Huon

Not Blaise Pascal, of course...

stephan huller

I am not defending anything 'Jewish.' I was raised by atheists. We only celebrated Christmas because they didn't want me to be deprived of presents. Nevertheless:

No Manetho was an Egyptian priest whose information was certainly based on the historical records of the priesthood. Sorry I can accept the dating is wrong, that it didn't involve hundreds of thousands of people, that there were no miracles, that there was no 'Moses' per se, no Patriarchs, no parting of the sea, no angels, no column of glory but there certainly was a historical event of some kind reported in the Egyptian records.
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/e.../g/Manetho.htm

Sheshbazzar

Hmmm.
Anyone got a grain of salt?

Diogenes the Cynic

That event was the Hyksos expulsion - something which had no actual relationship to the Israelites, and which occurred before they even existed.

stephan huller

But the paradox for the atheist is that you are defining the 'right' expulsion by a text that you also claim is fictitious. What you are saying is the 'right' expulsion happened at the time defined by the Bible which never happened. You just want to disprove the Bible. All else is secondary.

Diogenes the Cynic

I have no idea what you mean by "right." The Hyksos expulsion historically happened. That was the historical event for which we have corroboration. It also happened centuries before the alleged time of the Exodus.

The evidence for the Hyksos is hardly confined to Manetho, by the way, if that's what your getting at.

We know for SURE that the Exodus didn't happen. I think it's partially based on a garbled and rebooted version of the Hyksos story and their expulsion by a Pharaoh named Ahmose. I don't even know what "right or wrong" means. My personal motivations are to find out what really happened, not to "disprove the Bible." whatever that means.

stephan huller

I will tell you what it means - you and many at this forum and not being objective. You start with an agenda which shapes how you frame your understanding of the historical context of the narrative. You act like religious people in reverse.

Here is the accepted Samaritan dating of Exodus in reverse:

984 years from Alexander to the Fanuta
284 Rehuta (the turning away of divine favor) to Fanuta (entry into the Promised Land)
40 years wandering = 1658 BCE

Of course this is an approximation but: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyksos

I am not defending the authenticity of the narrative. But I am not looking for ways to prove its stupid either. We needn't look for a 'perfect match' to give credence that there might be something to Manetho making the connection between the two accounts (it should be noted that another Samaritan tradition takes a hundred years off of the years from Alexander to the Fanuta)

Of course these are just approximations, developments of oral traditions - but that's the point. What should we expect from an oral tradition that in some form 'matched' what was written in the priestly narratives of Egypt and referenced by Manetho? You want 'absolute certainty' - no we can't use the Samaritan tradition to navigate a time machine into the historical Exodus. But this isn't the same as 'proving' that it is all fake and made up either.

I hate absolutism. The Bible isn't absolutely true nor is it absolutely false. It's just something we picked up from antiquity because our ancestors thought it was better than whatever else was out there at the time.

Sheshbazzar

Be a different matter if we actually possessed authentic 3rd century BCE Manetho manuscripts containing a clear unambiguous reference to an expulsion of Hebrew slaves.

But what we have all passed through unreliable hands and were subject to an undeterminable amount of translation errors and editorial 'touching up' to align with the ideas of centuries latter users, each one of which operated with a foreign religious bias.

We don't know for fact what Manetho himself actually wrote on the subject, what we got is what these biased sources chose to present to their select audiences of some 4 to 11 centuries latter.
What Samaritans may have believed about their history is of little relevance in determining with any certainty what the Egyptian Mantheo actually wrote.

Any references to a possible Hebrew expulsion needs to be taken with a grain of salt until authentic 3rd century documents are unearthed that can confirm or disprove the the claim.

Promoting anything else requires an assumption backed by something beyond that which is known.
Usually identified as having an agenda. Do we really need to all become card carrying members of the Ron Wyatt School of Biblical 'Research'?


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Adam

Quite impressive reconciliation, Stephan Huller.
I am not a big fan of the man, but Simcha Jacobovici, The Naked Archaeologist, likewise uses the Hyksos regarding the Exodus. That chronology does not mesh with Liberal (and atheist) dates for the Exodus in the 13th Century BC, but it does come closer to date set by the Bible. History accepts the Hyksos as fact, so our resident mythicists here cannot fairly say that there is no evidence for a Semitic incursion and expulsion from Egypt. Thanks to Toto in Post #74 for pointing out that Josephus and some modern scholars lilke Greenburg identify the Exodus with the Hyksos. Let's keep open minds.

stephan huller

It's amazing what the Jews don't know. Most puzzling of all is the fact that they haven't clue about (a) the chronology of their high priests and (b) the sabbatical cycle of years. How did that happen? Whenever I don't know something or want to know something I go to Facebook and ask my Samaritan friend for the explanation. I don't always agree with the Samaritan tradition. My question of choice is - what did Marqe say?