Egyptian Enslavement of the Hebrews ?

[Gordy]

So because one view is tradition it must be obvious? Not say one of many equally viable interpretations but the one that was traditionally gone with? Like every other traditional interpretation of anything else.

I did not say that the traditional view was obvious, I said your interpretation wasn't the mainstream one historically speaking. It is one that only occurred to people in the light of relatively recent archaeological discoveries. So it can't be all that obvious.

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

However it doesn't have anything to do with the story about Jews being enslaved by Egyptians in Egypt however, quite the contrary in fact.

No, it actually does.

The exact piece Amalric is referring to is the victory stele of Pharaoh Merneptah in a mortuary temple in Thebes, relating to a c.1208 campaign against rebels in the land of Canaan. It gives a list of the rebel tribes subdued, including "Israel has been laid waste, bare of seed" (along with others - "Canaan plundered with every sort of woe, Askhelon overcome, Yanoam obliterated, Khor become a widow, etc.")".

The Egyptian conquest of the Levant in the 1450s is (IMO) a much more plausible historical context than the Hyksos a couple of centuries earlier. There was a hug influx of Canaanites into Egypt in the aftermath of the conquest - not merely as POWs from the wars, but also migrants looking for work. Don't forget that the Egyptian state was completely transformed after the conquest - the taxes and tributes from Asia allowed much greater centralization, breaking the pharaoh's dependence on local nomarchs and the creation of a professional Mesopotamian-style bureaucracy and professional standing army mainly composed of foreigners. Levantine migrants - and Canaanites especially - streamed as migrants into Egypt in this era, precisely to serve as highly-skilled craftsmen (formally attached as slaves to temples), to staff the bureaucracy (with their Asian experience) and the army (with new Asian technology, wheel, chariot, etc.). Young Canaanite princes were also brought to Egyptian courts, to be raised and trained in Egyptian mores, and become good loyal vassals when finally sent back to govern their homelands (much like the Romans brought conquered barbarian princes to Rome, etc.) Moses's upbringing would definitely fit the format of one of these princes.

Of course, not all came as voluntary migrants. There were repeated rebellions in the Levantine provinces, which had to be put down by force. And every rebellion would likely lead to the punitive deportation of rebel elements (and maybe tribes wholesale) to Egypt who would likely be put to crappier end of slave work. The victory stele of Merneptah is merely one example of this.

If I had to play speculator, I wouldn't be surprised if Moses was a Canaanite prince of the tribe of Israel (one of many Semitic Levantine tribes), that were taken to be raised in the Egyptian court, that there were long-standing Canaanite migrants serving for generations there already, alongside more recent deportees from Canaanite rebellions. That there might have been a rebellion of the Israel tribe specifically sometime around Moses lifetime (possibly the very one listed in the 1208 stele) which led a mass deportation of rebels to Egypt (just the latest of several waves from prior rebellions), and that the young prince felt it incumbent upon his duty to obtain the release of his tribesmen, availing himself of his court connections and the disorders of the Sea People troubles to return.

 

[Semper Victor]

Also to Semper Victor, Proto-Semetic religion was centred around El, who like Ba'al was also a generic name for any god/lord. But it wasn't centred around Ba'al, Ba'al is his kid.
And most arguments paint the rise of El into YHWH as a slow evolution over centuries than a reformation, cemented by political action not created by it.

The issue of the "true nature" of biblical YHWH is a controversial one, that's for sure. For one, even the Bible is confusing sometimes about the subject. The Semitic supreme god El is considered by many to be the origin of the biblical YHWH, but there's also the issue that in the Ugaritic tablets depicting the legends of that city's religion (the "Baal Cycle"), appears a son of El with the name "YW" wich some scholars consider to be the same god as the Bible's YHWH. It's far from settled, for as can be seen in the Baal Cycle, the Bible's language borrows heavily from western semitic religious imaginery, to the point that many of the attributes of Baal are attributed to YHWH in the Bible (with the opening of the Red Sea waters as a reference to the conflict between Baal and the sea god Yam).

Whatever the origins of YHWH may be, the current consensus among scholars seem to point towards him being the god of the royal house while the rest of the Israelite populace kept on worshipping the Semitic pantheon as they'd always done. Until in the VII century BC first king Hezekiah and later king Josiah of Judah decided to impose the royal god YHWH as the sole god of all their subjects. And the reason for such a move seems quite obvious: to reinforce the royal authority, which in the case of king Josiah went hand by hand with an ambitious program for military expansion against the northern highlands which had once belonged to the northern kingdom of Israel and the crumbling Assyrian empire had annexed. In this context, reinforcing the royal authority and especially turning YHWH's temple in Jerusalem (until then a temple for the royal family's worship of YHWH) into the "sole house of God" was a very potent ideological instrument that if successful would solidify his claims over all of the Palestinian highlands.

 

[Arilou]

The Semitic supreme god El is considered by many to be the origin of the biblical YHWH,

To be more specific, El is considered to be one of the sources for the entity that was eventually amalgamated into YHWH. (note that "God" is explicitly called El, or rather Elohim, in the Bible)

 

[Arilou]

So - generations of people read the bible and came away convinced that the Canaanites were totally different from the Hebrews. Your post seems to imply that it is obvious in the bible that the two groups were essentially flavours of the same thing. If that had been the case then we wouldn't have had generations of people with the wrong opinion. It came as a bit of a surprise even to archaeologists that the two supposedly separate people were archaeologically very similar.

It should be noted that the Bible explicitly draws genealogical/mythological links with other canaanite groups (although not always flattering ones)

 

[Arilou]

Also to Semper Victor, Proto-Semetic religion was centred around El, who like Ba'al was also a generic name for any god/lord. But it wasn't centred around Ba'al, Ba'al is his kid.

El seems to have been a "distant creator" (at least in the northern areas) acknowledged as the head of the pantheon but not the guy most actual worship and rituals were directed towards.

 

[Orinsul]

El seems to have been a "distant creator" (at least in the northern areas) acknowledged as the head of the pantheon but not the guy most actual worship and rituals were directed towards.

Greeks worked like that too which works as a good context to go through as everyone knows them. That's what makes the El-God thing a big change, not the main guy being the only guy, but the big concept but most;y irrelevant guy going to be the only guy. Which makes comparative religionists, to anthropologists to historians and etc all really happy because it breaks the pattern most religions development did, not enough to not make sense, but enough to let in lots of why and how questions which is what makes history fun.

 

[Gordy]

It should be noted that the Bible explicitly draws genealogical/mythological links with other canaanite groups (although not always flattering ones)

Yes but it also says that Hamitic (sons of Ham) and Semitic (sons of Shem) are part of the same family but I think it would be pushing it to say that the Hebrews were a Hamitic people.

 

[Arilou]

Yes but it also says that Hamitic (sons of Ham) and Semitic (sons of Shem) are part of the same family but I think it would be pushing it to say that the Hebrews were a Hamitic people.

Cart before the horse there: The hamitic and semitic language groups are named after the mythological figures, not the other way around.

 

[Gordy]

Cart before the horse there: The hamitic and semitic language groups are named after the mythological figures, not the other way around.

Yes but the Hamitic languages got their name because the bible considered the "sons of Ham" to be the Canaanites and the Egyptians. Hebrews were "sons of Shem". Thus they saw Canaanites to be relatives to the same extent as their other enemies the Egyptians.

 

[Barsoom]

Yes but the Hamitic languages got their name because the bible considered the "sons of Ham" to be the Canaanites and the Egyptians. Hebrews were "sons of Shem". Thus they saw Canaanites to be relatives to the same extent as their other enemies the Egyptians.

Also, every single person in the world is part of this family as they're all descendants of Noah. Descendants of Shem and Ham are the least related, it's a first generation split.

 

[Semper Victor]

To be more specific, El is considered to be one of the sources for the entity that was eventually amalgamated into YHWH. (note that "God" is explicitly called El, or rather Elohim, in the Bible)

Yes, you're right. In Semitic religious tradition, El was the father of all gods, and thus was considered not only as "a" god, but as "the" god (El seems also to be another name for the Arabic god "Allah" that Islam woul later single out as the one "true and unique" god).

Another interesting fact is that, apart from the Ugaritic Baal Cycle, there seems to be other traces of YHWH worship outside the territory inhabited by primitive Israelites, more especifically among the Semitic nomadic populations of the Neguev and the Transjordanian highlands, or to put it another way, that YHWH was not a n exclusively Israelite "invention".

Another (in my opinion) fascinating line of enquiry is to what point the Hebrew Bible came under influence of an older version of proto-monotheism: Zoroastrianism. Scholars put the redaction of the oldest version of the 5 books of the Torah (in part drawing on older traditions and books, of which the Book of Isaiah seems to have been the oldest in written form) in the VII century BC, while Zoroaster's Gathas have been dated by comparative linguistic analysis to 1000 BC or earlier (due to the proximity of its language to that of the Rigveda). It's very possible that through their stay in Babylon, their release from exile by the Persian king Cyrus and their later experience as subjects of the Achaemenid empire. Although any such influence would have been superimposed onto the basic Biblical tradition, that had been already fixed in its written form before the Babylonian exile. But looking at how the most ancient part of the Bible lacks the notion of Final Judgement, while it's already present in the Gathas (tied to the moral behaviour of the judged ones during life), it's tempting to draw hypothesis on that fact (although another much nearer source would have been traditional Egyptian religion).

 

[jamhaw]

Ah that makes quite a bit of sense.

I thought it was well know that the Pyramids were build by Egyptian labourers putting in their annual service rather then slavery but I can't say I'm surprised given the number of people who seem to think Humans couldn't have build them and Aliens had to be involved. "I'm looking at you History Channel"

I honestly think the revision is more an attempt to try and look smart than something terribly accurate. The Biblical account demonstrates that the Israelites viewed it as slavery. Accounts of the exact same thing from the 19th century (in this case building not a pyramid but a canal) attest to people subject to the corvee deeming it no better than slavery. And in that case significant numbers of slaves were also brought in from the south, I see no reason to believe that the same considerations were inapplicable 2,500 years ago.

Archaeologists pretty much consider the Hebrews to be a sub-tribe of Canaanites. The only major differences seem to have been that Hebrews didn't eat pork (hence no pig bones found at various sites) whilst other Canaanites did.

Of course reading the bible would give you the impression that the Canaanites were enemies of the Hebrews and nothing to do with them but the known facts don't really support this.

That is not true. The Bible is filled with stories of close interactions and marriages with the Canaanites, not to mention going into detail about how the children of Israel are related to various foes like the Moabites. Of course the accounts aren't very positive about such things.

 

[Gordy]

That is not true. The Bible is filled with stories of close interactions and marriages with the Canaanites, not to mention going into detail about how the children of Israel are related to various foes like the Moabites. Of course the accounts aren't very positive about such things.

So how does this contradict what I said?

I said the impression you get is that they are a) not us b) enemies. You've just said that "the accounts aren't very positive" about close interactions and marriages with them. To my eye that supports what I said.

 

[Jos de trol]

were ramses and moses really youth buddies?

 

[Avernite]

To be more specific, El is considered to be one of the sources for the entity that was eventually amalgamated into YHWH. (note that "God" is explicitly called El, or rather Elohim, in the Bible)

I haven't read much of the bible in Hebrew, admittedly, but I understand the first bit of Genesis refers to Him as 'Adonai Elohim' which would more properly mean He was 'Lord of the Gods' with Elohim meaning Gods (and El, the singular, meaning God).

So, in the beginning the Lord of the Gods created Heaven and Earth. Sounds not-very-monotheist when you put it like that, and not that different from many other religions. But also doesn't mean El is anyone in particular.

 

[Cavalry]

I found this site is very interesting on the (speculation) history matters: http://bible.ca/
Not interested in the church teaching but in the Exodus route, where and when, who is the pharaohs involved....

Of course I don't believe in all the Exodus and miracles, but try to find some reasonable explainations. To think the whole Exodus and Moses are just some imagination of men is just too much.

Mỵ speculation about Exodus story after reading various sources is: Moses took some slaves (of multi nationality) out of Egypt, with or without permission of pharaoh, and united them with a new religion that he knew part from his father in law, the Midian priest. After a while, they became or mixed with the hill peoples on transjordan, to be called Hebrew or Habiru, and began to conquest Canaan. No miracles involved, except brilliant leadership of men!

 

[jamhaw]

So how does this contradict what I said?

I said the impression you get is that they are a) not us b) enemies. You've just said that "the accounts aren't very positive" about close interactions and marriages with them. To my eye that supports what I said.

"Gives the impression that the Canaanites were enemies of the Hebrews and nothing to do with them but the known facts don't really support this." The Bible is filled with accounts of close interactions and marriages etc. The Bible discourages it, but nonetheless makes it pretty clear that it was happening and frequently. It does give the impression that they were enemies fairly often as well, and I do think the facts support the concept that they were frequently foes.

 

[ZhugeKongming]

I honestly think the revision is more an attempt to try and look smart than something terribly accurate. The Biblical account demonstrates that the Israelites viewed it as slavery. Accounts of the exact same thing from the 19th century (in this case building not a pyramid but a canal) attest to people subject to the corvee deeming it no better than slavery. And in that case significant numbers of slaves were also brought in from the south, I see no reason to believe that the same considerations were inapplicable 2,500 years ago.

So you think that a theory which rests entirely on a vague religious text written centuries after the fact is more accurate than archaeological evidence?

No one here or anywhere else is claiming that corvee for purposes of monumental construction is some kind of picnic, but there is actually a meaningful distinction between labor-as-tax and lifetime bondage. There is also a meaningful distinction between pyramids built by free and skilled native Egyptian labor (whether they were compelled or paid) and pyramids built by foreign slaves.

 

[Gordy]

"Gives the impression that the Canaanites were enemies of the Hebrews and nothing to do with them but the known facts don't really support this." The Bible is filled with accounts of close interactions and marriages etc. The Bible discourages it, but nonetheless makes it pretty clear that it was happening and frequently. It does give the impression that they were enemies fairly often as well, and I do think the facts support the concept that they were frequently foes.

You seem to be confusing "facts" (as in stuff that is known to people like archaeologists) with a highly unreliable biblical narrative. The biblical narrative gives the impression that they were foes and little to do with the Hebrew people. Known facts don't support this view.