Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 03-24-2010, 03:22 PM

Quote:

Two weeks before Passover, on March 17, Dayan presented her research to an audience of more than 200 at Sinai Temple. Dayan, who earned her Ph.D. in Egyptology from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and is the wife of Jacob Dayan, Consul General of Israel in Los Angeles, told the group that linguistic evidence reveals an ancient and deeply involved Jewish presence in Egypt that eventually disappears. To illustrate, she drew remarkable parallels between the language of Egyptian papyrus (hieroglyphs), the haggadah and the Bible, all of which contain references to the Exodus story. In piecing together these manuscripts, Dayan framed an Exodus narrative based on facts of Egyptian history and language to prove her theory that a mass Exodus did occur and that it happened during the reign of Ramses II.

She includes the Ipuwer papyrus in her "proof."

Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple has been on record since 2001 as disputing the Exodus story.

Quote:

" . . . The reason that modern scholars dispute the historicity of the Exodus doesn’t have anything to do with the first two parts of the story [slavery in Egypt, the journey through the desert]; it has to do with the third part [when they arrive in the land].

“If, in fact, hundreds of thousands of Jews left Egypt, then you should be able to see new settlement patterns in Israel — and archaeologists have excavated Israel, and they don’t see a change in the building structure, in the pottery, all the things you think would change if there was a huge immigrant influx,” Wolpe said.

ideologyhunter · 03-24-2010, 03:48 PM

I find it impossible to believe that 10 plagues happened ... and all the first born were murdered by God... and the Red Sea parted... and yet the only record of this is in the Bible. Oh yeah and people lived out on the sand eating starch that fell out of the sky. It's a folk tale, probably embellished over long years of retelling.
The only Bible miracle I believe is Balaam's ass, but that's because the same miracle is visible whenever Pat Robertson opens his piehole.

Minimalist · 03-24-2010, 07:48 PM

Quote:

Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple has been on record since 2001 as disputing the Exodus story.

As do most archaeologists who don't get their checks signed by some bunch of religious morons.

http://www.mailstar.net/archaeology-bible.html

Quote:

Of prior concern here should be the date of the sources in Exodus 1- 14 judged empirically on the basis of datable details. The latter, it must be admitted, are few and most are of a toponymic nature. Research on these place-names, however, has proceeded far beyond the stage of Cazelle's classic article of thirty-five years ago; and we can now genuinely speak of a unanimity of the evidence. Whoever supplied the geographical information that now adorns the story had no information earlier than the Saite period (seventh to sixth centuries B.C.). The eastern Delta and Sinai he describes are those of the 26th Dynasty kings and the early Persian overlords: his toponyms reflect the renewed interest in the eastern frontier evidenced for this period by fort building and canalization. He knows of "Goshen" of the Qedarite Arabs, and a legendary "Land of Ramesses." He cannot locate the Egyptian court to anything but the largest and most famous city in his own day in the northeastern Delta, namely Tanis, the royal residence from about 1070 to 725 B.C. (cf. Psalm 78:12, 43), which survives as a metropolis into Roman times; and he mistakenly presses into service the adjacent marshy tract "the reed-(lake)" as the "Reed-sea," the scene of Israel's miraculous passage to safety. The route he is familiar with is that which traverses the same tract as the canal of Necho II (610-594 B.C.) from Bubastis to the Bitter Lakes; then he moves north in his mind's eye past the famous fort at Migdol to Lake Sirbonis (Ba'al Saphon) where Horus had already in the mythical past thrown Seth out of Egypt. In short, with respect to the geography of the Exodus, the post-Exilic compiler of the present Biblical version had no genuinely ancient details. He felt constrained to supply them from the Egypt of his own day and, significantly perhaps, cited several places where Asiatic elements and especially Judaean mercenaries resided in the sixth and fifth centuries.

--Donald Redford

PhilosopherJay · 03-24-2010, 08:08 PM

Hi Toto,

Ms. Dayan is reading from the Ipuwer Text. Ipuwer is dated around the Second Intermediate Period - 1640-1550 B.C.E.. It is describing events that happened hundred of years before. Here is a translation. Yet she says that the Exodus was during the period of Ramses the second who ruled from 1279 BC to 1213 BC, about 300-400 years afterward.

The one line that seems relevant in the text is:

Quote:

"Indeed, the river is blood, yet men drink of it. Men shrink from human beings and thirst after water."

Compare this to Plutarch's description of Alexander the Great in the Fourth century B.C.E.:

Quote:

He drank rivers fouled with blood, crossed streams bridged by dead bodies...

or his description of the Roman Marius making war in Spain in the Second century B.C.E.:

Quote:

Most of the Ambrones were cut down there in the stream where they were all crowded together, and the river was filled with their blood

Apparently a river of blood is a pretty common metaphor through diverse cultures:

Chinese mythology talks of a giant named P'an Ku:

Quote:

"After tens of millennia P'an Ku decided that everything was okay - so he sank into the earth and died. His final breath became the wind and clouds. His body and limbs formed the mountains and hills, and his blood flowed as streams and rivers."

In a Summarian Myth, (2335 B.C.E.) we find:

Quote:

"holy Inana drowned Ur-Zababa in a river of blood."

When Ms. Dayan's work gets accepted by other archeologists, we should take her seriously. Right now, one has to question the objectivity of her work based on this article:

Quote:

Meanwhile, Galit Dayan’s loftiest goal is spearheading One People, a project that she hopes will become an annual “gathering of the Diaspora” in Israel. She envisions a fanciful parade through the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, weeklong learning workshops and community-building events, a celebration of Jewish love for Israel — L.A. style. She is planning a kickoff ceremony in July in Jerusalem, where a delegation of rabbis and cantors from around the world will convene in prayer.

She hopes to launch the first parade in 2010.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Passover Proof in Egyptian hieroglyphs

Quote:

Two weeks before Passover, on March 17, Dayan presented her research to an audience of more than 200 at Sinai Temple. Dayan, who earned her Ph.D. in Egyptology from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and is the wife of Jacob Dayan, Consul General of Israel in Los Angeles, told the group that linguistic evidence reveals an ancient and deeply involved Jewish presence in Egypt that eventually disappears. To illustrate, she drew remarkable parallels between the language of Egyptian papyrus (hieroglyphs), the haggadah and the Bible, all of which contain references to the Exodus story. In piecing together these manuscripts, Dayan framed an Exodus narrative based on facts of Egyptian history and language to prove her theory that a mass Exodus did occur and that it happened during the reign of Ramses II.

She includes the Ipuwer papyrus in her "proof."

Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple has been on record since 2001 as disputing the Exodus story.

Quote:

" . . . The reason that modern scholars dispute the historicity of the Exodus doesn’t have anything to do with the first two parts of the story [slavery in Egypt, the journey through the desert]; it has to do with the third part [when they arrive in the land].

“If, in fact, hundreds of thousands of Jews left Egypt, then you should be able to see new settlement patterns in Israel — and archaeologists have excavated Israel, and they don’t see a change in the building structure, in the pottery, all the things you think would change if there was a huge immigrant influx,” Wolpe said.

Toto · 03-24-2010, 08:49 PM

I had to dig back into the archives for the last Ipuwer thread:

http://www.freeratio.org/thearchives...ad.php?t=81053

Minimalist · 03-24-2010, 11:59 PM

Quote:

Indeed, the desert is throughout the land, the nomes are laid waste, and barbarians from abroad have come to Egypt.

Sounds more like an invasion than an "exodus."

semiopen · 03-25-2010, 07:12 AM

I'm surprised at the Rabbi's remarks.

The settlement of the Judean highlands is consistent with the story. The problem is the amount of people mentioned which could have been inserted by later redactors.

The archeological problems are more from Israelite pottery, etc being the same as Canaanite.

Seems like a pretty trivial detail if one agrees with all the previous parts.

Minimalist · 03-25-2010, 08:10 AM

Quote:

The archeological problems are more from Israelite pottery, etc being the same as Canaanite.

William Dever's answer for this is that his proto-Israelites arose from fleeing survivors of the Canaanite towns in the wake of the Sea People attacks in the late 13th century BC. There are a few problems with the idea if you take it too far but on the whole he makes a valid point.

rhutchin · 03-30-2010, 06:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ideologyhunter

I find it impossible to believe that 10 plagues happened ... and all the first born were murdered by God... and the Red Sea parted... and yet the only record of this is in the Bible. Oh yeah and people lived out on the sand eating starch that fell out of the sky. It's a folk tale, probably embellished over long years of retelling.
The only Bible miracle I believe is Balaam's ass, but that's because the same miracle is visible whenever Pat Robertson opens his piehole.

This just came out. It's been around before and probably gets re-run every year before Easter/Passover.

http://sify.com/news/biblical-plague...4nOcfdded.html

" Scientists have claimed that the Biblical plagues that devastated Ancient Egypt in the Old Testament really happened and were the result of global warming and a volcanic eruption.

According to a report in The Telegraph, researchers believe they have found evidence of real natural disasters on which the ten plagues of Egypt, which led to Moses freeing the Israelites from slavery in the Book of Exodus in the Bible, were based.
...

The explosion of the volcano Thera, which was part of the Mediterranean islands of Santorini, just north of Crete, around 3,500 years ago, is now also thought to be responsible for triggering the seventh, eighth and ninth plagues that bring hail, locusts and darkness to Egypt.

The cause of the final plague, the death of the first borns of Egypt, has been suggested as being caused by a fungus that may have poisoned the grain supplies, of which male first born would have had first pickings and so been first to fall victim."

MarkA · 03-31-2010, 03:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhutchin

Quote:

Originally Posted by ideologyhunter

I find it impossible to believe that 10 plagues happened ... and all the first born were murdered by God... and the Red Sea parted... and yet the only record of this is in the Bible. Oh yeah and people lived out on the sand eating starch that fell out of the sky. It's a folk tale, probably embellished over long years of retelling.
The only Bible miracle I believe is Balaam's ass, but that's because the same miracle is visible whenever Pat Robertson opens his piehole.

This just came out. It's been around before and probably gets re-run every year before Easter/Passover.

http://sify.com/news/biblical-plague...4nOcfdded.html

" Scientists have claimed that the Biblical plagues that devastated Ancient Egypt in the Old Testament really happened and were the result of global warming and a volcanic eruption.

According to a report in The Telegraph, researchers believe they have found evidence of real natural disasters on which the ten plagues of Egypt, which led to Moses freeing the Israelites from slavery in the Book of Exodus in the Bible, were based.
...

The explosion of the volcano Thera, which was part of the Mediterranean islands of Santorini, just north of Crete, around 3,500 years ago, is now also thought to be responsible for triggering the seventh, eighth and ninth plagues that bring hail, locusts and darkness to Egypt.

The cause of the final plague, the death of the first borns of Egypt, has been suggested as being caused by a fungus that may have poisoned the grain supplies, of which male first born would have had first pickings and so been first to fall victim."

Every year we get a 'historical' explanation of the plagues and of the Star of Bethlehem.

Velikovsky also used the Ipuwer papyrus as evidence of the Excodus as a historical event.

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03-24-2010, 03:48 PM	#2
ideologyhunter Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Port Clinton, Ohio Posts: 591	I find it impossible to believe that 10 plagues happened ... and all the first born were murdered by God... and the Red Sea parted... and yet the only record of this is in the Bible. Oh yeah and people lived out on the sand eating starch that fell out of the sky. It's a folk tale, probably embellished over long years of retelling. The only Bible miracle I believe is Balaam's ass, but that's because the same miracle is visible whenever Pat Robertson opens his piehole.

03-24-2010, 08:49 PM	#5
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	I had to dig back into the archives for the last Ipuwer thread: http://www.freeratio.org/thearchives...ad.php?t=81053

03-25-2010, 07:12 AM	#7
semiopen Veteran Member Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Hillsborough, NJ Posts: 3,551	I'm surprised at the Rabbi's remarks. The settlement of the Judean highlands is consistent with the story. The problem is the amount of people mentioned which could have been inserted by later redactors. The archeological problems are more from Israelite pottery, etc being the same as Canaanite. Seems like a pretty trivial detail if one agrees with all the previous parts.

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