The Egyptians never enslaved the Israelites?

[Tim_D]

I believe that most of what is recorded in Exodus, and the Pentateuch as a whole, took place. Although, even if it’s not meant to be a historical account I don’t think this poses any problems for the faith.

Precisely. That was the point of my post. The revelation of God to man is something that took thousands of years to unfold and is a complicated process, especially to an ancient people who were far less sophisticated than those who would eventually arrive on the scene later. The entire story of the Hebrew people in Egypt, Moses, the burning bush and the exodus comprise an entire 1 and 1/2 pages of scripture! Certainly the revelation of God to man is more complicated than that! Still, it took much longer after that for the Hebrews to comprehend what it meant to be God’s chosen people. Look how easily they turned back to the pagan ways of the golden calf. Professor J.M. Roberts, in his A History of the World, said that the Hebrew exodus out of Egypt is one of the most, if not THE most, important events in the history of the world because it was the beginning of the concept of monotheism that would eventually be fulfilled in Christianity. With these old stories, it is important to look at what is being said instead of how it is being said.

 

[Tim_D]

If you have not seen the LORD working and doing, then you have not seen the actual happenings, whatever you would be describing in anything you observe.

Then what you are saying is that it is a cultural history, not a literal historical one. I said that in the very beginning.

 

[Reepicheep]

I read some stuff that claims that the story of Exodus was a “White lie” perpetrated by white people to keep the “Black Man” down.

Many scholars claim that the Egyptians never enslaved Israelites.

This article goes into detail:

darkmoon.me/2015/the-first-jewish-lie-the-old-testament-fabrication-that-the-israelites-were-slaves-in-egypt-john-kaminski/

Here is a small sample from it.

*Tel Aviv University. Prof. Ze’ev Herzog, in a 1999 article in Ha’aretz, said:

“The Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel.”*

*“The ancient Egyptians kept meticulous records of every event, and there is a great deal of documentation about the kingdom’s political and military life … . Yet there is not a single mention of any ‘Children of Israel’ who lived in Egypt, or rebelled against it, or emigrated from it at any time.”

Source: Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People (2008); Arthur Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage (1976)*.

Is this true? Is this all just some lie made by white scholars and white religious leaders?

Or does our faith and the Bible have the historical accuracy it claims?

My immediate reaction: Egypt suffered a series of horrible disasters ending with the death of every single firstborn son in every household in the kingdom, from the poorest peasant to Pharaoh himself. Why would they want to remember it? They expunged it from their history because it was so horrible.
Beyond that they knew if was Divine retribution for enslaving Israel. Another reason for not wanting to remember the facts.

 

[John_Martin]

Then what you are saying is that it is a cultural history, not a literal historical one. I said that in the very beginning.

It is literal historical narrative - and if you do not include the LORD, you have not told the literal fact. You have told the apparent image of a culture that refuses to see the full picture.
This is not a ‘cultural telling’ but a fully factual telling to include the actual fact of the LORD in the narrative of history.

 

[Tim_D]

It is literal historical narrative - and if you do not include the LORD, you have not told the literal fact. You have told the apparent image of a culture that refuses to see the full picture.

Going in circles makes me dizzy. If it is literal historical narrative, then it should be able to stand on its own.

 

[John_Martin]

Going in circles makes me dizzy. If it is literal historical narrative, then it should be able to stand on its own.

It does stand on its own. But anyone not seeing God cannot see.
Rather, when you read and American or European History, you should rather be saying to yourself, “They have not identified God’s presence and work; something is missing; we are not reading the actual whole literal history but it is a shell.”

Pharaoh did not tell his court, “The LORD sent Moses to me to ask for the Hebrews to be released.” He said, “Moses wants me to free the Hebrew slaves.”
He was not telling his court the literal history, nor do the secular historians tell us literally what is actually happening.

 

[Wesrock]

It may have been a smaller event/emigration/etc… than as described in the Bible, with well over 1,000,000 leaving. Some details of the real historical events may have grown in the telling.

 

[Tim_D]

It does stand on its own. But anyone not seeing God cannot see.
Rather, when you read and American or European History, you should rather be saying to yourself, “They have not identified God’s presence and work; something is missing; we are not reading the actual whole literal history but it is a shell.”

Pharaoh did not tell his court, “The LORD sent Moses to me to ask for the Hebrews to be released.” He said, “Moses wants me to free the Hebrew slaves.”
He was not telling his court the literal history, nor do the secular historians tell us literally what is actually happening.

Trying to parse the word “literal” does not work. You sound like a poster from the threads about Adam & Eve who says that since Genesis states that “God created the heavens and the earth,” and we know dogmatically that this is so, then Genesis now becomes literally and historically “true.”

If something is objectively observable to all, then it can be considered “literal.” If it takes a particular knowledge or inside observation to make something apparent to those in the know, then it isn’t objectively literal.

Did the Greeks myths, told amongst the people of that culture, suddenly become historically “true” and literal because the people identified the presence and the work of the gods of their pantheon?

 

[Tim_D]

It does stand on its own. But anyone not seeing God cannot see.

So, it stands “on its own,” unless you can read between the lines?

 

[omgriley]

While I know there is doubt about the story of the Jewish captivity, I have a hard time trusting a writer who starts his article with: “Jews lie. Jews have always lied. And most assuredly, Jews are still lying today about everything that has to do with themselves and their sordid history.”

And it gets worse.

And here I was expecting a well thought out and sincere point of view.

 

[meltzerboy]

I beg to differ. To say that the stories as recounted are “literal history” is to err. Did the Jews wander for literally 40 years in the desert or is the mysterious number 40 that pops up all over the Bible a symbolic way of expressing a long expanse of time? Did Jonah really go to Ninevah, preach to the enemies of Israel and convert them to penance? Your analysis makes Judeo-Christian religious thought a house of cards, where if one thought is not a literal, historical fact, then the whole thing comes down.

BTW, Islam IS “one huge fabrication.”

Certain aspects of the Exodus may be symbolic, such as the 40-year wandering, but the gist of the event is believed to have taken place. That is, Jews were slaves in Egypt; there were plagues visited upon the Egyptians due to Pharaoh’s refusal to free the Jews; the first feast of Passover did occur; there was an exodus of the Jews from Egypt; through Moses, G-d did part the Red Sea; Moses received the Law from G-d at Mount Sinai, whether or not he spent all those days atop the mountain. Indeed, according to the Oral Law, he had to renegotiate the final draft of the Law, going up and down Mount Sinai several times. Without these historical events, both Judaism and Christianity are false, man-made religions with no divine intervention. It may be, as you say, historical narrative, but this is not synonymous with myth.

I am curious whether you also deny the literal death and resurrection of Jesus on the third day? Or the Apostles’ telling of the Jesus narrative, which, although slightly inconsistent in the details, captures the gist of the event?

 

[omgriley]

**And How!!!
**
If anyone has an agenda, it’s this individual!
To be more blunt about it, he seems to be “a very nasty piece of work”…an anti-Jew conspiracy theorist.

To paraphrase: All of the world’s ills are deliberately caused by the Jews.

Credibility: Zero minus.

We probably should not be surprised to learn that the author is also a big holocaust denier.

 

[ToeInTheWater]

As someone who’s dabbled in Egytpology, all I can add to this discussion is that it was indeed S.O.P. for them to erase parts of their histories that didn’t show them in a good light, or that extolled rulers who their descendants didn’t like. Similar to the Soviets airbrushing people out of photos once they fell from power.

Hatshepsut, one of the few female pharaohs, for example, started out as a regent for her nephew, Thutmose III, but eventually usurped the throne for herself. After she died, either Thutmose III or his son Amenhotep II, removed many of the inscriptions that proclaimed Hatshepsut as pharaoh.

Granted this attempt didn’t get very far and not all of the references were erased, there are also contemporary accounts from other lands about her.

I also recall some attempts to erase the Hykosis from history, though unclear if they were actually related to the Hebrews or not.

ETA: And by “removed” I mean “ordered removed”, I doubt a Pharaoh or Crown Prince would actually stoop to the manual labor involved in chipping off a stone inscription.

 

[undead_rat]

Here’s a book which purports a theory that would confirm the idea that the Hebrew nation was formed in Egypt:

**THE HEBREW PHARAOHS OF EGYPT, Osman, 2003 **

 

[Tim_D]

I am curious whether you also deny the literal death and resurrection of Jesus on the third day? Or the Apostles’ telling of the Jesus narrative, which, although slightly inconsistent in the details, captures the gist of the event?

How is it that since I don’t hold to an absolute literal interpretation of the early books of the Bible could you ask such a hopelessly ignorant question? As I’ve said before, your system is a house of cards; if one detail fails, then the whole thing comes down. Jesus’ death and resurrection, much like the Exodus story, is an objectively literal event that exists whether or not it is recorded in the Bible and whether or not it is recorded letter for letter. The method by which it is recorded does not matter one iota. Your position is really not much different from Bill Mahr. He says that if you believe the Bible, then you believe in talking snakes. Would you suggest that if I don’t believe in a literal talking snake that I don’t “believe” the Bible?

 

[Tim_D]

As someone who’s dabbled in Egytpology, all I can add to this discussion is that it was indeed S.O.P. for them to erase parts of their histories that didn’t show them in a good light, or that extolled rulers who their descendants didn’t like. Similar to the Soviets airbrushing people out of photos once they fell from power.

Absolutely correct. We can also assume that if they would go to an extreme on the one side, that they would also go to the extreme on the other by taking more credit than is due. the Bible’s authors do the same with King Ahab being an example.

 

[mVitus]

A while ago I remember watching an episode of Battles from the Bible that was decently interesting concerning Exodus. It mentioned a Habiru tribe with a military wing that had settled in Egypt and left after government conscriptions to public works projects. (From warrior to builder.)

 

[thephilosopher6]

Certain aspects of the Exodus may be symbolic, such as the 40-year wandering, but the gist of the event is believed to have taken place. That is, Jews were slaves in Egypt; there were plagues visited upon the Egyptians due to Pharaoh’s refusal to free the Jews; the first feast of Passover did occur; there was an exodus of the Jews from Egypt; through Moses, G-d did part the Red Sea; Moses received the Law from G-d at Mount Sinai, whether or not he spent all those days atop the mountain. Indeed, according to the Oral Law, he had to renegotiate the final draft of the Law, going up and down Mount Sinai several times. Without these historical events, both Judaism and Christianity are false, man-made religions with no divine intervention. It may be, as you say, historical narrative, but this is not synonymous with myth.

I am curious whether you also deny the literal death and resurrection of Jesus on the third day? Or the Apostles’ telling of the Jesus narrative, which, although slightly inconsistent in the details, captures the gist of the event?

Well, I beg to differ. It may be a threat for the most conservative versions of Judaism but not entirely for Christianity. As said, I do believe what is recorded in the Pentateuch actually took place as is the traditional view. But the Bible doesn’t always have to be taken so literally, especially the earlier parts. There are similar arguments from creationist saying that if evolution is true then that means Christianity can’t be but we know that is completely false.

Christianity ultimatly bases itself off of Christ’s resurrection more than anything. Without the resurrection of Jesus there could be no Christianity. There is a lot of evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, and indeed most skeptical arguments in the scholarly community again it don’t hold up too well. There is really good reason to believe that Jesus rose based on biblical scholarship alone. Even Wikipedia, which has articles that try to dismiss many biblical events as historical, even their article on Jesus’s resurrection seems to be sympathetic to the fact that he did rise. Even Wikipedia!

 

[Richca]

How is it that since I don’t hold to an absolute literal interpretation of the early books of the Bible could you ask such a hopelessly ignorant question? As I’ve said before, your system is a house of cards; if one detail fails, then the whole thing comes down. Jesus’ death and resurrection, much like the Exodus story, is an objectively literal event that exists whether or not it is recorded in the Bible and whether or not it is recorded letter for letter. The method by which it is recorded does not matter one iota. Your position is really not much different from Bill Mahr. He says that if you believe the Bible, then you believe in talking snakes. Would you suggest that if I don’t believe in a literal talking snake that I don’t “believe” the Bible?

Well, I wouldn’t hinge my salvation on what Bill Maher says. It is pretty clear from Scripture, the fathers, doctors, and saints of the Church that it was the devil talking through the snake or serpent in the Garden of Eden to Eve (cf. John 8:44; Rev. 12:9, 20:2) The devils talk through humans, what would make us think he can’t talk through animals as he did to Eve in the Garden of Eden?

 

[Tim_D]

Well, I wouldn’t hinge my salvation on what Bill Maher says. It is pretty clear from Scripture, the fathers, doctors, and saints of the Church that it was the devil talking through the snake or serpent in the Garden of Eden to Eve (cf. John 8:44; Rev. 12:9, 20:2) The devils talk through humans, what would make us think he can’t talk through animals as he did to Eve in the Garden of Eden?

Because the Church does not teach a literal interpretation of Genesis.