I like new sources. Dr. Ashraf Ezzat, "Author and Filmmaker", gravatar.com/ashraf53, ashraf62.wordpress.com, imdb.com/name/nm5967076, Faculty of Medicine, Alexandria University, location "Land of Osiris": he has quite the intense stare. His links look 100% self-promoted, but that's no disqualifier. He writes:
Nothing in the ‘milieu of that story’ indicates that it happened in Egypt, except maybe the mistaken association between ‘Pharaoh’ and ‘King’ of Egypt, a false correlation that needs to be untangled and cleared out in the collective subconscious. Likewise, nothing in ancient Egyptian records or its oral tradition say or even allude to the fact that this tale of Moses happened in Egypt.
I was on the hop about the two meanings of Pharaoh, but otherwise I listed plenty counterexamples. Let's read further.
Pharaoh was never a title for Egypt’s king.
Seems contradicted from Thutmose III on, with the backdating or retconning to earlier kings. (Very interesting: "rabbi" has the same feature, it was not applied to many contemporaries until it entered vogue around 100 AD; so Jesus may have been the first person called "rabbi" (great one) in his lifetime, even though the Talmud retcons many leaders as "rabbis" before him.) If he gets too dogmatic it'll be so revisionist as to defeat his purpose.
Mainstream Egyptologists just went along with the Biblical narrative and absentmindedly designated Egypt’s Kings as Pharaohs.
Dismissive scapegoating. The Middle Kingdom blessing "May Pharaoh live, prosper, and be in health" repeated over the centuries, even if formally applied to a building, sounds just as anthropomorphic as anything in Genesis, and begins usage about the same time, the 20th century BC. Plus, the Bible correctly reflects that "Pharaoh" was not used with a name at this time, but later used with names like Hophra or Neco, precisely the shift seen in Egyptian sources, of the same dates. So I think the Egyptologists are following the Egyptian sources. So far I'm getting a bad vibe this is just althist without any meat, but let's stay open-minded ....
If we examined the Hebrew text the Bible (currently in our hands) used as a reference we will strangely not find Egypt mentioned in it as the site/land of the Exodus story.
Another incredibly sweeping claim that needs no debunking because it would be outrageous if taken literally ....
The third century BC ... is when Egypt was first hijacked and forcibly placed in the Hebrew Bible as the theater of the Israelite landmark stories.
So the LXX. But does he have an MT or Hebrew text that says differently? Because if not, the LXX is correct.
No one can revisit Egypt that too many times and never refers to one of its ancient icons; the Pyramids.
Purely rhetorical flourish to the argument from silence. Waiting patiently ....
All of their stories are devoid of any trace of Egyptian influence.
Waiting ....
Slavery was not a common practice in ancient Egypt in the first place. Unlike the pervasive culture of slavery in the Israelite stories, ancient Egypt never had a public market for trading slaves.
His evidence for "pervasive" is Joseph and Moses. Now, the KJV doesn't use the word "slave" here, which is pretty loaded with the changes in its meaning in 19th-century English, but speaks of "servant" (ebed), pretty broad. The same word is used of the court butler (the security chief), a high-standing official; it has no attribute of degradation (unlike the word paired with some of the service, "affliction"). Then it is used for all the Egyptians, the people as belonging to the court, the king. We might argue that King James was wrong and self-advancing to spin-doctor the Ten Commandments by making it "house of bondage" not "house of service", but that is not the fault of Hebrew. The fact that Potiphar was a servant who had his own servant, and the fact that the Israelites were servants just like the Egyptians were servants, don't speak of a pervasive atmosphere of even 200 years of continuous slavery (the actual affliction was only a brief time). Christians are wrong and self-advancing to get the slavery emphasis wrong, but for several reasons we are far removed from that cultural understanding so it's an understandable mistake.
Checking WP's extensive article, I find "the Berlin papyri show that by the time of the Second Intermediate Period, a slave could be owned by both an elite individual (like the king) and a community." Sounds like the Bible, and sounds very unlike Ezzat. Maybe he's fudging since slaves were generally not sold but arrived as prisoners of war or debtors or new births to a prior generation of servants. Yup, there it is, "Slave dealing in Ancient Egypt was done through private dealers and not through a public market." But also, "Many more slaves were also acquired via the Mediterranean slave market, where Egypt was the main purchaser of international slaves." So he's batting zero so far.
Everything about ancient Egyptian culture; its art, architecture, monuments, people, theology, mythology, and the pantheon of gods is uniquely strong and influential even to this very day. After such a long sojourn in the land of the Nile Valley, one would have expected to find some trace of Egyptian cultural influence in the Israelite history and narrative, but that was hardly the case.
Another argument from silence. Being nomadic foreigners, the Semites (Habiru) were notorious for not picking up culture from their surroundings. For art, they kept their own Semitic "TEY ware", which is easily distinguished from Egyptian pottery. Nomads didn't have architecture or monuments; "Hyksos" means "Shepherd", and Egypt despised that idea. Joseph married an Egyptian, and a mixed multitude of Egyptians accompanied Moses, but they were required to abandon their religion to remain in the community, and this was enforced stringently as common for desert life. Theology, mythology, and pantheon was, well, strong but so variable that many contrary things could be considered Egyptian religion; but the Exodus indicates that all traditional gods (Nile, frogs, oxen, the sun, the firstborn, etc.) were being demonstrably defeated by the one Semitic storm god, named Yahweh in the text (as he is named earlier in the Book of the Dead, I noted). So you didn't last long if you continued Egyptian religion, there was a communal push to reject all that, which overcame contrary views. Could we say a little bit of Egyptology still slipped in? Moses learned from Egyptian courts, and in that sense many laws do reflect Egyptian practice; e.g. in Egypt a slave could be given freedom for a justifiable grievance, as Moses agrees. But the whole point is that the Hyksos maintained separate cultural identity within Egypt (Yakbim never even used a cartouche), so the argument from silence is again unpersuasive.
Themes from Sumerian and Babylonian mythology like that of the flood, Adam and Eve, and the tree of knowledge can be traced in the Hebrew book.
Um, yeah, Abraham was from the Sumer area, so this is natural. Why would they add Egyptian creation legend when they had a perfectly good Hebrew one already?
And no, the argument that claims the Israelites refrained from being affected by pagan beliefs and culture can’t be considered valid, for all sorts of Sumerian, Assyrian, and Babylonian (pagan) cultural influences are jammed into their Torah.
That might be a testable hypothesis, but offhand I don't think Egyptian influence is zero and other influences "jammed". The idea that the Torah is influenced by culture that came after its closing date of 1499 has never borne itself out, though there have been imaginative attempts.
The not-so-infrequent comparison between King Akhenaten’s monotheism and that of the Israelites is also invalid
His reasons are again very ephemeral. Actually, Akhenaten was influenced by the Hyksos monotheism (which Hatshepsut went on record for abominating) and so I would hold contrarily that he had the derivative monotheism. If Aten is the universal god, he is one with Yahweh who is depicted as the universal god, and neither can be advantaged against the other.
And that's it! He goes right to the sales pitch. No honest exploration, just US dollars. Wow. There is a Kindle preview, which gives locations out of 509 as follows:
1 Cover 9 Title 32 Dedication 50 Bio 65 What Really Happened 86 Copyright 105 TOC 153 Intro 173 Ex. 11:1 198 Village of Mizraim 222 Arabian tribe 242 Faraon vs. Pr-aa 278 No Pharaoh (again) 260 Egyptology false 283 How could Egypt hit wrath? 300 Maat 311 Good/right, idolatry/tyranny 330 Seeming paradox 347 Egypt would've converted 364 1400-1200 382 Not New Kingdom, not Ramses II 401 Not Merneptah, not Thutmose III 421 Not Israelite pyramids 442 LXX; Egypt not Misr 471 I heard Maat 492 Pyramids damn sure included whenever Egypt visited
260: "Almost all of the academic work of Eyptologists carried out over the last two centuries or so, is simply based on a false premise."
Nope, Preston, I don't see myself buying it. I'll give you some leeway and concessions where I might agree, which I'll mention in the next paragraph. But what I see first is someone proud of Egypt and eager to excise a negative view of one Pharaoh from being overlaid on a giant history. Instead of facing facts he simply denies the whole deal. Now, at least he doesn't deny that Thutmose and all successive rulers were indeed Pr-aa, but he denies that "Pharaoh" is an appropriate parallel term and argues that it means an obscure Arabic ruler. So, out of respect for his being Egyptian, I'll be happy to call Apophis (Apepi) the "Pr-aa", i.e. the court, rather than the "Pharaoh", in this context (though I'll use the usual term in other contexts). But he's not going to carry the argument if his primary proof is a few Arabic-Hebrew convergences (which is natural, both being Semitic) that you have to pay for. Etymology is my strong suit and I can spot a phony equivalence quickly, if I do say so myself.
But what's happening is that he tries to prove too much. Let's agree that the legend of the LXX is wrong and self-advancing for giving far too much credit to the miraculous and undercuts the likely actual process by which the text originated. Let's agree that Josephus was wrong and self-advancing to say the Israelites built the pyramids. Let's agree that Jewish Hollywood is wrong and self-advancing to say the same in Gods and Kings. Let's agree that "Judeo-Christians" were wrong and self-advancing to seize upon Ramses II and Merneptah because they saw the name Ramses in the Bible and thought it must've happened close to Ramses the Great, when that is not stated nor required. Let's agree that Judeo-Christians beating up on Pharaoh Apepi are wrong and self-advancing because ignoring their own equally heinous sins of rebellion. See, that's a few concessions, and around here we say we're also "noticing" a "pattern". And guess what: all of those concessions don't excuse an Egyptian from being wrong and self-advancing in the other direction.
To find the truth we'll need more than one contrarian who disagrees with everyone and can't spell "Karnak" in his preview text. I will be happy to file that there exists an alternate theory where Misraim and Faraon and a couple other words have linkages to Yemen. But if he's not willing to let this theory flow freely, it suggests it's not worth paying for and he's not interested in truth spreading. Searches indicate that the core points of his theory are not public but are all paywalled. An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence, and he's not giving that; he appears just to be an Egypt apologist who wants you to know that Egypt is a great and misunderstood empire.
But the fact is that Egypt did have two intermediate periods of weakness and bare continuity. It did degrade and renew and then fall tragically with Cleopatra. It did have hundreds of kings of varying competencies, and Apepi was not necessarily worse than the rest, but (the text shows) he was made a didactic example of. During his reign, the Thera volcano exploded (exactly 1540, dated by Hugh Schofield, and I say on 8 Sep due to the Rhind Papyrus). This was regionally catastrophic and left radioactive dust throughout the Mediterranean, still useful for layer-dating because it's so unique. (You can go to Avaris today and find the exact same dust that Moses cast into the air to cause plagues twice, it's that distinctive.) All ten plagues can be naturalistic upheavals responsive to this historic eruption. So both the hardness and historically attested downfall of Apepi and the explosion of Thera were contemporary, and they are karmically connected as well. And that is no curse on the other hundreds of kings of Egypt, it's just another didactic event, and that's what the Bible makes it. For Ezzat to ignore the many fluctuations in Egypt's fortunes is to reject a whole jar of ointment just to remove one perceived irritation in it.
Let's see how many characters I have left.
Why do you keep referring to OT
Because it has historical value for my references, validated by other sources.
I just proved that to you it's a fraud
You proposed an alternate hypothesis without data. That's where I file it for now.
the terrain, which in the OT more resembles hilly Arabia
No hills mentioned in Egypt. Deut. 11:10-11 contrasts hills of Israel with garden-like land of Egypt. What are you thinking of?
Nope, Preston, I don't see myself buying it... what I see first is someone proud of Egypt
I didn't think you would buy it. But, you also have a lot to explain when it comes to numbers, and that's right out of the OT. The event the book of Exodus itself and the Book of Numbers indicate that the people, the Israelites who left Egypt, that there were 600,000 men of military age. So, you're not talking about old man, you're not talking about children and you're not talking about women. Six hundred thousand so you add all the others, what is that? two and a half, three million people? and one problem is that's more than the population of Egypt would have been by a long shot. And apart from that, when you think three million people you expect there's going some kinds of remains like pottery or weaponry or you know, stuff. I mean we have stuff from what, well before that time for other civilizations. There's nothing regarding Exodus and so that's that. It does cause problems for you, think that anything like what the Bible describes happened it's a problem because you'd expect some remains.
Regardless if you buy it or not, Palestine was not the homeland for the kingdom of Israel and the stories of its early patriarchs. The inception of Judaism and the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Joseph and Moses happened in Arabia and Yemen. The blatant failure of Biblical archaeology in the land of Palestine is primarily due to a premise completely flawed and a Bible (Septaguint) cunningly tampered with. By the same evil creeps who manipulate our news and educational materials today. People like Leon Black, the Jewish billionaire who is accused of raping a 7-year-old girl in the Epstein Files and who owns Lifetouch. The biggest school picture company in America that photographs millions of kids each year. Like I said they always lie, but you go on and keep believing them. Rather than Dr. Ashraf Ezzat who indeed may be proud of Egypt, that doesn't mean he would make things up. Or Prof. James Henry Breasted an archaeologist, Egyptologist, and historian.
Good questions. Let me first separate one question out: Feel free to pick on individual Jews and Jewish organizations, because that is one purpose for this forum, picking on anyone who conspires evilly regardless of race. It's very easy for an objective person to do this without being collectivist or judging the innocent (e.g. the children of a race) along with the guilty. For that reason, people who don't are easily identified as nonobjective.
Again, my take on where to trust history comes from the fact that I made an irrevocable commitment to Jesus, even knowing that he's identified as Jewish. Only he can revoke it. What he says about the Hebrew Scripture is my rule. But I've never needed to fear truth because the truth has always backed up his claims. So I'm happy to look into details and I'm motivated to consider any evidence that I could be wrong, because I am committed to all truth. If Jesus should fail me, that might conceivably be him revoking my commitment, via demonstration of his impotence; but he has always revealed himself as potentate.
Yes, population demographics are a much more important field than realized. A quick unchecked quote comes up: "The total population, they say, was of old about 7 million and the number has remained no less down to our day" (Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library 1.31.8). Modern estimates are a bit lower. Recall that the "Israelite" exodus officially included a mixed multitude of non-Jews along with descendants of Israel. Though the nomadic-community influx of Jacob's family could have been almost 10,000, to get to 2 million would have required conversion as well as birth. Though many were Egyptians, this group were required to consent to Moses's laws and to be circumcised, and the entire polity were counted as "Israel" regardless of heritage, because all were naturalized equally; and the desert wandering cemented this identification and rooted out rebellions. So this number is not immodest.
Since Ramses does have archeological evidence of sudden abandonment by Semite dwellers, this implies that there was a massive population hit via the Hyksos expulsion, even on Manetho's numbers. On the above I'd be comfortable with 30%, while 60% would not be impossible, and 15% could be defended by conservatives. If you read Ahmose's boasting about how he arrived at a devastated region and took over, unifying the people, it's no surprise. Look, Scored itself has had attrition of 95% in some regions and 60% in others, and is still going strong; people do it. Did you know 8% of the population of Nicaragua, which might be 30% of the men of fighting age, entered America this past decade? That's a pretty statistically significant exodus too. I don't think that comparing the largest estimate of Israel's population and the smallest estimate of Egypt's population and claiming contradiction would be sustained, because it admittedly uses two different counting methods. Apples to apples there is no problem.
you expect there's going some kinds of remains like pottery or weaponry or you know, stuff
What is the difference between exodus and expulsion then?
The inception of Judaism and the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Joseph and Moses happened in Arabia and Yemen.
I said I'd look into that. There's another source I'd heard recently on similar claims that I want to consult. But, takeaway, most of these sources admit Abraham and Moses were real (just misplaced), which contradicts your initial claim. So pick which one you want to defend.
a Bible (Septaguint) cunningly tampered with
This lacks evidence. We have the original and translated text. There is no alternate manuscript tradition by which tampering with thousands of words would have been a sustainable theory. When you look at admitted document tampering by the Inquisition, by contrast, all kinds of evidence shows what happened and what was original.
you go on and keep believing them
I worship exactly one Jew. When he happens to agree with other Jews, that means those other Jews aren't lying on that point.
Dr. Ashraf Ezzat ... indeed may be proud of Egypt, that doesn't mean he would make things up.
Medical doctor Ezzat isn't lying, but he is being dramatic. He's saying Egypt has no "pharaoh" when he knows very well and admits that Egypt had a "pr-aa" since the 20th century BC. That's a semantic quibble to increase hits and purchases. On the argument that Egypt has no Israelites, I'll look into it, and yet his sources claim the Israelites back to Abraham's family were indeed still very real, which means the Bible isn't lying even if we interpret its geography wrong. Similarly, Breasted's math is likely based on the same atheist althist invented in the 19th century as if closeted Babylonians came up with the name "Mose", one of the most common Egyptian names but only of a millennium prior. (Let me repeat that list for my own records: Ahmose, Amenmose, Dedumose, Kamose, Ptahmose, Ramose, Thutmose. Several repeated often, and maybe more names exist. But none after about 1000 BC.)
So the sources aren't proving what you infer they're proving. If there were a real challenge to a Christian worldview it would be worth considering (which is why I'm taking the Asir hypothesis with more time), but these are not significant and have been ably dealt with by the existing historian community.
I like new sources. Dr. Ashraf Ezzat, "Author and Filmmaker", gravatar.com/ashraf53, ashraf62.wordpress.com, imdb.com/name/nm5967076, Faculty of Medicine, Alexandria University, location "Land of Osiris": he has quite the intense stare. His links look 100% self-promoted, but that's no disqualifier. He writes:
I was on the hop about the two meanings of Pharaoh, but otherwise I listed plenty counterexamples. Let's read further.
Seems contradicted from Thutmose III on, with the backdating or retconning to earlier kings. (Very interesting: "rabbi" has the same feature, it was not applied to many contemporaries until it entered vogue around 100 AD; so Jesus may have been the first person called "rabbi" (great one) in his lifetime, even though the Talmud retcons many leaders as "rabbis" before him.) If he gets too dogmatic it'll be so revisionist as to defeat his purpose.
Dismissive scapegoating. The Middle Kingdom blessing "May Pharaoh live, prosper, and be in health" repeated over the centuries, even if formally applied to a building, sounds just as anthropomorphic as anything in Genesis, and begins usage about the same time, the 20th century BC. Plus, the Bible correctly reflects that "Pharaoh" was not used with a name at this time, but later used with names like Hophra or Neco, precisely the shift seen in Egyptian sources, of the same dates. So I think the Egyptologists are following the Egyptian sources. So far I'm getting a bad vibe this is just althist without any meat, but let's stay open-minded ....
Another incredibly sweeping claim that needs no debunking because it would be outrageous if taken literally ....
So the LXX. But does he have an MT or Hebrew text that says differently? Because if not, the LXX is correct.
Purely rhetorical flourish to the argument from silence. Waiting patiently ....
Waiting ....
His evidence for "pervasive" is Joseph and Moses. Now, the KJV doesn't use the word "slave" here, which is pretty loaded with the changes in its meaning in 19th-century English, but speaks of "servant" (ebed), pretty broad. The same word is used of the court butler (the security chief), a high-standing official; it has no attribute of degradation (unlike the word paired with some of the service, "affliction"). Then it is used for all the Egyptians, the people as belonging to the court, the king. We might argue that King James was wrong and self-advancing to spin-doctor the Ten Commandments by making it "house of bondage" not "house of service", but that is not the fault of Hebrew. The fact that Potiphar was a servant who had his own servant, and the fact that the Israelites were servants just like the Egyptians were servants, don't speak of a pervasive atmosphere of even 200 years of continuous slavery (the actual affliction was only a brief time). Christians are wrong and self-advancing to get the slavery emphasis wrong, but for several reasons we are far removed from that cultural understanding so it's an understandable mistake.
Checking WP's extensive article, I find "the Berlin papyri show that by the time of the Second Intermediate Period, a slave could be owned by both an elite individual (like the king) and a community." Sounds like the Bible, and sounds very unlike Ezzat. Maybe he's fudging since slaves were generally not sold but arrived as prisoners of war or debtors or new births to a prior generation of servants. Yup, there it is, "Slave dealing in Ancient Egypt was done through private dealers and not through a public market." But also, "Many more slaves were also acquired via the Mediterranean slave market, where Egypt was the main purchaser of international slaves." So he's batting zero so far.
Another argument from silence. Being nomadic foreigners, the Semites (Habiru) were notorious for not picking up culture from their surroundings. For art, they kept their own Semitic "TEY ware", which is easily distinguished from Egyptian pottery. Nomads didn't have architecture or monuments; "Hyksos" means "Shepherd", and Egypt despised that idea. Joseph married an Egyptian, and a mixed multitude of Egyptians accompanied Moses, but they were required to abandon their religion to remain in the community, and this was enforced stringently as common for desert life. Theology, mythology, and pantheon was, well, strong but so variable that many contrary things could be considered Egyptian religion; but the Exodus indicates that all traditional gods (Nile, frogs, oxen, the sun, the firstborn, etc.) were being demonstrably defeated by the one Semitic storm god, named Yahweh in the text (as he is named earlier in the Book of the Dead, I noted). So you didn't last long if you continued Egyptian religion, there was a communal push to reject all that, which overcame contrary views. Could we say a little bit of Egyptology still slipped in? Moses learned from Egyptian courts, and in that sense many laws do reflect Egyptian practice; e.g. in Egypt a slave could be given freedom for a justifiable grievance, as Moses agrees. But the whole point is that the Hyksos maintained separate cultural identity within Egypt (Yakbim never even used a cartouche), so the argument from silence is again unpersuasive.
Um, yeah, Abraham was from the Sumer area, so this is natural. Why would they add Egyptian creation legend when they had a perfectly good Hebrew one already?
That might be a testable hypothesis, but offhand I don't think Egyptian influence is zero and other influences "jammed". The idea that the Torah is influenced by culture that came after its closing date of 1499 has never borne itself out, though there have been imaginative attempts.
His reasons are again very ephemeral. Actually, Akhenaten was influenced by the Hyksos monotheism (which Hatshepsut went on record for abominating) and so I would hold contrarily that he had the derivative monotheism. If Aten is the universal god, he is one with Yahweh who is depicted as the universal god, and neither can be advantaged against the other.
And that's it! He goes right to the sales pitch. No honest exploration, just US dollars. Wow. There is a Kindle preview, which gives locations out of 509 as follows:
1 Cover 9 Title 32 Dedication 50 Bio 65 What Really Happened 86 Copyright 105 TOC 153 Intro 173 Ex. 11:1 198 Village of Mizraim 222 Arabian tribe 242 Faraon vs. Pr-aa 278 No Pharaoh (again) 260 Egyptology false 283 How could Egypt hit wrath? 300 Maat 311 Good/right, idolatry/tyranny 330 Seeming paradox 347 Egypt would've converted 364 1400-1200 382 Not New Kingdom, not Ramses II 401 Not Merneptah, not Thutmose III 421 Not Israelite pyramids 442 LXX; Egypt not Misr 471 I heard Maat 492 Pyramids damn sure included whenever Egypt visited
260: "Almost all of the academic work of Eyptologists carried out over the last two centuries or so, is simply based on a false premise."
Nope, Preston, I don't see myself buying it. I'll give you some leeway and concessions where I might agree, which I'll mention in the next paragraph. But what I see first is someone proud of Egypt and eager to excise a negative view of one Pharaoh from being overlaid on a giant history. Instead of facing facts he simply denies the whole deal. Now, at least he doesn't deny that Thutmose and all successive rulers were indeed Pr-aa, but he denies that "Pharaoh" is an appropriate parallel term and argues that it means an obscure Arabic ruler. So, out of respect for his being Egyptian, I'll be happy to call Apophis (Apepi) the "Pr-aa", i.e. the court, rather than the "Pharaoh", in this context (though I'll use the usual term in other contexts). But he's not going to carry the argument if his primary proof is a few Arabic-Hebrew convergences (which is natural, both being Semitic) that you have to pay for. Etymology is my strong suit and I can spot a phony equivalence quickly, if I do say so myself.
But what's happening is that he tries to prove too much. Let's agree that the legend of the LXX is wrong and self-advancing for giving far too much credit to the miraculous and undercuts the likely actual process by which the text originated. Let's agree that Josephus was wrong and self-advancing to say the Israelites built the pyramids. Let's agree that Jewish Hollywood is wrong and self-advancing to say the same in Gods and Kings. Let's agree that "Judeo-Christians" were wrong and self-advancing to seize upon Ramses II and Merneptah because they saw the name Ramses in the Bible and thought it must've happened close to Ramses the Great, when that is not stated nor required. Let's agree that Judeo-Christians beating up on Pharaoh Apepi are wrong and self-advancing because ignoring their own equally heinous sins of rebellion. See, that's a few concessions, and around here we say we're also "noticing" a "pattern". And guess what: all of those concessions don't excuse an Egyptian from being wrong and self-advancing in the other direction.
To find the truth we'll need more than one contrarian who disagrees with everyone and can't spell "Karnak" in his preview text. I will be happy to file that there exists an alternate theory where Misraim and Faraon and a couple other words have linkages to Yemen. But if he's not willing to let this theory flow freely, it suggests it's not worth paying for and he's not interested in truth spreading. Searches indicate that the core points of his theory are not public but are all paywalled. An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence, and he's not giving that; he appears just to be an Egypt apologist who wants you to know that Egypt is a great and misunderstood empire.
But the fact is that Egypt did have two intermediate periods of weakness and bare continuity. It did degrade and renew and then fall tragically with Cleopatra. It did have hundreds of kings of varying competencies, and Apepi was not necessarily worse than the rest, but (the text shows) he was made a didactic example of. During his reign, the Thera volcano exploded (exactly 1540, dated by Hugh Schofield, and I say on 8 Sep due to the Rhind Papyrus). This was regionally catastrophic and left radioactive dust throughout the Mediterranean, still useful for layer-dating because it's so unique. (You can go to Avaris today and find the exact same dust that Moses cast into the air to cause plagues twice, it's that distinctive.) All ten plagues can be naturalistic upheavals responsive to this historic eruption. So both the hardness and historically attested downfall of Apepi and the explosion of Thera were contemporary, and they are karmically connected as well. And that is no curse on the other hundreds of kings of Egypt, it's just another didactic event, and that's what the Bible makes it. For Ezzat to ignore the many fluctuations in Egypt's fortunes is to reject a whole jar of ointment just to remove one perceived irritation in it.
Let's see how many characters I have left.
Because it has historical value for my references, validated by other sources.
You proposed an alternate hypothesis without data. That's where I file it for now.
No hills mentioned in Egypt. Deut. 11:10-11 contrasts hills of Israel with garden-like land of Egypt. What are you thinking of?
No drought mentioned in Egypt. But: Following the very short reign of Nehesy, most scholars – including Manfred Bietak and Kim Ryholt – agree that the Delta region was struck by a prolonged famine and perhaps a plague lasting until the end of the 14th Dynasty. Oh look, same dynasty as Joseph's famine internally dated 1756-1749.
Gen. 37:25: "Ishmeelites". "To carry it down to Egypt". Duh.
The earliest confirmed instance where pr ꜥꜣ is used specifically to address the ruler is in a letter to the eighteenth dynasty king, Akhenaten (reigned c. 1353–1336 BCE), that is addressed to "Great House, L, W, H, the Lord". If you mean Egyptians didn't speak Hebrew, well, duh.
Solomon's son was attacked in this city by Shoshenq I, 925 BC, exactly when the Bible says under the Hebrew name Shishak.
Of course not, it was 1499-1492. Right when Canaanite culture collapsed.
I didn't think you would buy it. But, you also have a lot to explain when it comes to numbers, and that's right out of the OT. The event the book of Exodus itself and the Book of Numbers indicate that the people, the Israelites who left Egypt, that there were 600,000 men of military age. So, you're not talking about old man, you're not talking about children and you're not talking about women. Six hundred thousand so you add all the others, what is that? two and a half, three million people? and one problem is that's more than the population of Egypt would have been by a long shot. And apart from that, when you think three million people you expect there's going some kinds of remains like pottery or weaponry or you know, stuff. I mean we have stuff from what, well before that time for other civilizations. There's nothing regarding Exodus and so that's that. It does cause problems for you, think that anything like what the Bible describes happened it's a problem because you'd expect some remains.
Regardless if you buy it or not, Palestine was not the homeland for the kingdom of Israel and the stories of its early patriarchs. The inception of Judaism and the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Joseph and Moses happened in Arabia and Yemen. The blatant failure of Biblical archaeology in the land of Palestine is primarily due to a premise completely flawed and a Bible (Septaguint) cunningly tampered with. By the same evil creeps who manipulate our news and educational materials today. People like Leon Black, the Jewish billionaire who is accused of raping a 7-year-old girl in the Epstein Files and who owns Lifetouch. The biggest school picture company in America that photographs millions of kids each year. Like I said they always lie, but you go on and keep believing them. Rather than Dr. Ashraf Ezzat who indeed may be proud of Egypt, that doesn't mean he would make things up. Or Prof. James Henry Breasted an archaeologist, Egyptologist, and historian.
Good questions. Let me first separate one question out: Feel free to pick on individual Jews and Jewish organizations, because that is one purpose for this forum, picking on anyone who conspires evilly regardless of race. It's very easy for an objective person to do this without being collectivist or judging the innocent (e.g. the children of a race) along with the guilty. For that reason, people who don't are easily identified as nonobjective.
Again, my take on where to trust history comes from the fact that I made an irrevocable commitment to Jesus, even knowing that he's identified as Jewish. Only he can revoke it. What he says about the Hebrew Scripture is my rule. But I've never needed to fear truth because the truth has always backed up his claims. So I'm happy to look into details and I'm motivated to consider any evidence that I could be wrong, because I am committed to all truth. If Jesus should fail me, that might conceivably be him revoking my commitment, via demonstration of his impotence; but he has always revealed himself as potentate.
Yes, population demographics are a much more important field than realized. A quick unchecked quote comes up: "The total population, they say, was of old about 7 million and the number has remained no less down to our day" (Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library 1.31.8). Modern estimates are a bit lower. Recall that the "Israelite" exodus officially included a mixed multitude of non-Jews along with descendants of Israel. Though the nomadic-community influx of Jacob's family could have been almost 10,000, to get to 2 million would have required conversion as well as birth. Though many were Egyptians, this group were required to consent to Moses's laws and to be circumcised, and the entire polity were counted as "Israel" regardless of heritage, because all were naturalized equally; and the desert wandering cemented this identification and rooted out rebellions. So this number is not immodest.
Since Ramses does have archeological evidence of sudden abandonment by Semite dwellers, this implies that there was a massive population hit via the Hyksos expulsion, even on Manetho's numbers. On the above I'd be comfortable with 30%, while 60% would not be impossible, and 15% could be defended by conservatives. If you read Ahmose's boasting about how he arrived at a devastated region and took over, unifying the people, it's no surprise. Look, Scored itself has had attrition of 95% in some regions and 60% in others, and is still going strong; people do it. Did you know 8% of the population of Nicaragua, which might be 30% of the men of fighting age, entered America this past decade? That's a pretty statistically significant exodus too. I don't think that comparing the largest estimate of Israel's population and the smallest estimate of Egypt's population and claiming contradiction would be sustained, because it admittedly uses two different counting methods. Apples to apples there is no problem.
I already told you it is a standard pottery designation from the exact city of Ramses named by Moses.
What is the difference between exodus and expulsion then?
I said I'd look into that. There's another source I'd heard recently on similar claims that I want to consult. But, takeaway, most of these sources admit Abraham and Moses were real (just misplaced), which contradicts your initial claim. So pick which one you want to defend.
This lacks evidence. We have the original and translated text. There is no alternate manuscript tradition by which tampering with thousands of words would have been a sustainable theory. When you look at admitted document tampering by the Inquisition, by contrast, all kinds of evidence shows what happened and what was original.
I worship exactly one Jew. When he happens to agree with other Jews, that means those other Jews aren't lying on that point.
Medical doctor Ezzat isn't lying, but he is being dramatic. He's saying Egypt has no "pharaoh" when he knows very well and admits that Egypt had a "pr-aa" since the 20th century BC. That's a semantic quibble to increase hits and purchases. On the argument that Egypt has no Israelites, I'll look into it, and yet his sources claim the Israelites back to Abraham's family were indeed still very real, which means the Bible isn't lying even if we interpret its geography wrong. Similarly, Breasted's math is likely based on the same atheist althist invented in the 19th century as if closeted Babylonians came up with the name "Mose", one of the most common Egyptian names but only of a millennium prior. (Let me repeat that list for my own records: Ahmose, Amenmose, Dedumose, Kamose, Ptahmose, Ramose, Thutmose. Several repeated often, and maybe more names exist. But none after about 1000 BC.)
So the sources aren't proving what you infer they're proving. If there were a real challenge to a Christian worldview it would be worth considering (which is why I'm taking the Asir hypothesis with more time), but these are not significant and have been ably dealt with by the existing historian community.