RE: Massacre of the Innocents
July 24, 2018 at 4:48 pm
(This post was last modified: July 24, 2018 at 4:55 pm by JairCrawford.)
(July 24, 2018 at 4:08 pm)Minimalist Wrote: In Israel they do not seem to hold with the "wandering" shit. Professor Israel Finkelstein notes that they regard the episode as 38+ years spent at the oasis of Kadesh Barnea. After the six day war his colleague, Amihai Mazar, excavated at Kadesh Barnea and found nothing. No sign of Late Bronze Age habitation by anyone.
Xtians make excuses for that. Archaeologists dismiss the story as bullshit. I'll go with the archaeologists.
Keep in mind I'm referring to a theory that some of the progenitors of Israel/Judah (or even the greater Canaan area) started off as nomadic tribes before settling. Some theorize that the nomadic Semitic tribes could have migrated up from the Arabian peninsula, rather than what is now known as the Sinai region. (Actual mount Sinai could have been a volcano in the Arabian peninsula as well).
Reasons for this theory are primarily that there are passages in the Old Testament that speak of an age of wandering, yet do not mention an exodus at all.
Also there are extra biblical mentions of people like the Shasu nomads (associated with the name YHWH) in an ancient Egyptian papyri as well as a nomadic Apiru people mentioned in the Amarna letters.
None of these arguments seem to be made from an apologist view to me (although I've seen appologists use some of these arguments to try to support their views). In fact the very crux of these theories goes against a literal reading of Exodus.
