I use the example of Exodus all the time in my "discussions" with the bible literalists that believe the Bible is all "factually proven."
There is in reality absolutely NO historical record that the Exodus ever occurred. No record that Hebrews ever lived in a "land of Goshen"--about which there is no record, either.
The Bible has meaning because one has faith in its message, not because it is observably true.
It is interesting to speculate on the physical location of Mt. Sinai, or Mt. Ararat (yes, there's one in Turkey but no one is positive it's the one the Bible mentions--it's like saying you grew up in "Paris," without also relating that you're talking about "Texas," not "France").
But in the end the facts don't matter nearly so much as the reality of personal, spiritual witness of faith.
There is in reality absolutely NO historical record that the Exodus ever occurred. No record that Hebrews ever lived in a "land of Goshen"--about which there is no record, either.
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There are egyptians records of Jews living in Egypt after the destruction of the 1st temple or about 550 bc. But those were likely ones that Jeremiah pleaded with--not to go to Egypt.
Explicit corroborating mention of Jerusalem in Egyptian records only goes back as far as about 950 BC when Egyptian records record the Egyptian Phaoroh Neco's sack of Jerusalem after the death of Solomon. This corresponds to the bible record of the sack.
Incidently, until 1993 there was no non-biblical evidence for David. That year they found a Syrian inscription dating to c.850BC that mentioned "King Asa of the House of David". The inscription celebrated the defeat of King Baasha of Israel by Asa and the Syrians - an event recorded in Kings and Chronicles.
And then there is this from:DID THE EXODUS HAPPEN? ANSWERING THE SCEPTICS
http://www.ensignmessage.com/archives/exodusscptcs.html ‘Before Moses, the Bible records that the Israelites were enslaved by their Egyptian hosts (Exodus 1:8-14). In the Brooklyn Museum (p.276, fig. 310) resides a papyrus scroll numbered Brooklyn 35:1446 which was acquired in the late 19th century by Charles Wilbour. This dates to the reign of Sobekhotep III, the predecessor of Neferhotep I and so the pharaoh who reigned one generation before Moses. This papyrus is a decree by the pharaoh for a transfer of slaves. Of the 95 names of slaves mentioned in the letter, 50% are Semitic in origin. What is more, it lists the names of these slaves in the original Semitic language and then adds the Egyptian name each had been assigned, which is something the Bible records the Egyptians as doing, cf. Joseph’s name given to him by pharaoh (Genesis 41:45). Some of the Semitic names are biblical and include:- Menahem, Issachar, Asher, and Shiprah (cf. Exodus 1:15-21).
That 50% of the names are Israelite means that there must have been avery large group of them in the Egyptian Delta at that time, corroborating the testimony of Exodus 1:7 which alludes to how numerous the Israelites became. The sceptics look for Israel in the Egypt of the Nineteenth Dynasty and remain sceptics, because the proof is in the Egypt of the Thirteenth Dynasty. The site of Avaris has been uncovered by the Austrian archaeologist Manfred Bietak in the land of Goshen underneath that of
the city of Ramesses. It provides plenty of proof, says Fulton, for Israel’s presence and sufferings in Egypt:
‘The people who lived in Avaris were not Egyptian but Asiatic Palestinian or Syrian. The finds there included numerous pottery fragments of Palestinian origin. Several factors about the graves were particularly fascinating:- 65% of the burials were of children under 18 months of age, the normal for this period being 20-30%. Could this be due to the killing of the male Israelite children by the Egyptians, recorded in Exodus 1:22? A disproportionately high number of adult women as opposed to adult men are buried here, again pointing to the slaughter of male Israelite babies. There are large numbers of long-haired Asiatic sheep buried which indicate these people to be shepherds. Large numbers of weapons found in the male graves indicate the warlike nature of the people.’
According to the Bible, Moses was bom around 1527 BC, in the reign of Neferhotep I. A few fragments of ancient records from a Jewish historian called Artapanus were preserved by the Catholic historian Eusebius. They say that the Pharaoh’s daughter at the time Moses was born was called Merris. She married the Pharaoh Khenephres, also called Sobekhotep IV.
Moses or Mousos, meanwhile became a great general who invaded Nubia and Ethiopia. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 2.10.1-2 tells the story. The Ethiopians had invaded Egypt and had practically overrun the country:
‘The Egyptians, under this sad oppression, betook themselves to their oracles and prophecies; and when God had given them this counsel, to make use of Moses the Hebrew, and take his assistance, the king commanded his daughter to produce him, that he might be the general of their army ... So Moses ... cheerfully undertook the business’ and defeated the African invaders by marching through a snake-infested region and taking them by surprise: ‘When he had therefore proceeded thus on his journey, he came upon the Ethiopians before they expected him; and, joining battle with them, he beat them, and deprived them of the hopes they had of success against the Egyptians, and went on in overthrowing their cities, and indeed made a great slaughter of these Ethiopians.’
Josephus was right. A monument in the British Museum tells of Khanferre or Khenephres invading Sudan and Ethiopia, the only Thirteenth Dynasty ruler to do so. Remains of an Egyptian government building with the Pharaoh’s statue has been found hundreds of miles south of known Egyptian territoy
Sobekhotep IV/Khenephres was the Pharaoh of the Oppression from whom Moses fled, about 1487 BC. The forty years Moses spent in Midian were likely to have been 1487-1447 BC. The Pharaoh of the Exodus was Dudimose. Fulton records that the Austrians found evidence both of God’s slaying of the firstborn and the sudden departure of Israel from Goshen:
‘The Tenth Plague to be sent on Egypt just before the Exodus was the plague on the first-born, recorded in Exodus 12:29,30. At the end of stratum G/l at Tell ed-Daba or the ancient city of Avaris (p.293), archaeologists found shallow burial pits into which the victims of some terrible disaster had been thrown. These death pits were not carefully organized internments; the bodies were simply thrown in on top of one another. Could these be the burial pits of the first-born Egyptians? What is more, immediately after this disaster, the remaining population left Avaris en masse; this fits perfectly with the Exodus of the Israelites following the final terrible plague.’
Manetho, the Egyptian historian wrote how Egypt collapsed in the reign of Dudimose:
‘Tutimaos: In his reign, for what cause I know not, a blast of God smote us; and unexpectedly, from the regions of the East, invaders of obscure race marched in confidence of victory against our land (Egypt). By main force they easily seized it without striking a blow and having overpowered the rulers of the land, they then burned our cities ruthlessly, razed to the ground the temples of the gods and treated all our natives with cruel hostility, massacring some and leading into slavery the wives and children of others.’
The invaders were the Amalekites Israel encountered after leaving Egypt. They found Egypt, devastated by Divine judgment an easy prey.
‘The continuing archaeological discoveries’ says Fulton, ‘here in the ancient city of Avaris mirror exactly the early Israelites revealed in the Old Testament. For two centuries no evidence was found for the Israelites when looking in the strata of the 19th Dynasty. Now that the chronologies have begun to be amended and the sojourn in Egypt placed in the 12th and 13th Dynasties, we have a wealth of archaeological evidence corroborating the Biblical account.’
***The Bible has meaning because one has faith in its message, not because it is observably true.***
This apply to the resurrection too?
There is in reality absolutely NO historical record that the Exodus ever occurred. No record that Hebrews ever lived in a "land of Goshen"--about which there is no record, either. There is a four-fold flaw in your conclusion, Illbay:
1) Only the Egyptian upper class were educated in reading and writing, and the upper class was ruled by Pharoah. Thus, any Egyptian recorded history would be biased pro-Pharoah, for social as well as religious reasons (see #2)
2) The Egyptians did not record their history using the same concept of linear time as you & I do in our Western thinking. Egyptian "history" was a history of their gods' incarnations in Pharoah, Apis bulls, etc. No accounting was made for overlapping time, or time where no Pharoah served. In other words, it should not be viewed a chronological or comprehensive, because their historical mindset was not chronological or comprehensive.
3) Successive Pharoahs were known for retroactively changing recorded history, in order to support the current religious dogma of the living Pharoah, to the point of re-sculpting or destroying a prior Pharoah's monuments. Thus, there is no expectation to find a direct account of the slavery of Israel in Goshen, the Exodus, etc., because a successive Pharoah would have likely wiped out any record of the prior Pharoah's failures. What would remain is circumstantial evidence, such as sudden changes in the Pharoahnic bloodline (death of Pharoah's firstborn, then Pharoah's drowning in the Red Sea), preceeded by changes in building methods and quality (making bricks without straw). And such evidence does exist, although due to #2 above, the dates may not be where convential wisdom thinks they should be.
4) John 5:46-47, where Jesus says "For if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me..." Illbay, your final authority on the matter shouldn't be Egyptian archaeology (i.e. believing Pharoah), but Biblical authority (i.e. believing Jesus, who says to believe Moses). This is not to say that the Biblical account will forever be at odds with the historical one - it's to say the Egyptian account is untrustworthy as history for all the reasons above, and that another record exists (i.e. the book of Exodus). Your own church claims the Book of Mormon documents the history of the Americas in biblical times - are you saying the BoM is not observedly true in history, as well?
The Bible has meaning because one has faith in its message, not because it is observably true. But in the end the facts don't matter nearly so much as the reality of personal, spiritual witness of faith.
Which part of Moses' account do you fail to believe? The spiritual, or the historical? Where (and by what standard) do you seperate the accounts? If it wasn't historically true, how can we maintain it's spiritually true? Either God freed Israel from Egypt, or He didn't. And if He didn't, then the whole of Moses is a lie.