mark9950

One of my previous posts about these peoples image of God being after their leaders.

It looks like those ancient people looked as their kings and rulers as God as sargon and his son proclaimed being God at one time.

Jeremy Pallant

Thank you, Vinnie!

Cretinist

Bishop Colenso showed the logistical problems with the Exodus in the mid-nineteenth century, and no one has ever seriously challenged his findings.

Jeremy Pallant

Except for those Christians who believe the Bible to be inerrant.

JoyJuice

Has anyone heard of the reference of Israel with the Merneptah Stela?

....The Merneptah Stela from year 5 of Merneptahs reign (1207 BC) refers to Israel: "Canaan has been plundered into every sort of woe; Ashkelon has been overcome; Gezer has been captured. Yano'am was made nonexistent; Israel is laid waste, its seed is not." Brier points out that this is the earliest non-Biblical reference to Israel. Another thing he points out is that on the stella, foreign nations were denoted with a hieroglyph resembling three mountains (because most foreign countries had such mountains). But the reference to Israel does not include this determinative hieroglyph. He believes this indicates the Israelites were still a wandering people at the time the stela was carved and had not yet founded a nation....

Although this is not a smoking gun indicating that Israel was indeed enslaved by Egypt, what does one make of this?

alkech

Tellurian

First, I saw some debate as to whether or not the correct translation of the term on the stele was "Israel" and not a reference to another group.

Second, were the Israelis of the Galilee area not settled people who grew and harvested grapes and olives? Wasn't it the Beduin Arabs of the south who were the nomadic people that eventually became the Jews?

Third, wasn't it the desert bandits the Egyptians called the Hapiru (Hebrews?) that were the targets of their policing actions instead of the settled Israelis?

Celsus

alkech: It means that by the end of the thirteenth century, there was a clan/tribe/chieftanship/village/town/city/etc. or some group of people called Israel by an Egyptian scribe. That it mentions "Israel" does not in anyway prove the Biblical Israel, especially if it was as large as a twelve-tribe nation, yet mentioned in the same breath as cities like Ashkelon and Gezer. Other than that, it really tells us nothing.

Tellurian: It's fairly uncontroversial and accepted that it really is Israel on the stele. I don't understand your second question. What time period are you talking about? And for your third, again, what time period? The Apiru/Hebrew connection has been discarded already for lack of any means of specifying exactly who the Apiru were (i.e., the Egyptians used the term far too loosely).

Joel

Tellurian

I am going by the archeological evidence that has been discovered, some of which has been described in magazine articles in Archeology and Biblical Archeology, and in the book, The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein.