Yoseph and The Departure from Egypt

[bluethread]

I pretty much stay away from this thread, because I believe that scientifically proving the details of historical events is a fools errand. However, examining claims that certain things are scientifically impossible can have value. A case in point is a recent examination of previous discoveries discarded due to archeological orthodoxy.

Most archeologists and even many rabbis, reject the idea that Yoseph ever existed and Israel originated from a population of Semitic people who were delivered from slavery in Egypt and effected a conquest of the land of Canaan. However, upon closer examination it has been proposed that, like the location of Mt. Sinai, the reason why no evidence of such things have not been found was because archeologists were looking in the wrong place, based on orthodoxy and not scientific skepticism.

patternsofevidence.com (also available on Netflix)

The thesis is that, based on the references to the region and city of Rameses, archeologists erroneously presumed that Israel was delivered in the time of Ramesses the Great. However, those references might have been inserted in the text for the sake of the reader at a later date. Though there is no significant population of Semites in Egypt at the time of Ramesses the Great, there is evidence of a significant number of Semites and a swift departure of same in the middle kingdom, some 500 years earlier. Now, there is more to the thesis than that and I am not addressing the grandeur of the miracles on this thread. The only question is does this put to rest the assertion that there is no historical basis for Yoseph, the deliverance from Egypt and the conquest of Canaan?

[Donray]

Why don't you provide some evidence to support what you think? By the why, besides thing a movie like the Load of the Rings show what really happened. What is it exactly evidence do want to discuss the is related to the Bible and Exodus?

Thus far you have not stated what this is true form a movie that was made to make money.

Casting aspersions based the inferred intent of a presentation is fallacious. Degrasse Tyson and Stephen Hawking do not work free. The theory has been presented in the OP link.

So I can avoid running a fowl of the site one liner rules, let me note here that Kenisaw is spot on. One does not have to believe that the evidence is valid. However, it is not consistent with what people here claim as proper science to reject the evidence out of hand.

The OP did not mention one thing that can be debated. He reference a movie. I am asking any one that agrees with the movie to identify one thing and state there reason to believe it is true.

All you do is say things and have no proof. I don't even know what you are debating.

There is zero proof the movie is nothing other a move producer trying to make money from Christians that need to believe.

What evidence and yes it is proper science to dismiss it out of hand when it has been proven false over and over. Nothing about the bible story is true and no evidence has been presented that it could be true. All the fantasy in move has been disproven.

[bluethread]

The OP did not mention one thing that can be debated. He reference a movie. I am asking any one that agrees with the movie to identify one thing and state there reason to believe it is true.

All you do is say things and have no proof. I don't even know what you are debating.

There is zero proof the movie is nothing other a move producer trying to make money from Christians that need to believe.

What evidence and yes it is proper science to dismiss it out of hand when it has been proven false over and over. Nothing about the bible story is true and no evidence has been presented that it could be true. All the fantasy in move has been disproven.

The nature of the information provided in the linked video can be debated, as at least one person here has done, i.e. DtD. I am really at a lose as to why the majority of posters prefer to take a doctrinaire approach rather than address the assertions of the documentary. However, I will venture into the reeds enough to show that there are reeds. I hope the mods will excuse the large quotes, but it appears that you will accept nothing less. My real concern at this time is the "baby with the bathwater" approach mentioned in the second quote.

http://www.hebrewhistory.info/factpaper ... _egypt.htm

Who were these people?
The dean of Egyptian archaeologists, James Henry Breasted, to whom Egyptology is everlastingly indebted for having spent a lifetime copying and preserving Egyptian inscriptions, wrote of what he had learned about the Pre-Dynastic people of Lower (northern) Egypt. They were Asiatics, he pointed out, Semites who played a critical role in the birth of Egyptian civilization. As far back as 1905 Breasted wrote: "It was chiefly at the two northern corners of the Delta that outside influences and foreign elements, who were always sifting into the Nile valley, gained access to the country... The Semitic immigration from Asia, examples of which are also observable in the historic age, occurred in an epoch that lies below our remotest historical horizon."1
Sir Flinders Petrie, whose status in Egyptology is on a par with that of the great Breasted, was similarly impressed by the extent of Semitic influence he found on his excavations in Egypt. He was convinced of the fundamental Semitic origin of Egyptian civilization.

Later it became the fashion for many archaeologists to reject out of hand the evidence of these and numerous other examples of seminal Asiatic influence. It was claimed that these and other early diggers in ancient graves, garbage pits, and ruins had been unduly influenced by biblical lore. Certain conclusions of the doughty archaeological trailblazers were indeed found to be faulty. The revisionists promptly "threw the baby out with the bath-water."

The realization by Egyptologists of Semitic seminality produced a bizarre result. The search for pre-dynastic evidence virtually ceased! Dr. Trigger, of the McGill Department of Anthropology, pondered upon this peculiar circumstance: "The conviction that Egypt was not an important center of plant and animal domestication and a consequence shift of interest to south-western Asia are, in part, responsible for the dearth of field-work on Pre-Dynastic sites in recent years."23
On the one hand, sites such as el Yehudiya ("Jew-Town" - see map on page 3) were abandoned, left for scavengers to ravage its remaining artifacts. On the other hand, attention was focused on every minutia of Egyptian origin to bolster the theory of autochthonous cultural development in Egypt.
A hiatus in Egyptological research also resulted from a lack of attention to the life of ordinary people, a defect of archaeological research that has only recently been addressed. The Asiatic communities were farmers, artisans and traders, headed by local chieftains. No massive monuments were erected in their villages for future tourists to gawk at, no hedonistic sculptures were produced for museums to vie over, nor were the chieftains entombed with golden artifacts for future collectors to salivate over.
"It is no wonder that the present state of studies of ancient Egyptian civilization is enormously one-sided," declared Manfred Bietak, excavator of Qantir, the site on which the biblical city of Avaris was identified. "In Egypt, temple sites and cemeteries have been chosen as objects of excavation and study because they yield more museum objects and, with their imposing architecture and representations of fine arts, are far more likely to impress the trustees of institutions than the decayed mud-brick architecture of town sites with their tons of potsherds."24
History, it was wisely said, repeats itself. After 1500 years of periods of stagnation another Semitic influx had a revolutionary impact upon the culture of Egypt. Their contribution is being likewise ignored or denigrated.

The centralization of power and the monopolization of trade by the Egyptian hierarchy had a such a deleterious effect upon progress that virtual stagnation ensued.
Intermittent periods of aggression and peace ensued for the next twelve hundred years. During peaceful intervals, the Semitic peoples of Lower Canaan flowed into the Delta region. These periods mark whatever advances in culture and technology ensued. During the twelfth Dynasty (roughly 2000-1800 B.C.E.), such a peaceful period developed.
An important Egyptian text, "The Tale of Sinuhe," is a lengthy account that illustrates the positive nature of the intercourse between Egyptians and Canaanites of the times. It took place during such a peaceful period in the reign of king Sen-Usert I (1971-1928 B.C.E.). It relates how the said Sinuhe, an Egyptian official of high rank, having fallen afoul of the law, fled to Retenu ("Canaan"). Hiding in bushes and creeping through fields by day, he slipped by the Egyptian frontier guards by night, only to suffer hunger and thirst in the Sinai desert.

[DanieltheDragon]

[Replying to post 62 by bluethread]

In your third paragraph there is mention of el yehudia being abandoned and left to scavengers. It is also given a nick name Jew-Town.

The site discovered in 1805, led to some interesting discoveries. Namely the pottery style and the fortification were distinctly not Egyptian. There seemed to be some semetic influences as well. These influences turns out came from the Hyksos a group of Baal worshipping Canaanites who conquered Egypt and headed the 17th dynasty. The el yehudia site was a likely a fortification they once held. Aside from the pottery and walls there really wasn't much else to the site.

It just fits the narrative that is being presented in the quote because of the nickname that is simply not accurate as no Jews ever lived there just Baal worshipping Hyksos. Nor were they slaves, but conquerers...

As to the first paragraph there is an Asian Levant theory for the semetic languages:

Some geneticists and archaeologists have argued for a back migration of proto-Afroasiatic speakers from Southwestern Asia to Africa as early as 10,000 BC. The Natufians might have spoken a proto-Afroasiatic language just prior to its disintegration into sub-languages.[4][5] The hypothesis is supported by the Afroasiatic terms for early livestock and crops in both Anatolia and Iran.[6] Recent Bayesian analysis identified an origin for Proto-Semitic language in the Levant around 3750 BC, with a later single introduction from what is now Southern Arabia into the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia) around 800 BC.[7]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Semitic_language

This however does not really coincide with an exodus nor does the statements of Petrie or Breasted. It would not be strange for neighboring civilizations to have cultural influence upon each other. Enculturation is a natural process when cultures mix. This does not mean there was an exodus nor is encluturation an exodus. The Hyksos dynasty in Egypt is one such example.[/quote]

[bluethread]

[Replying to post 62 by bluethread]

In your third paragraph there is mention of el yehudia being abandoned and left to scavengers. It is also given a nick name Jew-Town.

The site discovered in 1805, led to some interesting discoveries. Namely the pottery style and the fortification were distinctly not Egyptian. There seemed to be some semetic influences as well. These influences turns out came from the Hyksos a group of Baal worshipping Canaanites who conquered Egypt and headed the 17th dynasty. The el yehudia site was a likely a fortification they once held. Aside from the pottery and walls there really wasn't much else to the site.

It just fits the narrative that is being presented in the quote because of the nickname that is simply not accurate as no Jews ever lived there just Baal worshipping Hyksos. Nor were they slaves, but conquerers...

I did not post the quote based on the "jew-town" reference. It just happens to be the name given to the site. Avaris, mentioned late in that paragragh, is the site referenced by the movie, because it was discovered beneath a "Ramesses" site. The reason I presented those quotes is to show that archeology is not immune to presumptive bias, preference for the grandiose, knee jerk opposition to a theory. As I have said before, I have no intention of proving the details of the Torah account. Again, proving details related to ancient literature is a fool's errand. Most archeological discoveries are by happenstance. One can get some general clues, but even with regard to the powerful who wished to be remembered, the artifacts are relatively few and far between. As the article points out, it is even worse with regard to general populations. There is little incentive to take such things seriously, especially if they do not line up with one's preferred narrative.

[Willum]

[Replying to post 52 by bluethread]

In this I am glad we agree - dismiss mythical peoples and magical horses out of hand due to a lack of evidence, and unlike unicorns, a lack of possibility.

There is simply no longer any place or time in history that you could find dis-enfranchised Hebrews.

And if you pause to consider the possibility of the people of the Exodus, realistically, could such people exist?

Tell me about them in a way that does not make their lifestyle like that of a unicorn...

[DanieltheDragon]

[Replying to post 62 by bluethread]

In your third paragraph there is mention of el yehudia being abandoned and left to scavengers. It is also given a nick name Jew-Town.

The site discovered in 1805, led to some interesting discoveries. Namely the pottery style and the fortification were distinctly not Egyptian. There seemed to be some semetic influences as well. These influences turns out came from the Hyksos a group of Baal worshipping Canaanites who conquered Egypt and headed the 17th dynasty. The el yehudia site was a likely a fortification they once held. Aside from the pottery and walls there really wasn't much else to the site.

It just fits the narrative that is being presented in the quote because of the nickname that is simply not accurate as no Jews ever lived there just Baal worshipping Hyksos. Nor were they slaves, but conquerers...

I did not post the quote based on the "jew-town" reference. It just happens to be the name given to the site. Avaris, mentioned late in that paragragh, is the site referenced by the movie, because it was discovered beneath a "Ramesses" site. The reason I presented those quotes is to show that archeology is not immune to presumptive bias, preference for the grandiose, knee jerk opposition to a theory. As I have said before, I have no intention of proving the details of the Torah account. Again, proving details related to ancient literature is a fool's errand. Most archeological discoveries are by happenstance. One can get some general clues, but even with regard to the powerful who wished to be remembered, the artifacts are relatively few and far between. As the article points out, it is even worse with regard to general populations. There is little incentive to take such things seriously, especially if they do not line up with one's preferred narrative.

Archealogy is more than just happenstance(there is a process related to help find dig sites and it's not based on dumb luck) and we have more artifacts of non famous people than we do of famous people. Of course no one goes to museums to look at broken pieces of ancient pottery. No one is immune to bias but the sciences do their best to limit bias. I often hear this throw out the baby with the bath water quote but it is simply just not true. Especially with regard to archeological subjects related to Israel considering much of the archeologists in the area are either Muslim or Jewish all of whom have a vested interest in finding evidence for the exodus and other religious events.

If there is a bias it is most certainly not with the secular perspective.

[DanieltheDragon]

[Replying to post 62 by bluethread]

The reason I presented those quotes is to show that archeology is not immune to presumptive bias, preference for the grandiose, knee jerk opposition to a theory.

I don't see how how those quotes prove this assertion. Bias I will grant is hard to remove from anything, but a preference to the grandiose? Knee jerk opposition?
The article you quoted from is written by a man with a clear bias(Samuel Kurinsky) who while passionate about Jewish Hisyory has no credentials to be found and is at best no more authoritative about Archealogy than you or me.

I take his words with a grain of salt. He presents a common tack in apology, don't trust the experts because their biased against my beliefs, trust me because we share a belief.

Why not simply look to the evidence and see where it points?

[DanieltheDragon]

[Replying to post 64 by bluethread]

I knew Avaris sounded familiar, and why I find movies and articles you presented to be especially deceptive and target believers such as yourself.

Avaris is the capital city of which Egyptian dynasty? Yup you guessed it the aforementioned Hyksos those Baal worshipping Caananites.

These sites have actually been really well researched and that is the reason why they are not linked to semetic slaves or an exodus. Not from presumptive bias or knee jerk reactions. I think you might have been misled.

[Donray]

As the movie points out, if the Exodus is not true all the Christians lose all there belief system. Therefore they look at the smallest thing that supports their belief and make up history that does not exist.

Example, from http://www.hebrewhistory.info/factpaper ... _egypt.htm

Egypt's Prehistoric Period
The area west of the Nile (the Libyan and Nubian deserts) was periodically habitable during the Pluvial period.

The Pluvial period was made up by the fiction writer HG Wells: http://etc.usf.edu/maps/pages/3500/3595/3595.htm


Thus the whole thing http://www.hebrewhistory.info/factpaper ... _egypt.htm must be suspect when they don't even know that the Pluvial period was made up. The Mediterranean is 5 million years old not 15,000 like HG Wells thought.

So, can bluethread prove that HG Well 1929 book is fact? I like how you don't check things out yourself.