Passover Mystery

No. It is an error to confuse speculation with 'information'.

Pedantic rubbish. Cite the evidence for "Bedouin tribes of Hebrews invading Canaan".

You may pretend to humility all you wish. The question remains: do you or do you not have evidence for "Bedouin tribes of Hebrews invading Canaan"?

Brian, I just finished reading Dever's new book and was pleasantly surprised. It is far less a tirade against the 'minimalists' and more a reasoned (and, I believe, fairly effective) polemic against Finklestein's resedentarization hypothesis. You might consider adding it to your library.Now, back to the fray ...

I enjoyed it. Just be advised that it is somewhat polemical in nature. You might benefit from reading Finkelstein first if you haven't already done so. BTW, Archaeology and the Bible by John C.H. Laughlin is also worth owning. What I find most instructive is the degree of scholarly consensus among Syro-Palestinian Archaeologists, and that consensus dismisses the Exodus/Covenant/Conquest narrative as fictive.

How kind of you to offer yet another example of cherry-picking fringe speculation to match your presupposition. The reference is entitled 'An Anthropologist Looks at the Judeo-Christian Scripture', from 'Crapo's World'. After reading this silliness, it remains unclear whether the Anthropologist is this Crapo, or whether it refers to the sole reference, i.e., Let's give Abshalom the benefit of the doubt and focus on Redford, whose scholarship is clearly worthy of respect. Let's also assume that Abshalom has never taken the time to actually read Redford's comments on the Exodus - that might require far too much intellectual effort and honesty. Luckily, I have a copy on hand. Allow me to quote:

quote:

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The event is suppose to take place in Egypt, yet Egyptian sources know it not. On the morrow of the Exodus Israel numbered approximately 2.5 million (extrapolated from Num. 1:46); yet the entire population of Egypt at that time was only 3 to 4.5 million! The effct on Egypt must have been cataclysmic -- loss of a servile population, pillaging of gold and silver (Exod. 3:21-22, 12:31-36), destruction of an army -- yet at no point in the history of the country during the New Kingdom is there the slightest hint of the traumatic impact such an event would have on economics or society.

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[and later ...]

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... we can now genuinely speak of unanimity of the evidence. Whoever supplied the geographic information that now adorns the story had no information earlier than the Saite period (seventh to sixth centuries B.C.). The eastern Delta and Sinai he describes are those of the 26th Dynasty kings and the early Persian overloards: his toponyms reflect the renewed interest in the eastern frontier evidence for this period by fort building and canalization. He knows of "Goshen" of the Qedarite Arabs, and a legendary "Land of Ramessses." He cannot locate the Egyptian court to anything but the largest and most famous city in his own day in the northeastern Delta, namely Tanis, the royal residence from about 1075 to 725 B.C., ...

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-- Egypt, Cannan, and Israel in Ancient Times, by Donald B. Redford

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[This message has been edited by ConsequentAtheist, 01-12-2004]

That's a bit childish. So now you've managed to read the comments and evade/ignore the arguments twice in succession. Truthfully, there was no intent to challenge that for which I've seen no evidence. I simply find it disingenuous that you would dismiss Dr. Redford's position while referencing an article relying solely of Dr. Redford. Also a bit childish ... and ignorant, given that any representation could only be a transliteration. In this case, the text is correctly quoted; see Redford, page 409. See also, for example:

• Ramesses I
  
• Ramesses the Great
  
• Ramesses II

The quote appears fine. Enjoy the book.

Perhaps you'll forgive a blatant tease aimed at tempting you to order the Dever book as well ...

quote:

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For these reasons, even some raher radical scholars would take seriously the notion that some of these "Shasu of Yhw" were among the tribal peoples who became early Israel, and that they may indeed have been guided through the desert by a charismatic, shiekh-like leader with the Egyptian name of "Moses". In folk religion these pre-Israelite traditions, partly mythological, may have survived well into the late Monarchy. They could then have been incorporated into a national epic that crystallized as the old agrarian ideal was giving way to urbanization, national security, and religious conformity. As Baruch Halpern has so elequently put it, this reform "successfully defined traditional as un-Israelite, as pagan, as inferior, a position that Western literary religions have continued to maintain ever since" (1991:91).

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- see Dever (pg 237)

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As always, happy reading!

Do I detect facetiousness? What 'folk-Moses theory' are you attributing to Dever? Thanks. I enjoyed the book.By the way, why not start a thread on the Shasu?

But how is a Dever reference to what "some rather radical scholars" might belief equivalent to a Dever statement of belief, i.e., where and when did it become "his folk-Moses theory" to defend? Do you mean 'theory' as in testable (and, thereby falsifiable) explanation, or 'theory' as in wild-ass speculation reminiscent of bad science fiction? I just hope that you don't resurrect Moses as some Pharoah or space alien. It's been done to death. That would be nice. I may have a Jerusalem Bar Mitvah to attend in 18 months. Unfortunately, ...

Sure. Read The Pentateuch: An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible by Joseph Blenkinsopp.