Freethinker2004

It's often been brought up that Egyptian history and the bible don't mix, especially the dates Apologists agree on for the flood, which cuts right into the middle of the Old Kingdom.
However some have argued that the data Egyptologists are using is faulty, especially Mantheo's "Kings list". Chief among these are Immanuel Velikovsky and Donovan A. Courville. I've found a link which make that argument based on their "research":


http://www.apologeticspress.org/rr/rr2003/r&r0311a.htm


With another Christian source, but this one(Under "Second review") disputing their claim based primarily on the problem of Shishak/Sheshong(Who is mentioned in the bible):

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/BookReviews1949-1989/12-73.html


Does anybody have any thoughts on the accuracy of Mantheo's list and in support of the generally accepted Egyptian timeline vs. these claims?

Dr Rick

The first link is an attempt to rationalize and refute discrepancies between Biblical dates and what we have learned through palentology, archeology, and specifically, Egyptology.

How does the author do it? Well, he establishes some "facts":

So it naturally follows that anything that disagrees with the Bible, like palentology, archeology, and specifically, Egyptology, must be "rooted in evolution":

Here's what happens when one's reasoning can be summarized as "the Bible is inerrant, therefore the Bible is inerrant;" to support his assumption/conclusion that the Bible is factually correct, the author offers this "rationale" to "explain" a discrepancy:

A word of advice: Don't waste your time like I did checking this site; it's drivel bordering on mindlessness. The author would have served his cause better by just being honest and simply stating, "I believe what I believe because of my faith" rather than engaging in this type of pseudo-intellectual dishonesty.

spin

Manetho's list isn't bad considering that it was written thousands of years after some of the pharaohs. No, it's not totally accurate, but it was useful when there was nothing better available. Alan Gardner had a history of Egypt which used Manetho's list in his appendix to relate it to what we basically know today. We do have a lot of archaeological evidence for the vast majority of Egyptian pharaohs and the few problem areas, the second and third intermediate periods have been studied in great detail, so what is to be known has been looked at. (Kenneth Kitchen wrote an important book on the "third intermediate period".)

As to jerks telling tales of mishaps in Egyptian chronology, forget it. Velikovsky didn't have the knowledge to make his conclusions and the modern writers who push this agenda fail because of the cross-referencing available with chronologies of other civilisations including Hatti, Ugarit, Babylon and Assyria.

Manetho is more of interest because it supplied information that gave a basic picture which has since been clarified by more useful Egyptian finds in archaeology. Anyone who is still talking about Manetho with regard to meaningful historical value is wasting his or her time.


spin

Harry Bosch

My wife and I are getting ready to adopt a child from China. So, I've been studying the history a little. They are one of the oldest civilizations on Earth. They written history goes far before the "flood"? Its curious that they didn't notice the Flood.

Dr Rick

Yeah, that bit hasn't been very well explained by the apologists so far. The Chinese and others were recording events at the time, and one could reasonably expect something as important as a worldwide flood not to have gone completely unnoticed by them. At the very least, their written records should have come to an abrupt end, maybe finishing with something about how unseasonably rotten the weather had been for the previous 40 days...

Magus55

And how do you know that their written history goes back that far?

Harry Bosch

Their first written documents have been carbon dated to around 2000 BC. At this time they already had a large, well organized culture. Do the math. How many generations would it take for them to have that many people at 2000 BC. When did the mythical flood take place. And why arn't their any stories about the flood. And where is the evidence? PS: their is a long documented history regarding the flooding of the yellow river and all the damage that it caused. But no regional wide flood.

gregor

And which Noahian descendent produced all of the Chinese? Shem or Ham?

Harry Bosch

As soon as I submitted my last response, I realized that scientific evidence (carbon dating) probably would not pursuade you of anything. I thought of a second line of reason: common sense. Why is the story of Noah's Ark common to only the Jews? Why don't we find the exact same story among all of the ancient peoples? Are the Jews simply more superior than the rest of us? {I hope that I didn't offend anyone, 1/4 of my family is jewish} If the story were true, it would have been told by the Aztecs, Austrailians and everyone else. Even the ancients directly next to the Jews didn't have the exact same story.

Magus55

Common sense would lead one to expect stories that aren't exact. Many, many ancient civilizations do have a flood story. If Noah and his family were the only ones who survived the flood, only his descendants would have known about it. In which case, Noah would have passed the story down through the generations, and as it happens quite often, the story would get changed throughout the years. Kinda like that telephone game. You start a story with one person, and by the time you get to the last person in the circle, the story is substantially altered. Now, obviously I know you reject this as being true ( big surprise), but since I do believe in Noah, and consider him to have originated the story, common sense tells me that it got altered through the generations and cultures.