Biblical Exodus Out of Egypt

[Ringer]

Is there any evidence to support that a massive exodus took place out Egypt that the Bible tells of? If not, how will that affect the way I'm eating my peppered beef jerky?

 

[Storm]

AFAIK, what archaeological evidence there is discredits the traditional story of Exodus.

For instance, the Egyptians did not build their wondrous monuments on the backs of slaves. Rather, they had an entire class of fairly well-off and expert workers.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Is there any evidence to support that a massive exodus took place out Egypt that the Bible tells of?

AFIAK, the only evidence is the Biblical account. All the archaeological evidence I've heard of is either silent on the matter or indicates that the Exodus didn't happen.

If not, how will that affect the way I'm eating my peppered beef jerky?

I don't know about you, but it might lead some people to wonder whether they might want to sprinkle some cheese on that jerky.

For instance, the Egyptians did not build their wondrous monuments on the backs of slaves. Rather, they had an entire class of fairly well-off and expert workers.

Indeed. And farmers would work for the Pharoah in the months their fields were flooded as their way of paying tax.

 

[Phasmid]

Ancient Egyptians - better than us since... way back.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Is there any evidence to support that a massive exodus took place out Egypt that the Bible tells of? If not, how will that affect the way I'm eating my peppered beef jerky?

Put it this way: it's easier to twist the historical and archaeological data to make an Exodus possible than it is to say that dinosaurs and humans co-existed 6,000 years ago.

Of more interest to me personally is the conquest of the Hebrews and the subsequent kingdoms. There is almost no archeological evidence for Jews living in the holy land in the Iron and Bronze Age. The Hebrews first come on the scene - with earlier traditions - with the Egyptian, Babylonian / Persian, and Greek conquests of what is now Palestine.

 

[Ringer]

So, would it be more logical to believe that:

• The exodus never took place?
• The exodus did take place but was greatly embellished?

If the story was greatly embellished I guess my question would be, why? I don't know why I've never really given the exodus much thought but I thought this was a huge deal for Jewish people even to this day. Is this really nothing more than a fabricated story or, at best, a huge embellishment?

 

[angellous_evangellous]

So, would it be more logical to believe that:

• The exodus never took place?
• The exodus did take place but was greatly embellished?

If the story was greatly embellished I guess my question would be, why? I don't know why I've never really given the exodus much thought but I thought this was a huge deal for Jewish people even to this day. Is this really nothing more than a fabricated story or, at best, a huge embellishment?

Like many other peoples, it is an extravagent story of the beginning of a people.

 

[Ringer]

Like many other peoples, it is an extravagent story of the beginning of a people.

Thanks...

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Ah, it's not so bad.

On the one hand, we can know that the Conquest of Palestines by the Hebrews was not a genocide. It's extreme, but some polemists attack Christianity for this...

On the other hand, Christians have to reach out by faith for a salvation history rather than rely on scholarly arguments.

 

[Storm]

So, would it be more logical to believe that:

• The exodus never took place?
• The exodus did take place but was greatly embellished?

Though I'm far from an expert, I lean to the former.

If the story was greatly embellished I guess my question would be, why? I don't know why I've never really given the exodus much thought but I thought this was a huge deal for Jewish people even to this day. Is this really nothing more than a fabricated story or, at best, a huge embellishment?

Virtually every ancient culture mythologized its origins and borrowed from other cultures.

 

[HipHopAvenger]

I think it could have been some big movement of people. And then as that information was going through time, changing and being enriched to the story from the Exodus. It seems to me quite normal.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Of more interest to me personally is the conquest of the Hebrews and the subsequent kingdoms. There is almost no archeological evidence for Jews living in the holy land in the Iron and Bronze Age. The Hebrews first come on the scene - with earlier traditions - with the Egyptian, Babylonian / Persian, and Greek conquests of what is now Palestine.

Just wondering: where did you get this from? Other sources I've read have indicated that the Jews were indigenous to the area.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Just wondering: where did you get this from? Other sources I've read have indicated that the Jews were indigenous to the area.

I didn't say that they weren't.

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

I have read that the Exodus story is likely a significant elaboration and mythologization of a smaller event- e.g. a slave revolt, which provides the historical kernel for what would be accounted for in the Torah.

 

[Kurt31416]

AFAIK, what archaeological evidence there is discredits the traditional story of Exodus.

For instance, the Egyptians did not build their wondrous monuments on the backs of slaves. Rather, they had an entire class of fairly well-off and expert workers.

The Hebrew doesn't say slaves.

 

[Kurt31416]

That the two monotheistic religions would therefore be at the same place and time is strong evidence that the story is essentially true.

 

[Kurt31416]

Put it this way: it's easier to twist the historical and archaeological data to make an Exodus possible than it is to say that dinosaurs and humans co-existed 6,000 years ago.

Of more interest to me personally is the conquest of the Hebrews and the subsequent kingdoms. There is almost no archeological evidence for Jews living in the holy land in the Iron and Bronze Age. The Hebrews first come on the scene - with earlier traditions - with the Egyptian, Babylonian / Persian, and Greek conquests of what is now Palestine.

False. They have a Hebrew alphabet from 900BCE carved on a wall, the first actual alphabet in history. The Samaritans genetically split from the Jews around 800 BCE. They are part of the lost tribes of Israel, destroyed by the Assyrians, like they always claimed. The Cohen gene in Jews is 3,400 years old.

The Jews may or may not have been there before 1200 BCE, but they had long been there by 900 BCE. Was David and Solomon's glory overestimated, well of course.

 

[Azakel]

Now Kurt where are your sources for your claims?

 

[Kurt31416]

Let's start with the Samaritans...​

Principal component analysis suggests a common
ancestry of Samaritan and Jewish patrilineages. Most of the former may be traced back to a common ancestor in
the paternally-inherited Jewish high priesthood (Cohanim) at the time of the Assyrian conquest of the kingdom of Israel.​

http://evolutsioon.ut.ee/publications/Shen2004.pdf

This is because the Hebrew Scriptures were codified by the Jewish community (the Masoretes) and declared fixed and correct, and since then have been preserved with painstaking care and nitpicking detail by each successive generation of scribes. The schism with the Samaritans predates this canonization, though, and the Samaritans themselves never went through one like it, so their version of the Torah is more significantly different from the Masoretic text, and moreover, there are many, many more versions of their text
The Samaritan Pentateuch

 

[Kurt31416]

In the 10th century B.C., in the hill country south of Jerusalem, a scribe carved his A B C's on a limestone boulder - actually, his aleph-beth-gimel's, for the string of letters appears to be an early rendering of the emergent Hebrew alphabet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/international/middleeast/09alphabet.html

Anything else I need to look up for you?