Steviepinhead

I'm reminded of the various segments of the Oregon Trail, which still indelibly show the movements of, allegedly, a lot fewer wooden-wheeled vehicles over a shorter timeframe.

While the time elapsed since the days of Westward Ho is certainly shorter, the conditions of preservation of some parts of the Oregon Trail--arid, fragile high desert terrain--are such that one might confidently expect (if not deliberately obscured by later human development and disturbance) that at least some portions of the Trail would continue to be detectable for thousands of years.

The ongoing finds of ancient cities, ruins, watercourses, etc. in the Sahara that have been detected from orbit are also brought to mind. Sometimes these finds are much older than the 40-year journey of the Israelites--going back to the end of the last Ice Age, or further.

Given the alleged "accuracy" of the Bible, one would think, by one means or another, that at least some trace of the movement of this many people for this amount of time across a fragile environment, across a relatively short stretch of land, from known Point A (the Valley of the Pyramids) to known Point B (named cities of the Holy Land) would still be evident to satellite imagery, ground-penetrating radar, careful archaeological investigation, something...

But, uh...

...over to you, afdavey!

Dutch_labrat

But on the other hand..

If the exodus is based on the flight of the Hyksos from Egypt to Israel, if the story was later reconstructed to make the Egyptians the bad guys and to justify the invasion of Israel, and if we allow for some hyperbole things looks suddenly much different.

(Note: this is partially speculation and opinion. I do know the difference between those and fact)

First of all the group of Hyksos leaving could have been much smaller. Even a 10,000 large wandering tribe would have been huge in those days. The time they took to reach Israel also looks extremely inflated; a toddler on a red tricycle could have done it in a week.

So you have a large group of people trekking through the dessert from Egypt to Israel. This won’t take that long and would not leave that much of a trace. There is no reason to expect archeologists to find and significant traces of this.

This could make a cute story. Can this be supported by facts?

Pappy Jack

There is no hard and fast evidence that I am aware of that would add credence to this speculation; it's just that the circumstances kind of fit together, allowing time for the development of oral legends to evolve into accepted truth and then be recorded in the written melodrama of Exodus. In the field of speculation, I would guess that the necessary band of defeated retreating survivors required to set the story going in the first place could be considerably less than 10,000 - maybe as few as some hundreds, if that many.

Minimalist

Let us not forget that the current archaeological theory (supported by artifacts) is that the Israelites "arose" out of the debris of Canaan after the area had been desolated by the Sea People at the end of the Late Bronze Age (c 1200 BC). Whether one subscribes to Finkelstein's theory of nomads who were forced to settle down when their trading partners were overrun, or, Dever's assertion that the Israelites were nothing more than Canaanites who fled eastward to escape the Sea People, one does need to have Canaan coming apart in ruins to make the idea work.

The Hyksos were separated from that kind of collapse by about 350 years and in that time Egypt maintained a stranglehold on the region.

VoxRat

There's a report of genetic evidence that Phoenicians = Canaanites = Modern Lebanese.

I don't know the evidence first-hand.

If it's true, it ought to be possible to ask whether Jewish genes (homage to the late Gilda Radner) bear the same markers.

-Jay-

Hey, Hex. Do you recall having this same line of discussion with a certain Larsguy47 a few months ago? Creeeeeepy.

regards,

NinJay

-Jay-

Latrines, garbage dumps, tent post holes, graves, cultivated fields, hard structures (surely after a few years someone would've built a house...), areas cleared of stones, wells, fire pits, compacted paths...

You don't put that many people in one place for that long without leaving some damn significant traces, no matter how neat they were trying to be.

regards,

NinJay

Coleslaw

Maybe God picked up after them.

Pappy Jack

Yes, I have read similar material and agree with your summary. Because of the obvious love-hate relationship the Israelites had with Egypt that is shown in the Bible it is interesting to speculate on how it might have arisen. Was it no more than envy and hatred of the local superpower for all the usual reasons? There were many Semitic Asians who settled and prospered in Egypt and who would likely have fled during and after the war of liberation. So maybe it's possible the descendants of some of these numbered amongst the 'new' nation of Israel and carried with them a melodramatic account of the life in Egypt, the wars and the flight that became incorporated into the mythology of the Israelites. Whether this could ever be substantiated in any way at all is, of course, an entirely different matter.

Minimalist

Jack, if you haven't read The Bible Unearthed, you should. He explains in much better detail than I ever could.

In essence, Finkelstein argues for a 7th century writing of the Deuteronomistic History, based on the geography and the fact that places which figure prominently in the text were not occupied or even in existence at the supposed date they took place. [ Jericho, for example, had been destroyed in the Middle Bronze Age and remained vacant for 500 years or so. ]

What happened in the late 7th century, during the reign of King Josiah, was the collapse of the Assyrian Empire. Judah had prospered as an Assyrian vassal under Manessah (villified by the priests who wrote the bible for towing the Assyrian line). Unlike Hezekiah who rebelled against Assyria and got the country stomped flat for his efforts, Manessah had learned the ways of politics and was content to rule a country where everyone was making money...especially him and the Assyrians.

However, when Manessah died and Josiah came to the throne as a boy, and then the Assyrians had to withdraw to deal with the Babylonian revolt an obvious power vacuum arose. All of this United Kingdom stuff was created as a justification for intended Judahite expansion into the areas of the north which Assyria could no longer hold.

The problem is that just as Judah was getting these ideas of glory, Egypt under the 26th Dynasty of Psammetichus I, was also reviving in the absense of Assyrian dominion and was looking to expand into its traditional sphere of influence in Canaan, which would have included dominating the coastal road to Megiddo.

Josiah was hailed as the next "David" a glorious and righteous king but somehow the OT recounts how he was summoned to a meeting with the pharaoh who unceremoniously had him whacked. Looks like 'god' didn't do such a hot job of protecting his annointed that time. So, it was back to the drawing board for the bible's authors who had to explain away this disaster.

In any event, a few years later Babylon defeated both Assyria and Egypt and became the new big dog in town. They subsequently took out Jerusalem.

Again, Finkelstein takes 300 pages to outline his ideas and he makes a compelling argument.