Ancient texts in discussions of science?

quote:

---

Regarding the flood, most cultures have some version of a flood in their legends, et al. This is likely what the ancient Egyptian Tempest Stele, for example was aluding to in some of it's statements which to many of us lend corroboration to the ancient Biblical account. See my Exodus debate with Brian for link to the T. Stele. If there was a flood the ancients were not too far removed from the event time wise.

---

The Tempest Stele is talking about a exceptionally bad storm and some serious flooding in the reign of Ahmose. It has nothing to do with the Noah's Flood story. It doesn't have anythign to do with the Exodus, either.

egyptian slavery was very complex, servents were most of the time slaves, but slaves sometimes were considered better off than freemen, the fact is the owner had the right to kill his slaves if they wanted to, but it wasn't common because a good slave is hard to come bythe author of that quote is wrong they were slaves, most if not all servents were slaves, some where indentured servents, which was pretty much slavery from Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Egypt if this was even true, which it has never been shown to be true

I was thinking of two other reasons. Firstly, the Egyptians stopped building pyramids a few hundred years before the Bible claims that the Israelites were in Egypt, and secondly, the Bible never claims they helped to build them.As far as living in Goshen is concerned, there isn't a single shred of archaeological evidence ot support that claim.Brian.

while we're fudging dates by a few hundred years here, maybe noah lived in the red-sea basin, which got flooded after moses crossed...

---

Closer to a thousand isn't it? And lived to the ripe old age of 950!There's too many problems fitting in genealogical information for this hypothesis.Perhaps if we said the authors of Genesis lived in the Red Sea basin after Moses crossed it could be possible. But, we would still have to accept a lot of mythology as being accurate.Brian.

(psst, i was joking)Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

*goes back to sleep*

Unfortunately the reality is even sillier.Buz's source claims that some of the Stele text is "identical" to parts of the Bible. It isn't true but Buz can't admit that his source is saying something that isn't true. So even though the guy is trying to claim that the Stele contains parts of the Exodus story, Buz goes looking elsewhere and picks on the Flood myth because it looks more like the storm than the supposedly "identical" Exodus.What makes it even funnier is that Buz is trying to defend a source that argues that Exodus is a distorted version of the real events.And funnier still is the fact that elsewhere the guy one-ups the Da Vinci code nonsense by not only claiming that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, but that they were brother and sister too !

Quite possible and very plausible. I would certainly grant that evidence is scant, but what purpose would it serve a nation to claim ignoble origins if they were going to lie? If such a story was a lie, what was hoped to be gained by telling it? If anyone was going to make up stories about their ancestors, why would they invent an embarrassing legend about themselves instead of these grand stories of heroism? At some point the Egyptians and Hebrews had to have crossed paths, otherwise, how would anyone have knowlege of certain details about Egypt at the time the Bible was first penned? Somebody would have to have had firsthand knowledge for all of these details to have been known. Aside from whether or not there is record of Hebrews living in Egypt is inconsequential when you consider that the archeological record of Egypt is incomplete altogether. There are many relics and artifacts reputed to be missing or destroyed because long periods of elapsed time. There are also internal problems for the overall cohesion of various dynasties. The Hebrews are not the only culture to have problems reconciling the Egyptian civilization with other concurrent civilizations. And this is no fault to archeologists. Egypt is just a very old, but massive civilization in human history.

---

"There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility." -Theodore Roosevelt

i'm not following the great debate, but i'm reasonably familiar with jacobovici's claim (same person? or just similar idea?) that the tempest stele reports the exodus from the egyptian perspective. clearly, it does not, and reading the translation of the stele demonstrates this quite clearly.was it you who provided the link to higgaion? christopher heard neatly dissects this point over there. yes, it's kind of silly when you can arbtirarily shift things around at will like that, with no regard to dates or even content (of either source). ironically, exodus may actually be a distorted cultural memory of the hyksos expulsion. since the hyksos were indeed semitic, and were chased back to a stronghold in canaan -- and the hebrews took much of their cultural traditions and stories from their neighbors and highly modified them -- there is indeed a chance that there was a real event behind the exodus.this is not to say that the text is accurate, but it's a foot in the door that people like bux look for. plausible, distorted history -> history -> accurate. when really the first one in no way leads to last.

---

The problem with saying that the Exodus is based on the Hyksos expulsion is that so much of it disagrees wth that. I can imagine it being one of the stories that contributed to Exodus but there has to be more to it than that. Literalists like Buz ought to reject the idea wholesale, yet Buz clings to it. Indeed he is attempting to use it to support Ron Wyatt's ideas which is daft because Wyatt insists that Moses is Tuthmoses II (who was supposedly forced into exile and returned).This version doesn't come from Jacobovici but from a guy called Ralph Ellis (who may well be the original source). This webste is devoted. Click on the "Books" link to see the sorts of claims he makes.

yes, they ought to, because at the heart of it is the basic idea that the bible is an inaccurate or distorted record. but a bad record of something is better a complete work of fiction, and they'll take what they can get.

---

It isn't scant, it is zero. Simple, it is what is known as the "Cinderella Theme". The underdog overcomes overwhelming odds to finally triump, it is a very comon theme in the Bible. Take the Joseph myth, he is sold by his brothers, ends up in prison in Egypt, yet was able to rise to second in command of the entire Egyptian Empire! Simple again, and there are many reasons, for example our God is more powerful that your god. Throughout the 3rd and 2nd millenium BCE, civilisations thought that if bad things were happening to them then they had upset their god(s), they thenhad to appease thei god(s) in order to regain favour and thus better times again. When things went welll, say in a battle, then it was god(s) who got the credit, and Israel is a great example of this. God frequently deserts Israel when they are not entriely loyal to Yahweh, so if they lose a battle then there must be a reaosn for it, they simply must have uspet Yahweh. Look at the story of Ai, when the Israelites failed to take Ai then they had to find a reason why God had allowed them to be defeated, they found the reason in Achan, and proceeded to slaughter him and his family, they attack Ai again and are victorious. These myths are examples to the Israelites that if they are loyal to God then they will have good times, if they stray then there are bad times. What better example of this is there than Yahweh defeating all the Egytpian gods and the most powerful man in their world at the time?The myth of Achan is exactly the same, if one Israelite is unfaithful to God then He will desert Israel. Israel was not the only nation to think this way, if you have time look at the Moabite Stone, in it the Moabites praise Chemosh for kicking Yahweh;s butt, because they believed the same as the Israelites that all victories come from God. I don't see what is embarrassing about it, many nations were enslaved, it was run of the mill stuff back then. Heck the Israelites themselves had slaves! And they do have grand stories of heroism, what about Joshua, or David? Ah, but when was the Bible first penned? The earliest we have are the DSS, which are dated to about 1200 years after the Bible claims there was an Exodus.But, it shouldnt be surprising to find some details about Egypt in the Bible since for many centuries Palestine was essentially a province of Egypt. The latest research leans heavily towards Israel emerging from within Canaan and not entering it from outside. So, if the Israelites arose from within Palestinian society then some tales of Egypt would be expected.Also, if Israel was in Egypt why are so many important details missing form the biblical account? Why on earth don't they mention the name of the pharaoh? Why do they have anachronisms in the account? Someone with first hand knowledge would have prepared a far more accurate account. However, many parts are no incomplete and the Hebrews are missing from those parts. Many of the tales have been shown to be inaccurate based on archaeological evidence. For example, there is simply not the room for 2-3 million Hebrews to have lived in Egypt, there was no Philistines in the Near East either when the Bible claims there were, there was no pharaoh called Rameses whenthe Bible claims Israel helped to build one of his cities, in fact, there was no such title as Pharaoh when Joseph was said to have helped one!There are a great many other examples that have falsified the Exodus, such as the lack of a settlement at Kadesh-Barnea, but we have covered all this before here. But you must have evidence of these to know this? Well, so it is claimed, although it is only fundy Christian 'archaeologists' that claim this. Got an example? Indeed, and much of that massive civilisation has been preserved, and a great deal of that evidence has falsified almost all of Genesis and Exodus.Brian.

Some passages in Exodus mention the Hebrews as living in Goshen but others describe them as living among Egyptian neighbors.. Edited by Archer Opterix, : HTML.

---

ArcherAll species are transitional.

Yes, there are two different Exodus accounts edited together in the Book of exodus as we have it. As well as these two different accounts, there is information from at least two other authors/schools blended together, well when I say blended there are some jagged edges.Brian.