Critics of the Bible have suggested there is no evidence of a mass Hebrew exodus from Egypt. The typical claim is that Egyptian records mention neither this event nor large slave populations, and there is a lack of bones or graves in the wilderness. Such criticisms are factually incorrect: there is archaeological evidence that corresponds to the Bible’s description of the exodus.
evidence of the exodus
This is not disinterested. ‘Kahun’ workmen’s village dates to c. 1840 BCE. The few hundred to a thousand workmen were Mesopotamian slaves. Even using fantasy Biblical chronology and characters, there were no Israelites at that time. Isaac wasn’t even a twinkle in Abraham’s eye. Cinderella don’t dance at this procrustean ball.
OK Cox’s Bazaar Rohinga refugee Camp 2e has a density of 64k/km^2, with no social distancing. So the maximum theoretical population of Kahun village was 9,000 so there could have been up to 4,000 workers. The mortality and replacement (by capture and birth in that order) rates would have been phenomenal, over a round period of thousand years they’d have got through half a million people easily. Before the mythical Abraham of course.
These are circumstantial evidences. We must prioritize evidence in following order, I suggest: 1. geography, 2. archaeology, 3. names in local literature, and 4. cultural. This order give priority to those evidences that are less amenable to capture. Now let us examine.
Geography: No yam suf 1, yam suf 2 or yam suf 3. No volcano. No parting of the water body.
Archaeolgy: No Philistines < 1150 BCE. No baked bricks using more straw for baking. No person parallel to Moses.
So, the evidences you give dont override the lack of geography and archaeology.
Therefore the Nile was the Indus!
aarceng: Critics of the Bible have suggested there is no evidence of a mass Hebrew exodus from Egypt
RS: I agree with these critics when claiming there is no evidence of a mass Hebrew exodus from Egypt.
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Why was Egypt added to the Torah?
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I’m curious about what these critics think about archeologists’ possible discoveries about Hebrews leaving the Indus Valley, India, and traveling to Yisrael
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How did Moses write about his death before he died?
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Can all archaeologists have a relationship with God while discovering their findings?
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I think all archeologists are included in God. You agree?
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There’s no possibility that any discovered evidence can separate any archeologist from God. Do you agree with this?
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Or are there people who actually think an archeologist can actually separate themselves from God through their findings?
It is useful to compare the evidences given in the paper underlying the post with the evidences for Exodus from the Indus Valley.
Egypt: Pyramids built of mud-and-straw bricks (Exodus 5:7–8) and both written and physical evidence that Asiatic people were enslaved in Egypt (Exodus 1:13–14).
Indus: I have not seen evidence of mud brick pyramids. Mud bricks were used only for houses of the poor in Egypt. Main construction material was stone. In comparison entire cities in the Indus were made from burnt bricks.
Egypt: Skeletons of infants of three months old and younger, usually several in one box, buried under homes in a slave town called Kahun (Exodus 1:16), corresponding to Pharaoh’s slaughter of Hebrew infants.
Indus: Hindu King Kamsa ordered all male children of the Yadavas to be killed. No parallel legend in Egypt.
Egypt: Masses of houses and shops in Kahun, abandoned so quickly that tools, household implements, and other possessions were left behind. The findings suggest the abandonment was total, hasty, and done on short notice (Exodus 12:30–34, 39), consistent with the Israelites’ sudden exit from Egypt in the wake of Passover.
Indus: Entire cities were suddenly abandoned around 1500 BCE.
Egypt: Court advisors used rods that look like snakes (Exodus 7:10–12). This partly corroborates the magical opposition against Moses performed by Pharaoh’s advisors.
Indus: The stick is a standard weapon even in contemporary India.
Egypt: The Ipuwer Papyrus, a work of poetry stating, in part, “Plague stalks through the land and blood is everywhere. . . . Nay, but the river is blood . . . gates, columns and walls are consumed with fire . . . the son of the high-born man is no longer to be recognized. . . . The stranger people from outside are come into Egypt. . . . Nay, but corn has perished everywhere.”
Indus: Compare this:
Bble: Let every man put his sword on his side, and go in and out from entrance to entrance throughout the camp, and let every man kill his brother, kill his companion, and every man his neighbour ( Exodus 32:27).
Son killed father, brother killed brother, nephew killed uncle, grandson killed grandfather, friend killed friend… When their arrows were exhausted and weapons were broken, they started pulling out reeds from the seacoast. This grass grew out of the powder of the pestle ( Bhagwata Purana 11:30:13, 19-21).
Egypt: The Amarna letters, ancient correspondence between Egyptian and Middle Eastern rulers, blame significant unrest on a people group labeled as Habiru or ‘Apiru (Exodus 9:1).
Indus: The name Amram, father of Moses, and his parallel Hindu Vasudeva, father of Krishna. The name Amram means “exalted people.” The name “Vasudeva” has two parts. “Vasu” means “excellent, good, beneficent” and Deva means God. Thus, Vasudeva means “excellent God” which is similar to “exalted people.”
The name of Moses’ mother Jochebed and her parallel Krishna’s mother Devaki. The name “Jochebed” is derived from Jehovah or God. “Jochebed” means “Jehovah is glory.” Devaki, on the other hand was daughter of Devaka. The name Devaka means “divine or celestial”. So Devaki means daughter of the divine which is parallel to Jochebed meaning Jehovah is glory.
The name of Biblical Moses and is parallel Hindu Krishna. Moses’ skin was dark. At one time Moses was at Mount Sinai. God wanted to show him His powers. He asked Moses to put his hand inside his cloak. The Bible says that his hand became white. Then God again asked him to put his hand in the cloak and it regains its normal color. The skin becoming white means that the skin was “not white” before it became white; which means it was dark. Therefore, we can say that the word Moses has a connection with darkness. The name Krishna directly means black, dark or dark blue.
The name of Biblical Aaron and his parallel Hindu Balarama. Both names have the common sounds “A,” “R” and “N” or “M.”
Egypt: Discoveries also include evidence of cities such as Jericho being conquered during that timeframe.
Indus: It is clear that cities of the Indus collapsed. The jury is still out on whether this was due to war.
The number of firstborn males redeemed is rather low compared with how many people there would be with the translation “thousand”. As the area is desert, the population it could support at a time is rather low. Also, the accounts suggest the whole populace hearing Moses with major pronouncements. The system of governing recommended by Jethro (Ex. 18) suggests not too many thousands of people to deal with, and the archaeological evidence of a large group of more nomadic, pork and idol-avoiding people invading Canaan in the late 1200’s BC would fit with about 20,000 people.
Passing nomads would not leave much obvious trace distinct from any other wanderers. Egypt would not publicize “a bunch of slaves got away and we lost a battalion”; there would not be any official inscriptions recording that among Pharaoh’s triumphs. (Apart from the Bible, hardly anyone admitted to a defeat in the ancient Near East until the Babylonian chronicle.)
However, many of the claims about multiple sources behind Old Testament books seem little different from young-earth claims in terms of having any solid basis. The fact that the common translation as “thousand” is almost certainly incorrect does not mean that the text itself is flawed.
What archaeological evidence?
The abrupt appearance of increased population in the central highlands, culturally somewhat less advanced than the previous residents of Canaan and rather less inclined to pork or images of deities. To be precise, that is archaeological evidence of the invasion of Canaan rather than of the Exodus itself.
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What do you think of the theory that the Hebrews originated in Canaan and were subjected by the Egyptians while they had control. When the Egyptians lost their grip the Hebrews were “freed”. No actual exodus from Egypt.
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We know this how?
There are a range of possible models, with varying plausibility.
Exodus specifically notes that various other people decided that getting out of Egypt sounded good, and Joshua and later books record various Canaanites (sensu lato) joining up with Israel, e.g., the Gibeonites.
Egypt had some control over Canaan from time to time during this general period, but largely “send in your taxes” rather than any significant control on everyday life. The Tel el Amarna letters show that various city-states in Canaan were cooperating with or revolting against Egypt as seemed advantageous at the moment, with average individuals probably much more focused on the varying levels of cooperation or hostility between the individual cities and towns in Canaan then whether any of their taxes went to Egypt. I do not know of any evidence that Egyptian subjugation of Canaan was ever particularly more of a burden for people there than what the local rulers did anyway.
The biblical account quite clearly describes departing from Egypt, after an extended time there. The account is geographically and chronologically accurate, recording relatively short-lived cites in the east Nile Delta, for example. It’s also not a narrative likely to be invented - “we’re a bunch of escaped slaves” is not the standard self-aggrandizing narrative, but is a constant theme throughout the Bible, and there seems to be no good reason to doubt that the core ancestry of Israel did escape from oppression in Egypt.
Again, archaeological work in Israel has found an abrupt influx of people at about 1200 BC, with the regionally atypical habits of avoiding pork and images of deities. As Canaan is on the fringe of the Fertile Crescent, there are numerous waves of invaders coming in and then often settling down to the point of being the sedentary victims of the next wave. But this particular wave fits both in timing and in habits with the biblical account.
Denying the existence of an Exodus event or the united monarchy has curious parallels to young-earth creationism in its insistence that nothing could possibly exist before a certain date.
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What archaeological work? 1200 BCE is 200 years later than the Biblical chronology, only 200 years before David.
I like the argument that the massively embellished, deconstructed, demythologized, minimal narrative wasn’t invented. Which is rather funny. But I still do. All of the claims of Chaldean lineage are to curry favour with the exiled Jews’ Babylonian masters. Right? At the time of the highly refined final edit of Genesis. So a bunch of monotheizing Canaanites ended up in Egypt during a famine, became enslaved, more monotheistic, revolted and returned to their more polytheistic kin. The rest is, on the way to, history.
The time frame is probably less than the Biblical and the numbers 1 to 0.1%
One possibility for the Exodus I like is that the massive number is a retrojection. Richard Elliott Friedman proposes that the participants in the historical event were The Levites, who numbered in the thousands, and would later retroject all of Israel back to this time to say that this is the story of every Jew, much like Americans of all backgrounds would do with Thanksgiving or The Revolution.
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Archaeological surveys of the central highlands (I can look up the exact details, but the semester is quite busy) show rather low population for the latest Bonze age, followed by an abrupt increase for Iron Age I.
I had forgotten - there was significant Egyptian raiding and taxation in the late Bronze age, though not a thorough enslavement of the general populace still in Canaan.
Judges does not spell out an overall chronology. Jepthah does not appear to be likely to have a very accurate understanding of chronology (not to mention other things). Most judges were only influential in a smaller region; even Barak’s tribal coalition had no contribution from the southern tribes. So about 200 years before David is not unreasonable for the Exodus, and it is a good fit archaeologically with the dates for the Egyptian settlements mentioned in the early chapters of Exodus.
Got any scholarship on this?
Yes, but not next to me. I also have a big pile of papers to grade, tests to write, etc.
Uh huh. But you’ve got time to make claims without backup.
One Finnish archeologist and theologian, Eero Junkkaala, made his thesis about the arrival of israelite-style culture to the towns mentioned in the books of Joshua and Judges. As control groups, he used the reports of the raids done to the same area by the Egyptian leaders Tuthmoses III (ca. 1479-1425 BC) and Soshenk (ca. 945-925 BC). Junkkaala identified the locations of the towns mentioned in the reports and the books of Joshua and Judges and inspected the archeological reports of all towns that had been studied, a total of 116 towns.
Junkkaala concluded that the archeological evidence of the cultural change in towns mentioned in the books of Joshua and Judges was comparable to the evidence of the raids reported during the time of Tuthmoses III and Soshenk.
Junkkaala made separate inspection of the towns that were rapidly occupied by israelites and those that the israelites did not manage to occupy immediately, according to the books of Joshua and Judges. There was a clear difference: in the occupied towns, a change of culture was evident at the time when Bronze Age turned to Iron Age. In the non-occupied towns, the ‘old’ Coastal plain culture continued throughout that time period and changed later, when the later rulers of Israel occupied these towns. In some of these towns, the culture changed at some point from ‘Coastal plain’ to ‘Philistine’ but there were no changes to israelite-style culture.
The towns Ai and Arad were unclear cases as their occupation history did not seem to fit nicely to the stories. If the identification of the locations was correct, these towns seemed to be empty when the israelites arrived. The identification of the locations may have been wrong and the quality of older archeological work, especially the surveys, was far from perfect, so these cases remained unclear.
It seems evident that israelite-style culture invaded towns in the area, approximately during the estimated time of Joshua and Judges (ca. 1200-1100 BC). The culture does not reveal the identity of the inhabitants but fits fairly well to what OT tells. The number of invading people is not known but is probably closer to tens of thousands than millions.
Looks good. Except the Biblical chronology suggests 1400 BCE, I believe.