Yes, 100%. Then FDR sent his staff to House's retirement house to get more advice on finishing the job. LN-UN was the phased approach, leading one to wonder what the next phase is.
I don't understand. Barak (2nd column of OP) and Netanyahu are among the 305 names. Why should the omission of Olmert be an issue?
It is clear that these names were selected by self-defined criteria in accord with the text of the EFTA, which allows a number of dodges and omissions while remaining legally compliant. For instance, the list is ambiguous about whether George H. W. Bush is intended to be included or not, because it only refers to both "George W. Bush" and "George Bush Jr."; this is a prima facie fault. Also a couple names are misspelled and a couple are alphabetized arbitrarily, which is also a prima facie fault. These indicate that the list is not defined by number of appearances but by secret, unpublished scoring methods that can be considered compliant with the law. Presumably by these criteria Olmert, and many others of many nations, didn't rise to the sufficient level of making the "official" list.
Is there statistical or situational evidence that omissions of names of one nation or category (other than US) are imbalanced with respect to their appearance in the files? It should be a simple matter for noticers to compare occurrences of unique names versus their inclusion or exclusion in the 305 names, which means your proposition is easily testable for truth or falsity. But is anyone doing this?
(Continuing:)
The chronicle of events of the reign of Ramses II on the wall in Luxor does not know about any major slave results or flights by same into the Sinai peninsula.
Of course not, it was 1539. Right when Apepi's dynasty collapsed.
Dr. Kamal Salibi has discovered more than one hundred place names in Arabia and North Yemen that amazingly matched the ones mentioned in the Torah, Ezzat writes.
I'll follow up, thanks. Copyright 1985, 1987 PDF edition. TOC looks better than Ezzat's. But most lists of 100 etymology "matches" I review are 90% false and 10% useless.
Prof. Breasted writes the Egyptians possessed a standard of morals far superior to that of the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments) over a thousand years before the Decalogue was written.
Not really. There are similarities that both Egypt and Israel took from Hammurabi; but the best expression of Egyptian standards resembling the decalogue occurs in a Book of the Dead of Hatshepsut ca. 1475 BC, after the decalogue is given in 1539 BC. The actual spell 125 is not very decaloguy either. If he fast-forwards the decalogue 1100 years, well then sure, but conservatives don't.
The wisdom of Amenemope, preserved in an Egyptian papyrus in the British Museum, was translated into Hebrew in ancient times and, circulating in Palestine, was the source for a whole section of the OT Book of Proverbs.
Haven't heard. But since Paul quotes Epimenides and Aratus, sometimes with attribution, what would be wrong if it were true that Solomon quoted Amenemope without attribution? However, the argument that Amenemope is older is based on one "unquestionable" dating to the 21st dynasty conducted by Jaroslav Cerny, so I'm not going to make a ruling based on a single source, given that others place it much later. However, I do like prima facie the theory that Prov. 22:17 "yom af-atah" ("[this] day, even to thee") might be a corruption of "[Amen-]Em-Opet"*, so that might influence me to favor Egyptian priority. And what of it? 22:17 admits they are "words of the wise" and not necessarily Solomon's, just like 24:23, 30:1, 31:1. Plus, even if one is copying the other, in either direction the copyist is clearly reorganizing and modifying the material to his own purposes, so it's original wisdom in both passages. I'll keep that question open too, as it might be a good Bible study later.
I'm a Jesus guy. Jesus is King of the Jews but he never lied. If he says the Hebrew Scriptures cannot be broken and not even a serif will disappear from them, I believe it, not only because he's always proven himself, but because the Scriptures have passed every test I or anyone has ever thrown at them. I sought out the worst tests and regularly found they were just sour grapes created by people who don't care. I compared them to objections to the Talmud and Quran, and found that there were sour-grapes motives there too, and lack of seeking original culture or comparative religion. But I came to find out that the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures have passed every test of historical authenticity, predictive verification, and moral purity, and the Talmud and Quran, while beautiful and uplifting, don't pass every test. So Jesus is vindicated for me every day I test him. This means I am free to consider the most outrageous blasphemies against him because he's defeated every one of them I've ever considered and because if even one of them stuck I'd need to change my views to acknowledge the full truth. I pursue truth wherever it leads, and, if Jesus were wrong when he said Moses was a great lawgiver and that he himself called Moses down from heaven to talk to him in AD 32, when he said that Abraham was feasting in glory and was still alive to God, I'd accept the truth about it. But funny thing, he always looks and speaks better than every whiner who complains that Jesus didn't know what he was talking about. It's only because of Jesus that I know that all mere men are liars, and he's the only source I have for finding the real truth. I have nothing to fear from learning more. It's only salesmen who talk big and deliver little who have things to fear from the truth.
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?
droughts, which Egypt never had
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.
camel caravan carrying "gum, balm and myrrh", which were products of Arabian trade, not Egypt's
Gen. 37:25: "Ishmeelites". "To carry it down to Egypt". Duh.
pharaoh, which no Egyptian document ever uses
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.
The Jewish people were not building Jerusalem 3000 years ago, i.e. 1000 BC.
Solomon's son was attacked in this city by Shoshenq I, 925 BC, exactly when the Bible says under the Hebrew name Shishak.
There was no invasion of geographical Palestine from Egypt by former slaves in the 2200s BCE.
Of course not, it was 1499-1492. Right when Canaanite culture collapsed.
Respected. I only see the one meta from Neo1 and the one from NeoOne. Also, I should note publicly, since you approved the one from Neo1 as an exception to meta and then you banned him for rule 3 later, I'm presuming my interpretation is correct that up to 7 subsequent comments were also violative of rule 1 and/or rule 3.
I always tell mods, including myself, beware of reacting disciplinarily when part of the user's objection is about you rather than about something else. Reasons for discipline must be straightforward and transparent and separable from what the user says about the mod personally. Verbum sat.
Okay, start at the beginning with me, you can post in c/Christianity or anywhere. No rules against meta there.
It's because Scored has an oft-stated default policy that newcomers shouldn't have to face "politics" but should be allowed to opt in rather than to get it by default. Therefore app users are not served forums flagged as political. On Conspiracies we do have lots of political content, so I proposed that by flagging those NSFW they would achieve the admin objective, where they would not be served to newcomers (but all nonpolitical content would be, which it isn't currently); and only those few lurkers who don't have NSFW content turned on would miss it. Though the term "not safe for work" doesn't apply, I said we could interpret it as "not safe for world", i.e. not for broad distribution.
I don't think AMA content is political. Some covid content is political, much isn't. But if we make it a mod discretion issue rather than a forumwide ban, we'd get the original goal of having more exposure for apolitical Conspiracies content.
I'd love to hear your thoughts at the covid roundtable.
Several people created vote threads just as you describe, the most conclusive one was 4-1-1 in favor of some unspecified mod team, with silent lurkers outnumbering those totals a lot. Anyone is free to start a new vote anytime, I'm mystified why they don't.
Don't forget pepper, which I link with demonic activity in the Pacific. Opium is big but people don't forget that one. I wonder why I have Saigon cinnamon on my shelf when we don't like Vietnam communism.
I'm sad that you continue thinking I took sides. In many disputes I disciplined both sides, or neither side. It was rare that I ruled that one side was all at fault if it wasn't an obvious thoughtless trolling attempt.
When I tell two sides separately what they each did wrong, each side will remember more what I said about them than anything said to the other person. So it's natural for people to feel justice is unequal because it's much easier to remember injustice committed against oneself than against anyone else. I attempted to answer that by being open to all appeals (and still do). Whenever you charged favoritism, I addressed any specific case you called out.
Your choice right now is that you can continue to treat me as a person who has erred in the past, so much so that it's fitting for you to keep bringing it up (as if some resolution is needed); or, you can work through the issue of what is needed so that relationship is restored and one never need talk negatively about another's past again. If you want me to do something, I always say, let me know specifically.
I upvote lots of people, and OP when he's saying something useful buried in the slop. I only gave him one upvote on this page.
You say Solomon and Moses is fake?
Year ban is not permaban. I'm sure that a user like u/NeoOne could fit into this community without making it all about meta material. Also, his post is still live so there was no loss of material and I don't know what could be intended by merging it.
u/Foletadoo, Neo1 (a separate account that has asked me not to ping it) first raised the question of restarting roundtables by a mod, which led to about 10 days of discussing 6 names as potential mods, after which admin told u/Thisisnotanexit that she could become mod in time, which happened after another 2 months of community vetting of that idea. Since nobody demonstrated a strong consensus result in favor of any outcome, admin stepping in could be considered a coup, but if the community could demonstrate some consensus result I'm sure admin would accept that.
Neo1 got the year ban for rule 3, which was about unnecessary meta posts (now called subversion), and it appears his several attacks were also rule 1 violations. I don't know why he hasn't contributed to the several new roundtable threads that he wanted restored.
Right now the status is that the whole forum is political by default. IIRC, this would be a good time to ask u/Thisisnotanexit if she would like to remove the Politics flag from the description and then to mark politics posts as NSFW, if the community agrees. This would give more app visibility but might lead to some misunderstanding, and would require her to set the meaning of what is political (much discussion of cabal can be charged as "political" rapidly).
I honestly think free thinking and open mind are pretty clear; it merely means not judging others negatively for their opinions, and therefore treating people respectfully even when you disagree.
I wouldn't take the phrase "your issues" as an important indicator, it appears only an attempt to ask you for specifics just as you like to ask others for specifics. I understand if that phrase has been misused in your past experience. I haven't stepped into that convo because you two seem to be negotiating well. She is open to questions and has a greater burden of transparency now, and so you can ask her anything in place; you can ask me anywhere also, whether here or c/CommunitiesConflict or c/ReputationCampaign or c/Meta (where others would chime in too).
Since you have not asked me not to reply to you, unlike some other accounts, I can explain now that it's actually more lenient to give a year ban than a permaban, which is standard practice on some other fora here.
I am very interested in hearing about objections to moderation that do depend on content rather than objective rule violations. The account you're referring to as to 1-year ban violated rule 3 with an unnecessary (trolling) meta post and, I add, rule 1 with at least 7 attack comments. This is consistent with other recent bans, and better than the permabans given to those known to constantly press community-reject points (to forum-slide).
If you wish to contribute conspiracies and not subversive meta posts yourself, I think you'll find the community welcoming of your content.
I suspect also a Talmud believer.
Nope, I've said for years that those who criticize the Talmud with misquotes and strawmen are the ones advancing the Talmud, while accurate criticism of the Talmud must depend on understanding its cultural context as with any other criticism. I have a number of criticisms of the Talmud on grounds of insularity and superstition that don't rely on strawmen.
not once are the Pyramids mentioned.
Argument from silence. The tower of Babel (a ziggurat, the same style as the pyramids) is mentioned as representative. I tentatively accept Etemenanki as this tower. But the purpose of the Bible is not to glorify giant works done in the names of other gods, so much about contemporary religion is deliberately omitted.
more than 100 pyramids
Only 4-5 of them are what people think of as "pyramids". The rest are more moundlike and are mostly unimpressive ziggurats under 50 m.
none of this is ever mentioned in the Bible
Argument from silence. The book is not about the Egyptian people per se but only about Egyptian interactions with covenant people. Egyptology is indeed amazing, but when you look into it you find where the Bible alludes to the same things. First, recognize that "Egypt" is a Greek word and the Old Kingdom had other names for itself, notably "Tawy" in Egyptian. This means the two bounded lands, and is translated in Semitic languages as "Misraim" (Arabic "Misr", its current official name). Given the variety we don't have to assume that description of early culture is limited to use of the names Tawy or Misraim. A good summary of early culture is Gen. 6:1-8, where we see exactly the divine-human sexual union depicted in Old Kingdom deities like Amun. That far back, that's enough correlation to posit an overlap even without specific name mention.
Gen. 10 includes an incredible wealth of worldwide data encoded in names. Here Mizraim is given as a son of Ham and his family is eventually assigned the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. The Middle Kingdom never built large pyramids like the Old Kingdom and so the Egyptians' Semitic slaves had nothing to do with that earlier slave labor; the Semites were instead employed building smaller ziggurats, temples, obelisks, and fortifications like that of Apophis in Avaris against Kamose and Ahmose. Since the text is unqualifiedly iconoclastic, there would be no mention of building statues; but they appear later in Scripture, and the statues of Ur, which included some Egyptian deities, are mentioned in oral tradition about Abraham put to paper later.
But Gen. 10-11 specifically focuses on events that have didactic value. Thus Nimrod (probably Naram-Sin grandson of Sargon) is singled out because of the uniqueness of his unprecedented Akkadian Empire. This rise coincides with the collapse of the Egyptian 6th dynasty into an Intermediate Period of relative impotence compared to Akkad, so it's appropriate to focus on Akkad rather than Egypt when discussing that period (23rd century BC). Centuries later, in the time of Abraham (which I have as 2044-1869 on Biblical chronology), well, Akkad was weak again and Egypt was entering the stronger Middle Kingdom and anxious to trade with Semitic merchants, as I documented. And at that time you see all kinds of references to pharaohs and Egyptians, but not to architecture, which is appropriate for nomads who care about relationship more than structure.
In 1763 the elevation of Joseph corresponds naturally with the founding of the 14th Egyptian dynasty, admittedly run by Canaanites, and likely founded by Yakbim/Salitis; this ran concurrently with the 13th dynasty in the south, just as the Bible indicates Joseph's power in the north was largely independent from the pharaonic successions in the south (e.g. Khendjer). The great building works directed by Joseph are discussed prominently, Gen. 41:48-57, and his legislative reforms, Gen. 47:13-26. The Israelites settle in Goshen in 1754, Gen. 46:28-29, the exact abandoned region now called Tell el-Yahudiyeh. Their primary cities are later named as Pithom (Per-Atum) and Ramses (Avaris), exactly where the Hyksos lived.
Egypt never had Pharaohs
The title pharaoh for a person is first attested with Thutmose III, a little after the Hyksos expulsion, but it's a very old Egyptian word and originally meant "great house" and referred to the palace and the administration rather than an individual, starting in the 12th dynasty, the one that Abraham traded with. Because of the collectivist focus of culture, the king was regarded as one with the people, land, palaces, and administration and was not to act "independently" but as the collective will of the people. In modern English, we might use similar titles like "the court" when referring to what an individual judge does in the name of a collective; judges might refer to themselves as "the court" when their more literal meaning is that they are identified with a people as their appointed agents. That is the way in which "pharaoh" is used from Gen. 12 on, and it's consistent with the Egyptian use of the word from the contemporaneous 12th dynasty on, where it is usually translated something like "great house". Good observation, because this is easily misstated if one is not careful!
There is nothing recorded in Egypt literature archives about Moses, or Israelites, or slavery
Manetho is Egyptian literature and mentions Moses. The Merneptah Stele of 1208 is Egyptian archives and mentions Israel. The subjugation of the Semites to build warworks under Apophis is also well-documented and corresponds to the brickmaking work of Exodus. If you mean they didn't bother to mention the same names contemporaneously with their lives, it was not expected that they should care about foreign names in formal literature or architecture. But we do have a number of crossovers of Semitic names in Egyptian records, too many to list. "Moses" is likely cognate with the many pharaohs with the same root, Dedumose, Kamose, Ahmose, Thutmose, Ramose (Ramses), etc. "Yah" appears in the name of Jtwnjr’yh, an 18th-century Semite who got his own special burial in Egypt and dedicated copy of the Book of the Dead, whose Hebrew name was Adoni-Roe-Yah. Egyptian god names were often different for the same Semitic deity concepts, but the linkages can be traced; so for instance Seth was identified as the Semitic god Baal-Zephon, exactly the name the Bible gives to the Semitic outpost in Ex. 14 (at that time this was understood as a title for Yahweh, the leader of the divine council; separation of Yahweh and Baal concepts happened demonstrably later). There are a few more such correlations I've noted.
In fact Egypt didn't widely practice slavery, and never had slave open markets.
Correct, Gen. 15 should not be read as speaking of 400 years of slavery because in context it indicates that slavery was a culmination of the 400 years. But the law that all land and people belong to pharaoh (the great house) is ancient, and mentioned in Genesis, and is defacto slavery (what they didn't practice is an oligarchy where each master had his own slaves, as the Levantine nomads had). In the war between Apophis and Kamose, Apophis had laborers build fortifications at Avaris (also Nefrusy, Per-Atum, Tjaru, and On/Heliopolis). This is the point at which the straw breaks the camel's back and the despoiled people seek a redeemer figure.
Also, nothing recorded about the Exodus, escaping of the Jews to the promised land, in Egyptian literature.
I told you and linked you, look up the Hyksos expulsion where hundreds of thousands of Semites left Ramses and crossed the Red Sea into the Levant. It's standard Egyptology, it's just not recognized by many as the same as the Exodus. Other Semites left at the same time besides the Israelites; some are named in Deut. 2.
the Pyramids ... the most important achievement of the people in Egypt
To your subjective judgment and argument from silence, they're not mentioned because the ziggurats were idol temples and were not to be glorified by the covenant people, and so are only mentioned in connection with their failure at Babel. They would hardly have called them "pyramid", a Greek word, anyway, as you note about "Egypt"; they would have called them "migdal", typically translated tower. We think of the three great pyramids as tourist traps, but to the Egyptians they were just overblown cemeteries that didn't affect daily life.
Nothing in the Hebrew culture or even traditions (Talmud is the most important book in Jewish culture) resemble anything to do with ancient Egypt.
Rather a sweeping assertion. I've loaded you up with Egyptian references and customs that don't reflect the later times to which the text has been forward-dated.
But, plenty of traditions from Babylon where the Israelites were in captivity for 70 years (not 400 years like in Egypt, according to what we're told).
I've never seen credible assertions that the Torah has data dated to Babylon and not to any earlier period. I told you the theory was invented by 19th-century German atheist historical-revisionists who hated the Bible and wanted its testimony dead. The whole book of Deuteronomy closely parallels suzerainty contracts popular ca. 2000-1500 that were not used in later periods. But when people try to argue for a late date on some decontextual wording or uncertainty, it's always easily answerable.
One mistake Christians have made is to insist that Gen. 15 means 400 years of slavery. On the dates and chronologies given this is impossible, and on the later references to this (including Paul) it's clear that it refers to a total sojourn in Egypt starting with Abram's first visit (1969) until the Exodus (1539). The meaning of the text is that these three things named, including slavery, will occupy a round total of 400 years (later calculated as exactly 430). The Biblical description of slave labor itself is chiefly confined to the reign of Apophis in wartime, just as history says.
Add: Since I have this page open, another very fun one is the highly valuable synchronism of the Stele of Neferhotep made in Lebanon by a diplomatic mission on his behalf: since Governor Yantinu of Byblos (Yantinammu) is depicted, it's clear there was a journey of Egyptians to the Levant at this time that had the opportunity to strike up business relations and possibly vassalage. Lo and behold, the Bible says that Joseph's family did make exactly such a trip, for other reasons, and were regarded by the Canaanites as Egyptians, internally dating it to 1737, right in Neferhotep's reign when the Stele was constructed.
Now, Preston, this is a speculative forum, and I don't intend to write to be dogmatic (in case my tone misleads). (Add: You asked and I should answer directly, I do pursue truth at all costs, and adjust my views when evidence indicates.) I am very interested in Babylonian influence on Israel and would not gainsay its evidences, even if I might not agree with the conclusions drawn from them. (I was just looking separately into the Zoroastrian wrath demon Khashm-Dev who informs the apocryphal Asmodeus; backdating that name to being a contemporary of Solomon does bear the marks of later narrative-padding, unlike the cases we're discussing here.) The issue is whether we can approach it with free thinking and open minds. You present to me some data about the word "pharaoh" that I was unaware of, and I thank you; I look at the data and recognize that it doesn't affect my general conclusion but does require me to adjust my perception of the different cultural uses of the word. I'm presenting you a lot of data, some long known and some I and others recently uncovered, and I trust you recognize it's not a clearcut scenario to reject the historic people whose stories became the narratives we have today. What you present is mostly argument from silence, and such an argument logically gives way when greater evidence is provided. So I'm interested in where you intend to take the evidence discussion in the pursuit of the truth out there.
You're welcome, fren! Will work on the not excusing people.
Sounds like a valid reading but does allow discussion about risk of overreach. I've held that subversion is basically what admin calls "inauthentic campaigning", and that would seem to be slightly more objective, and compatible with the prior agreed specifics.
Oh how funny! I didn't realize it was just an AI reading debunked misquotes that are over 100 years old. Literally at 0:00:20 there is a reference to "Gad Shas 2:2", which has never existed, and which I showed was recognized literally 100 years ago to be a typo series derived from "Yad Chazakah 8:2", which is not Talmud at all but just the opinion of Maimonides (and still misquoted). It's probable almost all of these are dealt with on my Talmud quotes page. It's not worth mining 5 hours of untranscribed video to correct them all.
I did ask for a summary. I was hoping there'd be something about Solomon's 72 spirits because I'm interested in tradition on that. But OP has not left a summary or timestamp or anything useful. I keep saying, people who criticize the Jews with really stupid, anciently refuted arguments make the Jews look good by comparison. It's as if all the "anti-Semitic" accounts here are the real Israeli accounts, because they act consistent with stated Jewish goals to make their opponents look stupid and engage war by deception when believed necessary.
Skimming the graphics I even came across a cheap AI female demon. That doesn't actually help the case any. There's some Remphan stuff ably handled by my hexagram article; and some Allan Cronshaw stuff, a guy who follows the vegetarian Gideon Ouseley who wrote a new gospel ca. 1900 after channeling Emanuel Swedenborg.
Third Eye, are you actually interested in getting at the truth of what the Talmud says and what Solomon and the rest did? Because you're not acting like you pursue the truth at all costs, but that you just pursue low-effort posts and comments regardless of how botlike it appears.
Preston, it's great to meet you, so I have a few questions to see if you are free-thinking and keeping an open mind, or if you have already concluded your case based on what appears to be pretty shoddy dependency.
What does your AI (Artificial Stupidity) say about the Hyksos expulsion that would contradict what I said? The Hyksos were Semitic from the Levant, not Yemen, and they have a number of pharaohs, probably a hundred scarabs, and many artifacts. Excavations of Tell El-Dab'a (Avaris) show no widespread destruction of the city, which instead seems to have been abandoned by the Hyksos. Avaris is Ramses, the same city name Moses uses.
Did you know the Hyksos were likely founded by Yakbim, a Semitic name cognate with Joseph's name Ben-Yaakov? Did you know that Yakbim may be identified with Salitis, a Semitic name cognate with Joseph's title Shalit (governor)?
Was Manetho wrong when he put Moses's name into his history? He's often wrong, but in minor predictable ways. Is Manetho not counted as evidence that a credible tradition informed him that the Hyksos departure was led by Moses? Was Ptolemy of Mendes incorrect to attribute the same to Moses?
Were Sesostris I and Khnumhotep II wrong to depict their trade with rich Semitic merchants in the lifetime attributed to Abraham, 20th-19th centuries BC? Has anything about the life of Abraham been conclusively proven as anachronistic to that period?
I recently tracked one of the Five Kings, Amraphel, as being Amar-Sin of Ur (short chronology). One telling point is that Amar-Sin died suddenly "from the bite of his shoe" and thus couldn't complete his ziggurat; while when Amraphel died Abraham argued over the shoe-latchet from the spoils.
The AI's relying on an "accepted" narrative is a laughable telephone-game that goes back to 19th-century German "JEDP" atheists. Conservative and liberal historians have disagreed on this awhile. I already told you that their sole reason for putting Moses in the 14th or 13th century, as the AI's source says, was because they didn't believe Moses could speak of a city of Ramses before Ramses II. However, Exodus 15 (Song of the Sea) and Judges 4-5 (Judgment and Song of Deborah), which both include Moses, are recognized by many scholars (via their poetry) to have been written close to their own events in the 16th-14th century. In general:
According to Solomon Nigosian, there are three prevailing views among biblical scholars: one is that Moses is not a historical figure, another view strives to anchor the decisive role he played in Israelite religion, and a third that argues there are elements of both history and legend from which "these issues are hotly debated unresolved matters among scholars".
The reason people don't find records is they're looking in the wrong century. As soon as you look at the Hyksos expulsion you find all the backup you need. Did you know that every line of the Davis translation of the Tempest Stele of Ahmose has a parallel line in Exodus 8-12? It's as if Ahmose was right that a tempest like never before in Egypt, accompanied with days of darkness which made torches unusable, was actually sent in 1539 BC by "the great god" as he calls him. Right when the Hyksos left and there was a pharaoh power vacuum (seized by Ahmose) with the sudden deaths of Pharaoh Apophis and Crown Prince Apophis, and the impotence of successor Khamudi.
You say Moses was Arab, but did you know the likely etymology of "Arab" is metathetical for "Eber", the father of the Hebrews (a term that originally included Arabs)? Do you feel comfortable backdating the first secular appearance of the word "Arab" from the 9th century BC back to the 16th-13th centuries? If you say you are, you're using a double standard when you refuse to backdate the Christian data that is better attested. Or perhaps you'd prefer to give the Bible conditional credit for deriving Arab from Arabah (wilderness), which comes from Moses's follower Joshua in the 1490s? Do you discount the Arab tradition that they are descended from Ishmael the son of Abraham, when Ishmael is a Semitic name dating from ca. 2000 and used continuously by the Arabs since then? With all your reliance on certainty about Arabs, your primary supports for it are the same as the supports for Abraham and Moses.
It's not useful to seize upon u/Mrexreturns writing his althist to present more of the same. OP is an interesting subject but we may be derailing it a bit. The real question I'd have for you is: do you pursue truth at all costs (free-thinking, open-minded), or is there anything else that might prevent you from committing to pursue truth at all costs? Nothing whatsoever can be successfully substituted for truth, nothing is worth it.
Welcome. Yes, out of six names proposed over 10 days when the subject came up, admin indeed selected u/Thisisnotanexit as a frontrunner, and then waited another two months to gauge the community's reaction to that preference.
Again, Neo1's original opinion of me was:
You see collaboration and you work for it. I cast my vote for you as moderator of c/Conspiracies! To me, you have proven that you left your ego behind and you want to accomplish the goal of the community. That does come with challenges from shills that would want to break you, but I know you're better than me, so I cast my vote firmly towards a person that is able to defend his position and leave his ego - you! You didn't have to prove your worth, but you did it anyway, for the best of this community. I really hope you can help us forward! I hope we can vote for a moderator from this point on, so we can finalize it in a week. Anyone can cast their own votes. It's fine, if you vote for yourself even.
The link you point out includes my analysis showing that there were not a significant number of contributors to the vote, which is why I didn't press the issue with the community. I also analyzed a separate recent conversation that went 17-4-1 against TINAE's interpretation of a rule, and she accepted that consensus, so it's not like people are incapable of voting. So I think the admins waiting awhile to gauge consensus as an added method beyond the vote itself was a responsible way of collecting the consensus. I've also said anyone can start a new vote anytime, which hasn't happened for some reason. The fact that Christians take more responsibility for voting on community questions than average isn't significant in that respect.
I wouldn't have a problem with your proposing a conspiracy, but your username indicates inauthenticity, and your immediate reaction to getting deleted aggravates it. You were autodeleted for being a handshake, and TINAE then ratified that by judging you didn't demonstrate commitment to the published rules. Neither I nor TINAE has ever sought to hide how things happened, I have always responded with full facts and she has never denied any of the facts either; in fact she posted the moderation megathread for the purpose of ensuring discussion was connected and findable. But your conclusions are illogical and, I believe, would fail the tests of skepticism that we use here.
If you wanted to proceed with any of (1) logical demonstrations of culticness in traditional Christianity, (2) logical demonstrations that anyone is being deleted here for content rather than for rule violation, (3) logical demonstrations that I, TINAE, or u/Paleo should have done something different at some point, (4) better solutions for the community than what's happened so far, or (5) any new community question, I would affirm such an approach. But it requires being prepared to handle truth in a community of competing views, and you're not demonstrating much of that. So for now I'm going to call you Joe because your illogic style reminds me of someone, someone who often does successfully take the hint when I point it out to him.
All historians agree the Hyksos expulsion of the 1530s BC involved hundreds of thousands of Semitic men leaving Egypt suddenly; Manetho says its leader was named Moses or Osarseph. It's not like these nomadic Israelites left sex toys around like other nations did to make them easy to track. There's quite a bit more. The secular historians' tack against this is to say Moses was actually 14th century BC, but that's a lie that ultimately comes from the insane claim there was no Ramses before Ramses II.
Oh, this one's a keeper IMHO. First, I recently documented that the McDonald family was regarded by a "tracker of names" as one of the 17 families running the world. Second, something OP hasn't said yet is that McDonald's stole IP from H. R. Pufnstuf to create these characters and was fined a million dollars. Third, I like where IP is going with how creepy the original and revised characters are (I never liked Grimace as a kid). Fourth, compare Mac Tonight. Fifth, there are an incredible number of oddities in the McDonald's legal career (one of my favorites, a bit off track, is that they claim IP over "Mc" everything, and usually win except they have so far chosen never to take on the Cayman Islands restaurant founded by one James MacDonald and so there are no (Kroc) McDonald's in the Caymans; note this is a bit different from the urban legend version).
Disclosure: I once worked at McDonald's.
Physics stagnated because of Bohr, Heisenberg, and Feynman.
On the side with a taco cat. At the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.