Proof Of Exodus

Author: Dr.Franklin

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Whats the proof that Exodus really happened?

The names of three places that appear in the Biblical account of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt correspond to Egyptian place names from the Ramesside Period (13th–11th centuries B.C.E.). The Bible recounts that, as slaves, the Israelites were forced to build the store-cities of Pithom and Ramses. After the ten plagues, the Israelites left Egypt and famously crossed the Yam Suph (translated Red Sea or Reed Sea), whose waters were miraculously parted for them. The Biblical names Pithom, Ramses and Yam Suph (Red Sea or Reed Sea) correspond to the Egyptian place names Pi-Ramesse, Pi-Atum and (Pa-)Tjuf. These three place names appear together in Egyptian texts only from the Ramesside Period. The name Pi-Ramesse went out of use by the beginning of Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period, which began around 1085 B.C.E., and does not reappear until much later.

This supports a 13th-century Exodus during the Ramesside Period because it is only during the Ramesside Period that the place names Pi-Ramesse, Pi-Atum and (Pa-)Tjuf (Red Sea or Reed Sea) are all in use.

During their excavations, the University of Chicago uncovered a house and part of another house belonging to the workers who were given the task of demolishing the temple. The plan of the complete house is the same as that of the four-room house characteristic of Israelite dwellings during the Iron Age.



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@Dr.Franklin
However, while this evidence certainly adds weight to the historical accuracy of elements of the Biblical account, it can’t be used to “prove” that every detail of the Exodus story in the Bible is true.
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@keithprosser
Details such as what?
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@Dr.Franklin
You can start with proof of any one of ten plagues, maybe. 
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@Dr.Franklin
Dunno.  I just copy/pasted the last sentence of the article, just above where it says

"To learn more about evidence for Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, read the full article “Exodus Evidence: An Egyptologist Looks at Biblical History” in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review."
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@ludofl3x
Or Egyptian evidence of 400yrs of Jewish slavery.
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@ludofl3x
1.the first plague, of blood, was a massive amount of red algae, plus a huge quantity of red earth washed into the Nile by excessive rains on the Abyssinian plateau.

2.These algae allegedly de-oxygenated the water, thus killing the fish, which somehow gave rise to anthrax bacteria. The frogs then sickened, left the river (the second plague) and died

3.third plague was mosquitoes, which had bred in the floodwaters,

4.fourth was the biting fly Stomoxys calcitrans, breeding in the decaying plants left by the retreating Nile flood.

5.The livestock disease of her fifth plague was anthrax spread by the dead frogs.

6.The sixth plague, of boils on animals and people, was supposedly skin anthrax transmitted by the biting flies.

7.the seventh plague, of hail and thunder, was a local weather feature,

8.which also promoted the locusts of the eighth plague.

9.The ninth plague, of darkness, was allegedly caused by a desert sandstorm known as a khamsin, which blotted out the sun by throwing into the air the blanket of fine red dust from the first plague, left on the ground when the widespread Nile floodwaters receded.

10.Killing of the First Born
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If you can't name one,I can't help you
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@Dr.Franklin
THe natural explanations for the plagues are sensible, I grant, but can you provide evidence that (a) any of them happened at all, (b) that these events were not natural but were commanded by god, (c) that these supernatural events led directly to the freedom of the slave population and (d) this slave population was between 40K and 600K people who then (e) subsequently wandered the desert for four decades? Why did you not cite the natural explanation for the theory of the slaughter of the first born by the merciful god? There is one, but wouldn't such a phenomenon, natural or unnatural, have been recorded by the Egyptians?

THis is not to say I buy all of the natural causes being actual "plagues." Many of them are at best long shot conjecture, like the idea that biting flies could be plague-level, not just a minor uptick, or that the sun was 'blotted out' by a film of dust. Those two things seem distinctly different. I mean even your second point, contains "allegedly" and  "somehow," not exactly compelling arguments. 

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@ludofl3x
A. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0160412085902302, algae distribution in the Nile, the basis for my claims above
B.Well, If God exists, then he commanded that, I have to prove that God works through nature

What may be known of God is manifest in them for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse (Romans 1:19,20).

C and D. I have to prove that these slaves existed-

There was another interesting discovery Petrie made. ‘Larger wooden boxes, probably used originally to store clothing and other possessions, were discovered underneath the floors of many houses at Kahun. They contained babies, sometimes buried two or three to a box, and aged only a few months at death.’16
There is a Biblical explanation for this. Pharaoh had ordered the Hebrew midwives, ‘When you do the duties of a midwife for the Hebrew women, and see them on the birth stools, if it is a son, then you shall kill him’ (Exodus 1:16, KJV). 

e.That's impossible, In a desert, where all traces of humans usually go away over like a hundred years we can't prove this, but we can prove that the Red Sea crossing happened-https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/mosaic-synagogue-huqoq-israel-magness-archaeology/

There is one, but wouldn't such a phenomenon, natural or unnatural, have been recorded by the Egyptians?
No, Egyptians recored only victories not failures

My allegedly and somehow was because God did it

This happened so long ago, it's hard to prove but the evidence we have strongly points to it

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@Dr.Franklin
B.Well, If God exists, then he commanded that, I have to prove that God works through nature


Right, this is kind of what I'm waiting for. 

C and D. I have to prove that these slaves existed-

There was another interesting discovery Petrie made. ‘Larger wooden boxes, probably used originally to store clothing and other possessions, were discovered underneath the floors of many houses at Kahun. They contained babies, sometimes buried two or three to a box, and aged only a few months at death.’16
There is a Biblical explanation for this. Pharaoh had ordered the Hebrew midwives, ‘When you do the duties of a midwife for the Hebrew women, and see them on the birth stools, if it is a son, then you shall kill him’ (Exodus 1:16, KJV). 
There's a biblical explanation, sure...that doesn't make it so, though. There's no other evidence except what's in the bible, which makes the bible the claim, not evidence. Finding skeletal remains of babies in wooden boxes doesn't even match up with the explanation in the bible: the duties of a midwife end at birth, not "a few months" later, and there doesn't seem to be any evidence that the babies were hebrew, or were male. "There's a biblical explanation" of how the earth was created out of nothing, too, and a biblical explanation for a 6000 year old earth, we can't just say "The bible says it." Taking natural explanations, even if they happened, and retrofitting mythological causes onto them is exactly what the greeks and romans and native people and Sumerians and every other culture in the history of mankind before the age of enlightenment did. How did you discount these yet validate others?

No, Egyptians recored only victories not failures

Strange that NO other culture tells the tale of a complete generation of Egyptian children being wiped out. By a merciful god, no less, which you again skim over: what did a, say, four year old Egyptian toddler boy do that makes it just for god to kill it? I mean, that god must be responsible for the creation of that Egyptian boy in the first place, right?

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@ludofl3x
God works through Nature-You should turn from these vain things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all things that are in them, who in bygone generations allowed all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless he did not leave himself without witness, in that he did good, gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness (Acts 14:15-17).

Clearly God wants us to notice his creation through nature

I have proved that The Bible is correct, that is just an add on

Again, Egypt only makes great sweeping victories, and never did stuff about home or children usually military

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Nevertheless he did not leave himself without witness, in that he did good, gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness

So these things, rain and seasons, are caused by God, not by natural phenomena, right? That's what this says: because it rains we know god is there, otherwise, what else would explain the rain being there? (Appeal to ignorance)

Hebrews knew that accumulation of moisture in the air, air pressure, and wind patterns caused weather, and still attributed it to god? Or did we figure all that out, and end up with people like you making another terrible mistake, this time God of the Gaps: "well that's what it LOOKS like to us, nature doing it, but really that's how god does it and wants us to think it works." I'll ask a different way:

How do you know Neptune is not behind every oceanic phenomenon? Tsunamis, for example, how do you know they're not caused by Neptune's rage?

Again, Egypt only makes great sweeping victories, and never did stuff about home or children usually military
Are you implying we cannot know, or more accurately, reasonably infer, anything about the day to day of an Egyptian person from the time of the pharaohs? 
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The Water Cycle is created by God

Any evidence Neptune is behind the ocean, greek/Roamn gods lasted a couple hundred of years, not THOUSANDS

Are you implying we cannot know, or more accurately, reasonably infer, anything about the day to day of an Egyptian person from the time of the pharaohs? 
No, Where did you get that?



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The Water Cycle is created by God
God of the gaps, please cite anything about the water cycle in the bible. I'd be really interested in the part where the hebrews explained that clouds are clusters of suspended water crystals. 


Any evidence Neptune is behind the ocean, greek/Roamn gods lasted a couple hundred of years, not THOUSANDS
Tsunamis happen today, why isn't Neptune behind them? Tidal waves happen today, why isn't that Neptune's doing? Try a different one if you don't like that one.

Lightning bolts are signs of Zeus's power. Why is this false?
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@Dr.Franklin
No, Where did you get that?

When you said they only wrote about victories. If that were the case, we wouldn't know about how they built things, about their architecture, the structure of their religion, anything about their culture besides military victories. 
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@ludofl3x
Genesis 1:10

God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
When you said they only wrote about victories. If that were the case, we wouldn't know about how they built things, about their architecture, the structure of their religion, anything about their culture besides military victories. 
They did, my first post
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@ludofl3x
My theory is that the Egyptian episode was written (or re-written) during the babylonian exile to serve as a parallel to the Israelites current state, ie prisoners in a foreign land.  

The story offers the hope that what had befallen the Egyptians in the time of Moses would also befall their current, Babylonian captors.   That was of course, conditional on the exiles remaining loyal to yhwh and his priests!   To maintain morale (and national identity)the priests promised that a Moses-like Messiah would arise,  defeat the babylonians and the Exiles would return to their homeland, as had (they said) happened before.

Some Jewish scribe had a field day, wishing a series of disasters to beset the hated Babyonians via their Egyptian proxies!   In fact the Babylonians did fall - to the Persians, and the Persian king Cyrus is honoured as a Messiah in the late books of the OT (eg Isaiah 45:1).   Although the Babylonians did not suffer any plagues, Cyrus permitted the Exiles to return to Jerusalem which became a theocratic province of the Persian empire as described in the books of Nehemiah and Ezra.

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@keithprosser
However, while this evidence certainly adds weight to the historical accuracy of elements of the Biblical account, it can’t be used to “prove” that every detail of the Exodus story in the Bible is true.

WOW!!!!  You are so fkn good at stating the bleedin' obvious. At least you are now moving your goal posts and appear to be in some agreement that there just  maybe some "historical accuracy of elements of the biblical accounts", instead of your usual outright dismissal of anything biblical because  "wiki"  says so.

My theory is that the Egyptian episode was written (or re-written) during the babylonian exile to serve as a parallel to the Israelites current state, ie prisoners in a foreign land.   


Then it would have  been much easier and accurate and truthful to write about their curran state instead of inventing what you call a "parallel". And if it were "paralel" this goes even further to indicate  a possibility that there were Israelites in Egypt slaves or not. i.e it had to be "parallel" with something. They did go to Egypt after all on the invite of Pharaoh at one point; as long as they were 'herdsmen' and not 'shepherds'.

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@Stephen
Obviously you didn't read the article linked to or you would have noticed that I lifted that sentence from the end of it.  It was a straight copy and paste job.

I wanted to see if anybody would notice and I looked forward to saying it's not my opinion - it was the author of the artice saying it doesn't 'prove exodus' as the OP claimed.

I don't base my views on what it says in wikipedia.  I think I've made it clear in previous posts that I think the 'history' in the OT is essentially fiction until near the very end.  I base that on long - if sporadic - study of such things.  I gave my personal take in post #18 which I'm fairly sure is not in wikipedia!

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Then it would have  been much easier and accurate and truthful to write about their curran state instead of inventing what you call a "parallel". And if it were "paralel" this goes even further to indicate  a possibility that there were Israelites in Egypt slaves or not. i.e it had to be "parallel" with something. They did go to Egypt after all on the invite of Pharaoh at one point; as long as they were 'herdsmen' and not 'shepherds'.
The priestly scribes who wrote the OT weren't concerned with accuracy or truth - they were writing propaganda, their aim being to maintain the existence of the Jewish people.

The priests fired up the exiles by telling them they were a 'kick ass 'people with a kick ass god - things only went wrong when they strayed from that god.  The exile was presented as a punishment for apostasy - the egyptian episode promised it was only temporary and would end with a triumphant return to the promised land.

Of course I don't have the minutes of the editorial meetings where what went in and what didn't was thrashed out... maybe at  one such meeting obviously the priests couldn't agree on which version of the creation myth to include so they both went in, as chapters 1 and 2 of genesis, as a compromise!

Do I know all that's true?  No!  But I think it's a highly likely scenario,given what we know of history and human nature.  Re the
OP, I don't think it's worth trying to explain how the plagues of Egypt could be natural phenomenon - they, like the whole egyptian episode, are most likely completely fictional.

IMO, of course.





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I don't think it's worth trying to explain how the plagues of Egypt could be natural phenomenon -

No because I have already said on this thread here>>. https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/2135?page=1&post_number=3

Post 2

-> @Stephen wrote: It was more than likely that the Volcano that erupted on Thera island in Aegean- called today Santorini - caused all the other 9  "plagues".

This very plausible theory was put forward over 30 years ago - I just forget by whom.

 The theory goes that once the sky was darkened for months on end caused by the eruption of Thera this then led to all the other "plagues" .

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@keithprosser
I have always been amused that the Hebrews with an army of 600,000 men needed to beg to be let go. According to what I've read the Roman Empire in the first century CE had a standing army of 150,000 and a reserve about the same size and they ruled half the world. The authors of the fiction that includes the Exodus story new more about hyperbole than they did honesty. 600,000 fighting men begging the leader of maybe 50,000 other fighting men to be let go, sorry it's just completely unbelievable, but it's an amusing mental picture.

1137 days later

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Proof of Exodus….


From another archeologist Israel Finkelstein.

Exodus never happened and the walls of Jericho did not come a-tumbling down. How archaeologists are shaking Israel to its biblical foundations.

Israel Finkelstein, chairman of the Archaeology Department at Tel Aviv University, with archaeology historian Neil Asher Silberman, has just published a book called "The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Text."

"The Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land [of Canaan] in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the twelve tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united kingdom of David and Solomon, described in the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom."

Jerusalem was essentially a cow town, not the glorious capital of an empire. These findings have been accepted by the majority of biblical scholars and archaeologists for years and even decades.

The tales of the patriarchs -- Abraham, Isaac and Joseph among others -- were the first to go when biblical scholars found those passages rife with anachronisms and other inconsistencies. The story of Exodus, one of the most powerful epics of enslavement, courage and liberation in human history, also slipped from history to legend when archaeologists could no longer ignore the lack of corroborating contemporary Egyptian accounts and the absence of evidence of large encampments in the Sinai Peninsula ("the wilderness" where Moses brought the Israelites after leading them through the parted Red Sea).

Finkelstein is an iconoclast. He established his reputation in part by developing a theory about the settlement patterns of the nomadic shepherd tribes who would eventually become the Israelites, bolstering the growing consensus that they were originally indistinguishable from the rest of their neighbors, the Canaanites. This overturns a key element in the Bible: The Old Testament depicts the Israelites as superior outsiders -- descended from Abraham, a Mesopotamian immigrant -- entitled by divine order to invade Canaan and exterminate its unworthy, idolatrous inhabitants.

The famous battle of Jericho, with which the Israelites supposedly launched this campaign of conquest after wandering for decades in the desert, has been likewise debunked: The city of Jericho didn't exist at that time and had no walls to come tumbling down. These assertions are all pretty much accepted by mainstream archaeologists.

Marcus says that Finkelstein is "difficult to dismiss because he's so much an insider in terms of his credentials and background. He's an archaeologist, not a theologian, and he is an Israeli. It's hard to say that someone who was born in Israel and intends to live the rest of his life there is anti-Israeli."


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This is one theory regarding the Exodus story. It is possibly a contentious theory but I thought it may be of interest. There is a fair bit about it on the internet for those who may be curious.
 
During the mid-14th century B.C.E. Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten decreed during his reign that his subjects were to worship only one god and that was the sun-disk Aten. After Akhenaten’s death Egypt retuned to polytheism, worship of Aten was deemed heresy and his worshipers faced persecution.
 
The theory is that Moses was a high priest of the god Aten, who with a number of his fellow believers fled into Canaan and established a monotheistic religion there.
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@Elliott
This is one theory regarding the Exodus story. It is possibly a contentious theory but I thought it may be of interest. There is a fair bit about it on the internet for those who may be curious.
 
During the mid-14th century B.C.E. Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten decreed during his reign that his subjects were to worship only one god and that was the sun-disk Aten. After Akhenaten’s death Egypt retuned to polytheism, worship of Aten was deemed heresy and his worshipers faced persecution.
 
The theory is that Moses was a high priest of the god Aten, who with a number of his fellow believers fled into Canaan and established a monotheistic religion there.
There is no mention of Jewish slaves or the exodus in Egyptian history.

From another archeologist Israel Finkelstein.

Exodus never happened and the walls of Jericho did not come a-tumbling down. How archaeologists are shaking Israel to its biblical foundations.

Israel Finkelstein, chairman of the Archaeology Department at Tel Aviv University, with archaeology historian Neil Asher Silberman, has just published a book called "The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Text."

"The Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land [of Canaan] in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the twelve tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united kingdom of David and Solomon, described in the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom."

#27
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Albert Einstein said that the Bible is a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.
#28
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The Bible is not a history book, it is not a science book. It is a book of mythology same as every other religion's books.
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@Shila
Yes, I wouldn’t dispute any of that.
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@Elliott
Yes, I wouldn’t dispute any of that.
It forces us to question the Bible as a historically reliable source.