Toto

... or "archeologists" or "claim" or ...

Minimalist

I'm guessing you phrased this poorly...or perhaps dropped a word or two...but evidence in Egyptian writings for conquests in Libya, Nubia, Canaan and the middle east is extensive. Thutmoses, Seti, Ramsses II, etc, etc. are all clearly displayed on Karnak.

We have considerable textual evidence for the campaigns of Ahmose I who threw the Hyksos out of Egypt on their semite asses. He then chased them back to Canaan and four centuries of Egyptian domination of Canaan ensued. In all of that, there is no mention of any "Israelites." The Amarna tablets provide diplomatic correspondence from the subject kings of Canaan (including Abdi Heba of "Jerusalem") with an equal lack of mention of those peoples you insist existed. I would ask you to stop listening to bible thumpers and check out some real archaeology on the subject. This:

http://www.worldagesarchive.com/Refe..._(Harpers).htm

is only a primer but you need somewhere to start. From there, you can graduate to Finklestein's "The Bible Unearthed."


As a matter of fact these things are deeply in question. Real archaeologists have excavated these places on "Joshua's" hit list and many of them did not even exist in the Late Bronze Age. Some, such as Ai, were abandoned for 1200 years having been destroyed in the Middle Bronze Age and not re-built until sometime in the Iron Age.

Proofs, for real archaeologists (who would dispute the word "proof" as opposed to "evidence" in the first place) do not only come from written material...which in many cases is not trustworthy as people do tend to lie or at least exaggerate, just look at the bible for an example. Archaeological evidence comes from pottery shards, destruction layers and C14 dating or artifacts. You need to lose the Indiana Jones idea of archaeology and realize that a real archaeologist is delighted to find a garbage midden that he can sort through. In any case, in those handful of Canaanite towns which do have destruction layers it has been found that they are spread over a 200 year period and were thus not, I repeat NOT, the result of any unified campaign. The Sea People, the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, Hittites, etc were all busily terrorizing the area. They needed no help from any fictional "Israelites."

No, you are discussing the ranting of bible-based preachers masquerading as archaeologists who went to Palestine in the late 19th-early 20th centuries with a bible in one hand and a shovel in the other and who were bound and determined to fit anything they dug up into some biblical context. Put another way, any rock they found was going to be something Moses pissed on....whether he did it or not. These early theories have now been overturned.

Jerusalem, in the 10th century....when your bible claims it to have been the capital of some far-flung empire....was a small village. The jesus freaks whine about "absence of evidence" but they are wrong. The evidence that has been found and has been dated to the 10th century shows that it was at best a miserable little shithole of about 1,000 people. That is not an "absence of evidence" it is an absence of any evidence that your stories are true. A subtle distinction to be sure and one which is usually lost on fundamentalists.


Excuse me but there is no evidence outside of your bible for any of this nonsense.

I do agree with you that there is no evidence for jesus or mohammad, though. There, we agree.

semiopen

My house is on 3.5 acres, whenever I cut the grass I think how it's as big as Jerusalem was back then.

Doug Shaver

Fine. Then it should be trivially easy for him to produce some evidence. That's all I'm asking for.

The comment to which I addressed my request has nothing to do with the current state of things. It has to do with Joseph's claim about what the state of things used to be before the Tel Dan discovery.

semiopen

Ah, sorry... I sort of figured it was out of context since the fragment you supplied seemed reasonable.

Joseph's postings are not the easiest to read all the way through, so I can only imagine (and shudder at) what point he might have been making.

Tel Dan is hardly conclusive evidence for David's existence.

Doug Shaver

Indeed.