Anat

IamJoseph, to make things simple:

Have a look at Introducing Archaeology Series by Joel Ng. You will find much information about how archaeology of Palestine was done over the last few generations and how the findings were interpreted.

From Stone to Bronze gives the general picture of the settlement patterns during the Bronze Age and the histories of the cities. The rise of Israel is an overview of several possible explanations that have been offered over time for the origins of the people who lived in the hill country in the Iron Age. It explains why the conquest model has been abandoned and how other models fit the data better. Dever believes the hill-country settlers were farmers who used technological inovations such as water cisterns and terracing to settle a new area and eventually split off from their ancestral farming communities in the valleys. Finkelstein believes the early settlers were nomadic herders who were forced to take up farming because they could no longer rely on their trade partners, the farmers of the valleys, as a source of grain due to the disruption of the country by the Sea Peoples (his book 'The Bible Unearthed' provides a more detailed explanation of his ideas).

Further on, Appendix A lists the cities listed in the Bible as conquered by Joshua and what the status of evidence about them was in 1998. Note several cities were not even settled at the supposed time of Joshua's conquest, others were settled continuously with no sign of destruction at the supposed time and some others were actually conquered by Sea Peoples.

Appendix B shows how much evidence there is for the Philistine invasion, as opposed to the absence of evidence for an Israelite invasion.

The Ascendance and Decline of Israel and Judah deals with monarchic times and may be more relevant to the Solomon thread. In the 9th century, with the Omride kings, we finally start getting more correlation between the biblical account and the archaeological finds. The Rise of God deals with the possible history of Israelite religion, also relevant to the other thread.

Over all, the findings from Palestine contradict a conquest from Joshua's alleged times and contradict the arrival of people who had lived in an Egyptian culture. There are no findings supporting a lengthy stay of a huge people in Kadesh Barnea. Where are the mass graves of the hundreds of thousands that should have died prior to entering the country? Where are the garbage heaps? The latrines? Back to Egypt, where is the economical collapse that should have followed the loss of hundreds of thousands of slaves? If Egypt was fighting wars in the Levant it must have had the economy to support the armies.

And since you like names, the Egyptian names from the Joseph account (Potiphar, Potiphera, Asenath) are common in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE. OTOH notice that while the Biblical account claims there were several Pharaohs involved (at the very least the one from Joseph's times, the one from when slavery began, the one from the time of the plagues and the exodus) we are not given their names, as opposed to Pharaoh Necoh (or Necho) from Josiah's times.

More specifically:
What scientific census? How do you know these were not made up numbers from a later time, if you do not have manuscripts or tablets or shards from the time of the exodus? (It is possible to make up anything. Take the names of families in the time of the author, write any numbers you like.) The entire population of Egypt is estimated as around 1 million at the beginning of the pharaonic era and around 5 million in Roman times. If there were 600,000 Hebrew adult men then the entire Hebrew nation would have been around 2 million, at least half of the total population. The instant depopulation should have been noticed, as well as the loss of a large part of the work force.

OTOH the total population of the hill country of Palestine is estimated as 50,000 in the Late Bronze and 150,000 in Iron II. Where did those hundreds of thousands disappear to?

As for the Merneptah stele, yes it attests to a war with many different groups, among them people called Israel. How does this support an exodus from Egypt? It is about a war in the Levant.
From Joel Ng's essay:
The Canaanites were a northwestern semitic people, just like the Israelites and the Phoenicians. The writings we have from them are the letters they wrote to their overlords which are obviously in one of the diplomatic languages of their times - in this case Akkadian. Writings for internal consumption have been found in Ugarit, and these were written in a northwesten Semitic language. Not only that but the Ugaritic mythology shares some similarity with the description of Yahweh in some of the Psalms.

If you read my first post to this thread, I was offering this as a guess. However the celebration of Sukkot has many elements of a harvest celebration, and even later traditions documented from second temple times have elements from the agricultural cycle such 'simhat beth hashoeva' and the tradition of slapping with willow branches as prayer for rainfall. This kind of accumulation of customs and added meanings is common in folklore worldwide.

I will be leaving tomorrow for a week, i won't be online for a while.

semiopen

Return, moreover, with a Davidic dynasty guy, while Ezra seems like the emperor's drinking buddy.

The early Israelite monotheistic case seems remarkably weak to me and yet we see it defended by intelligent people.

One remark related to Anat's question to IAJ; I'm not aware of any passover references in the prophets before the fall of Israel, except for Joshua 5:10-12(from the book link below) so there is some possibility it is tied in with Assyria.

Ancient Israel By Roland De Vaux, John McHugh suggests that the Holiday of Matzot was not added to Passover until after the return from exile.

http://books.google.com/books?id=A42...esult&resnum=1

IamJoseph

Solomon had a navy and numerous commercial treaties with the Phoenecians - this is factual, not because of the one source, but numerous sources. Wiki has been engaged in numerous law suits of its anti-Israel and dis-historical content. It calls pre-70 CE Judea as Palestine, and those who know their history know this is a terrible falsehood and what it refers to. Wiki is for those who have not paid a small charge to get info from a real encyclopedia or who prefer a desired falsehod to a disdained truth.

They were not 'sent', but forcefully exiled as slaves. In that time, slaves left with rings on their noses.

The fundamental factors were not ignored by me, nor did I distort real history by quoting a sub-set of no impact.

The situation is different when the one temple was destroyed. Here, synagogues can be operative, and only certain rituals could not be observed by the temple not being available. Using this issue to invalidate an entire history is hardly credible, but it is still rampant with those who have an underlying agenda.

Wiki is not a good source to learn history when it concerns Israel. Polytheism is not a mark of the world's introducer and longest surviving Monotheists, who proved themselves numerous times in exstential threats in this same issue. The fundamental things apply.

IamJoseph

I don't read articles which call Judea as Palestine - before that term was invented. I know my history better than your kind of links.

Anat

Extra-biblical evidence?

Extra-biblical evidence?

Anat

Your loss.

IamJoseph

Then you should be flabbergasted Israel was returned in '48, when this was least plausable, and that a 2000 year dead language was also resurrected - never occured before. I don't see why there is surprise here - prior to Israel's return, despite the situation after W.W.II and that all nations slammed their doors to fleeing Jews - Israel refused large chunks of land in Africa and Australia, and settled only for her own ancestral land. This says that the Jews have never stolen anyone's lands in all their 4000 year history - despite being robbed and dispersed across the world's nations.

I don't think so. There is nothing sinister of one returning to their own land. In fact it was the right thing to do, as was seen and done with Persia. There are two kinds of manifest destiny - one which robs and genocides another people, claiming God told them so - and one which does not.

The situation with Israel has no cnnection with what Darius did in Babylon. The God of Israel also gave the nations 100% historical proof which was the land of the Hebrews - and this is not based on theology but factual history.

show_no_mercy

The Zoroastrians?

IamJoseph

The quickest path to 5 minutes of fame is to say anything anti-Israel. But this is a short term win.

IamJoseph

There you go again - the world can't tolerate truth when it concerns the Jews. Neither the Zoros nor ancient Egypt was monotheistic at any time. Head bashing deities battling for supremecy and sun deities should have raised alarm bells.