Steven Avery

Sodom and Gomorrah is one of the most fascinating. The sulphur is there, and you can take a bit and stink up your living room very quickly with a match. Also when you look at the pictures you can see a good outline of the buildings and such. You have to be an "expert" to miss the evidence.

Doug Shaver

Sorry, but I just can't get from there to "the exodus really happened."

I don't consider it negativity to say that a work of fiction is a work of fiction.

I think one could as well argue that Le Morte d'Arthur gives a reasonable picture of the situation in early Medieval England.

Anat

triffidfood, if I understand Finkelstein correctly, he says that during the Bronze Age the hill country population underwent several cycles of agricultural settlement - nomadic herding and back again. IOW there ws a local nucleus of unsettled population.

Anat

praxeus, so there were settlements destroyed by tectonic activity (not unusual in a rift valley). Doesn't mean the inhabitants had been wicked, nor does it mean that one family, related to a guy who talked to a divine being, escaped to a cave and founded two nations via acts of incest.

Shanefield

Anyone still not convinced by the above, that the OT is really just fiction, I suggest that they search amazon.com for "Etz Hayim." This book is written by a Jewish rabbi committee, and it concludes that Abe, Moe, Josh, Sol --- all fiction, 100%.

For the logic of it, you might also quickly skim thru my little site about the "Jensenhurst Parable," at:
http://oldnnew.blogspot.com , but there is nothing really new there.
Dan Shanefield
A New User (but an old guy)

Toto

Etz Hayim gets a few hits:

Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary (Hardcover)

Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary; Travel-size (JPS Bible Commentary) (Paperback)

mdarus

Silly me. I started reading this thread getting the idea that all the evidence pointed to fiction without any factual basis but then a little at a time I found out:

• There is physical evidence about David
• Egypt did have slaves from palestine.
• Some slaves probably did escape back to palestine.

My faith is nicely bolstered.
"But it is not as grand as described."
A grand temple in the eyes of shepherd is a shack to a servant of the Pharaoh.

The most important fact that nobody mentioned is:
All the "modern" archeological interpretation is skewed by the deep political agendas. The Israelis hire their archeologists to prove their claims. The Arabs higher a different group. Surprise, surprise, they find just what they were hired to find. If you want modern science to figure this one out for you, good luck! If you think modern "scholarship" does not have its own private agendas, you have much faith.

Anat

If the Israelis had hired archaeologists to bolster their claims there wouldn't have been such an uproar when the findings of Israeli archaeologists made it to the popular media.

Reena

Hmm, where did you learn this? I'd like to see pictures etc.

Apikorus

Yes, sulphurous emissions are a sure sign of divine wrath and basically prove that the Holy Bible is unswervingly accurate.

There is a town by the Dead Sea named Sedom to this very day -- I've driven there. A company called Dead Sea Works Ltd. opened a factory there in the mid-1950's -- potash, magnesium, etc.