Was the Exodus fictional?

[polonius]

Is the Old testament fictional regarding the Exodus story?

1. The story begins with Joseph, his faather and his brothers.

2. The Hebrews were supposedly in Egypt for about 400 years.

3. At the time of the Exodus they numbered about 2.4 million, computed from the number of 600 Hebrew soldiers, their wives, children, and men too old or to young to fight.

So evidently Joesph and his brothers were overwhelmed with procreating!

4. And in spite of the number of Hebrews and all the time spent in Egypt, as one archeologisgt put it, they didn't even leave any broken pottery. In short, nothing that showed that 2.4 million had been there.

5. And to make matters worse, Moses l
led them into Canann, a Egyptian terrirtory at that time.

Don't we just love bible stories

[Difflugia]

Since I still don't know what Willum meant, I'll continue the discussion in the context of Old Testament minimalism. If you're interested in reading a good treatment of the subject by Thomas L. Thompson, The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology And The Myth Of Israel is available to be borrowed from Internet Archive's Open Library.

Wasn't Moses' time in the 1550s BCE +-?

This is admittedly oversimplified, but minimalism in a nutshell is that all of the Old Testament that takes place prior to the Babylonian Exile is fiction. Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Moses, David, Solomon, the United Monarchy, divided Israel and Judah, and even details of the Exile itself are all literary creations that were written as a backstory to support a Jewish theocratic government installed by the Achaemenid Empire (whose kings Cyrus and Darius figure prominently into the latter portion of the Old Testament). In this view, the temple of Solomon was never built, so the so-called "Second Temple" of the Persian period was actually the first (and thus far only) temple. The "first Jews" are that population.

Minimalists claim that prior to colonization by settlers sent by the Persians, the inhabitants of Israel and Judea were what was left of the old Canaanite civilization. Though the civilization was gone, the remaining populations still worshipped the Canaanite pantheon (El, Baal, Astarte).

What is generally considered the opposite view (and sometimes labeled "maximalism") is that of William F. Dever. I find his books dry and hard to read, but he's a dynamic and engaging speaker and lecturer. A YouTube search will find several hours of Dever speaking.

William Dever still doesn't think the Exodus was historical, but Richard Elliott Friedman's take on it is novel and fascinating. In short, the Exodus was a real event with a real Moses, but rather than all of Israel escaping Egypt, it was just the Levites, who then integrated with and united the established Canaanite populations to form Israel.

Pharaoh Seqenere Tao who had sons Amose, Kahmose and Tamose(Tamuzz)? Tamose being the one who was killed by the angel of death passover night. Thus starting the Tears for Tamuzz pagan festival which Lent is based off of? The Hyksos people were descendants of Japhaet who became the place guard and "special forces" of pharaoh. They took over Egypt for a time after Pharaoh 's army was destroyed. The Hyksos period.

I've never seen or heard Egyptian history tied to the Exodus by this detail and Google didn't turn anything up for me. Do you have a link to a source for this?

My understanding is that Tammuz from Ezekiel 8:14 ("...there sat women weeping for Tammuz") is a reference to the Sumerian Dumuzid.

[brianbbs67]

Pharaoh Seqenere Tao who had sons Amose, Kahmose and Tamose(Tamuzz)? Tamose being the one who was killed by the angel of death passover night. Thus starting the Tears for Tamuzz pagan festival which Lent is based off of? The Hyksos people were descendants of Japhaet who became the place guard and "special forces" of pharaoh. They took over Egypt for a time after Pharaoh 's army was destroyed. The Hyksos period.

I've never seen or heard Egyptian history tied to the Exodus by this detail and Google didn't turn anything up for me. Do you have a link to a source for this?

My understanding is that Tammuz from Ezekiel 8:14 ("...there sat women weeping for Tammuz") is a reference to the Sumerian Dumuzid.

I am not sure 100% how accurate that thought is. I came across it researching genealogy. I actually was able to trace a friend's genealogy to Adam.(same pedigree the royals claim, so who knows how valid). He was descended from Phenius Pharsee. The legendary Egyptian who helped the Israelites escape. This brought in the Hyksos. Who later were politly forced out of Egypt to Scythia and Crete. Scythia was the land of the Minoans. They were decimated by an earth quake and a tsunami. This was curiously close to when the Red Sea parted(as dated by some). Yeah, I know, lots of coincidence but it is strange coincidence it all happened in a short period.

So, I have wondered ever since if Seqenere Tao was Pharaoh in Moses' time.

[Tcg]

I am not sure 100% how accurate that thought is. I came across it researching genealogy. I actually was able to trace a friend's genealogy to Adam

Please provide the details of how you were to accomplish this amazing task. Of course, if the Genesis myth is factual, it's not much of a claim to fame.


Tcg

[Willum]

[Replying to post 19 by Difflugia]

Made up?
I made up the Seleucid Empire?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seleucid_Empire

At what time? First century BCE? Sixth Century? Eighth century?

Well, here you may check the Bible. You can go ahead and say when the Hebrew became "Jews."
And if the term should ever be applied in a Biblical context... so many Jews consider Bible false these days...

[Willum]

[Replying to post 19 by Difflugia]

Made up?
I made up the Seleucid Empire?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seleucid_Empire

At what time? First century BCE? Sixth Century? Eighth century?

Well, here you may check the Bible. You can go ahead and say when the Hebrew became "Jews."
And if the term should ever be applied in a Biblical context... so many Jews consider Bible false these days...

[Difflugia]

Made up?
I made up the Seleucid Empire?

No, of course not. Your statement was this:

Israel began with Pompei overthrowing the Seleucid Empire and installing the then-puppet Pharisee in place of the pagan/Ba'El worshiping Sadducee.

The parts that I think are wrong are "Israel began with" and "pagan/Ba'El worshipping Sadducee[s]."

Perhaps "made up" was a poor choice on my part, so I'll rephrase the question. Do you think the quoted statement is true and if so, what is your justification?

At what time? First century BCE? Sixth Century? Eighth century?

Well, here you may check the Bible.

I know what the Bible says, but not what you mean. You said that "there were no Jews at that time." Since I had previously mentioned three distinct time periods, I don't know which one "at that time" refers to. Which period did you mean by "at that time?"

You can go ahead and say when the Hebrew became "Jews."

I was asking you what you meant, but OK. The Hebrew word "Yehudi" ("יְהוּדִֽי׃") is rendered as "Ἰουδαῖος" in the Septuagint and carried to the New Testament. In English, this is "Jew." The books of Jeremiah, Ezra. and Nehemiah use the term for those living in Jerusalem before and after the Exile. What I consider reasonable assumptions about biblical historicity put "Jew" in use as a self-description sometime around 600 BCE.

If we say that the whole thing was fabricated to justify the Second Temple, then it was sometime prior to 516 BCE when the Temple was actially built. This is the latest reasonable date that I would consider justified by the scholarship I'm aware of.

Variations of Ezra containing "Jew" were translated for the Septuagint around 400 BCE. I would consider this to be a reasonable terminus ad quem from textual evidence, but I've read arguments (bad ones, but still...) that the Septuagint was fabricated by early Christians as late as the first century AD.

4QEzra from Qumran dates to the middle of the first century BCE. This is, I believe, the earliest extant scrap of papyrus containing the word "Jew." This would be a literal terminus ad quem. It's possible that there are older references in the extrabiblical Qumran texts, but I'm not looking.

When do you date the first people to call themselves Jews?

And if the term should ever be applied in a Biblical context... so many Jews consider Bible false these days...

I'll keep that in mind.

[polonius]

There never was a Hebrew presence in Egypt. They existed as a nomadic people in Caranna I'm afraid the Exodus is folklore. Look it up especially in the publications of Tel Aviv University.

On line you might enjoy the "Bible Unearthed" Watch the hour version. Or better yet get the book from your library.

[Tcg]

I am not sure 100% how accurate that thought is. I came across it researching genealogy. I actually was able to trace a friend's genealogy to Adam

Please provide the details of how you were to accomplish this amazing task. Of course, if the Genesis myth is factual, it's not much of a claim to fame.

Tcg

brianbbs67 must have overlooked my query, so I'll repeat it.

How did you trace your friend's genealogy back to Adam?


Tcg

[onewithhim]

Is the Old testament fictional regarding the Exodus story?

1. The story begins with Joseph, his faather and his brothers.

2. The Hebrews were supposedly in Egypt for about 400 years.

3. At the time of the Exodus they numbered about 2.4 million, computed from the number of 600 Hebrew soldiers, their wives, children, and men too old or to young to fight.

So evidently Joesph and his brothers were overwhelmed with procreating!

4. And in spite of the number of Hebrews and all the time spent in Egypt, as one archeologisgt put it, they didn't even leave any broken pottery. In short, nothing that showed that 2.4 million had been there.

5. And to make matters worse, Moses l
led them into Canann, a Egyptian terrirtory at that time.

Don't we just love bible stories

Yes, we just do love those stories.

Some even love to call them fiction.

But no one so far on this thread, has actually proven their claim.

Grace and peace.

Yes, people talk of the Exodus as fictional, but no one can say with absolute confidence that it never happened. I have seen documentaries showing the places that Israel lived in Goshen, and how structures are left that clearly bear distinctive characteristics of Hebrew building practices. I have also heard that satellite views have picked up evidence of a great number of people moving through the desert in Arabia. There are also pieces of chariots and bones in the Gulf of Aqaba where the Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea. There is more evidence for the Exodus than against it.

[Difflugia]

Yes, people talk of the Exodus as fictional, but no one can say with absolute confidence that it never happened.

They can and do. The Exodus, as described in the Bible, didn't happen. Full stop. While there are authors that will claim that there is an actual event behind the biblical Exodus story, any such event is always much modified.

From The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein (pp. 61-63):

According to the biblical account, the children of Israel wandered in the desert and mountains of the Sinai peninsula, moving around and camping in different places, for a full forty years. Even if the number of fleeing Israelites (given in the text as six hundred thousand) is wildly exaggerated or can be interpreted as representing smaller units of people, the text describes the survival of a great number of people under the most challenging conditions. Some archaeological traces of their generation-long wandering in the Sinai should be apparent. However, except for the Egyptian forts along the northern coast, not a single campsite or sign of occupation from the time of Ramesses II and his immediate predecessors and successors has ever been identified in Sinai. And it has not been for lack of trying. Repeated archaeological surveys in all regions of the peninsula, including the mountainous area around the traditional site of Mount Sinai, near Saint Catherine’s Monastery (see Appendix B), have yielded only negative evidence: not even a single sherd, no structure, not a single house, no trace of an ancient encampment. One may argue that a relatively small band of wandering Israelites cannot be expected to leave material remains behind. But modern archaeological techniques are quite capable of tracing even the very meager remains of hunter-gatherers and pastoral nomads all over the world. Indeed, the archaeological record from the Sinai peninsula discloses evidence for pastoral activity in such eras as the third millennium BCE and the Hellenistic and Byzantine periods. There is simply no such evidence at the supposed time of the Exodus in the thirteenth century BCE.

Richard Elliott Friedman wrote a book to claim that the Exodus happened. Even so, he acknowledges that it cannot match the biblical description. From chapter 2 ("A Smaller Exodus?"; my ebook doesn't have page numbers and Google doesn't show this page) of The Exodus:

The principal points that people generally bring up in doubting the exodus are mostly about numbers: We have found no remnant of the two million people in the Sinai region. We have found no widespread material culture of Egypt in early Israel: no Egyptian style pottery or architecture. We have found no records in Egypt of a huge mass of Israelite slaves or of a huge exodus.

True. But none of this is evidence about whether the exodus happened or not. It is evidence only of whether it was big or not. For heaven’s sake, did we need archaeological work to confirm that an exodus of two million people was, shall we say, problematic? It had already been calculated long ago that if the people were marching, say, eight across, then when the first ones got to Mount Sinai, half of the people were still in Egypt. And I think it was Bishop Colenso who calculated around 150 years ago the amount of, let us say delicately, residue that that many people would have deposited in the Sinai over a period of forty years, and he figured that the Sinai wilderness should be fertile! Did we really need archaeologists combing the Sinai and not finding anything to prove what we knew anyway? The absence of exodus and wilderness artifacts questions only whether there was a massive exodus.

Not only do we not have evidence of a large Exodus, Friedman is saying, but it's so implausible that it would be silly to even expect such evidence.

William Dever in Beyond the Texts: An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah, p. 124:

The biblical portrait of Sinai and Transjordan at the time of any exodus (now clearly thirteenth century) is unrealistic. Apart from a few possible memories in oral tradition, the writers are obviously viewing the region from their point of view in the seventh century or later. Again, the biblical texts are a secondary source; archaeology, the primary source, is largely silent. To be sure, recent studies by archaeologists (as well as most biblical scholars) have suggested that behind these stories there may be authentic memories of a small “exodus group,� essentially the two southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Sometimes designated significantly “the house of Joseph,� these groups were the principal authors of the traditions as we now have them. Not surprisingly, they included in their story of self-identity all Israel. But as far as we know archaeologically, the ancestors of most Israelites and Judeans had never been in Egypt. The biblical narrative of the exodus is best understood, therefore, as metaphorically true: a story in cultural memory of Yahweh’s superiority to the pharaoh and the gods of Egypt, a story of liberation and manifest destiny.

I have seen documentaries showing the places that Israel lived in Goshen, and how structures are left that clearly bear distinctive characteristics of Hebrew building practices. I have also heard that satellite views have picked up evidence of a great number of people moving through the desert in Arabia. There are also pieces of chariots and bones in the Gulf of Aqaba where the Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea. There is more evidence for the Exodus than against it.

While I don't doubt that apologists have produced documentaries to claim these things (and I've seen some of them, in fact), modern archaeologists don't seem to know about the evidence they claim. If you can find documentation of a specific claim, we can examine it, but I'll otherwise expect that the documentaries are at best relying heavily on conjecture.