hotshoe wrote:So your position on evidence is that if we DON'T have it, then that means we should assume the chances are 50/50 that it DID happen ? That the evidence we DON'T have, if we somehow did get it, would be evidence that Exodus occurred ?

hotshoe wrote:
In the absence of evidence showing that Hebrew slaves were at Pi-Ramesse and then "escaped" en masse, the only rational statement which can be made is "there is no evidence that the Exodus ever happened." That's it. That's not a sweeping statement. It's a simple statement of fact. There is no evidence that it ever happened.

hotshoe wrote:
Did it ? Who knows ? What kind of evidence should we expect to find if it really had happened ? I don't expect even one single papyri to survive. It never occurred to me that they would. But I expect that the Hebrews, supposedly miraculously delivered by their god, and supposedly divinely inspired by their god in recording the history, would at least get the names correct. And those Hebrew texts did survive and we do have copies of them, with all their puzzling omissions and mysterious little errors.

hotshoe wrote:
I would be interested to know what Kitchen thinks is "correspondence with attested realities" and what his physical evidence is.

hotshoe wrote:
By the way, this quotation is slightly doctored from the version available in google books. So I am concerned with where you got the quotation. Did you transcribe it yourself, or did you copy it from someplace else on the internet ? (In which case, you need to supply a link to your source - it's the rule.)

Lion IRC wrote:The bible says 600,000 adult males left the country in a hurry.

Lion IRC wrote:Ramses and Succoth arent metaphors - they are actual places.

Blood wrote:

hotshoe wrote:
I would be interested to know what Kitchen thinks is "correspondence with attested realities" and what his physical evidence is.

Read the book. It's long. I can't quote from the whole thing.

Lion IRC wrote:What more would Karen Armstrong know about the Exodus than people who were there?
She pushes a "history of mythology" agenda because it is easy to be an expert or an author about something as nebulous as "symbolism" and "metaphor".

'My father was a Syrian, about to perish, and he went down to Egypt and dwelt there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. 6 But the Egyptians mistreated us, afflicted us, and laid hard bondage on us. 7 Then we cried out to the LORD God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice and looked on our affliction and our labor and our oppression. 8 So the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm, with great terror and with signs and wonders. 9 He has brought us to this place and has given us this land, "a land flowing with milk and honey"; 10 and now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land which you, O LORD, have given me.'

stijndeloose wrote:

Lion IRC wrote:The bible says 600,000 adult males left the country in a hurry.
I could walk from Egypt to Israel in a couple of seconds.

Ah, yes, that makes for a total of, what, about 3 million people, who then when on a stroll through the desert for 40 years and didn't leave any evidence?

Lion IRC wrote:The bible says the Egyptians were happy to see them go.

So why did Pharaoh chase them afterwards, then, according to the same book?

Lion IRC wrote:Ramses and Succoth arent metaphors - they are actual places.

Places that were uninhabited at the time, as mentioned here before. Try again?

Lion IRC wrote:

stijndeloose wrote:

Lion IRC wrote:The bible says 600,000 adult males left the country in a hurry.
I could walk from Egypt to Israel in a couple of seconds.

Ah, yes, that makes for a total of, what, about 3 million people, who then when on a stroll through the desert for 40 years and didn't leave any evidence?

Lion IRC wrote:The bible says the Egyptians were happy to see them go.

So why did Pharaoh chase them afterwards, then, according to the same book?

Lion IRC wrote:Ramses and Succoth arent metaphors - they are actual places.

Places that were uninhabited at the time, as mentioned here before. Try again?

OK

I will try again.

The Sinai is not all desert and people have been living there for a long time. Who says there is NO evidence of this? People have been living there for 200,000 years. Is there someone arguing that Succoth was not a real PLACE name at the time of the exodus?

Is someone arguing that there was never any nomadic human habitation of the Sinai (ca. 2400-2000 B.C.) WOW!

We are talking about an area which lies within a couple of days walk of the Kings Highway which has been a trade route for over 5000 years. Is there some population density problem with the Israelites fitting into 61,000 square kilometers? How can you tell the difference between the bones of an Israelite nomad and an Arab/Egyptian?

Why is there this astonishment about nomadic wanderings for 40 years.
There have been Australian Aboriginals "strolling around the desert" for 40 THOUSAND years.

Lion (IRC)

Lion IRC wrote:The Sinai is not all desert and people have been living there for a long time. Who says there is NO evidence of this? People have been living there for 200,000 years. Is there someone arguing that Succoth was not a real PLACE name at the time of the exodus?

Is someone arguing that there was never any nomadic human habitation of the Sinai (ca. 2400-2000 B.C.) WOW!

We are talking about an area which lies within a couple of days walk of the Kings Highway which has been a trade route for over 5000 years. Is there some population density problem with the Israelites fitting into 61,000 square kilometers? How can you tell the difference between the bones of an Israelite nomad and an Arab/Egyptian?

Why is there this astonishment about nomadic wanderings for 40 years.

1:45 So were all those that were numbered of the children of Israel, by the house of their fathers, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war in Israel;
1:46 "Even all they that were numbered were six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty."

Lion IRC wrote:Why is there this astonishment about nomadic wanderings for 40 years.
There have been Australian Aboriginals "strolling around the desert" for 40 THOUSAND years.
Lion (IRC)

Tbickle wrote:

Lion IRC wrote:

stijndeloose wrote:

Lion IRC wrote:The bible says 600,000 adult males left the country in a hurry.
I could walk from Egypt to Israel in a couple of seconds.

Ah, yes, that makes for a total of, what, about 3 million people, who then when on a stroll through the desert for 40 years and didn't leave any evidence?

Lion IRC wrote:The bible says the Egyptians were happy to see them go.

So why did Pharaoh chase them afterwards, then, according to the same book?

Lion IRC wrote:Ramses and Succoth arent metaphors - they are actual places.

Places that were uninhabited at the time, as mentioned here before. Try again?

OK

I will try again.

The Sinai is not all desert and people have been living there for a long time. Who says there is NO evidence of this? People have been living there for 200,000 years. Is there someone arguing that Succoth was not a real PLACE name at the time of the exodus?

Is someone arguing that there was never any nomadic human habitation of the Sinai (ca. 2400-2000 B.C.) WOW!

We are talking about an area which lies within a couple of days walk of the Kings Highway which has been a trade route for over 5000 years. Is there some population density problem with the Israelites fitting into 61,000 square kilometers? How can you tell the difference between the bones of an Israelite nomad and an Arab/Egyptian?

Why is there this astonishment about nomadic wanderings for 40 years.
There have been Australian Aboriginals "strolling around the desert" for 40 THOUSAND years.

Lion (IRC)

First of all, you are jumping the gun by arguing for an exodus before looking at the justification for the need for an exodus. There is no evidence to suggest that Jews were forced into labor by the Egyptians, but there is some to suggest that they were employed. Before you can begin to suggest that this supposed exodus did occur, shouldn't you first establish that there was a need for an exodus first?

The other problem isn't that there is a vast amount of evidence to show that an exodus DIDN'T occur, it's just that there is not much evidence to support this claim. You probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the bones of an Egyptian and a Jew, but you could potentially discover other archeological data that could help to make this determination. Archaeologists often use other artifacts to build an understanding of a culture or a particular site, not just the bones. A presence of say, pig bones used for consumption could be a clue that we are not dealing with a Jewish archaeological site.

Crocodile Gandhi wrote:

Lion IRC wrote:Why is there this astonishment about nomadic wanderings for 40 years.
There have been Australian Aboriginals "strolling around the desert" for 40 THOUSAND years.
Lion (IRC)

Indeed. What isn't astonishing at all is that we have found many artifacts that show that the native Australians have roamed Central Australia. From skeletons, to tools and rock paintings. Got any of that for your Israelites?

Lion IRC wrote:

Crocodile Gandhi wrote:

Lion IRC wrote:Why is there this astonishment about nomadic wanderings for 40 years.
There have been Australian Aboriginals "strolling around the desert" for 40 THOUSAND years.
Lion (IRC)

Indeed. What isn't astonishing at all is that we have found many artifacts that show that the native Australians have roamed Central Australia. From skeletons, to tools and rock paintings. Got any of that for your Israelites?

There have been people living in the Sinai for 200,000 years +/-
This is not in dispute surely.

Crocodile Gandhi wrote:

Lion IRC wrote:

Crocodile Gandhi wrote:

Lion IRC wrote:Why is there this astonishment about nomadic wanderings for 40 years.
There have been Australian Aboriginals "strolling around the desert" for 40 THOUSAND years.
Lion (IRC)

Indeed. What isn't astonishing at all is that we have found many artifacts that show that the native Australians have roamed Central Australia. From skeletons, to tools and rock paintings. Got any of that for your Israelites?

There have been people living in the Sinai for 200,000 years +/-
This is not in dispute surely.

Perhaps. Though wouldn't we expect a swathe of archeological evidence from a group of a couple of million of people sweeping across the land just a few thousand years ago?

Crocodile Gandhi wrote:While there may have been many millions of other people who have lived there over the millenia, a few thousand years ago they would mostly have been disperate tribes. There wouldn't have been many hordes of people consisting of millions of individuals. They would have had needed to have large encampments just to have survived. Why is it that we find the remnants of small villages all over the world, but not the remnants of a travelling tribe numbering in the millions?

Lion IRC wrote:

Crocodile Gandhi wrote:

Lion IRC wrote:Why is there this astonishment about nomadic wanderings for 40 years.
There have been Australian Aboriginals "strolling around the desert" for 40 THOUSAND years.
Lion (IRC)

Indeed. What isn't astonishing at all is that we have found many artifacts that show that the native Australians have roamed Central Australia. From skeletons, to tools and rock paintings. Got any of that for your Israelites?

There have been people living in the Sinai for 200,000 years +/-
This is not in dispute surely.

hotshoe wrote:

Blood wrote:

hotshoe wrote:
I would be interested to know what Kitchen thinks is "correspondence with attested realities" and what his physical evidence is.

Read the book. It's long. I can't quote from the whole thing.

Would you be willing to give one example of his physical evidence that you found convincing ?

The essence of Humphreys's approach rests on three premises. First, there is at least one figure in the censuses of the book of Numbers, which "stands out as being entirely reasonable." Numbers 3:14-39 reports about the census of the tribe of Levi, conducted separately from the census of other Israelite tribes. This census is summarized with the figure of 22,000 Levite males over one month old. Then, Numbers 3:40-43 reports about the census of the firstborn sons over one month old in the whole Israelite population, which resulted, as noted above, in the figure of 22,273 persons. The surplus of the firstborn sons over the Levites, amounting to 273 persons, is mentioned explicitly in Numbers 3:46. It is this figure which Humphreys took as fully reliable.

Second, Humphreys supposed that the numerical strength of the tribe of Levi was approximately 1/12 of the numerical strength of the whole Israelite population, or 1/11 of the original outcome of the censuses described in Numbers 1 and 26, which did not include Levites.

Third, Humphreys suggested that in the figures for individual tribes, provided in the censuses of Numbers 1 and 26, the Hebrew term 'elef, usually translated as "thousand," should be understood as "a group of men, a troop" -- a meaning somewhat close to that of "family, kin group," which is well attested for 'elef in the Bible. Thus, when the number of males over 20 years old in the tribe of Reuben, for example, is given in Numbers 1:21 as "forty-six 'elefs, five hundred," in Humphreys's view it means 46 troops, consisting of 500 persons in total. This suggestion, of course, is not new with Humphreys and goes back to W. M. Flinders Petrie, who made it, in a slightly different form, back in 1906, and whose precedence Humphreys acknowledged. What was new with Humphreys was the connection of this suggestion with the two mathematical premises mentioned above.

hotshoe wrote:

Lion IRC wrote:

Crocodile Gandhi wrote:

Lion IRC wrote:Why is there this astonishment about nomadic wanderings for 40 years.
There have been Australian Aboriginals "strolling around the desert" for 40 THOUSAND years.
Lion (IRC)

Indeed. What isn't astonishing at all is that we have found many artifacts that show that the native Australians have roamed Central Australia. From skeletons, to tools and rock paintings. Got any of that for your Israelites?

There have been people living in the Sinai for 200,000 years +/-
This is not in dispute surely.

Citation please.

As far as I know, there have NOT been people living in the Sinai for 200,000+ years, and if that is true, I would really like to update my knowledge by following up on the source of your claim.