Keith Russell

Greetings:

I am reading a book called 'The Bible Unearthed' by two Israeli archeologists. (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/002-5174695-2649667)

I am not going to quote the part of the book that deals with the Exodus, but the authors offer some pretty conclusive evidence that the Exodus, and most of the Old Testament, is not historical fact.

They explain that the sites mentioned in the Bible correspond to known contemporary places, and yet there is no archeological evidence which would support the Bible's claim that there was a large Hebrew presence in the region at the times the Bible claims.

They have found lots of evidence of Egyptian and other settlements, but no evidence of Jericho, the Patriarchs, or the Exodus.

Their conclusion is that much of the Old Testament is much more recent than most people have believed. (1500 to 1300 BC, rather than 5,000 BC or so...)

Interesting reading.

Keith.

davidH

Wow - so many posts on the Bible unearthed!! lol.
You all post at the same time?!

Yeah, I'm reading it at the minute.

It's a pity that Finkelstein couldn't come and give some insight into all of this - especially with first hand experience. Mabye he'll be back from the dig by the time I get bacck from hols - in a month.

One thing I would especially like to know is why Finklestein carried all his research into the Exodus and the conquest from the date he did.

1 Kings 6 v 1

Tells that the Exodus took place 480 years before the building of Solomon's temple - Finkelstein himself says that this would put the Exodus at 1440 BC.

Note: 480 years isn't a round number, it's not a date that someone didn't think about when writing this - anyone roughly guessing would have written 500 years.

So here we have the Bible specifically giving the date of the Exodus.

Yet Finkelstein doesn't base his research on this date (already he has assumed the Bible as inaccurate) but goes to a verse in the Bible

Exodus 1 v 11
"So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labour, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for pharoh."

The first pharoh named Rameses came to the throne in 1320 BC.
He mentions that Egyptian sources report that the city of Pi-Rameses was built in the delta in the days of Rameses II, who ruled 1279 - 1213 BC - and that Semites were employed in it's construction.

Now I quote
" Second and perhaps most important, the earlest mention of Israel in an extrabiblical text was found in Egypt in the stele describing the campaign of pharoh Mernepath -the son of Rameses II - ....the pharoh boasted that Israel's "seed is not!" The boast was clearly an empty one."

So instead of the Biblical date given, Finkelstein
uses one based on his own assumptions - The question on the inside of the cover "Is the Bible true?" hasn't been answered - for the date the Bible gives has been ignored (ie considered false) then his own date put in - and then the rest of the conquest of Canaan based on his own dates.

Surely you agree with me, that he isn't answering the question of whether the Bible is true or not.

I mean that's like me setting out to see whether Finkelstein has given an accurate statement with regard to archaeological evidence - but after reading his first pages, I see that he refers to this earlier date but I take the date of the Bible - of course the evidence I get will contradict his, because I'm looking at the evidence for an earlier time.

Surely you can see the logic of what I'm saying - you can't set out to see if a book is right by taking a date that you think is right, but ignoring the date that that book says it happened in.

If you want to find out if the book is correct in what it says, then obviously you take the date that is given by the book.

Maybe his research would have proved far more interesting if he had just taken the biblical date.
I mean, I can't believe that he wouldn't even include evidence that has been found in the Biblical time frame - even if just to show that the date he has choosen is more accurate.


If we can ever get discussing this with him, I would really appreciate it, Not only for my disagreements, but because he will have first hand experience and up to date information which interests me a lot.

Now about the verse that he talks about. There are a number of explanations for it, this one I find the most resonable.
One is that the more modern name for the city was inserted - just like we now call Mesopotamia - Iraq.
If the name of the city changed then it is likely that those copying would have inserted the new name so that people reading would have understood.

(BTW this won't make sense to you since you believe the stories were handed down orally - there is evidence to suggest otherwise, but will put that up some other time).

From history I see how the pharoh's often changed the monuments - Akhenten, Thotmes III etc. In my reasoning, it wouldn't be hard for a pharoh to change the name of a city and have history record that he built it....but that is only a thought.

I would ask that when you read "the Bible unearthed" and you read the conquest of Canaan, that you would see if the evidence he gives makes sense in a viewpoint that the Israelites had already made their conquest of the land. They now occupied the cities (those they hadn't destroyed).

In the times that Finkelstein is comenting on, the Israelites are probably in the stages of the judges.
(Start reading through the book of judges and see if any thing you read, corresponds with what Finkelstein has discovered).

I'd like to be able to respond to all that Mendeh and Kosh have written, but I don't have time.
I'll try and get some of it answered.

In answer to you saying that the Apiru didn't mean the Israelites - it is true, the name doesn't mean them, but here is some interesting information for you to think about.

As I have shown you - that link, the main thing wasn't that the people were called Hapiru but rather that a stateless people were taking over the whole land. A people that 200 years later are mentioned in Canaan - not as stateless (Apiru/Hapiru) but as the Israelites. They had their own land - the land had fallen to the Apiru and they were now known as the Israelites. (the new kingdom that had established it's self there).

Again - do you think this is still co incidence?
Maybe the Apiru just happened to be in Egypt, maybe pharoh's son just happened to die, maybe Hatshepsut just happened to draw Mannaseh (Moses)out of the nile and advance him to high honours, maybe the Israelites just happened to have a place of worship 3 days from the capital where they wanted to wordship, maybe a stateless people just happened to be starting a conquest of Canaan, maybe pharoh's army was to busy to be bothered with them and maybe by pure chance the Israelites happened to be established in the land of Canaan after this conquest......

Here Mendeh - thanks for the timeline, but that is a timeline of their reigns - not when they where born, and died etc. - I do have one of their reigns, but I'd like to know for sure when history thinks they died. - Thanks.

Also - I wasn't referring to Akhenten and Thotmes IV being the same when I was referring to having read that 2 pharoh's where actually one. (My mistake ages ago was a mistake). I can't remember which 2 the page said might be the same - I'll get back to you on that one.

So this just proves that he wasn't lazy or incompetent, he wasn't disinterested in the lands under his rule. You yourself quoted this;

And yet it didn't quash the rebellion in Canaan..
You say this is because he didn't realise how serious it was...and you say this.

And yet in this statement he says - he writes to me more than all the other mayors.
Akhenten had recieved more than one letter saying there was serious trouble - surely he would have at least sent a delegation to see what was happening. Could he believe that these mayors would exagerate to the extent of saying,"The whole land will be lost" !?

I doubt this would be the case - there must be something else - he quashed Nubian rebellions, and yet fails to quash a rebellion that all the mayors are telling him about?! Surely you see the logic of what I'm saying.

Also what internal affairs would stop the Egyptian empire from defending or recapturing it's territory again? What internal affairs could be more important than the image of the great and powerful Egyptian empire at risk, because a bunch of stateless people took over their territory in Canaan?

It doesn't make sense does it? Surely pharoh wouldn't think twice about send archers and troops to put an end to this stateless people taking over.

Add in the Exodus - if what the Bible says is true, then the Egyptians wouldn't have forgotten so quickly the Israelites. And surely you can see why Akhenten would ignore the many many pleas for his army.


I'm really sorry that I have to go now - I probably won't get to post anything until I get back.
I hope this topic hasn't been locked - if it is then I'll ask for it to be opened again.
Try and see if you can get Finkelstein to come here - though it is understandable if he can't make it.

So maybe see you all in a month's time again? I'll try and get more research done while I'm away - I think i'll also post about the oral aspect of the Bible that has been brought up, I noticed Finkelstein had mentioned it too in his book.

So I'll see y'all in a month
bye.

Mendeh

You may find this reasonable, but unless you have some evidence to suggest that it was changed, the claim is unsupported.

On the contrary, we know how fluid oral storytelling is. Names would have been changed, the story embellished, characters incorporated into others, etc.

It is only a thought, and unless you have any evidence to support it, it is simply speculation, and of no weight in your case without any evidence to support it.

But you originally made the claim that the Amarna letters talk specifically about Israelites:
You're now giving a different definition of Apiru; that of a term for stateless people. But I think you're making a logical error. If Apiru=a stateless people, and the Israelites are stateless people, then that doesn't mean that references Apiru=Israelites: if lizards are creatures with four feet, and cats have four feet, that doesn't mean all cats are lizards.

But the Egyptian term is generic, not specific. If it was specific 200 years later, that doesn't change the fact that the Egyptian term was still generic then. Your claim that the Amarna letter you linked to specifically referenced the Israelites is wrong.

The problem is, you've got a set of coincidences, most of which are really quite dodgy when you get to any sort of detailed study of them, and no evidence. It's as if you've got a postcard's border with the actual picture cut out.
The Apiru is a generic term, it's NOT a reference to one specific people; I've already said, and you could have checked if you'd bothered looking at my timeline, that your timescale for Hatshepsut drawing Moses out of the water is completely up the spout (because following your dating, he'd have been 58 by the time he got around to leading the Exodus); and even if the Israelites were conquering Canaan, that STILL doesn't say anything about the historicity of EXODUS; remember that there are a phenomenal number of individual sources that went into the compilation of the bible; there are about three we know about in the Exodus story alone, and THEY would have been influenced by different ideas as they were handed down (remember that the earliest source for Exodus had 200 years to travel before we even know about it, assuming that Exodus was a real event). Just because one part of the Bible is accurate; that doesn't make the rest of it beyond doubt; and equally, just because one part of the bible is fiction, that doesn't make the rest of it completely made up.

Fine, but I didn't say Akhenaten and Thutmose IV; I said:
You're still confusing Amenhotep IV and Thutmose IV, after two pages of people telling you otherwise and a timeline with the two of them etched into the monitor in solid bold print!

Wrong; if you'll see what follows, you'll see how he was disinterested in Egypt's empire and lazy at holding it together; his exploits in Nubia, for example, were to get gold for the Egyptian coffers to finance Egyptian building projects. He wasn't interested in keeping it together, just getting what he needed when he needed it. Disinterested and lazy - I think so.

YES!!!! This is how bad a king he was. The very volume of letters that Rib-Hadda and others sent shows how difficult it was to drill anything into Akhenaten's thick skull that he didn't want to hear.
No. By the time Rib-Hadda was writing, the army wasn't available for use without slowing down Akhenaten's internal building projects, and sacrificing order in Egypt itself. I've said all this in the last post.

As I've said in my last post, it makes perfect sense. Egypt was falling apart from the inside; not only was Akhenaten disinterested in the Empire; the army was required as a presence inside Egypt because Egypt itself was on the verge of collapse. When General Horemheb took over the throne after Ay, he had the whole of this period wiped out of history. That is how serious this episode was. Egypt was collapsing, and it was the army's use inside Egypt that prevented this. Once Akhenaten was gone and Egypt had secured her foundations, the army was built up and sent out again, and under successive pharaohs of the 18th and 19th dynasties, the land that was lost was recaptured with a vengeance. But at this time, the army was needed to act as an oppressive force within Egypt, simply to stop the whole house of cards from collapsing because the anchor cards, Akhenaten and his court, were completely off-course. I've said all this in my last post.

But this is all completely speculative and unsupported by any evidence - you are making an empty claim. And so far, you've given not one shred of evidence for the exodus EVENT itself, and only a few pieces, most of which collapse when examined under any sort of detail, for a few of the surrounding events. Even if those surrounding events were more or less accurate, that doesn't prove that the exodus itself took place - the story could have simply been inserted into that period of history, much as subsequent Egyptian pharaohs took it upon themselves to re-write the Amarna period to their specifications.

Kosh

Why is this so hard to understand? Finkelstein isn't basing the date on "his own assumptions". It's simple deductive reasoning.

Fact: The bible says the city of Pi_Ramesses was built by semites, just before the Exodus

Fact: The city could not have been built before 1279 BC.

Ergo: The Exodus, if it occurred, could not have been before 1279 BC.

Fact: The Bible says it would have been 1440 BC.

Conclusion: The Bible is wrong.

Finkelstein then methodically shows how the archeological evidence contradicts the Exodus, and in fact makes it impossible.

Here's my favorite:


See you when you get back. Happy Leprochaun (sp?) Hunting.

davidH

I'm back! From a nice long break in Africa!

Well, it's good to see that the style of the site has changed, amazing all the changes that can take place in 1 month eh?

Anyway - don't have time to post a proper answer up at the minute. But will do later.

You guys still around somewhere?

davidH

Yo Mendeh

Could you or anyone else here post up a timeline of the rulers - not the timeline for the period of their Reigns.

If there is a timeline available, it would be of great benefit if it could be of when they were born and when they died.
Only then can we properly work out the dates together.

- Basically, get the date when Queen Hatshepsut was born, then we can roughly work out when Moses was born etc.

lol!!

Oh boy, oh boy. I am not still confusing Amenhotep IV and Thotmose IV. I was referring to something else when I said that - can't be bothered explaining it now. But I am not still confusing them lol.

Kosh, you have posted several facts in your answer.
Would you care to show the evidence for these facts?

Why couldn't it have been built before 1279 BC?

The Bible being wrong depends on how solid your fact is. If your fact is solid, then the Bible could have been updated with the modern names so that it could have been understood better.
Since Mendeh wants proof that this could have happened - he is asking the impossible, for no written Biblical records from that time peroid have been found.
Therefore since you cannot disprove that the Bible could have been updated, then you cannot conclude that the Bible is wrong.

In answer to your quote Kosh,

Mendeh himself has provided a clue to the answer to this here.
Here's what he wrote

So what is to stop another pharoh doing the same to this particular period of history? Wouldn't the episode of the Biblical account of the Exodus be considered far far more serious than this?
Does this then account for the more effective and thorough wiping out of this episode?
Maybe it is worth thinking about...Queen Hatshepsut's memory was also attempted to be wiped out - so it wasn't unheard of.
And if I was pharoh, I too would make sure this was completely hidden up - I wouldn't want my enemies to hear about this huge embarassment.


Exactly - and I will show why it wasn't handed down by story telling. But not just yet.

Yes, I did make that claim - the reasoning behind it has already been posted.

Nope, there is no logical error. You have ommited the timing aspect.
If someone said to me that they saw an animal with 4 feet under a tree by my house at 4pm, then someone else said that they saw a cat under a tree by my house at 4pm on the same day. I wouldn't naturally conclude that it must have been a lizard that the first person saw, and then a cat that the 2nd person saw.

No the logical assumption is that they both saw a cat at the same time - but both were described in different ways.

Same goes with the Israelites and the Apiru. Apiru (a stateless people) are in Palestine in 1400 BC or round about and are warring, and letters talk about the whole land is about to be lost etc.
The Bible says that the Israelites (Hebrews as they were then called - a stateless people) entered Palestine and begin conquering - also around 1400 BC.

What is the logical conclusion?

Are you referring to the term, " a stateless people " as specific?

Show them to be dodgy.

Exactly - not neccessarily to one specific people group, only a stateless people. But does it still apply if a specific people happen to be stateless?

Let me show you something else, the term Hebrew, doesn't neccessarily indicate the Israelites.
The term Hebrew is in essence the same as Apiru - they both mean a stateless people.
That was why they didn't keep their name as Hebrew. They were no longer stateless.

Is the date given for Hatshepsut the date of her birth, or the date when she first began reigning?
Give the date of her birth and we'll work it out and see if it fits.

Are you sure that there are 3 people who composed it? - I'd like to see who they were.

Are you sure that Akhenten was lazy - or was it just that he couldn't hold it together? If he knew that he couldn't hold it together, could this have influenced him to do the things he did?

This doesn't sound logical, from what you have written, it sounded as though he had no other alternative, since all the army was needed at home.

You mention later on that the army needed to be rebuilt - rebuilt or do you mean restructured?
Because rebuilt implies that they had suffered losses....Red Sea incident perhaps? Also Mighty Egypt on the verge of collapse can't be only due to this one pharoh's laziness - there must have been another huge factor involved.

Exactly, but this insertion of history is without evidence. Rather than trying to explain the lack of evidence in this way, you haven't examined the more logical conclusion.
We have hard evidence that the Egyptians rewrote history themselves - you mentioned one above. They did it in order to avoid embarassement. The same happened with Hatshepsut - her memory had tried to have been wiped out.

So here we have hard evidence that the Egyptians modified their history to "their specifications" as you put it. So the logical conclusion which the evidence supports is that the Egyptians themselves erased and modified that time of history. - How more embarassing is it then the Amarna peroid?!! Is there little wonder that so little evidence remains?! - The Egyptian Gods shown to be powerless, Mighty Egypt humbled before the slaves etc etc.
As you told me, the same applies to you when you say that the Israelites inserted this history.

Whereas the evidence to support what I have just said is clearly in abundance.

I have also been studying the "Bible Unearthed" some of the matters mentioned in it will crop up here in this post no doubt.

So hope you are still all ok, and enjoyed your summer (or winter as the case may be).
cya.

sighhswolf

Son,
You are spouting the biggest load of manure
that I have seen in a while.
You should give up your historical research and find something you have a chance of getting right.
What happens to your whole damn premise if the Egyptians never used slave labor in the construction of monuments?
What is the result of all the speculation of a mass movement of Jewish/Hebrew slaves out of egypt if it can be proven that the egyptians did NOT USE SLAVE LABOR in the construction processes.

Wolf

davidH

lol - good one wolf.

I presume that from that comment you have read through the whole topic....

We commented on this one a long time ago.

Wolf, if you know so much about history then come and show me the proof that the Egyptians never used slaves.

What about all those POWs? Do they not count as slaves just because they were POWs? Or did the Egyptians actually release them after a certain time. Or did the Egyptians not infact take POWs?
(Prisoners of War).

Marduk

"What about all those POWs? Do they not count as slaves just because they were POWs? Or did the Egyptians actually release them after a certain time. Or did the Egyptians not infact take POWs?"

POW's were used as slaves in the copper mines, where they served a sentence, at the end of which they could either return to their homeland or become citizens of Egypt.

Egyptians did uses slaves in later years (under Greek & Roman rule, 1st millenium BCE), a practice they picked up from the surrounding cultures.

[ August 27, 2002: Message edited by: marduck ]</p>