Oh for goodness sake… I’m a Unitarian Universalist. I’m about as “locked in” as an angel’s 2 year old toddler would be.
But this could still be the reason I react to your scenario the way I do. The one thing you encounter in the U.U. denomination is lots and lots of “what ifs” about religion, history, history of religion and the afterlife.
You have as much right as anyone to cook up your own recipe. But my study into the history of Yahweh-ism has put me in a rather archaeological/literary mode, where I take just as much input (if not more) from information outside the Bible.
You, on the other hand, have to keep linking up with the Bible’s plot structure. I think that’s unwise. And here’s where I think the problem starts - - with pond ripples proceeding outwards from there:
Exodus. Exodus could not happen before the arrival and consolidation of the Pelest/Philistines. This was accomplished around 1130 BCE. Before 1130 BCE, all the way back to the Hysksos, the Egyptian hegemony over the Levant and Southern Syria was incredibly consistent. It wasn’t perfectly consistent, but it would not be wrong to say that every 50 years or so, the Egyptians were crawling all over the highlands, past Jerusalem to Beth Sheehan, collecting tribute, farm products, and re-asserting their rule. That was 400 years or so where there is no way an Exodus group could have sat at the edge of the Sinai wilderness (for 40 years) and not have been wiped out by the Egyptians.
Once the Philistines consolidated, the Egyptians were barred from accessing the Sinai for a few centuries.
If your scenario can still function with an 1130 BCE Exodus, I’ll listen to you some more. But I don’t believe many Evangelicals are willing to accept the time frame.