Exodus, fact or fairy tale?

[Kurieuo]

I don't understand the fuss really.
Never did when doing a little historical criticism and the passing comments some made.
What kind of evidence should we expect is a better question going back those 1000s of years?

It seems to me the historical writings themselves, putting any religious element aside, are often unfairly treated.
The mere fact these writings form the Christian "Bible" and Jewish Tanakh, that they form religious canon, now these historical writings must in all areas prove themselves innocent rather than being treated as innocent until proven guilty?

If we had historical writings preserved from Chinese culture, Greek and what-have-you, there wouldn't be and isn't the same high level of scrutiny and non-acceptance. Yes, you might shave obvious embellishments off here and there -- but it's unreasonable to say its all wrong especially when in many cases there's nothing to the contrary except critical speculation.

There is extremism on both sides. Those who say everything is entirely true, spick and span. And those who say, nope, "the Bible" is untrue - it has been proven false (composition fallacy). Well, what about digging in and exploring. More often then not, you walk away with everything not tied down, but and matters of it is probably or not likely... but rarely, if ever, is knowledge of truth air-tight.

Now as to whether or not there is a seed crystal of reality in the exodus story, probably is. How much it has been fluffed up is hard to tell from this remove. I am guessing it is mostly fluff.

Yes, but I wonder what reason a group of people, identifying themselves as slaves in Egypt, rising up and leaving seems in and of itself so fluffy? Especially when the people themselves recorded how they came be in the land they had through such.

Without Googling fluffy opinions out there, do you have a preferred guess about how ancient Israel originally gathered in their land?

[Audie]

I don't understand the fuss really.
Never did when doing a little historical criticism and the passing comments some made.
What kind of evidence should we expect is a better question going back those 1000s of years?

It seems to me the historical writings themselves, putting any religious element aside, are often unfairly treated.
The mere fact these writings form the Christian "Bible" and Jewish Tanakh, that they form religious canon, now these historical writings must in all areas prove themselves innocent rather than being treated as innocent until proven guilty?

If we had historical writings preserved from Chinese culture, Greek and what-have-you, there wouldn't be and isn't the same high level of scrutiny and non-acceptance. Yes, you might shave obvious embellishments off here and there -- but it's unreasonable to say its all wrong especially when in many cases there's nothing to the contrary except critical speculation.

There is extremism on both sides. Those who say everything is entirely true, spick and span. And those who say, nope, "the Bible" is untrue - it has been proven false (composition fallacy). Well, what about digging in and exploring. More often then not, you walk away with everything not tied down, but and matters of it is probably or not likely... but rarely, if ever, is knowledge of truth air-tight.

Now as to whether or not there is a seed crystal of reality in the exodus story, probably is. How much it has been fluffed up is hard to tell from this remove. I am guessing it is mostly fluff.

Yes, but I wonder what reason a group of people, identifying themselves as slaves in Egypt, rising up and leaving seems in and of itself so fluffy? Especially when the people themselves recorded how they came be in the land they had through such.

Without Googling fluffy opinions out there, do you have a preferred guess about how ancient Israel originally gathered in their land?

Nothing far fetched about an enslaved people making their way to freedom.

I have never thought about how / why they gathered where they did. Ecery tribe ever has a story,
why make a big deal of theirs? Its not your ancesters.

[Kurieuo]

I'm really just making a deal out of how many place it in the box of untrue from the get go and work from that starting point to theorise this or that so it seems. For no reason other than people are put off Exodus as being of any historical value due to it forming part of the Torah or Christian Bible. It seems absurd to think there is no true historical story, even if you do shave out God and the like.

[Audie]

I'm really just making a deal out of how many place it in the box of untrue from the get go and work from that starting point to theorise this or that so it seems. For no reason other than people are put off Exodus as being of any historical value due to it forming part of the Torah or Christian Bible. It seems absurd to think there is no true historical story, even if you do shave out God and the like.

Many do all sorts of things. Why speak of foolish persons who are not even oresent?

[Kurieuo]

I guess we're a little similar i.e., your ark chasing people and chariot wheels under the sea. I don't see them oresent either, I mean present.

[EssentialSacrifice]

why make a big deal of theirs? Its not your ancesters.

ah, but they are ... they're the human ancestors of my God, and the big deal is He has human ancestors at all. it's not like the creator of the universe needed man ... He chose to become man and He chose to do this from within the Jewish race. The Exodus reflects none of this but, if God chose this race to free all men, His freedom to the Jews from Egypt is our freedom as well, so in that sense, they most certainly are my ancestors. and worthy of the respect and freedom of this "big deal"

[Audie]

I guess we're a little similar i.e., your ark chasing people and chariot wheels under the sea. I don't see them oresent either, I mean present.

I will "crescent" you, then ya will see what is what.

[zacchaeus]

So is it only fair if Audie told their story, or 'life history' with no other writings outside their word to verify... Can we deny their word as historical fact, disprove their biography? I guess I'm asking what basis to we have to believe them?

[Kurieuo]

@zac, your question is really at the heart of how we can know anything with absolute certainty.

With historical texts found in the Bible, Biblical criticism and methods like historical-criticism are used.
As the name suggest, such is by no means "friendly" to just accept the writings at face value, but critiques such in a rigorous and controlled manner.

Like any pursuit in knowledge, there are often many sides putting forward their own thoughts, arguments, defenses and the like. Pick an issue, research it, and then choose a side or come up with your own position. That requires undertaking some critical research and analysis of positions on all sides.

[PaulSacramento]

So is it only fair if Audie told their story, or 'life history' with no other writings outside their word to verify... Can we deny their word as historical fact, disprove their biography? I guess I'm asking what basis to we have to believe them?

Personal history and the history of civilizations are not the same thing BUT the issue is how do we e verify and how do you believe a historical account of something that is not verified by an outside source?
Well, the first thing is to remember that evidence does NOT = proof, as any lawyer or historian will tell you.
So, even having evidence is no guarantee of things having happened.
The vast majority of historical accounts we have are take as truth because there are historical truths because there is either NO reason to not believe them or we have enough evidence to think that it probably happened.

Of course people's emotions also muck things up BOT ways.
EX: There is lots of historical evidence for the existence of Jesus, both from the bible AND outside sources.
You will find very few, legit, historians that believe that Jesus did NOT exist.
The historical evidence for him is very high, even more so considering he was not royalty.
Yet some still deny his existence because, well, they want to.

We have seen that there are things that have been disputed from the bible as have happened or existing, ONLY to have archaeology eventually, prove the bible correct.

I spoke to a couple of historians at the local university here and a friend of mine that is a researcher at the Royal Ontario Museum and they all said that the exodus story is viewed ( by historians) as an even they probably did indeed happen, even if not 100% as WRITTEN in the OT.

Now, realise that "probably did happen" is what any good historian will say of an historical event that we do NOT have direct archaeological PROOF of it happening.

Examples of events that probably did happen:
Battle of Thermopylae.
Crossing of the Rubicon

Here to help you:

http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320hist&c ... 01hist.htm

[Kurieuo]

It also needs to be added, believe them on what?

For the main part, I can't see how anyone reading the books in the OT can see them as anything other than recordings of events, real places, names and what-not. In fact, that's what struck me when I read through the Bible for the first time many years ago. Just how much, and often depressingly so, it is just an accounting of events and the like.

For the main part that is what these books are. Here and there we see God mixed into the pages and a miracle or the like, which casts great suspicion upon it all in our enlightened modern anti-miraculous society. But, by and far it seems to be a chronicle of Israel and the like.

There are no other preserved historical writings like it, that's for sure.
That, is even quite miraculous in itself. That we have such books with us today about a nation thousands of years old who was conquered, lost its land and what-not. Is there anything in ancient literature that is comparable?

[PaulSacramento]

Found this and thought it pertinent:

https://discourse.biologos.org/t/was-mo ... ses/4245/2

you should read some mainstream archaeologists on this. In archaeology - the study, remember, of the few remaining vestiges of the distant past - absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence. Ever. In the Nile Delta, the damp and the high water table mean that very little survives from that period at all. And the Sinai desert is very big and very empty - what does one look for where?

One remark that puts some perspective on it is from archaeologist Alan Millard: of 120 ANE kings known to us from various documentary sources, the existence of only 20 is confirmed by inscriptions. That's 100 missing kings, despite recording themselves as winning victories, or being recorded by other kings as defeated.

It doesn't, and never would, include leaders of tribal slave revolts pulling a fast one on you. Compare Spartacus - no contemporary evidence whatsoever - just two historians writing 150 years or so later. Ever heard anyone deny his existence, though?

Remember, too, that just a decade or two ago the very existence of King David was denied outright by the small but influential group of "low chronology" archaeologists, and by the OT scholars whose evolutionary theories of Israelite religion such conclusions suited. Then in 1994 they found the Tel Dan Stele mentioning "the House of David" as early as the 9th century.

Even so, there have been those wanting to show that that evidence too is evidence of absence... but even Wikipedia concludes "House of David" is the meaning. There was a Davidic dysnasty in the 9th century - current royal dynasties are not fictional.

We also tend to forget that the only evidence we have for the existence of the vast majority of ancient authors is their writing itself - or often just citations of their writing in other works (Think of Papias or Hegesippus - major sources for early Christian history known only from citations).

Just imagine being the guy commissioned, many centuries later, to invent Moses out of whole cloth, to compile the torah (books of undoubted genius) and pass them off as his teaching, and then to sell the whole package to your nation as their foundation story, as opposed to whatever had been remembered from their real past.

It would be like trying to persuade Americans about the Sioux Chief Mitch Egan and his forty-nine warriors (Ken Tucky, Minnie Sota and Ida Hoe foremost amongst them) liberating the United States from slavery in Mexico and being given lands in return. Sooner you than me!

[Kurieuo]

You forget that ancient people were stupid and so gullible. We all so much smarter today. Our brains and knowledge are more evolved. No reason we should accept books of bible as historical anything like Spartacus', especially since they're evidently religious and so shouldn't be considered as anything other than religion controlling the masses.

[Audie]

Found this and thought it pertinent:

https://discourse.biologos.org/t/was-mo ... ses/4245/2

you should read some mainstream archaeologists on this. In archaeology - the study, remember, of the few remaining vestiges of the distant past - absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence. Ever. In the Nile Delta, the damp and the high water table mean that very little survives from that period at all. And the Sinai desert is very big and very empty - what does one look for where?

One remark that puts some perspective on it is from archaeologist Alan Millard: of 120 ANE kings known to us from various documentary sources, the existence of only 20 is confirmed by inscriptions. That's 100 missing kings, despite recording themselves as winning victories, or being recorded by other kings as defeated.

It doesn't, and never would, include leaders of tribal slave revolts pulling a fast one on you. Compare Spartacus - no contemporary evidence whatsoever - just two historians writing 150 years or so later. Ever heard anyone deny his existence, though?

Remember, too, that just a decade or two ago the very existence of King David was denied outright by the small but influential group of "low chronology" archaeologists, and by the OT scholars whose evolutionary theories of Israelite religion such conclusions suited. Then in 1994 they found the Tel Dan Stele mentioning "the House of David" as early as the 9th century.

Even so, there have been those wanting to show that that evidence too is evidence of absence... but even Wikipedia concludes "House of David" is the meaning. There was a Davidic dysnasty in the 9th century - current royal dynasties are not fictional.

We also tend to forget that the only evidence we have for the existence of the vast majority of ancient authors is their writing itself - or often just citations of their writing in other works (Think of Papias or Hegesippus - major sources for early Christian history known only from citations).

Just imagine being the guy commissioned, many centuries later, to invent Moses out of whole cloth, to compile the torah (books of undoubted genius) and pass them off as his teaching, and then to sell the whole package to your nation as their foundation story, as opposed to whatever had been remembered from their real past.

It would be like trying to persuade Americans about the Sioux Chief Mitch Egan and his forty-nine warriors (Ken Tucky, Minnie Sota and Ida Hoe foremost amongst them) liberating the United States from slavery in Mexico and being given lands in return. Sooner you than me!

"Mainstream" ok. What do you call the ones who find chariots of the gods and wheels at the bottom of the Red Sea? Slipstream ardhaeologists?

Maybe those slipstreamers can find the cities described in the BoM. Maybe even Hyperborea?

Seriously why do we see so much about "mainstream" science as not really being competent, compared to, who, exactly?

[Audie]

You forget that ancient people were stupid and so gullible. We all so much smarter today. Our brains and knowledge are more evolved. No reason we should accept books of bible as historical anything like Spartacus', especially since they're evidently religious and so shouldn't be considered as anything other than religion controlling the masses.

Nobody says they were stupid. Or less "evolved".

What point might you actually be so obliquely shuffling toward making?