actual origin of the exodus story which just kept growing and growing with retellings.
It is easy to imagine a large group of slaves escaping or being freed from Egypt. Maybe they or their ancestors were war captives. But wandering the desert for 40 years? Yeah right. Even if you want to grant miracles the idea that all of Egypt would even know about such events at that time is bananas. Information didn't travel that fast. Probably one group of people in one city. And the antagonist could easily have been a local lord. Over time it became the Pharaoh and the 18 months of wandering turned into 40 years. Only then it was written down.
Unfortunately, this is the case for much of ancient history. Doesn’t mean nothing happend, just that it can be difficult to figure out what is myth and what are actual events.
Sure. Although I'd say that if you want to study history that's _all_ you can do - use different sources, corroborate, cross-check, link and, generally, try to make the different events and interpretation "fit" together. If you have no documentation for it or supporting evidence then you've got nothing to work with.
Otherwise one could just use a semi-apologetic argument: the Exodus story DID happen as outlined in OT but God hid all signs of it so it couldn't be confirmed.
Sure, but I think 1) a lot of objections in this thread come because people seem to conflate "nothing to work with" and "so obviously it didn't happen" and 2) there's not no documentation for anything people have argued about in here.
A big disagreement that's probably been unsaid in this thread has more to do what counts as corroboration. Speaking abstractly, I think that if a group of people from 500 years ago strongly attest to something that happened 1000 years ago, that is not definitive proof in and of itself, but it is absolutely a form of supporting evidence.