Does Archaeology Confirm the Exodus and Conquest?

These could be possibilities but until hard evidence is available, these don’t establish anything.

This is an excellent point. New pottery designs would be likely from groups who were established. A new generation of people out of the exodus wouldn’t even necessarily know how to do pottery. There are other issues as well. It is my understanding that massive wars and genocide as commanded by god did not take place in this time as recorded in the Bible (of-course the assumed time line could be incorrect but then a new consistent time line would need to be developed). All of these issues and more causes problems.

Ditto to what I previously said. The massive killing ordered by god creates major problems within Christian theology. Christians should be happy if these passages actually never really happened.

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You would probably relate to this, as I do:
https://randalrauser.com/2021/09/on-the-rotten-spiritual-fruit-of-genocide-apologetics/

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I have raised points like this in other forums. Literalist Christians than have had to try to defend genocide and reconcile it with god’s foreknowledge - I would submit an impossible thing to do unless you can effectively argue that god can do whatever he wants (including breaking his own moral and ethical injunctions because he is god!). Since god’s middle knowledge would have allowed him to do otherwise, we have a major problem. What possible purpose could god have for doing such a thing if god could have created an infinite number of better worlds? One would be left trying to justify that the possible world that god created (with genocide) was somehow the best possible world. A very dubious suggestion and one which I’ve never seen even a remotely well argued line of thinking to defend.

We are told they had pots, pans, and basins to use in the tabernacle so they either knew how to do pottery or bought it at the local Pots-r-us. We really don’t know much about what they did for the 40 years of wandering but they may have stayed in one area for a decade or two which is plenty of time to develop a style of pottery.

This seems unlikely as the desert would not allow a large group of people the luxury of staying in one place for very long and there is no evidence that the necessary resources would have existed. There is no evidence that even 20K people were in the desert let alone over a million.

The points you make are assumptions, you provide no hard evidence. A person who is an Atheist could equally make up assumptions on why the story is false. All we can really say is that there is currently no real evidence of very large numbers of people being in the area at the time of when the Exodus supposedly happened.

If there is little or no evidence of fortified walls we can’t really say one way or the other for sure. With lack of evidence we have to be open in both directions (as we should be any way). However, since their seems to be current agreement for minimal occupation by the experts, we should accept this tentatively until more information can help us to move toward a more comprehensive understanding. This doesn’t mean the Bible is wrong, although it could point to other explanations rather than some that are currently favored.

I don’t think it is as simple as I may have appeared to indicate. There is a tendency to provide a united front to the public when dealing with Creationism by Evolutionary Scientists (and as you correctly point out, I also doubt that they care less the rest of the time). However, these Scientists obviously can have very different ideas about Evolution when dealing with specific Scientific issues. When healthy Science is being practiced, there is a fair amount of room for disagreement within certain limits that at a given time is determined loosely with the Scientific fraternity. However, some research programs can start to really suck up resources (such as String Theory in theoretical physics) and get some criticisms from other branches because resources are always finite and it becomes unhealthy if one prominent framework starts to dominate the particular area’s ecology too much.

You are correct that Science probably does the best job of shaking up pet theories of influential older members of the fraternity (if for no other reason than these people eventually die off!) that dominate thinking, theory and prevailing models. As evidence piles up, not just within an area but across areas, and as older advocates die off, there is room for what Kuhn called new paradigms or revolutionary science (or at least some smaller variant of a paradigm shift, what I would call minor (but not insignificant) shifts). So I would tend to agree, with careful qualification, with most of your points.

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Pots, pans, etc. are made of metal. For pottery, you need a potter’s wheel, and a kiln to fire the pottery, and wood for fuel. And a source of natural clay, found on some river banks. It’s very heavy! And glaze. Not the sort of things you would schlep through the desert. If they had kilns we would have found them. On a related matter, the Hebrews had to leave Egypt in a hurry–no time to let the bread rise. But Aaron seemed to have the skill and equipment for goldsmithing. Had the presence of mind to bring tools along in case he needed to make a golden calf!

The version of the story I remember has them being provided with food and water. So plenty of resources.

Actually you don’t need a wheel, kiln, or glaze. You would need clay which is found in places other than river banks.

Well, I suppose you can make pinch pots. Where else would you get moist clay than from a creek or river? And how do you fire pottery without a kiln? Wouldn’t they have left behind potsherds for archaeologists to find?

Big difference from bare subsistence and being able to things like pottery that involve a stable and settled culture. Not convinced.

Straining at a gnat. Provide evidence please. We can sit here all day talking about a million possibilities and get nowhere.

Any reference to peer reviewed journal information is welcome. The evidence can then be viewed and evaluated. Secondary references are fine as long as they properly reference the original and are an accurate portrayal of the original. These results, if accurate, indicate a lot of missing evidence that would be necessary to support the account.

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Found this

You can burn pottery in a fire without a kiln. Ever read The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne?

I never got the impression that mana from heaven was “bare subsistence” but maybe that is just your assumption. And these people were together for over 40 years so I think they had a stable culture.

But it doesn’t say that deserts are a good place to find clay! And what of the potshards? Where are they? But before we go on and on, why don’t you or Para point me to some examples of the new pottery styles the Hebrews supposedly introduced. According to you, they should not have been made on a potter’s wheel and should be unglazed. So they would be relatively primitive.

btw, Can you think of any other nomadic desert cultures that create pottery?

Not very pro-life, is it? I’m certainly happy about the lack of evidence.

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Book? Authors? Journal names? Anything concrete from a peer-reviewed journal? You have to be careful with your sources, because Noah’s ark has already been found several times…

We have access to Academic Search Premier so I’ll have access to any journal you name.