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Pretty much the whole thing is folklore. Yes, some real people and places are mentioned, but that doesn't mean that the described events actually happened or that all of the characters were real people.
The movie Ghostbusters takes place in the city, county, and state of New York, but that doesn't mean the events really happened.
Most fictional stories are set in real locations. How some adults have yet to figure this out is beyond me. It's like saying, "The North Pole is a real place, so Santa must be a real person."
A real location does not mean the story is real. It can be fiction. But perhaps if people only read mainly one book in their lives, such as the Bible, they might not be aware of that fact.
With all due respect to the views of the biblical fundamentalists, the first seven book of the Old Testament, the foundational narratives, were written about 700 BC and are folklore, not history. The Hebrews were nomadic tribes in Palestine, never Egypt.
“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. They argue that crucial evidence (or a telling lack of evidence) at digs in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon suggests that many of the most famous stories in the Bible—the wanderings of the patriarchs, the Exodus from Egypt, Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, and David and Solomon’s vast empire—reflect the world of the later authors rather than actual historical facts”
“As noted by a reviewer on Salon.com the approach and conclusions of The Bible Unearthed are not particularly new. Ze'ev Herzog, professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, wrote a cover story for Haaretz in 1999 in which he reached similar conclusions following the same methodology; Herzog noted also that some of these findings have been accepted by the majority of biblical scholars and archaeologists for years and even decades, even though they have only recently begun to make a dent in the awareness of the general public.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_Unearthed
The Exodus: Does archaeology have a say?
“The Exodus is so fundamental to us and our Jewish sources that it is embarrassing that there is no evidence outside of the Bible to support it.
For the account in the Torah is the basis of our people’s creation, it is the basis of our existence and it is the basis of our important Passover festival and the whole Haggada that we recite on the first evening of this festival of freedom. So that makes archaeologists reluctant to have to tell our brethren and ourselves that there is nothing in Egyptian records to support it. Nothing on the slavery of the Israelites, nothing on the plagues that persuaded Pharaoh to let them go, nothing on the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea, nothing.
Nothing at all. There are three Pharaohs who said they got rid of the hated foreigners, but nothing to say who the foreigners were, and no Pharaoh is named as having persecuted foreign slaves or suffered unspeakable plagues.”
With threads like this, we can go the other way and state the entire New Testament is a work of fiction too. Just because someone (or group of people) wrote a novel about a fictitious person doesn't make it real. It all comes down to faith.
Most fictional stories are set in real locations. How some adults have yet to figure this out is beyond me. It's like saying, "The North Pole is a real place, so Santa must be a real person."
The fallacy comes up so often that it's been given a name:
With threads like this, we can go the other way and state the entire New Testament is a work of fiction too. Just because someone (or group of people) wrote a novel about a fictitious person doesn't make it real. It all comes down to faith.
Excellent summation! And then the question becomes, "What is your basis for faith, the person or the message?"
Do you expect to find official court records from Egypt detailing the defeat of Pharaoh by the Hebrew God?
Of course not. It never happened.
What proof is there that it never happened? That is hardly an "of course not."
Let's say I'm Emperor Palpatine. I get defeated by some Jedi and one of my former apprentices, and thrown out of a starship. One, I'm probably dead, and there is no historical record. Two, assuming I survive, I'm only going to write about them if I survive and later completely trounce them. History is written by the winners. The losers do not tend to write history.
Second, people never write history that is "unrealistic" as in, if it defies the current worldview. For instance, this picture has a person who looks anachronistic.
We would never say that he is in fact a time traveler... Likewise, Jesus rising from the dead? Nope, not a real person, the dead stay dead, and don't have virgin births.
Do you honestly expect to find official court records from Egypt detailing the defeat of Pharoah by the Hebrew God?
RESPONSE:
There wouldn't be since the Hebrews never defeated the Egyptians, that's the point. They were not there to do so.
Are you seriously telling me that a people residing in Egypt for over 400 years rising to about 2,100,000 persons or a fourth of the Egyptian work force, would not leave any of their own records, and that the Egyptian could or would destroy such records of their own kept by about four times that number of persons? And there are no Hebrew grave markers, broken pottery, tools, artifacts, or anything?
Yet the Egyptians kept records on every other visiting and or conquering group such as the Hyksos
However, there is actually an Egyptian record (or stele) dating from abut 1200 BC which describes the Hebrews being in Canaan, never in Egypt.
Last edited by Aristotle's Child; 09-19-2015 at 02:07 PM..
Reason: typo
Sure scholars will ignore the archeology , as the Exodus from Egypt did happen and the mount Sinai is in Saudi Arabia and there are people who have visited the site which is closed by the government of Saudi Arabia as it is embarrassing for this government to have a Israelite temple ground on the land of Saudi Arabia ...... The Mount Sinai is actually Jebel el Lawz , and these people must have crossed the Red Sea to get there , and the people who live there call it Moses mountain and the there is 70 palms trees of oasis elim close on the way ..........See what do the scholars books say about this discovery , or just to reject it with no study for the scholars as it would confound the scholars to find the real thing .......
And yet modern archaeologists, especially fro Tel Aviv University, don't buy the legend.
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts[1]
is a 2001 book about the archaeology of Israel and its relationship to the origins of the Hebrew Bible. The authors are Israel Finkelstein, Professor of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, and Neil Asher Silberman, a contributing editor to Archaeology Magazine.
As noted by a reviewer on Salon.com[3] the approach and conclusions of The Bible Unearthed are not particularly new. Ze'ev Herzog, professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, wrote a cover story for Haaretz in 1999 in which he reached similar conclusions following the same methodology; Herzog noted also that some of these findings have been accepted by the majority of biblical scholars and archaeologists for years and even decades, even though they have only recently begun to make a dent in the awareness of the general public.[3]
Unless it never really happened. Thay's why Egypt has no records of the Hebrews ever having been there.
Like they do of the Hyksos
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