How authentic is the Exodus, founding story of Israel ?

ChicagoJoe · 18-01-2015 4:05pm #1

The reality is that there is no evidence whatsoever that the Jews were ever enslaved in Egypt. Yes, there's the story is in the bible itself, but that's not a remotely historically admissible source. I'm talking about real proof such as archaeological evidence, of which nothing exists. It is hard to believe that 600,000 families (which would mean about two million people) crossed the entire Sinai without leaving one shard of pottery with Hebrew writing on it.

Also Egyptian records make no mention of the sudden migration of what would have been nearly a quarter of their population, nor has any evidence been found for any of the expected effects of such an exodus; such as economic downturn or labor shortages. Furthermore, there is no evidence in the Israeli state despite decades of searching that shows a sudden influx of people from another culture at that time.

So can anyone convince me that this founding myth of the modern zionist state Israel is anything but yet another fairy tale thanks to the bible ?

By the way I'd ask the mods to keep an eye on this thread so we don't have the usual comedians dragging the discussion into a mud slinging thread on modern events such as the onslaught on Gaza a few months ago or the murderers in Paris recently.

catallus · 18-01-2015 4:08pm

Since when is the bible not an admissible source?

ChicagoJoe · 18-01-2015 4:19pm

catallus wrote: »

Since when is the bible not an admissible source?

When was it ever to scientific research ?

robp · 18-01-2015 9:58pm

ChicagoJoe wrote: »

When was it ever to scientific research ?

Its a historical question not a scientific question.

Its not clear cut as the absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence. If it occurred with smaller numbers it may have been barely visible in Egyptian records and archaeologically.

Manach · 19-01-2015 12:52am

One should assume the broad accuracy of ancient texts on general matters, unless there are sources to the contraty. Given the paupacy of other materials and the close links between Jewish/Egyptian Culture & Religion ( book - VSI Guide to Eygpt) then the simplest explanation that the Biblial account has a measure of truth seems to be the more likely explanation. As robp said, history != science, where relative and absolute truths are not fellows.

pablomakaveli · 19-01-2015 1:28am

Hasn't it been found to be untrue already. There never were Jews in Eqypt and the pyramids were built by paid workers instead of slaves like we're led to believe from Exodus.

Ipso · 19-01-2015 2:14am

pablomakaveli wrote: »

Hasn't it been found to be untrue already. There never were Jews in Eqypt and the pyramids were built by paid workers instead of slaves like we're led to believe from Exodus.

I can't remember where I read it, but one idea is that any Jews involvements in building the pyramids was as skilled labourers and not as slaves.
Plus the route taken in the exodus story was in the middle of two major trade routes, so the chance of thousands of people getting lost was unlikely.

the dark phantom · 19-01-2015 2:30am

I read this about 12 yrs ago..secrets of the exodus.

https://books.google.ie/books?id=4iW-NwAACAAJ&dq=secrets+of+the+exodus&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KFy8VLm1GYvsaOaSgdgN&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA

It pretty much implies the people who left were the elite of Egypt, Seems the rest of the population were unhappy about famine etc and they blamed those at the top. Think Moses was actually Akhenaton. It was a good read lots of interesting stuff. The jist of it is the authors think the Jews just made up the slavery stuff to justify their immigration to Israel or whatever it was called then. The Assyrians or Babylonians (can't remember which) didn't get on with the Egyptians so the Jews said they weren't Egyptians but slaves who originally lived in Israel and were taken by the Egyptians.

Peregrinus · 19-01-2015 3:37am

pablomakaveli wrote: »

Hasn't it been found to be untrue already. There never were Jews in Eqypt and the pyramids were built by paid workers instead of slaves like we're led to believe from Exodus.

If we are going to refute the historicity of the Book of Exodus it helps to start by reading it. Exodus does not claim that Jews in Egypt built the pyramids. In fact it does not mention pyramids at all. Evidence that the pyramids were built other than by Jews does nothing to refute the Book of Exodus. (It does refute Cecil B. de Mille, though.)

ChicagoJoe wrote: »

. . . So can anyone convince me that this founding myth of the modern zionist state Israel is anything but yet another fairy tale thanks to the bible ?

By the way I'd ask the mods to keep an eye on this thread so we don't have the usual comedians dragging the discussion into a mud slinging thread on modern events such as the onslaught on Gaza a few months ago or the murderers in Paris recently.

If you don’t want “the usual comedians dragging the discussion into a mud slinging thread” it’s probably best to leave out tendentious claims about the Exodus story being “a founding myth” of the State of Israel, or about it being “a fairy tale”.

The fact is that there is little or no historical/archaeological evidence to confirm (or refute) the biblical story. Both the Book of Exodus itself and the (few) other textual references we have were written centuries after the events they (purport to) describe. There is no confirmation of the Exodus story in any of the Egyptian chronicles, or in any monuments or inscriptions. (On the other hand, that's not suprising; both the chronicles and the monuments are noted for the complete omission of any reference to defeats, setbacks, embarrassments, etc. If the Exodus had occurred even remotely like what is described in the Book of Exodus, the Egyptian sources almost certainly would not mention it.)

The general view of mainstream historians of the period is that information about this is not recoverable. If there was an Exodus at all, it certainly did not unfold as described in detail in the Book of Exodus; on the other hand we're not in a position to say that nothing happened. The parsimonious explanation for the existence of the Exodus story is that something happened; some kind of migration out of Egypt to escape unfavourable political conditions. But we have no way of knowing what happened, or even of knowing for sure that anything happened.

robp · 19-01-2015 11:57am

pablomakaveli wrote: »

Hasn't it been found to be untrue already. There never were Jews in Eqypt and the pyramids were built by paid workers instead of slaves like we're led to believe from Exodus.

As already mentioned Exodus doesn't mention the pyramids at all. From my understanding the current thinking is that the pyramids were most likely built by farmers during seasons when their labour was not needed in farms perhaps as a tax to the state. That being said slavery did exist in Egypt.

shedweller · 20-01-2015 1:05am

robp wrote: »

As already mentioned Exodus doesn't mention the pyramids at all. From my understanding the current thinking is that the pyramids were most likely built by farmers during seasons when their labour was not needed in farms perhaps as a tax to the state. That being said slavery did exist in Egypt.

But the accuracy. The geometry.
Farmers today would not be able to build the pyramids to such accuracy. Even build them at all!
Hell, the best of the best today would be under pressure to build the pyramids to such accuracy.
Sorry, i dont buy the farmers theory.
Whoever did it had a lot of skill and expertise in this. Without the help of little green men of course!

the dark phantom · 20-01-2015 1:09am

shedweller wrote: »

But the accuracy. The geometry.
Farmers today would not be able to build the pyramids to such accuracy. Even build them at all!
Hell, the best of the best today would be under pressure to build the pyramids to such accuracy.
Sorry, i dont buy the farmers theory.
Whoever did it had a lot of skill and expertise in this. Without the help of little green men of course!

The older the pyramid the better it was built too.

Peregrinus · 20-01-2015 2:27am

shedweller wrote: »

But the accuracy. The geometry.
Farmers today would not be able to build the pyramids to such accuracy. Even build them at all!
Hell, the best of the best today would be under pressure to build the pyramids to such accuracy.
Sorry, i dont buy the farmers theory.
Whoever did it had a lot of skill and expertise in this. Without the help of little green men of course!

Well, that may or may not be true, but either way it is not relevant to the OP. Even if it was impossible for the pyramids to have been constructed by farmers during the quiet season, it does not follow that they were built by enslaved Jews.

But I don't think the claim is that off-duty farmers designed and engineered the pyramids; just that they did most of the heavy lifting during the construction. They provided the muscle.

pablomakaveli · 20-01-2015 12:34pm

Peregrinus wrote: »

If we are going to refute the historicity of the Book of Exodus it helps to start by reading it. Exodus does not claim that Jews in Egypt built the pyramids. In fact it does not mention pyramids at all. Evidence that the pyramids were built other than by Jews does nothing to refute the Book of Exodus. (It does refute Cecil B. de Mille, though.)

It doesn't but it had a large part in creating the belief that slaves built the pyramids in Egypt.

Peregrinus · 21-01-2015 2:41am

pablomakaveli wrote: »

It doesn't but it had a large part in creating the belief that slaves built the pyramids in Egypt.

I doubt that's true. The Greeks believed that the pyramids were built by slave labour - Herodotus goes into some detail on this. It's not likely that he ever read, or knew of the existence of, the Book of Exodus. The Romans, who were fascinated by all things Eqyptian, accepted the Greek view without question. They themselves probably could not conceive of large-scale works being completed without slave labour. And the assumption that slave labour was employed was generally accepted until the late twentieth century, when archaeological evidence began to suggest otherwise.

I don't see Exodus doing much to reinforce this, and certainly not having "a large part" in it. In the Exodus account, the Israelites are enslaved in Eqypt for only one generation, and there is no discussion at all of what work they do as slaves, except passing references to the construction of barns, and to building work and work "in the fields", which suggests they were used for general heavy labour. Nothing in the text suggests that this happened at the time of the construction of the pyramids. Nobody has ever suggested that the Israelites were the only slaves the Egyptians ever had, and the belief that the pyramids were constructed by slave labour has never depended on the Israelites being those slaves. The historicity of the Book of Exodus has been questioned since at least the second half of the nineteenth century, but I'm not aware of anybody then or since using that to challenge the "slave labour" account of the construction of the pyramids.

In short, "who built the pyramids?" and "is the Book of Exodus historically accurate?", are two almost completely unrelated questions - and always have been.

tac foley · 21-01-2015 11:30am

How does the biblical story of Moses fit into this? It would appear that the Hebrews who did NOT live in Egypt traded with Egypt.

After that, we might move on to the seven plagues and the 'let my people go' part of it.

If they were not enslaved in Egypt, why was there such reticence about 'letting them go'?

tac

ChicagoJoe · 23-01-2015 4:11pm

the dark phantom wrote: »

I read this about 12 yrs ago..secrets of the exodus.

https://books.google.ie/books?id=4iW-NwAACAAJ&dq=secrets+of+the+exodus&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KFy8VLm1GYvsaOaSgdgN&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA

It pretty much implies the people who left were the elite of Egypt, Seems the rest of the population were unhappy about famine etc and they blamed those at the top. Think Moses was actually Akhenaton. It was a good read lots of interesting stuff. The jist of it is the authors think the Jews just made up the slavery stuff to justify their immigration to Israel or whatever it was called then. The Assyrians or Babylonians (can't remember which) didn't get on with the Egyptians so the Jews said they weren't Egyptians but slaves who originally lived in Israel and were taken by the Egyptians.

Interesting, from your link " no trace is to be found of Abraham, Joseph or Moses as described in Genesis and Exodus. No mention of stories or eyewitness accounts has been discovered in Egyptian hieroglyphic texts about the presence of a population which lived in Egypt for 400 years".

Thanks phantom.

ChicagoJoe · 23-01-2015 4:28pm

Peregrinus wrote: »

If you don’t want “the usual comedians dragging the discussion into a mud slinging thread” it’s probably best to leave out tendentious claims about the Exodus story being “a founding myth” of the State of Israel, or about it being “a fairy tale”.

Nothing tendentious about stating that something is a fairy tale as historical fact as not a single shred of evidence has ever been found to give it any authenticity whatsoever. The ideology of zionism was the driving for the creation of the state of Israel and it's main tenet is indeed the Exodus.

The fact is that there is little or no historical/archaeological evidence to confirm (or refute) the biblical story. Both the Book of Exodus itself and the (few) other textual references we have were written centuries after the events they (purport to) describe. There is no confirmation of the Exodus story in any of the Egyptian chronicles, or in any monuments or inscriptions. (On the other hand, that's not suprising; both the chronicles and the monuments are noted for the complete omission of any reference to defeats, setbacks, embarrassments, etc. If the Exodus had occurred even remotely like what is described in the Book of Exodus, the Egyptian sources almost certainly would not mention it.)

The general view of mainstream historians of the period is that information about this is not recoverable. If there was an Exodus at all, it certainly did not unfold as described in detail in the Book of Exodus; on the other hand we're not in a position to say that nothing happened. The parsimonious explanation for the existence of the Exodus story is that something happened; some kind of migration out of Egypt to escape unfavourable political conditions. But we have no way of knowing what happened, or even of knowing for sure that anything happened.

The general view of mainstream historians is that the event never happened as not a single piece of information has been recovered. No mention of stories or eyewitness accounts has been discovered in Egyptian hieroglyphic texts nor a single shred of art, pottery etc, even with your interest in it you still haven't brought forward any possible proof. The Exodus has about as much legitimacy as the fairy tale about St Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland, no evidence whatsoever to support either.

robp · 25-01-2015 4:35pm

ChicagoJoe wrote: »

Nothing tendentious about stating that something is a fairy tale as historical fact as not a single shred of evidence has ever been found to give it any authenticity whatsoever. The ideology of zionism was the driving for the creation of the state of Israel and it's main tenet is indeed the Exodus.

The general view of mainstream historians is that the event never happened as not a single piece of information has been recovered. No mention of stories or eyewitness accounts has been discovered in Egyptian hieroglyphic texts nor a single shred of art, pottery etc, even with your interest in it you still haven't brought forward any possible proof. The Exodus has about as much legitimacy as the fairy tale about St Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland, no evidence whatsoever to support either.

Personally I would not hear the term fairy story used in serious intellectual discussion of any myth.

In archaeology we don't really use the absence of evidence as evidence. If a exodus involved a few hundred or thousands the archaeology might be a needle in a hay and stack. Even if you found a potential desert site I don't see how you could rule out it being a casual encampments of traders.

smcgiff · 25-01-2015 4:45pm

There's plenty of ancient documents describing Ireland's ancient past. And the giant's causeway was so two rival Giants were able to fight.

It's all written down.

qt3.14 · 25-01-2015 4:58pm

People tend to forget that Egypt at the time was an Empire competing with the Hittites and Mesopotamians (were the Mittani on the scene or was that later? Been a while).
The Levant was their battleground and if we go with Biblical timing of the building of the Temple then right about the time of the Exodus, Egypt ruled the Levant as far north as Cilicia.
If the Jews escaped, it needn't have been from Cairo or what is traditionally thought of as Egypt. They could have been internally displaced inside Canaan, maybe on the far side of the Dead Sea.

Peregrinus · 27-01-2015 3:40am

ChicagoJoe wrote: »

Nothing tendentious about stating that something is a fairy tale as historical fact as not a single shred of evidence has ever been found to give it any authenticity whatsoever. The ideology of zionism was the driving for the creation of the state of Israel and it's main tenet is indeed the Exodus.

It's tendentious to claim that the Exodus is the "main tenet" of Zionism. Political zionism is, and always has been, a largely secular movement, and it does not rest its case for a national homeland for the Jewish people on the Exodus, still less on any claim that the Exodus story is historically accurate.

ChicagoJoe wrote: »

The general view of mainstream historians is that the event never happened as not a single piece of information has been recovered.

"Mainstream historians" do not generally assert that if we have no information about an event, it "never happened". There are presumably many events which occurred, but about which we have no information. What mainstream historians say about the Exodus is that we cannot know what parts of it, if any, are historically grounded. We can be reasonably confident that large parts of the story are not historically grounded. It's entirely possible that no part of the story is historically grounded. But we cannot know, within the discipline of history, that no part of the story ever happened.

P.S. Strictly speaking it's not true to say that we have no information; we have the Book of Exodus itself, which contains much information. What we don't have is any corroboration of that information from any other source. And the Book itself long postdates the events it purports to describe, and so certainly can't be taken as a primary source. The bottom line is that we have no primary source at all for the Exodus story, and the whole thing could be completely non-factual.

ChicagoJoe · 01-02-2015 4:25pm

Peregrinus wrote: »

It's tendentious to claim that the Exodus is the "main tenet" of Zionism. Political zionism is, and always has been, a largely secular movement, and it does not rest its case for a national homeland for the Jewish people on the Exodus, still less on any claim that the Exodus story is historically accurate.

"Mainstream historians" do not generally assert that if we have no information about an event, it "never happened". There are presumably many events which occurred, but about which we have no information. What mainstream historians say about the Exodus is that we cannot know what parts of it, if any, are historically grounded. We can be reasonably confident that large parts of the story are not historically grounded. It's entirely possible that no part of the story is historically grounded. But we cannot know, within the discipline of history, that no part of the story ever happened.

P.S. Strictly speaking it's not true to say that we have no information; we have the Book of Exodus itself, which contains much information. What we don't have is any corroboration of that information from any other source. And the Book itself long postdates the events it purports to describe, and so certainly can't be taken as a primary source. The bottom line is that we have no primary source at all for the Exodus story, and the whole thing could be completely non-factual.

The bottom line is that we have no source at all for the Exodus story, and the whole thing is completely non-factual.

Manach · 02-02-2015 12:12am

Given my reading on Assyrian Hittite Sea-peoples and Proto-Greek sources and how the oral history of peoples reflect events and placing this in the context of the state of other evidential source of the time, my reckoning is the Exodus is based on some form of events that made up the Jewish people's story. Thus as much as anything that could be said for that time period, it is authentic.

Peregrinus · 02-02-2015 2:44am

ChicagoJoe wrote: »

The bottom line is that we have no source at all for the Exodus story . . .

We do have a source for the story. We must have, since we all know the story.

We have no primary source for the story. People who care about historical truth wouldn't try to gloss over this distinction.

ChicagoJoe wrote: »

. . . and the whole thing is completely non-factual.

You seem to believe that if we don't know that a thing happened, then objectively it never happened.

Reality exists outside your mind, Joe. Lots of things are totally factual, even though you may be completely ignorant of them. The fact that we have inadequate or no historical evidence for something doesn't mean that it didn't happen; just that we can't know that it happened. Again, people who care about historical truth understand this.

How authentic is the Exodus, founding story of Israel ?

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