Kosh

Actually, it was proceeding quite well until recently...

leonarde

I was talking from an archaeological point of view.......yes, if there is a written record of deaths (any deaths at any time and at any place), then that would at least give us a clue but the complaint was: no bodies. The bodies may well be there but they are just another group of deceased people, spread over the greater Egypt area, who died of some unknown causes in the ancient world, at the time a HUGE category, and not one limited to one generation.

There were no equivalents of newspapers then, hence no "obituary columns" etc to check.......

leonarde

I hardly see what the one has to do with the other!

I have no basis for concluding it happened, none for concluding it did not happen.

It is you (plural, meaning people are the other side of the question) who is absurdly making claims about what 'bodies' should be found in graves, mass or otherwise. Etc.

Jayhawker Soule

Asha'man

The topic of this thread is archeological evidence that supports the Bible. The simple fact is that there is absolutely zero archeological evidence in support of the Exodus. None whatsoever. And the events in Exodus are exactly the type of large population movement that archeology is particularly well suited to discover. These are monumental, kingdom-shattering events, in a culture that produced lots of physical and written trails, but this particular event is utterly unsupported.

You can dance all you like trying to explain why Exodus could be real and still not produce any evidence, but the simple fact is that no such evidence exists. Your evasions are nothing but smoke and mirrors, and I don't think anyone is fooled.

leonarde

Unsupported assertion.

Cheers!

Dark Jedi

Is this along the lines of that Fark thread, where you reply with a generic term to represent your position?

Or is this a reference to the fact that the Exodus is an unsupported claim?

Pentagram

leonarde
What exactly do you mean when you say Asha'man's assertion is unsupported? Should he somehow produce proof of the lacking archeological evidence to satisfy you, or do you know of actual evidence to counteract his assertion? If the latter is true, there are lots of people who would like to see it.

Btw, after Egypt had been brought down by constant, obviously supernatural plagues, a significant part of their population cut down in one single night and their military drowned you would expect the Egyptians to recognize the superior firepower of the Jewish god and convert en masse.

Julian

Hi all, this is my first post on this forum as I just found it a few days ago and spent some time lurking. I must say that I am impressed with the level of knowledge of some of the posters here.

I do, however, have a few comments on the whole exodus issue. I have found that when arguing with believers the lack of physical evidence is rarely sufficient to make them think. Also, the existence of evidence that clearly indicate that the entire area from Eqypt up to, and including, Canaan was under Egyptian control at the supposed time, can be poo-poo'd away by the 'righteous.' One thing I generally use to dispute it, or at least make the believer think twice about the accuracy of Exodus, is a simple bit of math.

Here goes:
600,000 males on foot escape from Egypt, excluding children. That would mean that we are looking at probably around 1,000,000 males total. Add to that an equal number of women. I will be fair here even though women are generally more numerous in a population. That makes for 2,000,000 people. Exodus further states that they brought along a large number of livestock and so on. Again I will be conservative and say a total of 3,000,000 goats, cows, chickens (no pigs) and so on. That makes for a total of 5,000,000 living creatures. Now, they all need water. Watering holes or wells in the desert are generally not overly large so lets assume that 10 creatures can drink or fill their waterskins at any given time. Lets say it takes 20 seconds for each group of 10. You would need about one and a half gallons of water a day in a desert enviroment to stay strong and healthy. Basically this means that you would need to carry 6 gallons of water away from the water just for yourself. Even more to feed the livestock for the next few days even though they drank today. So roughly about 20 gallons of water or around 80 pounds of additional weight. Of course, small children and babies can carry next to nothing so add another 40 pounds at least. Boy, they must have been really strong. All this water should last you and yours for about six days or so. That is how long it would take to water the entire population. Six days. By that time you will have to go back to the well and get more water. No wonder it wook 40 years. It would seem that they spent all that time wandering around in a big circle around a watering hole, never able to proceed. And I am, of course, not even concerned with the fact that waterholes will dry out in many cases... Oh yeah, lets not even look at how to feed ruminants in the Sinai desert...

Another fun thought: Since one of the plagues of Eqypt killed of all the horses, how were the chariots drawn? Non-jewish slaves with a bit between their teeth?

As much as I enjoy the factual evidence for disproving the bible there is nothing quite as good as logic, math and common sense.

Thanks for your kind attention,
Julian

Kosh

Actually, 1 gallon(US) of water = 8.34 pounds! So that's 160+ pounds!

Ironically, they will believe that the Sanai is simultaneously wet enough to support that many people with water and food, and yet dry enough for it's Sahara like sands (which are now gone) to have covered up all the evidence!