Did Exodus Really Happen? Most likely NOT

Were the Jews ever mass enslaved in Egypt? Did two million of them escape slavery in Egypt and live in the desert for 40 years before invading 'The Promised Land' ?? Did Moses really celebrate Passover with the slaves in Egypt ?? More and more the answer looks like ... NO.

Exodus Timeframe sometime around 1570 - 1200 BC. The exact dates are unclear.
Why look critically at Exodus? Some words of advice from Rabbi David Wolpe -

... A tradition cannot make an historical claim and then refuse to have it evaluated by history. ... Truth should not frighten one whose faith is firm. ... Knowing the Exodus is not a literal historical accounting does not ultimately change our connection to each other or to God. Faith should not rest on splitting seas. ...

EXCELLENT ARTICLE -
Did Enslaved Hebrews Build the Pyramids? Answer - no

Was there a mass Exodus of Jewish slaves out of Egypt? There is no record of any such thing ever happening, and the simple reason is that there is no time in which it could have happened. No Egyptian record contains a single reference to anything in Exodus; and by the time there were enough Jews living in Egypt to constitute an Exodus, the time of the pyramids was long over. And Pharaoh Ramesses can be let off the hook as well: With apologies to Yul Brynner, no documentary or archaeological evidence links any of the Pharaohs bearing this name with plagues or Jewish slaves or edicts to kill babies. Indeed, the earliest, Ramesses I, wasn't even born until more than a thousand years after the Great Pyramid was completed. His grandson, the great Ramesses II, lived even later

Some information against Exodus happening -

Belief Net (Jewish)

Surveys of ancient settlements--pottery remains and so forth--make it clear that there simply was no great influx of people around the time of the Exodus (given variously as between 1500-1200 BCE). Therefore, not the wandering, but the arrival alerts us to the fact that the biblical Exodus is not a literal depiction. In Israel at that time, there was no sudden change in the kind or the volume of pottery being made. (If people suddenly arrived after hundreds of years in Egypt, their cups and dishes would look very different from native Canaanites'.) There was no population explosion. Most archeologists conclude that the Israelites lived largely in Canaan over generations, instead of leaving and then immigrating back to Canaan.

Christianity Today

"The actual evidence concerning the Exodus resembles the evidence for the unicorn," writes Baruch Halpern of Pennsylvania State University.

"The Book of Joshua is of no historical value as far as the process of settlement is concerned," contends Volkmar Fritz, director of the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology in Jerusalem.

"The period of the patriarchs, exodus, conquest, or judges as devised by the writers of Scriptures ... never existed," declares Robert Coote of San Francisco Theological Seminary.

The Genesis and Exodus accounts are "a fiction written around the middle of the first millennium," states Niels Peter Lemche at the University of Copenhagen, and, "The David of the Bible, David the king, is not a historical figure."

Julius Wellhausen and the Jahwist-Elohist-Priestly-Deuteronomist grid (Known as the Documentary Hypothesis) says that there are FOUR authors to Exodus. This is what he has detected in studying Exodus. He also said that he believes Exodus may have been written just 450 years before Jesus. This would make sense since the Abrahamic folklore wasn't written down until 500 BC or so. Read More Here - Did Abraham Exist? - ATS Thread

Historians, archaeologists and theologists agree that the exodus didn’t happen, or at least not the way the bible tells us.
Bullet by bullet information about how there is nothing in the Egyptian records of this happening (and they kept good records). Nothing left behind in the desert by two million people supposedly living there for 40 years. The Egyptian army should have collapsed if they all drown in the Red Sea, but instead, Egypt thrived militarily.

Exodus mentions the Philistines, a people that didn’t exist yet. Cities like Ezion Geber, Arad, Heshbon and Kadesh Barnea weren’t founded yet. Other cities mentioned in Exodus and Numbers, like Ai and Jericho, were abandoned ruins for centuries by the time the Israelites arrived.

The author speculates that the Exodus story could have been about The Hyksos who were chased out of Egypt in the 'Exodus' time period. The Hyskos information here

The Exodus Didn't Happen - Summary of Findings from 'The Bible Unearthed' by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman

“The border between Canaan and Egypt was thus closely controlled,” the scholars write. “If a great mass of fleeing Israelites had passed through the border fortifications of the pharaonic regime, a record should exist.” It doesn’t, despite “abundant Egyptian sources” from the period in question. ...

Although the Bible gives the impression that once the Israelites had safely crossed the Sea of Reeds, they were beyond the reach of the anonymous pharaoh’s decimated armies, this isn’t true. Egypt controlled the Sinai Peninsula – and patrolled Canaan itself, as far north and east as the Euphrates River in Syria...

Then there’s this kicker: In the specific places where the Bible discusses Israelite encampments – Kadesh-barnea, where Israel stayed for 38 years, according to Numbers 34, and Ezion-geber on the Gulf of Aqaba – there is not only no evidence from the 13th century, there is evidence from a different time period: the seventh century. “All the major places that play a role in the wandering of the Israelites were inhabited in the seventh century; in some cases they were occupied only at that time”. That includes Edom, Ammon and Moab. The exodus story describes these nations as trying to stop Israel from getting to Canaan. Yet these areas were essentially uninhabited in the 13th century. They were full-fledged nation-states – and enemies of Israel, at that – in the seventh.

Extreme thinking - Exodus didn't happen
- No records of mass numbers of Hebrew slaves in Egypt.
- No records of mass deaths (10th Plague) in Egypt.
- Hebrews entered Canaan (owned by Egypt) in a genocidal rage but no record of this in Egypt.
- The Merneptah Stele (stone carving) 1207BC says Hebrews in Canaan were 'a tribe' .. not a nation.
- The claim is that the Torah was written by Moses himself in 1400 BC but the Hebrews were illiterate. IF Moses wrote it, it would have been in Egyptian hieroglyphics which he would have been schooled in.

It was more likley an invasion led by RAmoses-Rameses.

I believe that Exodus really happened. I also believe that Moses killed many of the people he "saved" because of their building of the calf. It seemed like most of the people from what I read. So who did he actually save? surely not the ones he had slaughtered. They would have been better off staying where they were.

With this in mind -

Rabbi David Wolpe -

... A tradition cannot make an historical claim and then refuse to have it evaluated by history. ... Truth should not frighten one whose faith is firm. ...

Much of Judaism and Islam, and some of Christianity, look to the Exodus story as literal fact. They look to it so as to get a feel for Who God is. They think their 'holy books' are incorrupt and accurate. The problem is, those holy books are just wrong. Many people indoctrinated into those beliefs won't admit that their Torah or Bible or Quran are flat out wrong.

If you are basing your beliefs on a construct of God made from false stories, then you aren't going to know Who God really is, right?

Don't be afraid of the truth, no matter where it takes you.

When I was young, I believed the bible was literal truth. I couldn't understand why people thought the Exodus story was so wonderful. They said 'oh look at how God saves His people' and 'look at how the faith of the people saved them'. Instead of thinking Exodus was wonderful, all I could think was ... 'what kind of Father-God leaves His children in slavery for 400 years ... generation after generation begging for help but instead get nothing'. I thought it was a horrid story. Now I know, it most likely never really happened. So that's great. But my question now is ... why would a God let something that is so fake be told over and over for thousands of years? Why woudn't He want to clear His name and have TRUTH be told? I don't get it.

I don't know, Im starting to thin that either Jews had the most atrocious bad luck a "people" can possibly have or has mastered the art of deception and actually created "playing the victim" role in early history.

So its either:

Their life is a drama with a beginning, a middle and noooooo #ing end.

Or

By way of deception thou shalt wage war.

*shrug*

reply to post by FlyersFan


But where did they come from? They didn't write the Bible in Egyptian because they weren't from Egypt? But where did their language originate?

A people's history is usually important to them regardless of what happened they liked to have a record of it. What I'd like to know is, if what you say is true, why would a people completely destroy their real history and what really happened and write up something completely fake? This is abnormal behavior and makes me want to know why.

Also many times claims like this get made you'll have people saying things like there's no record of them being in Egypt! Yeah there is, their own oral record passed to what their Bible says. It has a record of them being in Egypt. You're just disregarding it completely because you think it's wrong. It may be wrong but it's best not to disregard it completely.

The next step is to try and figure out why they wrote it then from a historical point of view. Where did this slaves in Egypt story come from if it wasn't true?

Im sure it happened. There was the library of alexandria that burn down a lot of important documents. As well as kingdoms burning their own documents to avoid embarrassment

reply to post by FlyersFan


Oh yeah, according to the Bible anyway they weren't really Egyptians. They started off with their own language/culture and then "ended up" in Egypt and lived there for a long time. So they would of had their own language before they even got to Egypt and according to the Bible the Israelites and Egyptians never fully assimilated.

If you read it you'll find it was two cultures basically living in the same land. And Moses was raised by the Royal Family so while many of them may have been illiterate Moses probably wouldn't have been.

Why do people have to take the Bible literally? Can't people understand an allegorical text for what it is and move on? Most of the higher-ups in faith are fully aware of this ... and yet they preach this stuff like it really happened just-like-it-says. Sheesh!!

You might just walk away from the Bible understanding something if it wasn't jammed down your throat.

tinfoilman
But where did they come from? They didn't write the Bible in Egyptian because they weren't from Egypt? But where did their language originate?

The Abrahamic folklore wasn't written down until around 500 BC. That's when the Hebrews written language got a firm hold. The ten commandments (if they actually happened) would have been written by Moses in Egyptian because that is what he was schooled in. He was a high prince of Egypt and well schooled. The Hebrews were not schooled. Therefore, if they were written down immediately, it would have been in Egyptian.

As for where the Hebrews came from ... that was in the opening post. They didn't come from Egypt. They were already in the area they are in now. IF anyone came out of Egypt, it wasn't two million Hebrews. It was either a MUCH smaller number of Hebrews or it was another group of people. (see the opening post for speculation on that group).

why would a people completely destroy their real history and what really happened and write up something completely fake? This is abnormal behavior and makes me want to know why.

Folk lore. It happens all around the world all the time. Cultures embellish their backgrounds to make the people feel better about themselves. Change history and make themselves special or victorious in some way.

Also many times claims like this get made you'll have people saying things like there's no record of them being in Egypt! Yeah there is, their own oral record passed to what their Bible says. It has a record of them being in Egypt.

Egyptians kept exceptional records. They were extremely organized and well documented. Everything from financial records to genealogical records to military records to historical records. Slaves were property and would have been in the financial records. A mass movement of 2 million slaves would have been recorded. A mass slaughter of Egyptian soldiers in the Red Sea would have been a serious hit to the military and would have been recorded.

Word of mouth folklore by Hebrews doesn't measure up to the written record keeping of the Egyptians. It simply doesn't.

Jordan River
Im sure it happened. There was the library of alexandria that burn down a lot of important documents. As well as kingdoms burning their own documents to avoid embarrassment

So you think that the Egyptians wiped away all information that pointed to a mass exodus of two million Hebrew slaves? Okay .... that would be really really hard to do. A total scrubbing of all documents throughout Egypt ... hundreds and hundreds of years of documents about slaves and finances and events and names ...etc etc ????

What about the fact that no evidence of two million people living in the desert for 40 years was ever found? Or the evidence that the places mentioned in the Exodus story didn't even exist until the year 700 BC so it's impossible for Moses to have been in them?

FlyersFan
Were the Jews ever mass enslaved in Egypt? Did two million of them escape slavery in Egypt and live in the desert for 40 years before invading 'The Promised Land' ?? Did Moses really celebrate Passover with the slaves in Egypt ?? More and more the answer looks like ... NO.



Extreme thinking - Exodus didn't happen
- No records of mass numbers of Hebrew slaves in Egypt.
- No records of mass deaths (10th Plague) in Egypt.
- Hebrews entered Canaan (owned by Egypt) in a genocidal rage but no record of this in Egypt.
- The Merneptah Stele (stone carving) 1207BC says Hebrews in Canaan were 'a tribe' .. not a nation.
- The claim is that the Torah was written by Moses himself in 1400 BC but the Hebrews were illiterate. IF Moses wrote it, it would have been in Egyptian hieroglyphics which he would have been schooled in.

edit on 11/6/2013 by FlyersFan because: spelling/typo

Proto-Sinaitic is hypothesized to be an intermediate step between Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Phoenician alphabet. If this is the case, Proto-Sinaitic may be the first alphabet. According to the alphabet theory, the alphabet began with Proto-Sinaitic at the end of the Middle Bronze Age and split into the South Arabian script and the Proto-Canaanite script in the Late Bronze Age. The Proto-Canaanite script would then have evolved into Phoenician proper by 1100 BCE.[5] The theory centers on the idea that only the graphic form of the Proto-Sinaitic characters derive from Egyptian hieroglyphs, and that they were given the sound value of the first consonant of the Semitic translation of the hieroglyph. (Using a character for the first sound of its name is the acrophonic principle.) For example, the hieroglyph for pr "house" (a rectangle partially open along one side, "O1" in Gardiner's sign list) was adopted to write Semitic /b/, after the first consonant of baytu, the Semitic word for "house".[1] According to the alphabet hypothesis, the shapes of the letters would have evolved from Proto-Sinaitic forms into Phoenician forms, but the names of the letters would have remained the same. Below is a table showing selected Proto-Sinaitic signs and the proposed correspondences with Phoenician letters. Also shown are the sound values, names, and descendants of the Phoenician letters.

Proto-Sinatic

Proto-Sinaitic, also known as Proto-Canaanite, was the first consonantal alphabet. Even a quick and cursory glance at its inventory of signs makes it very apparent of this script's Egyptian origin. Originally it was thought that at round 1700 BCE, Sinai was conquered by Egypt, and the local West-Semitic population were influenced by Egyptian culture and adopted a small number of hieroglyphic signs (about 30) to write their own language. However, recent discoveries in Egypt itself have compounded this scenario. Inscriptions dating to 1900 BCE written in what appears to be Proto-Sinaitic were found in Upper Egypt, and nearby Egyptian texts speak of the presence of Semitic-speaking people living in Egypt.[/ex]

Semitics In Egypt


Anyway what were you saying?

reply to post by FlyersFan


The idea that would Moses would have been schooled in Egyptian only is probably a misconception. There's no reason to believe that. According to the story anyway, the Israelite weren't slaves in Egypt for much of the time. In the beginning of the story they're living in peace with the Egyptians as just a separate culture. The story of the land of "Goshen" right?

Story time yay! So, recently I've moved my way back up to friggin northern Indiana here. Just in time for winter, yay I'm a moron! Anyway I happen to be staying in Goshen and my brother in law has Amish family here. Don't know if you know anything about them but they're basically a completely different culture living right in the US. They all still speak Dutch and stuff. Fancy.

Anyway for according to the Bible it was the same way in Egypt. The land of Goshen was the part of Egypt the Israelite lived in and they lived for a long time peacefully, but still as two separate cultures with their own languages. So like I said, they never fully assimilated. So there were probably many people that spoke both languages and Moses was probably schooled in both languages.

Knowing the languages your slaves speak would come in handy don't you think? Also, it's not hard to believe since I'm currently living in an almost exact replica of it right now.

And as for the Egyptian financial records? Well let's take a look? Usually in times like this I see people making claims like so and so kept perfect records! We just don't have them!

Usually the claim is usually about Jesus. The Romans kept excellent records and there's no record of anyone named Yeshua being crucified! Which is weird since it was actually a somewhat common name around then. Alright well let's take a look at the Roman crucifixion records. Can't don't have them?

What do you mean you don't have them? I thought they kept excellent records! Uh, well guess not. Not only is there no record of Jesus being crucified. There's no record of ANYONE being crucified except of course we know they crucified people.

So, just to make sure the same kinda thing isn't going on here. You say the Egyptians kept excellent financial records and would have their slaves they did have listed there? Alright let's take a look at the Egyptian slave financial reports? Got a link to those?

tinfoilman
The idea that would Moses would have been schooled in Egyptian only is probably a misconception. There's no reason to believe that..

According to the Exodus story - Moses was a prince of Egypt. OF COURSE he would have been schooled in Egyptian. Egypt had great schools for the upper crust. And him being a Prince of Egypt ...well they weren't going to have a prince running around who was unschooled. That would have been unacceptable. He had to rule (or help rule) the reigning country in the known world.

Acts 7:22 - Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action

What Moses Schooling Would Have Been

The historian Philo says, that Moses was initiated by the Egyptian priests in the philosophy of symbols and hieroglyphics, as well as in the mysteries of the sacred animals. This testimony is confirmed by numerous others.He would have been taught the diplomatic languages, mathematics, astronomy, and was probably trained for service as a military leader.

Not only did Moses receive the best education available at the time but also all the advantages of Egyptian wealth and status. This was a unique preparation as a leader. He would be able to stand in front of Pharaoh, having been educated in Egyptian ways, but he would also stand for his people

So IF Exodus happened, (and it looks like it didn't), then Moses was schooled in Egyptian schooling. Being a prince of Egypt, that would make sense.

Schooling in Ancient Egypt
More Schooling in Ancient Egypt [/ur]
[url=http://library.thinkquest.org/J002606/AncientEgypt.html] Elementary Schools in Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egyptian School Images
Ancient Egyptian Scribe Schools

reply to post by FlyersFan

OF COURSE he would have been schooled in Egyptian

I said Egyptian ONLY. If he was raised by the royal family and they did have Israelite slaves there's no reason to think Moses wouldn't have learned BOTH languages since you want to be able to tell your slaves what to do right?

What I'm telling you is that during this time, according to the Bible, if both languages were spoken in Egypt at the time then Moses would have probably learned both languages. I don't know where you get this idea that Moses could have only learned Egyptian.

According to the Bible it was two groups of people with two languages living with each other. If so, Moses probably knew both languages.

FlyersFan

tinfoilman
The idea that would Moses would have been schooled in Egyptian only is probably a misconception. There's no reason to believe that..

According to the Exodus story - Moses was a prince of Egypt. OF COURSE he would have been schooled in Egyptian. Egypt had great schools for the upper crust. And him being a Prince of Egypt ...well they weren't going to have a prince running around who was unschooled. That would have been unacceptable. He had to rule (or help rule) the reigning country in the known world.

Acts 7:22 - Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action

He also lived for 40 years with Jethro the priest of the Midianites. So probably well schooled in the proto-sinaitic as well.

tinfoilman
reply to post by FlyersFan

 

OF COURSE he would have been schooled in Egyptian

I said Egyptian ONLY. If he was raised by the royal family and they did have Israelite slaves there's no reason to think Moses wouldn't have learned BOTH languages since you want to be able to tell your slaves what to do right?

What I'm telling you is that during this time, according to the Bible, if both languages were spoken in Egypt at the time then Moses would have probably learned both languages. I don't know where you get this idea that Moses could have only learned Egyptian.

Consider that his mother was taken in by Pharos daughter as well. He was never isolated from his native language.

tinfoilman
According to the story anyway, the Israelite weren't slaves in Egypt for much of the time.

From those who take the bible literally - Hebrews were slaves for 430 years in Egypt

And as for the Egyptian financial records? Well let's take a look? Usually in times like this I see people making claims like so and so kept perfect records! We just don't have them!

Egyptians kept magnificent records.
Taxes, laws, stories, history, trades,
The scribes and the stone workers made sure of it.
UPENN Ancient Egyptian Guide
Ancient Egypt On Line

It is no exaggeration to say that we owe most of our knowledge of ancient Egypt to the work of her scribes. The ancient Egyptians covered their temples and tombs with hieroglyphs, but they also employed scribes to record everything from the stocks held in the stores for workers, the proceedings in court, magic spells, wills and other legal contracts, medical procedures, tax records and genealogies. Scribes were central to the functioning of centralised administration, the army and the priesthood and in truth very little happened in ancient Egypt which did not involve a scribe in some manner.

moses is a plagerizm

Like the Bible's Moses, Sargon may have been a Semite rather than a Sumerian. A story about Sargon's youth sounds like the Moses infancy story. The baby Sargon, nestled in a reed basket sealed with bitumen, was placed in the Euphrates River. The basket floated until it was rescued by a gardener or date grower. In this capacity he worked for the king of Kish, Ur-Zababa until he rose in the ranks to become the king's cupbearer....

Then the ambitious king of the Mesopotamian city-state of Umma (and beyond), Lugulzaggesi, invaded Kish from the south. King Ur-Zababa king fled and Sargon led forces against Lugulzaggesi's Sumerian mini-empire. Lugulzaggesi had to leave Kish to face Sargon, who proved unstoppable. After Lugulzaggesi surrendered, Sargon named himself king of Kish and then marched south to conquer Mesopotamian land to the Persian Gulf.

ancienthistory.about.com...

comparisons of the Indian and egyption and sumerian hyroglyphs show Sargon's son Menes united upper and lower egypt around 4000 BC...."our lord AMEN" as Menes was known...

ps
oh yeah:
Sargon was an ARYAN GOTH not a semite

tinfoilman
I don't know where you get this idea that Moses could have only learned Egyptian.

I didn't say that at all. I said I thought he would have done the writing in Egyptian because that was what he was well schooled in. But it isn't worth even arguing about because, as the evidence shows, the Exodus probably didn't even happen.