godspell said
Steefen said
The Descent of Joseph into Egypt was to a Delta kingdom, not to Memphis or Thebes. There is no need to mention the Pyramids of Giza, Dashur, or anywhere else.
An Exodus from the Delta city of Avaris would not need to go south to Giza or Dashur–again, no need to mention the pyramids.
No point made–not a valuable contribution to the discussion.
I was referring to Exodus. Which refers to a Pharaoh (without telling us which one). The OT does reference identifiable historical figures at times. Not this time. If the original authors had known which Pharaoh it was, they’d have said so. They didn’t. That seems like the kind of thing that would be remembered. But who knows? I do know that where Pharaohs be, there be monuments built to their vanity.
Are these posts your pyramids, Steefen? 😉
Steefen
You were referring to an Exodus from what city, Pi-Ramesses, Avaris, or a place where people would have passed by pyramids? What? You think there Exodus was from Thebes?
You are so un-scholarly to think the compilers of the Hebrew Bible consulted Ancient Egyptian historians before they finalized their draft of scripture to get the Egyptian historical details correct?
All I know of the most ancient possible sources are the YHW of the Shasu and the Yammu river god in the area that would become Israel. If we are talking about the Shasu, their mention in the Armana letters to the king of Egypt would mean that once again we have a people invading NE Egypt. Certainly the traditional chronology gives Moses at 1400 according to the Bible and the Shasu are at 1330 according to Egyptian chronology (given in Wikipedia entry on Armana letters). The dates are nice and close.
Rohl disconnects this, no?
What is the date of the earliest uncovered actual inscription of YHWH anyway?
YHWH may originally have come to Israel via the Edomites…YHWH’s name is perhaps derived from the name of a Kenite town by the name YHWH.
p. 129 of Ancient Israel in Sinai by Hoffmeier
= = =
Yahweh was the national god of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel (Samaria) and Judah. His exact origins are disputed, although they reach back to the early Iron Age and even the Late Bronze: his name may have begun as an epithet of El, head of the Bronze Age Canaanite pantheon, but the earliest plausible mentions of Yahweh are in Egyptian texts that refer to a similar-sounding place name associated with the Shasu nomads of the southern Transjordan. Some scholars believe that Yahweh was originally thought to be one of the seventy sons of El, who later killed his siblings and displaced his father El at the head of the Israelite pantheon.
– Wikipedia entry on Yahweh
[For Canaanite pantheon, including El, see: ** you do not have permission to see this link ** ]
Yahweh, the god of the Israelites, whose name was revealed to Moses as four Hebrew consonants (YHWH) called the tetragrammaton. – Encyclopedia Britannica, ** you do not have permission to see this link **
This is saying Yahweh enters the consciousness of the Israelites not before Moses [but then Moses used this when writing Genesis, particularly Chapter 2, verse 4:
“This is the history of the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that Yahweh God made the earth and the heavens.“
= = =
“Interestingly, at Serabit el-Khadim (mine M) one of the most intriguing inscriptions was found, which reads: ‘l ‘lm, “god the eternal.” Frank Moore Cross was the first to recognize the reading of this text, and his reading was subsequently accepted by William F. Albright and others. This same epithet for God is also found in the Abraham narratives at Genesis 21: 33).”
Hoffmeier, James K. Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition. Chapter 8: “The Sinai Legislation,” Section II: “The Origins of the Semitic Alphabet.” p. 179.
= = =
Steefen
Serabit el-Khadim (mine M) probably should not be connected to a Wilderness Tradition from Rohl’s Exodus. The Wilderness Tradition does not include working the Turquoise Mines of Serabit el-Khadim, even though Turquoise was a precious gem in the a priestly garment.
‘l ‘lm, “god the eternal seems to be more Canaanite than the culture of Jacob/Israel.
A Semitic alphabet dates before 1600 BCE.
= = =
One of the most influenctial theories to explain the origin of the name of Yahweh is that Moses actually learned of this deity in Midian, perhaps through his Midianite father-in-law. … The Midianites are descendants of Abraham’s second wife, Keturah (Gen. 25: 1-2), meaning that they were distant kin who may have preserve something of Abraham’s faith that the Israelites had forgotten during their sojourn in Egypt.
p. 236 Ancient Israel in Sinai by Hoffmeier
Bart Ehrman (Sept 13, 2019 Post “Did the Exodus Happen?”)
If two million slaves escaped from Egypt, and the army was destroyed, this would be a significant event, and we surely would find some mention of it.
Other nations of the region would have been ecstatic to learn that Egypt could no longer field an army; surely they would have swooped down to the south to take over that fertile land. But we have no such record of the event and no other nation came in to take advantage of the situation.
Steefen
While you brought up some valuable analysis, the second paragraph above is incorrect. Joseph and his brothers were in the Delta city of Avaris. There is archaeological evidence of this. This city harkened Moses at the end of his exile. Moses would have had to go to the city where Jacob/Israel and his 12 sons had lived–the city where Joseph, second in command to a pharaoh lived. (I agree with you that the number of people in the Exodus is too large, especially for Avaris as the city of origin.) People from the Canaanite area were called Asiatics. In the archaeological record, the Asiatic quarter of Avaris was abandoned after a plague (similar to the Israelites leaving Egypt proper (areas along the Nile, including the Nile branches in the Delta).
Now, here is the clash, why I say you are incorrect about “we have no record of another nation coming to take advantage of the situation.” After the Asiatics [Israelites, generations after Joseph] abandoned their section of Avaris, the Hyksos did swoop in. The Upper Kingdom of Southern Egypt was threatened and had to push them out.
It was less an Exodus of the Asiatics of Avaris that made the Lower Kingdom of Northern Egypt threatened and appetizing to the Hyksos invaders but more so the fallout of the Thera eruption along the eastern Mediterranean region that probably prompted the Hyksos to charge south into the Egyptian Delta but the meteorological fallout from Thera had even reached Avaris.
The archaeological dating of the fall of Jericho prevents the Exodus from happening after the descent of the Hyksos. How, then, were the Hebrew slaves working on Pi-Ramesses? The centuries-later writers used the then name of the Delta region, not the name of the Delta region at the time when a) Moses could have come out of exile to his ancestors’ hometown of Avaris and b) Israelites/Asiatics abandoned the Asiatic quarter of the city.
Steefen
David, on page 265 of Exodus: Myth or History, you put Eruption of Thera at 1050. I do not think your New Chronology overwrites the following. Radiometric dates for the eruption cluster into two groups, 1500-1550 BC and 1615-1645 BC. The younger chronology is supported by correlation to the Egyptian archaeological and cultural chronologies. The older chronology is supported by proxy evidence: dendrochronologic criteria and Carbon 14 dates, … a pronounced acid-ice layer in two ice cores … dated at 1636 BC … as well as climatic perturbations recorded in Chinese cultural records. Please explain. Thank you.
David
Not true. You will have to read the appendix on scientific dating in the next book. There are numerous reasons not to trust calibrated radiocarbon dating. Thera erupted during the reign of Thutmose III, which was certainly not 1636 BC. The acid peak has been identified as coming from the Aleutian Islands, not Thera.
Steefen
Okay: I’ll correct my notes but I will say this, it came from Volcanic Hazards and Disasters in Human Antiquity, Special Paper 345. McCoy, Floyd W. and Heiken, Grant, editors. 5. The Late-Bronze age explosive eruption of Thera (Santorini), Greece: Regional and Local Effects. p. 43, 48, 56-57, 59, 62, 64-65. Geological Society of America, 2000. Do you think the Geological Society of America will accept your counter? Yes, that is what they thought back in 2000. Maybe they have changed their story since then. You have any developed country geological society that picked up Aleutian Islands? I would like to go back to the library and get that better publication.
David
Scientific analysis of volcanic glass shards in the Dye 3 core proved that the acid peak came from Aniakchak volcano.
Steefen
I’ll research that and even talk to a librarian. Meanwhile: [Note to self: Rohl is definitely saying there are no Thera plagues at the time of Moses, stepson of Princess Merisa and Sobekhotep IV.]
VolcanoDiscovery dot com dates the Minoan eruption at around 1613 BCE.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
I wrote to them.
Let me see about writing to the US Geological Society
Reference: the book, Exodus: Myth or History by David Rohl (Egyptologist)
and
Reference:
Volcanic Hazards and Disasters in Human Antiquity, Special Paper 345. McCoy, Floyd W. and Heiken, Grant, editors.
5. The Late-Bronze age explosive eruption of Thera (Santorini), Greece: Regional and Local Effects. p. 43, 48, 56-57, 59, 62, 64-65.
Geological Society of America, 2000.
Hi,
I wrote to the author of the above-referenced book.
David, on page 265 of Exodus: Myth or History, you put the eruption of Thera at 1050 BCE. I do not think your New Chronology overwrites the following.
Radiometric dates for the eruption cluster into two groups, 1500-1550 BC and 1615-1645 BC. The younger chronology is supported by correlation to the Egyptian archaeological and cultural chronologies. The older chronology is supported by proxy evidence: dendrochronologic criteria and Carbon 14 dates, … a pronounced acid-ice layer in two ice cores … dated at 1636 BC … as well as climatic perturbations recorded in Chinese cultural records.
My information came from the publication
Volcanic Hazards and Disasters in Human Antiquity, Special Paper 345. McCoy, Floyd W. and Heiken, Grant, editors.
5. The Late-Bronze age explosive eruption of Thera (Santorini), Greece: Regional and Local Effects. p. 43, 48, 56-57, 59, 62, 64-65.
Geological Society of America, 2000.
Please explain. Thank you.
He wrote back.
Not true. There are numerous reasons not to trust calibrated radiocarbon dating. Thera erupted during the reign of Thutmose III, which was certainly not 1636 BC. The acid peak has been identified as coming from the Aleutian Islands, not Thera.
Scientific analysis of volcanic glass shards in the Dye 3 core proved that the acid peak came from Aniakchak volcano.
QUESTION FOR USGS
Have you heard what David is talking about? Do you agree? Is there an updated USGS Special Paper 345? How can I get from USGS one of your publications with more up-to-date info about this?
Do you agree the USGS cannot use to support their dating the proxy evidence: dendrochronologic criteria and Carbon 14 dates, … a pronounced acid-ice layer in two ice cores … dated at 1636 BC … as well as climatic pertubations recorded in Chinese cultural records
Thank you,
[signed]
Was going to buy the book so I could disclaim it for you. On seeing his other works, I could not give this man my money. Are you sure his volcanic studies, the core 3 stuff, is on the level? Some of these guys make up some pretty complicated stuff to defend their “truth.” 
It sounds like you have invested quite a bit into this tangent of pumice. Not sure it makes much of a difference since we are not sure why the Hyksos invaded Egypt. I am unaware of inscriptions saying “we harbored in Egypt because of the dark skies.” It only serves as a possible reason for the Hyksos to invade Egypt.
This is all so confusing because you will not simply list out Rohl’s new timeline. Did. Rohl. have. a. timeline? Or does he just poke holes in the accepted timeline and say “see, Moses – praise God?”
The second intermediate period, unless I am mistaken would have been caused by the Hyksos invasion. Or the Hyksos invaded taking advantage of infighting, IDK. But the point is that in the timeline generally accepted the Hebrews would have lived there during the Hyksos rule and left Egypt at the height of Egyptian native rule (including Canaan).
Just moving that Egyptian timeline 300 years (generous), we have, as you reply to Bart, the Hyksos invading the Egypt devastated by losing its army in the Red Sea. But now we have Egypt at its peak, ruling all of Canaan at 1100 BC in the days of Judges or Saul!!
There are so many explanations, perfectly valid explanations, for all the tidbits like “Semites lived in Egypt”, “Semitic life in Egyptian town”, and “collective memory of an Exodus.” There is no reason, or very little reason, to think Exodus happened.
FocusMyView said
Was going to buy the book so I could disclaim it for you. On seeing his other works, I could not give this man my money. Are you sure his volcanic studies, the core 3 stuff, is on the level? Some of these guys make up some pretty complicated stuff to defend their “truth.”
It sounds like you have invested quite a bit into this tangent of pumice. Not sure it makes much of a difference since we are not sure why the Hyksos invaded Egypt. I am unaware of inscriptions saying “we harbored in Egypt because of the dark skies.” It only serves as a possible reason for the Hyksos to invade Egypt.
This is all so confusing because you will not simply list out Rohl’s new timeline. Did. Rohl. have. a. timeline? Or does he just poke holes in the accepted timeline and say “see, Moses – praise God?”
The second intermediate period, unless I am mistaken would have been caused by the Hyksos invasion. Or the Hyksos invaded taking advantage of infighting, IDK. But the point is that in the timeline generally accepted the Hebrews would have lived there during the Hyksos rule and left Egypt at the height of Egyptian native rule (including Canaan).
Just moving that Egyptian timeline 300 years (generous), we have, as you reply to Bart, the Hyksos invading the Egypt devastated by losing its army in the Red Sea. But now we have Egypt at its peak, ruling all of Canaan at 1100 BC in the days of Judges or Saul!!
There are so many explanations, perfectly valid explanations, for all the tidbits like “Semites lived in Egypt”, “Semitic life in Egyptian town”, and “collective memory of an Exodus.” There is no reason, or very little reason, to think Exodus happened.
Do not give this man your money. Your loss of information/evidence, knowledge, understanding, wisdom, and being an informed participant in this discussion.
I have not invested quite a bit into the pumice evidence but I will not discuss that with you.
As I told you before, I am not going to re-type what you can see in his book. I have done enough of that.
The generally accepted timeline has mistakes but you do not want to educate yourself about that because you do not want to give this man your money.
As for what David Rohl is going to provide as evidence and when, I do not know. The U.S. Geological Society wrote back to me saying they no longer cover the Minoan Explosion. The year 2000 US Geological Special Paper / book I got from the college library is something they cannot now address.
Steefen to David Rohl
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Image: Exhibit F: Santorini Pumice in Egypt,
with caption: “Manfred Bietak holding pumice identified as Santorini/Thera pumice…”
See the book Exodus: Myth or History by David Rohl, Egyptologist. The book has 67 amazon reviews averaging 5-stars.
Unfortunately, it is not at the Dallas Public Library. // When I check the Plano, TX library, the DVD of the documentary video is available at one branch and that DVD is unavailable at the moment. // When I check the Collin County College Libraries, it is not there. // When I check UNC Chapel Hill library catalog, it is not there. // Finally, when I check the New York Public Library catalog, the book is not available, but the DVD of the documentary video, “Patterns of Evidence: Exodus” is.
I think I would give the book 4 out of 5 stars because 1) it does not have an index and 2) the Exodus plagues cannot be discussed without the Minoan eruption, the eruption of the Thera volcano. Furthermore, he goes against the traditional dating of that eruption, even though the Austrian archaeologist who excavated Avaris found pumice there. Because he does not have an index, I do not know where I am going to find his discussion of Thera. When I wrote to him, he said he has another book coming out with an appendix on his dating of the Minoan eruption occurring during the 18th Dynasty. Furthermore, how can you have the Ipuwer Papyrus/Admonitions of Ipuwer dating to the Exodus from Avaris without the Exodus plagues of Thera fallout reaching Avaris?
Steefen said
Bart Ehrman (Sept 13, 2019 Post “Did the Exodus Happen?”)If two million slaves escaped from Egypt, and the army was destroyed, this would be a significant event, and we surely would find some mention of it.
Other nations of the region would have been ecstatic to learn that Egypt could no longer field an army; surely they would have swooped down to the south to take over that fertile land. But we have no such record of the event and no other nation came in to take advantage of the situation.
Steefen
While you brought up some valuable analysis, the second paragraph above is incorrect. Joseph and his brothers were in the Delta city of Avaris. There is archaeological evidence of this. This city harkened Moses at the end of his exile. Moses would have had to go to the city where Jacob/Israel and his 12 sons had lived–the city where Joseph, second in command to a pharaoh lived. (I agree with you that the number of people in the Exodus is too large, especially for Avaris as the city of origin.) People from the Canaanite area were called Asiatics. In the archaeological record, the Asiatic quarter of Avaris was abandoned after a plague (similar to the Israelites leaving Egypt proper (areas along the Nile, including the Nile branches in the Delta).Now, here is the clash, why I say you are incorrect about “we have no record of another nation coming to take advantage of the situation.” After the Asiatics [Israelites, generations after Joseph] abandoned their section of Avaris, the Hyksos did swoop in. The Upper Kingdom of Southern Egypt was threatened and had to push them out.
It was less an Exodus of the Asiatics of Avaris that made the Lower Kingdom of Northern Egypt threatened and appetizing to the Hyksos invaders but more so the fallout of the Thera eruption along the eastern Mediterranean region that probably prompted the Hyksos to charge south into the Egyptian Delta but the meteorological fallout from Thera had even reached Avaris.
The archaeological dating of the fall of Jericho prevents the Exodus from happening after the descent of the Hyksos. How, then, were the Hebrew slaves working on Pi-Ramesses? The centuries-later writers used the then name of the Delta region, not the name of the Delta region at the time when a) Moses could have come out of exile to his ancestors’ hometown of Avaris and b) Israelites/Asiatics abandoned the Asiatic quarter of the city.
Now, in reference to the question, “Did the Exodus Happen?” Bart responds:
My guess is that there was a small group of immigrants from Egypt who settled in Canaan and over the years, decades, and centuries their background stories came to be exaggerated hugely, leading to the accounts in Exodus.
Steefen
Exaggerated how? If the Asiatic Hebrew slaves of Avaris were not turned south into the Sinai to escape invading Asiatic Hyksos, did the Asiatic Hebrew slaves from Avaris inform the Hyksos Invasion into Avaris? Was the Hyksos Expulsion combined with the Avaris Exodus to get the count of people leaving Egypt that appears in the Bible in an actual joint Exodus & Expulsion? Josephus would agree because he identifies the Hyksos as Hebrews.
I’m moving up the date of my evidence source from 2000 with the U.S. Geological Society to 2006 with University of Rhode Island volcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson, The National Geograhic Explorer in-Residence, Robert Ballad, and the Hellenic Research Centre for Marine Research.
Bart’s conclusions seemed quite reasonable to me. We know for a fact this type of exaggeration occurs all the time–look at the way historical events in the American West were mythologized shortly after they happened, with modern journalism and the printing press and even photography.
So why assume any of it happened precisely (or even approximately) the way it’s described, when the accounts were committed to paper centuries afterwards?
It is not merely a supposition that Exodus is myth, but a certainty. That does not mean it is myth made up out of whole cloth. Anymore than the Iliad is–there really was a Troy. And there really were Jews in Egypt, some of whom were probably brought there as slaves after a military defeat.
Basically, the moment you pretend you know for sure what happened, in any great detail, about anything that ancient and poorly documented–you’ve lost me. Bart is right. We can guess at generalities, and the rest is a blank slate–that kibitzers keep trying to fill in to suit themselves.
godspell said
Bart’s conclusions seemed quite reasonable to me. We know for a fact this type of exaggeration occurs all the time–look at the way historical events in the American West were mythologized shortly after they happened, with modern journalism and the printing press and even photography.So why assume any of it happened precisely (or even approximately) the way it’s described, when the accounts were committed to paper centuries afterwards?
It is not merely a supposition that Exodus is myth, but a certainty. That does not mean it is myth made up out of whole cloth. Anymore than the Iliad is–there really was a Troy. And there really were Jews in Egypt, some of whom were probably brought there as slaves after a military defeat.
Basically, the moment you pretend you know for sure what happened, in any great detail, about anything that ancient and poorly documented–you’ve lost me. Bart is right. We can guess at generalities, and the rest is a blank slate–that kibitzers keep trying to fill in to suit themselves.
Here you go again: failing to pay attention to the discussion and just blurting out your nonsense. And if we have lost you, do not reply until you find yourself agreeing with the evidence or making an evidence-based counter-claim against the evidence presented. This discussion is about specific evidence, not generalities in which you try to specialize.
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