Was the Exodus natural or supernatural, fact or fiction?

[catfish]

Zone, a sockpuppet doesn't care about logical contradictions as their real identity is usually obscured from public scrutiny...
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[John V]

To what end?

As already noted, to display more works. We're still talking about it thousands of years later.

I went and read the passage and it gives another reason for the final plague - it was proof that a god who was for the Israelites and against the Egyptians was behind all of this. The Israelites could have seen the other plagues as somehow having natural causes, or could have been caused by a god indifferent to Israel. Not so when death strikes all the first-born except for those who were told to put lamb's blood over their door.

[Confused Ape]

Anyway, assuming the story is true it would certainly give another shot in the arm to the garbled story of the Hyksos expulsion being re-worked into the exodus bullshit story.

Ahmose, son of Ebana

Ahmose was born in the city of Nekheb, the modern El Kab. During the war to expel the Hyksos from Egypt, during the reign of Seqenenre Tao, his father enlisted in the navy. After the deaths of Tao and his son Kamose, Ahmose began to serve as soldier under Pharaoh Ahmose I. He participated in the battle of Avaris (the Hyksos capital in the Delta), where he killed two Hyksos and was awarded the "gold of valor" twice. Ahmose was awarded slaves and other spoils by the pharaoh after Avaris was sacked. Ahmose also participated in the three-year siege of Sharuhen in southern Canaan for which he was rewarded.

Ahmose Pen-Nekhebet

Under Ahmose I he fought in Northern Canaan

Sharuhen

Sharuhen was an ancient town in the Negev Desert. Following the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt in the second half of the 16th century BCE, they fled to Sharuhen and fortified it. The armies of Pharaoh Ahmose I seized and razed the town after a three-year siege.

The Negev desert is in Southern Israel.

If Hyksos refugees eventually merged with the Israelites, the campaigns of Ahmose 1 could have turned into Pharoah pursuing the escaping Israelites in the Exodus story.

[Minimalist]

If Hyksos refugees eventually merged with the Israelites,

Bible-thumpers aside, current archaeological evidence has led to this:

http://rense.com/general12/decon.htm

The Exodus from Egypt, the wanderings in the desert and Mount Sinai: The many Egyptian documents that we have make no mention of the Israelites' presence in Egypt and are also silent about the events of the Exodus. Many documents do mention the custom of nomadic shepherds to enter Egypt during periods of drought and hunger and to camp at the edges of the Nile Delta. However, this was not a solitary phenomenon: such events occurred frequently over thousands of years and were hardly exceptional. Generations of researchers tried to locate Mount Sinai and the encampments of the tribes in the desert. Despite these intensive efforts, not even one site has been found that can match the biblical account.

The power of tradition has now led some researchers to 'discover' Mount Sinai in the northern Hijaz or, as already mentioned, at Mount Karkoum in the Negev. The central events in the history of the Israelites are not corroborated in documents external to the Bible or in archaeological findings. Most historians today agree that at best, the stay in Egypt and the exodus events occurred among a few families and that their private story was expanded and 'nationalized' to fit the needs of theological ideology.

Ze'ev Herzog's 1999 article in Haaretz which led to fundies shitting their pants everywhere!

[Brian37]

If Hyksos refugees eventually merged with the Israelites,

Bible-thumpers aside, current archaeological evidence has led to this:

http://rense.com/general12/decon.htm

The Exodus from Egypt, the wanderings in the desert and Mount Sinai: The many Egyptian documents that we have make no mention of the Israelites' presence in Egypt and are also silent about the events of the Exodus. Many documents do mention the custom of nomadic shepherds to enter Egypt during periods of drought and hunger and to camp at the edges of the Nile Delta. However, this was not a solitary phenomenon: such events occurred frequently over thousands of years and were hardly exceptional. Generations of researchers tried to locate Mount Sinai and the encampments of the tribes in the desert. Despite these intensive efforts, not even one site has been found that can match the biblical account.

The power of tradition has now led some researchers to 'discover' Mount Sinai in the northern Hijaz or, as already mentioned, at Mount Karkoum in the Negev. The central events in the history of the Israelites are not corroborated in documents external to the Bible or in archaeological findings. Most historians today agree that at best, the stay in Egypt and the exodus events occurred among a few families and that their private story was expanded and 'nationalized' to fit the needs of theological ideology.

Ze'ev Herzog's 1999 article in Haaretz which led to fundies shitting their pants everywhere!

Yea like Oz shit at the sight of Toto, it's not polite to pull back the curtain.

[Confused Ape]

If Hyksos refugees eventually merged with the Israelites,

Bible-thumpers aside, current archaeological evidence has led to this:

http://rense.com/general12/decon.htm

The Exodus from Egypt, the wanderings in the desert and Mount Sinai: The many Egyptian documents that we have make no mention of the Israelites' presence in Egypt and are also silent about the events of the Exodus. Many documents do mention the custom of nomadic shepherds to enter Egypt during periods of drought and hunger and to camp at the edges of the Nile Delta. However, this was not a solitary phenomenon: such events occurred frequently over thousands of years and were hardly exceptional.

Very interesting article. Anyway, back to the Hyksos

Hyksos, group of mixed Semitic-Asiatics who immigrated into Egypt’s delta region and gradually settled there during the 18th century bce. Beginning about 1630, a series of Hyksos kings ruled northern Egypt as the 15th dynasty (c. 1630–1523 bce; see ancient Egypt: The Second Intermediate period).

The Hyksos seem to have been connected with the general migratory movements elsewhere in the Middle East at the time.

The story of Joseph and the famines etc could be a fictionalised account of how this mixed group (the Hyksos) came to settle in Egypt. Maybe it even started out as a Hyksos legend. If Hyksos refugees merged with tribes in Canaan who ended up as the Israelites it means that some Israelites did have ancestors who came from Egypt. The story then got changed to say that all of the Israelites went to Egypt.

Now to the mysterious Habiru

As more texts were uncovered throughout the Near East, it became clear that the Habiru were mentioned in contexts ranging from unemployed agricultural workers and vagrants, to mounted mercenary bowmen. The context differed depending upon where the references were found.

Though found throughout most of the Fertile Crescent, the arc of civilization "extending from the Tigris-Euphrates river basins over to the Mediterranean littoral and down through the Nile Valley during the Second Millennium, the principal area of historical interest is in their engagement with Egypt."[3]

Carol Redmount who wrote 'Bitter Lives: Israel in and out of Egypt' in The Oxford History of the Biblical World concluded that the term "Habiru" had no common ethnic affiliations, that they spoke no common language, and that they normally led a marginal and sometimes lawless existence on the fringes of settled society.[4] She defines the various Apiru/Habiru as "a loosely defined, inferior social class composed of shifting and shifty population elements without secure ties to settled communities" who are referred to "as outlaws, mercenaries, and slaves" in ancient texts.[4] In that vein, some modern scholars consider the Habiru to be more of a social designation than an ethnic or a tribal one.[5]

Sounds like the kind of social class who could have ended up making Egyptian Mud Bricks out of mud and straw. It's likely that the Hyksos had some Habiru in their kingdom and they could have been refugees as well. I wonder if making bricks for the Hyksos rulers got turned into the Israelites being enslaved and forced to make bricks for the wicked Pharoah.

[Minimalist]

The Hyksos "invasion" has to be put in the context of the Second Intermediate Period - i.e., between the Middle and New Kingdoms.
Further, this "invasion" was written about by Manetho in the Ptolemaic era over 1200 years later, a time period equivalent to the difference between us and Alfred the Great. The SIP was marked by weak central governments and competing dynasties - civil war, for the most part. I have seen a great case made that the original Hyksos were brought in as a mercenary force ( they did have some interesting weapons technology that the Egyptians lacked) by one desperate rebel or another but being an ethnically and linguistically separate group they soon overthrew the warlord they were serving and set themselves up as the 15th dynasty. The civil war did not end although it did resolve itself into a fight between Upper and Lower Egypt which was eventually won by Ahmose I who founded the 18th dynasty.

[Greatest I am]

The bible is bullshit and whatever real places or real people peppered into that comic book does not, nor will ever make invisible friends real.

You obviously missed the last line in my previous post. "There's a lot of evidence that the stories of the Egyptian plagues were based on real events. So what? None of it proves that any deity exists.

I don't know where you live but here, in England, we're used to the idea that legends can have some basis in fact. For example, there's a lot of evidence that Eadric The Wild existed even though there are local legends attached to him.

I am on your page.

There may be some history to the myth as that clip clearly shows but I read it as allegory. To me Moses is just an archetype. Just like Jesus is.

I think it was a re-write of the Hyksos expulsion written in a form to give the Semites a bit of pride. Jewish writers seemed to use that kind of typology often.

For instance, there are connections being made between the N T and The War of the Jews in this same way.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJgvws0ZYUE

Regards
DL

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[quote]Is that moral and good or is it God doing evil?

You'll say it's evil, I'll say it's just.

Could we have your argument showing how punishing children for what their parents do is somehow just?

Regards
DL

[Confused Ape]

I have seen a great case made that the original Hyksos were brought in as a mercenary force ( they did have some interesting weapons technology that the Egyptians lacked) by one desperate rebel or another but being an ethnically and linguistically separate group they soon overthrew the warlord they were serving and set themselves up as the 15th dynasty. The civil war did not end although it did resolve itself into a fight between Upper and Lower Egypt which was eventually won by Ahmose I who founded the 18th dynasty.

It would make sense that the Hyksos who had the superior weapons technology became the rulers of the Hyksos kingdom. If the Egyptians used the term Habiru to include mercenaries, the Hyksos would have been regarded as Habiru at one time. Not that everyone agrees with the idea that the Hyksos took over by force.

You can't have a kingdom with just a ruling class, though, so the rest of the population did all the work required to keep a kingdom running. It's likely that some of the Hyksos kingdom's residents were native Egyptians while others were Habiru who had wandered in from various places and settled down. Some of the settlers could even have come from the tribes which eventually became the Israelites.

Did the ancient Egyptians have slaves? It seems that they did but their system was very complex. War captives appeared to have been landed with the really rotten jobs. Slaves And Slavery In Ancient Egypt

Was it just the ruling Hyksos class who left Egypt or did some of the ordinary population go as well? There's no way of knowing but it does seem as if bits and pieces of daily life in Egypt got mixed in with what became the Exodus story.

[Greatest I am]

Exodus 23:7
New International Version (NIV)

7 Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty.

Yes, from a Christian or Jewish point of view, they must not have been innocent, otherwise God wouldn't have put them to death.

Have a look at the Jewish POV and recant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx7irFN2gdI

Regards
DL

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Anyway, assuming the story is true it would certainly give another shot in the arm to the garbled story of the Hyksos expulsion being re-worked into the exodus bullshit story.

Sniped for brevity but nice work.

I especially like Breased's writings on the vizierate.

I have forgotten when the Egyptians went from the many Gods to the one and back again to the many Gods.
Do you know the dating and does it pertain to the times of the Hyksos Expulsion?

Regards
DL