Moses Vindicated

6 Comments / 56 Comments

1. @ Sebastien Zorn:

   Well there were some very early Sumerian cuneiform slabs and steles found which had some historical events written on them , but well overl
   They didn’t have a people who equated their writings with religion, and who clung with unimaginable tenacity to it, placing the “History” into a singular place od almost worship.

2. @ Sebastien Zorn:

   Well Manetho was only 3rd cent, and detailing for the previous thousands of years,which has to be “shaky”… I recall reading many years ago, he was found only in the writings of those who came later like Josephus. There was a question as to why, being an Egyptian, he wrote only in Greek at a time when Greek was not the language of choice in Egypt.. Josephus says that Manetho didn’t seem to believe that the Hyksos were the Hebrews. And…I recall a bit where Manetho says that the Hebrews were actually a horde of lepers who were driven out of Egypt. .

   Then there were so many contradictory opinions amongst scholars, that a lot of doubts emerged as to whether such a person ever existed, and a lot of forgeries were found.

   This is all from memory, a bit garbled, and in no particular order. But I read it, and I read much about Manetho, as well as reading through Josephus; “Wars”, “Antiquities”, “Against Apion”, Wars and Antiquities more than once. He doesn’t say much about Manetho.

3. Elsewhere:

   A papyrus mentions a wealthy Egyptian lord whose 77 slaves included 48 of Semitic origin.
   read more: https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/archaeology/1.713849

   and

   In fact, by the late Middle Kingdom era, around 3700 years ago, Canaanites had actually achieved absolute power, in the form of a line of Canaanite pharaohs ruling the Lower Kingdom, coexisting with the Egyptian-ruled Upper Kingdom. (These Canaanite pharaohs included the mysterious “Yaqub,” whose existence is attested by 27 scarabs found in Egypt, Canaan and Nubia and a famous one found at Shikmona, by Haifa.) The biblical tradition of the patriarch Jacob settling in Egypt could well derive from this time.
   read more: https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/archaeology/1.713849

   and

   “The papyrus Anastasi VI from around 3200 years ago describes how the Egyptian authorities allowed a group of Semitic nomads from Edom who worshiped Yahweh to pass the border-fortress in the region of Tjeku (Wadi Tumilat) and proceed with their livestock to the lakes of Pithom.’

   and

   a’The Roman-era Jewish historian Josephus for one identifies the Hyksos with the Israelites. He cites the 3rd-century Egyptian scribe and priest Manetho, who wrote that after their expulsion, the Hyksos wandered in the desert before establishing Jerusalem.”
   read more: https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/archaeology/1.713849

   Sure doesn’t sound like myth to me. In fact, I have the impression that the biblical account is more concerned with accurate detail than the so-called father of history, Herodotus.

   If history is an attempt to be objective, isn’t the Torah the first work of history. It is certainly the first account that makes no attempt to whitewash the flaws of its founders and leaders, or of the people as a whole, as has been pointed out elsewhere.

4. @ yamit82:
   The Ha’aretz article refers to physical evidence that would indicate that the biblical account of Jewish slavery is accurate:

   Egyptian scribes of Ahmose I and Thutmoses III wrote boastfully of campaigns in the Levant, resulting in captured prisoners being enslaved in Egypt. Various descriptions perfectly match scenes in the Passover Haggadah.
   The setting described in Exodus could be Egypt’s East Delta, where the Nile floods every year. The area has no source of stone, and mud-brick structures repeatedly “melted” back into the mud and silt. Even stone temples have hardly survived here. Physical evidence of slaves working there isn’t likely to have survived. But a leather scroll dating to the time of Ramesses II (1303 BCE-1213 BCE) describes a close account of brick-making apparently by enslaved prisoners of the wars in Canaan and Syria, which sounds very much like the biblical account. The scroll describes 40 taskmasters, each with a daily target of 2,000 bricks (see Exodus 5:6).
    

   The tomb of vizier Rekhimire, ca. 1450 BCE, shows foreign slaves “making bricks for the workshop-storeplace of the Temple of Amun at Karnak in Thebes” and for a building ramp. Wikimedia Commons
   Other Egyptian papyruses (Anastasi III & IV) discuss using straws in mud bricks, as mentioned in Exodus 5:7: “You must not gather straw to give to the people to make bricks as formerly. Let themsleves go and gather straw for themselves”.
   The tomb of vizier Rekhmire, ca. 1450 BCE, famously shows foreign slaves “making bricks for the workshop-storeplace of the Temple of Amun at Karnak in Thebes” and for a building ramp. They are labeled “captures brought-off by His Majesty for work at the Temple of Amun”. Semites and Nubians are shown fetching and mixing mud and water, striking out bricks from molds, leaving them to dry and measuring their amount, under the watchful eyes of Egyptian overseers, each with a rod. The images bear out descriptions in Ex. 1:11-14; 5:1-21. (“They made their life bitter with hard labor, as they worked with clay mortar and bricks and in very form of slavery in the field” – Exodus 1:14a)
   Also, the biblical description of how Hebrew slaves suffered under the lash is borne out by the Egyptian papyrus Bologna 1094, telling how two workers fled their taskmaster “because he beat them”. So it seems the biblical descriptions of Egyptian slavery are accurate.
   Clues to Israelite presence in Egypt
   Conclusively, Semitic slaves there were. However, critics argue there’s no archaeological evidence of a Semitic tribe worshiping Yahweh in Egypt.
   Because of the muddy conditions of the East Delta, almost no papyri have survived – but those that did, may provide further clues in the search for the lost Israelites.
   The papyrus Anastasi VI from around 3200 years ago describes how the Egyptian authorities allowed a group of Semitic nomads from Edom who worshiped Yahweh to pass the border-fortress in the region of Tjeku (Wadi Tumilat) and proceed with their livestock to the lakes of Pithom.

   Shortly afterwards, the Israelites enter world history with the Merneptah stele, which bears the first mention of an entity called Israel in Canaan. It is robustly dated at is 1210 BCE, i.e., as of writing, 3226 years ago.

   [Photo: The Merneptah Stele, which states: “Israel is laid waste, its seed is no more.” ]
   read more: https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/archaeology/1.713849

5. @ terjeber:
   The Ha’aretz article has a couple of good answers for the population numbers cited.

   “Note that Herodotus claims that a million Persians invaded Greece in 480 BCE. The numbers were undoubtedly exaggerated, as in most ancient records. But nobody claims the invasion of Greece never happened.
   That said, as the Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen points out, the Hebrew word for thousand, eleph, can mean different things depending upon context. It can even denote a group/clan or a leader/chief. Elsewhere in the bible, “eleph” could not possibly mean “a thousand”. For example: 1 Kings 20:30 mentions a wall falling in Aphek that killed 27,000 men. If we translate eleph as leader, the text more sensibly says that 27 officers were killed by the falling wall. Bv that logic, some scholars propose that the Exodus actually consisted of about 20,000 people.”
   read more: https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/archaeology/1.713849

6. @ yamit82:

   I know what the Torah has to say, I spent 8-10 years in chedar, and was on the way to becoming a Biblical Hebrew scholar with much potential for further studies..(according to my teacher known to you as Menachem Mansoor of Wisconsin University, internationally of great repute, who got multiple degrees in Trinity College Dublin, and many gold medals for Semitic Studies, with many books on the subjects we are now discussing). To believe in “miracles” and not the accidental conjunction of a variety of things at the very same instant instead, is delving into the metaphysical world, and I don’t do that, nor is my interest in such things more than academic.

   We are speaking of very ancient times where the simplest natural phenomena were regarded as miraculous, and there was no understanding as yet of critical thinking. Superstition ruled the world. They obeyed and believed in deities at which we’ve all been laughing at for the past 4-5 hundred years. they committed the most awful atrocities believing that they were pleasing their gods, and regarded anything that happened after, even if nothing did, as the action of that god. They believed that gods fought amongst themselves, and it really must have driven the poor guys crazy trying to pick a winner to follow.

   So let it be. I’m the strongest believing Jew that you ever came across, but this doesn’t require me to believe in things that my senses tell me are mere tradition or ancient fable. People of those times had brains, and required that there should be an explanation for everything, and whatever they couldn’t understand they attributed to their gods.

   So, again, let it be so.@ yamit82:
   @ yamit82:

   And, I forgot to say, It’s absolutely impossible to put oneself into the mindset of those who lived 3500 years ago, we have had myriads of writers and historians who’ve tried but failed. Modern thinking has to creep throught the best of them. Unseen anacronisms abound.