Red sea crossing of Israelites.

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

Right so my mother started freaking out when I told her that I felt that the theory evolution was a viable model for the origin of species. Naturally her fundieness comb flared red and she went off on how she wasn't an ape yada yada. So I asked her why she didn't believe in evolution or why God couldn't have created via evolution, more rhetoric (it's actually quite scary see the shit you guys say you hear and then watching it come out of a family members mouth). So I asked what were some of the things that she found that made evolution so distasteful to her before hand. She told me a story about some professor yada yada yada. Then told me that if I still didn't believe that my gramps had heard about some dude who found some crazy crossing in aquaba where the israelites may have crossed. I searched on my own (since she couldn't bring her own evidence) and found the following.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/artic ... E_ID=33168

http://www.arkdiscovery.com/red_sea_crossing.htm

Now I thought both of these were rather interesting. The bit that bothered me was that when I searched in google, I couldn't find a peer reviewed journal or jack diddly on this. I don't think the Egyptians would cover this up if it were so important. In addition, why is it only available on fundie websites? Has anyone heard of this before?

[Gullible Jones]

WorldNetDaily is way the hell out in the far right wing boondocks. They have indulged in white supremacist shit, and should basically be treated as a tabloid - i.e., if it sounds fishy, they're probably lying through their teeth.

[Darth Servo]

Even if they manage to find an entire chariot at the bottom of the Red Sea, and even if they can show that its an Egyptian one (both of which they just assume) it means nothing. It could have fallen off a boat.

[SpacedTeddyBear]

Well obviously you're only gonna find the "evidence" on fundie websites. Assuming the red sea crossing did occur as a lost historical fact, the stories passed on could have been sensationalized. Even trying to connect the crossing to anything found at the bottom of the red sea, is like finding some ancient ruins in Britain, and claim it's obviously the ruins of Gondor.

BTW, if she doesn't like the fact that we are decendant from apes, just pick up a pile of dirt and call it gramps.

[ray245]

Didn't some scientist say that the red sea part could be due to a tusnami, where the sea level retreat for a while, allowing the jews to escape, before the egyptian got caught in the wave?

[Superman]

Hyatt is a probably a fraud. Look up his bio.

[Knife]

Didn't some scientist say that the red sea part could be due to a tusnami, where the sea level retreat for a while, allowing the jews to escape, before the egyptian got caught in the wave?

Or more interestingly; what about the 'Reed sea' instead of the red sea. Couldn't the Jews have crossed over a marsh land in low tide and later tellings got it jacked up higher to the Red Sea.

[Darth Wong]

Two points:

1) WorldNetDaily is a Christian "news" organization with about as much credibility as the National Enquirer.

2) Before one even looks for evidence of the Red Sea crossing, one would do well to look for evidence that the great Israelite migration took place at all (hint: all evidence points to "no"). Such a large mass migration across a desert is logistically almost impossible even with support, never mind being totally unsupported as they were. And it would have left plenty of traces for archaeologists to find, but all they've ever found is the occasional small encampment: certainly nothing like you would expect to see for over a million men, women and children moving across a desert.

[Darth Servo]

Didn't some scientist say that the red sea part could be due to a tusnami, where the sea level retreat for a while, allowing the jews to escape, before the egyptian got caught in the wave?

I don't think it would last long enough for a few million people to go through the area.

[Master of Ossus]

I'm reading through the ArkDiscovery website on Mt. Sinai. Here's my favorite line:

What we must understand is that Mt. Sinai in the Sinai Peninsula was selected without any scientific or archaeological evidence being considered.

You can't make this up.

[ray245]

Didn't some scientist say that the red sea part could be due to a tusnami, where the sea level retreat for a while, allowing the jews to escape, before the egyptian got caught in the wave?

Or more interestingly; what about the 'Reed sea' instead of the red sea. Couldn't the Jews have crossed over a marsh land in low tide and later tellings got it jacked up higher to the Red Sea.

Due to people mistranslating right? Heard of that theory as well. The passing may not be literal as well, meaning the passing could mean a battle between the jews and egyptians, and the egyptians got ambushed.

[Covenant]

The whole exodus thing is really just a mistranslation of a false account. While things like the obliteration of the Minoan 'atlantean' civilization, the passage of various peoples from one area to another, and such foreign events got written down in detail in Egyptian records, they seemingly have no evidence anywhere on any account (and much to the contrary) to assert that this flight happened at all. It'd be written down SOMEWHERE. Some guy would have left a papyrus in some place detailing how pissed he was that his slaves up and left--and took with them, mind you, fucktons of silver and such at the end of a long period of godawful plagues and firstborn die-offs. There's zero record of this. Even if there's ways to plausibly explain these phenomenon, there's no need to, as there's no evidence to suggest it happened whatsoever.

And even if it DID happen, the original translation was to part the reed sea, which seems a little anticlimatic but it's hard to chase down people when your chariotwheels are all stuck in the mud. So the whole red sea splitting thing is just bunk on top of bad translations.

So when you ask yourself "Why are there no records?" the answer is, "Because it never happened." None of it happened, and thus left no records.

But archaeologists who have worked here have never turned up evidence to support the account in the Bible, and there is only one archaeological find that even suggests the Jews were ever in Egypt. Books have been written on the topic, but the discussion has, for the most part, remained low-key as the empirically minded have tried not to incite the spiritually minded.

“Sometimes as archaeologists we have to say that never happened because there is no historical evidence,” Dr. Hawass said, as he led the journalists across a rutted field of stiff and rocky sand.

Obviously, the Aquaba crossing and such are big battlegrounds about this, but it's still just bunk. Specifically, it's bunk that even the fundies swallow as fact but not as truth.

That is one of the three reasons I am certain of the Jews’ slavery and exodus. Any people that makes up a history for itself makes sure to depict itself as heroic and other peoples as villains. That the Torah’s story does the very opposite is for me an unassailable argument on behalf of its honesty.

Second, I do not believe that a nation tells a story for 3,000 years that has no experiential basis. Moreover, the text has allusions to Egypt that only contemporaries could know. Even the name Moses is Egyptian (compare the pharaohs’ names Thutmose, Ahmose and Ahmosis).

Third, I choose to believe the story despite the archaeologists’ (subjective) claim of no evidence just as, despite the powerful arguments of history and of archaeologists of the past generation, some archaeologists - and those who trust archaeologists more than the biblical narrative — choose to believe the exodus never happened.

Now, of course, here is the real problem.

If the Exodus never happened, then everything else that follows is an absolute lie. Exodus is, in nearly every way, the most important part of the entire Judeo-Christian faith, more than anything else. This is where the character of God is asserted. This is where God puts man into his debt, delivers to him the idea of a fulfillable promise (whereas before it was a bit more nebulous) establishes a Jewish theocratic state and hands down laws.

But most importantly it's the reason for Passover, which is one of the more important Jewish holidays (mildly put!) and the reason for the Last Supper to happen. To cast doubt on exodus is to remove any reason for passover to be done, making Jesus' observance of it (and the whole passover lamb nonsense worthless) and the entire last supper a sham. So for a Christian not to believe in Exodus is to believe that the last supper was, in fact, a relatively meaningless sham of an event and the Messianic Son of God just happened not to get the memo at some point about it all being garbage. It's not a shot through the heart--if you can believe in God at all you're already swallowing the fact that he's willfully deceptive for his own odd ends--but it does cause issues.

So before taking aim at Exodus, remember that it's not just a random account of something (like one of the unimportant scenes of genocide) but actually the most important direct link to the Christian's most powerful faith moment. And you best come loaded to bear for that debate.

[Ryushikaze]

2) Before one even looks for evidence of the Red Sea crossing, one would do well to look for evidence that the great Israelite migration took place at all (hint: all evidence points to "no"). Such a large mass migration across a desert is logistically almost impossible even with support, never mind being totally unsupported as they were. And it would have left plenty of traces for archaeologists to find, but all they've ever found is the occasional small encampment: certainly nothing like you would expect to see for over a million men, women and children moving across a desert.

"The bible only mentioned six hundred thousand men! How dare you assume that there were as many women and children! Besides, they'd be using egyptian pottery, so we wouldn't know it was the hebrews."

Someone actually took that stance against me when we were debating this. Refused to admit women and children would at least match the number of military age males and never really seemed to get that 'pottery' wasn't the only way to find traces of a population, or even what people would be looking for to find examples of massive encampments.

[ray245]

But it is possible that an exodus could have happened right? Well...it will be a war of indepedence rather that the sea parting...

The migration of Jews without any miracle...well the 'miracle' could be military victory.

[The Spartan]

But it is possible that an exodus could have happened right? Well...it will be a war of indepedence rather that the sea parting...

The migration of Jews without any miracle...well the 'miracle' could be military victory.

There probably was an exodus but not nearly on the scale of what is presented in the religious texts. More over it would not have been slaves.

The current thinking, last I heard anyways, was that it was a large-ish group that had been working as mercenaries for the Egyptians and decided for some reason or another to leave. The rest is, to be charitable, embellishment upon the basic story.

Though you should take that with a grain of salt since it's something I'm relating from memory that I haven't been keeping up with.

[Patrick Degan]

Another problem is that at the time of the Exodus (generally assumed to be during the rule of Ramses II), Caanan was a province of the Egyptian kingdom. So the Israelites would have been escaping from Egypt to... well, Egypt.

[Block]

The general assumption has been that it's during the time of Ramses the second, but there's now a lot of evidence that suggests it was earlier, and that while it did happen, they actually found a number of small settlements, they may have been mercenaries as was previously stated in this thread. Part of the problem is that there's a lot of archeological evidence that's mixed up and hard for people to date due to a number of agendas in the area, most of which aren't religious so much as political.

[Lambda 00]

So the Israelites would have been escaping from Egypt to... well, Egypt.

Not much of an improvement, eh?
So basically, they were running into the hands of their enemies, if we take geography into account?

[CaptainChewbacca]

So the Israelites would have been escaping from Egypt to... well, Egypt.

Not much of an improvement, eh?
So basically, they were running into the hands of their enemies, if we take geography into account?

They were making a run for the Egyptian 'Frontier', where the governing authority was weaker and they could put their military skills towards creating their own nation.

[ray245]

If the jews that 'escape' from egypt are mercernaries...I wonder what the egyptian do to piss them off...

*If we assume they did not leave due to their desire for an indepdence kingdom....

[Parallax]

It's not even so much there are no Egyptian records of it happening - and yes, I've seen people that the Egyptians would have covered it up - it's that no one in the entire region had made a single note about it.

An event which would have left Egypt into economic and social ruin and not one person in Egypt or surrounding nations made a single note about it? In a civilisation famed for its record keeping surviving the ages?

Right.

[Elfdart]

"The bible only mentioned six hundred thousand men! How dare you assume that there were as many women and children! Besides, they'd be using egyptian pottery, so we wouldn't know it was the hebrews."

Someone actually took that stance against me when we were debating this. Refused to admit women and children would at least match the number of military age males and never really seemed to get that 'pottery' wasn't the only way to find traces of a population, or even what people would be looking for to find examples of massive encampments.

Actually that might not be so far fetched. The numbers are bullshit, of course. However, the idea of a large number of male refugees fleeing a shitstorm and leaving the women and children behind isn't that odd. Exiled Norsemen took to raiding and pillaging and eventually settling in other lands (England, Normandy, Ireland, Russia, Iceland). One thing they constantly raided for was women and girls because they usually (with the exceptions of Danelaw and Iceland) didn't bring their own females with them. Various Central Asian peoples did this too, as did the Arabs -the closest relatives of the ancient Hebrews.

Open up your Old Testament and what do you find? Story after story of the randy tribes of Israel using one excuse or another to murder the males in nearby peoples and abduct their women and girls (preferably virgins). Then they set about taking over the land and digging in permanently. That's almost identical to what the Vikings did to England and Ireland.

The so-called Sea People (who did a Number Six on most of the eastern Med back then) were themselves most likely desperate refugees from the earthquakes, tsunamis and all-out wars of that period when they started their rampage, which in turn ruined most of the powers of that time and damaged Egypt severely. It's not so out of bounds to think the ancient Hebrews fled the Sea Peoples for Canaan any more than all those Germanic peoples fled the Huns and ended up in western Europe.

So the core of the story (desperate men flee, then go on rampage, start one feud after another, kill foreign men and kidnap women, and eventually settle in their new home) might be true and probably shouldn't be dismissed out of hand as bullshit.

The "special effects" are another matter.

[Darth Wong]

The problem is that this modified version bears so little resemblance to the Exodus story that it might as well not be the same story at all. It's like saying that the Biblical Flood story is substantiated by evidence of small regional floods. It really isn't.

[NecronLord]

Even the setup of the story is rediculous. The Egyptians never had 'more and mightier' slaves (foreign invaders, perhaps, slaves, no) in their country that we know of. Never mind 'more and mightier' slaves that multiplied, grew, and waxed very mightily over and over.

[Ted C]

Even the setup of the story is rediculous. The Egyptians never had 'more and mightier' slaves (foreign invaders, perhaps, slaves, no) in their country that we know of. Never mind 'more and mightier' slaves that multiplied, grew, and waxed very mightily over and over.

More to point, there's no evidence that the entire Hebrew population ever migrated to Egypt because of a famine, only to become a slave class there for generations before rising up and migrating back to Canaan/Palestine. The Hebrew population of that area never moved around much.