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Jewish History vs. the Bible

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Jewish History vs. the Bible

Postby Ragamuffin_artist on Sat Apr 30, 2011 8:33 pm

Greetings comrades,

I was curious if anyone in the intellectually robust online community of The Sinner happens to know if Jews were ever in Egypt or enslaved by the Egyptians.

I've done some cursory research online, and am having difficulty finding reputable, unbiased sources. My current understanding is that they were not.

Indeed, I often shamelessly use this messageboard to sort out life's greater issues.
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Re: Jewish History vs. the Bible

Postby RedCelt69 on Sat Apr 30, 2011 9:41 pm

The Jews and Christians would answer with a resounding "yes" to your question. Who else can you ask? The Egyptians? Carved wall monuments show various slave races that they captured. If I recall, they are meant to include the occupants of Judaea/Israel... but the source for that escapes me.

The chasing of Moses (and his followers), the parting of the Red Sea and the death of the pharaoh's troops in the sea... that is undocumented anywhere but in the bible. So, that part can be heavily disputed, as with every other (otherwise) uncorroborated part of the bible.
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Re: Jewish History vs. the Bible

Postby Gubbins on Mon May 02, 2011 7:12 pm

I am no ancient scholar, so I can't give a definitive answer. However, from what I do know, most information from that time has been heavily weighted towards Biblical history. Before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, there was no understood record from that time in the region: the closest sources were from ancient Persia (Assyria, Babylon, etc.). Since then, other corroborative evidence from Egyptian hieroglyphs has obviously become understood, but it still suffers from a lot of fundamentalist Christian interpretation.

One such piece of corroborative evidence is for the Sack of Jerusalem in 925 BC or thereabouts. There is a relief in the Temple at Karnak that shows purported conquests in the area of Canaan around this time and it would not be surprising if slaves were taken back to Egypt. This is, I imagine, later than the time of Moses, who is likely to have lived of the order of a millennium earlier.

One compelling idea is that the translation "Red Sea" is incorrect, and that the actual translation is "Reed Sea": a tidal area on the Mediterranean near Port Said. A second, separate theory suggests that the sea was parted by the tsunami triggered by the eruption of the volcano Thera (Santorini), probably in the late 17th century BC. This second theory is highly speculative, if interesting. I hope this points you in the right direction!
...then again, that is only my opinion.
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Re: Jewish History vs. the Bible

Postby LonelyPilgrim on Fri May 06, 2011 5:49 am

One theory that I have heard is that the Jews were not originally slaves in Egypt, but rather were military colonists settled on the frontier of the empire, in what is now the Sinai. The "Pharaoh" in the Bible 'enslaved' them by forcibly disarming them and incorporating them as subjects, instead of mercenary colonists.

As I understand it, that the Egyptians settled mercenary colonists on their borders is known. That some of these people were the Jews and that they were subsequently disarmed/'enslaved' is speculation.

As anyone who has had to study/work in the field of ancient history can tell you, the inconsistency of naming for groups in the sparse sources makes it very very difficult to know who, exactly, sources from different cultures are talking about. The Egyptians, especially, were, like the Greeks and Romans, keen to give Egyptian-ised names to foreign cultures and so matching up who their records are talking about with who, say, the Hittite records are talking about with who the Torah is talking about is a puzzle.
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