Christians: Please explain the Exodus

[Aractus]

I don't think the person making this argument realizes that it's not really helping him, either. I mean, yeah, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence in and of itself, but we have to remember what's being discussed: a civilization wandering through the wilderness for forty years being fed daily by magic sky-food. Apart from the Bible's claims, there's no evidence for this, either.

It seems more reasonable to just assume it didn't happen until we find some other reason to believe it.

Actually, the archaeologists say there is evidence of absence. That the 200 year search should have yielded at least some evidence in a variety of errors, but all evidence to date is negative. For example, archaeology shows that none of the cities that the Israelites claim were invaded by them were invaded at the time of the Israelites when they were petty much all abandoned:

And what of other settlements and peoples mentioned in the account of the Israelites' wanderings? The biblical narrative recounts how the Canaanite king of Arad, "who dwelt in the Negeb," attacked the Israelites and took some of them captive - enraging them to the point that they appealed for divine assistance to destroy all the Canaanite cities (Numbers 21:1-3). Almost twenty years of intensive excavations at the site of Tel Arad east of Beersheba have revealed remains of a great Early Bronze Age city, about twenty-five acres in size, and an Iron Age fort, but no remains whatsoever from the Late Bronze Age, when the place was apparently deserted. The same holds true for the entire Beersheba valley. Arad simply did not exist in the Late Bronze Age.

The same situation is evident eastward across the Jordan, where the wandering Israelites were forced to do battle at the city of Heshbon, capital of Sihon, king of the Amotites, who tried to block the Israelites from passing in his territory on their way to Canaan (Numbers 21:21-25; Deuteronomy 2:24-35; Judges n:r9-21)• Excavations at Tel Hesban south of Arnman, the location of ancient Heshbon, showed that there was no Late Bronze city, not even a small village there. And there is more here. According to the Bible, when the children of Israel moved along the Transjordanian plateau they met and confronted resistance not only in Moab but also from the full-fledged states of Edom and Ammon. Yet we now know that the plateau of Transjordan was very sparsely inhabited in the Late Bronze Age. In fact, most parts of this region, including Edom, which is mentioned as a state ruled by a king in the biblical narrative, were not even inhabited by a sedentary population at that time. To put it simply, archaeology has shown us that there were no kings of Edom there for the Israelites to meet.

The pattern should have become clear by now. Sites mentioned in the Exodus narrative are real. A few were well known and apparently occupied in much earlier periods and much later periods - after the kingdom of Judah was established, when the text of the biblical narrative was set down in writing for the first time. Unfortunately for those seeking a historical Exodus, they were unoccupied precisely at the time they reportedly played a role in the events of the wandering of the children of Israel in the wilderness.

(The Bible Unearthed)