Roland

Is it reasonable to expect that we would find evidence of a few million people (and their animals) living and dying in a desert 3,000 years after the event? Since not a single trace of the ancient Israelites has ever been found in the Sinai Desert, is it safe to say that the event probably never happened or is 3,000 years enough time to completely wipe out all such traces?

Any experts on here in relation to this topic?

Thanks.

Magus55

I wouldn't say there is no evidence. Just saw a documentary on Discovery channel called Ancient Evidence where archaeologists found the foundations to many small little houses or buildings at the base of a mountain, as well as a carving on a rock with 10 blocks that looked like the 10 commandments as well as a 12 stone altar. Maybe the rest of evidence was buried. Sand constantly moves in a desert. I don't see it being a stretch for 3-4000 years worth of blowing sand to cover up pretty much anything or destroy it through sand blasting.

spin

The logistics of such a trek are quite interesting.

Imagine at a well you were able to allow 100 men to use the well for five minutes before they ceded their time to another 100, you'd only supply water to 288,000 people. Thirst would be the state of the day and you wouldn't be able to quench it for at least five days. And that is considering staying put, for finding water would be a catastrophe. Just imagine if they had to go to the toilet on this Maoist proportioned march. Archaeologists would be able to spot a million coprolites without any trouble. If they walked ten abreast a metre in front of the next ten, you'd have a line of people well over a hundred kilometres long. Of course no arid landscape could possible support such a crowd, so it's no wonder that God gave them manna from heaven. They probably never had a fire, for there were so few sources of wood, so the vast majority of the people never cooked nor boiled water. I guess manna didn't need cooking. And nobody washed.

The usual thing the apologist who is not a fundamentalist will say is that the numbers are inaccurate.

Then, if you do accept such a large group of people -- well, not to means to question the veracity of the source text and if you start there, where do you stop? --, one has to wonder why the Egyptians never recorded such a mass movement of people. Or better still how they could have let such a population build up after their nasty experience with the Hyksos, which they vowed would never happen again. This is why they chased the Hyksos into Canaan around 1500 BCE, closed their borders to everyone except a few bedouin who they didn't think worth controlling, maintained a rather xenophobic approach to all foreigners, so, in short, the notion of a build up of a foreign population of the proportions indicated by Exodus is dismissable from the Egyptian side as never having happened after the Hyksos period. Hmmm, let's think about this... you could package the Hyksos as an exodus. You know, a bunch of foreigners who slowly infiltrated into the delta region, became so strong that they had pwer for a while before they left the land with the pharaoh hot on their tracks and they went off to Canaan.

At the same time, we should now bring in the analyses of the Israeli archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein, who has ascertained from the data representing the demographic data of all the small villages of Iron I Age Palestine and found that there was no trace of any influx of population frm outside Canaan, that there was no change in physical culture, which would only be expected had there been a different cultural group entering the territory. As this isn't seen in the data, we have to stick with the notion that no exodus occurred.

Then again another consideration: after say 400 years of sojourn in Egypt one would need to see traces of the Egyptian language entering the Hebrew to deal with all the cultural artifacts that they came into contact with in Egypt. There is no such linguistic influence in Hebrew. (All you have are a few personal names which would only be expected when Egypt held sway over Canaan for much of the period before the Assyrians moved in.)

All signs say that an exodus from Egypt of Hebrew people is a non-event (despite Magus's hopes).


spin

Asha'man

I'm not an expert, but I have in my hand a copy of The Bible Unearthed by Finkelstein and Silberman. They ARE experts in the archeology of Israel and the surrounding areas.

So, we have found evidence of people wandering the desert both before and after the supposed exodus, but not a trace of people in the correct timeframe.

I think the conclusion is clear: there is no evidence of an event that simply never happened.

(I don't know what Magus55 saw, but it seems to have been more wishful thinking than actual archeaology.)

spin

The reason of course why people think about the 13th century BCE is that the city mentioned in Exodus, Pi-Raamses, was built by Ramses II who was a pharoah of the 13th century BCE. This exodus must have happened after the city was built, right?


spin

Amaleq13

"Hmmm" indeed.

Didn't Abraham live in Canaan before he decided to leave and found the Hebrew people?

Can we assign a date to Abraham with any reliability?

godfry n. glad

Hmmmm....

An a priori assumption that Abraham even existed. How handy.

The answer to the second question is: No.

godfry

Amaleq13

"Handy" to whom? If, as spin suggested, we might be able to connect the exodus of the Hyksos to the story of the Hebrew exodus, why not connect other "dots" from the Bible story?

Is it at all possible that the Hyksos are the same folks who later called themselves "Hebrews"?

We can't even conclude he (assuming for the sake of speculation that there was an "Abraham" founder - happy?) came after the Hyksos moved into town?

spin

The story of the Hyksos disturbed the Egyptians throughout the pharaonic period. Writers in the Greek period were still rehashing it as Josephus's book, Contra Apion shows. Hebrews taken to Egypt in the Greek period came into contact with Egyptians who belittled them as having come from Canaan the place where the Hyksos went. It was also repackaged as a tale about lepers led by a certain Osarsiph, also known as Moses who took his lepers to live in Jerusalem. The ordinary Egyptians by then had embellished the story with the new information about the newly imported Hebrews, with whom they obviously clashed enough.


spin

mike_decock

Somebody pointed out this post on evcforum a while back. I thought it was an excellent summary of the research relating to the historicity of Exodus:

The Exodus: 'A Dead Issue'

-Mike...