Jay:

I am not an OT expert, but you might check work by John Walton, Kenneth Kitchen, and James Hoffmeier. Walton's book is Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament.  Kitchen's is On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Most of Hoffmeier's material are specific articles on the Exodus. He grew up in Egypt and knows the context. What the views expressed on the special seem to articulate has been called the "minimalist" school of Old Testament studies where the bulk of the Old Testament is either seen as creative myth or only gets somewhat historical in the latter periods from the exile and beyond.

dlb