Reena

Is there any? I have heard conflicting points, some saying that there is virtually none, with others claiming that there is a ton, including the finding of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Is there evidence for such things as the Exodus, conquests, wandering in the desert?

Anat

A good place to start would be 'The Bible Unearthed' by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. Also look at Joel Ng's articles here. In short - no evidence for the exodus (definitely not on the scale described in the Bible) or the wanderings, there was no mass invasion of people with Egyptian background, though there is evidence for the invasion of the Sea Peoples and a concurrent change in settlement patterns. Some of the cities supposedly conquered by Joshua weren't settled at the time, some were shown to have been conqured by Sea Peoples, some were settled and remained settled with no signs of warfare at the supposed time.

There is also no evidence for a unified kingdom whose capital was Jerusalem.

The best way to summarise the Iron Age history of Palestine is that during the invasion of the Sea Peoples and the upheavel caused as a consequence, the cities that had previouslybeen the administrative centers of the Egyptian rule lost their power. Somehow (there are several opinions on how) this led to increased settlement in the hill country. At a later point two kingdoms formed. The northern one was richer, cosmopolitan and more developed economically. This however made it a constant target for invasions by mightier kingdoms and empires from the north - until its eventual fall.

The southern kingdom was an undeveloped, provincial backwaters place, of no significance until the fall of the northern kingdom. After that it knew economical growth and territorial expansion, until it fell to Babylon.

Diogenes the Cynic

Not only is there no evidence FOR any of the OT history up until about the 8th Century BCE, an awful lot of it is directly contradicted be the archaelogical evidence. Besides the obvious fictions like the creation and flood stories (which hopefully do not require elaboration), it can also be proven that Patriarchal traditions are fiction (the Israelites were indigenous Canaanites, not immigrants). The Israelites were never enslaved in Egypt, never escaped, never wandered in the Sinai, and never conquered Canaan. There was also never a united kingdom of Israel under David and Solomon. If the latter two figures existed at all (which has never been conclusively proven), they were minor chieftains of a small, hughland chiefdom, not kings of large or wealthy kingdoms.

Once you get up around the 8th Century BCE and especially when you get into the post exilic stuff in the Hebrew Bible, you can confirm a lot of the kings and some of the events as being historical, but even then, it's a distorted, propagandistic version of history.

The requisite book on this subject is The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman.

Apikorus

Most ancient history is distorted an propagandistic, so this is hardly a problem unique to the Hebrew Bible. I find Finkelstein overly pessimistic regarding the united monarchy, and I think Dever presents a strong challenge, e.g. in What did the biblical writers know and when did they know it?. The most nuanced treatment of the David material in the Bible is found in Baruch Halpern's David's Secret Demons. Halpern, who himself is very much familiar with the archaeological evidence, believes that much of 2 Samuel is in essence historical, although highly spun, to use a term from modern political parlance.

At any rate, Diogenes and others are quite correct to state that we have nary a shred of evidence for the Exodus, and scholars are largely reduced to speculation. Halpern himself suggests there were two proto-Israelite groups, one of which came from Egypt and the other of which was autochthonous (i.e. Canaanite). He suggests that the Levites may have had their origin in Egypt, since many of the names for the first Levites in the Pentateuch are Egyptian in origin (Moshe, Pinchas, Hophni, Miriam, Merare, etc.). The Egyptian group picked up Yahweh from Midianite Shasu (we have a Bronze Age Egyptian reference to the "shasu of yhw"), and wound up in Canaan, where they merged with the native group that had populated the Judaean highlands. The fact that the Levites are allotted no tribal lands is also suggestive, in this regard. The Canaanite group brought with them El and the patriarchal traditions, while the Egyptian group brought Yahweh and the exodus story. Then after a few centuries we have J and E and ... poof! ... the beginnings of the Pentateuch. As I say, this is largely speculation, but it isn't entirely crazy. (As Dick Friedman once described it to me, the Canaanite group tells the Levites, "yeah, you guys can be the priests, but we get all the land...".)

Much of the argument over the historicity of the Hebrew Bible has now settled on the Iron Age and the united monarchy. There's a nice new book out edited by Levy and Higham, entitled The Bible and Radiocarbon Dating. I recommend it highly for its discussion of methodology and description of the key issues under consideration. I think Finkelstein hasn't convincingly responded to the C14 results from Mazar et al., and he's also got some problems dealing with Tom Levy's Iron Age Edomite fortress. But Finkelstein is a serious scholar, and the debate is spirited and interesting.

jjramsey

Another book worth looking at is Robin Lane Fox's The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible, which covers the problem with OT archaeology as well, amongst other things.

Anat

Apikorus, how much is known about the Shasu? Other than speculation from the Hebrew Bible, is there any support for the Leviite mini-exodus? How would it fit in with the Egyptian history? What would have been its timing?

rob117

About for Levy's Edomite fortress, I haven't seen much on that beyond the initial article, a skeptical response, a counter-response from Levy and a response to that; see here. Nobody denies that there's a large building here, possibly a fortress, but at least some (Finkelstein is among them) doubt that it has anything to do with the Edomites, especially since we have no other evidence for sedentary Edomite society before the 8th century (before this they existed, but they were nomadic). The area this was found in is actually south of the Edomite Plateau, and while the 8th-7th century Edomite state controlled this area, since there is no evidence of Edomite statehood before that, there is no reason to suggest the Edomites controlled this area before then. The site of this fortress could very well be an independent city-state of the 10th century. A similar situation would be the coastal plain of Israel- while this area was conquered as the Israelite kingdom was expanding in the 10th century (9th if you go by the Low chron), we know that the area was occupied by independent Canaanite city-states before that due to the material culture of the area- the 10th century witnesses a replacement of the lowland ("Canaanite") material culture with the highland ("Israelite") material culture.

As for David and Solomon and the United Monarchy- Many users here seem to be under the impression that the Low chronology has been conclusively proven; it has not, and the majority of archaeologists don't accept it. I read technical papers on the internet by Finkelstein, Mazar, and others when I can find them, and while I do think Finkelstein makes some very good points, he hasn't presented nearly enough evidence to topple the existing chronology, which still has plenty of evidence in its favor. I tend to vacilate between the two chronologies on an almost day-to-day basis; at this moment I'm leaning towards the traditional chronology. Both chronologies have some apparent problems, so it's going to be a very long debate unless we come across some well-stratified inscriptions.

If the traditional chronology is followed, there is definitely evidence for a United Monarchy. Obviously David never ruled "from the Euphrates to the Brook of Egypt" as the Bible has it, but the conventional chronology does support the existence of a kingdom that stretched approximately from Dan to Kadesh-Barnea. The Low chronology has the two kingdoms forming separately, but with intertwined histories- they definitely considered themselves to have a common ethnic identity by the time of the earliest substantial biblical texts (c.760 BC according to most estimates).

As for the existence of Solomon and David as historical figures, I know of no professional but Davies and co. who disputes that Judean monarchs under those names existed early in Judah's history. Finkelstein makes a strong case for a man named David as the founder of the Judean dynasty in David and Solomon, based primarily on the Dan stele- the stele, written within a century and a half of when David would have reigned, mentions the House of David as one of Omride Israel's allies; the Mesha stele also, according to the dominant textual reconstruction of a damaged line, mentions that the city of Horonaim, southeast of the Dead Sea in what the Moabites considered to be their territory, was occupied by the House of David, also within 150 years of when David would have lived. IMO there is no reason to doubt that early Judean kings named David and Solomon existed, regardless of the Bible's greatly inflated picture of them.

The earliest specific event mentioned in the Bible corroborated by outside sources is in the late 10th century; the raid of Shishak took place, although the assignment of certain destruction layers to him is pivotal in the chronology debate; from the 9th century we know the rebellion of Moab under Mesha took place, although the Bible puts it in the reign of Ahaziah of Israel while the Mesha inscription may suggest that it took place in the reign of Ahab. We also know of Hazael's invasions, and it seems very plausible that the "coup" against the Omrides by Jehu was actually instigated by Hazael, or perhaps Jehu was even placed on the throne by Hazael directly after a successful siege of Jezreel by Hazael's own forces- archaeologically, Jezreel seems to have been taken by a siege, while the Bible suggests a small coup (the Bible's confusion about this probably stems from the fact that the events of this time were a cloudy memory by the time the text was written down). Hazael in the Dan stele claims to have killed Jehoram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah (the Bible attributes this to Jehu) and, later in the stele after a lacuna, he says, "And Jehu ruled over Israel," which sounds to me like he put him on the throne; Finkelstein (The Bible Unearthed) states that Israel under Jehu was a vassal of Damascus, and this seems to be generally agreed upon. Israel probably regained its independence under Jehoash or Jeroboam II, after which it became the dominant power in the region until the Assyrians under Tiglath-pileser came in 739.

The Book of Kings seems to get events from the late 8th century on pretty accurate, although there is some inaccuracy in assigning dates and reignal lengths, and the story about the angel that smote Sennacherib's army is obviously a legend from about a century after Sennacherib's siege.

Everything in the Bible up to and including the Exodus and conquest is a myth; the Israelites seem to have originally been indigenous Canaanite nomads- i.e. Shasu- who settled down in the Iron I period. There probably was a small influx of refugees from Egypt-after all, the book of Exodus says the Israelites built the cities of Pithom and Pi-ramesse, which were Ramesside cities that no longer existed when the text was written down, and the tradition about those specific cities had to have come from somewhere- although I myself don't believe it was necessarily the Levites who were the exodus group (I think the assignment of the Levites as a tribe of their own is a tradition of no historical value, motivated by a desire of the priestly caste to see themselves as something apart from the rest of the population). Either way, the "exodus" was probably just a few families, and may not have been a single event- probably groups of five or ten slaves escaped one at a time and all ended up going in the same general direction.

Forget Adam and Eve, forget Noah, forget the Patriarchs, and forget Joshua.

So that's a decent-sized overview of the evidence?

robto

rob117, thanks for the summary. Can you recommend any books (other than The Bible Unearthed) on the topic?

A historical Exodus seems to be universally rejected by scholars, including Donald Redford, whose Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times I've been reading. But Redford also tells us

- Central Palestine was partially stripped of its population during the 18th Dynasty by Egyptians taking its inhabitants as slaves.

- The Israelites are regarded as descendants of the Shasu, wandering groups in the region east of Egypt.

- A relief from the time of Ramesses II (late 18th dynasty) shows Shasu captives being led away.

- "A generation later under Merneptah an entity called 'Israel' with all the character of a Shasu enclave makes its appearance..."

- By the end of Merneptah's reign (1200 BC) "the Canaanites as a political force were dead."

Given all this, the Exodus story seems fairly accurate in outline. Slaves are taken from Palestine to work in Israel. A period of wandering in the desert follows. Israel becomes established as a kingdom and the Canaanites are ejected.

So, why all the negativity about Exodus? It seems to give a reasonable picture of the situation. Unreasonably accurate, IMO, for a story that was made up of whole cloth.

Apikorus

Bingo. It might even be Israelite. The important thing is that it is from the Iron Age.

triffidfood

From the site linked to above (specifically, from a page linked to from there, which is http://www.eblaforum.org/library/bcah/intbibarch03.html):

My grasp of all this is kinda sketchy, does anyone know where the additonal migrants (to the highlands) came from around 1,000 BCE, and who they were?

Were they Canaanites escaping the destruction of their cities by the 'Sea Peoples' (or fleeing for some other reason)?

Does this imply that the 'Israelites' (originally pastoral nomads from Jordan anyway I believe) were also a mix of Canaanites from the west?