I believe in treating the subject of history as it should be treated, even if it is the history of the Bible. One needn’t be a religionist to participate in this thread, must one?
See Sage Rat and Malthus’ posts? That’s treating the subject as it should. See your post? That’s someone yelling “You don’t fool me, bible!” I will now discontinue my participation in this thread.
On behalf of historical accuracy and the scientific method? Guilty as charged.
True.
If you actually had something useful to contribute?* Yeah, that would be good.*
Too early for the Hyksos to be Isrealites.
No one is entirely sure who the Hyksos were, but they worshiped Baal, who became conflated with the Egyptian god Set. Set (or Seth) is one of the oldest Egyptian gods and officially a Big Deal, but the Egyptians were famously syncretist.
The story in Exodus is that the Isrealites worshiped Yahweh long before they ended up in Egypt. OTOH, the Hyksos worshiped Baal before they got to Egypt.
The Hyksos period, from about 1800bc to 1550 bc, runs from the end of the Middle Kingdom through Second Intermediate Era and ends with the establishment of the New Kingdom by the fabled 18th Dynasty pharaoh, Ahmose. (Note: I’m skipping the whole “Yahweh was Yah, the Egyptian Moon God” argument. It’s interesting but complicated and I have shit to do.)
So. In order for the Hyksos to be Isrealite Yahweh worshipers, you have to posit that Abraham and Joseph and the all rest were all Yahweh worshipers before 1800bc, because that’s when the Hyksos entered the historical record.
I don’t believe that there’s any archaeological evidence for the Isrealite tribes that far back. Also, let’s take a minute to recall that there is fuck-all evidence in the Egypt record about the presence, let alone, the Exodus, of a large group of Isrealites.
There’s the Merneptah Stele, dating from about 1200 BC.
And the ancient Egyptians were known to raid/conquer that area and come back with slaves- for centuries before that. Very common in the ancient world.
Not replying to your post, but there’s really a issue here of not wanting to believe a possible historical element- just because it comes from Judaeo-Christian writings or biblical history. People have no problem accepting Egyptian history built upon Egyptian religious writing or Greek History from Greek religious writings and so forth.
But it seems a product of “I am more Atheist that you!” to staunchly attack *anything that may be biblical history.
Professional Archaeologists dont do this- mind you, yes, they take it all with a large helping *of salt- but they have no problem using ancient religious texts to find out where to dig and how to interpret those digs.
By an large, more or more- instead of modern Archaeology and digs disproving the Bible- they are confirming it- well, at least “based on a true story part”.
We have only to look at our own Geo. Washington to see how quickly a real historical person gets mythologized.
A very good analogy! And (well assuming that “A Beautiful Mind” is a film that generations beyond us will want to see, though I guess it did win an Academy Award for Best Picture?) consider people born in 2000 watching the movie when they reach their 20s. Their parents/elders/research may tell them there was a ton of controversy at the time the movie was released about how Nash’s life was whitewashed for the purposes of the film and it was overly dramatized, and they may be somewhat aware of that, but it won’t be at some remove. And then those folks’s kids watch the film, that generation may briefly mention some controversy over it not being exact but more dramatized and that’ll register even less than it did with their parents. As you go onward the idea that Nash’s life was overly dramatized may get dropped for the new narrative that the movie was more or less historical.
I can see a similar result for Old Testament writings, where the actual actions behind the dramatized telling of the story get more and more forgotten as generations hear the story.
I do not doubt that stories were conflated. At the same time, I believe that most scholars locate the the origins of Israel to early Iron I. (See, for example, “Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance” by Avraham Faust.)
Since I am not a “religionist,” I certainly hope not.
Heh, judging purely by the posts - it looks like no-one so far participating is a “religionist”.
Only us boring historical/archaeological hobbyists here … 
But that is not at all what Friedman said. Nor is what Jewish tradition maintains. Rather, He says:
Granted, he erred in the case of Hur, but, if Hur’s mother was in fact Miriam, it is a very minor oversight. The distribution of Egyptian names remains worthy of note.
Well… I am hides
Hence the dimissive acronym: HAH!
My post was talking about the ancestors of the Jews, not about the path of Yahweh worship.
Based on both the archaeological record and the Bible, there’s no reason to believe that the Jews worshiped Yahweh in majority until sometime after 800 BC and they weren’t in majority monotheistic until sometime after 600 BC.
The god, Yahweh, was like Amurru, Chemosh, and Moloch, another Baal-like god that (most likely) a group of Canaanites from the region around the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba worshiped as the one most associated with their tribe, while otherwise still believing in the rest of the Canaanite pantheon. Consequently, the other tribe’s Baal equivalents had to be demonized in order for Yahweh to become dominant.
Abraham and Mose’s “God” would have been Amurru, and most likely he was still subordinate to El at that point in time. And, of course, Amurru is just a variant of Baal.
Or as the Bible says, ‘God spoke to Moses, and said to him, “I am Yahweh; and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty; but by my name Yahweh I was not known to them.”’
… or that they did not, particularly in the South.
References to the extent of henotheism or monolatry after the fall of the House of Omri without taking into account significant and forced transmigrations managed by the Assyrians can be misleading at best. At the same time, the Tanakh as we have it is a product of Judah and no doubt reflects their interest.
Therefore? Again, I have no doubt but that we are dealing in part with a biased and self-serving history.
Garbage, discarded pottery, etc… Don’t forget, they are supposed to have spent quite a while at one site (Kadesh Barnea). Nothing’s been found.
I’m not saying no smaller event that inspired the Exodus tale could have happened, but the Exodus, as depicted in the book of Exodus, did not happen.
Therefore, saying that the Exodus is unrelated to the Hyksos, because the Hyksos didn’t worship Yahweh is irrelevant. You might as well complain that Santa Claus isn’t related to Saint Nicholas because Christmas is a pagan Winter festival. Two truthful things may beggar belief in conjunction, but if the conjunction is true regardless, then so be it.
Please don’t distort what I’ve said.
? My original post was a response to Merneith. You questioned what my point was. I summarized what my point was. I didn’t imply anything about your point since I’m not sure what point you want to make. As said, I was responding to Merneith.