For those who want proof of the exodus

[athrock]

May I assume from your pointed questions above that you have, in fact, watched the documentary?

No not yet, but I will respond to this:

If scientists like Einstein can make errors in their formulas, is it inconceivable that Egyptologists can be off by a few centuries in theirs?

We're talking about two completely different regions. Egypt and Canaan. Egyptian timeline is, I believe, well established and accounted for with some, but little uncertainty over dating. As far as I'm aware, c.1300 BC we're only talking a single century of leeway. Not enough to shift the Exodus into the Middle Kingdom (which ended around 1700 BC).

On the other hand we have Canaan cities. And 4 of 5 of them, pretty much the only fortified cities at the time, were Egyptian up until the mid 12th century - when they were abandoned without conflict, thought to coincide with the fall/dwindling power of the New Kingdom. From these cities we find hundreds of cuneiform tablets detailing messages (telegraphs, if you will) between Egypt and their Canaanite territories. But not one single letter of Hebrew - in fact the earliest known Hebrew writing accepted by scholars as Hebrew is 2 centuries later in the 10th century BC (the Zayit Stone). And there's only one Hebrew inscription from that period that has ever been found and proved to be Hebrew.

If the Exodus happened the way the Bible explains then the conquest of Canaan has happened sometime between 1400-1200 BC. If that's the case then there should be lots of Hebrew writing to be found in the Cananite cities from at least the 11th century on (or the 13th century on if you favour the earlier date). But there isn't any. None at all.

But centuries aside or not, not one letter of Hebrew has ever been recovered from ancient Egypt. Despite their supposed enslavement. If there were really 1,200,000 Jews enslaved in Egypt - and they'd been living there for centuries - then we'd be able to dig up millions of their graves. They'd be everywhere.

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.

Sorry. I was travelling a bit during the holidays.

The point that the documentary seems to make is that physical evidence seems to suggest that the commonly accepted dating of Egyptian history may be the problem. Historians want to point to Rameses as the pharoah of the Exodus, but the archaeological findings point to the Middle Kingdom as the more likely date for the Exodus. If true, this may mean that the dating of ALL of Egyptian history (which isn't really anchored by anything else) may be off. And since much of ancient history is dated with reference to this arbitrary dating of Egyptian history, then you can see why scholars may be reluctant to re-consider the dates of the various Egyptian Kingdoms.

I'll read through the rest of the thread to see if you have made further comments after watching the documentary. Thanks!