T what degree are the Plagues of Egypt verifiable?

Factual Questions
21

As a writer, I’m fascinated by the problem of reading: namely that people read in very different ways. Some readers make firm and fine distinctions among types of reading and others simply do not. Convincing fictions sound just as real and true to many people as nonfictions do; perhaps even more so because they have been skillfully told in a manner to persuade. Michael Crichton and Dan Brown are just two examples of writers of the sheerest balderdash whose inventions are taken quite seriously.

With even modern works being read in these disparate ways, the problems of reading ancient works when the distinctions between fiction and nonfiction had not yet hardened into conventions even in the writers’ minds are exponentially worse. How does one properly read the Bible? Does one read it in the same way as Gilgamesh or the Iliad? Or the Koran or Book of Mormon? Or as Plato and Herodotus? Does one read the New Testament in the same way as the Old Testament? Leviticus in the same way as Exodus?

(Things are even worse outside of print, which has comparatively infinite freedom to expand to encompass an issue. The major movies of the year featured the lives of Howard Hughes, Ray Charles, Bobby Darin, Alfred Kinsey, Alexander the Great, and J. M. Barrie, each of which were compassed and altered to form a narrative, even though lives don’t have narratives. Turn on the television and we see individual lives, political issues, even whole wars and natural disasters rewritten to form little fables capable of being told in 1:30 before the sports and weather. But that’s a different rant.)

The Bible incorporates history, but is not itself history. There were battles, but no good evidence that they are the battles that the Bible speaks of, even when a real king or pharaoh is mentioned. There were kingdoms, but no good evidence that any of the people or events the Bible speaks of ever happened. The Bible, like the Iliad and Gilgamesh and the Koran and the Book of Mormon and Plato and Herodotus, contains stories flavored with the knowledge of history. I know story deep in my bones and I read story and archaeology and history as wildly disparate narratives. But I continue to butt heads with the reality that other people don’t see the differences and distinctions that I do.

And just to clear up something that must be confusing to everyone: Shishak is not the same Pharaoh as SheshonqI (or Shoshenk I), which looks even more confusing on my screen because that roman numeral one displays as an the letter “l”. Look at this explanation from a believer’s site, one that is postulating the historical truth of the Bible. Also check out the Moses page for his commentary on the historical accuracy of the plagues.

22

Grrr. Cut and paste errors. That last paragraph should read:

And just to clear up something that must be confusing to everyone: Shishak as the same Pharaoh as SheshonqI (or Shoshenk I), which looks even more confusing on my screen because that roman numeral one displays as an the letter “l”. Shishak is not the same Pharaoh according to the New Chronology, which can explain anything you desire. Look at this explanation from a believer’s site, one that is postulating the historical truth of the Bible. Also check out the Moses page for his commentary on the historical accuracy of the plagues.

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Welllll… indeed that is a site not exactly in the mainstream of Archaeology/History, eh? :smiley: They list Khaneferre Sobekhotep IV as the Pharaoh who adopted Moses- he is more than 400 years prior to Merenptah and died before 1650 BC, and then they say it was: “Dudimose who is the Pharaoh of the Exodus (began his reign somewhere between 1457 and 1444 BC)”. Dudimose isn’t even listed on the Oxford list, that date comes from the reign of Queen Hatshepsut- who is of the “New Kingdom” and the 18th dynsasty, not the 14th dysnasty. This site would also have Moses born before 1650BC, and still alive and hale some 200 years after!:dubious: Picking a King from the '14th dysnasty" to be the one who died during the Exodus is a clever idea- we don’t know enough about these “Minor rulers”- when Egypt was fragmented, there were several “Pharoahs” ruling in different areas, and certainly we don’t know enough about them to say with certainly that one of them didn’t die chasing down escaped slaves in the Red Sea.

I gave you “The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt” which says differently. Large, professionaly published by a well known & highly respect publisher, author with letters after his name, peer-reviewed, long list of respected contributors, etc etc. Moses is not there, nor is the Exodus discussed. Note that in the “Oxford Companion to the Bible” they say “Egytian records are also silent…: they make no mention of Joseph, Moses, the Hebrews, the plagues, or of a catastrophic defeat of Pharaoh and his army”.

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Does anyone know which of the stories were known legends of the people at the time of the writing of the Bible, and which were made up? I would guess that various tribes would have legends about their founding by a hero, who gave his name to the tribe, and these legends might have been incorporated. We know where the flood myth came from. But was the Davidic empire something everyone knew about, or was it invented as a justification of Josiah’s territorial ambitions?

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Bear in mind that part of the basis of Exapno Mapcase’s argument is that we do not have any other firmly verifiable contemporary references to David. (One possible reference, which may be somebody else…) For that matter, I don’t happen to know whether there are any other clear contemporary references to Josiah…
Given that, I don’t think there’s any way to answer your question. Perhaps everyone knew about David; but they didn’t leave a record of that. Perhaps David was invented; but we surely have no record of when, or why.

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There are some period references to the “House of David”, but I don’t know of any references to the King himself. It is quite likely that a “King David” as a founder of a dynasty did exist, and later Kings did of course trace their linage back to him. That does not mean any of the 'stories" about him are in any way true or verified.

In my opinion- the “King David” of reality and the King David of the OT bear the same relationship that King Arthur of the Legends bears to “Artorius”- a mysterious figure who seems to have been a great leader in rough times, and who was the fountainhead of much Myth & Legend.

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Not really “some,” only one. The Tell Dan inscription which contains the Aramaic letters “BYTDWD.” This has been popularly translated by many as “Beit David” (House of David). The stele dates from about 100 years after the traditional time of David and if the translation is correct, it would refer to a family name or dynasty rather than David himself.

That translation is disputed by some, though. Notably because BYTDWD appears as a single word on the inscription and if it were to be read as Beit David it should be separated as two words (BYT DWD). The arguments against the “Hous of David” reading run along the lines of "BYT_ " being a place name construction so the inscription should be read as as place name not as a family name. There still isn’t much agreement on what the DWD part would be but I guess it doesn’t have to be David.

I think there is still a majority that thinks the inscription should be read as Beit David but it’s by no means settled.

In any case, even those who argue for the historicity of David argue for the leader of a small chiefdom rather than than the grand Davidic kingdom of David and Solomon.

I do think it’s plausible to think that David may have been a legendary leader and folk hero in Judea whose story was tweaked and romanticized (and his “kingdom” expanded) for propaganda purposes by Josiah.

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Plausible, but (given current evidence) I cannot imagine how the hypothesis could be either verified or disproven.

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Few more non-biblical references I just found- all from “The Oxford History of the Biblical World”

  1. A bronze seal of a man who’s title (on the seal) was “servant of Jeroboam II” (King of Isreal c788 to c747BC).

  2. The “Mesha Stele” which commemorates a victory of that Moabite king over Isreal- mentions Omri as King, and also mentions the “house of David”. (Recent re-evaluation & translation of the text)

  3. The Tell Dan incription also has mentions of King Jehoram and King Ahaziah- dating it to c842BC

  4. Excavations at Samaria (Omri’s new capital, remember?) produced some 100+ notes on pottery shards- the “post-it notes” of that period. :smiley: Dates & such show King JeroboamII. c770BC.

All before Josiah. More? There ya go- hard evidence of 4 Kings before Josiah. And Omri is only 2 after Solomon, with a gap of 46 years- far too short of time to make up Solomon, David and their Kingdom out of whole cloth.

Note that the book clearly agress that the Archaeological evidence does show some sort of Jewish “unified Kingdom” around the time of David. Doesn’t show how big, and dates are hard to pin down, but the hard evidence of a Kingdom (or at least of a centralized government) is generally accepted.

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Read The Bible Unearthed. The Unified Kingdom is widely rejected now. I think your OHBW might be out of date.

Yes. There has been confirmation of Omri and shows that the name “Israel” was present in Palestine in the 8th century BCE. The “House of David” inscription is still disputed, and none of those finds really confirm any Biblical events prior to Josiah.

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I didn’t say (nor does the book) that the “Unified Kingdom” existed. Just that there was some sort of unified Kingdom. Big difference. For example (for one quote) “The relative uniformity of the ceramic repertoires of the Iron IIA period can best be explained by the increase of intersite contacts effected by a centralized government”. That just says that for a while, a good portion of that area was under a centralized Gov’t. That is way different from saying the Unified Kingdom with it’s legendary borders under Solomon was a fact. Showing that for two generations there was one Isreal/Judah is different that saying that the very widespread borders attributed to the “Unified Kingdom” once existed under one Monarch.
You of course know that “The Bible Unearthed” is very controversial and hotly contested. “The Oxford History of the Biblical World” is neither.

2001 edition. Pretty recent.

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The Bible Unearthed is not controversial among archaeologists or historians but only with religious conservatives. The book is only a popular discourse on what Israeli archaeologists have known for years.
There was never a time that the Northern and Southern Kingdoms were unified as a single monarchy. Part of the evidence that mitigates against a Davidic Kingdom is that during the alleged time of David, the Northern Kingdom was far more politically and economically powerful than the Southern Kingdom. It was also more populous. The regions were also distinctly culturally discrete.

If Jerusalem was the center of the Kingdom then why was it a primative vilage on a hilltop while David and Solomon were supposedly at the height of their power? Why is there no Jedean cultural influence in the North? Why is it that was no importation of goods or resources from the North to the South. Why was the North so much better off than Jerusalem? Why is there no evidence in the North of Yahwistic religion or monotheism until post-exillic times?

Why has there never been found any confirmation of David (even the Tel Dan inscription refers at best to a “House of David” and it’s a hundred years after the traditional dates for the king) or Solomon, of the first Temple or any of Solomon supposedly great infrastructure?

If you had never read the Bible and were just looking at the archaeology, you would never even suspect a unified Kingdom. It’s clearly two discrete regions developing independently, with the northern region being more powerful than Judah during the peak of Judah’s alleged dominance over Palestine.
What is the evidence FOR a unified Kingdom other than the Bible?

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Agreed, but I think you need to add the footnote that “history” as we think of it is a very late development. For instance, we say that Thucydides wrote “history,” but in fact he wrote a series of stories about kings and battles. That’s what “history” was.

At one time, the Iliad of Homer was considered to be entirely fiction. We now know that there was a Troy, and that some sort of Trojan War was (likely) factual, despite the obvious fiction/myth in the Iliad. Thus, we need to be careful with biblical stories, that we not reject too quickly merely from absence of evidence.

On the OP, we can be reasonably certian that the series of ten plagues as narrated in the bible cannot be an accurate, literal history. But don’t leap from there to reject the basic story. It is not at all unlikely that some sort of volcanic action (say) that polluted the Nile would cause frogs to leave the water, cause fish to die, the dead fish might attract flies and cause disease. I’m not trying to argue one way or the other, I’m just noting that it can be awkward to draw conclusions from an absence of evidence (to date.)

We also have logic. Every other mythology we have uncovered celebrates the glorious nobility of that people. Israelite mythology stresses their origin as a slave people. It is hard to imagine that such a mythology was invented out of whole cloth.

Finally, do note that the biblical stories cover a large period of time – even if we ignore everything prior to the Exodus, we’re talking about (roughly) 1250 BC to 500 BC. The United States are only 200 years old, and there’s lots of documentation of most events, but even then we have serious disputes about what happened and what didn’t.

Judea was occupied, conquered, buildings destroyed, cities rebuilt, many times over the centuries. That makes it somewhat different from Egypt, where a pyramid might have been looted, but wasn’t torn down to make way for a new temple. We thus have a fairly strong archaeological record for Egypt, but not so for Judea. Further, the Egyptians entombed their kings with great riches and art and carvings, since the Pharoahs were god-like. The Israelite religion allowed no such thing – the most important building (according to the biblical text) was the Temple, and there were no carvings or statues of God. So, again, it is not surprising that the archaeological record is weak.

Don’t get me wrong. I agree, that early archaeology in the area was trying to prove the biblical stories, and that was wrong-headed. However, there’s a strong trend nowadays for archaeologists to argue that the bible is only fictional with no facts underneath (thus, denying the united kingdom, denying a first temple, etc), and that seems to me to be equally wrong-headed.

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  1. Even Amazon’s product description calls the book controversial. " In this iconoclastic and provocative work, leading scholars Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman draw on recent archaeological research to present a dramatically revised portrait of ancient Israel and its neighbors. …

Challenging the fundamentalist readings of the scriptures and marshaling the latest archaeological evidence to support its new vision of ancient Israel, The Bible Unearthed offers a fascinating and controversial perspective on when and why the Bible was written and why it possesses such great spiritual and emotional power today." Again- hardly “known for years”- at best; "hotly debated fo"r years.

  1. Again, you give opinion as fact. One thing you get wrong is that “the regions were culterally discrete”- archaeological evidence shows elsewise. “Tenth century ceramic vessels exhibit considerable homogenity thoughout the land. In contrast to thepreceding period, with it’s distinct local pottery traditions, and also the succeeding period, in which pottery forms and wares divulge into northern and southrn groups, the ceramic assemblages of the early monarchic period show many similar features.” There’s more “Burial practices reveal another trend toward homogenity”. So do architectural remains; “A striking uniformity in public architecture appears at Gezer, Megiddo and Hazor in the early monarchy”. The book goes on for several pages of solid concrete evidence of some sort of centralized government. So- there was much cross cultural infuence and trading.

  2. There is certainly no evidence that Jerusalem was “a primative vilage on a hilltop”. It is true there is little that remains of that period. But for very good reasons- that period was extremely short, and Jerusalem has been rebuilt, re-built, razed, burnt, conquered, and retaken over and over. And, of course- digging is not allowed in most of the best sites. However, if you get out of the mindset that we need to find something there there is plenty of evidence outside the city which shows it was a city of some note - “The arrangement of (eastern hill) sites on the tenth century landscape points to a center- Jerusalem- outside the region”.

As C K Dexter Haven pointed out below- the whole area has problems in archaeology. It’s not that there isn’t much evidence- there’s too much evidence, and it is badly mixed and corrupted by conquest and later rebuliding. This is likely the most fought over real estate in the entire world you know. There is hardly any good evidence of the other non Jewish civilizations either. The early Isreali’s also weren’t into erecting monuments & steles, and they didn’t use coins with the heads of their Kings on them. Both of which handicaps Biblical archaeology. And again- at best- the Unified Kingdom lasted a mere 3 generations. In the span of History in that area, that is hardly a blip.

Now, I don’t want to give the impression that I believe in “The Unified Kingdom” as used to be held dear- there was likely no Utopian ideal of a Jewish Empire that straddled the area and had reach into Africa and Europe. That bears the same relation to History as Camelot does. But saying that one leader breifly unified the central area into one Kingdom isn’t much of a stretch, and it is supported by the archaeological evidence.

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This is getting into GD territory and the OP has already been addressed.

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You, sir… are completely correct in that. :smiley:

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Well, I’ve lost the URL, but I did a search and found a very interesting (and rather long) article that stated that the archaeological evidence did support an Israelite conquest of Canaan, in the 13th century BC.

Here’s the hitch, though. The conquest wasn’t of the cities, it was of the semi-nomadic pastoral tribes in the area. Basically, a coalition of twelve ethnically related tribes of herder-gatherers either killed off, drove out, or absorbed (or some combination of the three) the local herder-gatherers. The cities that were conquered were either abandoned or largely depopulated, but were still important because they were located near major water sources-- Jericho was located near a natural spring, and Ai had a system of cisterns that were still intact even though the city itself was a ruin. The Israelites then settled in among the Canaanite cities and carried on extensive trade with the urban dwellers, much as the tribes they had displaced had done before their arrival.

It is doubtful that they had a major empire, but I think it quite plausible that as the population increased to the point that the local pasture-land could no longer support their herds and flocks, significant numbers of Israelites moved out of the area and took control of the grazing lands in a fairly wide area, having “reach into Africa and Europe” as Dr. Deth put it.

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There was no distinct cultural group of “Israelites” in the 13th century BCE.

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Well, if you want to quibble over terminology, that’s certainly true.

I printed out the article and lost it amid the clutter in my room, so I’ll have to dig it up and provide a link, but it presented what I thought was some pretty strong evidence identifying the Hibarau or Apiru with the Hebrews, who we now know as the Israelites.
I’m going to go to bed now. I’ve already called off sick for tomorrow (drat this virus thing), so I’ll dig up the article in the morning and post a link.

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The Apiru/Habiru were not an ethnic group. That was a term which designated a socio-economic status. It was used to denote any number of landless people who lived on the fringes of cities. They had a rough and rowdy reputation and the term might be roughly analogous to “outlaws” in the Robin Hood sense. It was once thought that the Habiru might have an etymological relationship to “Hebrew” but that has now been disproved.