The question of the historicity of the Egyptian exile

[struggle4progress]

Various posters have recently asserted that there no evidence whatsoever supports the Old Testament Egyptian enslavement story

While I am not a Biblical literalist, and therefore have no theological concern with the historical accuracy of the story that has been handed down, there is a period in Egyptian history in which one might plausibly look for the roots of the enslavement and escape narrative -- namely the New Kingdom period. Here is a link to the known succession and approximate chronology of the eighteenth to twentieth dynasties:

http://www.egyptologyonline.com/new_kingdom.htm

The ascribed dates are often described as "rubbery" and vary according to source, since there is usually no absolute date on which to peg anything: the lengths of pharoahs' reigns are not always accurately known, for example, and fuzzy interregnal periods may interrupt some successions

The New Kingdom begins with the successful expulsion of invaders from Egypt and an increasingly imperial Egyptian foreign policy, which eventually leads to an empire including parts of modern Palestine and Syria. During this period, Egypt is not squeamish about slavery: Egypt's spoils included prisoners of war who were sometimes carried to Egypt as slaves, and there is a slave trade, for which some price records exist

Something odd happens towards the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty: a pharoah (Akhenaten) becomes a monotheist and attempts to abolish the worship of the other Egyptian gods. For a brief period, the traditional and highly stylized Egyptian representations of the pharoah are replaced by naturalistic portraits. Diplomatic correspondence survives from that period: some, for example, asks the pharoah to return certain war captives carried into Egypt; in other correspondence, the pharoah's agent (near what is now Jerusalem) complains that the habiru are taking the king's land. The meaning of habiru is not entirely clear today ("gypsies"? "vagabonds"? "outsiders"?) -- but for somewhat over a century, a number of scholars have suspected habiru to be the etymological origin of Hebrew. Worship of the traditional pantheon resumes after the death of Akhenaten; his monuments are removed; and he and his immediate heirs disappear forever from subsequent official Egyptian histories

The Egyptians then apparently attempt to re-establish military control over their empire. Importation of war captives as slaves continues during the Nineteenth Dynasty. A victory stele erected in this period proclaims the destruction of the people Israel as one of Merneptah's many accomplishments

So the region, in which Abraham and his immediate descendents are said to have lived as nomads, at times was at least near the boundaries of the New Kingdom Egyptian empire, and may have even fallen within the fluid borders of the empire. Regions further from Egypt predictably caused the empire trouble, and the habiru (whatever the term means) are regarded as trouble-makers; eventually, the people Israel are considered such an embarrassment that the regime officially claims to have eliminated them

It is natural to read the story from the sale of Joseph to Joshua in Jerico against this archaeological background

Imperialism in Early New Kingdom Egypt
Russell Buzby
... In 1570 BC Ahmose was .. concerned with expelling the .. Hyksos invaders from Egypt and regaining control of .. areas of Nubia .., namely the region of Kush ... Nubia had always been vitally important to Egypt because .... Nubian gold could be .. cheaply mined by slaves and forced labourers .... It was this .. that caused Ahmose .. to recapture Nubia ... Any rebels within Egypt had to be silenced, and the son of Ebana witnessed the fate of ... Aata, the Nubian ..: “Then Aata came to the south ... He was found by his majesty at Tent-taa. His majesty carried him off as a living captive, and all his people as booty ..."
pdf: http://www.sydgram.nsw.edu.au/CollegeSt/extension/Oct02/Buzby.pdf.
html by google: http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:1KvTVnMp5nAJ:www.sydgram.nsw.edu.au/CollegeSt/extension/Oct02/Buzby.pdf+%22New+Kingdom%22+Egypt+military+map&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us

Tuthmosis <III> (.. c1458 - 1425 BC) ... conquered more land than any pharaoh before or after. By the end of his reign, Egypt controlled Nubia, the Syrian and Lebanese coasts and vast areas of Israel and Palestine ... http://www.pbs.org/empires/egypt/newkingdom/tuthmosis3.html

Behold, I have sent you Hanya, the commissioner of the archers, with merchandise in order to have beautiful concubines, i.e. weavers; silver, gold, garments, turquoises, all sorts of precious stones, chairs of ebony, as well as all good things, worth 160 deben. In total: forty concubines - the price of every concubine is forty of silver. Therefore, send very beautiful concubines without blemish
Letter from Amenhotep III to Milkilu
http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timelines/topics/slavery.htm#slave_trade

http://www.ancient-egypt.co.uk/cairo%20museum/cm,%20akhenaten/images/akhenaten.jpg

Akhenaten (1352-1336 BC) .. son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiy .. changed his name to Akhenaten in his fifth regnal year, and began to build a new capital ... Amenhotep III .. recognised the .. power of the priesthood of Amun and .. sought to curb it - Akhenaten .. took matters .. further by introducing .. monotheistic .. worship of the sun disc Aten to the exclusion of the rest of the .. gods .... Significantly, and for the only time in the history of Egyptian royal art, Akhenaten's family was depicted in a .. naturalistic manner, and .. displaying affection for each other. Nefertiti also appears beside the king in actions usually reserved for a Pharaoh .... Artistic representations of Akhenaten give him a strikingly bizarre appearance .... Much .. art and .. infrastructure .. created during Akhenaten's reign was defaced or destroyed .. immediately following his death ... One other mystery remains .. - the disappearance of the bodies of Akhenaten and his immediate family ... Akhenaten's name never appeared .. king lists compiled by later Pharaohs ... http://www.egyptologyonline.com/akhenaten1.htm

The Amarna Letters
By Megaera Lorenz

... The Amarna letters represent the diplomatic correspondence between the pharaohs of the Amarna period and their contemporaries in Canaan, Mesopotamia, Anatolia and the Aegean ... The majority of the letters date to the reign of Akhenaten ... EA 122 and 123 .. concern Rib-Hadda's plea for aid against .. commissioner Pihura ... Rib-Hadda demands that Akhenaten help him protect himself and also return the three men that Pihura has brought as captives into Egypt ... http://www.courses.psu.edu/cams/cams400w_aek11/amarnal.html

The Encyclopedia of El Amarna
http://www.specialtyinterests.net/eae.html

Abdi-Hiba of Jerusalem to the king, No. 1
EA#285 .. Complains that he has no archery protection from his enemies (Eenhamu of the habiru) ... http://www.specialtyinterests.net/eae.html#285

Abdi-Hiba of Jerusalem to the king, No. 2
EA#286 .. `What have I done to the king, my lord? They slander me to the king, the lord: `Abdi-Heba has become faithless to the king, his lord.' Behold, neither my father nor my mother has put me in this place. The mighty hand of the king has led me into the house of my father. Why should I practice mischief against the king?'; mentions .. the Habiru .. http://www.specialtyinterests.net/eae.html#286

Abdi Hiba of Jerusalem to the king, No. 3
EA#287 .. `Verily, this deed is the deed of Milkili and the deed of the sons of Labaya which have given the land of the king to the Habiru.' .. http://www.specialtyinterests.net/eae.html#287

Abdi Hiba of Jerusalem to the king, No. 4
EA#288 .. `Let the king care for his land. The land of the king will be lost. All of it will be taken from me; there is hostility to me ..' .. mentions .. the Habiru .. http://www.specialtyinterests.net/eae.html#288

Abdi Hiba of Jerusalem to the king, No. 6
EA#290 .. ".. The land of the king has fallen away to the Habiru .." .. http://www.specialtyinterests.net/eae.html#290

.. A similar term, habiru, is found in cuneiform documents from the twentieth to the eleventh centuries .. At times the Habiru appear to be settled in specific locations; at times they serve in the army as mercenaries, or are bound to masters as servants. The El Amarna tablets refer to invaders of Palestine as 'apiru, a word bearing close relationship to the terms habiru and "Hebrew" .. The suggestion that the terms 'apiru, habiru and "Hebrew" relate to those who have renounced a relationship to an existing society, who have by a deliberate action withdrawn from some organization or rejected some authority, and who have become through this action freebooters, slaves, employees or mercenaries presents real possibilities .. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/hebrews.html

... The Papyrus Harris, the largest extant ancient Egyptian papyrus .... is essentially a summary of the important events of Ramesses III's reign, prepared by Ramesses IV, but written from the point of view of Ramesses III ... http://www.courses.psu.edu/cams/cams400w_aek11/www/pharris.html

Parts of the Great Papyrus Harris

... I made for thee an august house ... built of sandstone, gritstone, and black granite ... I filled its treasury with the products of the lands of Egypt ... It was filled with captives, which thou gavest to me among the Nine Bows ... http://www.specialtyinterests.net/harris.html

The Israel Stele
... Not one holds up his head among the Nine Bows. Wasted is Tehenu, Kheta is pacified, plundered is Pekanan, with every evil, carried off is Askalon, seized upon is Gezer, Yenoam is made as a thing not existing.
Israel is desolated, his seed is not, Palestine has become a widow for Egypt. All lands are united, they are pacified, everyone that is turbulent is bound by King Merneptah ... http://www.specialtyinterests.net/israel.html#stele

[papau]

1. Great post - its impossible to tour Egypt without concluding there is a lot that seems to confirm

the Bibles Account, right down to the sea bed wheel tracks and the physics that can explain the parting of the sea as not unexpected post an island blow up as in Hera.

Indeed in Turkey the build out under the Black Sea plus the likely sudden flood when the separation from the Med was breached makes Noah's adventure at least have a plausible background.

Thanks for the summary - it jogged my memory of some adventures when a bit younger.

[struggle4progress]

3. Adopting the chariot, then only recently invented, may account for those Egyptian military successes

Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California (1997), pp. 465-472

Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction

... In other cases, Egypt served as a conduit for spreading innovations from outside Africa more widely across the continent. For example, the horse-drawn chariot, a light car with four spoked wheels and pulled by two horses, is first clearly seen on stelae from the shaft graves at Mycenae. It is mentioned by Kamose and depicted in a rock drawing from Lower Nubia with a figure who carries an ax of late 17th Dynasty type. Pictures of the same type of vehicle and showing horses at a flying gallop, spread across the Sahara as far as Tassili-n-Ajjer. The occurrence of chariot tracks confirms the vehicle's prevalence and widespread distribution. This influence rebounded on Egypt when Libyans, in the late New Kingdom, attacked the Nile Delta using chariots of Egyptian type ...

http://wysinger.homestead.com/sub-saharan.html

[aquart]

5. Adopted from ....?

I wish someone would give me a decent definition of the word "Asiatic."

As for Nubian influence...well, yeah. A young black man once walked into my office and politely sat down to wait for his girlfriend. While I stared at him till he finally noticed. "I suppose people tell you all the time that you're a double for Akhnaten," I said. "No," he replied, looking around for sane people. But I'm telling you, he was. (With any luck, I freaked him out enough that one day he'll go for DNA testing and we'll find out how far back we can trace that face.)

[struggle4progress]

23. Horses seem not to have survived the ice ages in Europe; they were

apparently first domesticated on the Steppes somewhere around 3000BCE. The Hyksos apparently introduced both the horse and cart into Egypt shortly before the New Kingdom period. Both animal and vehicle, and their use in war, swept over the whole of Eurasia in a fairly brief period: within a few hundred years, all sorts of cultures have them

[jjray7]

36. As for Nubian influence

Sorry to quibble but Akhnaten is unlikely to have possessed Nubian blood. For present day Africans, "Nubian" means very dark skinned east african people with a round face (typically Sudanese). See the look of the model Alek Wek--



Nubia was a land of the lower Nile partially in Egypt but mostly in Sudan. I believe the term Nubian even to ancient Egyptians referred to the same dark skinned people that modern day Africans refer to as Nubians. For ancient Egyptians, Nubians were a subject people who, to my knowledge, did not marry into the royal family. Please forgive the quibble.

[edhopper]

7. This could be

one of the most ludicrous post I have seen.

[trotsky]

11. Some people just have very childish, very weak faith.

They desperately NEED for the bible stories to be true, because without them, their faith evaporates.

[struggle4progress]

12. That could be one of the most uninformative criticisms I have ever seen

You yourself make claims such as "The Hebrews were never slaves in Egypt and there was no historical exodus" without providing any evidence whatsoever

The slavery and exodos narrative had some meaning to the community that told and heard and retold it. The meaning of an early version based on some living memory, would not be the same as the meaning of an early version related by persons who knew for a certainty that the story was not factual. Based on what I provided in the OP, the tribes that finally build the Jerusalem temple must have had (at least) some historical awareness of Egyptian slavery in the New Kingdom period, when the empire is in its glory: we have Egyptian records showing that the Egyptians practiced slavery then and took captives from the area. Yet at this time, the Egyptian empire suddenly begins a curious retraction associated with an internal power struggle about monotheism. On the basis of this, "slaves in Egypt" seems credible

[edhopper]

13. To be clear

my post was in reference to the post about the Red Sea and Noah's Ark. It did not appear right under it and may have looked like a response to a different post.
This pseudo-archeology about the Black Sea flood and the destruction of Thera are have been debunked and completely disregarded by the archeology community.
The are on par with the "Worlds in Collision" poppycock.

[struggle4progress]

16. To be clear, neither the Red Sea nor Noah's Ark are mentioned in

the thread containing the post of yours that I referenced

And I doubt I have ever posted anywhere anything concerning the Black Sea flood and the destruction of Thera. I am quite certain I have never said anything (let alone anything sympathetic) about "Worlds in Collision"

[edhopper]

18. Okay, read reply #1 carefully

especially this part:
"its impossible to tour Egypt without concluding there is a lot that seems to confirm the Bibles Account, right down to the sea bed wheel tracks and the physics that can explain the parting of the sea as not unexpected post an island blow up as in Hera.

Indeed in Turkey the build out under the Black Sea plus the likely sudden flood when the separation from the Med was breached makes Noah's adventure at least have a plausible background."

Why do you assume I was responding to you. If you took the time to read the other post, you would not have written this foolish reply.

[struggle4progress]

20. (1) Apologies. I forgot about the software glitch that sometimes sends replies

too far up the reply tree: so ...

(2) your response was cataloged as a reply to me in my recent posts, which is why I assumed it was a reply to me -- but of course your confusion is understandable. As I already knew about the glitch, I should have been more careful to check the tree to ensure you really were replying to me, and thus ...

(3) your advice to examine the posts is certainly warranted. And perhaps one day you will even decide to follow it itself: if you examine the reply tree, you will see that I read and responded to the post you mention an hour before you did

Of course, there remains the question: Why not provide evidence when disagreeing with people, instead of sneering at them? Whether you agree with post #1 or not, the post involved no unpleasantness. You, on the other hand, added nothing to the discussion except an unpleasant tone

[edhopper]

25. Apology accepted

no harm no foul.
As for evidence. When responding to a post that is simply a statement of psuedo-scientific poppycock, I have neither the time nor inclination to put into debunking such foolishness. I do not need to search out the web for scholarly articles to point out the silliness of these claims about the fanciful stories in the Bible like Noah or Moses.
There is simply no collateral evidence to support these stories.
A rule of science is that those making the claims must provide the evidence. I am stating these things did not happen. The only evidence I have is the rest of scientific knowledge. And yes I'm being snarky.
Just as in our current political dialog, there are two sides, but sometimes the facts only support one.

[Warpy]

44. The Naked Archaeologist on the History Channel

did a pretty persuasive job of tying most of the plagues to the eruption of Santorini, including the burning hailstorm and the death of the first born sons of aristocracy (and, in fact, anyone who slept on the floor of the ground floor of any house).

That eruption was cataclysmic and really could explain a lot, especially if stories from various parts of the eastern Mediterranean were consolidated into one story covering the exodus.

One thing he did was come to the conclusion that it wasn't the Red Sea which parted and then closed up. It was a nearby lake.

[Adsos Letter]

2. Two good sources with differing explanations (for and against)...

William Dever "Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?"

http://www.amazon.com/Were-Early-Israelites-Where-They/dp/0802844162/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206841432&sr=1-1

and

Kenneth Kitchen "On the Reliability of the Old Testament"

http://www.amazon.com/Reliability-Old-Testament-K-Kitchen/dp/0802803962/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206841546&sr=1-1

Both of these works are from top scholars; Dever's focus is Palestinian archaeology, while Kitchen is an highly regarded Egyptologist.

Both agree that proving anything regarding the historicity of Abraham himself from the archaeological record is probably not doable at this point (and is probably less likely after the looting and destruction of archaeological sites in Iraq under our occupation) but they differ when discussing the historicity of the Israelites in Egypt, with Kitchen suggesting that clues within the Biblical text (some of which you have alluded to) providing evidence of ancient accounts surviving into the period when the texts were first written down. For more on that from Dever, see:

"What Did the Biblical Writers Know, and When Did They Know it?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel."

http://www.amazon.com/What-Biblical-Writers-Know-When/dp/080282126X/ref=pd_bbs_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206841432&sr=1-3

Remember that Dever approaches this as an archaeologist and speaks, primarily, to the issue of cultural material remains.

Another good read by an archaeologist who focuses on Israel in Palestine, but also touches on the Exodus and Conquest, is Israel Finkelstein: "The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts."

http://www.amazon.com/Bible-Unearthed-Archaeologys-Vision-Ancient/dp/B00009NDAK/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206842551&sr=1-6

or his more recent "The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel (Archaeology and Biblical Studies)."

http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Historical-Israel-Debating-Archaeology/dp/1589832779/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206842551&sr=1-2

All three men are recognized authorities, all disagree to some extent. Kitchen would be considered a "Maximalist" while Finkelstein would be closer to the "Minimalist" position, with Dever falling somewhere between. All of them provide very enjoyable and insightful reading on the issues you raise, with Kitchen's prose being a bit more scholarly in form, although all three authors are solid scholars.

:hi:

[struggle4progress]

4. Thanx!

[Meshuga]

6. Just because I say I don't believe in the literal story told in Exodus

Or said that it doesn't matter whether it is true or not, it doesn't mean that I have asserted that "there is no evidence whatsoever that supports the Old Testament Egyptian enslavement story". I am assuming that you are reffering to conversation between edhopper and myself in your other thread. Explaining my response in the title and first sentence.

And, just because there are extrabiblical evidence that there might have been enslavement or presence of the Hebrews in Egypt, it doesn't mean that the tale told in Exodus was not merged with other tales (including old Babylonian tales) in the creation of the final fictional product.

Again, finding evidence showing the stories behind the stories is of interest of the "geeks" who come up with their theories, not to prove the biblical narratives are true, but to find the story behind the story.

I am currently helping a rabbi with the technical aspects of a project he is putting together which is a passover Haggadah with extrabiblical accounts to show some stories behind the story. He goes a little further since Immanuel Velikovsky was a congregant of his congregation during Velikovsky late years. So Velikovsky's pseudo-science about the supposedly "alignment of planets that might have caused some catastrophies all over the planet" which, according to this theory, might have turned into the catastrophies accounted in the Biblical plagues and in Ipuwer Papyrus, is included.

But overall this Haggadah is not an attempt to prove the accounts of the Exodus to be true. It is just another product of true Jewish geekness.

[edhopper]

8. Thanks Wiggles

Because there is some vague evidence that something remotely similar happened at some point in History is far from confirmation of any biblical account. Especially since much of the early Bible was derived from stories of other cultures.
Wow, there was slavery in ancient times, that confirms a man named Moses parted an ocean and took his people to another land after plagues were visited upon their masters. Makes sense to me.

[Meshuga]

9. In other words,

I think the "so fucking what?" question is a very appropriate response to the OP since the OP does not really address what we were talking about in the other thread.

Like you, I think the extrabiblical stuff does not make the Biblical account any less fictional than it already is.

[struggle4progress]

10. Looking back over the history of the forum, one can find claims of the following sort:

"The Hebrews were never slaves in Egypt and there was no historical exodus" I am lifting this literal quote from somebody's recent post only as an example of such claims (and only because you seem to feel that the opening of my OP was based upon a twisted interpretation of your words). Of course, I am not competent to decide whether this such claims are accurate or not. But typically, neither are those who in this forum make such claims without providing any supporting evidence whatsoever. Since I am not of any Bible as inerrant word school, I do not reject the possibility that such stories may be unreliable or may incorporate elements originally from other unrelated tales

Whether the story is or not historically accurate, it is a story in which many people have found significant meaning, and the story continues to be retold. I am interested in such meanings. The meanings that people extract from such stories differs depending on personal inclination, available information, and cultural expectations -- but this story originated somewhere at sometime and had some meaning to those who first heard and retold it.

Concerning any original meaning, one can only make informed guesses based upon the best available reconstructions of the original context. It seems natural to regard the New Kingdom Egyptian empire of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties as providing that context

... early 18th dynasty .... kings .. never tired of piling the booty from foreign campaigns at the feet of Amun ...http://www.heptune.com/akhen.html

But in his sixth year as pharoah, Amenhotep IV rejects almost the entire pantheon, including Amen. He changes his own name to Akhenaten and abandons a number of old traditions

Akhetaten also provides us with a ... large cache of clay tablets, now known as the Amarna letters .... In these letters, we see the disintegration of the massive Egyptian empire taking place ... http://www.heptune.com/akhen.html

A power struggle follows Akhetaten's death. A few people related to Akhetaten reign briefly, but Tutankhaten, for example, apparently finds it expedient to change his own name to Tutankhamen. An old military man General Horemheb then becomes pharoah and begins the process of removing Akhetaten and his heirs from official memory. One expects anyone too closely associated with Akhetaten would have found this an unpleasant time and that all the gods of imperial Egypt visited their judgment on the friends of Akhetaten, who would have been blamed for Egypt's lost military position and for any other disaster the traditional elite wanted to pin on them

[Meshuga]

14. To be fair...

The quote you provided is a response from edhoper to a thread where there was an article claiming (or assuming) historicity of the tale in Exodus attributing psychedelics to Moses in order to explain his visions. The article was absurd given that it is trying to create justification for Moses' visions when the finished product is nothing but fiction. So in all fairness one could see what edhoper meant. Looking at the story in the finalized book of Exodus (in the Torah) one could reject that such events had occurred, one could question Moses existence, and question the historicity of the Hebrews presence in Egypt in context with the tale.

If habiru were present in Egypt, it doesn't mean it is related to the story in Exodus. We can make the connection to support a theory that shows that certain aspects might be historical, but we can't say that Hebrews were slaves in Egypt in context with Exodus.

The book of Exodus was finalized centuries after the alleged time of Moses and according to literary evidence it comes from different sources, from different times, from different kingdoms, and there were political motives behind the need to finalize this book (the perspective from J, E, and P sources and the R and JE redactors are all in that book). Therefore, it is not necessarily history but a book compiled as if it were historical accounts of a people with a lot of exaggeration and sensationalism and with a lot of borrowed and original accounts in the mix.

Like you said, whether the story is or not historically accurate, it is a story in which many people have found significant meaning, and the story continues to be retold. It is significant to me since it is part of my heritage.

[struggle4progress]

15. You might want to coordinate your stories next time:

edhopper, who wrote "The Hebrews were never slaves in Egypt," says his post "was in reference to the post about the Red Sea and Noah's Ark. It did not appear right under it and may have looked like a response to a different post" -- although that thread thread in question mentions at present neither Noah nor the Red Sea

I suppose edhopper's explanation -- that "The Hebrews were never slaves in Egypt" is a perfectly natural response to a nonexistent post in a thread on hallucinations -- is just as reasonable as your explanation -- that "The Hebrews were never slaves in Egypt" is a perfectly natural response to someone noticing hallucinogenic compounds in local plants

[Meshuga]

17. Why would I have to coordinate stories with edhoper next time?

I am responding to the thread you have provided (claiming that "Moses may have been high on drugs during the miracle of the burning bush and delivery of the Ten Commandments") where one would have to assume that the Exodus story is true to come to that conclusion. And I see his reply to that thread as reasonable. With the archaeological data one can try to make certain links as proof of some historicity, especially when interest is involved. And that's fine. But not all archaeologists agree that these connections should be made. If you can't accept that then I don't know what to tell you.

Obviously, edhoper made a mistake about the topic since it had nothing to do with Noah or the Red Sea. But so what? You are making it more obvious to me that your interest in starting this thread was not to discuss the topic but to discuss those who disagree with you.

[struggle4progress]

22. My confusion arises from a software glitch, which sent to me a reply that was not a reply to me

The response was rude -- and by pure chance it came from one of several posters fond of claiming without evidence that there was no period slavery in Egypt

In my original post, I simply provided a fair amount of archaeo-historical material, with the explanation that it was intended to contribute to disputes on this board about whether the slavery-in-Egypt narrative had any factual basis. I did not quote anyone directly nor did I mention anyone. In response to that post, you asserted that I was misinterpreting you: so I responded by linking to an example of the sort of claims that had been made. After providing that response, I encountered the rude post above, identified (as a result of a software glitch) in my recent posts as a reply to me. I think my response to that post was quite courteous: the response to my response seemed nothing short of bizarre, because it seemed to claim that certain posts existed which did not

I concluded (apparently incorrectly) that the two of you were baiting me, and not even bothering to keep your stories straight. There is some internal evidence of that in this thread: since (for example) you express the opinion I think .. "so fucking what?" .. is a very appropriate response to the OP, which seemed to dovetail neatly with the most ludicrous post I have seen

Anyway, it was not my attention in my OP to call anyone out: I merely thought it would be interesting to see what one could learn from the internet tubes about the brief reign of monotheism in the New Kingdom and whether it shed any light on the slavery-in-Egypt in narrative. It seems to me that the old text tells about a period when monotheists prospered in Egypt, followed by a period when they were treated badly: and the evidence suggests that actually happened in Egypt. Your mileage may vary: I certainly don't object to anyone disagreeing with me

[Meshuga]

24. Snowball of knee-jerk from all sides

:-)

[edhopper]

19. Again struggles.

If you simply look at the response tree and take the time to read the first reply, you would see the references to the Red Sea and Noah's Ark.
It's not all about you.

[struggle4progress]

21. Yes, I sorted out the cause of my confusion. See #20

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=167930&mesg_id=168043

[quip]

26. You might really enjoy The History Channel's "The Exodus Decoded"

http://www.amazon.com/Exodus-Decoded-History-Channel/dp/B000HOJR8A/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1207068306&sr=8-1

I have to admit that I was transfixed by Cameron et al and their arguments. Interesting stuff.

[struggle4progress]

29. Santorini Eruption Radiocarbon Dated to 1627-1600 B.C

Science 28 April 2006:
Vol. 312. no. 5773, p. 548
DOI: 10.1126/science.112508

Walter L. Friedrich,1* Bernd Kromer,2 Michael Friedrich,2,3 Jan Heinemeier,4 Tom Pfeiffer,1 Sahra Talamo2

Precise and direct dating of the Minoan eruption of Santorini (Thera) in Greece, a global Bronze Age time marker, has been made possible by the unique find of an olive tree, buried alive in life position by the tephra (pumice and ashes) on Santorini. We applied so-called radiocarbon wiggle-matching to a carbon-14 sequence of tree-ring segments to constrain the eruption date to the range 1627-1600 B.C ... http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/312/5773/548

Before attributing events in Egypt to this cataclysm -- the noise from which was probably heard there and which may very well have affected crops worldwide for several years -- one should like to find a Egyptian record clearly related to the event: no one seems to have done that

[quip]

30. It's been a while since I've seen it, but they do acknowledge a problem with the dating.

I forget how they reconcile the disparity in dates. I will have to watch it again.

[On the Road]

27. I've Been Impressed with David Rohl's Books

He reinterprets the Egyptian historical records to place the date of the Exodus in a different century and believes that the records backs up a literal exodus. He even identifies the statue of a particular vizier with Joseph (complete with the coat of many colors):


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rohl

It extends to the later history of Israel as well, including evidence for David and Solom. His position is that the evidence is all there, but archaeoligists have been looking in the wrong century.

Rohl's arguments are interesting, but are not commonly accepted and have been critcized by professional. I can't personally vouch for their accuracy. But his book "Pharaohs and Kings" is fascinating reading, and there's a documentary which you can occasionally catch on cable.

[struggle4progress]

28. Thanks for the reference. I looked at some online summaries of his ideas:

I will mention the following difficulty.

Without taking any stand on whether or not there actually are historical elements in the Biblical accounts, one can nevertheless reason as follows: If one would argue the Biblical accounts have some kernel of historical truth, one would certainly not be free to ignore the omissions of the texts in attempting to date the stories. Horses and related war technologies caused a (sudden, enormous and enduring) upheaval across the pre-classical world. It would be natural for the texts to reflect this. Horses were first introduced into Egypt at the time of the Hyksos immigration-conquest. But the texts (to my knowledge) give no indication of the horse before the war-chariots of Exodos. To argue that the Exodos occurred long before the time of the Hyksos, may require one to ignore current archaeological thinking about the introduction of the horse into Egypt; and it certainly requires one to explain why the texts omit to mention warhorses in connection with the patriarchs

[On the Road]

31. Rohl Actually Moves the Exodus Forward

from the 15th century to I believe the 12th I would agree moving the Exodus to before the Hyksos is too early and would not make a lot of sense.

The way he does this is to claim that the 22d and 23d dynasties in the Second Intermediate Period were simultaneous rather than consecutive (which occurred elsewhere in Egyptian history). Rohl provides a few interesting examples of reverse chronology (22d dynasty tombs built after 23d dynasty), but apparently it's not an airtight case. Sites like this one dispute his claims. In any case, I find it worthwhile to be skeptical about both claims and denials until the picture becomes clearer.

The dystantic argument is related to the date of the Exodus, but it's not critical. No one knows who the Pharaoh of the Exodus was or when the Israelites would have arrived in Canaan. The length period of the Judges is unknown. Although Rohl claims that evidence of the destruction of Jericho and Ai is in line with his chronology rather than the standard one, which is forced to conclude that little of the conquest has any basis in history.

[On the Road]

32. One More Thing About Rohl's Theories

His chronology for Egypt and Israel is linked, but not necessarily dependent on each other.

It is entirely possible that he is wrong about Egypt, but his identification and dating of Israelite history is correct.

Biblical archaeology is kind of an emabarrassment in that most of the events described in the Bible seem to have absolutely no evidence in the archaeological record. While I have no religious interest in believing the truth of the accounts, it's difficult to believe that the detailed history of the conquest, judges, and kings is simply fabricated from whole cloth. According to Rohl, it's all there if you look in a different century.

Oddly enough, the desire to take Old Testament history at its word may have led archaeologists from the beginning to miss the evidence they were looking for.

Take a look at some of the claims in that Wikipedia article -- his identification in the Amarna letters of David, Jesse, Solomon, Joab, etc. That is interesting stuff.

[edhopper]

33. I don't think

anyone is saying that everything in the Old Testament is all just made up stories. After all there are cities like Jerusalem and Jerrico. There was a kingdom in Israel and writings from that time. What is problematic is the pre-kingdom stories. The tales about Egypt more accurately describe the Israelis' dealings with Babylonia,which was a much larger presence in their lives. And if fact many of the early tales were most likely taken from Babylonian myths. Noah, Moses all have earlier Babylonian counterparts. These tales were probably co-opted when the Hebrews were slaves in Babylon.

[Meshuga]

34. There a lot of Biblical parallels in Sumerian literature...

...and stories of ancient Mesopotamia one can use to make connections. i.e., Garden of Eden vs. Sumerian Dilmun, Cain and Abel vs. Lahar and Ashnan, Noah vs. Ziusudra, Moses vs. Sargon of Akkad, etc.

As far as history of the conquest, judges, and kings are probably "not fabricated from whole cloth" but the accounts are obviously exagerated.

[onager]

35. And now, let's hear from the Egyptians!

I'm an American who has lived in Egypt for about 3 years now.

To my intense shame and aggravation, Egyptians tell me that American tourists really enjoy lecturing the Egyptians on their own damn history. Many of these Egyptians, BTW, have degrees in history or archeology. They hold down second or third jobs as tour guides, sometimes to finance graduate courses in their disciplines.

And the Egyptians say Americans always want to lecture at length on two subjects:

1. The Buy-bull/Cecil B. DeMille version of the Exodus story.
2. How aliens built the Giza Pyramids.

The Egyptians seem to think these two stories are about equally credible. (So do I, but I'm an atheist.) One tour guide told me how much he wanted to yell at some of his customers: "No Hebrew slaves built the Pyramids! And no space aliens!"

:rofl:

Now, about all those "references" up there. All I see is the standard cherry-picking/distortion of random selected factlets--all, of course, slanted toward "proving" the Buy-bull stories about the Exodus. Some of these are hilarious, however unintentionally.

1. The Merneptah Stele

That "Specialty Interests" article on the Merneptah Stele is a real hoot.

The stele is famous because it is the ONLY reference to Israel in all of recorded Egyptian history. So of course, Biblical literalists try to make much out of it. Though if Israel was the mighty kingdom depicted in the Buy-bull, you'd think the Egyptian records might have mentioned trade or diplomacy. Especially since Israel was (and is) literally right next door.

The article contains this jaw-dropper: The spirit in which this stele was written makes it clear the author is looking back at difficult times for Egypt.

Huh? The stele is a straightforward account of a military expedition by Merneptah, son of Ramses II. First he marched his army west, to deal with Libya. (In fact, most of the stele addresses the Libyan invasion.) Then he turned east and invaded Palestine, making short work of several minor states only mentioned in passing--Gezer, Yanoam, Ashkelon, and Israel.

Then this article does the usual trick of shuffling Egyptian history around. And why is that? You have to read the VERY fine print in the middle of the page to learn why:

Question: If Merneptah was Hophra wouldn't that bring disorder into the intricately laid out pottery schemes and excavation layers in Palestine?

Answer: Yes, it would. But...we regard much of the Canaanite period as belonging to Israel. Everything has to be moved forward in time and some layers may need to be revised...

Gotcha! If the history doesn't match The Big Book Of Fairy Tales, a/k/a The Old Testament, then we just re-write the history! Bertrand Russell was absolutely right--Christians and Communists have a lot in common.

BTW, anyone can take a look at the Merneptah Stele. It's in the Egyptian Museum, complete with a translation lacking any modern religious propaganda. Unfortunately many people walk right past it to see more eye-catching treasures. Or as E.M. Forster liked to note, if you go thru a museum too quickly, the museum will also go right thru you.

2. Akhenaton

Xians are fascinated with this guy because of his monotheism. And just as they torture Plato's claptrap about "Forms" to prove he was actually an ancient Greek Xian, they blow a lot of smoke to try and connect Akhenaton with modern monotheists.

Clear away the smoke and you're left with a pretty simple story, much like that one about the Merneptah Stelae. Akhenaton was trying to solve a political, more than a religious problem.

Of course, in Akenhanton's time the two were indivisible in Egypt. The priesthood of Amun held enormous wealth and political power, much like the medieval Catholic Church. And just like that Church, the Egyptian priesthood meddled in secular affairs, which undercut the authority of the Pharoah.

Some historians believe Akhenaton's father, Amenhotep III, may have warned his son to curb the all that priestly power after he became Pharoah.

Akhenation didn't take half-steps. He started a whole new religion and built a new holy city to house it. (Though again, you have to believe that was less a religious inspiration and more a sensible move for self-preservation.)

So Akehenaton probably wasn't trying to be an Egyptian version of the Prophet Abraham. Just the Egyptian version of Henry VIII.

3. "Chariot wheel tracks in the Red Sea" mentioned by one poster

I can top that! How about entire chariot wheels from the Red Sea?

That was a favorite "discovery" of the colorful Xian con man Ron Wyatt. As some of his many critics noted, Wyatt's discoveries seemed to be based on a shopping list from the Bible: Noah's Ark? Found that! Proof of Exodus? Got it! Etc.

Wyatt also claimed to have found the exact post-hole in Jerusalem where Christ was crucified, which led him to discover The Ark Of The Covenant underneath. The whole amazing story is right here: http://www.wyattmuseum.com/

Oh, and before I forget, Wyatt discovered Mount Sinai in Saudi Arabia. Complete with all the golden treasures from the Jerusalem Temple!

Unfortunately, the Saudi government confiscated all the treasures and put a military guard around the mountain, so Wyatt didn't have any proof. I hate when that happens.

Credulous Xians financed Wyatt's "expeditions" for years, but eventually even many of them Saw The Light and refused to send him any more money. You can still find Xian websites blasting him as a thief and crook, albeit a highly entertaining one.

Apparently there was a more recent find of a chariot wheel in the Red Sea, by noted archeologist...uh, sorry, that should be "38-year-old forklift mechanic from Keynsham, England..." Peter Elmer.

He was inspired by Ron Wyatt. Note the unimpeachable source: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33168

[struggle4progress]

37. There's a reason I didn't post any links to the articles you cite from that website:

I personally have neither the inclination nor the patience to go through the long essays on that site with their references Velikovsky's theories and similar ideas that do not much interest me. I was however interested in the texts, and that was the only site I could easily find that included purported translations of the Amarna letters. I would of course be delighted, if you could provide another site containing the Amarna material

I made no claims about aliens building the pyramids nor chariot wheels in the Sea nor did I "cherry-pick" or "distort ... random selected factlets ... <to prove> ... stories about the Exodus," as you claim. Rather, I said there is a period in Egyptian history in which one might plausibly look for the roots of the enslavement and escape narrative. The argument for looking at the New Kingdom goes something as follows:

First, as far as I know, horses are not mentioned in the Judaic texts prior to the exodos, where they do occur. Horses apparently came to Egypt with the Hyksos, and since horses spread quickly across the whole (then-known) world in a rather short time, the present or absence of horses suggests the patriarchal stories (such as Abraham's journey through Egypt) have a pre-Hyksos origin, while the stories following the exodos are post-Hyksos. Second, following the expulsion of the Hyksos, Egypt (previously long isolated from the world) enters into an imperial phase, conquering territories and taking slave captives from as far away as Syria: the conquered lands include some or all of Israel-Palestine. Third, during this imperial period, and not long after the expulsion of the Hyksos, there is the peculiar story of the monotheist Akhenaten, who has trouble with habiru (whatever the term means) in various places including Israel-Palestine. Fourth, there was a substantial effort to erase Akhenaten's influence: if one does not know exact details of the backlash, one nevertheless has other unpleasant but informative historical examples over hundreds of years suggesting that unexpected plagues (actually associated with the contacts of empire) can be blamed on "irreligious blasphemers" (here the monotheists), that declining living standards (actually associated with reduced colonial tribute) would be blamed on "foreigners and traitors", and so on; in short, the end of the Amarna period would have been an unpleasant time for those who had been allied against the old regime, when the old regime reasserted itself. Fifth, the known mention of Israel in Merneptah's memorial does not occur long after that: the birth of Akhenaten and the death Merneptah are only separated by about about 150 years ago: for comparison, note that there are people still alive today whose parents (when children themselves) knew people born in the 1840s and 1850s, so it is entirely conceivable that an underground memory of Akhenaten persisted to Merneptah's time

The outline above is not terribly original, and it does not require any particular attitude towards the Judaic texts: some of it was suggested nearly a century ago by the atheist Sigmund Freud in his Moses and Monotheism. The chronological references I provided are, I think, to entirely standard chronology

So: is it true that no evidence whatsoever supports the Old Testament Egyptian enslavement story? The broad outlines of the story seem credible enough to me: if you have counter-evidence, I'm of course interested

[muriel_volestrangler]

38. I'm struggling to see what you regard above as 'evidence'

The appearance of horses in the later stories may be helpful in confirming they come from a later time (though chariots and horses first appear in the Bible in the stories about Joseph - see Genesis 41, 46, 47, 49 and 50), but that hardly counts as evidence for the claim about the Exodus story - just that it was finalised in a time when horses and chariots were well-known.

If Egypt did brings slaves back from the Canaan area, then that doesn't fit with the biblical story of the origin of the Hebrews in Egypt - that they came by invitation, because Joseph helped a pharaoh. It's not 'evidence', just an acknowledgement that it's possible that Egypt could have had slaves from that area there. There's no story about a continuing ethnic group of slaves from the area.

The meaning of 'habiru' seems unknown, though the references you give imply it's an occupational description, rather than an ethnic one. One might have thought a monotheist pharaoh would have less trouble with monotheist Hebrews, if that's who the 'habiru' were, rather than more, so I'm not quite sure why you're emphasising the monotheistic aspect of Akhenaten. Indeed, your fourth point seems to be saying the Hebrews were allies of his, and so might have been painted as scapegoats by the polytheistic religion re-asserting itself. However, that seems like speculation, not evidence.

The mention of Israel in Merneptah's memorial is evidence for the existence of Israel at that point; I can't see what you think it says about a possible exodus, though, or what a "memory of Akhenaten" has to do with it.

Counter-evidence is, I think, held to be the absence of any archaeological signs of a movement of thousands of people across Sinai, and aspects of the story of the Hebrew conquest of Canaan which don't fit with the archaeological evidence.

[struggle4progress]

39. As I have already asserted that I am not a Biblical literalist, it is unclear

how I could possibly respond to your comments regarding my failure to provide iron-clad evidence that the stories should be read literally as accurate historical accounts

You, for example, cite the absence of any archaeological signs of a movement of thousands of people across Sinai, which presumably reflects some interpretation associated with a literalist reading. I have no idea whether the text (written in a language I cannot read) actually indicates a movement of thousands. I lack the sweeping familiarity with the archaeology of the Sinai that would be necessary to evaluate the claim that such evidence is completely absent; nor do I have a sufficient grasp, of the quality of the archaeological record for that place and time, to determine whether the common rejoinder "Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence" would be an appropriate retort. But on my view, such objections are irrelevant, as I have not argued for a literal reading of the Judaic texts as historical records: my much more modest goal has been to examine the claim repeatedly made in this forum, that "Hebrew slavery in Egypt is pure mythology". It seems to me that the Judaic texts contain enough plausibly historical elements that one might reasonably believe there was Hebrew slavery in Egypt

Joseph and horses

You, of course, seem to be correct in noting the Joseph narrative references chariots. Your comment, that the narrative was "finalised .. when .. chariots were well-known" is undoubtedly true -- but it sheds no light on the prior absence of horses from the text: there remains the natural question, "Why would finalizers incorporate horses into some stories and not others?" If one is simply adding horses to the text, then "Wouldn't Abraham have been an even more splendid and gracious host at Mamre, if he had offered not only to feed his stranger-guests but also to water their horses?" It would, of course, be interest if you can actually shed light on the proper dating of the stories and their successive layers of revision. However -- although I am not abstractly opposed to the possibility that your claim horses-only-reflect-when-story-finalized may be defensible -- you provide no evidence to support it: what is unreasonable, then, about reading your chariot references as indications the Joseph narrative concerns the post-Hyksos period?

You also claim "If Egypt did bring slaves .. from .. Canaan .. that doesn't fit with .. story .. Hebrews .. came by invitation" seems inaccurate: the story actually begins with the sale of a slave into Egypt, and the story also describes this monotheist as becoming "ruler over all Egypt." During the post-Hyksos period, not only did Egyptian actively trade in foreign slaves, from regions including the appropriate territories, the country even had a monotheistic ruler. The latter coincidence only becoming more striking when one understands that the fact had been a major Egyptian scandal, deliberately erased from all their official accounts and not rediscovered until the nineteenth century: in particular, it was completely forgotten by the classical world. This suggests the Judaic slaves-in-Egypt narrative is not pure invention, though it does not require one to regard the story as accurate in every detail or to believe its fabulous elements

Akhenaten and Merneptah

But even if one chooses to regard the narrative from Joseph to Moses merely as an instructive moral story, its original "truthiness" for the original listeners depended on a familiarity with the Akhenaten period, while in the post-Merneptah period, the official Egyptian position was that the people of Israel had been completely eradicated: whatever its status, the narrative is therefore set in a time between Akhenaten and Merneptah, though perhaps first told post-Merneptah

The Akhenaten-related power-struggle was vicious, according to the remaining evidence: the ultimate winners smashed the faces of Akhenaten's statues, dismantled his works, and defaced his inscriptions -- then they removed all reference to him and his immediate successors from the records. This signifies represents extreme hostility: if mere stone so enraged them, one does not want to imagine their treatment of flesh. Akhenaten had not been a devotee of the wargods and allowed the empire to retract. One can only imagine exactly how the struggle was conducted, but we have historical parallels from other times about how devotees of the wargods treat those who oppose them, so the broad outlines are probably clear enough. A text relating that bitter period of repression in Egypt followed a golden age for certain monotheists there fits what we know

Habiru

It is not inconsistent to simultaneously regard habiru as the etymological source of Hebrew and yet think that the word habiru did not originally mean anything like people of Israel. If habiru caused difficulties to the empire at its borders in Akhenaten's time, the subsequent war-pharoahs made every effort to pacify their territories and reduce them to captivity. Nineteenth dynasty Egypt would have contained a mixture of slaves from various markets and conquests: is there any good reason to think at the height of the Egyptian empire, the triumphant Egyptians distinguished carefully between the individual histories of various enslaved foreigners? One simplistic derogatory term is as good as another for describing the slaves. It is not at all unlikely that the anti-Akhenaten party not only sneered that their opponents were monotheists but added some gratuitous "foreign terrorist" slurs as well: my candidate for the latter might be habiru

[muriel_volestrangler]

40. But your OP was about the "enslavement and escape narrative"

not just the existence of some Israelite slaves in Egypt at some time. This isn't a question of 'iron-clad evidence'; it's a question of any evidence at all. The answer to your question of "is it true that no evidence whatsoever supports the Old Testament Egyptian enslavement story" seems to be 'yes, no evidence whatsoever'. The evidence is that Israel was one of several nations that Egypt claims to have defeated. That is nothing like the OT story.

The text does indeed talk about thousands; 600,000 men, plus women and children, according to Exodus 12. It was a claim of an entire people migrating across a desert. That's the broad outlines of the story - that all the Israelites came from Egypt, where they have been slaves. If you're just trying to say "at least one Hebrew person was a slave in Egypt at one time", then the scale of that claim is so different to the biblical story that we can't call it equivalent. Absence of evidence may not be evidence of absence, but your question was "is there any evidence?"

For the appearance of livestock, we could go back to "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" - Abraham is mentioned as having sheep, but not goats. Those only make an appearance when Isaac is old. Is that meant to be evidence that the domestication of goats in that area only happened during Isaac's time? Trying to second guess the write of the Abraham story about what would have sounded good with horses is ridiculous. And if you really want to claim that the Bible shows the introduction of horses to Egypt between Abraham and Joseph's time, then the lack of a narrative about the Hyksos trundling through the place where they lived looks a bit strange. A change in the most powerful rulers in the area is a bit more notable than the animals hanging around a camp.

True, the Joseph in Egypt story starts with his sale as a slave; but the rest of his family is invited in, after he rises in the pharaoh's favour. But that is a 'literalist' detail, I admit. But again, that Egypt bought foreign slaves at a time in its history is hardly 'evidence'. It's just a fact that means one aspect of the story isn't impossible.

The bible story doesn't have Joseph become 'rule of Egypt'; it has him become a powerful member of the pharaoh's court.

You say "its original "truthiness" for the original listeners depended on a familiarity with the Akhenaten period". I say that's rubbish. Why does it need a familiarity with Akhenaten? There's nothing in the Joseph story, or in the exodus story, set 400 years later, about a monotheist pharaoh. Such a pharaoh would radically change the story.

"the narrative is therefore set in a time between Akhenaten and Merneptah" - you've shown no evidence for this at all. What stops the narrative (whether you're talking about Joseph, or the exodus) being pre-Akhenaten?

With 'habiru', you're saying we don't know what it means, so we'll make it mean whatever fits your theory. Again, this is not 'evidence'.

[struggle4progress]

41. Since you do not understand what I am saying, I suggest the following exercise

which does not require you to take any stance whatsoever on any particular aspect of the Genesis/Exodus narrative

The story, whatever its actual status, was told for particular reasons (whether those reasons be moral instruction, construction of nationalist ideology, preservation of historical memories, or whatever else). It originates at some specific time and place (though not necessarily in final form), and it may contain enough indicators to locate that time and place. So locate that time and place. An exact fit to all story elements is not required: all that is required is that the fit be cogent enough to make your argument

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

What I said at the top of my OP was Various posters have recently asserted that there no evidence whatsoever supports the Old Testament Egyptian enslavement story ... <T>here is a period in Egyptian history in which one might plausibly look for the roots of the enslavement and escape narrative If you examine the entire thread, I repeatedly point out that my .. goal has been to examine the claim repeatedly made in this forum, that "Hebrew slavery in Egypt is pure mythology", which seems to me rather different than establishing that the exodos account should be taken literally: in this respect, by insisting I debate about the effect of 600,000 people on the landscape, you continue to argue with claims I have not made

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Whether Genesis 41:43 makes Joseph "ruler of Egypt" depends, of course, on the translation, on which I must depend (being, as I already noted, unable to read the original), but the meaning clearly ranges around that idea: set him over all Egypt, made him ruler over all Egypt, made governor over all Egypt, gave him charge over Egypt, &c&c. Without taking any particular stand on whether the story of Joseph contains elements of any actual biography, one can ask: Can one identify a period in Egyptian history, such that familiarity with the events of that period would make the Joseph story sound credible to those who heard it? The Akhenaten era fits that bill: if you know any other pre-Akhenaten period that fits better, I'm interested

[muriel_volestrangler]

42. But Akhenaten was a member of the existing Egyptian royal family

who promoted Aten from the most powerful Egyptian deity to the only one the people could worship. That is nothing like the story of Joseph, in which a foreigner come to the country as a slave, becomes a powerful courtier, and has no effect whatsoever on Egyptian religion. The exodus story is that an entire people were living in Egypt as slaves, and they escaped and founded a new country, by force, in Canaan. Again, there's nothing like that at all in the history of Akhenaten, or any Egyptian period, for that matter.

Stories may originate at one or more times and places; or they could be completely made up. There doesn't have to be a recognisable basis to them. In this case, the question is: is there any evidence outside the bible to support the story of the people of Israel being slaves who escaped from Egypt - and the answer is 'no, none at all, yet'. There's evidence for the existence of Israel as a people, or state, just before 1200 BC or so, and there's an Egyptian word which bears a similarity to 'Hebrew' - it may be the origin of 'Hebrew', but that doesn't tell us anything about the actual history of the people.

[struggle4progress]

45. You're repeating yourself. If one wants to decide whether a story contains

historical elements, it is reasonable to attempt to determine when and where the story originated, and who retold it and why

There are quite a number of different reasons for telling stories, and the quantity of useful historical information incorporated varies accordingly. The demands of an "Arabian Nights" fantasy differ, for example, from those of a "Horatio Alger" moral fable; the former may wander imaginatively through non-existent worlds, while latter requires at least a description of the plausible to listeners

It is possible for a story, told as history, to incorporate useful historical information, and yet fail to be literally true. When the Germans forced Jews to wear yellow stars, the king of Denmark protested by wearing a yellow star himself can be dismissed as mythology -- but it does reference real people and real events in a "shorthand" manner: that story will make absolutely no sense if one cannot locate its place and time and so leaves it completely unmoored in history; on the other hand, when the context is properly known, that story (despite being untrue) sheds an accurate light on popular attitudes and expectations at a particular place during a particular time

So if one wants to determine whether the Biblical notion that Hebrews were slaves in Egypt has any factual basis, one reasonably begins by attempting locate the story's time and place. Only a proper time-place location can support arguments either for or against the Biblical notion Hebrews were slaves in Egypt: evidence of Jewish slaves in medieval Egypt, for example, would be completely irrelevant unless the story dates from the medieval Egypt; the absence of any evidence of Egyptian slavery during the Jurassic era would be completely irrelevant unless the story dates from the Jurassic era; and so on

[trotsky]

43. Most excellent debunking from DU's own Egypt expert.

You rock, onager. For claiming to not really care one way or the other, some people seem to have a considerable investment in at least the *possibility* of bible stories being true.