Was the Exodus natural or supernatural, fact or fiction?

[GreatestIam]

Was the Exodus natural or supernatural, fact or fiction?

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbJ6qVsu_MU]?????? ????? ????? / The Exodus Decoded?? - YouTube[/ame]

I have always had a problem with the notion that God would have hardened Pharaoh’s soft heart and pave the way for him to kill/murder the first born of Egypt. For God to do so would have been evil indeed.

Do you think that science has explained the purported miracles as natural phenomena?

From what I can see, the Jews who wrote the story did not take it literally.

RaceandHistory.com - Doubting the Story of Exodus

Should Christians recognize the O T stories as natural or supernatural, fact or fiction?

Regards
DL

 

[Staidhup]

The exodus was an act of God delivering his chosen people out of bondage. It was the fulfillment of a promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom the lord renamed Israel, in return for their loyalty and obedience to God.

 

[konradv]

The exodus was an act of God delivering his chosen people out of bondage. It was the fulfillment of a promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom the lord renamed Israel, in return for their loyalty and obedience to God.

The problem is that archaeology provides no evidence for the Exodus. The Israelites were just another Canaanite community. There was no sudden influx of outsiders and no evidence of the destruction of cities as purported in the OT. While a small group may have come from Egypt, there's no evidence of a mass migration or a large slave population in Egypt.

 

[GreatestIam]

The exodus was an act of God delivering his chosen people out of bondage. It was the fulfillment of a promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom the lord renamed Israel, in return for their loyalty and obedience to God.

To believe so you would have to believe that staffs can turn into snakes and that God would punish the children/first born of Egypt for what their parents were doing.

Are these your beliefs?

Would God go against his WORD.

Ezekiel 18:20
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

Regards
DL

 

[PredFan]

Isn't it true that there is absolutely no evidence of any Israelite slaves in Egypt? I heard that somewhere.

 

[PoliticalChic]

The exodus was an act of God delivering his chosen people out of bondage. It was the fulfillment of a promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom the lord renamed Israel, in return for their loyalty and obedience to God.

The problem is that archaeology provides no evidence for the Exodus. The Israelites were just another Canaanite community. There was no sudden influx of outsiders and no evidence of the destruction of cities as purported in the OT. While a small group may have come from Egypt, there's no evidence of a mass migration or a large slave population in Egypt.

Not true.

 

[konradv]

The exodus was an act of God delivering his chosen people out of bondage. It was the fulfillment of a promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom the lord renamed Israel, in return for their loyalty and obedience to God.

The problem is that archaeology provides no evidence for the Exodus. The Israelites were just another Canaanite community. There was no sudden influx of outsiders and no evidence of the destruction of cities as purported in the OT. While a small group may have come from Egypt, there's no evidence of a mass migration or a large slave population in Egypt.

Not true.

Evidence?

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

The exodus was an act of God delivering his chosen people out of bondage. It was the fulfillment of a promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom the lord renamed Israel, in return for their loyalty and obedience to God.

The problem is that archaeology provides no evidence for the Exodus. The Israelites were just another Canaanite community. There was no sudden influx of outsiders and no evidence of the destruction of cities as purported in the OT. While a small group may have come from Egypt, there's no evidence of a mass migration or a large slave population in Egypt.

Nonsense.

 

[konradv]

The exodus was an act of God delivering his chosen people out of bondage. It was the fulfillment of a promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom the lord renamed Israel, in return for their loyalty and obedience to God.

The problem is that archaeology provides no evidence for the Exodus. The Israelites were just another Canaanite community. There was no sudden influx of outsiders and no evidence of the destruction of cities as purported in the OT. While a small group may have come from Egypt, there's no evidence of a mass migration or a large slave population in Egypt.

Nonsense.

Evidence?

 

[LittleNipper]

Please see for another view:

ISRAELITES IN EGYPT - Is there evidence that the Israelites once lived in Egypt as the Bible says? And has Joseph's original tomb been found? ? ChristianAnswers.Net

 

[LittleNipper]

Please see this secular article:
New find reignites Exodus debate - US News and World Report

 

[AVG-JOE]

Too much ado about unprovable ancient stories.

 

[konradv]

Please see this secular article:
New find reignites Exodus debate - US News and World Report

Interesting but hardly proof. From the article:

But one house doesn't prove the Exodus. When droughts hit in Canaan, people often wandered southwest into well-irrigated Egypt. Some could have stayed and become laborers, says Stager, who adds that he's still "agnostic" on whether the Exodus actually happened. Archaeologist Larry Herr of Canadian University College speculates that someone with no connection to the Israelites could have, by coincidence, built a hut with the familiar floor plan. "Give me a slave city where all of the houses are like this," he says. "Then I'll see some sort of connection."

 

[zzzz]

The desert has a history of consuming evidence. The river Nile has steadily moved eastward since the time of the Pharaohs so any settlements to the east of the Nile would have been washed away. Even today they are making new finds in Egypt of settlements.

As to whether staffs can be turned to snakes ... All oral stories undergo some embellishment and this is no exception. A possible explanation would be Moses threw down his staff and a nest of serpents was aroused under God's guidance. The re-telling of the story over time was changed to the staff became the serpents.

 

[konradv]

The desert has a history of consuming evidence. The river Nile has steadily moved eastward since the time of the Pharaohs so any settlements to the east of the Nile would have been washed away. Even today they are making new finds in Egypt of settlements.

As to whether staffs can be turned to snakes ... All oral stories undergo some embellishment and this is no exception. A possible explanation would be Moses threw down his staff and a nest of serpents was aroused under God's guidance. The re-telling of the story over time was changed to the staff became the serpents.

That still doesn't explain why there's no evidence of conquest in Palestine and why, except for the lack of pig bones, Israelite settlements are almost identical to Canaanite sites. One of the most telling pieces of evidence is the pottery. It's often used to distinguish cultures. Israelite and Canaanite samples are identical. Strange for a people that supposedly arrived from Egypt.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

The problem is that archaeology provides no evidence for the Exodus. The Israelites were just another Canaanite community. There was no sudden influx of outsiders and no evidence of the destruction of cities as purported in the OT. While a small group may have come from Egypt, there's no evidence of a mass migration or a large slave population in Egypt.

Nonsense.

Evidence?

Look. I know what the extant evidence is. You're the one making the claims that we have no evidence beyond the biblical testimony. You're basing this on something. Right?

 

[konradv]

Nonsense.

Evidence?

Look. I know what the extant evidence is. You're the one making the claims that we have no evidence beyond the biblical testimony. You're basing this on something. Right?

Yes, lack of evidence.

Building a history. Archaeologist Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University also points out that there's no physical evidence that thousands of people wandered for decades in the desert. Besides, Jericho and other Canaanite cities described in the Bible didn't exist when the Israelites were supposed to be conquering them. Finkelstein says the Bible isn't just fantasy, though. He thinks the first books of the Bible were written in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., long after the Exodus might have happened. The writers drew on a pool of folk tales, of myths, of shreds of evidence to build a history for Israel, he says.

Maybe, suggests historian Baruch Halpern at Pennsylvania State University, the Exodus actually happened over and over. Everyone knew someone who'd gone to Egypt and come back complaining. "That's basically what the story is about," Halpern says. "God, you know how much taxes they make us pay in Egypt?" Maybe through years of retelling, he says, their grousing became an epic of enslavement and escape.

New find reignites Exodus debate - US News and World Report

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Evidence?

Look. I know what the extant evidence is. You're the one making the claims that we have no evidence beyond the biblical testimony. You're basing this on something. Right?

Yes, lack of evidence.

Building a history. Archaeologist Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University also points out that there's no physical evidence that thousands of people wandered for decades in the desert. Besides, Jericho and other Canaanite cities described in the Bible didn't exist when the Israelites were supposed to be conquering them. Finkelstein says the Bible isn't just fantasy, though. He thinks the first books of the Bible were written in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., long after the Exodus might have happened. The writers drew on a pool of folk tales, of myths, of shreds of evidence to build a history for Israel, he says.

Maybe, suggests historian Baruch Halpern at Pennsylvania State University, the Exodus actually happened over and over. Everyone knew someone who'd gone to Egypt and come back complaining. "That's basically what the story is about," Halpern says. "God, you know how much taxes they make us pay in Egypt?" Maybe through years of retelling, he says, their grousing became an epic of enslavement and escape.

New find reignites Exodus debate - US News and World Report

Just as I figured, Finkelstein is your authority.

 

[Jimmy_Jam]

I can never understand some Christians' dogged determination to take the stories of the OT as literal factual events. The Jews by-and-large certainly don't do that. They acknowledge that there is some symbolic meaning involved. It's a Christian tendency to take the OT so literally.

 

[GreatestIam]

Isn't it true that there is absolutely no evidence of any Israelite slaves in Egypt? I heard that somewhere.

I have yet to see any.

Regards
DL