EthnAlln

So I'm waiting for my favorite comedian (Jack van Impe) to come on, and I'm watching a documentary on one of the God channels in the area. They allowed a humanist rabbi to say that the whole story of the Exodus was invented. Of course, the evidence for his conclusions was not presented. Instead, he was immediately followed by two tame archaeologists, one claiming that there are documents in "Sumerian" and ancient Egyptian showing that the geographical information contained in the Exodus story "could only have been known in such detail by someone who was an eyewitness" and --- this is what was new to me --- the other (a weedy looking twerp) claiming that there is an Egyptian papyrus that records all the plagues. He didn't say what it was or how it was dated or what its provenance was, of course. Obviously, to the fundies who routinely eat this shit with a spoon, this will be yet one more confirmation of Biblical reliability.

Does anybody have a guess as to what these documents are, especially that last-claimed papyrus? I frankly don't, but I'm very skeptical that it can be correlated with what is in the book of Exodus.

ETA: Jesus fucking Christ! Now there's a "scientist" blowing a fan over a tank of water to show how the Hebrews were able to cross the "Red Sea" (hasn't he heard it was the Sea of Reeds?) This they call science, but evolution is buncombe. Aaugh!!!

Roller

Its probably the Ipuwer papyrus. However, this papyrus is usually dated too early for Exodus.

As far as geographical information and witnesses go, I wonder what kind of witness missed Egyptian forts?

Toto

The second document sounds like the Ipuwer Papyrus (see this thread for more).

EthnAlln

Yeah, that certainly sounds like it. Can I ask another naive question? Is it possible the authors of the Exodus legend knew about the Ipuwer papyrus and used it to embroider their legend? That would make sense to me.