For those who want proof of the exodus

[athrock]

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???

No more so than dating and placing the events in Bram Stokers Dracula as having occurred in turn of the century London is admitting that a vampire actually set sail from carpathia on a ship which floated into harbor with all hands dead or missing.

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...

Joseph is your Dracula, in this instance..., and there are plenty of crypts, abbeys, and asylums from turn of the century London.  In point of fact, the locations in the novel existed and still do.  

So...see above.  The narratives you're discussing are considered to be establishment legends, myths, or epics.  The connection between Joseph expressed in these comments (and in the documentary) and any existent ruins are tortured beyond belief...but that's irrelevant, we actually do expect those narratives to refer to something.  If the authors had placed the events in a specific time, they would use details that they knew of that time (or, more accurately in this case..details that they -thought- they knew of the time) to provide a context for their narrative.  This appears to be -exactly- what the authors did...mistakes and all, when settling upon the narrative.  That it is placed within a timeframe that will not allow it is simply an effect of their ignorance as to chronology and the details of the world in which they placed the narrative.  If it happened some other time (slide the timeline)..then the details in the account are still plainly wrong and we are still discussing a non-factual narrative.

Squirm all you want, but Mahoney has identified six key features of the Exodus account which can be archaeologically supported from evidence in the ground. The only dispute seems to be about when these six events occurred and whether they are, in fact, related to the Exodus or merely coincidental.

Given that scientists have begrudgingly admitted their errors in other disciplines, I feel confident that archaeologists will sort it all out eventually.

And as I pointed out previously, archaeology has been VERY kind to Jews and Christians thus far.