Well, Daniel, he never accused you of being uninformed, and I dare say you are probably very informed...if by very informed you, of course, mean you are very well aware of what is in the bible. But you know what? One thing I have learned dealing with people is that the more certain they are about something involving themselves, the less likely it is to be true. So you know what? Let me test how informed you are. Lemme throw you a doozy: Did the Exodus actually happen? The founding element of the abrahamic religions...did it actually happen?

No. As Min has pointed out elsewhere on this forum before I could pounce on this myself, there is no evidence showing that Hebrews ever actually existed in Egypt at all. Two centuries of archaeology later and not a trace. Not a hint, not a clue, not an allusion or anything. It's almost like they were never there at all...which is, of course, the point.

So, if the Hebrews were never in Egypt under Pharaoh's despotic rule...then, where is the basis for the entire story that follows? Where is its weight in its meaning, if it's little more than a work of fiction?

A+ CoH

(November 2, 2012 at 2:17 am)Creed of Heresy Wrote: Lemme throw you a doozy: Did the Exodus actually happen? The founding element of the abrahamic religions...did it actually happen?

Did it happen when? In the traditional dates? 1250-1450 BC? Probably not. Because, as you know, the evidence from that period isn't there.

The more likely date is around 2450-2250 BC. The biggest "problem" that needs a solution is what Pharaoh was there when Moses lived? As the same Pharaoh served in Egypt from the time of Moses' birth up until he died which was when Moses was 80 years old, we first must find out what Pharaoh served for at least 80 years (that's a very long reign!) Pepi II Neferkare reigned from c. 2278 BC - c. 2184 BC. Approx 94 years. He is the only one who reigned for at least 80 years. His successor - Merenre Nemtyemsaf II reigned for just one single year, completely consistent with the Bible's account that he drowned in the Red Sea. The Pharaoh who had the next longest reign after Pepi II was Ramesses II, he ruled for 66 years.

You can believe whatever you want, the evidence is there and just because you stick your head in the sand and claim "there's no evidence" doesn't prove your case.

It is an unlikely coincidence that the only known pharaoh to reign for at least 80 years was followed by one who reigned for only a year or less.

Oh, and for an Egyptian parallel of the plagues themselves, see Ipuwer Papyrus. Again is this just another "coincidence" that something so vivid is written - or does it simply prove the Egyptians believed the "myth" of the Exodus themselves? Or is it clear evidence for a historical Exodus? Again, you can decide for yourself, no one can force you to accept evidence if you don't want to.

It might help to see what the Ipuwer Papyrus is and what it says. To call it an Egyptian perspective, a parallel you termed it, of the biblical plagues is stretching the definition of desperation it seems. According to Wikipedia (I know, I know; the main reason I'm using it is to obtain a less biased analysis):

Quote:The Ipuwer Papyrus is a single papyrus holding an ancient Egyptian poem, called The Admonitions of Ipuwer or The Dialogue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All. Its official designation is Papyrus Leiden I 344 recto. It is housed in the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Netherlands, after being purchased from Giovanni Anastasi, the Swedish consul to Egypt, in 1828. The sole surviving manuscript dates to the later 13th century BCE (no earlier than the 19th dynasty in the New Kingdom).

The Ipuwer Papyrus describes Egypt as afflicted by natural disasters and in a state of chaos, a topsy-turvy world where the poor have become rich, and the rich poor, and warfare, famine and death are everywhere. One symptom of this collapse of order is the lament that servants are leaving their servitude and acting rebelliously.

---

Parallels with the Book of Exodus

Some have interpreted the document as an Egyptian account of the Plagues of Egypt and the Exodus in the Old Testament of the Bible, and it is often cited as proof for the Biblical account by various religious organisations.[24]

The association of the Ipuwer Papyrus with the Exodus as describing the same event is generally rejected by Egyptologists. Roland Enmarch, author of a new translation of the papyrus, notes: "The broadest modern reception of Ipuwer amongst non-Egyptological readers has probably been as a result of the use of the poem as evidence supporting the Biblical account of the Exodus." While Enmarch himself rejects synchronizing the texts of the Ipuwer Papyrus and The Book of Exodus on grounds of historicity, in The reception of a Middle Egyptian poem: The Dialogue of Ipuwer he acknowledges that there are some textual parallels "particularly the striking statement that ‘the river is blood and one drinks from it’ (Ipuwer 2.10), and the frequent references to servants abandoning their subordinate status (e.g. Ipuwer 3.14–4.1; 6.7–8; 10.2–3). On a literal reading, these are similar to aspects of the Exodus account." Commenting on such attempts to draw parallels, he writes that "all these approaches read Ipuwer hyper-literally and selectively" and points out that there are also conflicts between Ipuwer and the biblical account. He suggests that "it is more likely that Ipuwer is not a piece of historical reportage and that historicising interpretations of it fail to account for the ahistorical, schematic literary nature of some of the poem’s laments," but other Egyptologists disagree (see Genre section above). Examining what Enmarch calls "the most extensively posited parallel", the river becoming blood, he notes that it should not be taken "absolutely literally" as a description of an event but that both Ipuwer and Exodus might be metaphorically describing what happens at times of catastrophic Nile floods when the river is carrying large quantities of red earth, mentioning that Kitchen has also discussed this phenomenon.

Confirmation bias again? Regardless, let's grant that Ipuwer and Exodus are indeed talking about the same events. Have you considered the possibility that the authors of the latter were drawing from the former, perhaps reiterating the poem in a fresh context? I'm sure our resident historians will have more to say on this.

Ipuwer Papyrus was just an afterthought. I've given you clear evidence that the Exodus could have occurred during the reign of Merenre Nemtyemsaf II. He reigned short enough to have died in the Biblical timeframe, and his predecessor reigned long enough to have lived from Moses' birth up until his 80th birthday.

Dude, even most of my people think that story is bullshit.

It doesn't work when you try to fit stories into existing history.

Quote:If we don’t have rights over lesser creatures, then we’re using them without right for our own selfish purposes. If we don’t need justification, why does God?

We do require justification. There are few people out there who would condone the random and needless slaughter of animals. Even when we exterminate insects it is for a purpose. If it is done for no reason at all, we call the perpetrators 'psychopaths'.

God needs justification because if he is all-powerful and all-knowing, he has the ability to erase all evil in the world merely by wishing it so. That he refuses to do this when he has that capacity indicts him as desiring of human suffering and misery (all the moreso when he is all over scripture as encouraging acts of evil among his followers or committing genocide personally).

An all-powerful being should never require anything bad to be part of his plan. If his plan requires that little Timmy die a horrible death of cancer at age 5, it means that either God is imperfect or that he takes pleasure in little Timmy's suffering. Theists always ignore this glaring fact because they know it means that they have to either admit that their God has flaws or that they worship a divine Freddy Kreuger.

Yes, clear evidence muddied up by the point of Ipuwer Papyrus. I do not deny that there is the possibility that Merenre Nemtyemsaf II [what a name] lived during the time that the Exodus COULD have happened...but again, this is, at best, circumstantial evidence. We still have nothing showing Hebrews living in Egypt at ANY time, though to your credit we at least have a timeframe of when it could have happened. See, you want there to be a date that it could have happened but the truth of the matter is you have to stretch more than just the timeframe; you have to stretch the numbers of the Hebrews themselves. I remember reading that the Hebrews numbered two million and that according to the story of Exodus they all left at once. For one thing, there is no way that two million people all leaving Egypt at once would not have left SOME kind of a visible impact that archaeologists would have discovered already. The Sinai desert should have some indication that it once hosted nearly two million people. But hell there's not even evidence that it COULD have hosted two million people; water and food for two million nomads in a desert? Really now. Not to mention the population of Egypt in the ORIGINAL dating was around 3.5 million all-told. You now introduce a date of a thousand years going back...meaning that population count is likely going to be even lower. So no, the biggest problem needing a solution isn't so much the Pharaoh who existed but rather why such a demographic and economic catastrophe such as the sudden departure of two million slaves never registers anywhere in Egypt's history and why two centuries of ardent archaeology spearheaded by the Israelis themselves has turned up absolutemente nada. The story is not historical, it's just simply a story. So, see, you keep throwing around the word "evidence" but to quote Inigo Montoya...

Quote:You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

In the court of logic, you have, at best, hearsay and a single piece of circumstantial evidence whose connection to the trial at hand is fragile at best.

Still, pulling up the Papyrus was actually unexpected, and it was, if nothing else, something I had not considered prior, but after reading on it, I have to state it doesn't really hold up as damning proof of much of anything.

(November 2, 2012 at 1:22 pm)Creed of Heresy Wrote: Yes, clear evidence muddied up by the point of Ipuwer Papyrus. I do not deny that there is the possibility that Merenre Nemtyemsaf II [what a name] lived during the time that the Exodus COULD have happened...but again, this is, at best, circumstantial evidence.

What level of evidence exactly, are you expecting? Historians do typically go from one extreme to the other in terms of accepting some things with very little evidence, and rejecting others even in the face of increasingly overwhelming evidence. My favourite example of the first point is Egyptian pyramids built by slaves, because historians based that belief on something written by a Greek in 450 BC. So they were "fooled" for 2400 years on what amounted to very weak evidence!

Likewise working on dating the Exodus using the numbers given in the Bible strictly is wrong. Firstly, because the preserved text (the Masoretic Text) isn't perfect and numbers are its weak point, and secondly because not all numbers given in the Bible are literal even in the first place. 1 Kings 6:1 COULD represent an error in transmission. 1480 becomes 480, for example. 1 Sam 13:1 is one of the most obvious examples of corruption in the Hebrew text. And many translations incorrectly "fix it" using late LXX manuscripts.

As long as Christians are willing to accept the fact that the Biblical text today is not 100% perfectly preserved from the originals (which has been proven), then we have to accept that some numbers as we have them are in error.

So I think this sums up perfectly the 600,000 figure (totalling about 2 million Jews) that evacuated Egypt in the Exodus. It's possible that the figure is correct anyway - at the time I've suggested the Exodus took place (the dawn of the Old Kingdom), historians estimate the population of Egyptians around 2 million people. 2 Million Jews would mean that there was one Jewish slave per Egyptian - an entirely possible figure.

Unfortunately, there generally isn't a lot of information on the number of slaves that inhabit a region and Egypt is no different. Some historians even hold the view that there was never any slavery in Egypt. Yet, if the Jews were there and indeed marched off through the Red Sea towards the end of the Old Kingdom, then it fits with Egyptian chronology quite well - they were there in a period of economic prosperity when Egypt was known for wealth and building, and after they left the Egyptian empire quickly declined into civil war.

The chronology of Egypt isn't a perfect science either. So just looking at Egypt itself, the evidence for the Exodus is there if you look in the right place, but even that doesn't give you the exact date or even the year of the Exodus. It simply gives you the period into which the Exodus fits correctly with their chronology.

Quote:See, you want there to be a date that it could have happened but the truth of the matter is you have to stretch more than just the timeframe; you have to stretch the numbers of the Hebrews themselves.

I believe I've adequately addressed this point above.

Quote:The Sinai desert should have some indication that it once hosted nearly two million people. But hell there's not even evidence that it COULD have hosted two million people; water and food for two million nomads in a desert?

Try to stay focused on one issue. We're talking about the Exodus, not what happened after the Exodus.

The Sinai desert is a different issue altogether. The evidence is more difficult to find because we don't know the correct path of the Israelites. We simply start looking wherever we can. You're correct, it should be littered with pottery that is inscribed with Hebrew writing. If we never found the Titanic would that mean that it never existed?

The other thing is, that if you claim that the Exodus never happened then you have to explain what advantage it would have to invent the story. In other words, why would someone want to believe their identity comes from a period of slavery? What was the "real" origin of the Israelites?

Quote:Really now. Not to mention the population of Egypt in the ORIGINAL dating was around 3.5 million all-told. You now introduce a date of a thousand years going back...meaning that population count is likely going to be even lower.

So? Do you have evidence that only one in five Egyptians could own a slave?

Quote:So no, the biggest problem needing a solution isn't so much the Pharaoh who existed but rather why such a demographic and economic catastrophe such as the sudden departure of two million slaves never registers anywhere in Egypt's history and why two centuries of ardent archaeology spearheaded by the Israelis themselves has turned up absolutemente nada.

But it does! Aligning the Exodus with the end of the Old Kingdom means that their departure DID contribute a huge impact on the Egyptians. The Bible says they plundered Egypt before they left, so it is impossible that their departure wouldn't have been detrimental to Egypt.

Most myths have some background event that inspired them.
Look at the myth of the ark, inspired by the great flood of the Black Sea by mediterranic waters.

It is plausible that there was such a mass departure of people from Egypt. You can't say if that departure was caused by some lack of conditions in Egypt itself, nor if it was caused by the release of all slaves... you can't even say that they were even slaves.
Maybe the "hebrews" are the name of the people that left Egypt at that time, and then they made up this "origins" story just make them look more homeless and needy.

It's a whole bunch of maybes and ifs, I know.... but I'll take a naturalistic view of human history over a super-natural one any day. It just seems more likely, considering all observations of the world that I have made throughout my life.... and these observations are compatible with most people's.
Super-natural observations, however, are shared by a few select individuals who, at present, are not taken seriously, are they?.... but, for some reason that eludes me, those super-natural observations from people of long ago are taken seriously.
Can anyone explain why that is?