bfniii

wow. this is quite colorful. the dichotomy of their histories is so profound, the hebrews must have been terrible copiers. the most notable difference is that the hebrews were enslaved by the egyptians whereas the hyksos ruled egypt. one of the most interesting aspects of the denouement is that hyksos rule would seemingly facilitate the rise in prominence of non-egyptians, such as joseph.

bfniii

and what kind of evidence would you expect? we have the story of the hebrews, apparently about the hebrews, allegedly by the hebrews.



you're assuming that the hebrews being in egypt necessitates that they would have adopted egyptian writing for the rest of their history without any possibility of switching later.



the first reason why it would/is imminently difficult to find their path is because we don't know what path they took. the names of the places they stopped at were associated with events, not places.

another reason is because they were wandering, as opposed to being established. this should be pretty obvious. finding and excavating sites that had cities for hundreds of years is not nearly as difficult as trying to find places where the hebrews stopped for mere days.

another reason is because there is no guarantee that the hebrews were not fastidious with their belongings. stating that there should be articles to discover assumes they left articles behind to be discovered.

another reason why there is no guarantee of articles to be discovered is in knowing that there were other nomadic peoples in the sinai area who may have scavenged whatever the hebrews may have left behind.

another reason is that the sinai area is not small.

fwiw, the sinai area was not all desert at the time, as you state. many areas are rugged. i would imagine this makes accessing possible sites problematic at best.

EthnAlln

Courtesy of Immanuel Velikovsky ("Earth in Upheaval," "Worlds in Collision"): Venus and Mars did a tango around the solar system for several centuries during historical times, in the course of which they came close to the earth several times and produced the miracles recorded in the Hebrew Bible. In particular, they discharged all kinds of frogs, flies, etc., all over the ancient Middle East. According to his credulous supporters, Velikovsky made "an amazing number" of accurate predictions based on this ingenious theory. Consulting his books, I found that one of his predictions was that the surfaces of Mars and Venus would be found covered with vermin. (That point becomes relevant because his followers wanted to argue that Velikovsky correctly challenged the accepted astronomical view that Venus had a cold surface. One of them even argued that Velikovsky predicted a surface temperature on Venus of several hundred degrees Celsius. Hmmm, so vermin can live at 500 degrees Celsius. Yup, that's a great prediction, all right.)

Well, I didn't intend to derail the discussion. Naturalistic explanations less fantastic than Velikovsky's for the plagues and the Exodus can probably be found. Yours look quite plausible. They still won't satisfy the Biblical literalists, who insist that the waters parted when Moses stretched out his hand and closed up when he withdrew it. (Flash! Is anybody else besides me having trouble visulazing Moses as distinct from Ian MacKellon's Gandalf?) But I consider the entire "history" in Exodus to be a legend, as its prequel in the Genesis almost certainly was. The Hebrew conquest of Palestine was probably not a re-conquest after a sojourn in Egypt. Who knows where the Hebrews originated.

xaxxat

C'mon... 2-3 million people trampling around the Sinai for 40 years should have left a tremendous amount of artifacts! :huh:

fromdownunder

..not to mention lots and lots of human skeletons.

Norm

Gullwind

Not crushed? Have you considered the implications of the 10 plagues?

The first through fourth plagues (blood, frogs, gnats and flies) were more annoying than anything else and would quite likely have left little physical evidence. The fifth plague, however, killed all of the Egyptian livestock. Cattle, horses, donkeys, camels, sheep and goats, all dead. Think about this. Not only is this a major food source gone, but also a large part of the transportation infrastructure. Gone.

The sixth plague, boils, would also have left little evidence, although interestingly, it appears to have affected the animals that just died as well. Of course, one could argue that the animals involved were the wild ones, such as crocodiles and hippos.

The seventh plague was hail that destroyed many of the crops of the Egyptians. The bible also mentions that they have to get their livestock out of the way. One wonders if they meant dragging the corpses from the fifth plague into the barns. :huh:

The eighth plague was the locusts that devoured everything that the hail left.

So, after all this, the Egyptians have no crops for the entire year, and no livestock. Do you really imagine that the nation of Egypt would survive a year or more with no crops and no livestock? Especially without mentioning it in any records. Not to mention the lack of any mention from neighboring nations where the Egyptians went to buy new seeds and animals (lots of them). Sure its possible that we just haven't found those particular records, but until we do, the logical position is to doubt such an extraordinary event ever happened.

jeremyp

How about that, Napolean, the supposed military genius failed to take into account the possibility of bad weather and novel tactics by his opponents.

Napoleon was a fool in several ways

- invasion of Russia was a big mistake
- totally failed to appreciate the quality of his opponents in the Iberian peninsular or the strategic problems of losing there
- had zero grasp of strategy and tactics in Naval warfare
- left the field at Waterloo during a critical period allowing his second in command to screw it up.

However, as far as I recall, he was not involved in any way in the escape of the Jews from Egypt, so why is anybody trying to claim his character flaws had any significance in that episode?

Anat

bfniii, Abraham also was supposed to have lived around Beersheba and dug a well there, although the city and its well date to later periods. He also had dealings with Philistines who did not arrive in the area in Abraham's supposed times. So why would you take Abraham's stories as evidence for anything? Why take them as anything but a series of legends composed over time by people wishing to explain the significance of places, their ties with other groups of people in their area etc?

Anat

Not really. See The Rise of Some People or Other. Especially the table in Appendix A.
Ai wasn't occupied at the supposed time of the Israelite conquest. Debir wasn't destroyed at that time. Of the 31 cities mentioned in Joshua, I count 11 or 12 as showing negative evidence for Israelite conquest at the end of the end of the Late Bronze Age, prior to Iron Age I. Either the cities weren't occupied, or weren't destroyed, or were destroyed at a different time. 6 cities were indeed found to have been destroyed at the right time: Lachish, Gezer, Bethel, Aphek, Hazor and Jokneam. However, Aphek was settled in the Iron Age by the Sea Peoples, so there is reason to think they were the conquers of the Late Bronze Age settlement there, and Gezer is claimed not only by Joshua but also by Merneptah. The status of the 13 remaining cities remains unknown - some haven't been identified, some haven't been excavated yet, some were excavated but the transition from Bronze to Iron Age isn't understood yet (or wasn't at the time of the writing of the article). So that's 4 or 5 at most out of 18. It doesn't look like a systematic conquest. More like local skirmishes. And considering the cultural continuity between the Bronze Age settlements and Iron Age ones in much of the country, except for where there was a settlement of Sea Peoples (see Appendix B of same article) I tend to prefer the explanations involving local disturbances in reaction to a weakening of Egyptian control in the wake of the arrival of the Sea Peoples, followed by economical changes leading to changes in settlement patterns.

bfniii

while finkelstein may be a good archaeologist, his conclusions are not without peer. the revisionist, nihilist and deconstruction movements within archaeology are not universally accepted. it's unfortunate that someone would present his debatable work but fail to mention the work of those who disagree with his ideas.