Did anyone else write this stuff down? In particular I am curious about Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt.
As I understand it, Ramses the 2nd was the guy running Egypt at the time. So while he is there, all this nasty stuff happens to him because of Moses. Plagues, kids dying overnight, thousands of his troops being KILLED by the waters of a divided sea crashing down upon them.
Now all I’m saying is, this is some hard core stuff to have happen to your people. Wouldn’t you write it down??
For most ancient events, it’s quite rare to find two different peoples’ records of the same event. I believe the earliest where we have such is of a battle between the Egyptians and Hittites (I forget the year but somewhere around 1200 BC, give or take a couple hundred years). Of course, both sides claimed to have won that battle, but that’s a different issue.
As far as there being no Egyptian record of the plagues, escpecially the one about the first born sons, is considered by some to be an indication that they didn’t happen.
Nobody knows when Moses is supposed to have led the Israelites out of Egypt. Rameses II built a lot of fancy monuments, so people like to think the Hebrews made them, that’s all. I’ve also heard suggestions for Hatshepsut, and that Joseph orignally befriended a Hyksos Pharaoh, so that the newly reinstated Egyptian Pharaohs had an excuse to turn the Greek-friendly Hebrews into slaves. We really know so little about the ancient Egyptians that an embarrassing episode like Moses would be almost impossible to find. The Egyptian Pharaohs wrote their own history, and we have very little of it now.
So I geuss it looks like something of that nature could have happened back in the day. Of course the only current source of the story could be extremely biased I would guess.
Genie, the Hyksos weren’t Greeks. Most likely their leaders were the ancestors (or cousins of the ancestors) of the Kurds and the soldiers were various Semitic tribes (including some proto-Hebrews) swept up/coerced/coopted into the invasion of Eqypt. The lack of any Egyptian records about these divine plaques, in a country that lived and breathed supernaturalism and mysticism, speaks against it happening the way the Bible says.
Exodus is most likely a dimly remembered, freely borrowed and synthesized account of the Hyksos expulsion from Egypt. Think of a made-for-TV movie about an actual historic event, but, instead of sex/romantic interest/gratuitous violence fillers, substitute religion, a humbling of the super power, and a general wishing that was the way it had been.
The fact that there are no records of the plagues from an Egyptian viewpoint could also indicate that the events were so indicative of pharaoh’s incompetence in dealing with slaves that the Egyptians worked to cover teh events up. Being that Egyptian history does not usually record negative things about pharaohs, the next pharaoh probably had all events about the children of Abraham striken from official records
Damn! That’s some awfully good covering up they did! How do you suppose they covered up the economic collapse that occurred when all the animals and first born children died, and 3 million slaves just walked off into the wilderness? Remember, you also have to delete the previous 430 years of official history, which you couldn’t do without leaving some major holes.
I have a series of articles which indicates that the census number presented in the Bible were wildly exaggerated. If there was any sort of exodus (a big if), it probably had a few thousand Hebrew slaves, max, not 3 million. All the stuff about Joseph, the plagues, etc. are later fictions. This is why it has avoided mention in any sort of contemporary documents.
There’s a Discovery Channel program that demonstrates recent findings that seem to correlate much of the story of the Exodus.
Of note is that there was a MAJOR vocanic explosion during that period of time which, if it corresponded with the ten plagues, gives scientific explanation for many of them, and can possibly account for the parting of the reed sea.
Also, they have found evidence that the Egyptians have stables that could have housed many more horses than the story claims, whereas previously it was thought that the Egyptian army did not posess such forces.
The lost city of Ramses was also found in an area of Egypt where the Nile used to run (but no longer does) that more closely fits descriptions of the story of the Exodus, but no longer existed by the time it was first written.
According to the program, there are many references to ancient Egypt in the original text that would have been difficult for the author to know without being told (in other words, he was transcribing a story told to him and not inventing it entirely).
My thoughts? Like all great works of literature, the biblical story of the exodus is based upon a historical event but “spicened up” to make it more appealing.