God Yahweh Allah was a volcano.

[Minimalist]

The ten plagues of Egypt happening around the time of the Santorini volcanic eruption and being documented in the Bible is pretty good proof of them having been in Egypt around 1500 BC.

Santorini exploded c 1625 BC.

Dendrochronology:

http://www.news.cornell.edu/chronicle/96...ology.html

Archaeologists had long believed the Thera eruption had occurred around 1500 B.C., but more recent studies have strongly suggested the eruption occurred earlier, in 1628 B.C.

C14 dating:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2142040/posts

Two olive branches buried by a Minoan-era eruption of the volcano on the island of Thera (modern-day Santorini) have enabled precise radiocarbon dating of the catastrophe to 1613 BC, with an error margin of plus or minus 10 years, according to two researchers who presented conclusions of their previously published research during an event on Tuesday at the Danish Archaeological Institute of Athens.

Ice core study

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1...i_5169204/

In the Aug. 6 NATURE, Danish researchers present the results of yet another method, which produced dates slightly older than the radiocarbon studies. C.U. Hammer at the University of Copenhagen and colleagues searched for acidity peaks in South Greenland ice cores. They found one layer containing high levels of sulfuric acid (which is formed from volcanic sulfur dioxide), and by counting seasonal variations in snow deposits, they conclude that Thera erupted in 1645 B.C.

* This citation omits the +/- figure customarily given as in this citation from the Thera Foundation.org { The revised Danish ice-core dates: 1645 ± 20 BC } for reasons known only to the web site author.

Three independent dating methods all coming within a hair's breadth of each other is about as good as it gets and sure as shit beats the bleating of a useless old book which was, at the earliest, begun in the late 7th century BC and not finalized until the modern era and for which archaeology can find no corroborating evidence.

Lack of physical evidence is not proof of non-existence.

Proof? No. But lack of evidence is most assuredly "evidence" of non-existence. Look up Bertram Russell's "Teapot" before you answer.

[Hannah]

I think the suggestion the story of the ten plagues of Egypt being entirely coincidentally reminiscent of the possible fallout of the santorini eruption to be as crazy as the suggestion that it was down to divine intervention. Holy shit......is this forum full of people as illogical as the Christians I've had the misfortune of trying to debate with recently?

[fr0d0]

Holy shit......is this forum full of people as illogical as the Christians I've had the misfortune of trying to debate with recently?

QFT

[Darwinian]

Holy shit......is this forum full of people as illogical as the Christians I've had the misfortune of trying to debate with recently?

Maybe, if by illogical you mean people who don't agree with you.

[Minimalist]

If you simply want to spout off and not be questioned on it you are in the wrong place.

Egypt was not particularly hard hit by Santorini. Portions of the coast which were not shielded by Mediterranean Islands probably caught hell from tsunamis but the ash cloud went to the North East ( Turkey ) and if you would bother to consult a map of the Aegean you would see that it would have been a bad day to be on Crete or the Dodecanese Islands or Rhodes or the Greek Peloponnese, and you wouldn't want to inhale too deeply in SW Turkey.

You know, we actually do have a pretty sound basis for Egyptian history which does not rely at all on fucking bible fairy tales. C. 1620 Egypt was ruled by the Hyksos who were actually Canaanites ( although nothing suggests that they were in the least bit "Jewish" ) and they ran the northern part of the country. They were not slaves. It is possible that the damage sustained by their trading partners in the Aegean and Levant as a result of Santorini enabled the rulers of the southern part of Egypt to begin a successful revolt. Oddly....or perhaps not so oddly depending on your point of view... the Egyptian leader who threw them out was Ahmose I. ( Take a good look at that name, btw. ) However, Ahmose laid siege to the Hyksos capitol Avaris for 3 years so, if anyone was saying "Let My People Go" it would have been Ahmose saying " GO! GTFO!" Inscriptions indicate that after taking Avaris, Ahmose chased the Hyksos back into Canaan and crushed them at Sharuhen. This initiated a 400 year Egyptian domination of Canaan which the bible omits! Ahmose, as founder of the 18th dynasty is generally dated to about 1550 BC or so.

There is no room for any "Hebrews" in this history. In fact, modern archaeology now understands that the groups which later became "Israel" and "Judah" developed at the beginning of the Iron Age in the aftermath of the Sea People devastation of the region.

I suggest you read "The Bible Unearthed" by Israel Finkelstein and/or "Who Were The Early Israelites...." by William Dever. Then, throw your bible in the trash.

[The Grand Nudger]

What Ten Plagues? Exactly what series of misfortunes of the Egyptian Empire do you feel that the exodus account is describing? That's what I'm getting at. Theres nothing there, no evidence, and tons of evidence of just about everything else (relatively speaking). The only reason to theorize on the plagues is to provide a natural explanation for a story. Not evidence, a story.

(bah, Min beat me to it)

[Minimalist]

When I saw the OP I thought it might be about the Egyptian inscription which suggested that Yah was a Midianite volcano god. He later got a promotion.

[The Grand Nudger]

And so it goes climbing the cosmic ladder. Amidst all of the layoffs you get a promo, and just when you really start churning out souls the labor force goes on strike.

[Cinjin]

It cannot be entirely mythical. The ten plagues of Egypt clearly occured due to the Santorini eruption. They experienced the aftermath of it. They must have been in Egypt to have experienced the fallout but to have not seen the volcano. Saying it's all myth is as bad as a Christian saying it's all the actual word of God. It's more complex than either or.

Interesting. Three sentences before you deride the Christian's common practice of offering up certainty for something unprovable, you do the same thing regarding the plagues.



(I hope I didn't just defend Christianity there. Yikes.)

[Judas BentHer]

Well one thing for certain. Volcano's exist.