Can a religious text be used for evidence?

[stereologist]

Just now, Doug1o29 said:

That ash layer is used as a means of dating archeological sites.

Doug

What does that have to do with the topic at hand?

[stereologist]

I used a religious text to support its own story, not as evidence. But Doug1o29 forgot the story in the torah/bible included the destruction of an army.

The question of whether or not a religious text can be used as evidence is as I see it no. A religious text discusses issues that are often lessons that do not need to be factual. The existence of some true things in a religious text should never be mistaken for accepting the entire text as evidence. The safe thing to do is to use that text for the lessons it teaches about life and not as evidence for external issues.

[cormac mac airt]

11 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

OK.  I wasn't clear.

The Hyksos are believed to be an amalgamtion of Semitic tribes.  There were three quasi-independent kingdoms in Egypt.  AND:  Semitic travelers had been quietly settling in the Nile delta for quite some time before the kingdoms were organized.

A sizable group left Amarna after Horemheb ordered it destroyed.  Were they the "Israelites" of the "Exodus?"  Or did they just head for Caanan without much fanfare?  Seems like the latter.  Also seems that they wouldn't have been of just one race.  At any rate, they took their religion with them and they wound up living in Jerusalem.

The term "Hyksos" is properly applied to the kings, not to the people, themselves.  Beats me what I am supposed to call the people.  So we have the Hyksos (kings) being completely defeated at Sharuhen, while their relatives survived in Jerusalem and vicinity.  So what did the people in Jerusalem eventually come to be called?

Doug

P.S.:  Winners write history.  I'm wondering just who wrote that part about the Hyksos being totally destroyed.

Doug

An amalgamation of Semitic tribes does not make them specifically Israelites, that's a rather huge stretch IMO.

Rather disingenuous IMO to claim that the term Hyksos only applies to the kings as that would mean that they came BY THEMSELVES into Egypt, without families. 

As is more likely the case the early group of Semites that would go on to become today's Jews likely took the stories of many, MANY other cultures and reworked/rewrote it to suit the agenda of giving themselves some sort of ancient provenance in the area that was not originally theirs. Not the first time.

cormac

[Doug1029]

33 minutes ago, stereologist said:

I looked it up and I see you are making up stories for your roll-you-own fictional history.

You claimed hot stones in Egypt, not an ash fall. It seems you are waffling here. I asked for tephra and I received a comment about deposits far away from the location of the Pharoah.

I am not sure I accept your claim of  3 inches of deposit at the shores of Egypt. The reworked studies of Thera show that the ash spread mainly over water and the Mediterranean islands, but also onto modern Turkey where the ash fall was accompanied by increased water and increased tree ring growth although wheat crops were down. Thera did not and could not have sent hot stones into Egypt. It might have brought some ash especially to the delta region.

It is clear you are making things up. You've provided almost no links to support your stories. Pretending that there is something wrong with the wikipedia without poiinting out errors is a dead end.

Try some of these:

Simkin, T. and L. Siebert.  1994.  Volcanoes of the world.  Geoscience Press, Tucson IN: Mattox, Steve.  2004.  Volcano World, University of North Dakota.

Pfeiffer, Tom.  2004.  Master's Thesis, Geology Department, Aarhus, Denmark.

Pellegrino, Charles.  1991.  Unearthing Atlantis.  In:  the eruption of Thera.

Oren, Eliezer D.  1979.  Land bridge between Asia and Africa.  In:  Rothenburg, Beno et al.  Sinai, Pharaohs, miners, pilgrims and soldiers.  Joseph I. Binns, Washington and New York.

Mattfeld, Walter.  2004.  BibleOrigins.  www.bibleorigins.net.  BibleOrigins is a website (or at least, it was).  There's an awful lot on there.  Happy reading.

Marr, John S. and Curtis D. Mulloy.  1998.  The ten plagues of Egypt.  Part of the BBC's Equinox series.

Marinatos, S. P.  1939.  The volcanic destruction of Minoan Crete.  Antiquity (13), pp. 425-429.

Manning, Stuart.  1999.  The Thera (Santorini) volcanic eruption and the absolute chronology of the Aegean Bronze Age.  In:  Manning, Stuart, A test of time:  the volcano of Thera and the chronology and history of the Aegean and east Mediterranean in the mid-second millenium BC.  Oxford Bow Books, Oxford.

LaMarche, V. C. Jr. and K. K. Hirschboeck.  1984.  Frost rings in tree as evidence of major volcanic eruptions.  Nature (307), pp. 121-126.  LaMarche has since renounced his statement that a frost ring in bristlecones marks the eruption of Thera.  A 14C age has placed the eruption in the late sixteenth century.

Gabirel, Richard.  2003.  A militray history of ancient Israel.  Greenwood Publishing Group, Praeger Publishers.  ISBN 0-275-97798-6.

Fox, Troy.  2003.  Who were the Hyksos?  http:www.touregypt.net/featurestories/hyksos.htm  Also,  The military campaigns of Seti I.

Finkelstein, Israel.  1995.  Archeological survey in the hill country of Benjamin.  Jacob M. Alkow Dept. of Archeology and ancient Near Eastern cultures.

Budge, Earnest A.  1923.  Tutakhamen.  Dodd, Mead and Company, New York.  In:  Geerts, L. C. Earth's ancient history.  Earth History.

Bietak, Manfred.  1996.  Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos:  recent excavations at Tell el-Dab'a.  British Museum Press.

 

There are dozens more.  Maybe I can find something on Egyptian slavery for those who are too lazy to dig it up themselves.

Doug

[Doug1029]

20 minutes ago, cormac mac airt said:

Rather disingenuous IMO to claim that the term Hyksos only applies to the kings as that would mean that they came BY THEMSELVES into Egypt, without families. 

Maybe.  But that's the standard archeological definition, so I guess we're stuck with it.

21 minutes ago, cormac mac airt said:

As is more likely the case the early group of Semites that would go on to become today's Jews likely took the stories of many, MANY other cultures and reworked/rewrote it to suit the agenda of giving themselves some sort of ancient provenance in the area that was not originally theirs. Not the first time.

People borrowed stories heavily from other cultures.  The Caananites were what, tens of thousands of people in the early tenth century?  And that group of 200 families are the likely source of the Exodus story.

Such stories are how people begin to identify themselves as members of a group.  It's quite likely that this story helped create the Jewish nation.

Doug

[cormac mac airt]

8 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

Maybe.  But that's the standard archeological definition, so I guess we're stuck with it.

People borrowed stories heavily from other cultures.  The Caananites were what, tens of thousands of people in the early tenth century?  And that group of 200 families are the likely source of the Exodus story.

Such stories are how people begin to identify themselves as members of a group.  It's quite likely that this story helped create the Jewish nation.

You're stuck with it, I know that it's beyond unrealistic to think that only the rulers came into Egypt. 

And yet it doesn't make the Hyksos descendants of the Semites, nor the Israelites the descendants of the Hyksos nor even the Habiru. You've stated or implied connections which are not completely true. 

cormac

[+Liquid Gardens]

2 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

Lots of explanations for Jesus.  Most are that he didn't die on the cross.  He was drugged, taken down and revived.  That idea has several different incarnations.

And I have no problem with destroying all miraculous claims.  A miracle is something that can't happen.  Let me know when you find one.

Whether something can occur is entirely different from whether a claim was made for something that can't occur.  Your original claim was that there were no miracles recounted in the Bible. There appear to be many, but the reason you are arguing they are not so far involves kinda ignoring what the claim itself says.  The bible plainly claims staves turned into serpents; that we have an explanation that people were fooled into thinking that it did happen does not change the claim, it just maybe makes it false.

The logic you are using here seems to be similar to claiming that there are no Sasquatch claims because we can rack all those claims up to hoaxes, misperceptions, bear sightings and other rational explanations.  Yet it's pretty clear that what Sasquatch is claimed to be is not a bear, and doesn't change the fact that there are many claims involving Bigfoot.

[Mr Guitar]

Answer to the original question: NO - religious texts are fictitious and only support themselves to those who agree them in the first place. Does the old saying "preaching to the choir" ring a bell? Granted, there is certain amount of history involved but, in my view, it is suspect and drastically warped.

[Only_]

14 hours ago, Liquid Gardens said:

I already have parents, thanks.  The above doesn't provide any meaning, that's just your meaning, and is no better than the 'meaning' that atheists derive from our 'meaningless universe'.  Why is being a 'child' of God more meaningful than being a 'child' of the universe?   Not seeing how you're really much different than a 'biological robot in a meaningless universe' under your belief structure.

1) On materialistic [I use materialism and physicalism interchangeably, as is common in philosophy today] atheism, all we are is matter in motion.

2) There is no objective reason to value matter moving in way A over matter moving in way B

3) Therefore, on materialistic atheism, there is no value or meaning

[Mr Walker]

17 hours ago, stereologist said:

The story as presented in exodus is denied by the archaeological evidence. You are pretending that it did happen despite the evidence. You'd like some alternative unrelated story to be a replacement for exodus. What does that have to do with exodus? Nothing.

No that is not academic opinion Academic archaeologists admit there  is no evidence for the biblical description of  the exodus,  but as said, Lack of evidence for is NOT evidence against. There is no evidence at all that it did NOT happen.  And there IS a lot of historical evidence that Hebrew worshippers of Jehovah worked as labourers in Egypt and made at leas t one group movement back to Israel  The point is tha t exodus probably ooccurred as an historical movement of Hebrew workers back to Israel and indeed they may have encountered the phenomenon described in exodus which is known to still occur today  Why does this disturb you so much?  The mythology and belief which grew up around this event is not historical even if the event is.

You make a mistake trying to put down belief by arguing against  history.   It s the difference between the  reality of jesus the man, and jesus the god . One is accepted without doubt by  mainstream academic historians, the other, of course, is not.  

The events described in exodus are clearly physically possible and a person caught  up in them might well attribute them to a god that  they believed in,  even if it was actually a natural fortuitous phenomenon 

[+Hammerclaw]

An interesting discussion, not unlike trying to glean facts from The Iliad and The Odyssey, also mythological accounts about supposedly real events, written long after their occurrence. 

Edited March 23, 2018 by Hammerclaw

[Mr Walker]

17 hours ago, stereologist said:

There have been multiple mappings. The story has been so-called analyzed. It has NOT been proven to be geographically correct. There is no proof. It is just a collection of guesses. Each guessed set of places is no more likely than the next set of guessed places. The claim of Jason's tale of being based on historical facts is now being challenged. I can't wait to see what you post there.

There have been lots and lots of guesses going all over the place and you are pretending that one of these guesses is better than another. It is all guesses.

National geographic is good enough for me   They comprehensively mapped the route matching real locations to descriptions in the story Of course someone will challenge it There is always some young gun  out to make a name for themsleves   

[Mr Walker]

16 hours ago, stereologist said:

I think there is the idea that myths or stories begin with a grain of truth or contain a grain of truth. I'm not so sure that is a good assumption.

There is an academic distinction between myths and legends 

A legend is presumed to have some basis in historical fact and tends to mention real people or events. Historical fact morphs into a legend when the truth has been exaggerated to the point that real people or events have taken on a romanticized, "larger than life" quality. In contrast, a myth is a type of symbolic storytelling that was never based on fact. Throughout time, myths have sought to explain difficult concepts (e.g., the origin of the universe) with the help of common story devices, such as personification and allegories.

These words are commonly used interchangeably to refer to the fictitious nature of something. Historically and academically, however, there is a difference.

Many European classic legends such as the sacking of troy,  or the voyages of Odysseus and Jason   began, based on true events and geographical locations, but became  legendary over time  Even Atlantis is probably such an example  

[Mr Walker]

12 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

I dispute your post.

You didn't read my post.  The Heroopolitc Red Sea is not the same as the Red Sea.  The Heroopolitic Red Sea was, before the Suez Canal, a gigantic tidal pool some sixty miles long and twenty wide.  The northwest end was at Tell el Maskutah (Succoth) with the south end at Shallufa.  The old wave terraces are still there with some visible on Google Earth.

The Bitter Lakes and Lake Timsah are remnants of the Heroopolitic Red Sea, the same as Salt Lake is a remnant of Lake Bonneville.  Their surface, before the Suez Canal, was about 6.5 feet below sea level (The lakes were reflooded to sea level in building of the Suez Canal.).  Lake Kemuera, Wadi Tumilat, the Bitter Lakes and Tia beni-Israel are part of a long-since-abandoned channel of the Nile (The Red Sea has been fresh at several times in its geologic history.).  Blocking this channel was Shallufa Sill, a sandstone ledge, that acted as a dam.  When sea levels were high enough, as they were about 1600 BC, water flowed northward from the Red Sea, over the sill and filled the old tidal basin.  Ships sailed from Succoth down to Shallufa, over the Sill and on to Sinai.  When the Canal of the Pharaoh was operating, tail water drained from the Canal to the Heroopolitic Red Sea, filling it, turning it fresh and draining over the sill into the Red Sea proper.

When water levels were high, the ford at the narrows between the Bitter Lakes could not be used, the water being about twelve feet deep.  When water levels were low, the ford could be crossed - water levels varied between about two feet and bone dry.  So "The Exodus" took place at a time of low water.  The pack trail that came that way was 83 miles long; it is a branch of the Darb es Shur.  It is not mentioned in the Bible.  But there are Egyptian accounts of it.  Apparently Hatshepsut used that route when she visited Punt.

If you want to know the location of ancient trade routes in the Near East, check out where the springs are.  From Tell el Maskutah down the west side of Great Bitter Lake to the ford there are many springs, including a large oasis.  Along the east side there are two and one is salt.  Ayn Musa is on the east side of the Gulf of Suez, so anyone traveling to Suez had to cross at the ford or struggle through steep rocky country with no water.  The "Red Sea Crossing" was this ford between the Bitter Lakes, about 19 miles from the Red Sea proper.

The Exodus story fits the geography that existed in Sinai during the twelfth century BC.  The Bible was written in the sixth century BC when the biblical geography no longer fit the terrain.  Some of the discrepancies in the story are easily explained by that difference.

 

There wasn't just one ("The") Exodus.  There were at least three - one in the late 16th century BC, about the same time as the eruption of Thera; one in the late fourteenth cetury BC at the end of the Amarna Period and one about 1194 BC just as Seti I's reign was beginning.  These stories were amalgamated and conflated into a single account.  You are correct in saying that that account is not true, but it originates in real events.

 

There are many potential crossing sites of the Heroopolitic Red Sea, the Red Sea proper and the Mediterranean.  If you like, I'll list them for you.  Many depend on particular ephemeral lakes being full of water, or on the Exodus taking a route other than that laid out in the Bible.  Not all are equally likely and most lack geographical support.  But two remain that might have been used - the one I laid out above, and a tidal channel at Suez (Napoleon almost drowned in that one.).  Military considerations make the tidal channel unlikely.

 

My account is a reconstruction based on the best available evidence.  You might laugh at it, but you haven't even heard it yet.  The full version takes 254 single-spaced type-written pages.  UM doesn't have to worry because I own the copyright.  I have ideas about re-writing it to correct some mistakes and bring it up to date with current archeology, but that will likely be a long time coming.

 

And I'd love to tell you more.  Any questions?

Doug

 

I knew he would regret arguing with you on this particular issue  

[Mr Walker]

9 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

Egypt is thousands of years old.  It has undergone almost everything one can imagine.  If a disater is possible, Egypt has suffered it.  If a strange tail can happen, it has likely happened in Egypt.

One at a time:

1) Absolutely no archaeological evidence of the Hebrews being enslaved in Egypt.

Egyptian slavery wasn't what we think of as slavery.  Slaves were usually freed after a length of time and even rose to positions of prominence and power.  Slaves owned other slaves and slaves oversaw other slaves.  Some slaves worked for the temples and their lives differed little from mine (I'm a wage slave.).  Slaves were obtained through warfare, occasional kidnapping and criminal conviction.  There is an account by Amose of Ibana, a general to Tao II, who on his tomb wall recounted how he captured a Chaldean chariot and its crew and presented them to his Pharaoh as a gift.

 

2) Absolutely no archaeological evidence of the Hebrews escaping en masse and living in Sinai for 40 years.

Horemheb ordered the destruction of Amarna.  It was so sudden that houses under construction were left unfinished.  Where did those people go?  They worshipped a god named Aten/Aden/Adonai.  Look up the names of god used by the Hebrews.  Archeologists have excavated Hazeroth (Hudera) and found 42 tent sites.  That's not exactly enough for 600,000 people.  But it is a place listed in the Bible as a stopping point.  "Archeologists" need to quit looking for a population of 600,000 people and look for maybe 400.

People are klutzes.  And cooking pottery invites destruction.  And that leaves a thick layer of evidence.  Sinai pottery of the period is about 65% Caananite, about 30% Amalakite and about 5% Egyptian.  The Exodus' pottery would have been Egyptian as the Jews did not develop a distinctive pottery until after the invention of the potter's wheel.  The people who worked the Egyptian's mines were laborers from Caanan and farmers from Egypt who worked the mines during the winter months when it was cooler, returning home for the planting season.

Those names listed as stopping points for the Exodus are springs along the road down to the Sinai mines.  There was a trail there, but I doubt large numbers traveled it.  For a hundred miles it followed the coast.  I suspect that the yearly expedition was supplied by boats carrying wheat that traveled along with them (Manna is an Egyptian bread made from malted wheat.).  Supplies could also have come straight across the Red Sea.

 

3) Absolutely no evidence of the Hebrews being enslaved in Egypt in any records outside of the Bible.

I've already explained that.

 

4) Miraculous claims being made, meaning there should be very, very good evidence to believe this (extraordinary claims mantra).

There are no miracles recounted in the Bible.  Every one of those so-called "miracles" has a rational explanation.

 

5) Camels were not domesticated in the area, yet Bible claims so, hinting at later writing in 600 BCE.

There were plenty of camels around in Exodus times.  The story does not actually require them.  It does require sheep because sheep determined the speed at which nomadic groups could travel.

http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2014/02/17/The-Date-of-Camel-Domestication-in-the-Ancient-Near-East.aspx

6) Pitch didn’t exist in the area, yet the Bible claims so, hinting that the Moses’ birth story was stolen from Sargon.

I believe Sargon.  The earliest-known copy of the baby-in-a-boat story dates from about 1200 BC, about Moses' time, and the story was obviously very old then, so it likely pre-dates the more-recent stories of the Exodus.  But who Moses was is very definitely up for grabs.  There are four, maybe five, Moses prototypes, none of whom fit the baby-in-boat story.

No the Bible doesn't claim so.  It's not pitch; it's bitumin, a sticky tar obtained from petroleum seeps.  Pine trees had nothing to do with it.  The source is mistaking an English-language translation for the real thing.

The story of the Exodus and the Moses stories are not related, but were mixed together and conflated with years of telling and re-telling.

 

7) Textual analysis pointing towards non-Mosaic authorship and later written date.

The most-recent version of the Exodus would have happened about 1200 BC.  Proto-Sinaitic was just coming into being then.  Written Hebrew is first recorded in the form of a calendar dating to about 930 BC.  In order for the stories to survive, they had to be written down.  But writing didn't exist, except in Egypt.  So look to Egypt, not Israel, for the first written versions of the Exodus.  The Jewish version of the story would have been copied from the Egyptian version.

 

8) Anachronism of the Philistines at the time, though they existed at the later date critics claim the Bible was written but not the t supposed time of Exodus.

Not Philistines.  Pelest.  The Pelest invaded Egypt en masse during the reign of Ramses III, about 1184, maybe a bit earlier (There were grumblings sbout them during the reign of Merneptah.).  That would match the most-recent version of the Exodus, but would not match the earlier dates at all.

 

9) Ramifications of plagues and army loss and firstborn loss to Egypt would have been massive and recorded. Egypt actually enjoyed a time of prosperity and flourishing.

The Ten Plagues of Egypt are an amalgamation.  All of them happened, but at different times.  The hail-from-a-cloudless-sky (hot stones) and darkness are indicative of a volcanic eruption (Thera in the late 16th centrury).  Late in the reign of Akenaten (mid-to-late fourteenth century) there was a low-water episode in the Nile.  It was so bad that Amenhotep III, co-ruler with Akhenaten, commissioned 730 statues of Ra (one for each of the two lands for each day of the year) to ward off the evil spirits.  Many of the "plagues" appear to have originated with this.  The "Plague of Locusts" could have happened any time as locusts are still quite common in Africa.

There is another eye-witness account to this disaster:  the Admonitions of Ipuwewr recounts a disaster that befell Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period.  Thus we have corroboration.

As for the first-born:  There was an epidemic? that hit during Hyksos times that that story may be harking back to.  The connections to the Bible are so weak that it is little more than speculation at this point, but if true, the Pharaoh in question was a Hyksos Pharaoh:  he was killing off his own people!  Something does not compute.

That's my take.

Doug

I REALLY knew he'd regret arguing with you on this topic 

[Mr Walker]

7 hours ago, cormac mac airt said:

You're stuck with it, I know that it's beyond unrealistic to think that only the rulers came into Egypt. 

And yet it doesn't make the Hyksos descendants of the Semites, nor the Israelites the descendants of the Hyksos nor even the Habiru. You've stated or implied connections which are not completely true. 

cormac

And yet we know  the English from  a certain period as  Tudors or  " the" Tudors",  or  Elizabethans or" the " Elizabethans.  Makes perfect sense to me   

Edited March 23, 2018 by Mr Walker

[eight bits]

While I admire the work that Doug has put into these questions, the Bible nevertheless leaves us with a parody of the classic Dragnet line:

What you are about to hear is a true story. The facts have been changed to protect the innocent.

In coming up with elaborate stories about things that could have happened, and could have been a "basis" for the very different stories we read today, we can easily lose sight of why we bother with the stories in the first place.

Example: Who gives a flying fatootie which swamp somebody might have crossed 3500-ish years ago instead of the Red Sea? The point of Exodus is to explain the origins of the Israelite national-scale presence on the shores the eastern Mediterranean as a massive migration from Egypt. Is that what happened? The archeology doesn't support it. Instead, it looks like some Canaanites developed a distatste for pork, shellfish, foreskins and figurative art. Those people didn't go anywhere, but did become a power in the area for a while.

We can also end up worrying about historical issues in the wrong logical order.

Example: Was Jesus' resurrection the result of premature diagnosis of death, drugs before and skin lotion after, mistaken identity about who got nailed up, Jesus having a twin brother ...? Fascinating stuff, but how about establishing with high confidence that there really was a historical Jesus in the first place?

[+Liquid Gardens]

8 hours ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

1) On materialistic [I use materialism and physicalism interchangeably, as is common in philosophy today] atheism, all we are is matter in motion.

2) There is no objective reason to value matter moving in way A over matter moving in way B

3) Therefore, on materialistic atheism, there is no value or meaning

1) In non-materialistic anything, all we are is matter in motion plus non-matter doing, well, something

2) There is no objective reason to value matter and non-matter moving (or not) in way A over it moving in way B

3) Therefore in non-materialism, there is no value or meaning

I don't agree with your 1 anyway, in materialism we are composed of physical things, it doesn't follow that that is 'all we are'.  Is music 'just' air waves in motion?  What's the difference meaning-wise between 'all we are is matter in motion' and 'all we are is matter and spirit-something in motion'?

[Will Due]

1 hour ago, Liquid Gardens said:

1) In non-materialistic anything, all we are is matter in motion plus non-matter doing, well, something

 

What is this "non-matter" you're talking about LG?

 

 

[+Liquid Gardens]

6 minutes ago, Will Due said:

What is this "non-matter" you're talking about LG?

Excellent question I really don't have any idea, but presumably people who disagree with materialism/physicalism are proposing that some kind of 'non-matter'/non material something exists.

[Will Due]

14 minutes ago, Liquid Gardens said:

Excellent question I really don't have any idea, but presumably people who disagree with materialism/physicalism are proposing that some kind of 'non-matter'/non material something exists.

 

Yes, that would be mind wouldn't it?

"The mechanism for intercommunication and interassociation between spirit and matter, between the material and the spiritual."

Sorry for the quote but I can't put it in words better. Hope you don't mind.

 

 

Edited March 23, 2018 by Will Due

[Doug1029]

15 hours ago, cormac mac airt said:

You're stuck with it, I know that it's beyond unrealistic to think that only the rulers came into Egypt. 

And yet it doesn't make the Hyksos descendants of the Semites, nor the Israelites the descendants of the Hyksos nor even the Habiru. You've stated or implied connections which are not completely true. 

cormac

You can call it whatever you want, but that's the definition.  I totally agree that the people accompanied the rulers, probably preceded the rulers.  There's a papyrus, a letter from a frontier official to Merneptah telling that he allowed some Shosu to pass the fort to water their livestock at the "Pools of Pithom."  This is obviously not an invading army, just some nomads in need of a drink.  That's how the "invasion" of the Hyksos' people took place:  just a few families at a time settling peacefully in the Nile delta.

The Hyksos are described as "Semitic."  How did they get that way?  I assume it was by being born Semites.  Is there a way for one to be born into a group without being a descendent of it?

The Bible describes the "Israelites" as being a discreet group when they first entered Egypt.  The biblical Joseph apparently arrived there during the reign of Amenhotep II, but there were already many Asiatics living in Egypt.  This points to the nation of Israel having developed in Caanan before the Sojourn began.  Moses was not the founder of Israel.  This is also in agreement with dates assigned to inscriptions mentioning Israel.

At least some of the Amarna refugees made it to Jerusalem.  Maybe they were "Israelites" and maybe not.  According to Josephus, their descendents sent an army to help the slave revolt at Avaris/Piramesse in an attempt to recover their ancient capital.  He gives a more-complete order of battle than the "600 chariots" listed in the Bible.  In spite of this, I could find no evidence of a "battle" ever having occurred at the Red Sea (or the crossing at El Kubrit).  Maybe there was an army there, but I don't think there was a battle.  I believe "Pharaoh's Army" was the militray wing of an expedition to Sinai.  It was there to protect the workers from maurading tribes and to maintain order.  I don't think there was much love between the two wings.  In such a circumstance, it would be easy to see how a legend of a hostile army got started.

 

My reconstruction of events is exactly that:  a reconstruction.  Any reconstruction has to make assumptions because it doesn't have all the facts.  The only requirement is that it fit the known facts, at least most of them (A few can be disputed.).

Doug

 

[Will Due]

45 minutes ago, Will Due said:

 

Yes, that would be mind wouldn't it?

"The mechanism for intercommunication and interassociation between spirit and matter, between the material and the spiritual."

Sorry for the quote but I can't put it in words better. Hope you don't mind.

 

 

 

I just noticed something @Liquid Gardens

It's interesting that the term "mechanism" is used in that quote to describe mind. I guess that means the brain really IS the mind, like so many have claimed and I've argued against.

I now realize that I was wrong for doing that. 

So, perhaps the "non-material something" that exists that you referred to, is what's the result of the interassociation between the material and the spiritual, which is born of the decisions made in the mind and in at least one respect, acts like a vessel or vehicle that serves to deliver a person to that place beyond this world where resurrection will occur.

 

 

Edited March 23, 2018 by Will Due

[stereologist]

17 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

Try some of these:

** snip **

 

There are dozens more.  Maybe I can find something on Egyptian slavery for those who are too lazy to dig it up themselves.

Doug

Please use these sources in your discussion instead of spewing lists.

[stereologist]

10 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

No that is not academic opinion Academic archaeologists admit there  is no evidence for the biblical description of  the exodus,  but as said, Lack of evidence for is NOT evidence against. There is no evidence at all that it did NOT happen.  And there IS a lot of historical evidence that Hebrew worshippers of Jehovah worked as labourers in Egypt and made at leas t one group movement back to Israel  The point is tha t exodus probably ooccurred as an historical movement of Hebrew workers back to Israel and indeed they may have encountered the phenomenon described in exodus which is known to still occur today  Why does this disturb you so much?  The mythology and belief which grew up around this event is not historical even if the event is.

You make a mistake trying to put down belief by arguing against  history.   It s the difference between the  reality of jesus the man, and jesus the god . One is accepted without doubt by  mainstream academic historians, the other, of course, is not.  

The events described in exodus are clearly physically possible and a person caught  up in them might well attribute them to a god that  they believed in,  even if it was actually a natural fortuitous phenomenon 

There is evidence that it did NOT happen. The evidence is in the lack of loss of economic might of the Egyptians. The evidence is in the lack of loss of military power.

Your suggestion is simply that exodus did not happen. Your suggestion is that something else happened.

You seem so disturbed that you have to make up stories which are not exodus and then suggest "exodus probably ooccurred as ..." That's not what exodus is about is it? You provide nothing at all to support your statements. You make some sort of vague story up and then suggest the event is historical? Is that what you are saying?

You make the mistake of not keeping to the topic of the thread which is "Can a religious text be used for evidence?" I am using exodus as an example of how a religious text cannot be used as evidence for history.

The events in exodus are NOT "clearly physically possible".  They did not happen. Exodus is a great example of  how a religious text cannot be used as evidence.