Archaeologists Discover Remains of Egyptian Army From the Biblical Exodus in Red

[Spud]

From GotQuestions.org there are two Bible references stating that the Philistines originated in Caphtor, i.e. Crete:
Amos 9:7, Jeremiah 47:4
https://www.gotquestions.org/Philistines.html

[Owlswing]

From GotQuestions.org there are two Bible references stating that the Philistines originated in Caphtor, i.e. Crete:
Amos 9:7, Jeremiah 47:4
https://www.gotquestions.org/Philistines.html

Honestly Spud, when are you going to realise that the Bible is NOT a factual historical record no matter how much you try to make it so and want it to be so?

This thread has shown time after time that you are talking nonsense and arguing for something that archeology has proven did not happen!

I will give you marks for persistance and deduct twenty times as many for persistant ignorance of factual evidence against you presented by someone who argues from fact and not from fiction or faith!

From my perspective, and I am not Christian, you have become what is usually described, in polite society, as a crashing bore who is intent on wasting as much of Anchorman's time and patience, for which he has my utmost admiration, as possible.

[Anchorman]

I think Ramesses II is too late, I was presuming on around 1446 BC. So do you think the Philistines didn't live along the coast of Canaan at that time (1446 BC)?

Early on on this thread, I showed why 1446 was untenenable as a possible date for Exodus.
Equally, there is no evidence for a Philistine nation before Ramesses III repulsed their attempted colonisation of the Delta.
After that, evidence of the Greco/Phoenican style pottery associated with the Sea Peoles/Palestinu starts to turn up in quantity in settlements on the coast of Canaan. It seems pretty clear that the establishment of their state starts around then.

[Anchorman]

From GotQuestions.org there are two Bible references stating that the Philistines originated in Caphtor, i.e. Crete:
Amos 9:7, Jeremiah 47:4
https://www.gotquestions.org/Philistines.html

Dunno where that comes from.
The Sea Peoples were an amalgum of peoples - some Greek, others Lybian and Canaanite, with other Mediterranean ifluences. They seem to have coalesced with the disinegration of the Hittite state.
Power abhors a vacuum, it seems.

[Spud]

Early on on this thread, I showed why 1446 was untenenable as a possible date for Exodus.
Equally, there is no evidence for a Philistine nation before Ramesses III repulsed their attempted colonisation of the Delta.
After that, evidence of the Greco/Phoenican style pottery associated with the Sea Peoles/Palestinu starts to turn up in quantity in settlements on the coast of Canaan. It seems pretty clear that the establishment of their state starts around then.

If that is the case then the timespans listed in Judges fit nicely with a date of around the mid-1400s BC for the Exodus. I've counted 364 years listed in the book of Judges, beteeen the death of Joshua and when the Philistines came on the scene to oppress Israel. This continued for 40 years, then Samson led Israel against them for 20 years. The Philistines would have begun their assault in about 1042 by this calculation.

By the way I hope I am not annoying you by discussing this, please say if you've had enough...

[Anchorman]

Calculate away!
However, there is no evidence that any Delta city was being built around tht time.
Avaris/Hutwaret had been destroyed eighty years earlier - staratification deposits confirm this - and was unoccupied.
Thutmose III built a fort/palace next to the ruins, but that would be slightly too late for your calculations, and, besides, wouldn;t require much labour to construct it; these fort/palaces were normally consturucted in jig-time by the army.
The next major city to be built in Egypt - and a capital city at that - would be around 1355, in Middle Egypt, by Akhenaten(and we have located the burial ground of those who built it...which contained the usual Egyptian pots, bowles, 'bes-amulets'...and a collection of Egyptians who seem to have been overworked and underfed, but with no signs of violence)

[Anchorman]

Dunno if this is any use to you, Spud, but I was doing something else unrelated to the topic when I remembered this page from University College London.
The whole site's worth a look as well.
It gives a reasonable overview of Piramesse ('Ramses')
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/qatar/research/qantir-piramesse

[Spud]

Hi Jim, thanks - having a look now.

[Spud]

Jim,

That was a very interesting article about Piramesse.

I think I have found something concrete to add to the pool of data on this subject, small but perhaps relevant. In Numbers 11:21 Moses is speaking with God about the people, who were moaning. Moses says to God, "Here am I among 600,000 men on foot, and you say, 'I will give them meat to eat for a whole month!'"
Earlier, in verse 4 of the same chapter, the mixed multitude who left Egypt with the Israelites are said to have been craving other food than the manna they were eating.
Apparently then, the mixed multitude were included in the 600,000 men that Moses mentions in verse 21.

[Anchorman]

What has that todo with Qantir/Piramesse?

[Spud]

Nothing - by "this subject" I meant the thread, in general, not Piramesse.

[Anchorman]

Then we're back to square one - no evidence for the numbers hinted at in Exodus or Numbers, noevidence for such numbers in the whole of Egypt, never mind the Eastern Delta, no evidence for a slave population constructing a northern capital......

[Spud]

Hi Jim, I know I said "nothing" but that may not be the case. If the descendants of Jacob numbered seventy men when he moved to Egypt, and 'the children of Israel' numbered 600,000 men (a figure that is intended to be read literally because it is repeated later) a few centuries later, there must have been other people in Jacob's household who were circumcised and thus counted as Israelites. Intermarriage with Egyptians and Canaanites could have facilitated such a rapid population growth. Whatever race an individual was, he/she would have been identified with Israel through the covenant of circumcision. It would follow that any traces of them left today would not easily be distinguished as 'Israelites' but would be interpretted loosely as 'Semitic' or 'Egyptian', etc.
This does indeed seem to be how the evidence has been interpreted, so that the first signs of a distinct Israelite nation does not appear until centuries later, with for example the mention of them on the Merneptah Stele. I might be wrong- what do you think?

[Anchorman]

That Merenptah gave a passing mention to Israel as a small tribe suggests a pre-existant population there - a population established enough to be worth mentioning on a Temple inscription in Egypt.
So, either that population had never LEFT Canaan, or the exodus, had it happened during or after the building of Piramesse (less than twenty yrars earlier), was much, much smaller than what the Pentateuch describes, and possibly an enforced migration of a minor Semitic tribe from the Eastern Delta back to the area where the rest of that tribe already lived.

[Owlswing]

That Merenptah gave a passing mention to Israel as a small tribe suggests a pre-existant population there - a population established enough to be worth mentioning on a Temple inscription in Egypt.
So, either that population had never LEFT Canaan, or the exodus, had it happened during or after the building of Piramesse (less than twenty yrars earlier), was much, much smaller than what the Pentateuch describes, and possibly an enforced migration of a minor Semitic tribe from the Eastern Delta back to the area where the rest of that tribe already lived.

Do you not get the feeling that you are going to do yourself a serious mischief continually banging your head against the concrete wall of Spud's refusal to accept that the Biblical "history" of the Exodus is actually anything but History?

Unless of course you call it Historical fiction or Historical myth, rather like Robin Hood and the Loch Ness Monster?

[Anchorman]

Do you not get the feeling that you are going to do yourself a serious mischief continually banging your head against the concrete wall of Spud's refusal to accept that the Biblical "history" of the Exodus is actually anything but History?

Unless of course you call ir Historical fiction or Historical myth, rather like Robin Hood and the Loch Ness Monster?

I've never actually dismissed the entire Exodus story as fiction - or even myth, Owlswing:
I've argued that there was a judicious editing of some earlier documents around the early sixth or late fifth centuries - incorporating ideas and peoples contemporary with that time, and throwing in bits of remembered iral history to a core story.
There's nothing to stop a high ranking Hebrew/Canaanite leader who had held high rank at court rebelling and taking his tribe - or some of it - from Egypt, pursued by a nomarch or army group.
That Semitic people already existed in the Delta, I think I've shown.
That they even existed at court - some becoming  minor wives of kings - I've also shown.
The scenario I described is not beyond the bounds of possibility.
The scenario as written down in the Pentatech we have today, however, is.

[Owlswing]

The scenario as written down in the Pentatech we have today, however, is.

That is the only thing that I was referring to - the bit Spud keeps going on abouit and trying to prove - the exit of the 600,000.

[Spud]

That is the only thing that I was referring to - the bit Spud keeps going on abouit and trying to prove - the exit of the 600,000.

You have read the book of Numbers, I hope? It tells us how many there were in each clan, and the figures add up to 600,000. We can be sure this figure is accurate because it I s firmly reiterated several times.

Jim, I wanted to emphasize that I don't hold to the theory that Rameses II was the 'Exodus pharaoh'. Neither that the Israelites built Piramesse for him. I think Exodus 1:11 may be referring to Avaris, but need to look into it more.

[Aruntraveller]

and the figures add up to 600,000. We can be sure this figure is accurate because it I s firmly reiterated several times.

I firmly re-iterate that God doesn't exist.

I firmly re-iterate that God doesn't exist.

I firmly re-iterate that God doesn't exist.

I firmly re-iterate that God doesn't exist.

Yep - works for me.

[Anchorman]

You have read the book of Numbers, I hope? It tells us how many there were in each clan, and the figures add up to 600,000. We can be sure this figure is accurate because it I s firmly reiterated several times.

Jim, I wanted to emphasize that I don't hold to the theory that Rameses II was the 'Exodus pharaoh'. Neither that the Israelites built Piramesse for him. I think Exodus 1:11 may be referring to Avaris, but need to look into it more.

So why on earth would Exodus refer to Hutwaret (Avaris/tell el dab'a( as "Ramses"?
If you're going with an earlier date for Exodus (for which you've provided no evidence), then you can only mean dyn XVIII and the reign of Amenhotep II.
We've already been there: Egypt had pushed out into Canaan already - and further. An escaping tribe would have been wasting its' time settling there if it wanted to get out of Egypt,.
Even if you add on the proverbial forty years, that makes things even worse - because Egypt's borders had stretched to what is now Turkey.
And if you want to go into semantics, why would an Egyptian king of the mid eighteenth dynasty, who was either tied to, or promoting, the cult of Amun of Thebes name a city for Ra of Heliopolis?
We already know Amenhotep II built minor shrines to Amun at Hutwaret, and further north at Bubastis, Xois, etc. He even left dedications to Amun in the Sinai and what is now southern Israel.
There's evidence of him enhancing the Re temple at Heliopolis and Memphis, but that's about it.

[Spud]

Jim, there was nothing Egypt could do at the time because its army no longer existed.

I don't know which pharaoh it was but I'm new to Egyptian history; maybe it will become clear at some point.

The reason I think the city named Rameses in Ex.1:11 may refer to Hutwaret is because the Pentateuch wasn't written until later, perhaps after Piramesse had been built and while it was still in existence. Hence also the reference to the Land of Rameses in Genesis. Plus the fact that the non-Pentateuchal references to the exodus, written still later, speak of Zoan (Tanis), which was the then primary city, the others being uninhabited.

[Anchorman]

Jim, there was nothing Egypt could do at the time because its army no longer existed.

I don't know which pharaoh it was but I'm new to Egyptian history; maybe it will become clear at some point.

The reason I think the city named Rameses in Ex.1:11 may refer to Hutwaret is because the Pentateuch wasn't written until later, perhaps after Piramesse had been built and while it was still in existence. Hence also the reference to the Land of Rameses in Genesis. Plus the fact that the non-Pentateuchal references to the exodus, written still later, speak of Zoan (Tanis), which was the then primary city, the others being uninhabited.

 

You're really clutching at straws, Spud.
There is virtually no time at which the army of Egypt no longer existed - from around 2000 BC onward.
Indeed, the New kingdom (Dyn XVIII-XX) was founded by kings from Thebes in the preceding dyn XVII who had to have a well organised, standing force to fight against, and eventually expel, the Hyksos.
The Egyptian professional corps of chariotry was feared throughout the Middle East.
Even in the decline of the New Kingdom, in the Ramesside period (following the death (assassination) of Ramesses III, Egypt maintained a standing military force.
The kings of the dyn XXI and XXII dynasties, albeit with limited power, maintained armies in the Delta.

[Nearly Sane]

 

You're really clutching at straws, Spud.
There is virtually no time at which the army of Egypt no longer existedf - from around 2000 BC onward.
Indeed, the New kingdom (Dyn XVIII-XX) was founded by kings from Thebes in the preceeding dyn XVII wo had to have a well organised, standing force to fight against, and eventually expel, the HYksos.
The Egyptian prrofessional corps of chariotry was feared throughout the Middle East.
Even in the decline of the New Kingdom, in the Ramesside period (following the death (assassination) of Ramesses III, Egypt maintained a standing military force.
The kings of the dyn XXI and XXII dynasties, albeit with limited power, maintained armies in the Delta.

I suspect Spud was taking the time after they were all drowned, according to the Bible,  as when they didn't have an army.

[Anchorman]

Aaaaaaargh!

[Anchorman]

Jim, there was nothing Egypt could do at the time because its army no longer existed.

I don't know which pharaoh it was but I'm new to Egyptian history; maybe it will become clear at some point.

The reason I think the city named Rameses in Ex.1:11 may refer to Hutwaret is because the Pentateuch wasn't written until later, perhaps after Piramesse had been built and while it was still in existence. Hence also the reference to the Land of Rameses in Genesis. Plus the fact that the non-Pentateuchal references to the exodus, written still later, speak of Zoan (Tanis), which was the then primary city, the others being uninhabited.

 


Whoops!
So you're arguing that the Exodus happened centuries BEFORE Piramesse was built, and that those who wrote/edited it knew of Piramesse?
So, that rules Moses out as the author, then........