Does anyone think there was a great deliverance of the Hebrews from Egyptian captivity?
by humbled 50 Replies latest watchtower bible
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MrFreeze
No, the only evidence of it is in the Bible. The Egyptians have no record of it. The surrounding nations have no record of a large tribe of a million or so nomads wandering throug the wilderness. There is no physical evidence that there was a large amount of people wandering through the desert. In fact, there is no evidence that the Egyptians even held the nation of Israel as slaves. There you go, Exodus debunked, Bible thrown into question.
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Black Sheep
Sure. Heaps of people. I'm not one of them.
I've never seen any secular, or archaelogical evidence to support the Bible's version of this great series of events . These people are supposed to have spent 40 years wandering in the desert and nobody has found so much as a broken pot that they might have tossed out. It's as real as Jehovah living in the Pleades.
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humbled
(Sorry--I started so rough.)
Well, the post title says it--I mean the long ago deliverance that was supposedly the real launch of their national identity.
Do you think they escaped all together? Why is it a central observance for faithful Jews to commemorate?
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Finkelstein
I think the story could hold some truth for the Egyptians were noted in going out to foreign lands capturing slaves to help in building of the
Pyramids for their Pharaohs..
If they captured people from the land of Canaan (Canaanites) and brought them to Egypt and eventually release them.
Upon their release they may have wondered onto lands which were foreign to them and since they spent some time within the Egyptian culture
they observed that culture focused more toward on to one single king/demigod the Pharaohs. From this perhaps they moved over to practice
monotheism from polytheism, which they practiced when they were in Canaan.
Just my surmising thats all.
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humbled
Do you think that any part is true?
I personally find oral traditions very interesting. Like flood stories--something happened.
That a huge group of people ritualisticly observe a date that was of national significance that they learned from father to son rather than from a priest--well I find it hard to dismiss.
Like the Jews fight not to have the Holocaust forgotten. It takes tremendous human memory to carry even a great event forward. I tend to think there is something to the Jews getting out of captivity.
But I'm wondering about any one else--thanks for the input.
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humbled
Yea, Fink, I think something must have happened.
It is hard to believe that somehow a bunch of people that disagreed about SO MUCH suddenly got it together for a national passover.
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humbled
I won't get to follow up or read any comments til I get back from my cancer treatment
tomorrow morning. It's my first day.
Orientation, Chemo and then radiation in the afternoon.
I know this info is off topic, kinda, but just because I won't get to follow up on stuff oesn't mean I just threw this out and walked away. I look forward to some thought-provoking comments.
G'night.
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Pterist
Now, the historical value of the Exodus story has fascinated scholars, but also lay people, for generations. Could the Exodus really have happened? And if so, when? And does it matter? And is there any evidence for this story, for example, in external sources, outside the Bible? Well, no, there isn't any direct evidence outside the Bible, but let's start at the beginning. We do have a victory hymn, a victory hymn that's inscribed on a stele — that's a slab of stone — which was erected in the year 1204 BCE. It was erected by a pharaoh, Pharaoh Merneptah. So the stele of Merneptah dates to about 1204, and in this victory hymn he's boasting of his victory over various groups in Canaan, and one of the groups he claims to have defeated is Israel. Now, this is a fabulously important inscription, because it's the earliest known reference outside the Bible to any person or entity that is mentioned in the Bible, and it suggests that a people known as Israel was indeed in the land of Canaan by the end of the thirteenth century BCE. Whether they arrived there after an exodus from Egypt is not of course indicated. The source doesn't tell us that, and in fact there's really no archeological evidence of a group, a large group, entering the land of Canaan at this time. There's a steady cultural continuum, not evidence of destruction as we would expect for a big invasion.
Course notes from Yale University...
http://oyc.yale.edu/transcript/949/rlst-145
http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-145/lecture-7#transcript
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jam
What,s wrong with this picture? By back-dating from the
foundation of Solomon,s Temple 968 BCE, the exodus took
place around 1552 BCE.
We have archaeological evidence when the Giza Pyramids were
completed, it took 30 years to complete, 2580 BCE.
Who built the pyramids, Egyptians built the pyramids without
enslaveing an entire nation. LOL