OK, now that this documentary has aired on TV, what does everyone think of it?
For me, there was a lot of distortion of what is written in the Bible, and I cannot agree that the Hebrews were really the Hyksos. The story just eliminates about 100 years of Egyptian history between the Hyksos and the Santorini eruption, and that destroys much of its credibility for me. Additionally, there was no effort made to reconcile the Orthodox Jewish chronology of the Bible with the assumptions made here, which further eroded its credibility. If Moses lived, as the show indicated, some 280 years before Solomon, then that'd be somewhere around 1280 BCE - because King David (Solomon's father) reigned beginning circa 1004 BCE. Even if Moses died in 1280 BCE at age 120, his birth would be some 100 years AFTER the 1500 BCE or so that the documentary postulates for the time of the Exodus or the Santorini eruption (not to mention that the miraculous events of the Exodus only started when Moses was 80.
Some aspects of the program were very well thought out and done, particularly the part about the location of Mt. Sinai. I'm not sure that the posited site is the correct one, but it at least is plausible (and far more so than the site chosen by St. Catherine). I'm still waiting for a better explanation of the whole thing - this was good,
As for the causes of the plagues, I don't see how the use of natural phenomenon means that there was any less of a series of miracles than claimed in the Bible. For those events to have occurred just when the Israelites needed them to occur, and to victimize the Egyptians so much so that the Israelites could leave, is too much of a coincidence to be just random geological/biological events. That the Israelites escaped and no one else did is very telling, as is the fact that the Israelites could leave while the Egyptian couldn't or didn't want to stop them is highly suggestive of a selective application of the plagues...which doesn't occur naturally.
Comments now that the show aired?