No, I am talking about real evidence that come in 2 forms:
- Physical evidence of archaeological site or object that can be dated to certain time or period.
- Physical evidence of the texts - literary evidence like inscribed stone or clay tablets, or extant manuscript or scrolls made of parchment or papyri, etc - literary evidence that can be dated to certain time or period.
Do you know why archaeologists, historians and philologists/translators know so much about the ancient Egyptians and ancient Assyrians/Babylonians, of their respective histories?
Many of the literary evidence survived and can be translated today, about their rulers, not just in tombs or other structural buildings (archive, palaces, temples, etc) that they have constructed, "contemporary", but also found written on walls, stone stelae, on clay tablets, on papyri codices or scrolls, etc.
In Egypt, many of the things we know about Egyptian kings, are found on written on stone stelae, that commemorated each king's achievements, including victories against their enemies, such as the Nubians, Libyans, Hittites, Syrians, Canaanites, etc. For instance, the earliest mention of "Israel", inscribed on the Merneptah Stele, at Thebes; Merneptah (1213 - 1203 BCE) was son and successor of Ramesses II (1279 - 1213 BCE).
Do you know what is the oldest "biblical" text ever discovered?
It contained a passage from Numbers 6:24-26 (the Priestly Blessings, found inscribe in paleo-Hebrew inscriptions, the 2nd (KH2) of two very small sheets of silver rolled up that would have been wore as amulet, hence it was known as the Silver Scrolls.
The Silver Scrolls were discovered in 1979, at one of the caves at Ketef Hinnom (Cave 25), Jerusalem, caves that were used between 650 and 588 BCE, as burial chambers. There are many artifacts, but it is the Ketef Hinnom scrolls that hold the most value as it is the oldest evidence.
The amulet or scrolls themselves have been dated between 620 & 590 BCE.
So far, there are nothing older than these 2 sheets of silver.
The Dead Sea Scrolls for example, discovered in 1946, contained many scrolls in the Qumran caves, the oldest scrolls were the mid-4th century BCE, eg the Great Isaiah Scroll (356 BCE to be more precise).
The question for me with regards to the Ketef Hinnom scrolls, was the Priestly Blessing (Numbers 6:23-27) just originally independent of the book of Numbers?
There are nothing older than the Ketef Hinnom scrolls.
We may one day find something older than those scrolls, but certainly nothing exist in the Bronze Age.
Beside that, in Bronze Age Canaan, particularly in the 2nd millennium BCE, they tends to write on clay tablets, using cuneiform characters, not alphabets until the 12th or 11th century BCE. Although there are some Egyptian hieroglyphs and hieratic texts found in some correspondents with Egyptian garrisons in Canaan, Canaanite people in the early to mid-2nd millennium BCE, wrote mainly cuneiform, like the people from Mesopotamia.
If, hypothetically the Exodus (and other books ascribed to Moses) was written in the mid-2nd millennium BCE, would it be in Canaanite cuneiform or Egyptian hieratic or hieroglyphs? In what writing system would Ten Commandment originally written in (hypothetically)?
It certainly wouldn't be in paleo-Hebrew alphabets, as the alphabets weren't invented yet.
