My Detoxing Thread

[Mudhammam]

Coming from where I have, I've got a few questions as I try to sort out my world-view. Google hasn't been any real help, maybe someone here could help me out, or at least point me to resources.

1.) Were the ancient Jewish people actually slaves in Egypt?
2.) Did the ancient Jewish people actually carry out the genocides described in the Bible?

1) While there is reference to conquests in Palestine during the New Kingdom of Egypt, the earliest and only reference to the Hebrews occurs in the "Hymn of Victory of Mer-ne-Ptah," otherwise known as the "Israel Stela," which includes in its inscription of subjugated nations, "Israel is laid waste, his seed is not." This dates to about 1206 B.C.E. One commentator writes, "Much has been made of the fact that the word Israel is the only one of the names in this context which is written with the determinative of people rather than land. Thus we should seem to have the children of Israel in or near Palestine, but not yet as a settled people. This would have important bearing on the date of the Conquest. This is a valid argument. Determinatives should have meaning, and a contrast between determinatives in the same context should be significant. This stela does give the country determinatives to settled peoples like the Rebu, Temh, Hatti, Askelon, etc., and the determinative of people to unlocated groups like the Madjoi, Nau, and Tekten. The argument is good, but not conclusive, because of the notorious carelessness of Late-Eygptian scribes and several blunders of writing in this stela." What's more likely is that if this refers to the Israelites, then some of the Hebrew people would have been taken captive, and the rest would have been made to pay regular tribute to the Egyptians, which may have been viewed as a form of slavery. That important figures in Hebrew history contain Egyptian names and certain stories are derived from Egyptian folklore (such as Moses and the story of Joseph and Potiphar) suggests an earlier connection.
2) Many Egyptian sources reference a group of Semitic people who lived as marauders from about 1,800-1,100 B.C.E. known as the "Habiru," and some have related them to the Hebrews, but there's not really any conclusive evidence on the matter. More likely, the Hebrews accumulated their land by waging war on their neighbors, and the biblical history represents a reconstruction with the common exaggerations and embellishments.