Egyptian Enslavement of the Hebrews ?

[Arilou]

It closer than you're going to get for almost anything in ancient times.

Which just means we don't know very much on the details of ancient times.

EDIT: That "It's the best we got" is no reason to treat unreliable information as reliable.

 

[Yakman]

Which just means we don't know very much on the details of ancient times.

EDIT: That "It's the best we got" is no reason to treat unreliable information as reliable.

it's also no reason to immediately discount it either. simply b/c there are no, or few, corroborating sources for a text doesn't mean that the text was dreamt up in the conspiratorial minds, of in this case, privileged cabal of Elder Zionists seeking to control history.

 

[Furion Matsuya]

it's also no reason to immediately discount it either. simply b/c there are no, or few, corroborating sources for a text doesn't mean that the text was dreamt up in the conspiratorial minds, of in this case, privileged cabal of Elder Zionists seeking to control history.

What you believe in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion conspiracy ?. If so I thought I was pushing things with somewhat believing in Bigfoot.

 

[Semper Victor]

It closer than you're going to get for almost anything in ancient times.

As another forumite as said before, that an ancient dicument removed some centuries from the events is the only thing we've got is not enough reason to treat unreliable information as reliable. If it fits with other historical and archaeological evidence, with logic and philological analysis shows it to be a reliable source, it's ok, If not, then it's not a valid source.

You peculiarly seem to continue insisting on cultural change. Why would there be any? Why do you expect any?

Israelites are NOT Goths or Mongols or Martians. They wouldn't be bringing a different culture. Their culture is Canaanite & Egyptian. These elements are already present in Canaan. You shouldn't be able to differentiate an Israelite from a Canaanite even if he hit you in the face with a slingshot.

I expect there to be as much "cultural change" as there is when, say, a Milanese army invades Bologna.

Because the Biblical tale talks of a nomadic people invading and destroying a sedentary society. And such a change in culture has left material changes in all material cultures known to archaeologists; unless Israelites are a special case of course.

Oh, I put philological considerations way, way ahead of physical evidence. Physical evidence doesn't say anything. It doesn't speak at all. It can only corroborate or fail to corroborate, written accounts. And even whether it does or not depends on a lot of assumptions, interpretation and speculation with a lot less basis.

Neither historical chronicles, nor archaelology nor philology on their own can usually give a complete picture. All paths of study must coincide if we want to arrive to a valid conclusion (as valid as it can be in such matters). And in the case of the OT, archeology and the study of the historical records other than the Bible itself are heavily bakanced againt the historicity of the Biblical tale in it basical framework.

Nothing in the ancient world is reliable. Nothing. Not a single scribble on a pyramid wall. Not sure what standards you expect.

Your theory about Babylonian priests inventing a cult is pure speculation. There is no more evidence of that than the Red Sea parting - and you're much further away from that period than the scribes were from the Exodus.

As I said before, "reliability" is always a relative concept when approaching these matters in a critical way. About "my theory", it's not mine at all. For starters, here you have a couple books that defend it (much better than I can do, I'm afraid):

• The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. This is an exhaustive recapitulation of the evidence (archaeological and historical) available and a summary of what can be inferred from it when compared with the OT.
• The Quest for the Historical Israel, by Israel Finkelstein and Amihai Mazar. A collection of essays written by two Israeli archaeologists, edited by professor Brian B. Schmidt (the essays are a further elaboration of their lectures at the Sixth Biennial Colloquium of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism held in 2006 in Detroit).

No we don't. We have thousands of contemporaries who read the same newspaper sources we do, and were just as fooled as we are. Accounts of actual eyewitnesses are few and far between. And, of course, they had a vested interest in claiming they were there, for they got government-awarded ribbons, pensions and stuff. It is an obvious conspiracy..

I wasn't aware that the French, Prussian, Spanish, Austrian and Russian public all read the British press in 1815 and believed it as the word of God.
It's not the same to manipulate historical records in barely literate societies where just a small elite knew how to write and read than in literate societies with mass printing and lots of writers and readers. Hell, not even Hitler or Stalin succeeded in these circumstances.

*shrug* I could see male bandits going on a raid to kidnap womenfolk. Not the first or last time.

That said, the point of the story is the Roman merger with the Sabines. And yes, I do believe they merged. No, it doesn't hang on the exact details of how that merger happened, but I do expect intermarriage was a step. Yes, maybe there was a quarrel over some kidnapped women, or a quarrel that intermarried women helped resolve. Not untypical of tribal squabbles. So, yes, I expect it to reflect some real historical event in the tribal past.

Did Romulus have a twin? Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. Twins do happen. Is it important? Well, given that nobles of the same family frequently lead rival factions against each other, I could it as a summary of an early internal conflict for leadership. So, yes, could be a historical event.

I'm on a roll.

This is starting to sound like the Monty Python gag: maybe they mixed, but it was not a rape at all, and maybe they were not Sabines at all, and maybe the kidnappers were not Romans, and maybe Romulus wasn't there, and maybe he did not even exist .... if you're trying to say that the ancient Romans intemarried with their neighbours and produced offspring, I must point out that's an utter platitude. But that does say nothing at all about the event of the Rape.

If we're going to treat all this stuff as vague allegories, perhaps we should organize a forum for Philosophy and Literature and move this thread there, because down that path we'll be able to turn and twist everything to fit any kind of preconceived theories. But that's not History at all.

Nonsense. There are plenty of other ruins in that area. The only reason you assume it is Troy is because later - much, much later - word-of-mouth tradition claimed Troy was there. Suddenly, that's reliable?

Unless the classical Greeks managed to alter the coastline, the topography and put the right mountains in the right place, it fits quite nicely, yes.

Bible doesn't say so. Does he have to?

I've read the argument of modern scholars, and it is very speculative and very, very weak. [To those not in the know: they claim "Israelites" were some local Canaanite proletarian heroes, who sick of oppression by the Canaanite nobility, overthrew the capitalist-exploitative superstructure in the cities, then fled to the hills to find "freedom", and reinvented themselves as "Isrealites" in their new workers' paradise. And one day, while sitting around bored in their kibbutzes, having met all the production targets of their five hundred year plans, the commissars decided to cook up with this really elaborate, complicated fantasy story, about having been slaves in Egypt, a big lie to forge closer brotherhood and uphold socialist consciousness.]

Besides the laughable modern-day overtones, it smells bogus. A proletarian uprising? Across all the cities of Canaan? Just how many times did such a thing ever happened in history, in any one city, much less across all of them?

Of course, it is all imaginative speculation. Something articulated by modern kids brought up on bad Hollywood movies and bad Marx. There is no evidence of any of that - written or otherwise. They are merely interpreting the evacuation of the cities and emergence of poor Canaanite settlements in the hills as the result of some Mel Gibson-inspired internal uprising. Fallaciously, in my opinion.

My argument on wartime disruptions, round ups & deportations explains the same archaeological evidence, and has the advantage of conforming with the only written account of that time. As well as being actually historically plausible, with multiple such examples throughout history, in many other countries and places. No revolutionary cries of "freedom!" or sympathetic folk heroes needed, just pitiless armed men doing what armed men frequently do - push little people around.

Not saying my theory is correct. But it is better than what's being offered.

To reiterate: archaeology doesn't "speak". Rocks don't tell stories. People do. I can take the same evidence and read it completely differently.

The collapse of the cities of the Levant and Anatolia across a 200 year period on such a wide area (while leaving relatively untouched other neighbouring areas) is a puzzling event, that scholars have tried to explain in several ways. The theory that holds most sway currently is that of an internal collapse as it's the one that fits better with the material evidence. And frankly I don't see what you have such a hard time accepting it (other than making anachronical references to a XIX century philosopher).

Just in Canaan, a wholesale collapse of cities had already happened before, at the turn between the third and second millenium BC, with a return to a seminomadic way of life until cities began to grow again. And then it happened again at the end of the Late Bronze era. And such collapses have also happened in other societies, for example ancient Mayans or the Indus valley civilization. I even venture as far as to affirm that Marxist influences can also be discarded safely in these cases too.

Archaeology in itself can not tell a tale, but it's the only kind of evidence that comes directly from the times under study, and the least susceptible to bias and manipulation. Unless you pretend us to believe that written documents are never subjected to alterations, or that it's harder to change a unique copy of a text than to move whole cities and settlements around.

 

[Yakman]

What you believe in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion conspiracy ?. If so I thought I was pushing things with somewhat believing in Bigfoot.

i don't. but the number of people who believe that the bible's entire text is a white wash by deuteronomistic conspirators is a bit silly. Jeremiah and his successors clearly had an objective, and more than a bit of it was propagandizing, but he didn't spin everything out of thin air.

 

[Yakman]

The Hyksos were Canaanite, but yet we can easily trace their return to Canaan after the fall of Avaris partly due to a very distinct type of pottery. Why do you suggest that it would be different for the Israelites? If they were pastoralists they should display an even larger difference in the archaeological records.

reading a lot of israelite history this summer, but how about this as a question?

The Hyksos were Canaanite, and the Hebrew tradition says that they had connections to Canaan. Why couldn't the Hebrews have been a remnant population that remained in Egypt? After all, they are settled in a singular area (Goshen), had been powerful at one time (Joseph), and were now in political disfavor (Exodus).

They get expelled, or whatever, and come back to Canaan after a period in the desert, where they coordinate an invasion by several tribes and peoples living around the margins. Doesn't that make more sense than a religious movement in just the highlands which would explain the absence of the pig bones?

 

[Semper Victor]

reading a lot of israelite history this summer, but how about this as a question?

The Hyksos were Canaanite, and the Hebrew tradition says that they had connections to Canaan. Why couldn't the Hebrews have been a remnant population that remained in Egypt? After all, they are settled in a singular area (Goshen), had been powerful at one time (Joseph), and were now in political disfavor (Exodus).

They get expelled, or whatever, and come back to Canaan after a period in the desert, where they coordinate an invasion by several tribes and peoples living around the margins. Doesn't that make more sense than a religious movement in just the highlands which would explain the absence of the pig bones?

That implies that in order to make part of the archaeological and historical evidence fit with a text composed several centuries later we have to assume the existence two events for which there's no evidence whatsoever (remaining Hyksos in Egypt and a later invasion of Canaan).

If we were trying to do this with any other ancient text in similar circumstances (for example, Livy's account of the foundation of Rome or the Homeric poems), such speculations would be disqualified immediately, why should the OT be an exception?

 

[Yakman]

If we were trying to do this with any other ancient text in similar circumstances (for example, Livy's account of the foundation of Rome or the Homeric poems), such speculations would be disqualified immediately, why should the OT be an exception?

except we don't immediately disqualify either Livy or Homer. They are sources. Archaeology is a source too, but it needs interpretation. Did the Trojans found Rome? Probably not. Did Odysseus fight a cyclops? Probably not. But were there competing greek settlements in central italy who influenced the creation of Latinum? Probably. Did the Mycenaeans carry out wars with people in what became Ionia? Probably.

 

[Semper Victor]

except we don't immediately disqualify either Livy or Homer. They are sources. Archaeology is a source too, but it needs interpretation. Did the Trojans found Rome? Probably not. Did Odysseus fight a cyclops? Probably not. But were there competing greek settlements in central italy who influenced the creation of Latinum? Probably. Did the Mycenaeans carry out wars with people in what became Ionia? Probably.

Nobody is disqualifying the entire OT, except for some scholars that published their works in the 1990s and whose theories have lost much sway after the discovery of artifacts like the Tel Dan stele in 1993-4 (and they also discarded the Moab Stele, known since the XIX century and widely considered as authentical, as a forgery). The point is that the biblical tale is only verified by external evidence until a certain point in history; past it the overall narrative becomes unreliable. This means that just a part of the OT is unreliable, not the whole of it. And the Exodus happens to belong with the unreliable and/or unverifiable parts of the OT. Does that mean that echoes of old folk tales and legends can not be detected, embedded into it? No, it doesn't. Here and there there are certain scattered parts and fragments that can be vestiges of older traditions with a historical basis. But on a whole, they've lost all of their significance as they've been taken out of context, edited, modified and used as building blocks in creating a new narrative. In the case of the Exodus, there may be some snippets that may allow us to make educated (and very cautious) guesses (always weighing them against external evidence), but those guesses differ so much from the biblical Exodus that I'm not sure if it's really advisable to consider it "historical" at all.

 

[Arilou]

Nobody is disqualifying the entire OT, except for some scholars that published their works in the 1990s and whose theories have lost much sway after the discovery of artifacts like the Tel Dan stele in 1993-4 (and they also discarded the Moab Stele, known since the XIX century and widely considered as authentical, as a forgery). The point is that the biblical tale is only verified by external evidence until a certain point in history; past it the overall narrative becomes unreliable. This means that just a part of the OT is unreliable, not the whole of it. And the Exodus happens to belong with the unreliable and/or unverifiable parts of the OT. Does that mean that echoes of old folk tales and legends can not be detected, embedded into it? No, it doesn't. Here and there there are certain scattered parts and fragments that can be vestiges of older traditions with a historical basis. But on a whole, they've lost all of their significance as they've been taken out of context, edited, modified and used as building blocks in creating a new narrative. In the case of the Exodus, there may be some snippets that may allow us to make educated (and very cautious) guesses (always weighing them against external evidence), but those guesses differ so much from the biblical Exodus that I'm not sure if it's really advisable to consider it "historical" at all.

More importantly, even if Exodus is part history, part myth, it's almost impossible to tell what is what.