Ridley Scott has done a fairly good job with the biblical interpretation of The Exodus. The effects that have been put in the movie appear heavenly from the look of the trailers released so far. Engaging Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities, Exodus remains a story that can be told again and again. The story has been told since a thousand years by the camp fires all over the world. There is hardly any jew or christian who has not heard about the feat of Moses while growing up. The Pharaoh, Ten Plagues of Egypt, Ten Commandments, and The Red Sea parting, all form basis of Exodus.
Belief is unquestionable and believers believe in miracles, there are events in the Exodus which are pure and sheer miracles. Scientists, researchers and archaeologists have tried to find truths about these and most of them have come to the conclusion that Exodus is a myth; it never happened. But does it make sense? Can we simply not believe in something that we cannot explain or not find proofs for?
I will leave the belief part to your discretion as far as The Exodus is concerned. Exodus of Israelis from Pharaoh captivity under the leadership of Moses has formed the basis of many great revolutions across the globe. It forms an inspirational tale for the oppressed all over the world to throw away dictatorship and oppression.
The absence of evidence is Evidence of Absence and that goes very fine for people like me. I know this truth is hard to gulp down the throat as it has biblical relevance.
There is n evidence that the events described in Exodus ever happened. The primary evidence that it didn’t happen is the fact that there is no evidence that ANY of the events associated with Exodus happened.
We do not find proof of any of these events related to Exodus outside of Bible. I will elaborate the points that prove all the events to be impossible even with the help of an omnipotent God.
1)No written evidence of existence of Hebrews in Egypt.
Exodus (12:40) says that Israelites lived in Egypt for 430 years, and yet there is no archaeological or literary evidence in the history of existence of Egypt about the community. Adding to it, there is no mention of Jews or TEN PLAGUES in extensive history of Egypt.
The Egyptian culture was a rich culture when it came to literature, they practiced detailed art that shows various events of Egyptian life so we cannot just account for them to miss an event of the scale of Exodus.
The archaeologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman have come to conclusion,
“We have no clue, not even a single word, about the early Israelites in Egypt: neither in monumental inscriptions on the walls of temples, nor in tomb inscriptions, nor in papyri. Israel is absent-as a possible foe of Egypt, as a friend or as an enslaved nation”!
At best archaeologists, well most of them have come to the conclusion that Exodus occurred in few families and their private story was expanded to fit the needs of theological ideology.
2)40 Year journey in desert and no one knows about it?
The archaeologists in olden times took bible in hand and spade in other, extensive research couldn’t get them to anything that can be considered as proof for existence of
Jewish community. Modern archaeologists however have found no evidence that Sinai desert ever hosted, 1.5 million people.
Surely more than 1.5 million people wandering around for 40 years would have left some traces(pottery, bones,fecal matter, wagon parts) for archaeologists to find, yet not a single bone has been found, no pottery, nothing at all.
3) Egypt’s 1/3rd population is lost and there is no evidence of that?
According to bible exodus consisted of 603,550 men, not counting women and children. If it is accepted that Israelites were slaves, then they obviously formed an important part of Egypt’s economy at that time. How is it then that Egypt’s economy remained unaffected with sudden loss of 1.5million people.
Take a broader example to understand this, suppose in India 100 million workers disappeared tomorrow, and our 25% of population died by midnight due to death of the first born and our entire remaining army drowned in sea, wouldn’t it affect our economy in a way that would reduce us to third world?
We do not have any proof of Egypt facing any such debacle of economy in its entire history. Egypt was weakened by the attacks by water people as they were called but never due to intrinsic factors like exodus.
4)There is no evidence of 1.5million people arriving at “Promised Land”, Canaan.
The archaeology of present day Palestine has equally failed to substantiate the bible’s account of the invasion of Cannan by the Israelites arriving from Egypt some 40 years later of 31 cities supposedly conquered by Joshua.
5)Consider Logistics
Communication
1.5 million people walking in the rows of 10 with three feet between the rows would form a kine 113miles long. The children of Israel were same in number as the American city of Philadelphia. How did Moses communicate with all “the children of Israel”?
Clothes
On the very same night that marked the anniversary of 430 years, all of israelites, 1.5 million of them left Egypt. All of them. They did not have much time to pack. They left in just one night, how did the word get around all? How did they pack? So for 40 years, these people go through the desert with the only clothes that they brought with them on that departure eve.
Water
God provided food in the form of “Manna” to the children of Israel, but what about water? Seriously what was the source of the water that maintained a city the size of Philadelphia and their livestock for a period of 40 years? How was it distributed?
Sanitation
The excrement from 1.5million humans would have produced a monumental volume of excrement every day and its associated health problems. Seriously, how did the children of Israel deal with the huge sanitation problems?
The golden calf
Where did the gold come from to make a golden calf?
Age of Moses
The age and genealogy of Moses indicates that Moses was in Egypt for 300 years and bible states that he was 80 when he left.
Parting of red sea.
To start with, Red sea is not even the place of the exodus if it ever happened, we just got lost in translation. The actual translation was sea of reeds which is a lake. The red sea parting remains unexplained to science till this date. You cannot simply account for east wind to create a path in sea. Scientists have stated theories about mega tsunami, lava creating the path but none of them actually stands the truth. There is no evidence in sea if we account for Exodus.
Explain Plagues
Science has in its desperation to save Bible’s notion tried to prove some of the plagues inflicted by the God of Jews over Egyptians. Science can account for explanation of blood red water, but not blood as water, science has explained how it formed a chain from the plague of frogs to Boils but the darkness plague remains unexplained. If we account a huge sandstorm to cover skies of Egypt and hide sun, then the only unexplained plague would be “The death of the first born”. Science has failed to explain how only the first born can die and how blood of lamb protected the first born of israelites.
5)God’s Broken Promise
God promised that he would return His people..
“And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the mortise, and the Perrizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.” Exodus 3:8
But only two of those to whom God made the promise actually made it to the land flowing with milk and honey. God compelled them to roam the deserts instead for 40 years, until all of them except two perished. Only Joshua and Caleb entered the promised land. Even Moses had to die in sight of it.
The Truth
Canaanites went to Egypt for a variety of reasons. They were generally assimilated- after a generation or two they became Egyptians. There is almost no evidence that these people left. But there are one or two Egyptian documents that record the flight of a handful of people who had been brought to Egypt for one reason or other and who didn’t want to stay there. Some Egyptians originally from Canaan, left Egypt to return home. That’s your Exodus.
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