QRUEL

Of course there would be evidence, but don't worry that won't stop Helo from making claims that aren't backed up by any.

Helo, why would you think my comment of you being an apologist was an insult ? you are the one trying to make assertations about a subject the bible claims to have happened upon which we have no evidence of. so why try to defend something that isn't part of your belief system when all evidence points to the contary ?

try pulling out and looking at the bigger picture and the many ways your arguement falls apart.

FatherMithras

Please go read the papers I sent you.

The link between the two has been refuted utterly in the historical community. The whole Ahkenaten relationship to Moses was a fringe theory.

*sigh* You can make up anything you want. But there's no evidence any of it happened.

The only thing that says any of the claims about Egypt or the exodus are the Bible. And there's ZERO evidence of reliability for it.


GO
READ
THE
PAPERS.

Heheh. Honestly, you're arguments ignore just about every fact we know about the Jewish people. Go read the papers I sent you and then stat making speculations. This is honestly been intellectually void from page one. We know you have interesting ideas, but with no evidence that it occured, and your refusal to examine the actual history, your arguments are as easily dismissed as Atlantis.

FatherMithras

The problem is you ideas hinge on absolutely no evidence. You refuse to read any of the papers I showed you and until you do, I don't see the point of responding. Your ideas are interesting, but only in the sense that fictional stories are interesting. There's no base to them. Once again, I'm begging you to go read.

Doug Shaver

We agree on that.
What, in your judgment, makes that significantly less like than its being based on history?

Gullwind

Sorry for the tone. I'm used to discussing this with literalists.

I understand where you're coming from, but where do you draw the line? How do you tell where the truth ends and the metaphor begins? Noah's Flood was very likely based on an actual event, but nowhere near the scale described in the bible, and perhaps it was simply made up to deliver a lesson. As a story, the flood account has a message, but none of it actually has to have happened to relay that message. Same with the Plagues and the Exodus. The story has a part in the history of the Jewish people, but none of it needs to have actually happened for it to have the meaning it carries.

All we're saying is that while its certainly possible that the Exodus story is based on certain real events, there is currently no evidence supporting that. If that changes in the future, we may have to re-evaluate our positions, but that's how science works.

FatherMithras

How science, reason, and logic works. You don't make conclusions sans evidence or counter to the evidence just because you're smart enough to construct a possible scenario.

Doug Shaver

Logical validity does not imply inductive strength. Given a good reason R to expect evidence E of some historical event H assuming H had occurred, and given a concession that if X had also occurred we would not find E notwithstanding R, the absence of E does not imply the likely occurrence of X. Absent good reason to believe X occurred, it is most reasonable to infer from the absence of E the nonoccurrence of H.

I have seen no such information. I have seen only your undefended assumption that the Bible stories were inspired by real events.

That is not a valid argument. The premise does not imply the conclusion.

Asha'man

Helo, you really need to pick up a copy of The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. They are professional archaeologists who have studied this topic in depth, and have produced what is essentially the definitive answer from the archaeological evidence.

One of the things that archeology is particularly good at is detecting mass movements of populations. And it can be demonstrated with high confidence that the Hebrews never conquered Canaan, but they evolved there out of natives.

If the Hebrews had conquered Canaan, there would have been a sudden influx of Egyptian-influence culture, which would be apparent in artifacts such as pottery, clothing, writing, architecture, etc. If you kill all the local potters and replace them, there would almost have to be a change in style found in artifacts, right? No such Egyptian-influenced change ever happened, at least not in any rapid fashion around the 13th century BCE.

Instead, there is a clear evolution of Hebrew culture from Canaan natives. Yahweh was apparently venerated as one god out of many, alongside a host of others. Over time, a 'Yahweh first' movement grew stronger, eventually becoming a 'Yahweh only' movement. Other cultural identifications, such as the prohibition against eating pork, also gained in strength slowly.

Since the evidence shows clearly that the Hebrews originated in Canaan, then they can't have fled from Egypt, right? Especially since the evidence also shows that the Egyptians never knew about the Hebrews nor suffered a massive economic collapse in the 13th century BCE. Between the positive evidence on one side, and a complete lack of evidence on the other, there is really only one rational conclusion: the Exodus never happened.

Finkelstein and Silberman even present the next layer of analysis: they look at the Exodus story in detail and determine when it was written. By examining clear anachronisms in the story, such as a line of forts on the Egyptian border that didn't exist in the 13th century, they can tell that it must have been composed sometime around the 7th to 8th century at the earliest. This is the time when the Kingdom of Israel had been taken over by Assyria, and the Kingdom of Judah was looking for theological and political justifications to claim ownership of the land, in order to raise support for a military action. What better claim could you make for land than "God promised it to our people" and "we conquered it, so now we own it"?

bfniii

wait, if scientific explanations add weight to the claims, then doesn't that add to the possibility that they're true and lower the chance that they're legendary? for the sake of argument, if they are true, why wouldn't you want people to discover the truth via science?

bfniii

1. who is "we"?
2. curious. the excavations at ai, bethel, lachish, debir, and hazor, city-states along the alleged paths the hebrews took into canaan, seem to indicate that there was indeed a hebrew conquest of canaan.
3. there wasn't a "wipe-out" of peoples. in fact that bible underscores that later in their history, that was a profound spiritual issue for the hebrews because they didn't do so. they let the cultures of the sedentary populations affect them in negative ways.



1. you misrepresent the situation when you state that egypt was crushed. that is not what the bible claims. therefore, your conclusion that it is laughable is not viable on that statement alone
2. "not supported by anything" is not accurate.
3. you don't know when the events were recorded so you have no standard to use when making a judgment about it's relevance to the alleged events.
4. you make a sweeping statement that does not include how the information was transmitted before being written in the form of the ancient texts. your statement does not include analysis that shows any such transmission to be errant. this leads to question-begging conclusions.



brittancia says: "The Habiru appear to have established a military aristocracy in Palestine, bringing to the towns new defenses and new prosperity (as well as many Egyptian cultural elements) without interrupting the basic character of the local culture; this was to survive the destruction of Megiddo, Jericho, and Tell Beit Mirsim that followed the Egyptians' expulsion of the Hyksos into Palestine at the end of the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1550)."

the statement by finkelstein seems to be in conflict with the brittancia account and the depictions of the habiru in the nuzu tablets.



a curious statement since the bible records that abraham and his family were in ur at larsa, which is relatively close to susa.



terah was allegedly in haran which is relatively close to kanesh. this would satisfy your date and proximity requirements.

in your post you state "It specifically obliterates the claims about the apiru and habiru". however, the article you cite states "What seems more likely". you misrepresent the article you cite when you make the claim that the theoretical connection of the hewbrews and the habiru is obliterated. that is not what the article states. furthermore, the article fails to encompass several critical factors that i have just pointed out.