(December 30, 2015 at 2:42 am)Aractus Wrote: There were no Jews in Egypt because there were no Jews anywhere until the rise of the kingdom of Judah in the 8th(/possibly 9th) cent. BC. Judah rose on its own. There was never a pre-existing Kingdom that was later split in two, which is what the Bible claims. No, there were always two different kingdoms. The kingdom of Israel rose in the 10th cent. BC. Where did it come from? See if there was an Exodus in 1250 BC then it should have been established in the late 13th century BC - but it wasn't. It wasn't there for another 300 years. And if you instead take the early Exodus date then it takes 500 years between when the Bible says that Joshua conquered Canaan and when the ancient kingdom of Israel actually rose in Canaan. Of course Israel had to exist somewhere in the Canaan region so they could rise to power, but they were nothing more than a pathetically small tribe of herders (or tribe of some description) that didn't even have a city to their name.
A point which is quite adequately contained -within- the OT, if a person doesn't commit to reading it as a book of miracles. Nearly the entire body of the text is a running dialogue between two distinct ideological forces and their criticisms of each other, their predictions for the outcomes of the competing ideologies policies. The OT -very- briskly rolls through it's establishment myth, the real meat and potatoes is the social commentary and legendary history of and between the northern and southern kingdoms.
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