Sauron

We consistently find evidence of a few million people (and their animals) living and dying in Egypt / Sumeria / Babylon / China / Mexico / etc.

Why wouldn't we be able to find evidence of the same thing with the Israelites?

Moreover, the Israelites stayed in one place for something like 38 of the 40 years of wandering. That cuts down the need to search the whole Sinai, and allows researchers to focus their archaeological investigations over a much smaller area. In spite of that fact, nothing has ever been found.

Sauron

This is the same TV series that thinks it can reconstruct the face of Jesus.

That is a little suspicious, actually. Why would any carving focus on ten commandments? What most people don't remember is that there weren't 10 commandments. There were several hundred. We focus on 10, but the entire series of laws that Moses supposedly received was far more than ten. So it's unlikely that this is meaningful - or at worse, it's a much later carving after the idea of *precisely* "ten commandments" had already solidified as a religious thought.

Except that archaeological evidence in the Sinai shows all kind of activity - just none of it Israelite.

rlogan

There are achaeological sites 10,000-12,000 years old in Alaska with occupation by a mere handful of people.

The idea that we could not find evidence of the exodus, had it happened, is - ridiculous.

godfry n. glad

Um... Have you been to the Sinai?

I haven't. But I _have_ been to the Negev, which is separated from the Sinai by an invisible and artificial national boundary. I didn't see any blowing sand. It was mostly rocks. Lots of hot rocks...not a single one of them blowing around.

Just because it's a "desert" doesn't mean there is blowing sand.

godfry

I've been to the Judean desert, too. And there was no blowing sand there, either.

Dark Jedi

"Blowing Sand" is a common misconception of those who have only seen desert through movies. I have talked to people who claim that if it doesen't have dunes, it ain't desert.

spin

Ya know as I said if they walked ten abreast at only a metre ahead of the next ten, you'd have a line of 200 kilometres -- assuming 600,000 men, the same of women and more of children. That means by the time the tail of the marchers was crossing the Reed Sea the head could be in Jerusalem.

I'm really impressed with Magus55's desire to believe this one.

Once you get this 200 kilometre long serpent out of Egypt at the time of the existence of the city of Raamses (13th century BCE), which was 480 years before the building of the temple under Solomon (10th century BCE) -- go figure --, you then have to wonder how they could leave no sign of an entry into Canaan, this enormous population movement.

The physical culture precludes such an enormous influx of people. There is absolutely no change in the cultural remains to mark such an influx, no different pottery, no different diet, no different constructions. (I. Finkelstein, numerous articles)

Then of course the Late Bronze Age city of Jericho had no walls (see Quaderno di Gerico 1, Marchetti & Nigro), so we can say goodbye to Joshua and the trumpet story.

Oh, wait, here's a good one though: there were already people referred to as Israel occupying a small space in Canaan at the time of Merneptah (according to one of his inscriptions at Karnak). They walk for forty years to already be there.

I'd really like to see a dyed in the wool believer of the inerrancy of this story make ends meet. Magus55, do you wanna try to make sense of the data concerning the exodus?

Why not go for the obvious conclusion that it is not based directly on events that happened in the past?


spin

Amaleq13

I'm not sure if this at least marginally related tangent is appropriate here but the folks who have posted seem like they might know.

What is the origin of the word "Hebrew"?

If I understand correctly, "Judaism" derives from the tribe of "Judah" but I haven't been able to find anything about "Hebrew".


Thanks in advance.

godfry n. glad

Yeah... And, from the top of Masada, in the Judean desert, one can see where the Roman encampments were 2000 years ago. The nice thing about archeological finds from deserts is that they tend to be so well preserved, thanks to the low humidity and the relatively lower likelihood that they were tampered with by later humans. The finds from Oxyrhynchus, Nag Hammadi and the Dead Sea area all owe a lot to low humidity and relative isolation.

godfry

Hazel-rah

According to Webster's New World Dictionary:

Hebrew is from Middle Eng. Hebreu, from Old French/Latin Hebraeus, from Greek Hebraios, from Aramaic ivray, from Hebrew ivri.

There does not seem to be any agreement on what "ivri" means, however. One theory relates it to the name Abraham (Ivrahim, one guesses?); one says it means "vagrant," one says it relates to one Eber, a descendent of Noah.

spin

You could always try the epomynous approach with Eber in Gen 11:14.

You could always also try a source from the Hebrew word for "beyond/across" as in pass across the river.


spin