[simiones]

The Exodus is an entirely fictional account though, it's not based on any real historical events. Even King David seems to be mostly mythical, though there is some vague evidence of a "House of David" being something some real kings claimed descent from.

Edit: I should say "almost entirely fictional". The main scholarly agreement is that it may record some stories of some small numbers (hundreds, at most some thousands - nowhere near the 600k in the Bible) real semitic slaves' escape from Egypt and migration to the area of Canaan, mixing with the local Canaanite population that were the precursors of the Jewish populations of later Israel and Judah.

[Brendinooo]

I tried to word my original comment in a way that allows a broad range of opinions to make a narrow point; I don't think anything you've said here refutes anything I said. I'm not really here to kick off a serious apologetics fight, though if you want me to engage on your thoughts I could.

(And of the things I mentioned, the Exodus is less likely to line up with the Bronze Age Collapse's chronology anyways. But personally, I think the book of Judges very much feels set in the kind of post-apocalyptic world that the Collapse would have created.)

[simiones]

You wrote:

> One can easily see the events leading to the Exodus being enabled by (or causing, depending on who you ask!) the weakening of Egypt

I think that if I'm right that the events of Exodus simply never happened that would quite thoroughly refute any possible link to the historical bronze age collapse. It would be like saying that the events of the Epic of Gilgamesh being enabled by the weakening of Egypt.

I didn't mention it, but the events in the Book of Joshua are also very much non-historical - there are no signs whatsoever of a conquest of parts of Canaan by any other group at a time that would be consistent with the Biblical narrative. The historical, linguistic, and archaeological evidence is most consistent with the ancient Israelites simply being a specific group of Canaanites that established a kingdom in the area in which they had lived for millennia.

> But personally, I think the book of Judges very much feels set in the kind of post-apocalyptic world that the Collapse would have created.

The Book of Judges is also regarded as mostly non-historical by modern day scholars.

[Brendinooo]

> modern day scholars

Everyone, including you, me, and the most expert of scholars, brings their own biases, assumptions, evidentiary standards that will allow us to accept something as truth.

I actually got more dialed into this while listening to Bart Ehrman on a NYT podcast recently. I was interested in him: an atheist who ascribes historicity to certain bits of the Bible, Jesus in particular. But ultimately I wasn't really impressed: If a detail is wrong, that's proof that everything is suspect; if a detail is right, sometimes that means "if I wanted to invent a credible story, of course I'd say that" and sometimes that means "I think it's obviously credible", and there didn't seem to be any meaningful heuristic to distinguish.

And, when he talked about his journey away from faith, all of that had nothing to do with it - it was him getting hung up on the problem of evil. In other words, the underlying value changed, then his interpretation of historical claims changed as a result.

I can live with the idea that one might look at the body of evidence and draw a different conclusion than I do; I just don't like the conceit that one conclusion is somehow objectively correct, especially because of some broad appeal to authority. I can live with "Troy may have existed but we haven't found any archaeological evidence", but I greatly dislike "we haven't found any archaeological evidence, therefore Troy didn't exist", which is what a lot of the replies under my first comment seem to be speaking. (There's be a lot of "we would expect to find..." as well: even if that's true, sometimes we just haven't found it yet! And surely we'll never find everything!)

That's not to say that scholars can't know more or contribute more work: in a case like Jericho, scholarly work seems to have settled the question of whether or not a city named Jericho exists, having walls that were destroyed suddenly. Now, we dispute when exactly that might have happened and how that compares to Biblical chronology, but just because one person gives a date that aligns with my priors or your priors doesn't mean the matter is settled.

I've sat on this tab for too long haha, just gonna send it and step out for a bit.

[tsimionescu]

Absolutely, of course we all have our biases and evidentiary standards.

But there is much we know about who and when wrote the various books of the Bible, and we have lots of archaeological evidence about what was happening in the area of north Egypt and Canaan for that entire duration. And for example we know with high confidence that the Book of Exodus, the Book of Joshua, and the Book of Judges were written hundreds of years after the events that they purport to describe - so they aren't very trustworthy sources to begin with, for those of us who don't presuppose divine authorship.

Note also that atheists, whether scholars or not, have no particular bias against the historicity of the non-miraculous elements of the Bible. The general narrative of the story of the Book of Exodus could be explained in naturalistic terms, so it isn't dismissed outright by atheists the way, say, the Book of Genesis is. Moses could well have been some historical semitic leader that led a group of semitic slaves from captivity in Egypt up into freedom in Canaan, perhaps in the midst of a series of calamities hitting Egypt that allowed for their escape in the first place. That's why many serious scholars have looked for signs of these events, in many forms of historical sources - they simply didn't find any.

Contrast this to the story from the Book of Kings. Again, atheists will generally dismiss the story of the fire from the sky and the other miracles out of hand - but when they went and looked for evidence of a King Ahab and a religious leader Elijah, they did actually find it, and so they have no problem in attesting that these were real people who really lived.

In relation to the Book of Joshua - while it's true that Jericho exists as a city, and seems to have indeed existed at the right times to match the accounts, other parts of the narrative do not fit. In particular, the city of Ai was abandoned much earlier than any possible time for the narrative of the conquest (it was abandoned in 2400 BCE) and it wasn't re-settled until much later when a village was founded there during the Iron Age. So Jericho - maybe; Ai - no. Beyond this, there is simply no evidence to suggest that early Jewish settlements were conquered from "the Philistines" - the evidence suggests much more so that they were simply peacefully founded by Jewish people (that is, people who spoke Hebrew, followed Jewish dietary practices, and worshiped Yahweh).

[Brendinooo]

> for those of us who don't presuppose divine authorship.

There's a lot I could say in response to your comment (most notably, I think we literates underrate the ability of oral cultures to transmit information) but I just want to highlight that merely acknowledging your presupposition as a presupposition removes one of the biggest things that riles me up when I get into discussions like this. It's very much appreciated.

[adgjlsfhk1]

the problem with oral societies isn't that they unable to transmit information (in the Shannon sense) it's that they're really bad at transmitting information through time while separating true facts about history from fables, revisionism, bias, she intermixing with pure fiction.

[tiberious726]

Not presupposing something is not itself a presupposition

[ButlerianJihad]

I personally think that the conquest of Jericho depicts, allegorically, a conquest of the Moon itself. That there is more than one OT story that describes journeys to outer space (the highest heavens, of course). That the Promised Land really was an unfathomable location in outer space that was only reached by the most faithful and holiest of warriors.

But I like to start with Jericho because there's a lot of evidence that the actual city-state of Jericho was dedicated to a Moon god, and the Moon god was worshipped there. But if you think about how Jericho and its conquest is described...

[bazoom42]

As far as I know we have no Persian sources for the batte of Thermopylæ. Historians also agree that Xerxes couldnt possibly have had a million man strong army.

Does this mean the war is entirely fictional? Ancient sources tend to be strongly mythologized, but “entirely fictional” is a very strong claim.

[vintermann]

One thing the author mentions in passing is the settlement which is "almost certainly the historical Troy". The "serious" opinion used to be that the city was fictional. The same with Ur. I think the Babylonian captivity used to be considered as fictional too. Of course ancient written sources embellish things, but they don't generally make things up out of whole cloth. Especially not things which are kind of embarrassing (e.g. "we used to be enslaved by those guys over there").

[Tuna-Fish]

The problem is, we don't just have an absence of evidence, we have evidence of absence. The area has been widely excavated, and there is a clear continuity of settlement with the same pottery, culture, and religion. There is simply no trace of any large-scale population movement. As far as we can tell, the same people continued living in the area in the same way, worshipping the same gods (still plural for way longer) with the only large change being the yoke of the nearby great powers going away with the collapse.

This of course doesn't mean that there cannot be a trace of truth in the story! It just has to have been morphed substantially over time. For example, it was common in the time to kidnap and move foreign nobility and artisans, while no-one much cared about the identity of the average farmer or goatsherd. It could well be that "the people of Israel" who were kidnapped meant the people who actually mattered, ie, a fairly small upper class group, who could move from the Nile valley to the levant without leaving much trace in either society.

I'm still personally partial to the observation that the story seems to originate during the Babylonian captivity, and the situation of the story greatly mirrors the conditions they were living under, but while complaining about their Babylonian overlords was probably not allowed, writing stories about the plucky underdogs outwitting the horrible Egyptian overlords with divine assistance was fine, even if it contained themes of returning home and of liberation from foreign rule. (Note that Egypt was the main rival of Babylon in this period, and the Kingdom of Judah was on-again off-again vassal of the Egyptians. The captivity was party imposed to prevent this relationship from continuing.)

[pqtyw]

Interestingly we have surviving Hittite letters complaining about the Achaeans causing some trouble in the vicinity of Troy along with a guy whose name sounds very similar to Priam (although he actually seems to have been on the Greek side). And we somewhat confidently know that Troy had a king named Alexander (Alakasandu) which happens to be the Greek name of Paris (of course there were probably many Trojan kings carrying that name over the years).

Of course that doesn't mean much, the Iliad is a mishmash of different historical events from different periods (based on the descriptions of weapons, armour, political systems, cities etc.). There is probably a massive accuracy gap between oral history like the Iliad and written one (including the Hebrew bible).

[pfdietz]

I'll add that it would make a lot of sense for these kinds of stories to be fictional, because they come through a religious infrastructure whose legitimacy is boosted by the stories. They are just the kind of propaganda one would create to cement a power structure.

[zoobaloo]

Respectfully, this is a stronger claim than I think anyone can make.

A more reasonable claim would be: "we cannot verify much of what's in Exodus using sources external to the Torah/Pentateuch." It's fair to also say something like "if X happened, it's surprising that we would not see physical evidence of it."

If you're interested in the topic of the Old Testament in general, I highly recommend [Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament](https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/products/9781540960214_anci...).

It starts with a survey of the academic field, an overview of relevant primary documents from surrounding cultures, and in-depth discussions of historical records and archaeological finds. There's meta-discussion about the role of comparative literature that I also found useful. I benefited from the author's perspective that there's a lot to learn from the Old Testament regardless of whether or not existing physical evidence satisfies our personal standard for determining whether something happened verbatim.

I like that it does so in a way that does not try to push an agenda. I interpret the author as trying to provide an entrypoint for anyone interested in the related academic fields, regardless of their background.

I've recommended the book to both religious and non-religious friends who enjoyed it. Take this recommendation as one made in good faith, and an opportunity to look at something from a new perspective. You're free to disregard it as you see fit.

[cogman10]

> Respectfully, this is a stronger claim than I think anyone can make.

The only reason to treat this with kid gloves is because a large portion of the population believes in it.

Nobody has a problem saying that "Romulus and Remus is an entirely fictional account it's not based on any real historical events."

The stronger claim is a valid one to make because the primary source doesn't have any corroboration.

[zoobaloo]

I'd encourage you to re-read my comment and consider that you may have jumped to conclusions about what I'm trying to say.

> Nobody has a problem saying that "Romulus and Remus is an entirely fictional account it's not based on any real historical events."

I wouldn't go so far as to say this. We have artifacts and historical texts talking about them, so we at least know that Romulus and Remus are figures that ancient humans talked about.

If we had a time machine, could we go back in time and meet them? If there were two guys named that who generally did the things the Romans thought, were they actually raised by wolves? No idea with the former. The latter sounds unusual.

My point is that there are more interesting questions to ask than these. The book I recommended does a good job of this. It's a good read if you're interested in the cultural backdrop of the ancient near east.

[tshaddox]

> We have artifacts and historical texts talking about them, so we at least know that Romulus and Remus are figures that ancient humans talked about.

Well, yeah, but you seem to be confusing the authenticity of the writings as ancient artifacts with the historical accuracy of the contents of the writings. I don’t think anyone disputes that the Torah contains stories that had been widely spread and believed among the writers, compilers, and intended audience at the time.

[ButlerianJihad]

Growing up, in popular media and my school textbooks, we learned certain foundational myths about the United States, the Founding Fathers, and other key figures around Colonial times and the American Revolution.

Come to find out that so many of these myths were not actually true: that they were legends built through the centuries to fluff up the importance and gravity of the United States in the eyes of naïve schoolchildren.

It was with some sadness that these myths were dispelled for me, but no less a sense of wonder to learn what had actually happened in this relatively recent history. There is still plenty of room for myth and legend in the popular imagination.

[astura]

What, specifically, are you talking about?

[Amezarak]

Denying the possible, even likely, historicity of Romulus and Remus is silly, yes.

[Telemakhos]

Recognizing that the exposure myth of Romulus and Remus is an analogue of the exposure myth of Moses, of Cyrus, and of a host of other famous figures gets one thinking that early Roman history and early Jewish history, among others, map common Eurasian stories onto particular agendas.

[Amezarak]

Or perhaps its because infanticide via exposure was a very common and widespread practice for most of human history.

Either way, there's a large gulf between "Romulus and Remus weren't real" and "Romulus and Remus weren't exposed as infants." You obviously don't believe Cyrus is fictional.

[cogman10]

Likely? That's wild.

What's the corroborating evidence from ~750BC documenting their existence? Heck, where's that evidence from 650BC?

[Amezarak]

> What's the corroborating evidence from ~750BC documenting their existence? Heck, where's that evidence from 650BC?

This is a totally unfruitful line of inquiry, unless you are an academic historian doomed to publish-or-perish; in that case, it's perfectly understandable that you have to make these arguments as part of your career.

Better questions, when it comes to ancient history are:

1. Is there any negative evidence? 2. Is there any reason to expect more evidence than what we have? 3. Did ancient historians with better sources believe it? 4. Is there anything inherently unlikely about the idea?

In this case there isn't any negative evidence, there's no reason to expect more evidence than what we have, ancient historians believed various versions of the same basic story, and there's absolutely nothing crazy about it - someone had to found the polity, and to declare them fictional results in there still existing a first king of Rome, just a guy with a different name for whom there is no evidence at all. You can certainly apply (4) to specific details of the different stories - for example, it seems much more likely Romulus was murdered by Senators than raptured by Jupiter, though perhaps something altogether different happened. There's even very weak archeological evidence - a chamber was found in an area where Romulus' (empty) tomb was supposed to be, although archeologists are debating over whether it really is that.

[cogman10]

> This is a totally unfruitful line of inquiry

It's really not. This is the line of inquiry that leads you to understand the founding myth of Rome and what the motivations might have been to create such a myth. It also helps to place in time when the myth was concocted.

> Is there any negative evidence?

Is there any negative evidence against unicorns?

Things that don't exist don't leave evidence.

But yes, there is evidence. The lack of corroboration and the fact that the earliest mention of Romulus was ~300BCE is a pretty strong indicator that he didn't actually exist. Further, the fact that his story is a mishmash of common tropes and that his very name is a derivative of Rome is a pretty strong indicator that he was simply a product of myth making. There are written records from surrounding nations and people from 750BCE.

But further, we also have evidence that Rome itself is a lot older than Romulus is supposed to be. There's evidence that the first founders of Rome showed up around 1600BCE.

The fact that the first records of Romulus trace the lineage of the rule of the city directly back to him is a very good indicator that the author was myth making.

> Is there any reason to expect more evidence than what we have?

Yes. People write about their leaders. It's quite common. And very influential leaders tend to leave pretty extensive records.

That's why, for example, we are so certain Ramesses II existed.

> Did ancient historians with better sources believe it?

You'd expect passing references to Romulus if they did. That doesn't exist.

> Is there anything inherently unlikely about the idea?

Yes, we have evidence Rome is a lot older than the Romulus myth. Seems pretty unlikely that Romulus founded Rome in 753BCE unless he was some sort of time traveler.

> ancient historians believed various versions of the same basic story, and there's absolutely nothing crazy about it

Ancient historians who wrote over 1000 years after the actual founding of Rome.

Imagine if I dubbed myself a historian and started writing about how China was founded by Jackie Chinamus in 1000AD, who also just so happen to have an army of pandas and consumed only bamboo. That is the problem with the Romulus founding myth. The historian placed the foundation WAY later than it actually was and wrote a fantasy story about Romulus where the only thing that could possibly be true is his name (Unless you want to claim it's possible Mars was his father).

[bazoom42]

We dont know that.

[cogman10]

We actually do.

There's a lot of claims in the exodus story which would have left behind corroborative histories. For example, the death of a large amount of the population along with the pharaohs son. The destruction of pharaoh's army. Records of ancient hebrew slaves.

Ancient Egyptians left behind a pretty large amount of history and documentation. They were also surrounded by other civilizations that also left a decent bit of documentation.

[Brendinooo]

>The destruction of pharaoh's army

Given what we know about how the Egyptians recorded history, we would definitely not expect to find them writing about stuff that would have embarrassed them.

>Records of ancient hebrew slaves

Look up Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446 - it shows that Egypt held slaves with Semitic names in roughly the correct time period.

>They were also surrounded by other civilizations that also left a decent bit of documentation

Israel being one of them!

[cogman10]

> Given what we know about how the Egyptians recorded history, we would definitely not expect to find them writing about stuff that would have embarrassed them.

That's exactly the sort of stuff they wrote about all the time. We know about the various wars and political conflicts throughout the second intermediate period precisely because that's what the Egyptians liked documenting.

And, in particular, during the supposed time of the exodus the Egyptian kingdom was fairly divided. Even if one kingdom was too proud to write about a defeat, the others would be sure to document it.

> Look up Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446 - it shows that Egypt held slaves with Semitic names in roughly the correct time period.

Read up about the Canaanites. They were on the uprise during this period and they are also believed to be the actual origin of the Hebrews.

> Israel being one of them!

No even according to the bible. Israel didn't exist before the exodus. Definitely not for decades and even centuries afterwards. The oldest records of the exodus are nowhere near the event. The closest record we have is around 900BCE.

[IAmBroom]

Some Jewish slaves in no way corroborates "all of Israel was enslaved". The latter is demonstrably false. Jewish immigrants were hired, paid, and in some cases promoted to positions of wealth and authority.

[cogman10]

Important to note, Canaanites have semitic names. So, someone with a semitic name isn't even an indicator that they were a Hebrew, only that they were possibly Hebrew. Which is unlikely. The evidence we have is that Hebrews were a splinter group from the Canaanites, rather than being a distinct group of people.

What we'd expect if the exodus was real is either proto-semitic writings about the event or even Egyptian writings. Because, fun fact, slaves tend to speak the language of their masters. The fact that the only document we have about it is written in Ancient Hebrew, a language that first debuted around 900 BCE, puts a lot of this into question.

The exodus was supposed to have happened anywhere from 1400BCE to 1200BCE (the bible gives at least 2 dates).

[palmotea]

> There's a lot of claims in the exodus story which would have left behind corroborative histories.

There's a lot of distance between having claims in the account not supported by evidence and it being an "entirely fictional account."

I wouldn't be surprised if truth is that it has a factual core with significant embellishment, to the point where the boundary is not discernible by history/archeology.

[cogman10]

People wandering in the desert for 40 years, or even 1 year, leave traces. Especially when it's thousands of people (at a minimum).

The Hebrew language came long after the exodus. We have no earlier records of it that aren't written in Hebrew.

So what we have is writings written hundreds of years later documenting an event with no earlier writings verifying that documentation.

It's possible that a small group of slaves escaped egypt and that was the actual origin of the exodus story which just kept growing and growing with retellings.

[xenadu02]

I liken it to the story of Noah. Whether that was the mediterranean re-joining the Atlantic and thus oral re-tellings from a much much earlier event or merely a localized flood you can certainly imagine someone preparing for a flood and surviving localized or wide-spread destruction. But two of every animal? That's not a stable genetic population. Hell there are 40,000 or more species of spiders! There is simply no possibility that you could even fit enough animals on a boat of any kind to make that story work. If it did happen the immediate result would be complete genetic collapse and extinction. The idea is abject nonsense but the core story probably happened.

It is easy to imagine a large group of slaves escaping or being freed from Egypt. Maybe they or their ancestors were war captives. But wandering the desert for 40 years? Yeah right. Even if you want to grant miracles the idea that all of Egypt would even know about such events at that time is bananas. Information didn't travel that fast. Probably one group of people in one city. And the antagonist could easily have been a local lord. Over time it became the Pharaoh and the 18 months of wandering turned into 40 years. Only then it was written down.

[acdha]

I would also note that there were things like the weird restrictions on fabric and clothing which make more sense when understood not as something an omniscient divine being cared about but rather as part of rabbinic politics where the central temple rabbis were saying that their political opponents in the villages dressed wrong. It’s very easy to imagine a trip through the desert being bad, losing people to lack of food or water, but then being magnified in the future to claim divine superiority or strengthen arguments that they had earned land occupied by someone else (similar to how American western settlement sometimes justified ignoring native claims by saying that the suffering and lives lost in some way meant the survives had earned the land they ended up on).

[Shitty-kitty]

It could also be that saying "wondering the desert" sounds better to a farming population then "they lived as nomads."

[bazoom42]

> So what we have is writings written hundreds of years later documenting an event with no earlier writings verifying that documentation.

Unfortunately, this is the case for much of ancient history. Doesn’t mean nothing happend, just that it can be difficult to figure out what is myth and what are actual events.

[quibono]

> Doesn’t mean nothing happend, just that it can be difficult to figure out what is myth and what are actual events.

Sure. Although I'd say that if you want to study history that's _all_ you can do - use different sources, corroborate, cross-check, link and, generally, try to make the different events and interpretation "fit" together. If you have no documentation for it or supporting evidence then you've got nothing to work with.

Otherwise one could just use a semi-apologetic argument: the Exodus story DID happen as outlined in OT but God hid all signs of it so it couldn't be confirmed.

[bazoom42]

Try applying the same criteria to say the battle of Thermopylae. What does the Persian sources say?

[cogman10]

Ktesias wrote of the battle using Persian sources. Though he's considered pretty unreliable.

While the sources are all from greek authors, we have 6 different sources about the battle with Herodotos, Diodoros, and Ktesias all writing within 100 years of the battle happening.

What we can deduce from these many sources and most of them in living memory of the battle is that the battle likely happened and was a real historic event.

We've got nothing like that with the exodus story. There's not a second author detailing the exodus or making even a vague reference to it.

[BurningFrog]

Are you saying we have no evidence that Exodus happened, or that we have real evidence that it did NOT happen?

[simiones]

If there had been a massive migration of hundreds of thousands of people, and even more so hundreds of thousands of slaves, from late bronze age Egypt (a powerful, old, highly literate kingdom), we would expect to find significant evidence of this (inscriptions, local stories, migration sites, etc). The absence of any such evidence, while not conclusive proof of course, constitutes evidence against this event happening.

We also know for example that the types of beliefs detailed in Exodus, especially the idea that the Israelites worshiped Yahweh alone as the only God, are not historical. Belief and worship of other gods were common in both the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah long after the supposed time that the Exodus happened - in particular El (who was later associated with Yahweh) and Asherah (who was sometimes seen as the wife of Yahweh). So at least this aspect of the Exodus narrative is directly contradicted by archaeological evidence.

This is similar to the reason we believe the stories in Genesis are not historical, e.g. the flood, - if they had been historical, we expect that they would have left behind certain marks; those marks haven't been found, so we have a reason to believe that they didn't happen.

[logicchains]

>We also know for example that the types of beliefs detailed in Exodus, especially the idea that the Israelites worshiped Yahweh alone as the only God, are not historical. Belief and worship of other gods were common in both the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah long after the supposed time that the Exodus happened - in particular El (who was later associated with Yahweh) and Asherah (who was sometimes seen as the wife of Yahweh). So at least this aspect of the Exodus narrative is directly contradicted by archaeological evidence.

I feel like you haven't read Exodus because it describes in detail the early Israelites' predilection for idolatry.

[jcranmer]

The book of Joshua details the supposed conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, which archaeological evidence rather disfavors--there's no discontinuous horizon in cultural adaptation between the supposed Philistines and the Hebrews following Jewish dietary laws, for example, and the settlement sites just are not inhabited during the time period that they were supposedly conquested.

[selimthegrim]

Philistines were Greek/IE, not Canaanite I thought.

[amanaplanacanal]

Calling it idolatry is ahistorical though. Worshipping yhwh alone came much later.

[gamblor956]

The absence of any such evidence, while not conclusive proof of course, constitutes evidence against this event happening.

There is documentation in Egypt of slaves around this time, and of the subsequent departure of some unstated number of slaves. There is evidence of pig bones disappearing from trash sites on the path of the migration, and there is evidence of a shift in religious practices along the migration path. So there is some evidence of an event similar to the Exodus occurring.

We're talking about something that occurred over 3000 years ago. Most events back then weren't recorded, and even then it was still so difficult and time consuming that Egypt and Ancient Greece generally left out the embarrassing parts, most of which we only know about because their contemporaries wrote about it to disgrace them (and most historians now suspect that the vast majority of negative accounts of other civilizations were wholly made up, especially those written by the Ancient Greeks).

Very few nomadic migrations left evidence on the way. There is more evidence of the some sort of exodus having occurred than of the human migration from Asia into South America (note: an increasing number of historians claim the first migration was by sea from Africa, not over land from Asia).

[IAmBroom]

> There is documentation in Egypt of slaves around this time, and of the subsequent departure of some unstated number of slaves

No one claimed the Egyptians didn't own slaves.

> There is evidence of pig bones disappearing from trash sites on the path of the migration

There are also many Jewish sites that had pig bones in their trash. That mandate had not yet solidified.

[palmotea]

> We also know for example that the types of beliefs detailed in Exodus, especially the idea that the Israelites worshiped Yahweh alone as the only God, are not historical. Belief and worship of other gods were common in both the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah long after the supposed time that the Exodus happened

I'm not sure what the point you're trying to make is. IIRC, that stuff is in the actual Bible. Like, a significant chunk of the Old Testament is about "Israelites [not] worship[ing] Yahweh alone as the only God."

[simiones]

This was not idolatry, as depicted in Exodus - this was full blown state religion, held in the same esteem as Yahweh, and co-existing with worship of him. So much so that El later became identified with Yahweh, and now most people reading the Bible (including Jewish people, Christians, and Muslims) believe El is just another one of Yahweh's names, or maybe the name of one of his angels.

[palmotea]

> this was full blown state religion, held in the same esteem as Yahweh, and co-existing with worship of him.

IIRC, I'm pretty sure there's also a lot about that in the Bible too (e.g Israelites worshiping other gods like Baal, people up to and including kings).

[tsimionescu]

Not in the Book of Exodus that I was talking about, no (if for no other reasons that there are no Hebrew kings in it).

[spwa4]

Plus the "not" part is the weakest part of historical study and archaeology. From this time we have about 1 page of text for every 10 years for the entire continent.

Imagine just how much is not recorded.

[BurningFrog]

Flood legends are very common among ancient Eurasian cultures.

As the last Ice Age melted away (20k–8k years ago), there were very likely several major floods in the region.

[ButlerianJihad]

But all of these are indeed historical. Y’all moderns have simply redefined the term to not include these types of history. That’s extremely problematic.

[krapp]

We know the Exodus didn't happen because the supernatural elements described cannot have happened, and there is no evidence of any such mass migration in the archeological record, nor any non-Biblical references to such an event taking place.

It may be the case that the Exodus tale is a recontexualization of various historical memories of nomadic resettlement combined with political narrative, but the actual story as described in the actual Bible didn't happen.

[coffeecat]

> We know the Exodus didn't happen because the supernatural elements described cannot have happened, ...

Of course the supernatural events could have happened! Unless you're certain that:

- matter exists (i.e., physicalism or dualism is the correct metaphysical worldview)

- the universe is strictly a physics simulation

- there's no God who's capable of fiddling with human affairs (or interested in doing so)

[Brendinooo]

Yeah.

> witness something that defies all natural explanation

> write about it

> people say it cannot have happened because it was a supernatural element

You see this too with stuff like "anything that predicted the destruction of the temple must have been written after because no one can predict the future."

Like, the whole point of huge chunks of the Bible is that world-altering supernatural events actually happened, and the authors want people to know about them.

I don't think it's terribly unreasonable to stake out a position of "supernatural elements cannot happen" and there are absolutely cogent responses to what I just did rhetorically, I just don't like that people who think that way try to assume the center; it's worth pointing out that it's the tail that wags the dog in big chunks of historicity debates.

[AnimalMuppet]

I think that this arises from one of two presuppositions: Either 1) the physical universe is all that exists, or 2) science is the only way to learn truth. (These two presuppositions are not strictly independent of each other.)

These are presuppositions. They are assumptions that you make at the start of the game, that you build your interpretation of the world on. They are not empirically proven in any way. (For #2, show me the scientific experiment that proved it.)

But people have built these presuppositions so deeply into their thinking that they don't even realize that they're making them. Within the silo of those presuppositions, of course miracles don't ever happen!

But, if that's you (not Brindinooo, but you the reader), try to step outside that for a moment, just as a thought experiment. For this experiment, let us hypothesize that God actually exists - not just the word or the idea, but that someone is actually there. And let us hypothesize that he can actually do things, things that change physical reality. (You could think of it as breakpointing a running program with a debugger, and changing the value of a variable, and then resuming. The value actually changes, with no antecedent that the program can see.) And let us hypothesize that God actually does this - he actually changes something.

(Digression: A typical way of thinking about the scientific method is four steps: Systematic observation, search for regularity among the observations, forming a hypothesis to explain the regularity, and testing the hypothesis.)

For our thought experiment, let us suppose that science observes God doing something at step 1 (systematic observation). Now, what is science going to do with it? It's going to throw it out at step 2 (search for a regularity), because there is no regularity - unless God does the same miracle repeatedly.

But if it makes it past that step, the next problem comes at step 3 (forming a hypothesis). Under current thinking, God will never be the hypothesis. But in our thought experiment, God is actually the cause!

And even if God were to be the hypothesis, the next problem comes at step 4 (testing). How could you test the hypothesis? "Uh, God, could you do that again, and please sign it this time"? I don't see how you could do the experiment, even in principle.

So there is no direct scientific evidence that God exists, because science is not a tool that is capable of investigating that question.

But if God exists, and if he actually does something, even if we don't see it with science, we might see it with history. Somebody might have observed it and recorded it.

And when you read such a thing, how do you react? Do you say "That's impossible?" You're right; it is. But what is your next statement? "Therefore it didn't happen"? If that's your response, it indicates that you're in the silo of the material-universe-is-all-that-exists presupposition, and can't or won't think outside of it. Instead, I think you're reaction should be "That's impossible, but did it happen?" Because the impossible happening is exactly the signature that we would expect if God exists and actually did something.

So the fundamental question is not whether these events have a supernatural element or not. The fundamental question is whether they happened.

[yongjik]

Well, I guess that makes a certain philosophical sense, but if we allow for the existence of an extra-physical god (or gods) that we can't test for, there's no reason to believe that one particular story is more likely than others. Maybe it was alien gods that built Pyramids, and the Hebrews took forty years to reach Jericho because they had to first go through a couple of Stargates.

[simiones]

> For our thought experiment, let us suppose that science observes God doing something at step 1 (systematic observation). Now, what is science going to do with it? It's going to throw it out at step 2 (search for a regularity), because there is no regularity - unless God does the same miracle repeatedly.

> But if it makes it past that step, the next problem comes at step 3 (forming a hypothesis). Under current thinking, God will never be the hypothesis. But in our thought experiment, God is actually the cause!

> And even if God were to be the hypothesis, the next problem comes at step 4 (testing). How could you test the hypothesis? "Uh, God, could you do that again, and please sign it this time"? I don't see how you could do the experiment, even in principle.

This sounds very convincing at first glance, but it completely disregards the actual history and practice of science.

In particular, for your insurmountable problems with steps 1 and 4, we actually have lots of scientific theories about singular events that we can't reproduce. Perhaps the most famous and well studied of these is the Big Bang.

If there were some god who could perform supernatural events, and presuming it didn't then explicitly try to obscure them from us, we could still study the consequences of these breaks in regular physics. If loaves multiplied for a feast, we may not be able to reproduce the event, but we could still use scientific means to confirm whether enough material had been present in the area to produce the total observed number of loaves of bread that was reported; and we could study the waste from the feast to corroborate eye witness testimonies with physical evidence (bread crumbs, stool samples, weight of the participants before and after, etc).

And historically, for step 3 - even though today gods or God are not commonly accepted hypothesis, they/he were for a long time in the history of science. However, every time something was thought to only possibly originate from supernatural causes, a natural physical/biological mechanism was later found. After this happened enough times, scientists started disfavoring this hypothesis, on the basis that it was not turning out to be useful or necessary.

[senderista]

"Whether they happened" is impossible to separate from your metaphysical priors on supernatural agency. You cannot evaluate the evidence for an ostensibly supernatural event in a philosophical vacuum.

[krapp]

They didn't happen.

Impossible things by definition didn't happen.

People observe and record all sorts of crazy things all the time, including for all of the religions you don't believe in, but that doesn't mean anything. You're just asking people to assume what the Bible says about the supernatural is real, and offering the lack of scientific evidence as supporting evidence for the Bible. I don't think you understand how profoundly unconvincing that argument is to people who don't already operate under the theistic model of reality that you do.

If you're trying to convert people with apologetics, this specific line of attack isn't going to be effective.

[Brendinooo]

This is articulating some of my thoughts in a far more cogent way than I could do on my own. Thank you.

[krapp]

>Of course the supernatural events could have happened! Unless you're certain that:

Yes, I am certain of these things because I am an adult with an education, and an awareness of the difference between mythology and reality.

If you believe in magic, and that the Bible describes reality more correctly than the entirety of science, and that archaeology and Biblical scholarship are all wrong, and that somehow out of all of the religions that humans have concocted only the Abrahamic God is the correct one, then the onus is on you to prove that.

[coffeecat]

During Albright's time, the archaeological evidence was generally interpreted as being in support of Old Testament narratives. Later generations of archaeologists mostly took the opposite view. The bottom line is, there's very little to go by, and the little archaeological evidence that exists can be interpreted either way, depending on one's preferred conclusion.

[krapp]

Could it be that later generations of archeologists took the opposite view because the preponderance of evidence uncovered in that time pointed in that direction (and because the cultural and political stigma against contradicting the Bible diminished over time,) or are you implying that the interpretation of archaeological evidence either way is simply a matter of arbitrary personal preference?

And notwithstanding that, there is absolutely no credible evidence of the supernatural at all.

On what basis do you believe the Bible and its supernatural claims could have happened?

[simiones]

Not really. Sure, sometimes long established archaeological conclusions get overturned by new digs, new sources, or just new methods or new evidence of similar events in other places and so on.

But one very important thing to add here is that there is no bias against the naturalistic narratives of the Bible in mainstream archaeology / Bible scholarship / historiography. Huge swaths of the Bible are considered firmly historical, with many important Bible characters being well attested to and many events in the Bible being accepted as historical facts. For example, the prophet Elijah and King Ahab are widely considered to be real people. The events of the exile to Babylon are (now) considered as well to be real historical events.

[tshaddox]

If you’re not a realist, just say so. Then we’ll know that there’s no point in engaging with your epistemology, because your epistemology also admits claims like “the Universe sprang into existence last Thursday,” or “I am the only entity that exists,” or “Jupiter doesn’t actually exists, it merely appears to exist.”

[coffeecat]

While I do reject realism, I disagree with all three claims.

> “the Universe sprang into existence last Thursday”

I have memories from before last Thursday; therefore, this claim would contradict what currently seems to be true. That's the best I can do. If you're a physicalist, you cannot deny this claim with certainty either: if electrical activity in the brain is truly the substrate of consciousness, then you have to admit to the possibility that you could be a brain in a vat, hooked up to some kind of world simulator.

> “I am the only entity that exists”

That would imply that I'm God. And I'm pretty sure I'm not God. Therefore, other conscious entities must exist.

> “Jupiter doesn’t actually exists, it merely appears to exist.”

To be is to be perceived, in my view. I don't think there's a meaningful distinction between the two.

[Brendinooo]

My epistemology admits that "the Universe sprang into existence last Thursday" could be true even if we might have no way of proving it; to me this is obviously far more correct than saying that it must not be true because we cannot prove it.

Doesn't mean I believe it's true, though: I think the point is more being willing to admit that humans might not be the pinnacle of existence, fully able to comprehend every mystery of the universe.

[dylan604]

Doesn't the English monarchy claim lineage back to David?

[simiones]

No, they don't. But they do claim lineage to Alfred the Great, whose lineage is traced by legendary sources to Woden/Odin, and from there to Noah and Adam. In some versions, Beowulf is also part of that lineage.

[dylan604]

Okay, so maybe the family doesn't but others do. There's the Davidic throne concept people believe that does claim that lineage exists. These are usually religious types though.

[tsimionescu]

If you're trying to say that this constitutes evidence of a historical king David, I point you back to the lineage that the real king Alfred (or some of his descendants, I didn't check the dates that clearly) claimed from Odin - who I presume few people today consider to be a historical character. Not to mention Odin's lineage being traced back to Adam.

[dylan604]

To be willing to claim lineage back to any historical figure means you stipulate that historical figure existed. If you are claiming you can trace back to David back to Adam means you accept the validity of the Old Testament (or however your belief calls it).

Personally, this is the first time I've ever heard Norse mythology being tied into the ancient Hebrew text. I've heard a lot but clearly not everything, and I have no interest in all of the crazy. I'm tired of dealing with all of the crazy I've had to deal with up to now

[prewett]

It's in the beginning of the Prose Edda. It's part a genre one could call "universal history", which is tying your group's history into the narrative of the world. It was pretty common in medieval Christianity; I'm not sure if places like Japan or Vietnam tried to tie themselves into Chinese mythic history. It makes some things like the Book of Invasions (Irish) make more sense, because historically Ireland being invaded from Spain en route from somewhere in the Mediterranean seems really unlikely. But if you're going to tie yourself into the biblical narrative, you've got to somehow get yourselves from the Mediterranean to wherever you live. In the case of the Icelanders (the Eddas), the way this was accomplished was to say that Odin et al were not gods but came from Troy, with a stop somewhere in-between (if I recall correctly), and over time came to be worshipped as gods.

[tsimionescu]

The writers of those genealogies indeed claimed that the god Odin did exist as a real historical person. But that doesn't mean that we have to accept their claim.

Similarly, anyone claiming descent from King David is indeed claiming that the he was a real historical figure, but we don't need to accept their claim.

As for tracing Odin's lineage back to the Hebrew patriarchs, that is of course a form of syncretism, where people who believe in multiple religions create a mix of them for various purposes.

[Ar-Curunir]

The link from Odin to Noah and Adam is only made by explicitly Christian writers. From what we know, the Germanic gods far predate Christianity and even Judaism.

[tsimionescu]

Oh, absolutely. I was merely pointing out that at least some early English kings claimed descent from Odin and from Noah - but this doesn't lend any special credence to the existence of Odin or Noah as real people/gods.

[ReptileMan]

Iliad is fictional yet Troy existed. The biblical flood was mythical yet couple of thousand years ago black sea connected to the Mediterranean and probably was not entirely unpeaceful.

I have absolutely backed by nothing theory that ancient Armenians and Jews are the same people that got separated. For some tribe living on the shores of east black sea - a myth about massive flood and some saving boat that stopped on Ararat is easy to see how it could be created.

Of course it takes incredible levels of incompetence to be lost in sinay for 40 years. But apply exponential reduction for each generation of oral account and you may get to something resembling truth.

[simiones]

Yes, Troy existed - we know that because we found it. If we found evidence of a mass migration of slaves from Egypt to Canaan, we'd also know that certain aspects of the Exodus narrative are true - but no such evidence has ever been found.

The biblical flood has been connected to various possible historical floods, but any such connection is highly speculative and tenuous, because the details simply can't match the original claims.

Similarly, some kernel of the Exodus narrative is quite possibly related to real migration events that actually happened, though they would necessarily be much smaller in scope. They also couldn't be the sole origin of the Ancient Israelites, as there is overwhelming evidence that they are simply a subset of the native people of Canaan, which had continuously inhabited that region for a very long time. We also know that the monotheistic/henotheistic religion described in the Exodus narrative was not the religion practiced by the people of Canaan, nor of the early kingdoms of Israel and Judah, which worshiped several other gods in addition to Yahweh (there are temples and inscriptions attesting to worship of Asherah, El, and even Baal in addition to Yahweh, at least).

[bjourne]

Noah's Ark may well be derived from the flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh. In both stories the God(s) assert that the flood is a one-time event and promise to never repeat it. Many of the stories are probably amalgamations of different myths and legends of the near east.

[Ar-Curunir]

There are flood myths across the entire world.

[logicchains]

>We also know that the monotheistic/henotheistic religion described in the Exodus narrative was not the religion practiced by the people of Canaan, nor of the early kingdoms of Israel and Judah, which worshiped several other gods in addition to Yahweh (there are temples and inscriptions attesting to worship of Asherah, El, and even Baal in addition to Yahweh, at least).

The Exodus narrative explicitly describes the early Israelites flocking to worship idols like that.

[simiones]

It describes it as a sectary offshoot relatively quickly corrected - while the historical evidence suggests that it was part of the main religion of these people for a long time. Note also that, while Baal became an adversary of Yahweh and/or a false god in later narratives, Asherah and El were ultimately identified with Yahweh - to the point that mentions of El in the Bible became identified as referring to the same being as Yahweh.

[Brendinooo]

> archaeologist, taking off his glasses: well actually the physical evidence suggests the ancient Israelites worshiped multiple deities

> Jeremiah, weeping and sighing: yes I know

(That's a tweet that pops up from time to time when exchanges like this happen.)

> the historical evidence suggests that it was part of the main religion of these people for a long time

I mean...yes, this is thoroughly documented throughout all of Judges/Kings/Chronicles/etc. Elijah is the one who stands against 450 prophets of Baal, and when he feels totally alone later on, God tells him that 7,000 haven't bent the knee - big enough to be reassuring, but certainly not a huge percentage of the northern kingdom's population.

[simiones]

Elijah (who, unlike Moses, is probably a real historical figure) lived long after the events depicted in Exodus. And Exodus ends with the all of the Israelites faithfully following Yahweh's commandments, after narrowly avoiding death for their worship of the golden bull idol. The book of Kings presents a time long after that, when the people of the now divided Israel have lost their way and started worshiping Baal - as opposed to their ancestors who only worshiped Yahweh.

[Pay08]

FYI, "Baal" is a much later invention. In ancient Hebrew, the word "Ba'al" means lord/master/husband and is often used as a honorific.

[pfdietz]

Baal was an Ugaritic god. Ugarit is one of the cities that was famously destroyed in the LBAC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugarit

[tsimionescu]

The god Baal, or his more complete name Baal Hadad, Lord Hadad, is attested in one of the longest pieces of literature we have from the ancient middle east - the Baal cycle, written circa 1100-1300 BCE in Ugaritic, a different semitic language - which is in fact older than the oldest attestation we have of the Hebrew language; but you're right that Baal meant "Lord/Master/Owner" in various Canaanite languages. Calling gods "(The) Lord" is a very common tradition in many languages and cultures, certainly in that area (see Adonai as well). Elijah and king Ahab lived in ~830 BCE, for reference.

[BigTTYGothGF]

> Yes, Troy existed - we know that because we found it.

We knew Troy existed long before that because it remained as a city at least into the 3rd century CE. We just didn't know which ruins it was.

[IAmBroom]

It was widely believed to be fictional. The discoverer of Troy's ruins astounded the world because it showed a fable had a serious basis in fact.

But until we dig up a boat in "the Holy Land" with biological samples from South America, Australia, and Siberia...

[dylan604]

> The biblical flood was mythical yet couple of thousand years ago

Pretty much every ancient religion/group has a "biblical" flood story. Even those from different continents. Haven't you seen Ancient Aliens?

[ivell]

It could be just that almost all ancient civilizations were near water bodies that could flood. Any big flood would seem apocalyptic for the population size of the time.

[dylan604]

The how/why of the flood is irrelevant. The fact that they all have them makes it not special/unique in the way that religion makes it out to be.

[pantalaimon]

> The biblical flood was mythical yet couple of thousand years ago black sea connected to the Mediterranean and probably was not entirely unpeaceful.

I thought that was a story from when the Sumerians were driven up to Mesopotamia as the water level in the Persian Gulf rose when the glaciers of the last ice age melted.

[bell-cot]

> ... it takes incredible levels of incompetence to be lost in sinay for 40 years.

That 40 years wandering in the wilderness was "lost" only in a poetic or opportunity cost sense. More literally, it was divinely-assigned Punishment Detail:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve_Spies

Also note that the story is in Numbers and Deuteronomy, not in Exodus.

[IAmBroom]

> The biblical flood was mythical yet couple of thousand years ago black sea connected to the Mediterranean

8,000 years ago.

> But apply exponential reduction for each generation of oral account and you may get to something resembling truth.

Unfalsifiable claims are not truth.

[Brendinooo]

> Unfalsifiable claims are not truth

My favorite color is orange.

[codesnik]

even if black sea deluge happened sufficiently rapidly, you're several thousands years off. Current theories date it to about 8 thousand years ago.

[senderista]

Uh, we know who the ancient Armenians were, from both linguistic and genetic evidence. They were Indo-European, not Semitic (unless you actually mean the Urartians or something).