The historicity of the Exodus & the Ten Commandments

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I have come across certain people who claim that the exodus was never an event of history and that the ten commandments were not really given to Moses on mount Sinai.
Is there any historical evidence to back the authenicity of the ten commandments; perhaps some archaeological evidence that the Church uses to substantiate her faith in the truth of the Mosaic Law…

Please help.
 
Bah_Bah said:
I have come across certain people who claim that the exodus was never an event of history and that the ten commandments were not really given to Moses on mount Sinai.
Is there any historical evidence to back the authenicity of the ten commandments; perhaps some archaeological evidence that the Church uses to substantiate her faith in the truth of the Mosaic Law…

Please help.
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Nope, at least not according to our contemporary expectations for history. There’s no archaeological or historical evidence for it (apologies to Steven Spielberg and Indiana Jones).
 
Actually, I have seen an interesting video, they are making a movie soon and showing it to the Jews, but evidence has been found on The Arabaian peninsula as opposed to the traditional “sinai desert.” Don’t blast me till you guys see the video some time. I’ll try to find a link to the website.
 
Nathan_Wagar said:
Actually, I have seen an interesting video, they are making a movie soon and showing it to the Jews, but evidence has been found on The Arabaian peninsula as opposed to the traditional “sinai desert.” Don’t blast me till you guys see the video some time. I’ll try to find a link to the website.
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evidence of what, exactly? Looking forward to the link.
 
For one, quail. No quail in Sinai. For two, almond trees. None in Sinai. Huge split rock in the middle of the desert with evidence of massive amount of gushing water, enough give drink to a huge crowd. Very large mountain with a shelf. The traditional mount sinai is not big enough for Moses to disappear from siight. There are several mass graves in a given area that matches with a Biblical account. They found a different water crossing with a land bridge underneath the water. They found wheels and animal/people bones underneath. There was no rust on the wheels, evidencing being made of gold. They found a corral type structure in the middle of the desert with pictographs showing animals being led to it to be slaughtered, some of them not being indigenous to the region. They found footprints carved into rock on the ground, which seems to match the Exodus promise that “where their feet would touch they would own” or something like that. On another rock of pictographs was a carving of the Jewish candles (forgot off-hand what they were called). At the supposed water crossing, I forgot to mention, were two great pillars that were marked as belonging to Solomon. They were later taken by the Arabs and replaced with white flags. They traced the route step by step through Exodus and found every landmark as it was shown. The desert in Sinai is nowhere near long enough to get lost in for 40 years, Arab desert is. The bedouins in the area said the drawings were done by the “yahood”. Very sorry don’t have time to look up how it’s spelled but it means “Jews”).Our deacon who has a master’s in theology showed us this tape. He was really excited. I am sceptical by nature, and am still sceptical about a couple points in the video, but overall it was absolutely compelling. I no longer accept the traditional site.
 
Nathan_Wagar said:
For one, quail. No quail in Sinai. For two, almond trees. None in Sinai. Huge split rock in the middle of the desert with evidence of massive amount of gushing water, enough give drink to a huge crowd. Very large mountain with a shelf. The traditional mount sinai is not big enough for Moses to disappear from siight. There are several mass graves in a given area that matches with a Biblical account. They found a different water crossing with a land bridge underneath the water. They found wheels and animal/people bones underneath. There was no rust on the wheels, evidencing being made of gold. They found a corral type structure in the middle of the desert with pictographs showing animals being led to it to be slaughtered, some of them not being indigenous to the region. They found footprints carved into rock on the ground, which seems to match the Exodus promise that “where their feet would touch they would own” or something like that. On another rock of pictographs was a carving of the Jewish candles (forgot off-hand what they were called). At the supposed water crossing, I forgot to mention, were two great pillars that were marked as belonging to Solomon. They were later taken by the Arabs and replaced with white flags. They traced the route step by step through Exodus and found every landmark as it was shown. The desert in Sinai is nowhere near long enough to get lost in for 40 years, Arab desert is. Our deacon who has a master’s in theology showed us this tape. He was really excited. I am sceptical by nature, and am still sceptical about a couple points in the video, but overall it was absolutely compelling. I no longer accept the traditional site.
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Thanks…but that doesn’t clarify anything for me regarding objective archaeological/historical evidence. Do you have more concrete references? Thanks.
 
Yeah I’ll have to find the website at least. It sounds whacky, dude, I thought it did too. But this couple took video footage of it all, and it’s being investigated by archaeologists that believe them. Many biblical scholars rejected the traditional site a long time ago for various reasons based off the Biblical account. They placed it in the Northern Arabian Peninsula. I’ll find some info when I have time, I wrote it down while I was at the Bible Study.
 
And as an addendum, if I’m wrong about the traditional site (and it’s quite possible I could be), it’s no big whoop to me. I accept the account in Exodus as literal history, and I will go to my grave accepting it as it was told. There are conflicting stories between archaeologists, experts, etc. It’s almost as bad as arguing theology.
 
In the first instance, the Bible is a book of faith. It is appropriate to look at it from a historical critical point of view, but that analysis is inherently one that avoids and excludes considerations of faith. It is of limited value, because we are interested in the total meaning of scripture.

Suppose that the events of the exodus are absolutely true in every detail stated in the Bible, the Bible would still be a very sketchy account, by our modern standards.

Regarding some specific questions in this thread, recall that the climate of that area has changed a lot over the recent thousands of years.

As an illustration of unexpected scientific results, a couple weeks ago we were supposed to be “wow-ed” by the two satellites sent to collide with the Moon. It seems that the experiment just didn’t go off as expected. Yet, scientists maintain the “belief” that there is water there.

I’ve read recently the idea that the Exodus did not occur, but that emergence of the nation of Israel occurred in-place in central Palestine, that it did not conquer the existing peoples of Palestine so much as it did spring up in their midst. Great idea, nice idea, but how do you prove that?
 
Recently some coins were found that contain an image and the name of Joseph in Egypt. The coins were a new find, but that Joseph had a place high in the government of the early Pharaohs is not new.

So if you start with Joseph being known to be IN Egypt, and his descendants are now IN Israel, with a history of the area’s regions named after 10 of his brothers and both of his sons, it doesn’t take a great leap of faith to believe they had to get there sometime in the general biblical-posed time frame. They would have to have done that in order to be the structured society they were in the 300 years before the incarnation.
 
I think the Bible’s status as poetic literature itself makes it vulnerable to healthy criticism. This necessarily includes questions about the verity of events that the text claims ever happened. Such speculations are okay, but we must remember that the Bible was never written as a treatise on history or botany.
What the Exodus clearly insists, is that a people was chosen by God, delivered from bondage repeatedly and prepared (in the wilderness) for His own Advent later. It shows much more the collective *hope *they had in Yahweh, their desire for freedom (more spiritual than political) and God’s constant unwavering faithfulness than a possibly historical movement from Egypt to Canaan.

In the pursuit of historical evidence, we must not let our focus on God’s faithfulness be shifted by the flimsy true-or-false polemic. This is the essential message of the Exodus and of the Decalogue: God is ever-faithful and Righteous.
Whether this nature of God is expressed in the Bible in figurative language or literal history is an interesting question, but really quite a secondary one.

I wouldn’t care if the Exodus was proved to be a myth. I know well that God is the Author of “Thou shalt worship the LORD thy God only.” That’s all I care about.🙂
 
Nathan_Wagar said:
Actually, I have seen an interesting video, they are making a movie soon and showing it to the Jews, but evidence has been found on The Arabaian peninsula as opposed to the traditional “sinai desert.” Don’t blast me till you guys see the video some time. I’ll try to find a link to the website.
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There are at least six different possible candidates for identification as “Mount Sinai” - the problem is, that the texts in Exodus are composite, of different dates. There is no single, complete, internally self-consistent narrative of the Exodus; if there was an Exodus at all; there may have been two, or none. That X is the traditional “Sinai desert” is valueless, if the age of the tradition is impossible to check; if it’s only a couple of thousands year old, that leaves a long gap, of at least 1200 years, between the assumed date of Moses and the tradition.​

About those coins:
Since the era to which Joseph is to be assigned is unknown - the “Patriarchal” era may be as early as 1800, or as late as 1400; and the Biblical traditions do not agree on this point - the article is valueless as proof of Joseph’s historicity.
 
Yeah if I remember correctly there may be as many as 14 possible sites now. So yeah…
 
Nathan_Wagar said:
Yeah I’ll have to find the website at least. It sounds whacky, dude, I thought it did too. But this couple took video footage of it all, and it’s being investigated by archaeologists that believe them. Many biblical scholars rejected the traditional site a long time ago for various reasons based off the Biblical account. They placed it in the Northern Arabian Peninsula. I’ll find some info when I have time, I wrote it down while I was at the Bible Study.
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I don’t really see any big problem if the Sinai Peninsula does not have the real Mt. Sinai*, but I’d also advise you to read the other side of the fence. As an aside, the term “Arabia” itself is vague, as it covers most of the south-western Middle East in its original meaning (also note the Roman province of Arabia Petraea).

*In the Sinai peninsula itself, three mountains contend for being recognized as the Biblical Mount Sinai: Mount Serbal (which was inhabited by Christian anchorites and, for a time, considered to be the Mountain of God), Mount Catherine (at the feet of which St. Catherine’s Monastery stands), and Jabal Musa/Mount Moses (based on Bedouin tradition; when people speak of Mt. Sinai in the Sinai peninsula, they usually mean this mountain).
 
Gottle_of_Geer said:

There are at least six different possible candidates for identification as “Mount Sinai” - the problem is, that the texts in Exodus are composite, of different dates. There is no single, complete, internally self-consistent narrative of the Exodus; if there was an Exodus at all; there may have been two, or none. That X is the traditional “Sinai desert” is valueless, if the age of the tradition is impossible to check; if it’s only a couple of thousands year old, that leaves a long gap, of at least 1200 years, between the assumed date of Moses and the tradition.​

About those coins:
Since the era to which Joseph is to be assigned is unknown - the “Patriarchal” era may be as early as 1800, or as late as 1400; and the Biblical traditions do not agree on this point - the article is valueless as proof of Joseph’s historicity.
Click to expand...

Additional Link:​

 
Yeah I have read the other side of the fence. I perhaps gave the impression that this video is the only reason I don’t necessarily accept the traditional site, and I apologize. I’ve done some studying since then, and both present decent arguments.
 
Nathan_Wagar said:
The traditional mount sinai is not big enough for Moses to disappear from sight.
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Dan:
I have never heard that criticism. From the Israelite’s camp the top of Mount Sinai was visible.—Ex 19:17,*18; 20:18; 24:17
 
Hey Dan. Yeah I’d have to look into the source for my info a bit deeper, which is why I am not going to make any definitive statements on this topic anymore lol. Better to plead ignorance than be a prideful fool.

That was my point, however. If I remember correctly however, Exodus talks about Moses moving toward the top of the mountain then disappearing abruptly from site, which fits in with the idea of a “shelf” on the side of the mountain, which Sinai does not have. The traditional Mount Sinai you can see to the top.
 
Nathan_Wagar said:
Hey Dan. Yeah I’d have to look into the source for my info a bit deeper, which is why I am not going to make any definitive statements on this topic anymore lol. Better to plead ignorance than be a prideful fool.

That was my point, however. If I remember correctly however, Exodus talks about Moses moving toward the top of the mountain then disappearing abruptly from site, which fits in with the idea of a “shelf” on the side of the mountain, which Sinai does not have. The traditional Mount Sinai you can see to the top.
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Here are the instances in Exodus where Moses goes up and down the Sinai:

19:3-8 - The first instance of Moses going up the mountain since the burning bush incident. God expresses His wish of making a covenant with the sons of Israel, which Moses relays to the people down below. The people express their agreement.

19:9-15: Moses climbs back up to relay the information to God, at which God announces that He will come down “in the thickness of the cloud” on the third day and orders that the Israelites purify themselves to prepare for this event.

19:20-25: God, who descended on the Sinai “in fire” and was talking with Moses at the mountain base (“and when the voice of the horn grew louder and louder, Moses was speaking and Elohim was answering him with a voice”), summons him back up to order him to fetch Aaron and to warn the people that they must not go up. Moses then goes back down to tell the people this, at which point God starts to give the Ten Commandments (20:1-17).

20:18-23:32: The Israelites, still fearing the various phenomena (the thunder, lightning, and the mountain being covered with smoke) pleads to Moses that he must not let God speak to them, at which Moses answers that it was all a test. He then goes in “the thick darkness” while the people kept their distance. God then gives three chapters’ worth of laws to him in the interval.

24:1-11: Moses is instructed to fetch “Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel,” but these seventy-four were to go up the mountain to a certain point while as Moses went further up into the presence of God. After some sacrifices and a ratification ritual involving the blood of the sacrificial offerings, Moses and the others go up the mountain, where they see God and eat and drink in His presence (usually interpreted as a covenant meal).

24:12-18: God then orders Moses to go further up so he can receive the tablets of the law. Taking Joshua with him, he orders the others to wait for their return. “And Moses went into the cloud and went up into the mountain, and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.”

32:15-35 - Moses, after receiving the instructions on how to build the Tabernacle and all the necessary furnishings, is ordered to come down the mountain because the Israelites “have corrupted themselves.” After some tablet-smashing, chastisements, destruction of an idol, and death by the sword, Moses decides to go up the mountain again to make atonement.

34:1-35 - Moses is ordered to hew two tablets like the first set and go back up the mountain to receive a replacement. He was once more on the mountain for forty days and forty nights, given reiterations of further laws and a few more besides while carving the commandments on the tablets. He goes down the mountain with something of the divine glory remaining in him, causing his face to shine. This is the last time we hear of Moses going in a trek up and down mount Sinai; in the following chapters, the construction of the Tabernacle commences and the Israelites would move on.

The only indication from the texts that Moses (apparently) disappears from sight is when he enters within “the thick cloud” into God’s presence; no mention of any shelfs here.
 
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