GoodAttention
Well-Known Member
Greek/Latin means Christian.
I am more than happy to rephrase.
If you think I am looking to uphold any literal reading of the scriptures you are grossly mistaken.
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Exodus Archeology Evidence
- Thread starter Mrpp
- Start date
Greek/Latin means Christian.
I am more than happy to rephrase.
If you think I am looking to uphold any literal reading of the scriptures you are grossly mistaken.
gnostic
The Lost One
You write of “Greek” and “Latin”, so I have assumed you were talking about the languages, and about the sources.
Then you should say what you mean, and say “Christian”.
Which btw, @shunyadragon isn’t a Christian. So he isn’t interpreting the Exodus in a Christian way.
You are making assumptions that he is a Christian. Are you?
GoodAttention
Well-Known Member
He knows what I mean, and if he didn't know I would clarify for him.
Unlike you who couldn't answer a direct question if your life depended on it.
Then you will have to explain your stoic objections to the documented evidence and the lack of evidence for confirming the Exosus and Joshua accounts as history. The Pentateuch was compiled after 600 BCE without provenance of source or authorship.
I would like to see direct questions related to the actual independent evidence documenting the historical account of Exodus and Joshua as recorded in the Pentateuch,
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There is no objective evidence to support any interpretation of history as recorded in Exodus and Joshua of the Pentateuch.
As far as the understanding of the Pentateuch concerning translation from the Hebrew and the provenance of the text I rely on independent academic sources. Actually the plan reading of the text is not hard to understand, I rely on the questions of independent archeological, historical, and geologic evidence for the Pentateuch as written to determine the historical accuracy and provenance of the text..
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That exemplifies my point. You don't know what you don't know while preaching in generalities without knowing what they mean. Let's start with the following:
Since I suspect that you have never bothered to study texts on the topic -- I can suggest a couple if you'd like -- let's compare your assertion with what one finds in the Wikipedia entry on the Book of Exodus.
It first notes:
The consensus of modern scholars is that the Pentateuch does not give an accurate account of the origins of the Israelites, who appear instead to have formed as an entity in the central highlands of Canaan in the late second millennium BCE (around the time of the Late Bronze Age collapse) from the indigenous Canaanite culture.[4][5][6]
It's not the best formulation but its does employ the term 'consensus', so let's not quibble and simply accept it as reasonably accurate.
Let's now focus on your "in the 6th century BCE" proclamation. Further on, the Wikipedia entry offers a far more informed and nuanced view:
Traditionally ascribed to Moses himself, modern scholars see its initial composition as a product of the Babylonian exile (6th century BCE), based on earlier written sources and oral traditions, with final revisions in the Persian post-exilic period (5th century BCE).[1][2]
and, later:
Jewish and Christian tradition viewed Moses as the author of Exodus and the entire Torah, but by the end of the 19th century the increasing awareness of discrepancies, inconsistencies, repetitions and other features of the Pentateuch had led scholars to abandon this idea.[20] In approximate round dates, the process which produced Exodus and the Pentateuch probably began around 600 BCE when existing oral and written traditions were brought together to form books recognizable as those we know, reaching their final form as unchangeable sacred texts around 400 BCE.[21]
Also worth scanning is:
One of the characterizations found in the book of Exodus is עֵרֶב רַב (erev rav), or mixed multitude. The same term might be legitimately applied to the people of the Yehud Medinata, the Province of Judah, established by Archaemenid Empire.
The effort to establish a reasonably problem-free client state would greatly benefit from forging a sense of common purpose
- predicated on a sense of peoplehood,
- informed by a thoughtfully redacted people's story.
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Slow down; you're trying too hard.
Please note ...
"There are nothing older than the Ketef Hinnom scrolls."
is not a rebuttal to"... what is your evidence that it was written in the 6th century BCE? So, for example, why not the 5th?"
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GoodAttention
Well-Known Member
To repeat myself again, I have never objected to any of the documented evidence within history, archaeology, etc etc.
I have only objected to "confirming the Exodud and Joshua accounts as literal history"
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Can you give me some examples?
GoodAttention
Well-Known Member
Keeping in mind "Names" can include titles and descriptions, I note significance with the following
Chapter 1
Joseph
Melech (King of Egypt)
Pharoah
Pitom
Ramesses
I've explained the significance of these in this thread.
Chapter 2-3
Levi
Mother (birth)
Mother (nurse)
Mother (foster)
Sister
Daughter
Reuel-Jethro
Gershom
I can direct message you if you are interested.
gnostic
The Lost One
@GoodAttention
What make me think that Genesis, Exodus, Numbers and Leviticus - books attributed to Moses - to be later compositions than the Middle and Late Bronze Age, are timelines in these books of Torah or of Pentateuch, that are out of order with timelines to history (people) and archaeology (people & place).
I have already have issues with the cities of Pithom (Egyptian Pi-Tem) and Rameses (Pi-Ramesses), as well as that of Exodus-Joshua in the order of Rameses & Jericho.
The real cities, Pi-Tem & Pi-Ramesses weren’t founded & constructed in the same time or period - early 16th century vs 13th century BCE, and 15th dynasty vs 19th dynasty. This makes think that whoever wrote Exodus, weren’t aware of these history of these 2 cities.
The Joshua (book) also have claim that Jericho had fallen to attack and left abandoned after the Israelites have left Rameses & Egypt 80 years earlier, but archaeological evidence points to Jericho before Pi-Ramesses ever existing.
These 2 added, that the Jews didn’t know much of Egypt’s actual history. Added that Genesis and Exodus couldn’t even name one single ruler when Abraham, Joseph or Moses have been in Egypt, have made me doubt of these books in the scriptures being reliable sources to the history of Egypt and Canaan in the 2nd millennium BCE.
Then there many other things, particularly in Genesis, including the post-Flood chapters, such as Genesis 10 - the Table of Nations.
This chapter clearly viewed that kingdoms and cities occurred after the flood, and arose from the descendants of 3 sons of Noah, particularly from Ham’s family.
That Mizraim, the Hebrew name for Egypt, but Egypt and Egyptian cultures developed long before the first dynasty where unified the 2 kingdoms (Upper Egypt & Lower Egypt in the north; the Proto-dynastic period of the 4th millennium BCE) into one Egypt.
That a single person, Nimrod, a grandson of Ham, would be founder of numbers of cities in ancient Babylonia (Shinar) and Assyria, particularly Erech (Sumerian Uruk), Accad (Akkadian Akkad), Babylon, Nineveh and Calah (Assyrian Kalhu).
Except for Akkad/Acaad, which archeologists don’t know of this city’s location, the rest of the cities we do know of their history, and the bottom-line is that none of these cities were founded at the same time, let alone by a single person.
Uruk (Erech) have been around as early as 5000 BCE as Neolithic villages turning into a Neolithic town, but by the start of the 4th millennium BCE, it was growing city, so large that by mid-4th millennium BCE, it housed a number of temples in the Enanna District, while a large ziggurat was completed with a temple on top, in the Anu district.
And Nineveh was first constructed as early as 6000 BCE, but became a city by 4500 BCE. This was 2000 years before the Semitic people, the Akkadians - under its 1st king Sargon (reign 2334 -2279 BCE) - conquered northern Mesopotamia. After the fall of the Akkadian empire, Assyrian became a separate kingdom to the Sumer south, that later became Babylonia.
What people should understand that Kalhu (Hebrew Calah; in modern time, it was renamed to Nimrud, since the 18th century), Kalhu is much younger city. Kalhu was built during the reign of Shalmaneser I (1274 - 1245 BCE).
Clearly, Nimrod couldn’t have had both Nineveh and Calah (Kalhu) built at the same time, not unless he has lived for thousands of years.
So clearly the authors who composed Genesis didn’t know much about the history of Mesopotamia.
But what really makes me think that Genesis, along with Exodus, being written during the 6th century BCE, is this passage about Ur, prior to Abraham’s story began:
Ur was a city in southern Sumer, where its origin was far back as 3800 BCE, as pre-Sumerian city. It became an important SumerIan city during the 3rd millennium BCE, and after the fall of Akkadian dynasty & empire, Ur’s 3rd dynasty (Ur III), 2112 -2004 BCE, ushered the Sumerian Renaissance, where the Sumerian culture (art, literature, language, politics) flourished once again.
At that time, throughout the 3rd millennium BCE, Ur was actually a coastal town, because back then shoreline of the Persian Gulf was further inland. Throughout the 2nd millennium BCE, gradually, erosions from upper Euphrates and Upper Tigris, have caused the built up of earth that pushed the shoreline of the Persian Gulf further away from the city, turning the region between Ur and the coastline into marshland.
As the water drained from the marshland, a new people migrated and settled into new land, the Chaldeans, between the 10th & 9th centuries BCE, and this former marshland became Chaldea, in the early 1st millennium BCE.
During the last decades of the Neo-Assyrian empire, the Chaldeans under the leadership of Nabopolassar (626 - 605 BCE) had conquered Babylon in 627 BCE, and was crowned king of Babylon, thereby establishing the 3rd dynasty of Babylon, the Chaldea dynasty.
My points, are that Chaldea and the Chaldeans didn’t exist during the early 2nd millennium BCE, a time supposedly Abraham and his family left Ur for Haran.
Genesis 11:28, is historically anachronistic. By that logic, Genesis, along with other literature attributed to Moses, was actually composed during the Exile in Babylon, when Chaldean king (Nebuchadnezzar II) was ruling Babylonian empire.
What make me think that Genesis, Exodus, Numbers and Leviticus - books attributed to Moses - to be later compositions than the Middle and Late Bronze Age, are timelines in these books of Torah or of Pentateuch, that are out of order with timelines to history (people) and archaeology (people & place).
I have already have issues with the cities of Pithom (Egyptian Pi-Tem) and Rameses (Pi-Ramesses), as well as that of Exodus-Joshua in the order of Rameses & Jericho.
The real cities, Pi-Tem & Pi-Ramesses weren’t founded & constructed in the same time or period - early 16th century vs 13th century BCE, and 15th dynasty vs 19th dynasty. This makes think that whoever wrote Exodus, weren’t aware of these history of these 2 cities.
The Joshua (book) also have claim that Jericho had fallen to attack and left abandoned after the Israelites have left Rameses & Egypt 80 years earlier, but archaeological evidence points to Jericho before Pi-Ramesses ever existing.
These 2 added, that the Jews didn’t know much of Egypt’s actual history. Added that Genesis and Exodus couldn’t even name one single ruler when Abraham, Joseph or Moses have been in Egypt, have made me doubt of these books in the scriptures being reliable sources to the history of Egypt and Canaan in the 2nd millennium BCE.
Then there many other things, particularly in Genesis, including the post-Flood chapters, such as Genesis 10 - the Table of Nations.
This chapter clearly viewed that kingdoms and cities occurred after the flood, and arose from the descendants of 3 sons of Noah, particularly from Ham’s family.
That Mizraim, the Hebrew name for Egypt, but Egypt and Egyptian cultures developed long before the first dynasty where unified the 2 kingdoms (Upper Egypt & Lower Egypt in the north; the Proto-dynastic period of the 4th millennium BCE) into one Egypt.
That a single person, Nimrod, a grandson of Ham, would be founder of numbers of cities in ancient Babylonia (Shinar) and Assyria, particularly Erech (Sumerian Uruk), Accad (Akkadian Akkad), Babylon, Nineveh and Calah (Assyrian Kalhu).
Except for Akkad/Acaad, which archeologists don’t know of this city’s location, the rest of the cities we do know of their history, and the bottom-line is that none of these cities were founded at the same time, let alone by a single person.
Uruk (Erech) have been around as early as 5000 BCE as Neolithic villages turning into a Neolithic town, but by the start of the 4th millennium BCE, it was growing city, so large that by mid-4th millennium BCE, it housed a number of temples in the Enanna District, while a large ziggurat was completed with a temple on top, in the Anu district.
And Nineveh was first constructed as early as 6000 BCE, but became a city by 4500 BCE. This was 2000 years before the Semitic people, the Akkadians - under its 1st king Sargon (reign 2334 -2279 BCE) - conquered northern Mesopotamia. After the fall of the Akkadian empire, Assyrian became a separate kingdom to the Sumer south, that later became Babylonia.
What people should understand that Kalhu (Hebrew Calah; in modern time, it was renamed to Nimrud, since the 18th century), Kalhu is much younger city. Kalhu was built during the reign of Shalmaneser I (1274 - 1245 BCE).
Clearly, Nimrod couldn’t have had both Nineveh and Calah (Kalhu) built at the same time, not unless he has lived for thousands of years.
So clearly the authors who composed Genesis didn’t know much about the history of Mesopotamia.
But what really makes me think that Genesis, along with Exodus, being written during the 6th century BCE, is this passage about Ur, prior to Abraham’s story began:
Ur was a city in southern Sumer, where its origin was far back as 3800 BCE, as pre-Sumerian city. It became an important SumerIan city during the 3rd millennium BCE, and after the fall of Akkadian dynasty & empire, Ur’s 3rd dynasty (Ur III), 2112 -2004 BCE, ushered the Sumerian Renaissance, where the Sumerian culture (art, literature, language, politics) flourished once again.
At that time, throughout the 3rd millennium BCE, Ur was actually a coastal town, because back then shoreline of the Persian Gulf was further inland. Throughout the 2nd millennium BCE, gradually, erosions from upper Euphrates and Upper Tigris, have caused the built up of earth that pushed the shoreline of the Persian Gulf further away from the city, turning the region between Ur and the coastline into marshland.
As the water drained from the marshland, a new people migrated and settled into new land, the Chaldeans, between the 10th & 9th centuries BCE, and this former marshland became Chaldea, in the early 1st millennium BCE.
During the last decades of the Neo-Assyrian empire, the Chaldeans under the leadership of Nabopolassar (626 - 605 BCE) had conquered Babylon in 627 BCE, and was crowned king of Babylon, thereby establishing the 3rd dynasty of Babylon, the Chaldea dynasty.
My points, are that Chaldea and the Chaldeans didn’t exist during the early 2nd millennium BCE, a time supposedly Abraham and his family left Ur for Haran.
Genesis 11:28, is historically anachronistic. By that logic, Genesis, along with other literature attributed to Moses, was actually composed during the Exile in Babylon, when Chaldean king (Nebuchadnezzar II) was ruling Babylonian empire.
GoodAttention
Well-Known Member
I honestly did not read any of what you wrote.
At this point I will be ignoring your comments, so letting you know.
Thank you.
Perhaps just one (your choice) would help,
GoodAttention
Well-Known Member
There are 2 dynasties running concurrently from 1803BCE, the Pharoahic 13th Dynasty with its capital in Itjtawy (Pitom), and the Kingly 14th Dynasty with its capital in Xois located in the central Nile delta. We can consider this date as being approximate to when Joseph is considered to have died.
In the verses, we see Joseph is forgotten by a Melech, and the Israelites are made to work. My understanding is the Kingly dynasty (who are thought to be Canaanite), became the taskmasters/slave drivers who would then force the Israelites to work for the Pharoahs out of Pitom. This would have continued from 1803-1677BCE, when Pitom was abandoned as a capital, marking 126 years in total. Melech-Pharoah.
The verses continue and we note the use of Melech twice in verse 15 and 18, and this represents the mistreatment under the Hyksos (15th Dynasty) from 1650-1550BCE, totalling 100 years. Melech-Melech.
We now enter a period where Egyptians Pharoahs have taken control again, starting from 1550BCE when they defeat the Hyksos. This is a relative period of calm until the beginning of the Ramesside period starting in 1290BCE and ending in 1077BCE, where the capital of the Egyptian Kingdom was (Pi-)Ramesses.
When you read the verses we see in 19 the midwives explaining to Pharoah in a neutral way, reflecting the relative calm of 1550BCE, but this contrasts with verse 22 when Pharoah then demands that boys been thrown into the river (foretelling his own demise). Pharoah-Pharoah.
The Rameses "store-city" slavery period is between the dates above, giving us 213 years in total. So we now have a total of 439 years. We could "give or take" 9-39 years in the first calculation to give us the 400/430 years that is mentioned as a total.
Chapter 1 summarizes from Jacob entering Egypt, to Moses leaving, giving us a very clear timeline.
Or later. You overreach; it's thoughtless or sloppy or both.
You need to qualify your view on the Exodus and Joshua accounts as history literal or otherwise, because there is no evidence that Moses, Joshua, the journey of Exodus nor the invasion by Joshua ever existed or happened.
The question remains does it represent history in any form by the evidence.
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Denial is not an adequate response, What was cited represented legitimate academic references.
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Out of curiosity, would you consider the Siloam inscription history?
(My wife and I have walked the tunnel; it was not particularly pleasant.)
gnostic
The Lost One
Could be later.
Perhaps it began in the 6th century BCE, as in early version, but the ones see today, in its final form, it was completed by 5th century BCE. That might explain some of the discrepancies in Genesis, as if they were written by 2 (or more) different groups of writers, eg the orders of creation differ between Genesis 1 or 2, or the flood story, it rained for 40 days vs 150 days, etc.
When you compare others books, like Samuel & Kings vs Chronicles, then it would seem to be that Chronicles would be written later than the former, most likely in the 5th ce BCE, whereas it is harder to say about Samuel & Kings, to date when these were composed.