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Holy Moses! PBS documentary suggests Exodus not real
OrlandoSentinel.com ^ | July 21, 2008 | Hal Boedeker

Posted on 07/22/2008 2:37:05 AM PDT by Man50D

Abraham didn't exist? The Exodus didn't happen?

The Bible's Buried Secrets, a new PBS documentary, is likely to cause a furor.

"It challenges the Bible's stories if you want to read them literally, and that will disturb many people," says archaeologist William Dever, who specializes in Israel's history. "But it explains how and why these stories ever came to be told in the first place, and how and why they were written down."

The Nova program will premiere Nov. 18. PBS presented a clip and a panel discussion at the summer tour of the Television Critics Association.

The program says the Bible was written in the sixth century BC and that hundreds of authors contributed.

"At least the first five books of the Bible come together during the Babylonian exile," says producer Gary Glassman.

The program challenges long-held beliefs. Abraham, Sarah and their offspring probably didn't exist, says Carol Meyers, a religion professor at Duke University.

"These stories are unlikely to represent real historical events, but rather there's some kernel of ancient experience in there which has survived and which helps give identity to the people at the time the Bible finally took shape centuries and centuries later," Meyers says.

(Excerpt) Read more at orlandosentinel.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: catastrophism; davidrohl; exodus; godsgravesglyphs; pbs; rohl
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To: tlb; NativeNewYorker
The Jews weren't in Israel yet when the Pyramids were built.

The Pyramids were built over 1,000 years before Moses.

41 posted on 07/22/2008 7:17:16 AM PDT by what's up
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To: what's up

weren’t there many pyramids and other construction projects throughout that era of ancient history?


42 posted on 07/22/2008 7:18:28 AM PDT by NativeNewYorker (Freepin' Jew Boy)
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To: 1st-P-In-The-Pod; 2ndDivisionVet; A_Conservative_in_Cambridge; af_vet_rr; agrace; Aiko; ...
Wait for Jews to seethe, riot, burn, and threaten to behead people. (But don't forget to eat, sleep and go to the bathroom while you're waiting)

FReepMail to be added or removed from this pro-Israel/Judaic/Russian Jewry ping list.

Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.

43 posted on 07/22/2008 7:20:19 AM PDT by Alouette (Vicious Babushka)
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To: Man50D

There is another thread on this same PBS program. Some good comments there.
Personally I’ve found the whole myth of the literal existence of PBS hard to swallow, especially the Nova story with the part about learning to be noncommercial under the leadership of a producer Glassman.
It may be shocking but recent scholarship has discovered clear evidence of commercials between programs that was long thought to be only sponsor information.
Further details of “membership drive” rituals to follow.


44 posted on 07/22/2008 7:30:18 AM PDT by count-your-change (you don't have to be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
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To: coconutt2000
Without a definition of "Canaanites" then you can say anything at all.

The Bible attests that the Hebrews were living in Canaan before the Egyptian Captivity and between the Egyptian Captivity and the Babylonian Captivity - if residency is the test, then they were Canaanites because they lived in Canaan.

Yet their ancestors came from Aramaea and they spoke an Aramaean language, and it is clear that they had different customs from and were in constant conflict with the other peoples in Canaan.

45 posted on 07/22/2008 7:35:35 AM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that those who call themselves Constitutionalists know the least about the Constitution?)
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To: Man50D

It’s like we say around here all the time, “If PBS didn’t do it, who would??”


46 posted on 07/22/2008 7:38:25 AM PDT by Mrs. P (I am most seriously displeased. - Lady Catherine de Bourg)
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To: Man50D; Alouette; wideawake
Ho-hum. This is the same bag of menel that's been rammed down our throats for almost two hundred years and PBS acts like it's just been discovered for the first time? They imply that most people interpret the Bible literally and will be shocked to learn these hoary old theories?

But I thought no one had ever interpreted the Bible literally until ignorant rednecks appeared on the scene after being influenced by nineteenth century positivism! You mean that's not so? Rednecks aren't the only people who believe the Biblical stories are true? Who'da thunk it???

Considering the number of "religious" people who dismiss the first eleven chapters of Genesis as mythology, I find it hard to believed anyone would be shocked at the logical conclusion of such thinking.

47 posted on 07/22/2008 7:40:12 AM PDT by Zionist Conspirator ( . . . Kol rodefeyha hissiyguha ben hametzarim.)
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To: Man50D

On another thread, we were just discussing the DNA evidence (to back family records) that the Kohen line (the line of Aaron) has a common male ancestor circa the time of the Exodus.

http://www.cohen-levi.org/jewish_genes_and_genealogy/the_dna_chain_of_tradition.htm

Yes, all this definatively proves is that one man was the ancestor of the Kohenim.

At the time of the historical Exodus.

Proving amazing maternal marital fidelity for some 35 centuries (something like 99% of all purported Kohen had the gene sequence).

And corresponding to family and Biblical history.

Coincidence? I think not.


48 posted on 07/22/2008 7:45:02 AM PDT by MeanWestTexan ("Jesse Jackson was an important figure; paving the way for Osama bin Laden to appear" -- Dan Rather)
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To: tlb
Your posts assumes two things not in evidence:

(1) That the Bible says that the Jews were the slave laborers who built the Pyramids. The Bible makes no mention of the Pyramids.

(2) That there was some large Egyptian middle class of skilled workmen.

A more accurate picture of Egyptian life was this: 95% of the population were subsistence farmers. There was an elite of priests, scribes and fine craftsmen and these urban upper classes had slaves and eunuchs to serve them and to oversee their households and lands.

The pyramids were built not by volunteers, but by farmers whose taxes were extracted from them in kind by pressgang labor. The work was supervised by artisans and architects, but there was not some vast army of well-to-do craftsmen who decided to work for a few years for free.

49 posted on 07/22/2008 7:45:48 AM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that those who call themselves Constitutionalists know the least about the Constitution?)
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To: NativeNewYorker
Construction projects yes, of course. And the Jews were busy in construction, no doubt about that.

But the Pyramids in Egypt (especially the classics at Giza) were built too early for Moses' era.

50 posted on 07/22/2008 7:54:54 AM PDT by what's up
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To: what's up; tlb; NativeNewYorker
The Jews weren't in Israel yet when the Pyramids were built. The Pyramids were built over 1,000 years before Moses.

Actually, if Moses flourished around 1800 BC, he was contemporaneous with the building of the last known pyramid, the pyramid of Amenemhet III.

Of course, the golden age of pyramid building was 800 years before Moses - the time when the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Gizeh was built. Khufu's was almost six times the size of Amenemhet III's.

But in Moses' time there were vast public works projects that would have dwarfed that particular gravesite in scale and importance.

51 posted on 07/22/2008 7:57:53 AM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that those who call themselves Constitutionalists know the least about the Constitution?)
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To: wideawake
Yet their ancestors came from Aramaea

This seems to be what the documentary is contesting...that they came from somewhere other than Canaan.

52 posted on 07/22/2008 7:58:23 AM PDT by what's up
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To: wideawake
Actually, if Moses flourished around 1800 BC

The usual dating for Moses is well after 1800.

53 posted on 07/22/2008 8:00:28 AM PDT by what's up
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To: wideawake; what's up; tlb; NativeNewYorker

If the Biblical chronology placing Moses at 1200 BC is correct, it would place Moses 500 years after the last documented pyramid project.


54 posted on 07/22/2008 8:06:52 AM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that those who call themselves Constitutionalists know the least about the Constitution?)
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To: tlb

Looking at Genesis/Exodus, it appears to me that the proto-Jews (who were not yet “Jews” until Sinai) were largely herdsmen literally on the edge of society.

Not certain about this, but that is certainly the implication of the last chapter of Genesis -— relegated to various semi-arid field areas fairly far from the Nile.


55 posted on 07/22/2008 8:09:52 AM PDT by MeanWestTexan ("Jesse Jackson was an important figure; paving the way for Osama bin Laden to appear" -- Dan Rather)
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To: liberallarry
There are no references in Egyptian records to the events described in the Bible.

A few weeks ago, I had the TV on the History Channel. The Naked Archaeologist was on. I was only half paying attention to the program as I was reading a book, and the TV just happened to be on.

This archaeologist (who calls himself the Naked Archaeologist) was in a museum in Egypt examining Egyptian hieroglyphics that dated back right to the same time as the Exodus. These Egyptian hieroglyphics told a story that paralleled the Biblical Exodus. There again, I was only paying half attention to the program so I'm not sure what museum this was.

56 posted on 07/22/2008 8:12:09 AM PDT by mtg
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To: Man50D
Call it what ya’ll like but this sorta publicly funded garbage is just part of the ongoing war to deconstruct western civilization as redress for that civilization conquering the world the past 500 years or so.

It's getback fueled by the silly self absorbed guilt of some descendants and the wrath of other descendants who don't consider themselves inheritors of said western civilization.

I have 5 kids and have to fight this nonsense every damned day. It's infuriating and it's ruining what made America and the West great and powerful.

57 posted on 07/22/2008 8:15:43 AM PDT by wardaddy (Myself and my ancestors take full responsibility for all racial discrimination here since 1607)
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To: NativeNewYorker
You think National Geographic should get its History from Cecil B. Demille? Neither History or the Bible give any indication that the great monuments of Egypt were built by Jewish slave labor.
58 posted on 07/22/2008 8:22:02 AM PDT by allmendream (If "the New Yorker" makes a joke, and liberals don't get it, is it still funny?)
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To: Man50D

God is revealed in the pages of Torah. Regardless whatever one feels therein to be missing, the Creator of the universe nontheless makes it real for me.


59 posted on 07/22/2008 8:22:43 AM PDT by onedoug
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To: allmendream
You think National Geographic should get its History from Cecil B. Demille?

A passing reference to the "legend" of Jewish slave labor would have been totally appropriate. By totally ignoring any Jewish element, the piece had the feel of airbrushing history.

60 posted on 07/22/2008 8:24:54 AM PDT by NativeNewYorker (Freepin' Jew Boy)
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