There’s a part of the OP that hasn’t really been brought up in depth-The Quran. Are there any falsifiable claims that don’t check out there?
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Ok, a mod is saying it. Drop the ad hominems and personal attacks. They don’t belong in Great Debates. Any further such will get you a warning.
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That is the older theory, yes. But the debates between the two I’ve read, those items are said to have originated in Egypt, itself, as a refutation. The problem is that the dates of Egyptian adoption are murky (and, in fact, some propose that it happened a couple of different times in Egypt).
One of the big problems with the Indo-Aryan hypothesis is that to conquer Egypt’s elite, they would have had to have some sort of support from a “home land”. The way in which the Egyptian crown fell into foreign hands (primarily sans bloodshed) speaks of infiltration, which is far more likely from a culture that was right next door than to someone across the sea.
The migration patterns we’ve been able to extrapolate/reconstruct have of the Indo-Aryans started south of the Caucasus Mountains in eastern Turkey/Anatolia and then migrating north along the east border of the Caspian Sea and then moving into Europe. There isn’t a record of them migrating through the Levant. This migration pattern puts them in Greece as the closest point to Egypt in their migrations, and while it’s very possible that they had enough of a naval fleet to grant them that sort of infiltrative influence in Egypt, there isn’t yet a record of ship building in Greece on that sort of “merchant level” scale in that time period.
I think MrDibble was referring to the Mitanni.
And I counter with the eruption of Vesuvius. Everyone knows what is happening in a small town. At the very least the James set of Christians, in Jerusalem, would have broadcast such an event to recruit. The Resurrection itself only supposedly got experienced by a small number of people, the zombies would have been a lot more evident. And tied to the event by the James Gang.
I totally agree that your average everyday stuff gets lost. But as I tried to imply with my Rocky & Bullwinkle bit, the dead rising is not average and ordinary. So, the lack of a record is to some degree evidence that nothing extraordinary happened.
The fact that it wasn’t mentioned in historical records could possibly be excused. The fact that it wasn’t mentioned in any other book in the New Testament can’t.
Wow, that’s some funky comparison! 
A volcano exploding and burying many square miles of countryside under hot ash, killing literally thousands of people, is a lot more significant (and there is, naturally, a lot more physical evidence) than a few holy men rising from the grave, witnessed by “many people”.
Sure, it’s a miracle, but the evidence is that claims of miraculous events weren’t all that uncommon (Jesus & his gang were not even the only miracle-workers operating at the time). The result is just what you’d expect: its memorable, and saved in the writings of, to those who believe it is real and quickly forgotten by everyone else (except to refute them, or claim deamons diddit).
Richard Carrier Kooks » Internet Infidels
Point in this article is that such “miracles” were pretty common - and most people were pretty credulous. So claims of one more would by no means have stood out like the eruption of Vesuvius.
Try starting here (not the easiest source to read, but kinda interesting).
I think the dates are out of range. The Mitanni primarily dealt with Egypt during Dynasty 18, and the Hyksos were the invaders that 18’s drove out. Although, the mode of empire acquisition was similar (a group of foreigners took over another cultural land) but the Mitanni was right next door to the Indo-Aryan home lands, so they would have been able to sweep at least the foundations to power with their military.
Moving that military down the Mediterranean seaboard before the Mitanni even formed (the closest the Indo-Aryans came to dominating the area around the Levant) would have been difficult, to say the least. Where do your rations and supplies come from? Were they just a mobile army of 1,000 people preying on the weak towns until they decided to take Egypt?
And I’d like to point out that having that military in the first place is probably also unfeasible just because a military force walking into Egypt would likely have merited a battle, even if they came in right as there was disarray in the Pharoah’s station. The military wouldn’t have gone anywhere and they would have defended the state instead of waiting for an outcome. They would have had to be there or recognizable long enough prior to the Pharoah’s at the end of Dynasty 17 turmoil to not be considered an “outsider” with no claim to the throne.
I can’t agree. There are other examples of essentially homeless or migrant people conquering established states, especially in the Med region - look at the Sea Peoples - they may not have managed to conquer Egypt, but they established themselves in the Canaanite polities just fine. Or look at the Goth invasions - they were a nomadic people before sacking Rome. The alternative Hyksos hypothesis is very similar to the Gothic invasions - first serving as mercenaries, then conquering from within. Which is what you agree on, but there’s nothing there that says the mercenaries have to be immediate neighbours
And I’m sorry, but the notion that the Egyptians under the Hyksos or otherwise, independently evolved a horse culture that just happens to have all the elements of the IE cultural package, is a bit too co-incidental, don’t you think? Especially when there’s no Canaanite precedents for the cultural stream - you only need read the OT to see that the protoIsraelites and other Canaanites were totally NOT a horse culture.
I’m not completely discounting a Canaanite element to the Hyksos - to get to Egypt by horse, you pretty much have to pass through Canaan, and I’m sure there was assimilation along the way. But I think the notion that the Hyksos were a wholly Levantine, Semitic phenomenon is strongly belied by the IE cultural elements present.
I see the problem - I’m not postulating an epic invasion by Hyksos, I’m suggesting gradual infiltration and usurpation by Hyksos who the Egyptians initially wanted there .
No, I think the Mitanni were a similar phenomenon but not the same group - the timelines don’t overlap sufficiently.
Exodus recounts some real ugliness in Egypt – plagues and pestilence of a pretty high order, you would think there would be a historical record of that. Egyptians were big on the long-lasting grafitti.
My apologies if this has already been pointed out, and also, if it has not been, for pointing it out so late in the thread, but most of the factual or apparently factual claims made in the “holy books” are historical claims. History is not a natural science, and very few if any historical claims are open to being falsified in the sort of rigorous way that (falsificationist philosophers of science maintain that) claims in the natural sciences are. Falsificationism is supposed to provide a methodology for the natural sciences, and a criterion for distinguishing genuine natural sciences, and genuinely scientific theories, from imposters (such as astrology or psychoanalysis). If it works at all (which is dubious) its domain does not extend to humanistic fields of enquiry such as history. History is simply not in the business of discovering general, universally applicable laws or theories, which are the sorts of things that (so falsificationists maintain) science is principally concerned to discover, and that (so they again maintain) must be in-principle falsifiable if they are to accepted as genuinely scientific.
Although it is perfectly legitimate to ask whether apparently historical claims in the “holy books” are are true or not - i.e., whether they are consistent with what historical scholarship otherwise tells us (I think the answer is bound to be that some are, to some extent, and some are not) - it is really not appropriate or useful to ask whether or not these claims are falsifiable. In general, they will not be falsifiable in the relevant sense, even when we have good reason to think that they are actually false, but the same could be said not just about the “holy books” but about any work of history. Falsifiabilty is just not a relevant criterion of epistemological virtue within the historiographical domain.
I’d argue that most everything pre…let’s be charitable and say pre-Davidic Kingdom… are more archaeological claims than historical. And archaeology is a science. Things like the timings of city strata, or the prescence or otherwise of entire peoples in a region very much fall into the natural science/falsificationist arena.
The Sea Peoples had a home backing. They attacked Egypt on four to six different occasions. If they were essentially Sea Hobos, they wouldn’t have been able to rearm and re-group and go back. They definitely had a home port that they could go to to get new ships and crew. I think it’s a common misconception that they were waifs cast to the sea. I think it’s more likely that they were part of an empire (that we know almost nothing about) that was casting it’s power to conquer and then colonize. The colonies became independent later on.
Look at the Philistines, they came, they conquered a five city area in the Levant (displacing the Israel tribe/nation of Dan) and didn’t start absorbing the local culture for a more than (~100 years). Their architecture stays distinctly aegean for a couple of strata levels in the excavations of their cities.
My view is with the Semitic population in the Delta being quite high and small kingdoms developing along the Delta that were unchallenged because of throne issues in Egypt, someone who was a Delta king could have claimed the Pharoah-ship if he formed his kingship at the start of the Pharotic turmoil (before which he would have been put down with a military response) and came into power by political manipulations or as an accepted “Hey, he’s a king!”
An Indo-Aryan explanation is harder to say. A merchant force wouldn’t have been big enough. A Mercenary force wouldn’t have been bloodless. It’s certainly still possible, but I don’t think the dominos line up quite right.
I wish there were more archaeological evidence. It would make our suppositions easier. 
I wonder why a Heavenly Father would tell some of his children to go into a city,and kill all the people so the chosen could have the land.
The current view is that they were the Greeks/Myceneans, plus coastal anatolians.
From the top of my head; Ekwesh would be Acheans , the Denyen would be the Danaoi. The Peleset (or Palestinians) might be from the Pelasgian part of Crete, the Lukka are probably Lykians.
It is not clear whether the Sherden and Sheklesh gave their names to Sardinia and Sicilia or that they came from there.
I too am doubtful of a Sea-Hobo culture. Much more likely they were just agressive pirates/raiders and seekers of fortune, as the Illiad show the Acheans to be.
The Acheans were known as Ahiyawa to the Hittites, who were not sure the leader could be classed as a ‘Great King’. So we’re not looking at a real ‘empire’, more of a confederation, spreading by conquest, in which the Achean king just held most sway.
The assumption here is that it was the same groups attacking each time, rather than successive pulses of invaders displaced from the Mycenaean heartland. (which, I think, is compounded, as is the case of the Hyksos, by the Egyptians using generic names for foreign groups - Hyksos as a name continues in use into the Hellenic period)
It would if the mercenaries had largely replaced native troops in positions of critical importance (Think Varangian Guard). Who would fight them if they have displaced the head (until native resistance built up - and the impetus seems to have come from Upper Egypt, not internal to the Delta, anyway)
That’s kind of how I feel about a pure Canaanite origin - the cultural “feel” just isn’t right.
I’m reasonably sure the truth is somewhere in the middle - like I said, I’m not advocating a one-time, purely IE invasion. I’m a demic diffusionist at heart.
Agreed 
The Skeptical Review comments on the Fall of Jerichoand the archaeological evidence.
ETA: Warning: long