Did the Exodus from Egypt really happen? The belief that God saved the jews from Egypt is a huge part of jewish faith. If proved it didn't happen, what would become of Judaism?
Did the Exodus from Egypt really happen? The belief that God saved the jews from Egypt is a huge part of jewish faith...
Anthony Cox
Cooper Diaz
Probably not. If it could be conclusively proven that it didn't happen? I imagine the really hardcore Orthodox sorts would simply refuse to change their beliefs anyway, and the Reform types would shrug and not care anyway since they don't really believe in most of the historical aspect of it anyway. The effect would probably be most pronounced in the sort that are in between those two extremes, but I honestly have no idea how many Jews fall into which groups.
Easton Walker
It never happened. Simply no archaeological evidence for a mass migration of a million people out of Egypt and into the fucking Sinai out of all places. There's not even evidence for 40,000. Moses almost certainly didn't exist, and both him and Abraham are legendary figures cobbled together from a dozen different traditions and cultures. All the evidence suggests that Jews are local Canaanites that suddenly went /pol/ on everyone else.
Andrew Roberts
>Did the Exodus from Egypt really happen?
This has plagued many scholars for years, people who talk about the happening of it and deny it completely are usually novices at biblical scholarship. From the journals, essays, books and papers I've read on the issue, the idea of the Exodus not happening is more unlikely. But the important note is the PORTRAYAL of the Exodus doesn't need to be 100% accurate to still find out if there was an Exodus.
From what I've read, the Exodus is one of the oldest traditions in the OT. All writers of J,E,P,D, affirm that the event happened, with a majority of the prophets of Israel also noting it. Unless you are an ultra minimalist, this leads to believe that the tradition of the Exodus has some credibility. Two the Exodus narrative lines up pretty well with event the Pharaoh Ramses II meeting with raiders along the Sinai regions. These called Shasu (meaning Bedouin) had a series of raids with the Egyptian people. Craved pictures show Shasu being captured and taken to Egypt. Some scholars have hypothesized that some of the Shasu made up a combination of the Israelites (Judens specifically) and migrated south of the Levant around 1200 BC while the pastoral Canaanites integrated with these new immigrants.
Others have said that it is likely that the Exodus tradition is a vague narrative of old traditions by combining the Shasu with YHWH's coming from the south near the Gulf of Aqaba where Moses went after running away. Additionally they argue that the cultural motifs of snake charming and names that reflect the time when the Exodus happened.
Hunter Long
I like this answer
Owen Anderson
One theory I found appealing is that the Jewish people were a buffer state on the eastern border of Egypt with the typical relationship this implies, while subjects of the Pharaoh, they were largely autonomous and not taxed.
When the Egpytians attempted to integrate the Jews they revolted and proceeded to loot their way out of Egypt.
It would be a fairly typical tale of antiquity and doesn't conflict with anything said in Exodus.
Charles Roberts
well to correct you they weren't Jews, they were Israelites.
Joshua James
To throw in a little bit of support, the word in Biblical Hebrew עבד , while usually translated as "slave", seems to encompass an enormous range of subordinate primarily economic relationships. Very important biblical figures like Eliezer (Abraham's heir prior to siring his own kids, and the guy he sends to fetch Rebekah to marry Isaac), and Phichol, the chief of the army and apparently some kind of diplomat to one of the local Caananite petty-kings, are both referred to with the word; even though clearly they're important people.
Then again, the bible also goes out of its way to say how the labor forced upon the Israelites was harsh, and the Egyptians were all really evil, so I don't think that it's going for that kind of angle, but the term in general is very much wider than modern conceptions of slavery.
Nolan Cox
Could it be possible that the freed slaves were a much smaller group than typically portrayed?
Evan Walker
>Could it be possible that the freed slaves were a much smaller group than typically portrayed?
yes, many people have questioned this, since parallels with other documents from the Ancient Near East also portray this as well.
Gabriel Wood
It depends if archeological evidence would ever be uncovered about the region during 1500-1000 BC Showing the political and cultural boundaries of the nations there, Historians also once rejected the existence of Sargon and the Hittites before evidence was uncovered. Archeological Evidence about what happened in the region before the two kingdoms period is not well known and historians don't know much about the unified kingdom of Israel or about the 12 tribal confederation period.
John Wood
The problem is that written records don't exist around the region where the Israelites were enslaved. Around about 98% of all material has been lost from that period, the Delta has swept it away or turned to mush.
Second the archeological evidence is not scant in the region in which they were enslaved in, it doesn't prove an exodus but prove a consistency with the Exodus narrative. It was known around that time that Egypt was using labour that were foreign, rosters were made to assign people to the 10 day week schedule. Some even had religious holidays. It's interesting that the bible makes it clear that Moses and the Israelite wanted to go out to the desert to worship YHWH but were denied. Showing a clear example of exception to other slaves.
Chase Myers
>When the Egpytians attempted to integrate the Jews they revolted and proceeded to loot their way out of Egypt.
Egyptians never really did empire building because for Egyptians the only place they could live in was along the banks of river Nile in Egypt. What they did do is take the children of conquered lands' rulers to Egypt so they were raised culturally Egyptian and thus obedient.
William Hernandez
Did the Romans really kill six billion Jews in 1st century AD? Could the numbers be fudged?
Jayden Davis
>tfw you remember King David and King Solomon were polytheists in the Canaanite tradition, easily one of the most retard-tier pagan religions, arguably as bad as the Aztecs
Gives me an existential crisis desu
Ethan Martinez
>King David and King Solomon were polytheists in the Canaanite tradition
What are the origins of these claims? Solomon was a polytheist later in life. But King David?
Adam Garcia
No, and it doesn't matter, it was never supposed to be taken literally.
Dominic Wood
>yfw no source for any of these claims
Ayden Cooper
Why does every euphoric think biblical scholars can't into archaeology?
>youtu.be
>tl;dr a lot of remains from egyptian chariots found in red sea and a pillar on the other side that is dated to several thousand years ago that commemorates the parting of the sea
Jace Nelson
>it was never supposed to be taken literally
So how was it supposed to be taken?
Ayden Johnson
Of course the exodus really happened. It's a great story because it's basically a full confession to genocide.
William Fisher
sure I'll give you some;
James K Hoffmeier - Israel in Egypt
Kenneth A Kitchen - On the Reliability of the OT
John Day - The search for the Pre-Exilic Israel
T N D Mettinger - In Search of God
Robert Karl Gnuse - No Other Gods: Emergent Monotheism in Israel
NAC Exodus - Douglas Stuart
Frank Moore Cross - Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry
Victor P Hamilton - Commentary on the Pentateuch
Note not all of them I agree with how the Exodus happened (evangelical also do the same thing), similarly not all of them are evangelical Christians. Refer to my comment . The portrayal of the Exodus by the writers must be looked over from the actual historicity of it.
John Myers
The fact that it took them years instead of a few days to get to Israel proves it's not real.
Daniel Rogers
40 years is a Hebrew saying for "a long time" as is "40 days and 40 nights."
Not supposed to be taken literally.
Sebastian Morgan
>proof
Why do yous spergs think 'proof' is an actual thing? It's a meme.
>THERE IS NO EVIDENCE ACCORDING TO MY IDEOLOGY SO IT DIDN'T HAPPEN
Fuck off back to /r/eddit with that solipsism.
Cameron Barnes
>YHWH couldn't have forced them into a long journey with no goal until they have earned their home
Why are you people so fucking autistic? You actually are incapable of abstraction, or considering anything beyond your own autistic ideology. Both are signs.
Samuel Hernandez
Bible also states that most of freed slaves died in the desert during those 40 years. Is this also not supposed to be taken literally?
Jason Hall
Yes and both of those begun in oral tradition, which eventually became Torah. It isn't a fucking metaphor, they actually meant '40 years' and '40 days and 40 nights'.
Bentley Anderson
>It isn't a fucking metaphor
Yes it is you fucking schlemiel. Just because you goy burgers took it literally doesn't change the original Hebrew meaning. 40 days and 40 nights and the number 40 in general has always meant "a long time" in Hebrew.
Elijah Price
Stop LARPing.
Eli Allen
>Why do yous spergs think 'proof' is an actual thing? It's a meme.
it's more evidence
Ayden Miller
It probably didn't happen like it did in the Torah. Jewish mythology is not treated fairly due to speical pleading by Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
Carter Ramirez
Not him
But rhe presence of Apirus/Hebrews is attested in Egypt
PIC 1
Jack Long
PIC 2
Jacob Butler
bump because I'm interested and don't want this thread to die
Hudson Hall
This answer seems quite realistic. It reminds me of an interview with a biblical scholar I've read some time ago:
Samuel Martin
>Richard Elliott Friedman
ahhhh, he's a good scholar no doubt, basically the founder of the new form of Documentary Hypothesis. In the article his view is very romantic to say the least, but it's a interview after all. Though he and I would be in agreement that an Exodus had happened but we would dispute its portrayal.
Joseph Martinez
what actually happened
>people kicked out jews again
how the jews described it
>plagues and frogs n shieeet
the exodus was basically just another routine expulsion of the jews, another checkmark on their already huge list of 150+ expulsions
Christian Watson
>the exodus was basically just another routine expulsion of the jews, another checkmark on their already huge list of 150+ expulsions
back to /pol/ you go
Ethan Diaz
I mean he's not wrong they did get kicked out 150 times throughout a couple thousand years so...
Justin Carter
Short answer, no. Long answer, picrelated.
Andrew Gonzalez
>I mean he's not wrong they did get kicked out 150 times throughout a couple thousand years so...
Jews did, not Israelites, there's a difference. Typical sophistry of /pol/
Luis Harris
who is this meant to be against other than clueless hyper-evangelicals and euphorics?
See and to understand a full fledged exodus was not what scholars are arguing for.
Eli Brown
>It would be a fairly typical tale of antiquity and doesn't conflict with anything said in Exodus.
This could be true.
But I feel like we always let Jews get away with revolting by blaming it on taxation. I know the mythical story of the Exodus is exaggerated but we would be remiss to ignore the attitude of the story. It was pregnant with purifying the nation of Israel. That's why you can never tell if Egypt was REALLY the bad guy.
Connor Edwards
It almost certainly happened.
Tyler Bell
I believe that it happened and I'm ignoring the euphoric "scholars" who claim otherwise. Atheists have been trying to discredit the OT texts since the Age of "Enlightenment". Give it time and the answers will come up. They were already proven wrong when they claimed that David is a fictional character.
Hunter Morales
>They were already proven wrong when they claimed that David is a fictional character.
Actually both sides were proven wrong.
the story on the david artifact contradicts a biblical story
Bentley Gutierrez
>the story on the david artifact contradicts a biblical story
elaborate, m8
Luke Murphy
Yes, it did happen.
Nathan Smith
>the story on the david artifact contradicts a biblical story
wat?
William Long
Isn't there a carving dated to around the time that the Hebrews were reportedly enslaved, located in a mine somewhere along the Red Sea, that makes explicit reference to "El"? I recall an user posting it a while back but can't remember the specifics.
Kayden Lewis
Evidence doesn't exist.
Yes and institutionalized mythology (history) is treated as dogma.
Scripture does not contradict itself, that's not how it works you illiterate.
Oliver Perry
>[poisons Descartes internally]
Lucas Ramirez
I only wish...
Aiden Martin
>Evidence doesn't exist.
Nathaniel Hall
Dive; don't just put the tip in.
Chase Lopez
I think you might be thinking of this:
en.wikipedia.org
it has yhwh, not el, but is close to the Red Sea
William Lewis
>The belief that God saved the jews from Egypt is a huge part of jewish faith. If proved it didn't happen, what would become of Judaism?
Yeah, God had nothing to do with Moses at any time whatsoever. That was all man.
Bentley Cook
>Serabit el-Khadim turquoise mine, a labour camp in the Sinai with a Semitic alphabetic inscription that reads "O El, save me from these mines."
Liam Watson
Probably a mixture of the memory of the Hyskos being kicked out (and I'm sure plenty of Hyskos were enslaved after losing given the era) and the Israelite origins in the Habiru, a decent chunk of whom were escaped slaves.
Caleb Jenkins
No, jews are just canaanites.
Also, slaves didn't build the pyramids.
Daniel Jones
we don't really know who is in this painting though, too many LARPing biblical scholars on here assume it's YHWH, proves to me that they don't read scholarly books, it's assumed only because the writing was near it.
"Initially, some scholars assumed that the texts were written next to the drawings, but closer examination disclosed that there is no clear connection between texts and drawings. It is hardly likely that the male Bes figure beside the female (?) Bes figure represents a picture of YHWH and his Asherah . Likewise a relation between the harp-playing female figure and Asherah is impossible to establish. There may be a relationship between the composition of a cow with calf and the stylized tree with goats standing on a lion, representing Asherah"
Becking, B . Only one God?: monotheism in ancient Israel and the veneration of the goddess Asherah (p. 30) (2001)
Joseph Phillips
I don't understand the point of this picture
Joshua Cruz
What the hell are you even talking about?
Jaxon Flores
Yeah, that's the one. I'm aware of but that's definitely not it.
Thanks user.
Hudson Ortiz
>Archaeological evidence of the parting of the Red Sea.
That doesn't even begin to address the physical impossibilities of parting a huge body of water.
Henry Miller
>If proved it didn't happen, what would become of Judaism?
Religions usually don't rely on what actually happened.
Julian Jenkins
Wait, there's a debate on this sort of thing? It's a metaphor dude.
Hudson Wright
Feeling euphoric this evening, my friend?
Daniel Edwards
Read the thread, it's all about conjectures and "what if?", for a good reason.
I actually regularly meet a catholic priest and a rabbi, you have no idea how far they are from these legends. They treasure them for the lesson they give, but in no way they take them seriously.
Christopher Gomez
>remains of chariots found in Red Sea
this is literally a false Snopes article user lmaoooo
Julian Morgan
>I actually regularly meet a catholic priest and a rabbi, you have no idea how far they are from these legends. They treasure them for the lesson they give, but in no way they take them seriously.
As a Catholic I second this.
Taking Exodus literally true is Protestautism at its most self-serving. There's not a single shred of evidence in the Egyptian archives that a pharaoh let 1/5th of its entire labor force (if Biblical numbers are to be believed) just up and leave after being scared shitless of some supernatural plagues, but then changed his mind and accidently wiped out his elite charioteers in an unnatural flood. Modern archeologists can track the path of a single ancient traveller across the Sinai wasteland, and yet there's not even a single measly patch of garbage left by our supposed thousands of Hebrews wandering around for 40 years. The Hebrews take credit for destroying the city of Ur when "Ur" literally meant "ruin" in its mother tongue, and had been abandoned for a very long time by the time that there were Hebrews in Canaan.
Nothing about the Israeli conquest of Canaan has any precedent in the archeological record, what's most likely is that Jerusalem was just another anonymous mountain town with its own particular breed of founding myths and legends, just one which had stumbled upon a formula for keeping a culture together even in the presence of a larger, more powerful culture, and part of that was creating a foundational myth for a culture born in the presence of a larger, more powerful one.
Angel Wood
>Evidence doesn't exist.
see
Cameron Nguyen
You can't be serious, these "authors" are commentators at best.
Wyatt Ramirez
>You can't be serious, these "authors" are commentators at best.
>dismissing them as commentators is considered a valid rebuttal
I highly doubt you know any of these scholars or even read their books. All of them have fields in biblical history, archeology and in Egyptology. They have gone onto archeological fields in Egypt, Jordan and Israel and have the ability to interpret the evidence when they find it.
Plus I only sourced two commentaries cause it sources other material that comes from journals and essays in academic circles. Everything else is either a monograph, collection of essays or a dissertation, many of the ones I've cited are also secular.
It's up to you to show me that these scholars have no weight in the Exodus debate, many of them have critiqued the views espoused by those such as Thompson, Lemche, Davis and Finkelstein.
Kayden Perry
>Biblical scholars
>hey guys the Bible is literally true, now I'm going to devote my career to proving it.
How can we be asked to take their word as impartial observers of the archeological record when they flat out state that they aren't impartial?
>Despite attempts by a number of biblical archaeologists — and an even larger number of amateur enthusiasts — over the years, credible direct archaeological evidence for the Exodus has yet to be found.
>While it can be argued that such evidence would be difficult to find, since nomads generally do not leave behind permanent installations, archaeologists have discovered and excavated nomadic emplacements from other periods in the Sinai desert.
>So if there were archaeological remains to be found from the Exodus, one would have expected them to be found by now. And yet, thus far there is no trace of the biblical "600,000 men on foot, besides children" plus "a mixed crowd...and live stock in great numbers" (Exod. 12:37-38) who wandered for forty years in the desert.
Professor of Ancient History and Archaeology Eric H. Cline, summarizing the scholarly consensus of Exodus
Posting the few contrarian faggots whom nobody else in the field takes seriously is no basis for argument
Gavin Cruz
Lots of Biblical scholars are atheists. I'm 100% atheist but every word of the Old Testament is still true.
Bentley Morgan
Again typical misinterpretation and dismissal of what others have to say. Consensus or not he him (Cline) has misunderstood what biblical scholars are looking for NO SCHOLAR IS LOOKING FOR A LITERAL INTERPRETATION OF THE EVENT they are looking if the tradition holds some truth. Freedman even admits this as well. No amount of arrogance and aggression on your part has proved otherwise. Even I'm not looking for a literal interpretation of the exodus. See my post again.
Jaxon Jenkins
>biblical
>scholar
>I'm 100% atheist but every word of the Old Testament is still true.
O---K
Stop being a burger. Travel. Breathe. I'm sorry if I sound insulting but what you say is just shocking. These "scholars" are just circlejerking writers about a fable and "atheists" (which is a believers concept to point out those who don't swallow the soup) certainly don't give any credit to the Old Testament.
Once again, I socialize with eclesiastics, I can assure you they don't take the texts literally, and consider those who do it as a matter of worry.