Sauron

Why should they? The event never happened.

If you claim to have an elephant in your bedroom, then that elephant is going to leave behind evidence. No evidence? Then no elephant.

Sven

Underwater archeology is much more difficult and expensive than conventional one. So, given that

* there's not a shred of written documentation of many Hebrews in Egypt, any of the seven plagues or the Exodus outside of the bible

* there's not a shred of other evidence (mass graves from all dead first borns, just as an example) for the above

* there's not a shred of evidence that the Hebrews conquered Canaan, there's rather evidence against it (no walls at Jericho which the Hebrews supposedly conquered by tearing down the walls, no change in pottery at the time of the supposed conquest, just to name two)

- why on Earth should anyone invest time and money into underwater archeology?

Hint: There was nobody walking at all.

Waht some people refuse to get is that absence of evidence is evidence of absence if evidence has to be there for something to be true.

-Jay-

Actually, I think it was Henry Jones, Jr. I believe this was a year or two after he found the Ark of the Covenant.

r/

NinJay

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

Greetings, Babylon sister, before you posted I had writing in #115 on this thread ...
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/newreply.php...eply&p=4402427

Quote:

Originally Posted by Praxeus It is pretty obvious that if you look in the wrong place for something, you will not find it. Surprise at this is a bit strained and for those who know the historical search feigned.

And this is a key issue, remember we are not looking in the Northern Plains . Where to look ? Have the professional archaeologists been looking in the wrong place ?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Babylon Sister And, even at 100 people for 20 weeks, there would still be plenty of evidence of their passing. But there isn't.

Here is a comment in regards to the site in Arabia (Saudi Arabia, to be
precise, not a mecca for Biblical archaeological research, in fact a tad hostile).

http://www.newprovidencebc.com/Mt%20...0al%20Lawz.pdf
THE BIBLICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF JABAL AL LAWZ - Charles A. Whittaker

One would expect some evidence of camping by a huge mass of people with the prolonged stay they experienced there. From extensive observation of the vast plains that extend in all directions from the eastern slopes of the Lawz/Maqla range, the Caldwells documented hundred and hundreds of camp-circles with the small stones. Does this prove they were used by Israel in the Mosaic times? No, but since dating is so inexact, it still remains a possibility. Once again, if this is the site of Mt. Sinai, there must be room to camp for as many as two million people, and one might expect some structural evidence of a nine-month camp. These structures could very possibly be that evidence. p. 153

And this is also discussed in p.262 of The Exodus Case (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Dr. Lennart Möller. An excellent book that skeptics try to simply dismiss with the most cursory and superficial and unsubstantive 'reviews'.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Babylon Sister My area of specialization is not the Middle East. It is the Northern Plains and the Great Basin. ... Since the Jews were not in either of these areas, I have not found anything they may have left behind.

And that of course would be true in the Sinai Kadesh-Barnea as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Babylon Sister Think about the process necessary to fashion a "golden calf". What do you need to melt gold? Do you think nomads wandering around the desert had the equipment to smelt gold?

Apparently this has been discussed some indirectly. There were Midianites at Sinai (Moses wife Zipporah was Midianite) and they apparently had mining and metal-smith skills. So this would apparently be a bit of a problem for a Sinai Peninsula mountain. (Note the discussion about whether Midian reached to Sinai.) As to what exactly would be needed to melt gold that is a good question for someone skilled in metallurgy. Compared to metals in general gold is very malleable with a low melting point.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

RED DAVE

Let's see what we;ve got here.

http://www.prophecyinthenews.com/det...oduct_ID=C5406

Yeah. Looks like a competent work by a professional archaeologist.

Note, by the way, that even in this piece of apologetic bullshit, there’s no references to traces in the desert of the occupationof 2 1/2 million people.

And, by the way, please let it be noted that praxeus is posting here on this archaeologically-oriented thread while he has consistently ducked out on a thread about dating the Flood.

RED DAVE

Hex

Except for the -evidence- of not having walls at Jericho from that time period. Yes, Lars. You have numbers that can be computed. What happens when your numbers don't match the -physical evidence-? It invalidates your numbers. Whether they add up or not. Sorry. :wave:


Except what I've already pointed out and you've never rebutted. You merely chant your mantra. :huh:

Okay, stated outright:

Your Syncellus/Manetho thing is likely full of biased information, and it is know that Syncellus changed data to fit with the Judeo-Christian history he wanted. Thus, the question of whether he inserted Joseph into the chronology becomes a critical point for your conjecture.

What other evidence (especially archaeological) do you have that there -was- a Joseph in Egypt who's appointed 'vizier'?


And, to get back to the debate at hand - Where's the hard evidence that we have millions of folks wandering in the desert for 40 years? I don't want a documentation, or a calculation of numbers, I want evidence.

Amedeo

Reply to you and the others (immediately above):

I am familiar with the Red/Sea and Reed/Sea issue.
Now, to begin with, I personally am not trying to uphold or defend the historicity of the Biblical accounts (about going to Egypt, returning, etc.) I am considering the inner logic of the text and the plausibility of certain stated events.

So, I do not believe that there ever was a parting of a sea [whether the Red Sea or a Reed Sea], not because in principle I do not believe in the occurrence of miracles, but because the Bible makes it UNNECESSARY for the Israelites to return by the crossing on any sea: the Israelites are stated as going into Egypt, which was done on dry land, that is, across the Suez isthmus, which had paths trodden by the Egyptians and others before.

By the text, the Israelites KNEW how to get to Egypt. When they passed by the Jordan valley, they saw the fertile land being used for agriculture and promised themselves to return and to get it. So God gave it to them and, indeed, the whole land from the Euphrates to the Nile. (The minds of the tribsmen in Egypt were not busy studying Greek or mathematics; they served only one purpose: keeping tabs of the Tribe, remembering roads, and the memory of the Dead.) So, it is plausible for the Israelites to have gone into Egypt and returned, centuries later, by the same routes.

For any evidence of the Hebrews/Hsraelites having been in Egypt, look not for ISRAELITIC artifacts; look at the religion of the Hebrews. They started out as Canaanite polytheists and came out of Egypt, led by Moses, as enotheists -- with a single god for themselves -- just as the Egyptians at one point of history mandated the recognition of a single god, Ra (the Sun). And like the Egyptians, the Israelites believed in the resurrection of the dead (or at least of the worthy Dead ones). Moses' single god he set for his People was Yahweh (the Levantine God of the former Hebrews), who is never associated with the theory of resurrection. Indeed, the resurrection was held by the Galileans (worshippers of El) [Jesus and Saul/Paul included] and one faction of the Judeans: The theory of the resurrection is not logically bound with either the religion of El or the religion of Yah; it is of Egyptian origin, just as enotheism is. Such basic outlooks are not acquired by a culture hearing about what other cultures believe in.

[[P.S.: I just rememberedthat we can go down little details as these: One biography of Jesus the Galilean describes how his body was wrapped in the tomb. There was no shroud covering the body but, rather, a band wrapped around, and a separate head-band, just according to the Egyptian custom of wrapping the dead. Incidentally, an evangelic theologian saw proof of the resurrection of Jesus from the fact that those who went to the tomb found the wraps where the body was allegedly laid out. The theologian drew no inference for the scriptually stated fact that those who went to the tomb saw that the head-band was still rolled up. In other words, it was never used around Jesus's head, as may have been still alive when brought to the tomb. Gospel readers may remember that when some of his disciples saw Jesus on the road to Emmaus, they did not recognize him. They eventually did when they saw his customary breaking of the bread. He must have been in such a physical bad shape as to be unrecognizable. So, I infer that there was a crucifixion, that he was taken to the tomb while he was still alive, and taken out secretely at night to Joseph of Arimethea's house. He started walking again some time later and then he vanished. By some legend, he went to Rome where Peter met him on the Appian way... and there is still a marble slab with a footprint of Jesus! By another legend, he joined his wife, Mary Magdalene in Rennes-les-Chateau, where the "sang real" [formery the "san greal" or Holy Grail] was brough by her in the form of a child, and the royal blood will flow in Geoffrey of Bouillon, who became the king of Jerusalem after the second Crusade. By the official legend, in Gospels, Jesus ascended into heaven, after promising that he would return and phantasmagoric changes in looks for the few onlookers.]]

Anyway, while heroic tales can be fully invented, it seems also to be the case that the slow conquest of "Palestine" proceeded from the west or north-west, toward Jerusalem, where the Kindgom of Judah was founded soon thereafter, and not from the southern part of the Sinai peninsula. So the "Gaza strip" or part of the land of the Philistines was never occupied. I don't know where the preparing Israelites were for about 40 years, but they did do emerge from the southern part of the desert, regardless of what names the Biblical accounts use.

There is more than a plausibility that they were in Egypt for some hundred of years, that they used the isthmus of Suez to return, and that they occupied "Palestine" (by some fighting and by seizing opportunities) from the north-west. The kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah [of which I have spoken in other posts] were historical realities that did not happen by some miracle. (I don't believe in miracles.)

Hex

Lars, if they did that, there would be the -foundations- of the walls still there. There would be the rubble from the interior of the wall, fill if you like, that was between the outer surfacing of brick. (What, you thought they had to be brick all the way through?)

And, for those bricks -under- the rubble, how desperate would you have to be to scavenge up -all- of those brick when there's a whole town made of bricks just a few paces farther along?

Seriously, it's unlikely to the point of being preposterous. :huh:


Note, I showed a picture of what is left after an archaeological nomadic tent site is vacated.


Why do you bring up the sand, Lars? We're talking about remains.

You think that with a couple of million people, they'll all be close enough together that a clean-up crew could actually clean up after them -every- morning, and they'll all be able to -all- find a sandy area in the Sinai?

And don't try to try to cloud our thinking with blowing sand. It's irrelevant to your discussion. Stick to evidence.


Lastly, being condescending is not likely to win you points. It doesn't up our view of your 'authority' or your debating skills. It's just more likely to inceite folks to not be nice ...

Hex

True, but it also doesn't mean we have lots of reason to beleive that they -were- there.

I think the main issue with this thread is the sheer number of people purported to be involved.

Larsguy47

The "walls" are your issue not Kenyon's. She gives those dates regardless of the lack of evidence of any walls and admits such:

Page 261 of her book, "Digging Up Jericho," in the Chapter called "Jericho And Coming Of The Israelites," she says:

"It is a sad fact that of the town walls of the Late Bronze Age, within which period the attack by the Israelites must fall by any dating, not a trace remains."

Kenyon has several reasons why she dates the Israelites here in LBIIA rather than earlier in 1550BCE where there is evidence of a major destruction of walls. Some of that has to do with burial customs and lots of other things. Arguing that Kenyon doesn't date this correctly simply because you found walls c. 1550 BCE doesn't mean that was the time the Israelites arrived, and it is certainly not the time Kenyon assigns to them. There are reasons why she excludes the Israelites from earlier periods. This is her OPINION. I agree with this opinion. That's all. There is nothing to be disproved by you here. The lack of wall evidence for this level doesn't disprove there were never any walls there. As is well known, for instance, often building materials from a deserted city were salvaged and used for other building; that would be one reason potentially that no evidence of that wall from that period remained.

So you can only disagree with Kenyon, that's all. I'm not misquoting her position.


Give up on this already! It's a REFERENCE! It is from 800 AD. Is it a good reference or bad? Who cares! It's THERE and there by someone who was intimately involved in Egyptian history. Where did he get this IDEA that Joseph came into Egypt in the specific year of the 4th of Apophis? !!!! Wherever he got that idea, it clearly means he uderstood that Pharaoh Amenhotep III must have died in the Red Sea, killed the same year as the Exodus. I don't think he was focussed on Akhenaten at all. So we must presume that someone, somewhere, got the idea that Amenhotep III was the pharaoh of the Exodus. Now whether this is proven reliable or substantiated beyond this or not, it would place the Exodus during the time Kenyon does as well, which is during the reign of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten. So they are RELATED.

So your deciding to dismiss Kenyon for your own reasons, and then Manetho/Syncellous as well simply means you don't agree with those references, but I don't care. I'm only noting those references ARE THERE and imply a certain chronology, no different than lots of others who read about the Jews building at Pi-Rameses and think the city was named after the pharaoh instead of the FAMILY in the region. If it were based on the family, then the dating of the Exodus can occur at any other time prior to Rameses II. But that's a theory too that's out there. I can dismiss that theory, but not the reference to Pi-Rameses and what it means. You can disagree with Kenyon if you want, but you can't say she never mentioned the Israelites or didn't specifically date their conquest of Jericho between 1350-1325BCE. Because she does. Manetho/Syncellus agrees with that dating. That's the only "notice" here. That's all. I have my own indepenent references beyond these for dating the Exodus.

You mean besides the reference in Manetho/Syncellus? and the Bible? None. Though Rohl thinks a king with a multi-colored coat depicted in Egypt was actually Joseph. But other than that, none. If you want me to come up with a video of Joseph, forget it! You'll have to just keep on doubting. Most historical "evidence" we get is going to be circumstantial, unfortunately.

I already told you! I accepted that, yes the Jews were quite messy and got tired of carrying all that gold they got from Egypt and decided to just dump it in a huge pile when they left for the Promised land. Now I don't have a video of this, but I think it is reasonable to conclude that some Arabs were in the region and came by and saw the big pile of gold there and took it! Therefore, if you go back there now and look for any large pile of gold dumped by the Jews, you don't find it! Which proves it must have been taken by the Arabs or someone. Therefore, since there is no evidence of any gold being found there, it proves the Jews must have left behind gold artifacts which were salvaged by people coming through that region over the next 500 or so years. So the Kadesh-Barnea is just as we would expect, an area with no gold being found lying around. Perfect!

LG47