The Exodus! Did it Really Happen?

[POI]

The Bible claims an Exodus took place. Many state it was not an actual event. Since the Bible makes a positive claim, in that an 'Exodus" took place, do we have positive evidence to support the claim?

For Debate:

1. Outside the Bible saying so, do we have evidence? If so, what?

2. If it should turn out that the Exodus did not take place, does this fact sway the Christian believer's position at all? Or, does it not matter one way or another?

[RBD]

Excerpt below from:

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com ... ny-decades

After 30 years nothing would remain. The bones would be completely worn away. This article has an in-depth analysis:

J Forensic Sci 1989 May;34(3):607-16.
Decay Rates of Human Remains in an Arid Environment

It indicates that an exposed corpse would be mostly worn down to bone fragments with in 3 years:



As the figure indicates, after 3 years complete skeletal decomposition has already begun. After 30 years there would be nothing left.

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Reasonable question: Is it reasonable to assume that we would find skeletal remains after 3000 years, when forensic scientist estimate there would be nothing left of a skeleton in that type of environment after 30 years?

Are you talking about Goshen and/or the wilderness? The main complaint is finding Hebrew physical and/or cultural remains in Egypt proper during the 430 years and time of Exodus events.

They also complain about Egyptians leaving no lasting 'memorial' of their defeat and humiliation at the hands of their slaves, or perhaps a dedication to their God...

[RBD]

Exodus 16:16-31
16:16 This [is] the thing which the "I AM" hath commanded, Gather of it every man according to his eating, an omer for every man, [according to] the number of your persons; take ye every man for [them] which [are] in his tents.
16:17 And the children of Israel did so, and gathered, some more, some less.
16:18 And when they did measure [it] with an omer, he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack; they gathered every man according to his eating.
16:19 And Moses said, Let no man leave of it till the morning.
16:20 Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto Moses; but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms, and stank: and Moses was wroth (angry) with them.
16:21 And they gathered it every morning, every man according to his eating: and when the sun waxed hot, it melted.
16:22 And it came to pass, [that] on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for one [man]: and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses.
16:23 And he said unto them, This [is that] which the "I AM" hath said, To morrow [is] the rest of the Holy Sabbath unto the "I AM": bake [that] which ye will bake [to day], and seethe that ye will seethe; and that which remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until the morning.
16:24 And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade: and it did not stink, neither was there any worm therein.
16:25 And Moses said, Eat that to day; for to day [is] a Sabbath unto the "I AM": to day ye shall not find it in the field.
16:26 Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day, [which is] the Sabbath, in it there shall be none.
16:27 And it came to pass, [that] there went out [some] of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none.
16:28 And the "I AM" said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep My Commandments and My Laws?
16:29 See, for that the "I AM" hath given you the Sabbath, therefore He giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.
16:30 So the people rested on the seventh day.
16:31 And the "House of Israel" called the name thereof Manna: and it [was] like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it [was] like wafers [made] with honey.

Question #1-2: Is it reasonable to expect that a people who were being taught NOT to be wasteful -- and to gather only their assigned portions, and a double-portion on the day of preparation so they would have a portion on the Sabbath without having to gather it -- would be leaving pottery behind everywhere they went? Pottery that they would need again the next day, and again the day after that?

Question #3: Is it reasonable to assume there were stores along the way in the wilderness, to buy additional supplies, e.g. pottery, firewood and fire-pit materials (rocks or stones if nothing else)?

Unique. Where did you get this train of thought?

Another theory is that the bones of the fathers, etc... were taken to Canaan along with those of Jacob and Joseph. Since it was a matter of faith to keep them until returning to Canaan...

[RBD]

Does it seem particularly unreasonable, given the fact that it is highly unlikely anything could survive in a desert wilderness for over 3000 years, to ask for graves, skeletal remains, fire-pits, pottery etc.?

Or is this merely the unreasonable stipulations placed upon evidence of the Exodus, by unreasonable people, so they can continue to ignore reason, common-sense and what has been found in support of the historical record of this journey found in the Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy?

And further, if someone cannot be bothered to look at and study the actual evidence presented, instead throwing a tantrum that they weren't spoon-fed the information provided in videos and links that they could examine at their leisure, are they even capable of reasonable, rational thought?

We can also add that skeletal remains do not genetically identify specific races. Only by mouth, nose, and mastoid features can race be hinted at. I.e. Certain known racial features seen among human beings can be searched for in preserved bones, but only if they are not too fragmented. In addition, it can only include the most common race differences, such as between whites, blacks, Indians, and Mongoloid. Semitics and Egyptians are too closely related to be part of the case study.

I.e. the biggest complaint is all those Hebrew bones not found in Egypt. And yet any Hebrew bones found in Egypt could not be identified apart from any Egyptian bones.

Every demand for remaining evidence in Egypt and/or the wilderness, as you say, is the unreasonable demands of uneducated willful disbelievers, that are only looking for any excuse not to believe something can possibly be true. This is even after the gut punch to the same kind of disbelievers pertaining to the Bible record of the Assyrians. The so-called experts not believing the Bible record, had to move on to some other complaint, after the Assyrian archeological remains were found. Now, they've only migrated to Exodus with the same 'no evidence' complaint. The only problem is, trying to find skeletal remains of similar races, is nowhere the near the same as that of a whole civilization and empire.

They might as well be demanding evidence for the plagues themselves. None of their so-called evidence complaints are legitimate.

[RBD]

Am I wrong to doubt the exodus story as told in the Bible?

Yes.

Your reasoning is not compelling and is against the rules of this forum.
You will know them by their fruit.

Seriously? Talk about a rock-bottom desperation.

An honest yes/no answer to a yes/no question is not 'compelling'. It proves nothing is compelling to someone that's not interested in being compelled.

And then a set-up question used for manipulate the rules against making accusations against people.

This one example alone, proves the dishonest pretense of scholarly debate.

[RBD]

Excerpt below from:

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com ... ny-decades

After 30 years nothing would remain. The bones would be completely worn away. This article has an in-depth analysis:

J Forensic Sci 1989 May;34(3):607-16.
Decay Rates of Human Remains in an Arid Environment

It indicates that an exposed corpse would be mostly worn down to bone fragments with in 3 years:



As the figure indicates, after 3 years complete skeletal decomposition has already begun. After 30 years there would be nothing left.

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Reasonable question: Is it reasonable to assume that we would find skeletal remains after 3000 years, when forensic scientist estimate there would be nothing left of a skeleton in that type of environment after 30 years?

And yet we find what you claim we won't!

A scientific expedition has found a 33,000-year-old skeleton of an Egyptian, the oldest human relic ever found in this country. The Government-owned daily Al Ahram said that the bones were found in the Firan valley in the Sinai desert.
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/21/worl ... of%20years.

The following excerpt is from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazlet_Khater

Nazlet Khater[1] is an archeological site located in Upper Egypt that has yielded evidence of early human culture and anatomically modern specimens dating to approximately thirty to fifty thousand years ago.

And what/where is "Upper Egypt"?

From the provided hyperlink in the Nazlet_Khater article, which goes to...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Egypt
...we find the following:

Upper Egypt (Arabic: صعيد مصر Ṣaʿīd Miṣr, shortened to الصعيد, Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [es.sˤe.ˈʕiːd], locally: [es.sˤɑ.ˈʕiːd]; Coptic: ⲙⲁⲣⲏⲥ, romanized: Mares) is the southern portion of Egypt and is composed of the Nile River valley south of the delta and the 30th parallel N. It thus consists of the entire Nile River valley from Cairo south to Lake Nasser (formed by the Aswan High Dam).[2]

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So not a desert area at all; instead the exact opposite. These skeletal remains were literally found in the wettest part of Egypt: the Nile River valley in Africa; NOT on the Sinai peninsula in Asia.

Continuing from the "Upper Egypt" link above, we find the following:

Name

In ancient Egypt, Upper Egypt was known as tꜣ šmꜣw,[3] literally "the Land of Reeds" or "the Sedgeland", named for the sedges that grow there.[4]

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The number one corrupter of radiocarbon (carbon-14) dating is WATER, because the water prematurely washes out the radiation, making the tested specimens seem dramatically older than they really are. And no one knows exactly how much water any given sample has been exposed to, which makes the entire process nothing more than guesswork.

The following excerpt is from:

https://www.nature.com/articles/BMC2050-7445-1-24

The freshwater reservoir effect can result in anomalously old radiocarbon ages of samples from lakes and rivers. This includes the bones of people whose subsistence was based on freshwater fish, and pottery in which fish was cooked. Water rich in dissolved ancient calcium carbonates, commonly known as hard water, is the most common reason for the freshwater reservoir effect. It is therefore also called hardwater effect. Although it has been known for more than 60 years, it is still less well-recognized by archaeologists than the marine reservoir effect. The aim of this study is to examine the order of magnitude and degree of variability of the freshwater reservoir effect over short and long timescales. Radiocarbon dating of recent water samples, aquatic plants, and animals, shows that age differences of up to 2000 14C years can occur within one river. The freshwater reservoir effect has also implications for radiocarbon dating of Mesolithic pottery from inland sites of the Ertebølle culture in Northern Germany. The surprisingly old ages of the earliest pottery most probably are caused by a freshwater reservoir effect.

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Another admission from the inventor of radiocarbon-dating William Libby about the dating process, from:

https://armstronginstitute.org/716-an-o ... bon-dating -

Following his invention of the science, Willard Libby originally attempted to use this method to check against the accuracy of his raw radiocarbon data. In his 1960 Nobel Prize acceptance lecture, Libby highlighted the immediate issue his team came up against: the ambiguity of historical ages. “You read statements in books that such and such a society or archaeological site is 20,000 years old,” he said. “We learned rather abruptly that these numbers, these ancient ages, are not known accurately; in fact, it is about the time of the First Dynasty in Egypt [circa 3000 b.c.e.] that the first historical date of any real certainty has been established.” (Still, there remains much debate even about the dating of this period.)

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If people want to make a god out of this pseudo-scientific nonsense, that's their prerogative. Just don't expect the rest of us to blindly accept this obvious garbage.

And a few additional questions about the blatant hypocrisy being exhibited here...

Where are all of the friends and family members of the "Nazlet Khater" skeleton that would have been living with him in the lush Nile river valley?

Where are the millions upon millions that lived in the Nile River valley 3000-4000 years ago, when Egypt ruled the entire known world? And why would anyone believe that this one skeleton somehow survived for tens of thousands of years, when millions from only 3000-4000 years ago didn't?

Who can honestly dispute that the "Nazlet Khater" skeleton may not have belonged to someone who only recently died and that this publicity stunt is nothing more than a testament to how wildly inaccurate radiocarbon dating really is?

One cannot drag a single skeleton out of the closet and then honestly claim they've "debunked" thousands of years of recorded history and eye-witness testimony.

THINK about it.

Dear Freeman. You need to THINK about it. Such as who you are dealing with: Someone who thinks a yes/no response to a yes/no question, is not 'compelling'.

However, keep up the good work for objective observers. Just don't expect anything from the 'uncompellable'. Afterall, who else would try to disprove facts about a dry desert, by going to wetlands for evidence against it...

[RBD]

If people want to make a god out of this pseudo-scientific nonsense, that's their prerogative. Just don't expect the rest of us to blindly accept this obvious garbage.

And a few additional questions about the blatant hypocrisy being exhibited here...

Where are all of the friends and family members of the "Nazlet Khater" skeleton that would have been living with him in the lush Nile river valley?

Where are the millions upon millions that lived in the Nile River valley 3000-4000 years ago, when Egypt ruled the entire known world? And why would anyone believe that this one skeleton somehow survived for tens of thousands of years, when millions from only 3000-4000 years ago didn't?

Who can honestly dispute that the "Nazlet Khater" skeleton may not have belonged to someone who only recently died and that this publicity stunt is nothing more than a testament to how wildly inaccurate radiocarbon dating really is?

One cannot drag a single skeleton out of the closet and then honestly claim they've "debunked" thousands of years of recorded history and eye-witness testimony.

It's not like such false evidence hasn't been planted elsewhere in the annals of archeological research. It's also the same with obvious false translations of ancient records. There's one particular JW 'linguist', that translates Jon 1:1 "And the Word was a god". Every first year Greek student knows it's childishly false.

[RBD]

Apparently the OP doesn't know how reality operates. Do all US election happened as claimed? What evidence shows, say, the first 5 president elections did occur? Any 'outside US' documents mentioned the details such as vote counts (any who ever verified the vote count claims being true)?

Did Confucius in China ever exist? Any "outside of China" document mentioned so? Did Confucius ever wrote any books? What proof is that those claimed books are actually written by Confucius?

Well done. Just another debunking any demand that everything ever recorded, has to be externally verified in order to confirm it.

The Assyrian empire was also not believed by committed disbelievers in the Bible, until the external evidence was found. And even then, many of them just moved on to Exodus to start making the same external demands all over again.

In the meantime, their pseudo-arguments have the same flavor of committed conspiracy theorists. They put on a great show of research and scholarly debate, that only circulates around an empty hole. In the case of Exodus, they conspiracy-theory style of false arguments is used to make the Bible just another conspiracy theory to uselessly argue about.

That's why serious and honest investigators can only continue with them for so long...

[RBD]

Blind faith and blind disbelief are only for those who don't care whether the Book is erring or unerring.

One of the reasons I no longer believe is because the book so heavily demonstrates to be erring.

One of the reasons I don't care what you believe, is because I only care about any proof of Bible errors, not about claims of error for the purpose of not believing.

I long ago understood, that it's not the miracles, spiritual kingdom, nor claims of error found in the Bible, that turns people from the God of the Bible, but it's simply the 'Thou shalt not..." And the judgment for doing it anyway...

[bluegreenearth]

One of the reasons I don't care what you believe, is because I only care about any proof of Bible errors, not about claims of error for the purpose of not believing.

Why would you expect the unfalsifiable claims in the Bible to be potentially disprovable?

[POI]

Are you suggesting there is other evidence the Hyksos were expelled, but Google is not able to access that evidence?

I'm suggesting that not all available evidence is always posted upon the 'internet'. And I'm not about to go on a search to locate textbooks/books, read all of them, and hope I run across this exact topic, about "why the Hyksos were expelled rather than enslaved". Nor am I going to attend a class or seminar where the professor or speaker may or may not evidentially bring up this very specific topic.

I'm also suggesting that 1) more obscure topics, or 2) less debatable topics, would have even less 'internet' published information on the web anyways. And it seems reasonable to apply the claim of a direct "Hyksos"/Israeli connection to both 1) and 2).

But yes, there is still other evidence(s) to suggest the Hyksos are not the Israelites. A matter of fact, I posted two links in my last response:

(https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/enigm ... say-635601)
(https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-is ... the-hyksos)

Of course, because skeptics automatically reject anything that supports the Bible.

Negative. I'm sure the Bible could be fairly accurate about many claims. But this goes back to the aforementioned Spiderman storyline.

As I've stated, more than once, I currently accept that a Jesus might have existed, who worked as a carpenter, was a charismatic homeless preacher, and was ultimately executed for 'blasphemy'. But then, mass embellishment/other likely came forth with all of this as well... I just don't think 'the Exodus' is really one of those claims which holds much water at all. Meaning, along with the claimed super-natural parts being of serious question, so too are the mundane parts in which you are I are now discussing. And as I've also repeated prior, (no "Exodus", no Bible). Which is why you may find it absolutely imperative to link another group to the said 'Israelites.'