Ratel

I'm aware of the lack of archaeological support for the Biblical Exodus as the origin of the Israelites, but, if I may play "Yahweh's advocate" for a moment; I wonder why the authors of the account would invent the scenario in the first place?

Had the Israelite tribes been indigenous to Canaan, that would seem a more legitimate claim to the land than a convoluted tale about an Egyptian captivity, a deal made with a god, and the extermination of the resident tribes.

Any speculations?

Toto

Your idea is based on modern political theory. It seems that ancient political theory saw legitimacy as coming from military conquest.

EarlOfLade

It's the opposite way.

The events described in Exodus are all natural events that can easily be explained, but the event was used to create the story of Moses leading the Isralites out during these events in order to justify their own god and to show how powerful he was.

Sci-fi spun around a natural event to make religion seem plausible and to cement one or more persons own power positions.

Zeichman

This is doubtful, to say the least. You're probably not going to find many advocates of this outside of the faux-scholarship of the History Channel. For an excellent look at a very plausible trajectory for the Red Sea event's tradition-history, see Batto's "Slaying the Dragon," and excellent and accessible work on this topic and also the Biblical creation narratives. If you're just getting into this type of stuff, I cannot recommend it enough. I'm sure you can find it cheap on amazon or abebooks or something.

Toto

Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition (or via: amazon.co.uk)

figuer

Read in one of those pseudoscholarly websites the theory that the Exodus myth originated when the priests of Aton fled Egypt afther the death of Akhenaten and took refuge in Canaan. There they kept alive a monotheistic cult, which gradualy mixed with local traditions. So the memory was kept of a coming out of Egypt, and its relationship with the "One god", but a tale of origin of the Hebrew people was added. Interesting angle, but there seems to be no clear evidence to support it.

It could also be that at some point a small group of Hebrews (not the whole people) was enslaved in Egypt for a time and fled. Their heroic exploit was magnified by posterior retelling of the story, and later Hebrews, even those unrelated to the small group, gradually identified themselves as their descendants to bolster their prestige.

spin

I don't think they did.

Jews had been in Egypt since the movement Jeremiah alludes to, when Gedaliah was assassinated. Jews were also used as soldiers by the Persians and Cambyses established some as a garrison at Elephantine, so there was a sizable presence of Jews in Egypt well before 500BCE, a presence which the Egyptians did not appreciate, for the Egyptians equated the Jews with Semitic peoples that had fled from Egypt many centuries earlier. Egyptian folk traditions connected the Jews with the Hyksos in various garbled forms, as Josephus writers about in Contra Apion.

It was an Egyptian tradition which has the Jews making an exodus from Egypt. So, why should the Jews doubt it?

There is little doubt that the Jews were Canaanites. How else would they have a Canaanite language? Had they spent a long period in Egypt, where are the traces of Egyptian language on Hebrew. We can see the effects of Greek on Hebrew and Aramaic, but Egyptian on Hebrew is basically zilch.

Archaeology shows that there was no such intrusion of a foreign culture as the conquest implies. What it tells us is that the same material culture was there throughout the Iron Age.

What one should explain is the notion of Israel being empty after Nebuchadnezzar, when we know that it wasn't. Nebuchadnezzar took away the upper classes and left everyone else. Without a directing class structure the land would have fewer rebellious tendencies. So why did the returnees need an empty Israel propaganda? They had to retake the promised land -- from the same people who were left when the nobles were deported, their own lower classes! The returnees entered the promised land just as the returnees from Egypt did according to the developing tradition.


spin

Larsguy47

Specifically on this connection, one belief is that the cryptic references at Isa. 19 are actually describing the conversion of Akhenaten. That is, after the 10 plagues and Israel left, the next pharaoh actually converts to a form of Yahwistic monotheism. That would be Akhenaten. In that scenario, therefore, though the Jews even in captivity were semi-practicing "monotheists" it became focal for Akhenaten and the Jews now receiving the Ten Commandments at the same time, thus the two were developed independently.


Here's the "take" on Isa. 19:

The Amarna Period was very much involved with Canaan. There might have been several primarily Canaanite-speaking cities in Egypt at the time.


If "midst" is understood here as "middle" of Egypt and "boundary" a reference to a general line between Upper and Lower Egypt, then this would be a reference to the new city to Aten that Akhenaten built, which, indeed, is near the very center of Egypt, halfway between upper and Lower Egypt, TEL-AMARNA:



What more grand a SAVIOR could there be in this connection than MOSES?!!! This is another indication that indeed this is a post-stated prophecy about Moses and the Exodus and how he would deliver Israel from Egypt.

And just how would Jehovah become known to the Egyptians? I don't think Jehovah's witnesses were out there preaching just yet! No. It was the Ten Plagues that acquainted all of Egypt with Yahweh! And based upon that, many would thus convert to monotheism and start to worship this new, "living" god! They would certainly make vows as well since the Ten Plagues weren't just fireworks display but some hardships on Egypt.


Again, so very much Ten Plagues! The blow and the healing! That means after the Ten Plagues they would see the light and want to worship and acknowledge this new, powerful god. God in turn would allow them to do so by allowing for a new religion, "Atenism" with Akhenaten as it's high priest. Akhenaten didn't just focus on his new monotheism, he claimed his God communicated with him and specifically commanded him to build a city and "altar" in the the middle/midst of Egypt (near the boundary between Upper and Lower Egupt?). The hymms written by Akhenaten to his god are so similar to that of the psalms by David that many believe they must be connected! So this certainly is the "same religion" and the "same god" from the literary/inspirational point of view.

Definitely the Amarna Period when Egypt was of great influence and friendship with practically everybody at this time, and that highway brought letters back and forth from Egypt to Assyria and visa Versa. Assyria here likely is including Mitanni where there was close interaction and intermarriage, etc.

Now this is interesting! In the Bible "rank" is implied by where you are mentioned. For instance, Noah's three sons are described as Shem, Ham and Japheth. Japheth was the eldest, Shem was the father to Abraham, etc. The specific order suggests preference as some believe. In this case (I'm chuckling a bit!) Egypt is first, Assyria second and Israel third. Of course we know Akhenaten got the message and got with the program and was totally into his monotheism all the way. He likely influenced Mitanni/Assyria who likewise followed Akhenaten. Israel, who should have been #1 and whose god it was that caused these Ten Plagues though, didn't waste too much time digressing and quickly set up calf worship and idolatry with the tacit help of Aaron no less! So it's kind of embarrassing that the main group is the biggest backslider. But here, we see, Yaweh acknowledging that by listing them third at this time in comparison to Egypt/Akhenaten and Assyria.

BUT... having noted the above. I only offer this as a tehnical reference to the question of influence of Akhenaten's monotheism over Israel. In this case, as noted, these were two separate branches of this worship that were established at the same time but were fairly unrelated, beyond Akhenaten perhaps finding out what the Ten Commandments said, though Aten/Yahweh probably gave him his own instructions directly if he told him where to build that city in the middle of Egypt. But that city was prophephesied to be built right after the Exodus before the Exodus occurred.

So a specific response is that the monotheism of Aten and that of the Jews is only indirectly related but not dependent. The Jews would have been in the wilderness the entire time of Akhenaten's rule.

LG47

Sheshbazzar

So the only question remaining is, and this is interesting!
Just how much baloney can one swallow before he barfs?

Larsguy47

It depends on the quality of the baloney and how fat a person already is, actually. Some people with low IQ's have extra sensitive stomachs though and they should stay away from baloney in the first place. :devil1:

So the question is: How sensitive is your stomach?

LG47