Significant Find by the Israel Antiquities Authority

[Minimalist]

Don't forget that both Israel Finkelstein and Egyptologist Donald Redford have arrived at a late 7th century BC date for the concoction of the exodus story using independent lines of evidence. I don't think you can get from Point "A" (Thera) to Point "B" (Yahweh the Bloody-Handed) with out a lot of intermediate steps along the way. It was a 1,000 years later.

[Brian37]

Don't forget that both Israel Finkelstein and Egyptologist Donald Redford have arrived at a late 7th century BC date for the concoction of the exodus story using independent lines of evidence. I don't think you can get from Point "A" (Thera) to Point "B" (Yahweh the Bloody-Handed) with out a lot of intermediate steps along the way. It was a 1,000 years later.

Not sure you are making the same point I am but this is precisely the point. Over time humans move around and power shifts and lots of mixing and hand me down stories. It isn't just analogous of when you were a kid sitting in a circle telling a story and by the time it gets back to you, it may contain the same motifs but has completely different details. Imagine more than one circle and not just one circle but many over long periods of time. Like the Olympic symbol intertwining. Some circles remain int tact, some motifs we see no connection to because one ring is at one end of the chain while the similar ring is at the other end of the chain but not connected.

The simple solution to why all religions and god claims exist is because they are a result of competing and prior cultures. What are not real are the gods of any of them. Not knowing how a story ended up in a book does not make the fantastic claims in it true. It merely means that story is there because someone prior picked up on it and it got filtered down through time to the point someone put it in a book.

[Confused Ape]

Don't forget that both Israel Finkelstein and Egyptologist Donald Redford have arrived at a late 7th century BC date for the concoction of the exodus story using independent lines of evidence. I don't think you can get from Point "A" (Thera) to Point "B" (Yahweh the Bloody-Handed) with out a lot of intermediate steps along the way. It was a 1,000 years later.

It's unlikely that somebody sat down one day and invented the entire Exodus story in one go. History gradually got rewritten to suit political and religious development.

Plauges of Egypt - Natural Explanations

Historians have suggested that the plagues are passed-down accounts of several natural disasters, some disconnected, others playing part of a chain reaction.

Plauges 1 - 6 and 8 could have happened in Egypt but not because of the Santorini eruption. Travllers tales about the eruption eventually got added in to the tales about the Egyptian disaster.

Real events can be handed down through oral tradition but, over the generations, explanations for them can get invented.

Submerged Forests off the coast of Wales: a Climate Change Snapshot

Cantre'r Gwaelod (also known as Cantref Gwaelod or Cantref y Gwaelod) translates into English as the Lowland Hundred. It is the legendary sunken kingdom that is said to have long ago occupied a tract of fertile land in what is now Cardigan Bay. Cantre'r Gwaelod's capital was Caer Wyddno, seat of the ruler Gwyddno Garanhir. The land is usually described as being defended from the sea by a dyke, complete with sluice-gates, managed by one Seithennin, who, it was said, was fond of his drink. One dark and stormy night, the gates were neglected during drunken festivities and as the tide rose, so the sea swept in, ruining the land.

Mere folklore, yes, but it is often wondered locally whether the legend recalls stories handed down over many generations, via the oral tradition, of lands that produced good hunting and gathering, but which by the start of the Neolithic had largely been lost to the advancing sea. The generations of people who followed-on from those who left the footprints would certainly have witnessed the environmental changes that led to the loss of the forests described above: they would have walked through what had become salt-marsh beneath dead and dying oaks and pines. They would have seen environmental change as starkly as anyone.

Why would it go into folklore?

The basal peat, upon which the tree-stumps are situated, is around 6,500 years old. Above it, where erosion has not removed it, there lies a layer of bluish-grey clay and, at the south end of the beach, atop the clay is a second, thinner peat. The succession records the transition from forest to salt-marsh, between 6,500 and 3,000 years ago, which is late Mesolithic through to mid Bronze Age.

The Submerged Forest has recently been in the news. In February 2012, retired geology lecturer Dr Denis Bates, of Aberystwyth, noticed that a new area of ancient peat had become visible along the southernmost part of the beach. Taking a closer look, he discovered that the peat contained scatters of burnt stone - an archaeological feature typical of Bronze Age sites. Burnt stone consists of sharp, angular fragments of bleached-looking rock produced by heating large pebbles in fires and then immersing them in water: it was the instant cooling that shattered them. Why they did this is not clear: one theory is that it was a means of heating-up the water whilst some archaeologists have connected the practise with sweat-lodges, as in the Native American tradition.

Dr Martin Bates, Denis' son, is an archaeologist based at the University of Wales, Lampeter, and was therefore quickly on hand to undertake a detailed investigation of this find. Despite the peat and clay beds spanning an important period of human activity in the area, they have to date yielded few remains: an Aurochs skeleton was discovered many years ago and a small number of flint and bone implements have been recorded over the years. But when surveying commenced, the site proved to be of even greater interest, as upon the surface of the upper peat layer, and impacting into the clay below, the surveyors discovered footprints. There were the circular depressions made by the hooves of cattle, sheep and goats and, incredibly, human prints. It appears that the adults were foot-clad, but one print was found that belonged to a child aged approximately four years, which showed the impressions of bare toes. I visited the site over low tide a few days ago: standing next to such impressions, my heavy rigger-boots hardly left a mark: back when the prints were made this would have been squelchy marsh that you could go up to your knees in if unlucky.

[Minimalist]

History gradually got rewritten to suit political and religious development.

That's the problem. The period of time when Judah and Egypt would have been competitors was exceedingly short. Babylon revolted against Assyria in 626 BC and 10 years later had evicted them from Babylonia. Four years later, in 612 BC, Nineveh was sacked and destroyed. The 26th Dynasty of Egypt, formerly Assyrian vassals themselves, stayed loyal and joined the Assyrians in an effort to stop the Babylonians. The Assyrians were forced to move their capital to Haran and to concentrate their military force remaining to protect their capital. This left the northern areas of Palestine open to Judahite dreams of glory but it was also the former seat of the Egyptian empire in Canaan.

Finkelstein notes that the brief period between 616 and 609 or so, there would have been an actual reason for Egypt to be portrayed as an enemy who was once before defeated by "Israel." Redford notes that there are 7th century place names in the exodus tale which were anachronisms which did not exist in the Late Bronze Age.

Finally, 2 Kings 22 gives us some line of shit about how "Josiah" sent some bozo to the "temple" ( which most likely did not exist at all ) to refurbish it and he found the "Book of the Law" which told them everything they had been doing wrong. So, actually, unless you want to believe bible bullshit, it does sound as if a piece of propaganda was brought forward to encourage the people to undertake a struggle against Egypt...which did not last very long as Necho II called Josiah to Megiddo and whacked him. Later, in the Book of Chronicles, they invented a battle so Josiah could die heroically instead like some mafia wise-guy who got fitted for concrete galoshes. It was subsequently re-worked in the Hellenistic Age when an actual independent jewish kingdom arose and became something of a regional power. The time line for his is around 110-98 BC.

So, yeah. A story could have been concocted to mobilize people on short order. Do I have to remind you how quickly George Bush manufactured the WMD bullshit story for his "war?"

[Confused Ape]

That's the problem. The period of time when Judah and Egypt would have been competitors was exceedingly short. Babylon revolted against Assyria in 626 BC and 10 years later had evicted them from Babylonia. Four years later, in 612 BC, Nineveh was sacked and destroyed. The 26th Dynasty of Egypt, formerly Assyrian vassals themselves, stayed loyal and joined the Assyrians in an effort to stop the Babylonians. The Assyrians were forced to move their capital to Haran and to concentrate their military force remaining to protect their capital. This left the northern areas of Palestine open to Judahite dreams of glory but it was also the former seat of the Egyptian empire in Canaan.

Folk tradition doesn't follow an established historical timeline, though.

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.

It's unlikely that every single Hyksos was killed so the survivors would have ended up mingling with the local population.

Canaanite folklore - we were once ruled by Pharoah.

Hyksos folklore - we were once chased out of Egypt by Pharoah.

Put them together and it ends up as the Israelite myth of - we were once in Egypt and were chased by Pharoah while we were leaving.

Then there's the Ipuwer Papyrus

The Ipuwer Papyrus is a single papyrus holding an ancient Egyptian poem, called The Admonitions of Ipuwer[1] or The Dialogue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All.[2] Its official designation is Papyrus Leiden I 344 recto.[3] It is housed in the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Netherlands, after being purchased from Giovanni Anastasi, the Swedish consul to Egypt, in 1828. The sole surviving manuscript dates to the later 13th century BCE (no earlier than the 19th dynasty in the New Kingdom).

The Ipuwer Papyrus describes Egypt as afflicted by natural disasters and in a state of chaos, a topsy-turvy world where the poor have become rich, and the rich poor, and warfare, famine and death are everywhere. One symptom of this collapse of order is the lament that servants are leaving their servitude and acting rebelliously.

Nobody really knows what it's about but there are several theories.

The date for the composition of this document is unknown. The papyrus itself (Papyrus Leiden I 344) is a copy made during the New Kingdom of Egypt.[1] The dating of the original composition of the poem is disputed, but several scholars have suggested a date between the late 6th dynasty and the Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1850 BCE-1600 BCE),[4] and appears to describe how the Hyksos took over Egypt.[5][6]

Another theory suggests this -

Further assessment of the text reads:

"It is quite likely that the destruction lament in the 'Admonitions' refers to the destruction of Memphis at the end of the Old Kingdom. Thus, this fully independent micro-text can be understood as a sort of oral tradition or at least a literarily formed piece of historical recollection which has trickled into writing, but it is clearly a text with literary forms and ambitions – certainly not a historical report in the narrower sense. Indeed, even recently this passage has been understood as an almost concrete historical report.[21]

Egyptian folklore about past disasters could have spread to Canaan when it was part of the Egyptian empire. It then got mixed into the Israelite folklore so they became the servants who left.

Ancient Egyptian Servants

Some servants were assigned to work for the pharaoh. They reported to the royal controller who was in charge of the pharaoh's servants. The servants worked as cooks, butlers, litter carriers, and as pharaoh's dressers. The male servants also worked on royal building projects or were sent to fight in the Egyptian army.

It doesn't take much for servants working on building projects to be turned into slaves.