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?

[1213]

[Replying to 1213 in post #116]

But at the end of the day, all you can say is 'There is no evidence'. At best this means we have only the claim. ...

Do we have a time in Egyptian history when they didn't write any history?

[1213]

Do we have any? If so, what exactly? So far, you told me to read a book, with NO follow up. So, all we have is the claim. If this is all we need, then make sure you buy every claim ever placed before you.

Please remember the claim includes millions of Jews occupying an area for a long time. And yet, leave no trace?

If the story is true, many Egyptians died. How would dead Egyptians write about the events? If we would have writings of dead Egyptians, wouldn't it actually discredit the Bible?

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to 1213 in post #116]

But at the end of the day, all you can say is 'There is no evidence'. At best this means we have only the claim. ...

Do we have a time in Egyptian history when they didn't write any history?

Only before writing, really. And (like Sumer) heiroglyphs appear to be used to note amounts of produce for tax purposes and gradually began to have abstract meanings. Obviously I can't do a graph of how much writing we have. Even during the intermediate periods (collapse of power) there were records and inscriptions. So even aside that Joseph (riding in a Chariot) HAS to date after the Hyksos when the Egyptians adopted the Chariot, there is no time when Egypt did so little record - keeping that one can claim that the enslavement of an entire demographically identifiable tribal state could pass without comment.

I have pointed out the one time when an Exodus could have really happened in Egyptian history. If there was a time an enslaved Hebrew nation could have slipped under the radar, I would tell you.

Do we have any? If so, what exactly? So far, you told me to read a book, with NO follow up. So, all we have is the claim. If this is all we need, then make sure you buy every claim ever placed before you.

Please remember the claim includes millions of Jews occupying an area for a long time. And yet, leave no trace?

If the story is true, many Egyptians died. How would dead Egyptians write about the events? If we would have writings of dead Egyptians, wouldn't it actually discredit the Bible?

Don't be silly. Many Egyptians (supposedly) died in a smiting of First borns and the Chariot wing of the army being drowned. That leaves all the scribes and officials to write about it. The excuse is that the Egyptians covered it up. But that only means there is no evidence for it. They also hypocritically point to stuff like the tempest stele or the plague papyrus or whatever as evidence that the surviving Egyptians complained loudly about what happened.

This is what Faithbased argument does - it does not care about evidence, reasoned argument or getting at the truth, but twisting and manipulating reason and evidence to prop up the faith (while projecting their bias onto the other side). This why Biblical archaeology is a fraud and a sham and should be banned from doing archaeology or at least closely supervised to stop them falsifying the results.

[POI]

Do we have any? If so, what exactly? So far, you told me to read a book, with NO follow up. So, all we have is the claim. If this is all we need, then make sure you buy every claim ever placed before you.

Please remember the claim includes millions of Jews occupying an area for a long time. And yet, leave no trace?

If the story is true, many Egyptians died. How would dead Egyptians write about the events? If we would have writings of dead Egyptians, wouldn't it actually discredit the Bible?

Repeat: No evidence of something, other than a story in an old book, means that we must believe it until there is conclusive proof that it didn't happen.

[TRANSPONDER]

Do we have any? If so, what exactly? So far, you told me to read a book, with NO follow up. So, all we have is the claim. If this is all we need, then make sure you buy every claim ever placed before you.

Please remember the claim includes millions of Jews occupying an area for a long time. And yet, leave no trace?

If the story is true, many Egyptians died. How would dead Egyptians write about the events? If we would have writings of dead Egyptians, wouldn't it actually discredit the Bible?

Repeat: No evidence of something, other than a story in an old book, means that we must believe it until there is conclusive proof that it didn't happen.

That is what it comes down to - trusting the Bible. And we know that some of it is just wrong, other things dubious mythological (the origins of the various nations like Edom and Moab as unfranchised sons of Lot, fit only to be slaves of the Israelites) and the debunked claims of prophecy must mean that the Exodus is dodgy even before we get to anachronisms, borrowings from Babylon and magical elements.

Why should any rational person credit that old tale, without any really decent evidence for it. I know the Semitic element is claimed but this the tail wagging the dog - the Semitic Canaanites ended up influencing the Israelites, they were not actually the 'enslaved' Israelites. So all the semitic slave names, proto Hebrew script, Canaanite architecture and even striped Hyksos robes (the Semites arriving in Egypt in the wallpainting have striped robes, too) are Faithbsed wangling of the evidence to fit Biblefaith, but really is not valid evidence for an Exodus, not without Biblical bias.

Our pal, site owner and boss of mods otseng drew to my attention some biased Biblical boko trying to pass off a Hyksos cylinder - seal as depicting the tribes of Israel. Apart from it being unlikely that a Hebrew minority in Hyksos Goshen already had tribes with symbols, they take a bit of fiddling to get all the symbols to fit, such as decor (like wavy underlining, seen in other cylinder seals, is not going to work as 'water' being a symbol of Reuben or Manasseh or whatever. The lion of Judah might work, but after that it's a struggle, and Bible archaeology fails to make a case yet again.

Biblical apologetics is not valid archaeology or historical discussion, but Faithbased fiddling to try to make an old book of tall tales look like the religious cult is right and not deluded.

[1213]

...That leaves all the scribes and officials to write about it.....

Does it, have we any evidence for that?

[TRANSPONDER]

...That leaves all the scribes and officials to write about it.....

Does it, have we any evidence for that?

Of course. There are many papyri from all periods, mummies of scribes and officials, dedicated statues of scribes and officials. They were a regular and attested feature of Egyptian life, through all kingdoms and intermediate periods. I think POI said the Egyptians were meticulous record -keepers. That is characteristic of ancient Egypt as much as any ancient civilisation, or more so. If they had to control, administer and record an enslaved nation like the Hebrews, we would have had some kind of record. We have records of Nubian captives, Libyan captives, Syrian captives, Even records of Sherdana as military personnel before they were part of the Sea Peoples invasion. We know about many rather minor peoples administered as part of Egypt as slaves, client kingdoms, hirelings or officials. There is nothing that even looks like an enslaved nation of Hebrews., The first mention appears to be the 19th dynasty stele recording a campaign in Canaan.

This fits nicely with Finkelstein's study that suggests that Israel was a tribe in the northeast mountains, one of a group of Amorite - speakers and they only moved into Canaan after the Bronze age collapse had devastated the City - kingdoms.

There seems every indication that the Exodus was bade up and the origins of the Israelites were quite different from the Biblical story.

[POI]

Placing this topic back on top.... There has been Christian responses, but no substance. Below are the two debate questions again:

1. Outside the Bible saying so, do we have evidence? If so, what? [So far, the silence is deafening. We are attempting to discuss a claim which would involve/include millions, over 100's of year.]

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? [Well, likely not, since we have "minimal facts" Christians, and/or others who may also chalk up "the Exodus" claim to intentional myth, and/or others who chose to remain 'agnostic' since there is no evidence in support of the claim (which essentially means -- it may be true until you can prove it's false, because the claim is in the Bible so we at least have to consider it), and maybe some others... -- But the Christian can still just say it cannot be proven false simply because there is no evidence to support the claim.]

[1213]

... POI said the Egyptians were meticulous record -keepers. That is characteristic of ancient Egypt as much as any ancient civilisation, or more so....

Unfortunately I have not seen any evidence for that to be true.

[TRANSPONDER]

... POI said the Egyptians were meticulous record -keepers. That is characteristic of ancient Egypt as much as any ancient civilisation, or more so....

Unfortunately I have not seen any evidence for that to be true.

If you had bothered to look you would have sees it was so. They kept records of papyri on all aspects of Egyptian life and even more on death. And the conditions mean that they get preserved too. Of course this isn't true of the Delta so you could argue the Hebrews were there but really, they were never used in upper Egypt as well? It is at least No good evidence for enslaved Hebrews en masse. I had otseng bring to my attention some Semitic slaves with Hebrew - sounding names, but they might as well have been Canaanite.

On top of this, the historical conditions for the Exodus are tricky. Someone mentioned 'Two Windows' but I can only see one. However we are quite familiar with denial of evidence (even negative evidence) by people who do not know the evidence and do not want to. We have seen a bit of that on the evolution debate just about now. Same objection 'I do not see it'. It's why we call it 'Blind Faith'.