EggplantTrent

Is there any evidence at all that a great exodus of the israelites occured? I am in an argument with a person that believes in the great flood and the great exodus etc etc. All the sites I've seen about the exodus are sites which my friend says are "not credible".

EggplantTrent

Spaz

If the friend really solidly believes in them I doubt anything you showed them would change their minds, I mean c'mon, the flood? I believe there was a thread discussing this before, I remember reading some stuff about the exodus somewhere anyways, if I find it I'll link you.

CX

No. There is no evidence of the Exodus outside the bible. There is no evidence that the Egyptians ever had a large population of Hebrew slaves to begin with. I suspect no source that says this would be considered "credible" by your opponent. Read "The Bible Unearthed" by Finkelstein for a relatively centrist position. (of course literalists consider Finkelstein a minimalist and minimalists consider him a maximalist).

Roland

I seriously doubt it. The Bible states that over 2 million people (not to mention their livestock) lived and died in the Sinai Desert during that 40 year time span. Yet not a trace of any of them remain.

For a point of comparison, the population of the city of Los Angeles is about 3 and a half million. Imagine a city over half the size of Los Angeles existing but leaving not a trace behind of that existence. Considering how many sites we have indicating small bands of hunter/gatherer tribes from far earlier in history than the alleged "exodus," it seems highly unlikely that we wouldn't be able to find at least SOME physical evidence of these folk.

zog

The question of Exodus is an interesting one as it seems that the evidence is extremely suspect and as we approached these reacting aganist the idea that these events are literally true we are bound to come to a minimalist conclusion. However i believe that we need to treat the Biblical account of Exodus as we do other parts of ancient history, i believe that something like Exodus must have occured of course there were not two million that is impossible but there seemed to be a largeish population of Hebrew slaves in Egypt.

As for Moses someone like him may have existed (in fact it is inevitable if any Exodus style event occured) but it is likely that any leader of a slave rebellion has been turned from perhaps a not strictly Religious figure to a great prophet.

At the end of the day even when dealing with normal ancient history we have to make guesses and take some stories on the text alone, based on the somewhat sparse nature of written recrods in ancient history, the story of Exodus is too large to have been entirely fabricated as you cannot just make up stories like this it must have come from some sort of legend