Thanks Riversea. And I appreciate the view of the book cover and the brief quote from page 197.
As I noted in my response to Bh (which you also must have read). …I did take a look on some Indian websites and learned a bit more about this Indus Valley situation. Yes, it also mentioned bricks with straw.
A few years ago, when I first began to look into the whole concept of an “exodus,” a woman recommended that I buy a particular videotape. It was by some famous person who had found, she said, a chariot wheel at the bottom of the Red Sea.
I was open to the idea. I went on Amazon.com and paid $5 for this VHS tape and watched it. It looked like a crusty chariot wheel on the bottom of a body of water —maybe the bottom of the Red Sea, maybe the bottom of a bathtub. Who was I to tell? The man who discovered it (said he did), said into the camera: “I am scientist. I do things scientlfically.”
Years down the road, I discovered that this “scientist” was a former X-ray technician. And another “scientist” — that is, someone trained in the field of Eygptology and archaeology — noted that the chariot wheels in the Egypt of Moses’ time were made of wood and would not have lasted for 3500 years at the bottom of any sea.
In other words…listen to people, but verify their story. The X-ray technician was an X-ray technician…trained in giving X-rays, not unearthing artifacts in the midst of a desert. He only wanted to make money off gullible people. He was a fraud, in other words.
If you read my comments to Bh, there are several problems with this Indus Valley civilization experience.
First — it is WAY too early for the Exodus event described in the biblical text. That is, the events in the Book of Exodus occurred CENTURIES after the Indus Valley civilization collapse.
You have to follow the known evidence, Riversea. People in the ancient Near East experienced droughts and famines. When this occurred, they often sought safety and food in Egypt. This is a known practice. It is known by archaeologists and ANE historians about the actions of OTHER groups, not just Hebrews. They went to EGYPT not the Indus Valley. And there is NO evidence that the Hebrews EVER were taken captive and forced to slave labor in the Indus Valley.
You can read this in my response to Bh.
Second, the quote by Bharat on page 197 about Moses getting “consent of the Hebrew elders at Vadnagar” and then going to Mitsrayim —this is fiction. This is like the crusted chariot wheel at the bottom of a bathtub. The only text that talks of the Exodus of Hebrews (Jews) is in the Book of Exodus which is in the Bible. The text is very old. Bharat’s text is three years old at best. The Bible does not simply tell stories. It discusses events that the writers knew or believed really occurred. There is usually sense to it – that is, it is based on known historical data. There is NO suggestion anywhere in the last 3000 years or so of history that Moses or a group of Hebrew slaves lived and worked in the Indus Valley area.
I think that any number of people on this site have said this. No, they are not intimidated. Their faith is not threatened. They just know the account in the biblical text involves the area of the Nile Delta and the Sinai desert…and people heading to Canaan after a lengthy hiatus in Egypt. I have also mentioned that there are numerous cultural and geological details supporting their presence in Egypt in the mid 2nd millennium BCE…not a smidgeon of evidence for the Indus Valley.