I've posted this before and will again.

Manfred Bietak estimates that the ancient Egyptians had literally millions of pages of papyrus records at Avaris (their capital during the most likely time of the Exodus) and other locations in the Egyptian Delta. However, archaeologists have not been able to find a single one. They all disintegrated due to the high water table, high humidity, and heat of the Delta. So when skeptics argue that there are no written records of the Israelites in Egypt or of the Exodus, the response is of course; there are no written records of anything.

Bietak has also concluded that Avaris had a population of 500,000 or more Semitics up until around 1460 BC. Additional thousands of Semitics lived in other cities in NE Egypt. All of them mysteriously and suddenly disappeared almost exactly at 1460 BC, the date of the Exodus. Bietak has wondered but has no clue what happened to them.

Manfred Bietak is a secular archaeologist and is perhaps the greatest living archaeologist.

Another tidbit is that the Bible describes Joseph's dream, his elevation by Pharaoh, and how he stored grain during the years of plenty and then sold it back during the years of drought, forcing the nobles to sell their land to Pharaoh and centralizing power in Pharaoh.

Based on the best estimates for when Joseph lived, archaeologists have noted the precise same thing happening in Egypt. The regional nobles were called nomarchs, and the lands that they controlled were called nomes. Their wealth and power rivaled that of the Pharaohs, demonstrated in part by the opulent tombs that they built. At exactly the time of Joseph, the nomarchs disappear from Egyptian history and no secular Egyptologist can explain why. Their loss of power was sudden, as demonstrated by many partially completed and abandoned tombs of theirs.

By the way, in western Egypt there exists a large canal designed to provide water to massive farmlands in that area (the Faiyum) and also to alleviate the Nile floods. A pharaoh named Amenemhat III had the canal built, and also built his pyramid next to to that canal. Amenemhat III was most likely the Pharaoh of Joseph. Intriguingly, that canal is still known today in Egypt as the "Bahr Yusef", i.e., the "Waterway of Joseph".

Silent For Too Long said:

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1.) There are archeologists still looking for evidence.

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Evidence of what. Yes they are still digging, but that's not what I said.

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2.) I'm not even sure what "so small to not even leave a mark" means. At minimum, the Exodus explains not only where the Torah came from but its basically the primary narrative therein. The Torah is one of the largest marks ever left on history. The book literally that changed the world. Weird statement.

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Sure it offers an explanation but it's not an explanation that fits the evidence we see. The mark I was talking about was archaeological. I'll ask again, at what point does the bible start describing literal history. Show me where you draw the line and let's look at it.

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3.) No, we don't have a lot of evidence for people making up gods out of whole cloth that function completely independently from the existing theological structures of the native culture. When you add in the fact that these theoretical original Yahwehists had been profoundly influenced by both Sumerian and Egyptian cultures that would have predated any genesis by hundreds if not thousands of years, it seems pretty unlikely.

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Except you don't have any evidence that it was completely independent form the existing theological structures, your own statement admits influence from existing theological structures. In fact, the evidence shows deliberate effort to intertwine them, so I don't know where this is coming from.

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You've made this sweeping and wrong argument before. I'll challenge you on it again. There is significant evidence for both the Exodus and the Conquest, and virtually no evidence that they did not occur.

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Name actual experts in the relevant fields who actually assert this. There isn't any actual evidence you can point to. It's only through a gross misunderstanding of what confirming evidence would be that you could make this claim.

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. Rather, it's because they start with the presupposition that the Bible is wrong and untrustworthy.

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The exact opposite of this happened. The digging was started by people who believed in the narrative and went looking for it.

Reality isn't as you say, the facts are we actually can get a remarkable amount of information through archaeology. Most of what we know of the ancient word is found in ancient records and ancient excavations. I dont' have time at the moment, you can probably google chatbot the basics. But it's important to remember the colossal scale of the purported event. The numbers are so extreme many who do argue for historicity try and argue these as typos or exaggerations

Aggrad08 said:

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Reality isn't as you say, the facts are we actually can get a remarkable amount of information through archaeology. Most of what we know of the ancient word is found in ancient records and ancient excavations. I dont' have time at the moment, you can probably google chatbot the basics. But it's important to remember the colossal scale of the purported event. The numbers are so extreme many who do argue for historicity try and argue these as typos or exaggerations

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No, I get it. I'm not trying to say that you're asking for something that's unreasonable. I just haven't heard from anyone what reasonable is. Like the writings. Based on my limited knowledge of archeology, it sounds like we're pretty lucky to have what we have due to the natural decomp that occurs. A few conditions being changed, and it would all be lost to history. Hence my titanic example happening in real time.


Again, not trying to be overly skeptical of your view. Just wondering what should be there that we aren't finding for a temporarily nomadic tribe. I'll refresh on the critiques. It's been awhile since I've looked into it.

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Name actual experts in the relevant fields who actually assert this. There isn't any actual evidence you can point to.

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Just for starters, some of the most known and reputable archaeologists and Egyptologists of all time, and I'm sure that I'm leaving out many:

• W.F. Albright
• Kenneth Kitchen
• John Garstang
• Manfred Bietak
• James Hoffmeier
• Titus Kennedy
• Anson Rainey
• Charles Aling
• Anne Killebrew
• Robert Schiestl
• Bryant Wood
• Doug Petrovich
• Paul J. Ray
• Charles Krahmalkov
• Hans Goedicke
• John Bimson
• Yohanan Aharoni
• Gary Byers
• Hershel Shanks (deceased publisher and chief editor of Biblical Archaeology Review)
• Peter van der Veen
• Christoffer Theis
• Manfred Gorg
• Frank Yurco
• William Dever

And many, many more. Those are just the tip of the iceberg of respected, credentialed scholars who believe in Israel in Egypt and the Conquest.

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The digging was started by people who believed in the narrative and went looking for it.

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Initially, that may have been true. But starting between the World Wars, the opposite has been true. For example, Kenyon wrote an article in the early 50s eviscerating Garstang's dating of the final destruction of Jericho and of its pottery. She did not even examine the pottery or visit Jericho before writing the article. She then started to dig at Jericho and, surprise!, made the same conclusion about the date of its final destruction that she had in her fact-free article.

Kenyon's sole basis for deciding on the final date of the destruction of Jericho was based solely on the absence of bichrome-ware pottery. That's it. No affirmative evidence, only the absence of evidence, and evidence that was and is slim at best. She also ignored lots of other evidence that showed pretty conclusively that Jericho was actually destroyed exactly when the Bible says it was (e.g., the presence of chocolate on white ware, scarabs of Egyptian pharaohs up until the final destruction date, evidence of unusual destruction patterns that match the Bible precisely, and so on).

Despite the weak evidence relied upon by Kenyon, and despite the abundance of evidence contradicting her findings, many modern scholars simply repeat her conclusion as if it was a revealed truth.

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But it's important to remember the colossal scale of the purported event.

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And there's evidence of an event at that time of a colossal scale.

Hundreds of thousands if not millions of Semites simply disappeared from Egypt at that exact time.

Great points. Kenyon made simliar mistake with Ai.

You implied that no archeologists are digging for evidence of the Exodus. Thats simply not true.

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Sure it offers an explanation but it's not an explanation that fits the evidence we see.

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Specifics?

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Except you don't have any evidence that it was completely independent form the existing theological structures, your own statement admits influence from existing theological structures. In fact, the evidence shows deliberate effort to intertwine them, so I don't know where this is coming from.

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The book itself screams its not canaanite theologicaly. If you changed the names no one on earth would associate the theological structures with those found in Canaan prior to the arrival of Yahwehists.

KingofHazor said:

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Name actual experts in the relevant fields who actually assert this. There isn't any actual evidence you can point to.

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Just for starters, some of the most known and reputable archaeologists and Egyptologists of all time, and I'm sure that I'm leaving out many:

• W.F. Albright
• Kenneth Kitchen
• John Garstang
• Manfred Bietak
• James Hoffmeier
• Titus Kennedy
• Anson Rainey
• Charles Aling
• Anne Killebrew
• Robert Schiestl
• Bryant Wood
• Doug Petrovich
• Paul J. Ray
• Charles Krahmalkov
• Hans Goedicke
• John Bimson
• Yohanan Aharoni
• Gary Byers
• Hershel Shanks (deceased publisher and chief editor of Biblical Archaeology Review)
• Peter van der Veen
• Christoffer Theis
• Manfred Gorg
• Frank Yurco
• William Dever

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I asked for men willing to stand by this quote:

"There is significant evidence for both the Exodus and the Conquest, and virtually no evidence that they did not occur"

Spot checking a few:

William F. Albright, dead for 50 years.

In the years since his death, Albright's methods and conclusions have been increasingly questioned. In 1993, William G. Dever wrote that:

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[Albright's] central theses have all been overturned, partly by further advances in Biblical criticism, but mostly by the continuing archaeological research of younger Americans and Israelis to whom he himself gave encouragement and momentum... The irony is that, in the long run, it will have been the newer 'secular' archaeology that contributed the most to Biblical studies, not 'Biblical archaeology.'[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Albright#cite_note-38][38][/url]

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Biblical scholar Thomas L. Thompson wrote that by 2002 the methods of "biblical archaeology" had also become outmoded:

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[Wright and Albright's] historical interpretation can make no claim to be objective, proceeding as it does from a methodology which distorts its data by selectivity which is hardly representative, which ignores the enormous lack of data for the history of the early second millennium, and which wilfully establishes hypotheses on the basis of unexamined biblical texts, to be proven by such (for this period) meaningless mathematical criteria as the "balance of probability" ...[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Albright#cite_note-FOOTNOTEThompson20027-39][39][/url]

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Bryant Wood

A YEC. Sorry, but I trust their evaluation of evidence at basically zero as proven by quite a bit of experience.

• William Dever

"William Dever, a prominent archaeologist, argues that the biblical Exodus story, as traditionally depicted, is not historically accurate. While he acknowledges the possibility of a small group of Israelites migrating from Egypt, possibly around the 13th century BCE, he emphasizes that the grand, large-scale Exodus narrative, including the wilderness wanderings and conquest of Canaan, is largely mythical. "


yeah so, no

I'll ask once again:
"I'll ask again, at what point does the bible start describing literal history. Show me where you draw the line and let's look at it."

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Specifics?

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The complete absence of evidence of that many Israelites leaving Egypt and arriving in canaan.

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book itself screams its not canaanite theologicaly. If you changed the names no one on earth would associate the theological structures with those found in Canaan prior to the arrival of Yahwehists.

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You mean the frequent references to clear Canaanite god's wouldn't be clear references to Canaanite god's if they weren't the actual names of Canaanite gods? I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with that.

If one believes in the historical accuracy of the subjective and transcribed mystical experiences of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, which I do, there are significant and very detailed accounts of the exodus from Egypt and much else besides. The caveats are large, of course, but the level and amount of detail is astonishing.

Angelico Pres, 3 large volumes, supplemented by 12 smaller volumes

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A YEC. Sorry, but I trust their evaluation of evidence at basically zero as proven by quite a bit of experience.

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So you only trust people who already agree with you?

As usual, I'm astounded by your intellectual honesty. /sarcasm.

[And what makes you say that Bryant Wood is a YEC? He may be, but that's not central to his career or writings.]

You've also ignored 95% of the names on my list.

It's clear that you are what you accuse others of. You've made your decision and you're not going to let any pesky facts or contradictory experts who know more than you get in your way.

It's clear that you've formed your opinion on a single book by Finklestein, a book that has been roundly criticized and shown to be deeply flawed.

You are what you claim to hate.

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The complete absence of evidence of that many Israelites leaving Egypt

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I've pointed to one major piece of such evidence and you continue to ignore it.

KingofHazor said:

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A YEC. Sorry, but I trust their evaluation of evidence at basically zero as proven by quite a bit of experience.

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So you only trust people who already agree with you?

As usual, I'm astounded by your intellectual honesty. /sarcasm.

[And what makes you say that Bryant Wood is a YEC? He may be, but that's not central to his career or writings.]

You've also ignored 95% of the names on my list.

It's clear that you are what you accuse others of. You've made your decision and you're not going to let any pesky facts or contradictory experts who know more than you get in your way.

It's clear that you've formed your opinion on a single book by Finklestein, a book that has been roundly criticized and shown to be deeply flawed.

You are what you claim to hate.

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No, but I don't take seriously people who've proven over and over and over wholly disinterested in contrary evidence, or outright liars, or truly pretty daft, or falsely credentialed or fundamentally unwilling to change their mind based on evidence. This goes for flat earthers too. I've given YECs their chances. Find some non crazies.

I spot checked to see if you list backed up your claim. It was unimpressive on initial returns or outright incorrect.

Titus Kennedy is a legit modern scholar who believes the Exodus happened and has written extensively about it.

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I'll ask once again:
"I'll ask again, at what point does the bible start describing literal history. Show me where you draw the line and let's look at it."

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What are you, my dad? Calm down.

I already told you I think the core stories are based on historical events. If you need specificity let's start with Abraham and going forward.

So your entire argument for the Jews/Isrealites making up Yahweh out of thin air rests on the fact that you don't have evidence of 6 million people in the Arabian desert? Even when you are fully cognizant of the fact that there are very good arguments the magnitude of those numbers were never meant to be accurate?

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names

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Im not sure how else to explain this to you. The overlaps between Yahwehism and Canaanite theology are platonic at best, minor, and completely insignificant. Canaanite theology lacks:

Any of the sacred events of Yahwehism. Passover etc.
Any attempt to rectify Yahweh within the Canaanite Pantheon
Any mention of Abraham, Isaac, and or Jacob

The Torah only mentions other gods when its warning what not to do. There is no attempt to assimilate Yahwehism with Canaanite theology. It straight up says the latter was completely wrong. Full stop.

Compare that to Christianity, or Islam, or Mormonism, which all clearly try to build upon and reconcile with the contemporary relevant theologies.