For those who want proof of the exodus

[athrock]

Good.

I look forward to your hearing your thoughts after seeing it!

Ok, surprise, surprise, just finished watching the film a short while ago. So here's what little I have to say:

The maker of the film, Tim Mahoney, tries to come off as a guy simply looking for the truth but, knowingly or not, had already made his conclusion even before examining the evidence: Exodus must have happened despite the mainstream scholarly consensus stating otherwise. Never throughout the film was he ever willing to accept the possibility of it never happening. So for him, it was not a matter of whether the event actually occurred, but when the event occurred. One of his biggest mistakes to make as this means, if Exodus never happened, then he was not open to such a truth. And that's the opposite of caring about the truth.

Another thing is that there was a severe lack of counterarguments to the revisionist theory proposed in the documentary. We only really hear one side to the debate. Sure, the filmmaker interviews experts who hold to the scholarly consensus, but we never really get to hear what they have to say about the "new" timeline proposed by Tim. All we ever hear the opposing side talk about is that the currently accepted timeline is the foundation for their position that Exodus never happened. But that does not seem to be the fault of the opposing side, but rather the documentary makers omitting all the important things they had to say. So for me, the editing was unfair and probably took a lot of critical words and phrases out of context.

Tim Mahoney's search for the "truth", by the way, is mainly based on Rohl's theory. Make no mistake about it, this was really a film about Rohl's view, not some new idea that started to emerge only recently.

Another big flaw in the documentary is that no attempt is made to try to negate the "theory" proposed and agreed with by Mahoney. Mahoney seems to think that a good theory is one that can be confirmed or supported by various pieces of evidence, but that is only part of what makes a theory a good one. A good theory should normally be one that potentially is falsifiable, and more importantly, has successfully passed challenges and tests multiple times before becoming accepted as a good theory. This obviously could not have been established by some documentary, so no expectation there, but they could have at least tried to challenge their own proposed timeline somewhat.

Of course, the meat of the argument in the documentary is that apparently there are multiple pieces of evidence that the Exodus did happen ... but only if you assume that the Exodus occurred way before Ramesses the II. But all that really means nothing if they are never challenged or put to the test.

One of the pieces of evidence is that a statue of some Asiatic person can be found in Avaris, and somehow the documentary reckons it must have been Joseph, but they don't consider that it may not have been a statue of a Jew but rather of some Hyksos person (which makes sense given that the Hyksos during that point rules over Egypt). This is just one example of how they make inferences that aren't parsimonious and aren't in line with the current accepted conclusions that, by the way, have been converged upon by multiple perspectives and not just one line of reasoning.

Thanks for your review. I have a question or two.

1. Based on your next to last paragraph: what is the basis for the conventional assumption that the Exodus HAD to occur during the reign of Rameses? IOW, if the skeptics are right, and the Exodus is PURE FICTION, then why do they insist that this fictional event had to occur during his reign? If the Exodus never happened, why do skeptics insist on dating it in the Middle Kingdom? But if they are insistent upon placing it in the reign of Rameses, aren't they admitting that the Exodus did occur???

2. Based on your last paragraph: Let's see...we have a non-king or pharaoh living in a palace in the Land of Goshen inhabited largely by Semites, and this palace has 12 colonnades, 12 tombs found on the grounds, and the one shaped like a pyramid (reserved for VERY important people) has a statue of a man with mushroom shaped haircut (semitic), yellowish-skin (used to depict northerners), a throw-stick (reserved for men of importance) and traces of a multi-colored coat (like the one mentioned in the Bible belonging to Joseph). When the archaeologists discovered this pyramid, they saw that it was not broken into violently but opened carefully, and ALL OF THE BONES WERE REMOVED as one might expect to have occurred if Moses honored Joseph's request to be buried in Canaan. Then, we find a tomb of Joseph in Shechem which indicates that his bones were ultimately moved and interred there centuries after Joseph died.  And all of this is just a coincidence?

Well, it's possible I suppose...