mung bean

Gee Dean, glad you decided not to be unfair.
What I love is that according to Nile delta sediments Dave's Flood date of 2170 BC coincides with a major drought in Egypt that resulted in a layer of sediment rich in iron oxide (ie. the delta was dry for substantial periods) and caused the collapse of the Old Kingdom.
http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/apr05...ileFloods.html

Lucretius

Let me see if I can summarise what Dave (& Rohl) have proposed so far and any arguments against their position on this

A single papyrus that only dates to generation prior to the alleged date of Moses IF you discount historical records and compress recorded history to fit in with your initial hypothesis , appears to show that SOME slaves in Egypt had Semitic(but not necessarily Hebrew) names.It does not however act as proof that the entire race of Israelites were in fact enslaved


Manetho ascribes the loss of the war and the subsequent take over by a foreign power to the actions of A God (unnamed as far as I know ) it was common in the ancient world to do things like this rather than just accept that the enemy they faced was superior (if only in warfare).

In just one town/city there is evidence that SOME in the city/town had died (of causes that are not mentioned but possibly illness ) and were buried in a hurry.This does not necessarily prove that this was a widespread occurence however
Note the "approximately at this time" so it doesn't definitively fit even into the revised chronology .

Not sure about this one but what evidence is there that this is in fact a statue of Joseph and not some other person

Only in the "correct time period " IF you discount historical records and compress recorded history to fit in with your initial hypothesis as above .

VoxRat

I think this is Dave's [mis]understanding of the concept of "consilience".

In his world, if you take enough pieces of extremely tenuous, tortured, far-fetched "evidence", they combine "synergistically" to make a compelling case.

Virginia-American

If the Nation of Israel really had been enslaved in Egypt for a few hundred years, one would expect to find Egyptian loanwords in Hebrew. I have read (can't remember where) that the only Egyptian word in Hebrew is "Moses".

Does anyone here know more about this aspect of the Exodus story?

spin

Rohl uses a trick translation and fudges the eclipse. It's crap and he doesn't bother keeping up with the analysis of the tablet, which has a fair amount of scholarly literature written about it.

This is the standard analysis of the tablet:

J. F. A. Sawyer and F. R. Stephenson, "Literary and astronomical evidence for a total eclipse of the sun observed in ancient Ugarit on 3 May 1375 B.C." Bull. Sch. Oriental Afr. Stud. 33, 467−489 (1970).

This supplies a conventional date which doesn't help Rohl so he tries to criticize, but since then other analyses on the implied date have been made.


spin

jules?

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=223441

another related thread,
why do you 'appear' [don't want to offend]to waste time on someone who clearly refuses to address any arguments with a few facts?

Dutch_labrat

Well, some people collect pins or keep exotic fish. It keeps them from the street where they worry people (or squirrels.)

Or for a better reason, if they didn't people like Dave could go unchallenged in their quest to poison innocent children’s minds with his mind viruses.

jules?

I quite agree, it is just irritating that the likes of dave squirm off the hook by answering questions by presenting lame questions and it would be satisfing to have a 'Court Zone'; a forum for those that enter to be forced to give an answer and address the question.

What do people think? a thread, moderated by a preciding mod who can act as a judge and compel witnesses to 'answer the question'. A free choice thing of course but one where entering requires certain rules to be followed.

VoxRat

Sounds good to me.

I have no doubt that habitual squirmers will continue to do what they do, but it would be refreshing to have them regularly called on it.

Now the trick is, finding moderators acceptable to all parties.

Might have to be done on an ad hoc basis. I.e. discussants agree on a particular moderator before launching a given thread.

Lucretius

From what little research I have been able to do online the identification of this statue (on Christian literalist sites alone as far as I can see ) is IF it is a statue and the palace of Imonhotep (which is far from certain) IF Joseph was a real person and not a mythical character and IF Joseph actually was Imonhotep (which is far from certain) then it MAY be a statue of Joseph (or it MAY NOT) .
So thats quite a few assumptions to start off with,not to mention how does this fit in with the accepted chronology or even Biblical chronology.
Some Christian sites appear to identify Joseph with Khufu (Cheops) a different person entirely to Imonhotep so as far as I can see they just want Joseph to be "someone else" to fit him into their revised timeline,(in fact anyone but Joseph ) .