Thread: the rosetta stone Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.
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Posted by Taliesin (# 14017) on
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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.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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As Clive Staples says somewhere on God's behalf: "They're MY myths.".
Posted by otyetsfoma (# 12898) on
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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.
Posted by Taliesin (# 14017) on
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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.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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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.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
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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.
Posted by Taliesin (# 14017) on
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"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 ]
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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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.
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
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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.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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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".
Posted by Hawk (# 14289) on
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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.
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
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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.
Posted by Net Spinster (# 16058) on
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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).
Posted by The Silent Acolyte (# 1158) on
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Phooey. I thought this would be a thread about Sister Rosetta Stone.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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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?
Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on
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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.
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on
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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 ]
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
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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.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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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.
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on
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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 ]
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
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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..."
Posted by Hedgehog (# 14125) on
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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...
Posted by Augustine the Aleut (# 1472) on
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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.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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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.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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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.
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
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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.
Posted by Hedgehog (# 14125) on
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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.
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on
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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.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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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.
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
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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.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
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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.
Posted by Hedgehog (# 14125) on
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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.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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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?
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
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Sorry, should have formatted that differently.
The first sentence was to you. An attempt at humour.
The following were just comments to the debate.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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If the Egyptians didn't post it on Face-Scroll, then it didn't happen.
Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on
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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.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
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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.
Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on
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That's interesting..my quick google fu was drowned out by generic noise of what happened.
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
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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.
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
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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]
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
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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!
Posted by Taliesin (# 14017) on
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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 ]
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
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....
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
:
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 ]
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
:
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)
Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on
:
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.
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
:
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.
Posted by hanginginthere (# 17541) on
:
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?
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
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'!
Posted by Taliesin (# 14017) on
:
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.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
Never, ever accept a single source history.
I cannot truly address the rest without spanning at least two other boards, but would suggest broadening you references.
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on
:
Talesin, looking at these responses, I think what I'm seeing is that many people here take those pieces of the bible as partial truth or not at all truth, so I'm guessing many churches don't take this stuff as literal always truth. Maybe your church group is a bit conservative for your tastes if this is a classic example?
Posted by Taliesin (# 14017) on
:
You're probably right.
cheers.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
:
I can't add any information but this has been a very informative and interesting thread on a subject I didn't know anything about.
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Never, ever accept a single source history.
If we took that advice we would know nothing at all about the ancient era; and very little about much before the modern era.
Be skeptical, sure. Understand your knowledge is limited, of course. But virtually everything we know from the ancient era is single-sourced. That's all we've got.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
Taliesin - that's the wrong end of the telescope. It either didn't occur to Peter and/or he was too busy (on the Roman holiday he never wrote about) or he did and it was destroyed. It's all superbly chaotically real. Simplicity has given way to complexity for you. Next comes perplexity! And that's GOOD. Don't worry, God is with you in it.
Posted by Moo (# 107) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jay-Emm:
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.
{tangent alert}
I saw a very interesting television program about the flood. Someone took a map of the world and marked every place that had a flood legend. He wound up with a circle that has its center in the southern Indian Ocean.
The hypothesis is that a large comet hit there, causing tsunamis and periods of rain. Apparently they have found some physical evidence at the postulated landing site. I didn't understand all the science. Since it was TV, I couldn't keep going over the parts I didn't grok.
I think that plotting the legends on a map was brilliant.
{/tangent alert}
Moo
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Never, ever accept a single source history.
If we took that advice we would know nothing at all about the ancient era; and very little about much before the modern era.
Be skeptical, sure. Understand your knowledge is limited, of course. But virtually everything we know from the ancient era is single-sourced. That's all we've got.
Well, yes. But consume with a boulder of salt.
Posted by Net Spinster (# 16058) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
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)
...
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)
Strange given that Aramaic (the language of Aram or Syria) supplanted Hebrew as the language spoken in Israel after the return from the Babylonian exile (it is one reason the later written books in the Bible have Aramaic expressions in them); do you have any evidence? Aramaic is closely related to Hebrew (and both more distantly to Arabic and ancient Egyptian) and probably shared a common ancestor sometime in the second millennium so in that sense the ancestors of the Hebrews were speaking a language that was ancestral to both Hebrew and Aramaic.
Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on
:
I have read that Egyptian archeology is chock full of tablets of a very large and long lived bureaucracy. Tax tablets, inventories of farm harvests and a lot of other paperwork, none of which shows Jews or plagues.
There's also strong controversy about whether there is any evidence that King David existed or was anything more than a local chieftain. So worry about Egyptian History is a secondary issue
Posted by Net Spinster (# 16058) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
I have read that Egyptian archeology is chock full of tablets of a very large and long lived bureaucracy. Tax tablets, inventories of farm harvests and a lot of other paperwork, none of which shows Jews or plagues.
There's also strong controversy about whether there is any evidence that King David existed or was anything more than a local chieftain. So worry about Egyptian History is a secondary issue
It might be chock full but for when? Remember that the Egyptians tended to use papyrus which decays or burns not clay for record keeping. It isn't much use to have lots of records from Ptolemaic or Roman Egypt when trying to determine facts about something that possibly happened a 1000 years earlier. Or lots of records for a community of royal tomb builders which were mostly interested in their own squabbles. What exists tends to be patchwork. We are lucky to have the Amarna letters but we don't have the equivalent for almost any other time period in ancient Egyptian history.
There is some evidence that David existed; however, strong doubt on whether his kingdom as described in the Bible existed. The material evidence for a strong central monarchy at that time and place is apparently scarce (though part of the problem is dating). How much of Samuel and Kings is legend added to a list of kings of Israel and Judah? Think the Matter of Britain.
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:
Ken, I also linked to a christian website:
that suggests the Hyksos were in fact the Israelites. (thoughts, anyone?)
The link between Hyksos and Hebrews apparently goes back at least to Josephus. (Jewish Virtual Library.)
I first came across the idea in The Bible Unearthed by Finkelstein and Silberman. They think that the story of the Exodus was a folk-memory of the Hyksos, but say that the Hyksos couldn't actually have been the Hebrews, because the chronology is all wrong.
Finkelstein and Silberman are sceptical about pretty much the entire Biblical history pre-Josiah. They think that there was never a united Israel; that after the fall of the Northern Kingdom to the Assyrians, a wave of refugees came to Judah, and to integrate this new population a mythic history of a united Israel-Judah was created.
I understand their position is on the extreme end of mainstream (so to speak); that is, while their position is academically respectable, scholars can be a lot less sceptical without having any religious axe to grind. What's interesting is that their work does show an immense respect and love for the Bible as a work of literature; they just don't believe it's history.
Posted by Hawk (# 14289) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Net Spinster:
quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
I have read that Egyptian archeology is chock full of tablets of a very large and long lived bureaucracy. Tax tablets, inventories of farm harvests and a lot of other paperwork, none of which shows Jews or plagues.
There's also strong controversy about whether there is any evidence that King David existed or was anything more than a local chieftain. So worry about Egyptian History is a secondary issue
It might be chock full but for when? Remember that the Egyptians tended to use papyrus which decays or burns not clay for record keeping. It isn't much use to have lots of records from Ptolemaic or Roman Egypt when trying to determine facts about something that possibly happened a 1000 years earlier.
If we're looking for an 'Israel of the gaps' then the Biblical chronology is distinctly innacurate, putting Moses in 1496BC - at the height of an Egyptian Empire that knew Canaan well and enforced quite direct control over the entire area. We have much extant evidence for this period and it shows Egypt at the height of its powers, crushing anyone in Canaan who looks at them the wrong way. We have to assume that the chronology figures in the Bible are symbolic, because if they are taking literally they are meaningless.
But Egypt's imperial control collapsed about 1200BC, and the Sea Peoples invaded Canaan from the west. From the Late Bronze Age we have Egyptian records of Shasu (lit. Wanderers/Raiders - similar to Bedouin but without camels) living on the periphery of Egyptian control and some of them settling in the northern uplands of Canaan. But there is no room in the record for any conquest before 1200BC as Egypt was too powerful. A threat from these Shasu in the northern Sinai was roundly crushed by Sety I in the late thirteenth century.
It is possible that the Shasu settlers and wanderers (nascent Israel) coalesced and settled/conquered the Canaanite lands west of their homelands post 1200BC, while Egyptian empire was drastically curtailed and the Pharoahs little more than jumped up officials squabbling for internal power. The local Canaanites would have been being invaded by migrating tribes of the Shasu from the East and the Sea People (Philistines) from the West. They were ripe for conquering, either by not being able to stop the mass migration and settlement of the foreigners, or by losing militarily.
Did some of these Shasu, or a part of the amalgam which later became Israel, spend time as slaves in Egypt before becoming these 'Wanderers'? It is possible. There would be no record of what nationality/origin the Egyptian slaves had, or what happened to them after an escape. The 'Shasu' are unknown apart from their descriptive sobriquet. Who were these wandering people, where did they come from? The Egyptian scribes were silent on the matter. They didn't know and they didn't care.
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
:
May I add a slightly flippant note, with a little rhyme wot I writ a litttle way down on the right of this page?
P.S.Apologies for the sp error - I ttried to correct it yesterday, but failed! ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
[ 03. May 2013, 13:07: Message edited by: SusanDoris ]
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
:
Hawk wrote - quote:
It is possible that the Shasu settlers and wanderers (nascent Israel) coalesced and settled/conquered the Canaanite lands west of their homelands post 1200BC, while Egyptian empire was drastically curtailed and the Pharoahs little more than jumped up officials squabbling for internal power. The local Canaanites would have been being invaded by migrating tribes of the Shasu from the East and the Sea People (Philistines) from the West. They were ripe for conquering, either by not being able to stop the mass migration and settlement of the foreigners, or by losing militarily.
Did some of these Shasu, or a part of the amalgam which later became Israel, spend time as slaves in Egypt before becoming these 'Wanderers'? It is possible. There would be no record of what nationality/origin the Egyptian slaves had, or what happened to them after an escape. The 'Shasu' are unknown apart from their descriptive sobriquet. Who were these wandering people, where did they come from? The Egyptian scribes were silent on the matter. They didn't know and they didn't care.
Shasu means something not entirely dissimilar to Habiru IIRC. Interestingly, the Egyptians may not have recorded their genealogy, but they did refer to one group as Shisu Yhw (Wikipedia cites a reference that hieroglyphic rendering corresponds very precisely to the Hebrew tetragrammaton YHWH, or Yahweh, and antedates the hitherto oldest occurrence of that Divine Name - on the Moabite Stone - by over five hundred years.)
But that sort of narrative seems to be possibility. It would fit the general upheavals and city destructions of the Bronze Age Collapse already mentioned. I don't know if it can be squared with the Hyksos, who were at least largely semitic travellers from the same sort of area, even if more mixed.
[ 03. May 2013, 13:45: Message edited by: Honest Ron Bacardi ]
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
:
- er, that was supposed to read Shasu Yhw. Sorry.
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
- er, that was supposed to read Shasu Yhw. Sorry.
No vowels in heiroglyphs so your guess is as good as most peoples!
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
Honest Ron Bacardi: - er, that was supposed to read Shasu Yhw. Sorry.
Glad to hear that. For a moment I thought you were cursing us! ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
- er, that was supposed to read Shasu Yhw. Sorry.
No vowels in heiroglyphs so your guess is as good as most peoples!
Damn tripewriting skills!
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
One of the 'problems' people have with fitting the Bible into history, is that scripture challenges you if you take it seriously. So it makes life easier to work on the presumption that it is less reliable than anything else. It gives you an excuse not to listen. Nobody reads, say, Caesar's Gallic Wars or the stone inscriptions Ozymandias or whoever may have put up to proclaim his great victories over a multiplicity of forgotten peoples, in that way, not even if those are the only authority that something ever existed.
Taliesin, on your other question, what evidence is there that Simon Peter was literate? He may have been. He may not have been. The tradition is that Mark's gospel derives from what Peter said. It's He makes it explicit that Sylvanus wrote his first epistle for him. We don't know whether that means just as scribe or whether it's Peter's thoughts but Sylvanus's words and style. There's been a question mark over II Peter, but if Sylvanus cast I Peter, it's possible for II Peter to derive from Peter by the hand of yet another unnamed person.
In the media recently, with the death of Mrs Thatcher, there's been quite a bit about peoples' memories of her. Admittedly, we live in a much more literate age. I remember the Falklands War well, as do may others. They took place about the same sort of time ago from now, as elapsed between the crucifixion and the first books of the New Testament being written.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
cliffdweller: quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Never, ever accept a single source history.
If we took that advice we would know nothing at all about the ancient era; and very little about much before the modern era.
Be skeptical, sure. Understand your knowledge is limited, of course. But virtually everything we know from the ancient era is single-sourced. That's all we've got.
I once read that there are a number of people in ancient history whose existence isn't questioned, but for whom there are less sources than for the existence of Jesus. Could this be true?
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
In the media recently, with the death of Mrs Thatcher, there's been quite a bit about peoples' memories of her. Admittedly, we live in a much more literate age. I remember the Falklands War well, as do may others. They took place about the same sort of time ago from now, as elapsed between the crucifixion and the first books of the New Testament being written.
However, given the creation, transmission, storage and retrieval of information; there is no comparison.
Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on
:
Living in a more literate age cuts both ways. In essentially pre-literary societies the patterns and strategies for non-literary transmission are much more secure. Much of Mrs Thatcher's time is well within my actual memory, and some events in which I participated are very clear indeed. If I had also been 'in the business' of recalling them for the last twenty years or so, I've no doubt that a very significant record would be retained.
Actually many of the things I remember being relatively small scale social or personal events, my and others memories are probably the only place where they are retained.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
In essentially pre-literary societies the patterns and strategies for non-literary transmission are much more secure.
I would disagree, slightly. The patterns and strategies are like glass; very hard, but very brittle. They are very durable if maintained, but easily destroyed. How many preliterate societies do we know only from physical evidence but whose culture we know very little? How many do we "know" only from the tangential reference of a literate culture?
I would also add that what they preserve is more cultural than historical.
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
:
What do you mean by "pre-literate"?
Jews of Jesus's time were a very literate culture. Maybe the most literate one in the world at that time.
Posted by Taliesin (# 14017) on
:
Thanks, Martin.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I once read that there are a number of people in ancient history whose existence isn't questioned, but for whom there are less sources than for the existence of Jesus. Could this be true?
Almost certainly, though not being a classicist I can't give examples off the top of my head. It's arguable that there are fewer sources for Socrates.
Posted by Chas of the Dicker (# 12769) on
:
Moses is one amazing character. A stuttering adopted Egyptian who commits murder and runs off to join a third tribe is not a creation in the epic mode. I think there is reality about him though how we go from the Bible to any deep understanding of the period in which he is said to have lived is problematic whether you assume Biblical historicity or utterly deny it. I just love the tale that God buried his friend Moses on the wrong side of the Jordan.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
It's arguable that there are fewer sources for Socrates.
What? There are two sources* for Jesus, neither of whom were alive when Jesus was; and at least three for Socrates who were alive and adults when he was.
*Not including the New Testament. And Tacitus is marginal as he seems to be recording the existence of Christianity more than Jesus himself.
[ 03. May 2013, 21:50: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
It's arguable that there are fewer sources for Socrates.
What? There are two sources* for Jesus, neither of whom were alive when Jesus was; and at least three for Socrates who were alive and adults when he was.
*Not including the New Testament. And Tacitus is marginal as he seems to be recording the existence of Christianity more than Jesus himself.
But that's arguing the point, isn't it? The point is why say "not including the NT"? The whole basis for the argument against including the NT is that there are so few collaborating witnesses. But the counter point is that that is true of pretty much anything from the ancient era. Socrates may be an arguable example, but only by a slim margin, and at best is the exception that makes the rule.
Posted by Chas of the Dicker (# 12769) on
:
It's hard to get behind the Platonic redaction of Socrates - see C. C. W. Taylor Socrates: A Very Short Introduction OUP, just as its hard to get behind the theologies of Paul, Luke, Mark, Matthew, John(s?) et al but in both cases they are very clear indications of the impact of their subjects and give us vital information - except we're unsure which information is vital.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
The NT is a biased source and using it as evidence is probably circular.
Plato might then be also suspect, as indeed part of his writings are.
Yes, as far as ancient sources go, the fewer, the more the scrutiny.
Posted by Chas of the Dicker (# 12769) on
:
All sources are biased, and modern evidence based history is a recent, though very good invention.
The task of a historian is not to dismiss sources, surely, but to evaluate them and work, knowing their bias to add to human knowledge. to say a religious source should be blanked out would leave much of history unilluminated, surely.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
Not blanked out, looked at with more scrutiny. All history should be examined critically.
Posted by Chas of the Dicker (# 12769) on
:
Of course all sources - and the reconstructions based on them - should be examined critically!But in this there is nothing to exclude Biblical verses any more then to excluded Plato's portrait of Socrates. In the early days of Biblical archaeology there was an enthusiasm to prove scripture, in more recent times an enthusiasm to disprove it. Perhaps we can settle to a wiser course of examining scripture and archaeology in the stereoscope of historical understanding to see what the pictures might look like.
Posted by Flubb (# 918) on
:
Finally something I can contribute on! Wall o' text to follow (sorry!)
There is no extant evidence that the Israelites were in Egypt, and no extant evidence of them wandering through the wilderness for 40 years (and hence no evidence of them at Kadesh-Barnea). However, none of that is particularly striking, unless you have a Rankean understanding of what constitutes evidence, so here's why.
Israel in Egypt
There's no documentation of Israel in Egypt, but then we are missing vast amounts of Egyptian papyri - 99% of New Kingdom papyri is missing. We know there were vast papyrus archives at Heliopolis and Pi-Ramesse because we find it in the stone inscriptions of the chapel tomb of Mes, but there aren't any remaining. We have 5 wine dockets which represents the entire administrative remains of Pi-Ramesse (which in case you missed it, is the capital city of Ramesses II). So there are large lacunae in the Egyptian documentation of the period when the Israelites were supposed to have been there.
There won't be any evidence of the Israelites in stone either. Pharaohs didn't record defeats as it was a sign of divine disapproval, so they're not exactly going to crow about it - but even if they had, stones were re-used by subsequent dynasties- Ramesside temple material was continually re-used through Saite, Ptolomaic, Romano-Byzantine and Islamic times, so if it had any mention of the Israelites leaving, it wouldn't have survived that many iterations.
There's no physical evidence of the Israelites in Egypt either. With Nile flooding, any papyrus would rot, and alluvial flooding is likely to remove any mud structures but even Egyptian sites don't leave much behind - no buildings in Pi-Ramesse are above ground level.
Israel in Sinai
There's no evidence of the Israelites in the wilderness either. There are big questions about how many there were - the 600,000 in the text is problematic, because it refers to the fighting fit - if there really had been that many people, Pharaoh would certainly not have sent only 600 chariots after the Israelites (outnumbered 1000:1), but also the advent of 600,000 fighting fit men in Canaan would have certainly a) been noticed and b) would have presented no problems in terms of conquest - something which the text definitely points out. More modern estimates put it at somewhere between 5-20,000.
But even with 20,000 why no evidence? A couple of reasons:
1. We don't know the date - some put it in the 15th century BC, some at the 13th (the are others but those are fringe dates).
2. We don't know the route they took across the desert. There are about 3 options, but even within each route, beyond a few noted places, most of the toponyms are not known for certain (Kadesh-Barnea has had about 18 proposed locations). We don't know where Sinai is and that would be very helpful. All of this takes place within 23,000 square miles, so good luck.
3. There are analogous events that are also not attested to by archaeology. Thutmose III's siege of Megiddo lasted seventh months, and fielded about 1000 chariots and 10,000 soldiers - of which there are no archaeological remains, and that was in a fixed, known location that has been excavated for over a century. Ramesses II camped at Nebi Mend and fielded 20,000 men and chariots in a battle that involved twice the number, and yet exactly 0 remains have been found in that fixed location. Both campaigns were recorded (some with drawings!) in Egyptian sources, but we haven't found anything of them.
4. As they were probably nomadic, nomads tend not to leave behind many traces, carrying only degradable items. The OP's original article wished for some ostraca left behind by some Israelites on their way (a silly idea - if you're leaving in a hurry, you're not going to carry heavy items with you to helpfully strew across the countryside) but nomads tended not to carry much if any pottery - they used skins (a practices that continued all the way into Iron Age Israel (David et al). Finkelstein said that it was hard finding evidence of Bedouin from 200 years ago, so 3500 years ago is asking to have your cake and eat it.
5. Archaeological digs are notoriously slow - Hershel Shanks estimated once that about 2-2.5% of a site gets uncovered per dig trip.
There's a significant amount of evidence to suggest the Israelites were in Egypt and in Sinai (or at the most parsimonious, whoever wrote the story had access to data from the 2nd millennium BC) if you'd like to hear it, but I'll wait in case it's not what you're looking for ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
[ 03. May 2013, 22:43: Message edited by: Flubb ]
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The NT is a biased source and using it as evidence is probably circular.
Plato might then be also suspect, as indeed part of his writings are.
Yes, as far as ancient sources go, the fewer, the more the scrutiny.
Again, with that criteria we will know next to nothing about the ancient era. There simply weren't journalists or historians in the modern sense running around keeping objective records (even by today's low standards). As we have seen here, pretty much ALL ancient sources were biased one way or the other. And pretty much everything we know from the ancient era is single sourced-- a few with 2 sources, an exceptional few with 3, that's about it.
Again, it's worth acknowledging the limits of our sources, including the NT. But any criteria you would use to dismiss the NT as a source would apply to every other ancient source as well.
[ 03. May 2013, 22:50: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on
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quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Again, it's worth acknowledging the limits of our sources, including the NT. But any criteria you would use to dismiss the NT as a source would apply to every other ancient source as well. [/QB]
Agreed that history had a different meaning then.
So how do you feel about the historic existence of Achilles?
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Again, it's worth acknowledging the limits of our sources, including the NT. But any criteria you would use to dismiss the NT as a source would apply to every other ancient source as well.
Agreed that history had a different meaning then.
So how do you feel about the historic existence of Achilles? [/QB]
Outside my wheelhouse, sorry.
Posted by Taliesin (# 14017) on
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Thanks flubb, and yes please, I'd like to hear it if you have time to write it!
Posted by Athrawes (# 9594) on
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So would I, flubb. I had read a lot of what you had posted, but didn't feel my hobby level of history was sufficient to comment.
Posted by Amos (# 44) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:
Thanks flubb, and yes please, I'd like to hear it if you have time to write it!
I would too, Flubb. That was an immensely useful post.
Posted by loggats (# 17643) on
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quote:
Originally posted by ken:
What do you mean by "pre-literate"?
Jews of Jesus's time were a very literate culture. Maybe the most literate one in the world at that time.
How are you judging this? Because in terms of literacy among the elite (which is what it would've been in the Jewish community too during the Second Temple Period), I'm fairly certain the Greeks and Romans would have given them a good run for their money.
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on
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quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Again, it's worth acknowledging the limits of our sources, including the NT. But any criteria you would use to dismiss the NT as a source would apply to every other ancient source as well.
Agreed.
And why does the New Testament constitute only a single source? John and the Synoptics are pretty clearly two independent sources. The Synoptics might have influenced each other, but they can claim to be derived from three or four separate bodies of material depending on whether or not you believe in Q. And there are a handful of logia in Paul that aren't in the Gospels.
Claiming the New Testament as a single source seems more like a fundamentalist thing to do, where there is only one author and that is God himself.
Posted by Freddy (# 365) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Claiming the New Testament as a single source seems more like a fundamentalist thing to do, where there is only one author and that is God himself.
There is only one Author, and that is God Himself.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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Yes, on the historical Jesus issue, it's often claimed that there are seven independent documents, and that's apart from Josephus. The seven are Mark, Q, M, L, Paul, John, Thomas.
Hence, 'multi-attestation'.
But as others have said, sometimes a single source seems to be accepted. For example, Boudicca's existence seems to be accepted, based on one (hearsay) source - Tacitus.
I think Josephus has a list of Jewish preachers, such as Theudas, and they seem to be accepted by most historians.
But I think it also depends on the nature of the source, and the nature of the reference. For example, a single source for Robin Hood would probably not be accepted, as it seems legendary.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
It's arguable that there are fewer sources for Socrates.
What? There are two sources* for Jesus, neither of whom were alive when Jesus was; and at least three for Socrates who were alive and adults when he was.
*Not including the New Testament. And Tacitus is marginal as he seems to be recording the existence of Christianity more than Jesus himself.
If you're going to include Plato or Xenophon as a source for Socrates you don't have any good grounds for excluding the New Testament.
I don't think that Aristophanes counts as a source for Socrates. He doesn't count as a source for Lysistrata. More importantly, he's never treated as a source: nobody ever uses Aristophanes when attempting to separate out Socrates' opinions from Plato and Xenophon.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:
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?'
Martin has given some good advice, and I'm not qualified at all to discuss the history/archeology, but I'd like to add a contribution on this point which I don't think has been picked up.
My experience is that God uses the Scriptures to speak to people who take them at a variety of levels. I'm sure many of us can recall taking the stories at face value in Sunday School (I have a vivid recollection from my infants' class of eating manna cornflakes off the classroom floor).
As we move on, grow up and encounter other views I think the challenge becomes one of retaining our intellectual and spiritual integrity - without undermining that of others who may not be in the same place as us. Jesus' words about "causing one of these little ones to stumble" come to mind, as do the various passages about respecting the conscience of others in order not to shipreck their faith.
I regularly preach to congregations who I think in the main have a much more literalistic view of Scripture than I do. I try to take care not to reinforce that view, but I don't go out of my way to dismiss it either, at least not in an in-yer-face kind of way.
(I recall a evo christian kids' camp I was on as a teenage helper where a newly-minted liberal led a meditation for us on the verse where it says "Saul was [blank] years old when he began to reign" and whose main point was how this demonstrated the unreliability of Scripture. It just wasn't what a bunch of exhausted volunteer helpers needed to hear right then; I think it was an abuse of responsibility on his part).
I don't think preaching, or (depending on your church) a housegroup is where you might expect discussions of those issues. You have to secure the willingness of people to engage in what can be very scary topics for them, and that may not be possible or appropriate in that sort of forum.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Truly pastoral Eutychus.
And fourthed, Flubb.
Posted by Chas of the Dicker (# 12769) on
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Could someone more recently educated confirm or deny that the Exodus traditions were Northern, non-Davidic stuff and were only integrated at the time of Josiah when the Northern Kingdom had been assimilated by the Borg, sorry the Assyrians?
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
It's arguable that there are fewer sources for Socrates.
What? There are two sources* for Jesus, neither of whom were alive when Jesus was; and at least three for Socrates who were alive and adults when he was.
*Not including the New Testament. And Tacitus is marginal as he seems to be recording the existence of Christianity more than Jesus himself.
If you're going to include Plato or Xenophon as a source for Socrates you don't have any good grounds for excluding the New Testament.
I don't think that Aristophanes counts as a source for Socrates. He doesn't count as a source for Lysistrata. More importantly, he's never treated as a source: nobody ever uses Aristophanes when attempting to separate out Socrates' opinions from Plato and Xenophon.
Whatever. So then remove Socrates from the verifiable.
Does not change my impression of the words attributed to him.
[ 04. May 2013, 14:32: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Whatever. So then remove Socrates from the verifiable.
Does not change my impression of the words attributed to him.
Ditto re Jesus.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Whatever. So then remove Socrates from the verifiable.
Does not change my impression of the words attributed to him.
Ditto re Jesus.
As it should be. Suppose concrete evidence of the existence of Jesus (or Buddha*) be found, why should this matter? The extra-natural qualities are still a matter of faith.
Posted by Chas of the Dicker (# 12769) on
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But Christian faith, at least the small but important component of faith that is beliefs, is intimately involved with history. For me that doesn't mean that each and every aspect of the Biblical narrative must be historically factual but it does leave open the possibility of beliefs being modified, confirmed or undermined by historical evidence. Eg. had the Turin Shroud proved genuine, how would it have affected faith had it offered evidence for the resurrection? There must be great amounts of archaeological evidence still to be found and interpreted, who knows how such will affect faith and not necessarily in a Dan Brown scenario...
Posted by Flubb (# 918) on
:
So we have no evidence in Egypt or Sinai of Israelites (or rather, proto-Israelites), but what we have are textual references to them (and events). To understand what I'm going to say next will require a bit of background information about the the state of biblical archaeology.
Starting in the 1970s with Thomas L Thompson, there began an attack on the historicity of the biblical texts on a variety of fronts. Those fronts have been gradually whittled away (it's the archaeological equivalent of the 'God of the Gaps' theory imo), but archaeology was subsequently split into two camps - Biblical maximalists and Biblical minimalists (the latter started by Thompson, also known as the Copenhagen School). I'm going to have to grossly generalise, but the minimalists tend to say that the texts are later fabrications (pious fabrications perhaps), but that they are creations of the 2nd to 5th century BC - so a very young set of documents, made up during those centuries. In fact, at a conference in Rome in 2005, they re-iterated the fact that (among other things) that the "Exodus never happened." The maximalists tend to assert the opposite- that the documents are generally old - perhaps re-edited later on, but the documents are essentially reliable (but not in a literalist way). This is important for what comes next, because are the stories made up between the 2nd and 5th centuries BC or are they much older?
It rather helps to talk about Joseph for a second - not because we have any evidence for him, but for how much he was sold for. The price for Joseph is 20 shekels. The reason why this is important is because he's supposed to be 17th-18th century BC and this is the cost of a slave in that period. If you go earlier to the 20-21st centuries BC during the third dynasty of Ur, the price goes *down* to about 8-10 shekels. If you go later to the 13-15th centuries, the price goes *up* to about 30 shekels (a fact mirrored in the Deuteronomic laws). Had Exodus been written in the 3rd-5th centuries (or rather, 'made up' according to some of the minimalists) then you'd expect them to reflect the slave prices of their time period- Persian slaves were going for 90-120 shekels at that time. If the Exodus took place in the first millennium BC (which is often put forward, rather than the normal 1300-1500 BC range), then the price was about 50-60 shekels (see Menahem paying Assyria 50 shekels in 2 Kings 15:20)). But the price for Joseph is exactly right for the 17-18th century BC - no more, no less, otherwise the price would be wrong. That gives us a reasonable date for the Exodus at around the 13th century BC (given the 450 odd years in captivity).
So what now follows is a plausibility structure for the Exodus having taken place - the details may be questionable (cf 600,000 men etc.,) but we're interested whether a story *like* the Exodus could have happened, so here's what we know:
1. The nature of the Ramesside 19th dynasty (the time period of the Exodus) included Semites at all levels from courts to slaves (cf Joseph). We also have lots of evidence of West Asian pastoralists bringing their flocks into Egypt to water and pasture them from the 1900s. Some details of Joseph are what happened (given Pharaoh's ring)
2. The New Kingdom used slaves for building projects and regularly went out on raids to capture more of them. The New Kingdom started a fair number of building projects that required bricks (cf the pictures at Rekhmire). We also have a wonderful tidbit from an Egyptian official complaining that he was unable to get on with his brick-making because 'there are no men to make bricks nor straw in the neighborhood'. We have fairly detailed quota systems for brick-making, and evidence of indigenous overseers (as opposed to Egyptian). We also have details of slaves making requests to have time off to worship their gods.
3. Exoduses took place throughout the second millennium - what happened is not out of the (extra)ordinary for the time period.
4. The Exodus story itself is written in a manner that is quite firmly rooted in the local geography and knowledge of the Sinai peninsular (flocks of quail do migrate, if you smash certain rocks, you will get water etc.,) unlike contemporary stories which were often quite fantastical (flying kings for example). The route of the Exodus, while difficult to pinpoint, actually displays knowledge of the military outposts and strongholds for the 13th century - which had disappeared by the 12th century.
5. Some of the names of the people who came out in the Exodus are of an Egyptian origin.
6. The Wilderness tabernacle, in its dimensions and layout is what we'd expect from a 2nd millennium story, and not from a 1st millennium tabernacle.
7. KA Kitchen has done work on the format of covenants. Like any legal document, they have a particular format, and each time period is specific in that it contains things that do not appear in other time periods (so a 3rd millennium format is NOT found in early 2nd millennium, which in turn is NOT found in a mid-2nd millennium treatise etc.,). When it comes to the covenant with Israel, the format fits a late 2nd millennium format (1400-1200BC) only - which is when the Exodus is supposed to have taken place.
8. The covenant is of a sophisticated nature that would have required someone with legal training to write it. The language, linguistics, and law codes indicate both the correct time for when the event was alleged, and the complexity of the law systems indicate that it would require someone with knowledge of the law courts - which means that Moses would have to be fabricated if he wasn't real.
So to summarize, if the Pentateuch/Hexateuch was a 'pious forgery' created in the 2nd-7th centuries, you'd have to have someone in Jerusalem who had very specific knowledge from between 700-1600 years earlier of a foreign land several hundred miles away. To quote James Hoffmeier, quote:
The Biblical evidence concerning the sojourn and Exodus are so deeply rooted in the Hebrew Bible that it cannot be cavalierly dismissed
and I rather agree with him :>
None of this is evidence of course, but it's hard to imagine what kind of evidence might count, short of "Moses woz 'ere" stamped on a brick with Joseph's signet ring ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
Posted by Net Spinster (# 16058) on
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I doubt the price of a slave was static across an entire region and would probably vary rapidly depending on supply (captured city->lots of new slaves->price drop), the merchants for instance would want to make a profit so the price they would pay to Joseph's brothers would be less than what they sold Joseph for in the marketplace in Egypt. In addition the merchants had no great incentive to buy but the brothers a lot to sell and only one potential buyer; this would also drive the price down. A later story teller may well have used 20 shekels (an extremely low price for a slave at their time according to your sources) to emphasize how cheaply the brothers sold Joseph.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Chas of the Dicker:
Could someone more recently educated confirm or deny that the Exodus traditions were Northern, non-Davidic stuff and were only integrated at the time of Josiah when the Northern Kingdom had been assimilated by the Borg, sorry the Assyrians?
I'm not that educated, but I can confidently say that anybody who is willing to assert that their personal controversial theory is that certain, is a conceited ass.
Flubb thank you for your wise words. I find it hard to believe that anyone in post-exilic Judea had sufficient historical sensitivity to fake writings convincingly so as to fool scholars now into thinking that they were written several centuries previously. Van Meegeren fooled his own time, but his fakes look strangely inter-war period now.
The RSV (mid C20) did not set out to imitate C17 English but is more traditional than more recent translations. It retained the 2nd person singular, as 'biblical English' but uses it in ways that no C17 person would have done.
A curious piece of negative evidence that the Torah dates from at least the monarchy if not a lot earlier, is the absence of any reference to hens in the sacrificial or food laws. There's ambiguity as to when they arrived in the Mediterranean but it seems to have been about 500BC. If they were a prevalent food item, one would have expected them to be explicitly kosher and used for minor sacrifices instead of pigeons or explicitly named as tref.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Thanks again Flubb.
Posted by Net Spinster (# 16058) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
A curious piece of negative evidence that the Torah dates from at least the monarchy if not a lot earlier, is the absence of any reference to hens in the sacrificial or food laws. There's ambiguity as to when they arrived in the Mediterranean but it seems to have been about 500BC. If they were a prevalent food item, one would have expected them to be explicitly kosher and used for minor sacrifices instead of pigeons or explicitly named as tref.
That would be evidence that the legal codes which are a part of the Torah could have been written no later than the early second temple period (the return is dated to starting about 530s). BTW chickens were in existence in Egypt by the 1400s BCE. I also note that geese (which have a long era of domestication in the Middle East are also not listed as potential sacrifices).
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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Net Spinster wrote: quote:
That would be evidence that the legal codes which are a part of the Torah could have been written no later than the early second temple period (the return is dated to starting about 530s).
I'm having difficulty following your logic here I'm afraid - any chance of expanding your point a little?
quote:
BTW chickens were in existence in Egypt by the 1400s BCE.
The Egyptians used them for sport, though, not eating, didn't they?
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
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Flubb
Very interesting post. I do admire those with a deep, and retained! , knowledge of history.
And of course every one of those people, whether they did exactly what was reported or not, and however much historians read, re-read and interpret the known facts and writings, was a human being, each with his/her place in the evolutionary thread of our species. No God/god/s involved; only a humanly created belief in him/them.
Posted by Net Spinster (# 16058) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Net Spinster wrote: quote:
That would be evidence that the legal codes which are a part of the Torah could have been written no later than the early second temple period (the return is dated to starting about 530s).
I'm having difficulty following your logic here I'm afraid - any chance of expanding your point a little?
quote:
BTW chickens were in existence in Egypt by the 1400s BCE.
The Egyptians used them for sport, though, not eating, didn't they?
Enoch stated that chickens showed up about 500BCE so therefore the Torah had to be written during the monarchy at the latest when a date of 500 still allows the early Second Temple (e.g., Ezra) and the Torah consists of more than the laws on sacrifice (e.g., that part could be old while the whole might be much later).
On chickens it is hard to know, however, geese which are also not mentioned in the Bible definitely were eaten.
[ 05. May 2013, 14:34: Message edited by: Net Spinster ]
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
:
OK, NS, I see the point you are making. Thanks. To be honest, either way it's an argument from silence, which is not much help on its own.
Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on
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I have vague memories of studying this, and I'm really not good with dates and chronological orders, so I might be throwing totally irrelevant stuff at this thread - forgive me if I am. I studied this in the period when many were saying that Israel as a nation didn't really exist (to which the Merneptah Stele was always a particular thorn in the side), with all manner of various ideas and theories, which of course naturally fed into the idea that there was no Exodus. The prevailing idea at that time (although there were others), was that the Exodus story was an identity tale/myth to give understanding to religious concepts and even practices. That is something fairly easy to demonstrate even using only scripture as your source material.
However, there are some who have suggested (I think that famous Egyptologist is one - you know; the one on tv a lot) that Israelites were never slaves in Egypt in any way. But I do recall a few fragments of what might be classed as 'annoying' evidence to all these theories. The Brooklyn Papyrus, if memory serves me well, has at least two quite distinct Israeli names listed as slaves in a domestic household. The 'Admonitions' papyrus by Ipuwer describes the gradual unravelling of Egyptian power and stability, hinting at the rise of the power of the salves and how they begin to outnumber the native peoples and even talks of a river of blood. There are some who suggest that Egypt did not rely heavily upon slaves, and may not have used slaves to any great degree and yet the Seti I Karnack reliefs show very clearly that hordes of slaves were driven across from the Sinai peninsula into Egypt.
Sinai has a few interesting features too, which are somewhat difficult to date, but point to periods of settlement and religious activity. The base of Sinai has little evidence of settlement, but there are a few scattered stone structures and piles of twelve stones. On the slightly upper flanks of Sinai itself there is significant evidence of Hathor worship and there is even a temple in Sinai dedicated to her with very fine carvings of her head in the shape of a cow.
I'm told - but must confess I haven't exactly kept up to date with these things - that there is an archaelogical picture emerging from Egypt of that period which shows a picture of terrible famine, various calamities and murder and insurrection, in which the Egyptians resort to old ways of killing the first born in an attempt to placate the gods anger. I'm afraid I simply don't know enough about it to know what evidence there is for it, or if there is truth in it.
Posted by Grammatica (# 13248) on
:
Out of curiosity, and since Flubb is on the thread, I have a question.
I was recently doing some idle reading and came across the "Serbonian Bog," a quagmire described by Herodotus. Desert sand would blow onto it, and it would look deceptively like solid land, until you tried to step on it. Herodotus said that whole armies had been swallowed up in the Serbonian Bog.
It's identified with the approaches to the present Lake Bardawil, which is on the north shore of the Sinai Peninsula, lying on what is today the main road east out of Egypt.
Has anyone proposed a connection between that and the Exodus story of Pharaoh's army swallowed up by the sea? It's very tempting to me to want to do so. Assuming the historicity of the story, of course, and there are many possible routes.
"Serbonian Bog" became a byword for an intractable, hopeless situation, used by the classically-educated down to our own times, as for example by John Milton and US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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Very interesting thread. I wish I knew more about ancient history.
Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on
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Gammatica
The answer is yes the connection has been made.
Jengie
Posted by Grammatica (# 13248) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
Gammatica
The answer is yes the connection has been made.
Jengie
It makes sense that a connection might be made. I suppose that if one does not accept the historicity of the Exodus narrative, there's not much to be gained, but if the possibility's held open, this might be one more suggestive piece of evidence.
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