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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: the rosetta stone
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Taliesin
Shipmate
# 14017
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Posted
I'm sure it's been discussed before.
But my bible group tend to talk about it like it's true. The Hebrews were never in Egypt, and we've known this since the rosetta stone decoded the history of the pyramids.
This caught my eye today
quote:
The reality is that there is no evidence whatsoever that the Jews were ever enslaved in Egypt. Yes, there's the story contained within the bible itself, but that's not a remotely historically admissible source. I'm talking about real proof; archeological evidence, state records and primary sources. Of these, nothing exists.
Israeli paper
I'd read about it a few months ago, and I'm back in a 'god doesn't exist so why do I go to church' space... I sort of knew, but reading a book about pope John Paul 1 put it in sharp context.
So it's very hard to talk to people who want to refer to the 'column' at the head of the Hebrew people as they marched across the desert, saying, if they didn't do as God wanted when God was right there talking to them, how much harder is it for us who haven't heard God at all? And I can appreciate it as a story, a metaphor, a lesson... but people want me to believe it as truth. And that God deliberately caused the Egyptians to have a change of heart and chase the Hebrews after all, so God could show how powerful he was. They left that out of the children's story, hey?
So the point for discussion is this - Jesus may well, however unlikely, have been born in Bethlehem. But the Hebrews were never in Egypt, so why doesn't the church agree it's a story, and use it as a story? I'm sure there's enough allegory in it to keep us going for a while.
Posts: 2138 | From: South, UK | Registered: Aug 2008
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
As Clive Staples says somewhere on God's behalf: "They're MY myths.".
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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otyetsfoma
Shipmate
# 12898
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Posted
The modern Egyptians, with the exception of the Copts, are descendents from the Moslem invaders of a much later date: it must have been the ancestors of to-day's Copts who enslaved Israel.
Posts: 842 | From: Edgware UK | Registered: Aug 2007
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Taliesin
Shipmate
# 14017
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Posted
I'm sorry, what?
No one talked about modern Egypt. I'm talking about the total lack of any evidence whatsoever - the records of Egypt go back right through that period - thousands of years - and there is no mention of Hebrews, plagues, a mass exodus, death of sons or swept away army.
Plus no evidence of Archaeology, as the article says.
And anyone who says 'it must have been...' about any aspect of history is probably on dodgy ground.
Yes, they're God's stories. I can cope with that idea.
Posts: 2138 | From: South, UK | Registered: Aug 2008
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
I'm not sure if we have fully reconstructed every year of Egyptian history. The fact that it isn't in the records isn't proof that it hasn't happened.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I'm not sure if we have fully reconstructed every year of Egyptian history. The fact that it isn't in the records isn't proof that it hasn't happened.
I feel reasonably confident that it happened, for some value of 'it'. Certain aspects may have undergone exaggeration in the spirit of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Taliesin
Shipmate
# 14017
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Posted
"Although the Book of Genesis and Book of Exodus describe a period of Hebrew servitude in ancient Egypt, more than a century of archaeological research has discovered nothing which could support its narrative elements— the four centuries sojourn in Egypt, the escape of well over a million Israelites from the Delta, or the three months journey through the wilderness to Sinai.
The Egyptian records themselves have no mention of anything recorded in Exodus..."
wikipedia
[ 01. May 2013, 21:33: Message edited by: Taliesin ]
Posts: 2138 | From: South, UK | Registered: Aug 2008
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Taliesin: the four centuries sojourn in Egypt, the escape of well over a million Israelites from the Delta, or the three months journey through the wilderness to Sinai.
I imagine there might have been a slight exagerration in there.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:
I'm talking about the total lack of any evidence whatsoever - the records of Egypt go back right through that period - thousands of years - and there is no mention of Hebrews, plagues, a mass exodus, death of sons or swept away army.
Plus no evidence of Archaeology, as the article says.
Bear in mind that the period around the rough timeframe of Exodus (and we've got nothing beyond a rough timeframe for Exodus) was a time of general social collapse in the eastern Mediterranean, one that would see the eventual collapse of the New Kingdom in the eleventh century BCE. One of the more interesting records of the time are the Amarna letters, so called because of their discovery location. Interestingly they're in cuneiform, so you wouldn't need the Rosetta stone to read them.
At any rate, they depict an Egypt still fairly strong at the center, but fraying at the edges. One group mentioned is the Hapiru (or Habiru), who may be Hebrews (or may not). The records of the time list them as an aggravation in Canaan and sometimes as war-captives or serfs. Nothing like the events of Exodus are described, but the Egyptians of the mid-second millennium BCE definitely had slaves of various Semitic origins and mention the fact in their records.
Of course, the existence of the Habiru (and a "mixed multitude" of other Semitic slaves) doesn't mean that the events of Exodus happened exactly as described any more than the existence of Homer's Troy proves that Hektor and Achilleus fought each other in a war over a woman conceived by a swan-human coupling.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
Croesos wrote quote:
At any rate, they depict an Egypt still fairly strong at the center, but fraying at the edges. One group mentioned is the Hapiru (or Habiru), who may be Hebrews (or may not). The records of the time list them as an aggravation in Canaan and sometimes as war-captives or serfs. Nothing like the events of Exodus are described, but the Egyptians of the mid-second millennium BCE definitely had slaves of various Semitic origins and mention the fact in their records.
As best I understand it, the current favoured understanding of Habiru (or cognates) means "stateless nomads" - or the like. It certainly wouldn't be a support for an ethnic group claimed as cohesive, let alone a Charlton Heston style parting of the waters. But given the great Bronze age collapse, it might be worth revisiting what exactly is meant by "The Hebrews were never in Egypt".
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Hawk
Semi-social raptor
# 14289
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Posted
To claim we know everything about the period is a gross overstatement. Much happened that can't have been recorded by the officials in the Capital, and the individual bureaucrats sent out to the hinterlands. There are massive gaps in our knowledge about the times.
It is perfectly possible that there is some truth to the folk legends of an escape from the collapsing Empire, that a band of slaves fled into the desert to live as nomads, despite the fact that we have no extant written Egyptian record of this escape. The amount of stuff that must have not been recorded or preserved, and the amount of things that have been lost to the mists of time, must be immense.
And why do we believe the official records that we uncover? Why are they more believable? Historians only accept them because they have nothing else to work with.
So at the end of the day, we do not know anything for sure. Some people put greater historical weight on the preserved and detailed recorded folk memory of a tribal community rather than on what scraps of knowledge can be dug from the sand. Some people choose otherwise. I am happy to accept that the Exodus is a tribal legend that never historically happened, just as I am happy to accept that it might all be entirely historically factual. Both are perfectly valid intellectual positions to hold. What is not valid IMO is that the question has been proven definitively one way or the other.
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“We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know." Dietrich Bonhoeffer
See my blog for 'interesting' thoughts
Posts: 1739 | From: Oxford, UK | Registered: Nov 2008
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
As best I understand it, the current favoured understanding of Habiru (or cognates) means "stateless nomads" - or the like. It certainly wouldn't be a support for an ethnic group claimed as cohesive, let alone a Charlton Heston style parting of the waters.
Didn't most cohesive ethnic or national groups start out in a similar way? For example, the English started out as a bunch of loosely related Germanic raiders. The Persians as a series of tribes affiliated with their more sophisticated Median allies. The Mongols of Genghis Khan's day would often invent fictitious ancestral relationships to explain how newly allied tribes were "really" related by ancient blood. And let's not even get started on Americans and Manifest Destiny.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Net Spinster
Shipmate
# 16058
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by otyetsfoma:
The modern Egyptians, with the exception of the Copts, are descendents from the Moslem invaders of a much later date: it must have been the ancestors of to-day's Copts who enslaved Israel.
Actually the modern Egyptians are a mix since plenty of Copts over the centuries would have either converted to Islam or, if women, been wives or concubines of Muslims whose children would have been raised Muslim. The number of invading Muslims was probably relatively small.
As for the Exodus, there is no evidence of anything near the size of what the Bible claims (and given the size claimed one would expect evidence) but that doesn't mean one part of the early Israelite people were not a small group of refugees from Egypt. There were times that Egypt directly controlled the region to the west of the Jordan river/Dead sea. For instance Tuthmosis III who ruled in the 1400s BCE controlled almost all the way to the border of modern Turkey. Ramasses II again extended the Egyptian empire to Syria circa 1280 BCE (the Battle of Kadesh). Kings frequently has Egypt intervening (and in contrast to the Exodus story usually names the rulers involved).
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spinner of webs
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The Silent Acolyte
Shipmate
# 1158
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Posted
Phooey. I thought this would be a thread about Sister Rosetta Stone.
Posts: 7462 | From: The New World | Registered: Aug 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I'm curious what the reaction is in Israel to the 'Exodus that never was'. I suppose conservatives will deny it, and will say 'you can't disprove it', and liberals will accept that they are theological stories.
Same in Christianity, presumably. The mythical nature of Moses hasn't brought the walls tumbling down, has it?
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
Isn't there an old theory hanging around somewhere that the Exodus tradition and the Sinai (law-giving) tradition were originally stories referring to different groups of people? The stories then got edited together in the Pentateuch as we have it now. There would be room, under this theory, for the idea of a small group of slaves - maybe a few hundred - escaping, barely noticed, from Egypt and settling in what later became Israel/Judah. (Think Judges, not Joshua.) They, and their story, mixed with the people who were already there who had a story of God talking to them on a holy mountain. A few hundred years later, along comes a local warrior styling himself as king, for whom stories of divine law and stories of the miraculous deeds of a chosen people serve a very powerful purpose, and abracadabra, you've got your Pentateuch.
Having said which, it also doesn't help that we necessarily view these stories through the spectacles of Cecil B De Mille - tinted not rose-colour, but the specific shade of dollar bills.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
As best I understand it, the current favoured understanding of Habiru (or cognates) means "stateless nomads" - or the like.
Which would perfectly describe Abraham, Isaac, Jacob - ie: the ancestors of the Israelites before they came to Egypt (if they did)
quote:
It certainly wouldn't be a support for an ethnic group claimed as cohesive, let alone a Charlton Heston style parting of the waters. But given the great Bronze age collapse, it might be worth revisiting what exactly is meant by "The Hebrews were never in Egypt".
I'm not even sure the Bible claims anything particularly cohesive. We have 12 tribes, who settle into different parts of Canaan, who are recorded as often feuding with each other with Judges who rarely have authority beyond their own tribe. It isn't until the establishment of the monarchy under Saul, and especially David, that any sort of cohesion forms. And, David needs to conquer a foreign city to establish his capital so as not to favouring the territory of one tribe over another. After the death of Solomon that cohesion again breaks down, though this time into only two groups rather than the original 12.
As for the numbers of people involved in the Exodus, that could be an exaggeration or (more likely IMO) a number that expresses a meaning other than the literal number of people - I would say the same about the 40 years in the desert etc, these numbers have meanings that have been lost to us. Certainly the 600,000 men, plus Israelite women and children, and a multitude of others in Ex 12 would account for 2-2.5 million people which is an inconceivable number.
As for no records in Egypt. That is actually easy to understand IMO. Monumental records require considerable time and effort to produce, and would only be commissioned by the Pharoahs, some other major court officials and priests. The monuments we have describe the successful military campaigns of Egypt and other accomplishments. They served as propaganda, declarations to the people of Egypt and surrounding nations that Egypt is a great and powerful nation. It would be a very strange thing indeed for such monuments to record defeats. Of course, the Exodus account is also a piece of mythical propaganda.
It is in the correspondence and accounts of individual families there may be clues. Large numbers of fields going out of production due to insufficient labour to farm them, sudden purchase of large numbers of slaves to replace a lost labour force, letters to an eldest son being prepared to run the estate only to be replaced by equivalent letters to a younger brother. Unfortunately, exactly the sort of document that is unlikely to have survived the intervening millenia.
[ 02. May 2013, 07:47: Message edited by: Alan Cresswell ]
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
I would say the same about the 40 years in the desert etc, these numbers have meanings that have been lost to us.
The significance of the number forty in Middle Eastern numerology isn't lost to us. It's a standard place-holder that signifies "a lot". A non-Biblical example would be Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
As best I understand it, the current favoured understanding of Habiru (or cognates) means "stateless nomads" - or the like. It certainly wouldn't be a support for an ethnic group claimed as cohesive, let alone a Charlton Heston style parting of the waters.
Didn't most cohesive ethnic or national groups start out in a similar way? For example, the English started out as a bunch of loosely related Germanic raiders. The Persians as a series of tribes affiliated with their more sophisticated Median allies. The Mongols of Genghis Khan's day would often invent fictitious ancestral relationships to explain how newly allied tribes were "really" related by ancient blood. And let's not even get started on Americans and Manifest Destiny.
Indeed so (though just in passing I think the story of "the English" is genetically turning out to be a bit more complex than just Germanic tribes) - but your point still holds. I had rather assumed the stories of the wandering in the desert were the coalescence narrative.
Alan makes a number of good points too IMHO. The maximalist stories are one amongst several.
The point about size and numbers is to a high degree about embedded significance. Late bronze age people had about the same level of intelligence that we do. They must have been well aware that people don't normally live beyond 80 or 90 years, let alone to some of the Methuselah type figures reported. Treating these foundational stories as hyper-literal takes them out of the genre they were written in into something which resembles a modern history. A separate genre that has its own problems, but it would be another anachronism. Jewish narratives are notorious for embedding meaning into themselves - the genre of "apocalyptic" continued this well into the NT period, and reading that one literally has caused all sorts of similar problems. That's not to say that surface literalism would have been discarded, but rather that the texts would have been scrutinized for all sorts of other levels of meaning. We know that at least from the rabbinical records.
Which brings us back to the link in the OP. It seems to suffer from the same problems of hyper-literalist reading that - for want of a better word - the "other side" regularly requires.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
Is there not some suggestion that the stories of the Israelites in Egypt are folk-memories of the Hyksos? The Hyksos were Canaanites who came to administer Egypt (like Joseph) and were then expelled (like Moses).
(Also pardon my ignorance but what is the relevance of the Rosetta Stone?)
[ 02. May 2013, 13:21: Message edited by: Ricardus ]
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
[QUOTE]
As for the numbers of people involved in the Exodus, that could be an exaggeration or (more likely IMO) a number that expresses a meaning other than the literal number of people - I would say the same about the 40 years in the desert etc, these numbers have meanings that have been lost to us. Certainly the 600,000 men, plus Israelite women and children, and a multitude of others in Ex 12 would account for 2-2.5 million people which is an inconceivable number.
I've heard it explained as representing the number of Israelites at the time of writing, not in the actual exodus, reflecting a sense of "this is our (Israelites') story- we were wandering nomads, God brought us out of Egypt..."
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Hedgehog
Ship's Shortstop
# 14125
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:
The Egyptian records themselves have no mention of anything recorded in Exodus..."
So the ancient Egyptians didn't bother to carve into stone pillars "Although we are the most powerful nation in the region we let our slaves thumb their noses at us and walk away"? Gosh, that IS a puzzle! Why wouldn't they do that? After all, our modern politicians LOVE to make sure that all their errors are recorded for history...
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"We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it."--Pope Francis, Laudato Si'
Posts: 2740 | From: Delaware, USA | Registered: Sep 2008
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
Hawk posts: quote:
To claim we know everything about the period is a gross overstatement. Much happened that can't have been recorded by the officials in the Capital, and the individual bureaucrats sent out to the hinterlands. There are massive gaps in our knowledge about the times.
As a massive gaps in knowledge parallel, I might note that my occasional idle hours are being filled with preparing a note on what might be my former (Canadian government) department's most successful and well-known public education effort. I discovered, shortly before I retired, that the entire 14 volumes of files had been destroyed to make room for space, in spite of having had them put in a special preservation category. Should anyone want to know anything at all about how this effort happened, they will have to ask me or a young academic at the University of Calgary. Nobody else knows and there is no longer any written record. Canadian shipmates will know to what I refer: "I smell burnt toast."
While not an expert on ancient Egyptian history or, indeed anything Egyptian, if one excepts occasional dinners and cottage swims with local Copts, it does not surprise me at that supporting archival material no longer exists. It could well be that the draft papyrus is still sitting around waiting for communications approval from the Assistant Deputy Under-Augur before it goes to the stonecutters.
Posts: 6236 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: Oct 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
That is a peculiar argument though, that the Egyptians were unlikely to have recorded certain things. Maybe, but it is just part of a wider absence of evidence for the exodus, and other events in Jewish history. One can't keep saying that there is no evidence against it. It's a confusion of history with theology, I suppose.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
That is a peculiar argument though, that the Egyptians were unlikely to have recorded certain things. Maybe, but it is just part of a wider absence of evidence for the exodus, and other events in Jewish history. One can't keep saying that there is no evidence against it. It's a confusion of history with theology, I suppose.
The thing is though - or at least what some of us are trying to point towards - is that this POV has embedded in it the notion that "the Exodus" was some sort of Cecil B. DeMille event, which either happened as per the account or didn't happen at all. Both contain the same assumption. We are questioning that assumption itself. Whatever "The Exodus" refers to, it couldn't have been related to us in such a way, as histories of this period were not constructed in such a way.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
That is a peculiar argument though, that the Egyptians were unlikely to have recorded certain things. Maybe, but it is just part of a wider absence of evidence for the exodus, and other events in Jewish history. One can't keep saying that there is no evidence against it. It's a confusion of history with theology, I suppose.
Not really. We're talking about the ancient era. They didn't have our modern penchant for recording everything (and, as noted above, even that gets edited) nor did they have the ease of recording and even more preserving those records. For pretty much everything that we know about that era there will be only 1 or 2 sources, with a LOT of gaps in between. Even into the middle ages it took tremendous resources to preserve, for example, Scripture itself-- with monastics devoting an entire life's work to copying Scripture. Those kind of resources mean that things were only preserved if there was a mighty good reason to do so-- it was considered sacred by some group or of tremendous importance to important and powerful people. The exodus of a group (as noted above, probably much smaller than the recorded #) of rebel slaves which doesn't particularly make the ruling country look good is unlikely to fit either of those categories. So I would agree with others that the lack of evidence is not in and of itself evidence one way or the other.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Hedgehog
Ship's Shortstop
# 14125
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
That is a peculiar argument though, that the Egyptians were unlikely to have recorded certain things. Maybe, but it is just part of a wider absence of evidence for the exodus, and other events in Jewish history. One can't keep saying that there is no evidence against it. It's a confusion of history with theology, I suppose.
I think it is more a combination of things. First, we are talking about records from thousands of years ago. But records don't last forever. We have a crappy historical record from even a mere 1,000 years ago. It is worse for 2,000 years ago when Jesus was walking around. Once you get to 4,000 or 5,000 years ago, the pickings are extremely slim.
Now, some ancient records survive. But the probability is that the types of records that survive are the ones that predominated at the time--the things they really wanted to have recorded, such as the achievements of their leaders rather than thier failures. So, even at the time, there were probably substantially fewer records documenting the loss of the slaves. Being fewer records, the odds of them surviving to the present day get substantially longer. The fact that we haven't found one yet is completely in accord with these long odds. It doesn't mean we won't, but it is not surprising that we haven't.
On the other hand, the people that would have a reason to document it (the Israelites) have documented it. Just because we call it the Bible and say it is religious does not change the fact that they documented it--admittedly, as an oral history at first until somebody bothered to write it down, but they documented it because it was important to them.
So the people who had no real good reason to document it do not have surving records that it happened. And the people that did have a very good reason to remember did document it, albeit not in contemporaneous written form. But they preserved it through oral history. For historical reliability, an oral history is dodgy, of course, but it is still a form of history. I find it a peculair argument that the Bible should be ignored entirely as a historical record just because it is the Bible.
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"We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it."--Pope Francis, Laudato Si'
Posts: 2740 | From: Delaware, USA | Registered: Sep 2008
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hawk:
So at the end of the day, we do not know anything for sure. Some people put greater historical weight on the preserved and detailed recorded folk memory of a tribal community rather than on what scraps of knowledge can be dug from the sand. Some people choose otherwise. I am happy to accept that the Exodus is a tribal legend that never historically happened, just as I am happy to accept that it might all be entirely historically factual. Both are perfectly valid intellectual positions to hold. What is not valid IMO is that the question has been proven definitively one way or the other.
I identify with this.
My own view is that the Exodus happened as described, although I am happy to concede that the numbers were probably enormously inflated.
The scraps of archeological evidence about what was happening in Egypt at the time could easily overlook these events - as miraculous and wonderful as they may have been.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I wasn't aware that anybody was suggesting that the Bible should be entirely ignored as a source of historical information. Who would they be?
For example, many historians seem happy to accept that the man Jesus existed, based on the multiple independent documents about him.
About the Exodus, there is little comparable evidence. This doesn't mean that it didn't happen, but equally, it doesn't mean that it did.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
About the Exodus, there is little comparable evidence. This doesn't mean that it didn't happen, but equally, it doesn't mean that it did.
Which is pretty much what everyone here has been saying all along. Glad you're shifting the goal posts to join our side.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
That is a peculiar argument though, that the Egyptians were unlikely to have recorded certain things. Maybe, but it is just part of a wider absence of evidence for the exodus, and other events in Jewish history. One can't keep saying that there is no evidence against it. It's a confusion of history with theology, I suppose.
Care to place a wager on the sentence in italics?
The Egyptians did try to erase this cat. (Curse you, pesky durable stone!) But honestly, anyone who thinks accounts of pre-literate/early literate peoples must be perfect historical documents simply does not understand the process. We do not even do this now.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Hedgehog
Ship's Shortstop
# 14125
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I wasn't aware that anybody was suggesting that the Bible should be entirely ignored as a source of historical information. Who would they be?
That would be from the paper quoted in the OP, to wit:
quote:
Yes, there's the story contained within the bible itself, but that's not a remotely historically admissible source.
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"We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it."--Pope Francis, Laudato Si'
Posts: 2740 | From: Delaware, USA | Registered: Sep 2008
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
That is a peculiar argument though, that the Egyptians were unlikely to have recorded certain things. Maybe, but it is just part of a wider absence of evidence for the exodus, and other events in Jewish history. One can't keep saying that there is no evidence against it. It's a confusion of history with theology, I suppose.
Care to place a wager on the sentence in italics?
The Egyptians did try to erase this cat. (Curse you, pesky durable stone!) But honestly, anyone who thinks accounts of pre-literate/early literate peoples must be perfect historical documents simply does not understand the process. We do not even do this now.
But who is saying that? Do you think I am?
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Sorry, should have formatted that differently.
The first sentence was to you. An attempt at humour.
The following were just comments to the debate.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
If the Egyptians didn't post it on Face-Scroll, then it didn't happen.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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Jay-Emm
Shipmate
# 11411
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Posted
I'd be mildly curious to know what we'd expect to find. The flood is one where there really ought to be something (if it happened as pictured) that we'd have found. Abraham on the other hand, I'd expect a slim chance of something being there, let alone discovered (but did see a TV show where that was an example of non-history*).
As a silly example what evidence of Napolean's invasion of Russia would we find if we were sufficiently sceptical.
Actually that leads me to a more disturbing tangent, is it possible that holocaust denial becomes the rational (but factually wrong) position in the near future? And if so how do we counter that?
*It was TV so as well as the possibility that they are right (they were nominally experts), it could be that they had to simplify things for TV.
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jay-Emm:
As a silly example what evidence of Napolean's invasion of Russia would we find if we were sufficiently sceptical.
Well...
quote:
Originally posted by Jay-Emm:
Actually that leads me to a more disturbing tangent, is it possible that holocaust denial becomes the rational (but factually wrong) position in the near future? And if so how do we counter that?
The truth has always been less relevant than what one wishes to believe.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
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Jay-Emm
Shipmate
# 11411
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Posted
That's interesting..my quick google fu was drowned out by generic noise of what happened.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by otyetsfoma:
The modern Egyptians, with the exception of the Copts, are descendents from the Moslem invaders of a much later date:...
No, that's really not true. First. a lot of Egyptians converted to Islam. Second, there weren't enough Arab migrants to replace the population. Thirdly and most importantly the amount of mixing between different groups is so high that pretty much everybody is descended from everybody else anyway. Everywhere, not just in Egypt. So you can never say that one a modern population is descended from such-and-such an ancient population, while another is descended from another. Both modern populations, and all individuals within thoise populations, will be descended from both ancient populations, but perhaps in different proportions.
For what its worth the recent ancestry of modern Egyptians seems to be about 50% to 80% North African, and the rest split between European, sub-Saharan African, and Near Eastern. And the mixture with Near Eastern populations seems to be very ancient - mostly before the Arab conquest. So the l amount of recent Arab ancestry in Egypt is quite small (as it is in other North African countries). Of course pretty much every Egyptian will have some Arab ancestors, and a few will be almost entirely descended from Arabs - but most won't be.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
My own view is that the Exodus happened as described, although I am happy to concede that the numbers were probably enormously inflated.
![[Confused]](confused.gif) You seem to be saying that the description is accurate, except when it isn't. That doesn't shed much light.
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
For example, many historians seem happy to accept that the man Jesus existed, based on the multiple independent documents about him.
[tangent] How many does it take to count as "multiple"? Josephus is the only reference we can say is truly independent. Tacitus makes mention of the trial and execution of Jesus, but it's in a passage describing Christians so it's fairly likely that he was describing Christian's descriptions of their own history rather than reporting from independent documents. That's just one of the frustrations of reading the works of historians who wrote before the invention of the bibliography. You never know what their source is. [/tangent]
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
Just a minor point - some of the discussion in this thread seems to be based on the assumption that the Exodus would have been in the 1200s BCE. In the Bible - in the account of Solomon dedicating the Temple - the date is explicitly given as over 400 years before Solomon, which would make it in the 1400s BCE. Is it possible that the lack of evidence has arisen from looking in the wrong date/period in the first place? Though I agree that we wouldn't expect much evidence in Egyptian records of something which made them look bad!
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Taliesin
Shipmate
# 14017
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Posted
Never mind the body of evidence in Egypt, where the tombs contain the names of all the pharaohs and thousands of other noted people going back to 3312BC - and the fact that the Hebrews were 'in' to begin with (Joseph was put in charge of the grain, remember?) and while there are Greeks, Hyksos and Nubians, not one single Hebrew is recorded.
Not a single Hebrew marking on any grave from the time. The bible is quite specific about the cities - Eventually, the Israelites were used as slave laborers to build the city of Rameses (Exodus 1:11), and when they left after 430 years (Exodus 12:40), they departed from Rameses (Exodus 12:37). christan website
that suggests the Hyksos were in fact the Israelites. (thoughts, anyone?)
Anyway, there are stone age etchings in Palestine, but no pictures of anything in exodus. Wouldn't someone have tried to record it? I get your point about the deleted files, really sorry to hear about that, must have been very frustrating - hell, devastating.
Plus, the vatican authorised massive expeditions to the holy land to try to find any evidence at all, and not so much as a finger bone has ever been found. (a lot of Israelites died and were buried on the Sinai Peninsula - 2 million, according to the bible.) no writing, no pottery, no jewllery.
That was sparked by the discovery of the rosetta stone, which was basically a tablet saying the same things in Greek, hieratics (hieroglyphs no one could translate) and another script - which broke the code of the pyramids.
ETA: x-posted with EVeRYBODY
[ 02. May 2013, 17:53: Message edited by: Taliesin ]
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
Just a minor point, but some of this discussion including Taliesin's latest post, seems based on the assumption that the Exodus would have been in the reign of a Ramessid Pharaoh in the 1200s BCE. However the Biblical dating, in particular in Solomon's prayer at the Temple dedication, puts the Exodus over 400 years before Solomon, that is in the 1400s BCE. The reference to Rameses in Genesis and Exodus is the same kind of minor anachronism as when a modern author refers to Caesar crossing the English Channel when the English weren't even in Britain in Caesar's day! Could it be that part of the problem with lack of evidence is that many people are looking for it in the wrong bit of history by 200 years or so?? Though as others have pointed out, this isn't the kind of event there'd be much evidence of....
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:
Never mind the body of evidence in Egypt, where the tombs contain the names of all the pharaohs and thousands of other noted people going back to 3312BC - and the fact that the Hebrews were 'in' to begin with (Joseph was put in charge of the grain, remember?) and while there are Greeks, Hyksos and Nubians, not one single Hebrew is recorded.
Ummm, you are aware that "Moses" is actually an Egyptian name, right? You can see it worked in to various names of the appropriate era, including several pharaohs. That alone indicates a good deal of cultural exposure. Another bit of well-known cultural cross-pollenization is noted by Herodotos:
quote:
[The Egyptians] are the only people in the world - they at least, and such as have learnt the practice from them - who use [male] circumcision.
I may have heard somewhere that circumcision is a pretty big deal for the Jews.
[ 02. May 2013, 18:13: Message edited by: Crœsos ]
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:
"Although the Book of Genesis and Book of Exodus describe a period of Hebrew servitude in ancient Egypt, more than a century of archaeological research has discovered nothing which could support its narrative elements - the four centuries sojourn in Egypt, the escape of well over a million Israelites from the Delta...
Genesis and Exodus do not describe four centuries in Egypt. Its four to five generations. Judah is still alive and his grandson or great-grandson Ram is a child when the family enter Egypt, or born soon after. Ram's grandson Nahshon is probablky the head of the family at the time of the Exodus, his son Salmon gets to the Promised Land, and his son Boaz is born there. And his great-grandson is King David.
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Just a minor point - some of the discussion in this thread seems to be based on the assumption that the Exodus would have been in the 1200s BCE. In the Bible - in the account of Solomon dedicating the Temple - the date is explicitly given as over 400 years before Solomon, which would make it in the 1400s BCE.
Those umbers are numeralogical, not historical. They aren't really copunting numbers, more comments on the significance of things. Saying "four hundred years" doesn't mean that if they had put a ston ein a bucket every year from Exodus to the Temple there woudl have been four hundred of them. It means that the complete sufficiency of time had passed.
The historical situation described in Joshua and Judges and Samuel clearly fits sometime between 1250 and 1000 BC. That's when the story is set (whether its true or not)
quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:
Never mind the body of evidence in Egypt, where the tombs contain the names of all the pharaohs and thousands of other noted people going back to 3312BC - and the fact that the Hebrews were 'in' to begin with (Joseph was put in charge of the grain, remember?) and while there are Greeks, Hyksos and Nubians, not one single Hebrew is recorded.
Hyksos are centuries earlier, Greeks centuries later. And how would you tell a Hyksos from a Hebrew anyway?
And there are Hebrews and all sorts of Semites in Egyptian inscriptins, just not the ones we have in the Bible. Why would you expect top see mentione of a random little group of nomanbds anyway? Archaeology doesn;t work that way. You calmost never find evidence about named individuals other than seriously posh kings and so on.
quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:
Not a single Hebrew marking on any grave from the time.
Why expect a Hebrew inscription? There was at the time no distinct Hebrew alphabet. Just Phoenician/Canaanite, and that wasn't used for inscriptions in Egypt (or much anywhere else outside Syria) The Egyptians were using heiroglyphs for writing Egyptian on monuments, and cuneiform to write Akkadian of Aramaic on clay tablets when communicating with outsiders.
Anyway, according to the Bible the early Israelites didn't yet speak Hebrew, they spoke Aramaic. (Though there is no clue as to when they were supposed to have changed)
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Chamois
Shipmate
# 16204
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Croesos:
Ummm, you are aware that "Moses" is actually an Egyptian name, right? You can see it worked in to various names of the appropriate era, including several pharaohs. That alone indicates a good deal of cultural exposure.
Also Hophni and Phineas. I read somewhere (sorry, can't remember where) that there is a theory that only the Levites were ever in Egypt. And that this may be why they didn't have any territory of their own in the Promised Land - it was completely occupied by the other tribes when they arrived. So they settled in towns, and became a specialist priest class. Judges indicates that having a Levite priest in your home was a status symbol.
Posts: 978 | From: Hill of roses | Registered: Feb 2011
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:
Not a single Hebrew marking on any grave from the time.
It should also be noted that finding an inscription in Hebrew dating reliably from the supposed time of the Exodus would seriously change the current estimate of the development of the Hebrew alphabet. Noting a lack of Hebrew inscriptions in thirteenth (or fifteenth, YMMV) century BCE Egypt is about as significant as noting the complete lack of typewritten documents generated during the voyages of Columbus.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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hanginginthere
Shipmate
# 17541
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Posted
Egyptian records might ignore the escape of a crowd of rebel slaves, but a massive catastrophe like the death of every single firstborn child and domestic animal? Would not some rumour of this have survived, if not in Egypt itself then in the records of surrounding (possibly enemy and therefore gloating) nations?
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'Safe?' said Mr Beaver. 'Who said anything about safe? But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'
Posts: 72 | From: Eboracum | Registered: Jan 2013
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
I note the suggestion that the numbers of years in these accounts are just 'numerological'; the one I quoted from Solomon's prayer is not a simple round number 400 years so probably is intended literally? And I thought the usual objection to the Exodus accounts was precisely that despite the anachronistic reference to 'the district of Ra'Amses' they were NOT describing the situation of that period. And we haven't even mentioned that the dating of the Ramessids is controversial anyway - try googling for 'Egyptology/New Chronology'!
Posts: 2245 | From: Stockport UK | Registered: Mar 2013
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Taliesin
Shipmate
# 14017
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Posted
Ken, I also linked to a christian website:
that suggests the Hyksos were in fact the Israelites. (thoughts, anyone?)
My own grasp of history is pretty childish, I don't have anything like the kind of mind that can grasp the distances of time involved.
My original OP was asking, not 'were the hebrews in Egypt' but, 'why does my church house group want to talk about things as if they actually happened, despite all evidence to the contrary?'
I'd just finshed a book that upset me a bit, that had all this stuff about Egypt - which I accept at face value, because it seems likely - and went on to point out the total and utter unlikeihood of the miracles of Jesus being true, because someone contempory would have written about it. No one wrote about miracles til the last eye witness was dead. Why didn't Simon Peter write an account of his own? He was literate.
etc.
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