BBS Exodus
Introduction
Whenever The Bible’s Buried Secrets
insists that convergence is the thing to be sought, it produces a denial that
the biblical evidence exists or is credible in any way. The justification for this rests on supposed
Egyptian or other artifact evidence that really does not exit. Neither the Merneptah Stele, nor The Tel
Zayit alphabet, nor Piramesse have produced any credible evidence, not one
shred. As opposed to this, the Bible
leaves a cohesive, relatively easily followed record.
There is no evidence for any groups
of writers offered in The Bible’s Buried Secrets. All that exists is the oft repeated refrain
that such writers created Torah. The basis
for this regurgitation of the Wellhausen theory is never really discussed. We are expected to accept this theory of a
group of writers on the basis of repetitious fiat alone.
The practice of replacing reality
with philosophical idealism is common enough. It is in no way scientific. It meets none of the criteria for scientific
endeavor, even in the loosest sense. It
must finally be discarded as pietistic truisms, which amount to so much
rot. Truisms are nice, but they rarely
square with the real world.
Script[1]
Exodus
(time 23:20)
N: This convergence[2] between archaeology and
the bible provides a time frame for the Exodus.
It could not have happened before Ramesses became king around 1275 BC,
and it could not have happened after 1208 BC, when the stele of pharaoh Merneptah,
Ramesses II’s son specifically locates the Israelites in Canaan.[3] The Bible says the Israelites leave Egypt in
a mass migration of 600,000 men and their families.[4] And then wander in the desert for forty
years. But even assuming the Bible is
exaggerating, in a hundred years of searching, archaeologists have not yet
found evidence of migration that can be linked to the Exodus.[5]
Dever: No excavated site gives us any
information about the route of the wandering through the wilderness, and Exodus
is simply not attested anywhere.
N: Any historical or archeological
confirmation of the Exodus remains elusive.
Yet, scholars have discovered that all four groups of biblical writers
contributed to some part of the Exodus story.
Perhaps, it is for the same reason its message remains powerful to this
day. Its inspiring theme of freedom.
Meyers: Freedom is a compelling notion and
that is one of the ways that we can understand the story of the Exodus from
being controlled by others to controlling one’s self; the idea of a change from
domination to autonomy. These are very
powerful ideas that resonate in the human spirit. And the Exodus gives narrative reality to
those ideas.[6]
Commentary
No convergence exists between archaeology and the bible, not at the
Exodus it doesn’t. The connection
between Ramesses II and the Exodus is an understandable romance. At first blush the artifacts found at Tanis
where overwhelmingly impressive.
Everyone jumped to conclusions.
Those conclusions were all wrong.
The location was wrong. The Ramesside artifacts found at Tanis were
hauled in from another location, twelve miles to the south. There is no evidence of Canaanite, Hyksos, or
Semitic activity at Tanis; all such activity appears to center around
Avaris/Piramesse/Qantir and that area.
The time is wrong. Egyptian dating is very uncertain: it is
filled with gaps, holes, and unidentified periods. Since Flinders Petrie began the first
Egyptian explorations, the estimated BC time span of Egyptian chronology has
dropped from 5510 to 3500 years, a 57% error.
Massive dating problems remain unsolved.
Most of the data hangs on one pharaoh, Ramesses II.
Only one safe scientific conclusion may be drawn. The pharaohs of Joseph and of Moses and the
Exodus remain unknown, shrouded in the mysteries of Egypt. We can find better fits in the dating scheme
of things, as it now stands; yet this too is just so much subjective wishing in
the wind. Until a firmer Egyptian
history is established, we don’t know much of anything about any “convergence
between [Egyptian] archaeology and the Bible.”
The Bible’s Buried Secrets
begins with the rash assumption that “It could not have happened….” Yet it both can and it did happen. With the relatively firm dating of Shishak,
the dates for Solomon will be fixed at 970-930.
These dates are supported by tracing the Hebrew kings all the way from
Solomon to the Persians, Greeks, and Romans.
There are very few chronological problems left to solve for that period
of Judaic history. Egyptian history, on
the other hand, is very muddy. If
Solomon’s dates are fixed then David’s dates are fixed at 1010-970; The Exodus
dates are fixed as well at either 1446 or 1406.[7] Neither of these two options is compatible
with any proposed dates either for Ramesses II or for Merneptah.[8] If the dates for Exodus are firm then dates
for Abraham and Joseph are also firm at circa 1846 and 1661, depending on which
stages of their lives are under discussion.[9]
Once again The Bible’s Buried Secrets begins with question begging logic: it assumes
that “the Bible is exaggerating;” that Torah is the result of four or more
convergent “groups of biblical writers;” and that this rests not in historical
reality, rather in an “inspiring theme of freedom.”[10] By assuming the conclusion The
Bible’s Buried Secrets
circumvents any need for rational evidence or logic.
The fundamental error of seeking to
find archaeological evidence for the Exodus is hoping to find any evidence at
all.
If we seek the Red (or Reed) Sea
crossing, we have hundreds of miles of coastline to explore. By the way, the red or reed very likely refers
to the papyrus plant, iconographic of Lower Egypt, which was found all along
the Red Sea as far south as Kush (Sudan).[11]
Once in the Sinai desert, we are searching
for artifacts from tent dwelling, animal herding nomads, who founded no permanent
settlements, who establish no lasting civilization, who are only present for
forty years during which they wander all over Sinai, whose principle stopping
place appears to be mount Sinai. From
such a sojourn we expect to find nothing at all.
There are pharaohs of Egypt, living
in established capitals, for whom we cannot establish so much as the certainty
of their name, or dates, or presence, or any evidence other than that recorded on
a document like that of the Table of Nations in the Bible.[12] Moreover, if the paucity of evidence calls
the historicity of the Bible in question, why doesn’t the greater paucity of
evidence call the historicity of Egypt into question?[13]
The Egyptians made glorious and vast
claims about the unification of their kingdom.
Contrary to this, their behavior exhibits an incredible pettiness. Their leaders regularly robbed their own
historic tombs, defaced their own historic monuments, destroyed their own
historic documents, and in general deprecated their predecessors. Such cheap and tawdry rivalry is rare, even
among politicians. Rather than being a
unified kingdom, Egypt must be characterized as a kingdom torn by family
rivalries and community feuds. Egyptian leaders
were far more interested in a display of glory, a desire to impress and
intimidate, than they were in building a nation. Everything about the Egyptians reeks of competition,
oppression, and slavery. If anyone
should be prone to exaggeration it would seem to be the Egyptians.
There is no evidence here that casts
doubt on either the reality or the date of the Exodus. Nor is there any substantiation for the claim
of four groups of writers. The idea that
we may rewrite history as it pleases us, replacing reality with the
philosophical idealism of freedom is novel, but also lacks evidence.
Conclusion
Whenever The Bible’s Buried Secrets
insists that convergence is the thing to be sought, it produces a denial that
the biblical evidence exists or is credible in any way. The justification for this rests on supposed
Egyptian or other artifact evidence that really does not exit. Neither the Merneptah Stele, nor The Tel
Zayit alphabet, nor Piramesse have produced any credible evidence, not one
shred. As opposed to this, the Bible
leaves a cohesive, relatively easily followed record.
There is no evidence for any groups
of writers offered in The Bible’s Buried Secrets. All that exists is the oft repeated refrain
that such writers created Torah. The basis
for this regurgitation of the Wellhausen theory is never really discussed. We are expected to accept this theory of a
group of writers on the basis of repetitious fiat alone.
The practice of replacing reality
with philosophical idealism is common enough. It is in no way scientific. It meets none of the criteria for scientific
endeavor, even in the loosest sense. It
must finally be discarded as pietistic truisms, which amount to so much
rot. Truisms are nice, but they rarely
square with the real world.[14]
[1]
What is for the most part an exact copy of the script follows. There are a few places where individual
speakers could neither be heard nor understood: for this we apologize. Every effort was made to be precise: there
were just spots that defeated us. Since
this is a quote in its entirety it seemed unnecessary to mark it with quotation
marks. The notation for each speaker is
tedious enough: Narrator, Reader, etc.
If you discover bothersome errors please reply to this Blog and point
them out. You may verify the script more
easily by starting to replay it where the “time” stamps indicate discussion
begins. The second of these links is
free from advertising and thus easier to use.
This blog is found at:
http://swantec-oti.blogspot.com/
[2]
There is no convergence here. The fact
of the true location of Pi-Ramesses
being at Qantir rather than Tanis requires the complete rethinking of the whole
Pithom and Ramesses relationship.
Insufficient information is forthcoming concerning either Qantir or
Avaris, even though Qantir was identified (1966-69, 1975 …) and Avaris (from
1885) contains artifacts going back to Minoan civilization, about which Bietak
has written extensively.
[3]
This dating can only stand on the presumption of a Ramesside Exodus, which we
have already shown to stand on precarious grounds. A Thutmose III/Hatchepsut/ Neferure Exodus provides a far
superior historical fit.
[4] There
is no good reason to suspect that the increase in Israelite population from
seventy-four to 2.4 million souls in two-hundred-fifteen years is at all
unusual. This is a 4.95% growth in
population. Besides, the count is
described as a mixed multitude, which suggests that all who adhered to Israel
were not of Israel. The biblical record
expresses that alarm exists among the Egyptians at the rate of population
expansion among the Israelites (Exodus 1:9-10).
[5]
Exactly what sort of evidence did anyone expect to find after a large multitude
of nomads wandered across the desert, dwelling only in tents, building no
cities, whose only lasting structures would have been wells? Finding the occasional un-datable broken clay
cup is the quest for a grain of sand in a land of sand, a particular un-datable
needle in a needle stack. What would be
alarming would be the finding of anything.
What could possibly be there?
Moses’ broken tablets? The golden
calf ground to powder? A tent peg?
[6] To
what end? To the fabrication of
unrealistic histories? To the
falsification of numerous dates? Meyers’
generalizations and opinions on the subject at hand are irrelevant.
[7] We
have discussed this difference before.
There is no technical problem here: it is a matter of simple
addition. The problem is a matter of
text criticism. MT dates the Exodus at
480 years prior to the fourth year pf Solomon’s reign (970 – 4 + 480 =
1446). LXX dates the Exodus at 440 years
prior to the fourth year pf Solomon’s reign (970 – 4 + 440 = 1406). We have tentatively proposed that the
resolution is that LXX counts from the end of the forty years of wandering,
while MT counts from the beginning of the forty years of wandering. Since LXX predates MT by several centuries,
this difference would be explained by a MT scribe attempting to correct a
perceived error in the text.
Egyptian sources have no such problem. For the greater part Egyptian records reveal
no textual variation; because. for the greater part Egyptian records have no
information at all: it’s just blank.
In the worst case scenario we have an unexplained forty year
error, which considering the errors of other methods is a very small nit to
pick, indeed.
[8] We
remember also that Merneptah hangs on the broken threads that the word for Israel
may not be Israel at all; furthermore, Merneptah provides no certain location.
[9] If
it were necessary for our discussion, the Bible provides more than ample means
for tracing the lives of both Abraham and Joseph from birth to death. We doubt that such accuracy can be established
for any Egyptian of the period.
[10] We
are not minimizing the importance of freedom, especially as it is so thoroughly
expressed in Torah. Our protest is to
the idea that freedom developed in the mind of man as a philosophical necessity
and ideal. We assert, without apology, that
real freedom exists only as the gift of Yahweh, and man learned it because
Yahweh taught it at Sinai. To remove Yahweh
from the evidence as the Central Character, and the Prime Mover in the Exodus reality,
is an attempt to destroy that reality.
The Israelites were empowered to be good historians, because they sat at
the feet of the Perfect Historian. The evidence
for this is overwhelming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_stem_(hieroglyph)
[12] Genesis
10
[14] This
is the realm or genre known as science fiction.
[15] If you have been blessed or helped by any of these meditations,
please repost, share, or use any of them as you wish. No rights are reserved. They are designed and intended for your free
participation. They were freely
received, and are freely given. No other
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