He'll just give you a couple of bible verses and say "See?"
In the aftermath of the 6 Day War in 1967 when Israel gained control over the West Bank and Sinai, an entire generation of young Israeli archaeologists went out looking for evidence of the Exodus in the Late Bronze Age.
Here is part of an essay by Amihai Mazar which deals with the lack of any finds...not a single pottery sherd in Mazar's words...at Kadesh Barnea in Eastern Sinai which then, as now, is about the only place that a large group of people could find water.
http://books.google.com/books?id=m1b1VgN...&q&f=false
Note that Mazar goes on to discuss Yohanon Aharoni's work in the Arad Valley where they found, again to their surprise that there was no "king of Arad" to attack any Israelites....who did not exist anyway.
This failure to find any hard evidence of an Israelite sojourn in the desert led credence to the work of scholars like Israel Finkelstein who found that beginning around the start of the Iron Age in the eastern hill country of Palestine a number of villages developed which later morphed into Israel and Judah...or whatever the fuck they were actually called at that time.
In the aftermath of the 6 Day War in 1967 when Israel gained control over the West Bank and Sinai, an entire generation of young Israeli archaeologists went out looking for evidence of the Exodus in the Late Bronze Age.
Here is part of an essay by Amihai Mazar which deals with the lack of any finds...not a single pottery sherd in Mazar's words...at Kadesh Barnea in Eastern Sinai which then, as now, is about the only place that a large group of people could find water.
http://books.google.com/books?id=m1b1VgN...&q&f=false
Note that Mazar goes on to discuss Yohanon Aharoni's work in the Arad Valley where they found, again to their surprise that there was no "king of Arad" to attack any Israelites....who did not exist anyway.
This failure to find any hard evidence of an Israelite sojourn in the desert led credence to the work of scholars like Israel Finkelstein who found that beginning around the start of the Iron Age in the eastern hill country of Palestine a number of villages developed which later morphed into Israel and Judah...or whatever the fuck they were actually called at that time.
