Because they have done so, and we know how they did. Stories weren’t just told around campfires, they were learned word-for-word, strictly adhered to.
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I’m sure you’re right, but 2.2 million people camping for 38 years in the same 7 x 7 mile spot, not growing any food, would dump 33 tons a day; nearly half a million tons all told, which would transform the ecology. Leave a definite stratigraphic layer. As nothing wore out, by magic, that covers the lack of archaeological finds you’d expect; vast amounts of ceramics and fibre and skins that aren’t there. But there would be hearths because they cooked all manner of wotsits. Campfires from burning bushes. Coins. You name it. It’s not there. It’s not anywhere. But as the numbers were 99% exaggerated there’d be even less nothing to worry about.
Southern Canaanites came and went for millennia.
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And we know this how?
I’m not going to go dig out my grad school notes to satisfy your cynicism. Suffice it to say that this was standard knowledge decades ago and has only been strengthened.
Youve reverted to the 2,000,000 million figure when I said there was good reason to believe it should be 20,000 or so. That makes a huge difference to the amount of faeces. And did they live in a 7x7 mile spot for 38 years?
As for the rest, a nomadic tribe would leave little if anything behind as they moved from place to place as presumably whatever they took when they left Egypt was the most they could carry on the day of leaving. Pretty minimal by anyone’s standards. They could therefore not afford to leave much if anything behind. I would very much doubt evidence of wood-burning campfires would be found thousands of years later.
You still havent pointed to another example where poo from a nomadic tribe travelling around a desert or very dry region thousands of years ago has been found.
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Even if the 38 year view is correct, and assuming your figure of 7 x 7 mile ‘spot’ is also correct, do you realise how big an area 49 sq miles is? I would suggest you look at a map of your own area and mark such a square of 7m/11km x 7m/11km. You might be surprised how big it is!
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They also had turquoise-mining operations in the south-west of the Sinai, at Serabit el-Khadim and Wadi Maghareh.
Assuming that the Exodus occurred within a period of Egyptian control, this would restrict the Hebrews to the central and eastern Sinai. This would further restrict their access to scarce water resources, and further increase their impact on the environment.
Why? The Hebrews hadn’t proven themselves to be serious military threat. Wouldn’t Egypt be looking at this at least partially through a perspective of wounded pride and desire for revenge?
Wouldn’t the “appropriate strategies” needed for 20,000 people have left significant physical evidence?
Then that’s not really “slavery” is it? Such “required service” was not uncommon in the medieval period, and was never termed slavery.
Also, is the Semite population under discussion the “Hyksos”? If so, this creates a couple of further problems. (i) The evidence seems to indicate that only their leadership was expelled, and that the general population remained in Egypt. (ii) This would leave the post-Exodus period simultaneous with the New Kingdom period and thus Egyptian control of Canaan.
If it isn’t, then which Semite population are we discussing?
For this to work, you would need to (i) divide the 20,000 into likely hundreds of smaller groups, and have each group (ii) move frequently, and (iii) be very careful to avoid areas where another group has camped for several months.
In an area with limited and concentrated sources of water, this would appear to be impractical (even if you could solve the organisational and logistical problems it creates). I have seen it suggested that more than half of the South and Eastern Sinai water resources was in a single location: Ain Feiran.
This would force the 20,000 to concentrate in a small number of areas where they could get access to water.
No.
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We have considerable information on the limitations applying to a population of a given size existing in a region of known, limited resources. This is a well-understood logistical problem. We simply have to apply this understanding to the Exodus narrative.
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What extra-biblical evidence do we have that “there came a considerable amount of new people to the area that became later Israel”?
What information do we have for the level of Egyptian control of the Sinai for the decades after these dates and of Canaan for the centuries after these dates? Are either of these hypotheses realistic?
At which point, the Exodus becomes “historical” only to the extent that King Arthur, Robin Hood and Beowolf, or even A Tale of Two Cities, are likewise “historical”. Stories that contain some historical elements.
I do not remember now the sources for the information - I have read too much and much just because of general interest…
Anyhow, an article about Pig taboos in Ancient near East (with some other texts) conclude that pig bones were found at all strata of the archeological sites in Canaan during the early bronze age (2400-2000 BCE). During the late bronze age, pig bones were totally or nearly absent in Northern Israel highlands, neighboring sites and Judean sites. Pig bones were still found from the lowland sites that were under Egyptian or other rule: Megiddo, Lachish, Ekron, Aphek, Beth-Shean.
That study did not reveal the population sizes but it tells that the culture had changed from including pig use to absence of pig use. Pigs were not just food animals, they were often used as temple offers to gods. The religious use may even have been the dominant use of pigs in Canaan during some periods. So, the absence of pig bones does not tell just about a change in the diet, it also tells that the temple offerings (of pigs) to the local gods had stopped.
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Uh huh. And how does that relate to Bronze Age SET myths, one appropriated from a completely other culture. You know the one, that was the biggest global catastrophe since Chicxulub, less than 4,500 years ago. And the lesser one, for which there is also absolutely zero evidence of even a 1% actuality, a thousand years later, that nonetheless shook civilization. Without a trace. How was that preserved through evolving Iron Age cultures, in historic, forensic, scientifically accurate detail, until it was written down another thousand years later? I know European folk tales, like Rumpelstiltskin, go back to the last ice age. Does that help you? What point are you actually trying to make? Standard “knowledge”, i.e. received, untested ‘wisdom’ means that these modernly absurd claims about foundational folk tales helps the Christian faith how?
Firstly, your pork-consumption claims would appear to be contradicted by this article, which describes considerable consumption of pork in Israelite-controlled Canaan:
Secondly, the change in pork consumption is not evidence that “there came a considerable amount of new people to the area that became later Israel” – as it could equally be explained by an existing population attempting to reinforce its cultural identity by differentiating itself from neighboring/invading populations through creating differing customs and taboos.
The article you mentioned speaks about what happened later in the iron age.
During the late bronze age, pig bones seemed to be mainly restricted to lowland dwellings ruled by Egypt and other pig-using cultures and occasional sites that were situated along main commercial roads.
After the initial stop in pig use, the article you linked tells that there happened a later gradual increase in the use of pigs, during the iron age. No conflict between the articles.
In the area where Jesus moved, there were pig farming in fairly large scale (thousands of pigs at one site). Those pigs were grown for the Romans and the other ‘pagans’ - an opportunity to get money seemed to interest, even if the local people would not have eaten the pigs themselves.
As I wrote, that article did not study changes in population sizes. I also wrote that the earlier inhabitants either disappeared or merged into the new culture.
Anyhow, that was a major cultural change, especially if we interpret the lack of pigs as a sign that the local gods did not get anymore pigs as offerings. Abandoning the worship of local gods, the gods of the ancestors, would have been a huge change. The people had a ‘supernatural’ worldview, including the belief that rains and success depended on the gods that ruled in that area. Abandoning the worship would have been an act that would have made the gods angry.
If that happened, something must have replaced the worship of the local gods, a spiritual force or god that was clearly superior to the old gods.
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Lack of pigs in the highlands is explained in the article for reasons other than cultural taboos:
The absence of swine in the archaeological record of such settlements in this rugged region [the highlands of the southern Levant] is no surprise. “In the majority of cases,” Price says, “a mobile, pastoral way of life, especially in the Near East, generally does not include raising pigs.”
Except the article is suggesting that pig-consumption occurred long after the Egyptians left, and long before the Romans arrived:
Archaeologists have detected an uptick in pork consumption in the region around 1000 b.c. This was about the time that the Israelites conquered Jerusalem by defeating a local Canaanite tribe and made it the capital of what became known as Judea. “There’s a creeping increase in pigs at this time, primarily in the northern kingdom of Israel,” says Price. At the urban sites of Megiddo and Tel Hazor, for example, excavators have unearthed butchered pig bones dating to the period between 1000 and 586 b.c., while at the site of Beth Shean, they have discovered that one in 12 bones belonged to swine.
This clearly demonstrates that the Israelites previously ate pork, and then later they stopped. There was no “there came a considerable amount of new people to the area that became later Israel” involved. Your whole pork red-herring is thus a complete non sequitor to my original question:
There are two problems with this claim:
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The archeological evidence is that the Israelites only stopped eating pork centuries after the Mosaic prohibition against it was meant to have occurred.
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I have already proposed an explanation for it: “an existing population attempting to reinforce its cultural identity by differentiating itself from neighboring/invading populations through creating differing customs and taboos.”
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You took only part of what was told:
“Many historians assume that this prohibition reflects an ancient tradition that stretched back to the Israelites, who, by 1200 b.c., lived in the highlands of the southern Levant with flocks of sheep and goats and herds of cattle. ...”
This text supports the interpretation that Israelites had arrived to the highlands by 1200 BCE. The earlier inhabitants appeared to be local, raising pigs and serving local gods. The Israelites came as nomads, with their flocks, did not raise pigs and served the God of Israel, until some of them did not anymore.
The Hebrew Bible is full of complaints that the people did not obey the commands of God and served idols (shifted to polytheism at the individual level). Those complaints included some of the people participating to the Exodus but was more prevalent later in the history of Israelites.
You have your own opinion. Taking all the evidence and the ancient cultures and worldview into account, I think that the explanation of Israelites arriving to the highlands before 1200 BCE is a more credible explanation than your alternative explanation.
This does not reveal much about the Exodus, only that the Israelites arrived before 1200 BCE, sometimes between 2000-1200 BCE, from somewhere. There were enough of Israelites that the culture changed in the highlands, the neighbouring areas and much of the Judea before 1200 BCE. The evidence hints that the lowland sites with military troops (Egyptian or others) were not yet ruled by the Israelites at that time (late bronze age).
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Not necessarily. It would also support the the interpretation that their ancestors lived there all along, and only became Israelites as they settled down from a semi-nomadic pastoralist lifestyle into a more sedentary one.
Except that the article seems to be suggesting that highland pastoralists, whether Israelite or not, did not raise pigs.
So you assert without evidence. I could equally say:
The nomads who were there all along, and who like most other highland pastoralists did not raise pigs, settled down and became Israelites, expanded into the lowlands, where they raised and ate pigs, like everybody else. Only much later did they stop raising pigs and “served the God of Israel”.
I’m not claiming otherwise. I’m just pointing out that your simplistic pigs=non-Israelites, no-pigs=Israelites narrative is clearly fallacious, so you have no evidence that "there came a considerable amount of new people to the area that became later Israel.” Pig-raising simply fails to distinguish between the two groups.
No Kai. You only get there by cherry-picking and distorting the evidence.
As far as I can see, you have presented no evidence that the early Israelites were any different from any other population in the region, in that they didn’t raise pigs when they were pastoralists in the highlands, and then they did raise pigs more-or-less immediately after they expanded into the lowlands.
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A four-fold increase in number of settlements in the Judean hillcountry between c.1250 and c.1200 BC. I think that I cited the journal sources for that earlier in the thread.
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150 years after the centuries later mythic Exodus setting. With no memory of mass immigration 150-100 years later. Some immigration due to the Bronze Age Collapse, possibly. Canaanite nomadism gave way to settlement and concomitant tribal differentiation over 200 years with natural, local, population pressure. No other explanation is remotely necessary.
This could equally be explained by a number of endogenous factors, like lowland-to-highland migrations (due to such factors as disruption of Canaanite city-states and weakened Egyptian control), existing pastoralists settling down and turning to agriculture (due to a wetter climate allowing this), rather than some single migration of a large group from outside the area.
As such, it does not provide evidence that “there came a considerable amount of new people to the area that became later Israel.”
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That is true but the archeological findings show a major cultural change between before vs. after the assumed arrival, a cultural change that fits to what we would expect after the Israelites arrived to the Canaan region.
As I told based on the articles, pig bones were found at all(?) archeological excavation sites that were from the period of early bronze age (2200-2000 BCE). I have not checked where the sites were but the conclusions suggest that there were pig bones in both lowland and highland archeological sites before the cultural change.
An invasion of people with a new culture would be a natural explanation for the observed change. Comparable changes have happened elsewhere, for example in Europe the old population and their lifestyle was replaced within a relatively short time when the Yamnaya people arrived.
The hypothesis that the local people would make a radical change in their culture demands more explaining and evidence because it seems to be a less likely explanation. Such a change would have been a more radical change in ANE context than in the modern world.
Why would the people abandon their lifestyle and culture, apparently including the worship practices?
Claiming that they just suddenly decided that we want to be different than everybody else, including our ancestors, is not a convincing claim without supporting evidence.
Is there any evidence that suggests such a major cultural change among the locals (without an influx of people with a new culture)?
It was regarded as slavery back in the ANE when it was objected to. Assuming that Egyptians had been under such obligation but the Hebrews not, then suddenly the Hebrews were required to do so, regarding it as slavery would have been a likely response.
This is why some (many?) scholars prefer the term “servitude”, which gets to the point without the (loaded) connotations of “slavery”.
As I recall they were distinct – one was militant, the other herders. I’m not current on the archaeology of ‘Goshen’, though.
The herders in Goshen.
There’s evidence that in desert areas human excrement was left on the surface or buried shallowly so it would dry, at which point it could be used for fuel. Given the shortage of wood in the Sinai, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if that happened.
I think the reference is to the Judean hill country, where the evidence is abundant.
That misunderstands how ancient literature worked.
My current view is that there were two exodus events, a Levitical one and a second one, and that the accounts were woven together; later on Semites in the hill country in Canaan attached themselves to these newcomers and adopted their story, sort of the way that Americans used to adopt the stories of the Pilgrims and such as their own. It’s a common cultural phenomenon when a group is establishing its own identity.
Nothing of the sort happened – you’re grasping at straws here.
What global catastrophe?
You just committed the fallacy I suspected: you’re imposing a modern worldview on ancient literature. That’s no different than YEC – a huge category error.
You just revealed an agenda: you aren’t here to discuss the topics, you’re here to attack Christianity – as evidenced by your moving the goalposts.
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As I recall there’s more evidence than just pig use.
Ah, that being one bit. IIRC they brought their own style of pottery and some other things as well.
Doesn’t Finklestein make this argument?
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