Hex

Out of that whole post, that's all you comment on? :Cheeky:

jess

ok, the fact that there is gold in tombs throughout the world, and you use two examples off your head to explain why people didn't do it? When it is obvious that all cultures did?

Hex: go ahead and say shit. No rule against it.

Same with all the other four+ letter words you can think of...

Nuwanda

I have only read up to this post so far so pardon me if this was already mentioned, but what makes anyone think that this area wasn't a target for vandals? There have been pilgrimages to the region for thousands of years. The entire Jewish faith is based on the Exodus story surely Jews throughout the ages have desired to have a "piece" of the Exodus in the home hanging over the fireplace. If anything was found the temptation must have been overwhelming to snatch it away to have a piece of the story; a holy relic.

This could have easily depleted the region of any artifacts that would have been used for evidence today. 3500 some odd years of vandalizing,... why not?

I hate to admit it but on a recent trip to Ephesus I smuggled out a tiny rock I found along the street, simply because I wanted a "piece" of the action back home. My wife already yelled at me for it so save your breath. Speaking of Ephesus, here's a city that was second to Rome, for all intents and purposes, in the ancient empire and it is only 15% excavated, and we know exactly where it is. We don't know the exact locations of the exodus movement, nor were any permenant settlements built. Why are people so quick to dismiss the exodus as myth due to lack of archaeological finds?

RED DAVE

No evidence of such souvenir taking. One more piece of idle (idol?) speculation.

Little green men from the planet Mesklin could have come down and erased the whole thing, too. But that didn't happen either.

RED DAVE

3DJay

Doesn't matter. Now we can write it off as myth, until proven otherwise, because the Bible wasn't written as a historical text, anyway.

Peace

Nuwanda

How on earth could there be "evidence of souvenir taking?" What, we're going to find a staff in some attic in New York with semetic inscriptions and be able to link it with the exodus? Nobody will ever guess that my little rock from Ephesus was from Ephesus no matter how slick their investigating is, much less prove that its from Ephesus. This is indeed speculation, speculation is the backbone of all inquiry, so what?

jess

Indeed, if there had been souvenir taking, we'd have a plethora of 'fake' exodus relics, like we have of the saints.

Also, we'd have evidence of the pilgramages that took the relics...

Nuwanda

Are you saying we have no evidence of Jewish pilgramages to the Sinai? Google that one Jess.

3DJay

You dropped jess' qualifier...
In what reality would Jewish religious pilgrims find relics...evidence of the desert trek...and not show them to the world?


Peace

Sauron

Because last time I checked, vandals didn't care much about broken pottery, clothing and household/farming implements - which is a small sub-list of the items that *ought* to be at Kadesh-Barnea in the Sinai, if 2.5 million people had camped there for 38 years.

And for those small bits of gold and jewelry, I don't see where vandals make much difference. The Valley of the Kings in Egypt has been the target of vandals for over three thousand years, and its contents were professionally buried to remain undetected. Yet in spite of all that, we're still finding tombs with rare and expensive items in the Valley.