EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israelites?

[Penelope]

I did a foolish thing, this last vacation.

My two kids and I got two invites, by different relatives, to spend Christmas and New Years with them. We chose the larger gathering, and had a very nice time. But, to that side of the family which lost out, I promised we'd drive over for a short visit, soon. And MLK Day worked out well for everyone. (In the States, we celebrate Martin Luther King Day on the third Monday, every January.) 3-day weekend.

Sunday was sunny and reasonably warm, so we packed a large picnic and all went out to the coast. A couple hour drive. Winter beaches in the Pacific Northwest are chilly fun. You need to bundle-up for it. But the salty air and clear blue horizon are a refreshing change from the endless rain and little bit of snow we've had, this winter. We strolled south half a mile, then settled in amongst driftwood logs.

Underneath several layers of clothing, I wore a one-piece swimsuit.

I'm a compulsive jogger. I go out, whatever the weather. But even I have limits, when it comes to weather extremes. Though not as satisfying to me, I will jog a circular track - indoors - if the outdoor conditions are unduly harsh. I am not foolish where my health is concerned.

Not usually, anyway ... But this Sunday, I peeled my layers of warmth and walked out into the surf till I was mid-thigh deep. The air was 47-degrees Fahrenheit, and the water was frigid. Far too cold to swim. (Believe me, I don't belong to one of those Polar Bear clubs - people who jump into a frigid lake at noon on New Years Day as a "refreshing" way to kick off the New Year.) But I did stand there, sideways to the waves breaking over me, looking south. It was strangely meditative.

Land to my left, sea to my right. The steady rhythm of whitecaps breaking upon the shore. Seabirds pecking in the wet sand or arcing gracefully in the breeze above. Skiffs of cloud drifting eastward. To keep my legs from going numb, I would lift my left foot up and put it back down, then lift my right foot up and put it back down. Left foot then right foot, a couple times every minute. There would be a little suction in the sand, every time I lifted a foot. I'm sure my relatives thought I was crazy. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, doing this slow dance. But the tide was going out, and soon the waves were barely covering my calves.

I headed to shore. And my daughter and my cousin formed a little tent with towels, so I could change out of my wet swimsuit. After lunch and exploring, the wind picked up and, by and by, began to gust. Knock-you-off-your-feet gust. We packed up and hit the highway. Not the person in the driver's seat, I let my mind wander.

What if I was, instead, facing shore? What if I'd stayed in the water two hours, instead of 20-minutes? My feet lifting and settling back into the sand, every few seconds. Say a camera was looking, and sped up the film. It would look like I was walking. And since the tide was going out and the water level around me was dropping, the camera would make it seem like I was walking from the ocean ... in toward shore. When, in actuality I was only "walking in place." Not going anywhere.

But, in the eye of that camera, the illusion of me walking toward shore would be compelling. Would be, visually, far more compelling to a movie-viewer's intuition than what had been the actual truth.

& & &

The historical period between the time of Moses and King David (1250bce-950bce) is an interesting time in the larger history of the Middle East. The Bronze Age was ending and Iron Age beginning. And there was turmoil everywhere. And according to Egyptian texts, much of this turmoil was caused by the raids and invasion by this mysterious tribe which Egyptian records named "the Sea People." Over this period of time, the Mycenaean Empire was dismantled, the Hittite Empire was destroyed, and the Egyptian Empire shrank in size back to its original Nile basin.

& & &

Back in better days, according to the Bible, Abraham and his great-grandson Joseph regularly hobnobbed with the Egyptian Pharaoh. And then, at the beginning of this new era of turmoil, Moses played a dangerous game of chicken with Pharaoh. Pharaoh blinked and the Israelites won their independence and exited Egypt.

The Egyptians were inveterate record-keepers, in stone, on papyrus, and on clay tablets (much of which has survived due to Egypt's dry climate). Those month-by-month, year-by-year, detailed Egyptian records make no mention of Abraham or Joseph or Moses. If any of these individuals actually existed, they made miniscule effect upon Egyptian history. Footnote history on lost clay tablets.

During most of this time - between Abraham and Moses - Canaan was a vassal state of the Egyptian Empire. The Egyptians maintained fortress-towns in the fertile valleys or on the coast of Canaan, elegant cities paid for by tax upon the Canaanites. If Abraham or Joseph or Moses had dealings with the Egyptians, it would not have been with Pharaoh directly. It would have been with Pharaoh's representative in Canaan, the Egyptian regional governor. And as nomadic tribes of herders up in the hill-country of Canaan, the Israelites would have had little contact with Egyptian authorities to their west. Except in time of war - when the Israelites probably hired on as mercenary foot-soldiers to swell the Egyptian ranks against its enemies (for a cut of battle spoils, as numerous tribal groups of that era typically did).

But no Middle Eastern herding people could survive by animal-husbandry alone. The Israelites were no exception. The herders needed to come down into the valley, seasonally, to trade animal products for the fruit and grain of the valleys' farmers. This mutual dependency (symbiosis) between farmers and herders lasted for centuries, and helped both groups to prosper (or, at the very least, survive), from season to season. These trading-times-of-year would become Festival Seasons (often around the equinoxes and solstices on the Egyptian/Canaanite calendar). And the Egyptian overlords may well have used this symbiotic get-together as an opportunity to tax the herders, as well.

& & &

In the Bronze Age, the big empires were BIG because that had the big war technology. And the armored tank of that era was a 4-wheeled war-wagon. (Not the one- or two-person chariots of the Ben Hur films.) Several bowmen rode within this horse-drawn war-wagon, protected by bronze armor. These were the elite troops of the Imperial army. This wagon (and 50 more like it) would charge into enemy lines and the bowmen would cut-down enemy infantry - whose leather (and even bronze) shields were no match to the hail of arrows. The enemy infantrymens' bronze swords and pikes were about as effective as WWII rifles were against tanks. The (mercenary) infantry, that followed behind these deadly war-wagons, merely had to mop-up on the battlefield - by finishing off survivors.

But, at the beginning of the Iron Age, somehow the Sea People figured out how to turn the tables on this awesome and deadly killing platform. Maybe it had something to do with new iron shields to deflect the arrows and new longer iron pikes to pierce the war-wagon's armor and that of its horses. Or maybe the Sea People had devised battle-plans that did not take place in open country, that destroyed the wheels, that isolated one war-wagon from another - leaving the elite soldiers vulnerable. Whatever the case, most scholars think "the Sea People" were not one tribe or a confederation of tribes. But pirates, freebooters. Former mercenaries who figured out the vulnerability in the traditional Imperial battle strategy. And, once they'd done so, they turned violently upon their former employers.

& & &

About the time of Moses and Joshua, the Sea People were, bit by bit, beginning to drive the Egyptians out of their vassal states in North Africa and Canaan. The Egyptian empire shrunk to a ghost of its former expanse and power - back to its core, in the Nile basin ...

Remember me at the beach, walking in the surf? Stepping up and down, seeming to walk out of the ocean? Maybe Moses and the Israelites walked out of Egypt in the same way. Maybe the Israelites did not move eastward, any more than I did in my mind-picture, stepping up and down. Maybe Egypt shrunk westward, backwards from their longtime colony in Canaan. The Israelites left Egypt - by standing still. (Passing time did a camera-trick on oral tribal memory of the Israelites. Created this optical illusion of traveling east.)

The Egyptians abandoned - exited - the land of the Israelites (after many battles with Sea Peoples, over many generations). That is the historic truth.

The Exodus was in reverse.

 

[Penelope]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

One of the conquering bands of "Sea People," by the way, was the Biblical Philistines.

After driving the Egyptian overlords from Canaan, the Philistines ruled the coast and the inland farming towns of the valleys of Canaan. These conquerors wielded more of an iron hand than did the Egyptians (and probably had it in for these "bandit" Israelites). The Philistines prohibited Canaanite farming towns from trading with Israelite herders, breaking a seasonal trade-pact which had gone back centuries.

Permanent farming villages began to appear in the hill-country of southern Canaan, during this time-period. The Israelites of the southern Canaan hill-country had to start growing their own fruit and grain, or die. How archeologists know these permanent villages were Israelite, and not Philistine colonists, is (1) how the buildings were arranged (same arrangement as temporary nomadic tent-villages employed by Israelite herders) and (2) the refuse dumps and latrines of these towns showed no genetic evidence of pigs being present (the Philistines were pork-eaters and pig-raisers, where the Israelites - long copying their former Egyptian overlords in ethics and hygiene - did not eat nor raise pork).

Israelites up in the hill-country of northern Canaan had begun to practice farming somewhat earlier in history. But as farming developed alongside grazing in the hill-country of southern Canaan, there came a degree of prosperity and economic stability - which had temporarily disappeared when the Egyptians left. But now the economic stability was homegrown, and (after a few generations) that made the southern Israelites confident. This country became a haven and base of operation for Israelite bandits against Philistine and other "Sea People" invaders. And the most successful of these bandit leaders made a miniscule trading hill-town the base of his operations. The town was Jerusalem and the bandit was named David.

Thru wile and charisma, David united the various Israelite hill tribes - south and north - into a confederacy effective enough to (pretty much, over time) drive out the Sea People. And, due to the considerable power vacuum in the region, David was able to manufacture a tiny little empire (which survived a mere generation past his death). But the power-vacuum did not last. And the BIG powers to the east and west of Canaan began to puff up their chest again. And the Israelites had to strike deals with these regional super-powers or die.

The only "puffing up" the small Israelite nation could muster, thereafter, was in its dreams - massively amplifying the extremely modest glories of its past.

Stories of the greatness that was ...

And of the (longed for) "greatness" to come.

 

[bob x]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

My own belief is that stories get exaggerated but do not come from nothing. So, I assume that there actually was a band of rebellious slaves who escaped Egypt and formed a community around a religious covenant, but that the numbers were much smaller and the events much less dramatic than we are told, and that most of the population who came to call themselves "Israelite" were, as you are saying, people who had been living there all along and got free of Egypt just due to the sheer inanition of the Egyptian empire, and of course preferred to identify their ancestry with those who got their freedom in a more heroic way. (There is even Biblical support for this: one prophet, BB could probably find it, tells the Israelites they forget who they really are, "Your mother was an Amorite and your father was a Hittite!")

 

[Penelope]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

Ezekiel 16:3 ...
Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth are from the land of the Canaanite, your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.

(I've been down this road with BB, before. So I remember the quote.)

The Amorites originate from territory south of Canaan and the Hittites from north, so Ezekiel could be talking metaphorically.
Or semi-metaphorically: Israelites of the southern hill-country of Canaan may have frequently intermarried with Amorite tribes to their south. Israelites to the north may have frequently intermarried with Hittite tribes.

& & &

Abraham, like Jacob, probably existed. There is some archeological evidence (or inferences from evidence) to support this. As much as the stories told about them, make them sound like characters in a novel.

Abraham, who was patriarch of these southern Israelite tribes, may himself have been an Amorite (a Semitic people). In 1750bce there were Amorite and other herding peoples in the hill-country near Ur in Mesopotamia who traded animal products for fruit and grain products with the prosperous farming community of Ur (who were probably largely non-Semitic). And Abraham's clan might have found itself on the wrong side of the war with Babylon. So they headed for the hills.

To get from Ur to Canaan, the direct route means crossing a desert which was almost as inhospitable then as it is today. So Abraham's clan would have to travel south, following the coast around, and up - paralleling the Red Sea north into Canaan. Or Abraham's people could travel the trade-route north, following the hills above the Euphrates River all the way to present-day Turkey (land of the Hittites, but also the land of a number of Semitic peoples), then follow the trade-routes - leaving from there - south into Canaan.

(This latter is the Biblical version of Abraham's travels. But if his clan took large herds along that route, they must have been pretty heavily armed. Or they would have found themselves in Canaan with two goats and a mule. The southern route, Abraham would have been moving thru friendlier territory - if he was an Amorite: grazing his herds each night on the home turf of one cousin or another.)

& & &

Nomadic tribes, like Abraham's, regularly hired-on as mercenaries in order to enrich themselves, and to keep themselves in the good-graces of the Big Power in their region. So how did the Israelites end up being slaves in Egypt?

If you think about it logically, it doesn't make a lot of sense. If the Israelites were foolish enough to side with Egypt's enemies in a war, and lost ... most of the adult males would likely have been slaughtered by the Egyptians and only women and children taken into slavery. These slaves would not have stayed together in a group, but would have been taken by individual soldiers to their home in one corner or another of the Egyptian Empire, or sold at auction.

If a group of Israelites left Egypt - even a small group - it would not have been as slaves. It would have been as a tribe which contracted to work with the Egyptians. Would the full force of the Egyptian army chase a rabbit-tribe all over hill and dale just because they bugged-out on a contract?

Makes no sense at all.

& & &

Bob X,
I used to think like you, that the Exodus probably happened - but in a much scaled-down version. But frankly, I have to wonder.

Archeology in the region has found not one shred of evidence to support that Joshua's conquest of Canaan ever occurred. And plenty of evidence to support the opposite - the 'Sea People' invaded and subdued the territory. And large numbers of Israelites had to turn from herding to farming to keep the community alive.

Did Joshua even exist?
(In later Jewish-scribes' dreams, yes. Sure. But was there even an actual 'Joshua'? If he did not conquer Canaan, what did he really do?)

And here is the $64 question:
What about Moses? ... Did he actually exist? If so, where is the evidence? ... And if he did not lead an Exodus out of Egypt, what did he really do? ... How did this guy get a highly-advanced religion built around him?

& & &

Is it that Moses and Joshua are just characters in a three-millennium old novel?

 

[iBrian]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

Penelope, there's an interesting book called "Test of Time" (in the UK) by David Rohl that seeks to prove the authenticity of Moses as an historical figure.

It's a contentious book, but still found it very stimulating - might be work a look for a very focused background on the subject.

 

[Penelope]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

David Rohl's book, in the U.S., is called:
Pharoahs and Kings: a Biblical Quest.
(Just requested it from my local library-system.)

Thanks for the tip, Brian.

 

[bob x]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

Ezekiel 16:3 ...
Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth are from the land of the Canaanite, your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.

(I've been down this road with BB, before. So I remember the quote.)

Thanks.

The Amorites originate from territory south of Canaan

"Amorite" is simply a SYNONYM for "Canaanite", more commonly used in Akkadian (the language of the Assyrians and Babylonians) where "Amurru" could cover a wide span of Syria and Lebanon as well as "Canaan"; less often used in Hebrew, but poetic usage required not using the same word twice, so after saying "Canaanite" in one verse he had to say "Amorite" in the next.

In 1750bce there were Amorite and other herding peoples in the hill-country near Ur in Mesopotamia

I do not believe that Abraham came from the Mesopotamian Ur, although most of the literature says so; "ur" was a generic root for "burg; ville" found in many town names. Abraham's home-town is given as Ur ha-Khashdim, where the difficult ethnonym "Kashd" got worn down to "Chaldean" in downstream Mesopotamia where some of them migrate, and to "Kurd" in the area (around Harran and Urfa) where they started; here it should be rendered "Ur of the Kurds" rather than "Ur of the Chaldees" because the Chaldean branch did not migrate south until long after Abraham's time, and indeed not until after Ur had ceased to be a city, so that it would never have been known as "Ur of the Chaldees". On a trip to Kurdistan in 1980, I discovered an old ruin which I have reason to believe was the site of "Ur of the Kurds", but it would be politically (it is very near the triple-border of Turkey, Iran, and Iraq) and physically (the Zab river has shifted its valley to surround the site with thick mud) difficult to excavate.

Abraham's clan might have found itself on the wrong side of the war with Babylon.

I can't approve of inventing story-elements for which there is no trace in the given story; if there had been any "war with Babylon" we would hear about it (we hear about an obscure raid into Canaan by Chederlaomer the Elamite, for example, in Gen. 14).

if his clan took large herds along that route, they must have been pretty heavily armed.

Indeed. In Gen. 14, Abraham's household has a better military force than the local king.

So how did the Israelites end up being slaves in Egypt?

The story as given is that they were the relatives and their domestics of a man who through sheer intelligence rose to be politically well-connected; then they were busted down from retainers of the Pharoah's household to state slaves when a change in dynasty brought a more hostile government. This is all straightforward and I see nothing implausible about it.

If a group of Israelites left Egypt - even a small group - it would not have been as slaves. It would have been as a tribe which contracted to work with the Egyptians.

Why do you say things like this? You seem anxious to invent stories out of nothing.

Archeology in the region has found not one shred of evidence to support that Joshua's conquest of Canaan ever occurred.

On the contrary, there are a large number of cities with burn levels around the 1200 BCE period; it is just that not all of these city-sacks can possibly be dated within the same generation (Jericho, Ai, and Hazor distinctly do not fit). So what it looks like is that Joshua was one general who sacked at least a couple cities, but then every city that ever got sacked anytime remotely like his period was eventually attributed to Joshua.

And plenty of evidence to support the opposite - the 'Sea People' invaded and subdued the territory.

No, the Philistines were only on the west coast, the area that the Bible acknowledges the Israelites never had any luck in.

Did Joshua even exist?
(In later Jewish-scribes' dreams, yes. Sure. But was there even an actual 'Joshua'? If he did not conquer Canaan, what did he really do?)

And here is the $64 question:
What about Moses? ... Did he actually exist? If so, where is the evidence? ... And if he did not lead an Exodus out of Egypt, what did he really do? ... How did this guy get a highly-advanced religion built around him?

& & &

Is it that Moses and Joshua are just characters in a three-millennium old novel?

Nobody wrote novels until the 18th century. You are attributing a purely modern way of thinking to the ancients. Stories got exaggerated, certainly; but the whole concept of inventing a character and writing a story about him out of nothing was just not something that anybody did back then.

 

[bananabrain]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

most of the population who came to call themselves "Israelite" were, as you are saying, people who had been living there all along and got free of Egypt just due to the sheer inanition of the Egyptian empire, and of course preferred to identify their ancestry with those who got their freedom in a more heroic way. (There is even Biblical support for this: one prophet, BB could probably find it, tells the Israelites they forget who they really are, "Your mother was an Amorite and your father was a Hittite!")

ezekiel 16:45 is the one that pops up on my search, although the context suggests it's the israelite's shoddy behaviour that is being criticised as far as i can see. interestingly, bob, this could be one way of reading the tradition about the eruv rav, the "mixed multitude" that piggybacked on the exodus and, rather helpfully for the classical commentators, provide an 'external' group to blame in the case of the many unpleasant incidents in the behaviour of the "generation of the exodus".

i also believe one variant reading of ezekiel suggests that "your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries".

Why do you say things like this? You seem anxious to invent stories out of nothing.....You are attributing a purely modern way of thinking to the ancients.

never a truer word overpunctuated in teal a font size too large.

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[Penelope]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

Hi Bob X

I greatly enjoyed reading your scholarly analysis in the Antique Hebrew inscription discovered thread. Admire the range of your knowledge (my knowledge on any of these subjects is rarely more than three books deep).

I do wish you were as subtle a reader of my posts as you are of ancient texts. My first two posts in this thread were serious-minded and researched. My later 'Abraham/Joshua' post was just a throwaway bit of nonsense - idle speculation.

Don't you ever do things like that?:
If Abraham really did originate in the Ur of the Chaldeans, how on earth did he end up in Canaan?
It's a game.

Frankly I figure Abraham (if he existed) was born in or near the hill country of southern Canaan.
(But I loved hearing about the Kurdistan Ur - and would love to hear more.)

'Hittites to the north and Amorites to the south': I did that mostly out of literary parallelism, regarding the Ezekiel quote. Though I did read somewhere the thought that deep in prehistory, the Amorites originated from southern Arabia. Only later migrated north into Canaan and Syria, then raiding east into Mesopotamia.
(Haven't yet re-located the source of that postulate. And the Amorite language has died, so forensic linguists do not have a language-tool to track Amorite movement in prehistory.)
But yeah, more idle speculation.

& & &

Bob X:
Nobody wrote novels until the 18th century. You are attributing a purely modern way of thinking to the ancients. Stories got exaggerated, certainly; but the whole concept of inventing a character and writing a story about him out of nothing was just not something that anybody did back then.

Bob, you either haven't read, or totally reject, Harold Bloom's reading of The Book of J. Bloom argues that from Genesis 2 to the death of Moses there is one unified story, by a writer with a brilliant literary voice, a book the equal of Homer's Iliad (written at about the same period).

Bloom:
Few cultural paradoxes are so profound, or so unnerving, as the process of religious canonization by which an essentially literary work becomes a sacred text.

Richard Elliott Friedman sees the same story, except extended to Solomon's succession to the Israelite thrown. Friedman's book, tellingly is titled: The Hidden Book in the Bible: The Discovery of the First Prose Masterpiece..

And this J-text was written (probably late-10th century bce) three centuries prior to when the stories of Jushua's 'conquests' were written down (7th century bce, 6 centuries after the supposed 'conquest').

They may have a "modern" take on Biblical texts, but both Bloom and Friedman are impeccable scholars.

& & &

But, if you mean by "novel," a product of the printing press and modern imagination ... the literary novel did reach its first high point in England during the 18th century (Defoe, Richardson, Fielding).

But the novel actually began in Spain, as picaresque adventures of a hero/antihero as a kind of journey of spiritual growth. Several were published in the years after 1598ce (Cervantes novel Don Quixote, in part, satirizes these popular novels). Spain was then the richest country in Europe, but a nation in economic flux. Thousands of individuals hit the road, traveling, looking for work. Land-based feudalism was breaking down and a money-based economy was taking over.
(I only mention this latter because of the parallel to Joshua's time - the economic turmoil at the end of the Bronze and beginning of the Iron Age. Egyptian security-arrangements slipping away, quarrels between city-states, invasions by Sea People, peasant revolts.)

Half century after the rise of the picaresque, during the 17th century ce, French authors started publishing social-melodramas about love and marriage - and about parental interference in the process. They were read mostly by well-to-do French (and other French-reading Europeans). Essentially novels of manners.

It was the great English novelists who synthesized these two strains - the Spanish picaresque novel and the French novel of manners - into what we think of, today, as the 'modern novel.'

I say this, Bob, not to point to a failure of scholarship, on your part. You were making a general observation, not a specific historical one.

So please, try likewise to read between the lines on my third post in this thread. It was written as a freehand speculation, not a hard-edged historical essay. Each are different styles of writing with, each, having a peculiar voice all their own. I sometimes merge styles, but sometimes not.

But do consider Bloom's and Friedman's core contention regarding J and other Biblical material. Moses and Joshua are essentially literary figures, perhaps based upon actual historical figures, but maybe not.

Maybe created entirely out of whole cloth.

& & &

Bob X:
On the contrary, there are a large number of cities with burn levels around the 1200 BCE period; it is just that not all of these city-sacks can possibly be dated within the same generation (Jericho, Ai, and Hazor distinctly do not fit). So what it looks like is that Joshua was one general who sacked at least a couple cities, but then every city that ever got sacked anytime remotely like his period was eventually attributed to Joshua.

I'm sure you have read Finkelstein and Silberman's The Bible Unearthed. I suggest you go back and reread Chapter 3 on "The Conquest of Canaan":
It is highly unlikely that the Egyptian garrisons throughout the country would have remained on the sidelines as a group of refugees (from Egypt) wreaked havoc throughout the province of Canaan. And it is inconceivable that the destruction of so many loyal vassal cities by the invaders would have left absolutely no trace in the extensive records of the Egyptian Empire.
{page 79}

Joshua's invasion would have occurred in the late 13th century bce. Jericho and Ai were destroyed centuries earlier. Archeologically, many of the other conquest cities were untouched. (None of these cities were walled cities.) And those that do show signs of destruction ...
The kings of each of these four cities - Hazor, Aphek, Lachish, and Megiddo - are reported to have been defeated by the Israelites under Joshua. But the archeological evidence shows that the destruction of those cities took place over a span of more than a century. The possible causes include invasion, social breakdown, and civil strife. No single military force did it, and certainly not in one military campaign.
{page 90}

How have historians explained this?
The German scholars had always considered the book of Joshua to be a complex collection of legends, hero tales, and local myths, from various parts of the country, that had been composed over centuries.
Or ...
... no more than etiological traditions - that is to say, they were legends about how famous landmarks or natural curiosities came to be.
{page 91}

Finkelstein and Silberman take a more sophisticated tack. This period was a time of great upheaval and transformation, and if you read between the lines in the Book of Joshua you might recognize ...
Folk memories and legends that commemorate this epoch-making transformation. They may offer us highly fragmentary glimpses of the violence, the passion, the euphoria at the destruction of cities and the horrible slaughter of their inhabitants that clearly occurred. Such searing experiences are not likely to have been forgotten, and their once-vivid memories, growing vaguer over the centuries, may have become the raw material for a more elaborate retelling.
{pages 91-92}

This "chaotic series of upheavals caused by many different factors and by many different groups," from the late 13th thru the 12th century bce, was crafted - six centuries later - into a singular tale about the forging of Israelite national identity.

National identity: a 7th century bce Jewish imperative.
(Not a 13th century bce Israelite imperative.)
That, Bob, is what we are reading ... when we read the Book of Joshua ... it seems to me.

Not history.
Not a religious tract.
But ...

Political mythology.

 

[bananabrain]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

But the novel actually began in Spain, as picaresque adventures of a hero/antihero as a kind of journey of spiritual growth. Several were published in the years after 1598ce (Cervantes novel Don Quixote, in part, satirizes these popular novels). Spain was then the richest country in Europe, but a nation in economic flux. Thousands of individuals hit the road, traveling, looking for work. Land-based feudalism was breaking down and a money-based economy was taking over.

ah, the best traditions of academic conceit - why not look up the first *portuguese* novel, called "menina e moça" by bernardim ribeiro? i believe the first edition came out in 1554. but then again, it was written by a crypto-jew, referencing kabbalistic concepts (albeit concealed inside a rather dull pastoral romance).

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[Penelope]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

Have not read Menina e Moca. (Sounds interesting.)
But I believe it is written in a genre of Renaissance literature called a 'shepherd romance.' If it does have Kabalistic symbolism, then it anticipates the 'dreamscape prose-literature of Latin-America: 'magic realism' - or what rigorous literary critics call a literary prose 'Satire.' (Cervantes and Rabelais are two other antecedents of the modern 'Satire.')

These same modern lit-critics (stylistically and structurally) set in opposition to this Latin American dreamscape 'Satire' ...
the English/French/North-American realist 'Novel'.

But the first 'realist novel' is actually Spanish, the picaresque Lazarillo de Tormes - a brief but wonderful book. It was also published in 1554, published anonymously.
(One speculation is that it was written by a forced convert, to Catholicism, of Jewish extraction.)
What makes it 'modern' and a 'Novel' - to lit-crits - is that Lazarillo de Tormes rejects the Renaissance genre of the supernatural 'chivalric romance.' It focuses, instead, upon a materialistic and detailed realism (like a Caravaggio painting), highlighting the lower-classes of society alongside presenting scathingly unpretty depictions of their "betters" (priests, aristocrats). A nasty, smart, and - ultimately - uplifting book (the journey actually gets somewhere - somewhere real).
The rogue-hero of Lazarillo de Tormes anticipates Moll Flanders and Huck Finn, among other 'complicated' anti-heroes of the Realist Novel.

But aside from a few oddities of forward-looking published literature like Menina e Moca and Lazarillo de Tormes during the 16th century, the regular commercial publishing of modern prose literature did not blossom into an everyday industry till the next century - the century of Corneille and Monteverdi and Li Yu and Caravaggio.

The century which began the job of shaping the modern world.

 

[bob x]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

My first two posts in this thread were serious-minded and researched. My later 'Abraham/Joshua' post was just a throwaway bit of nonsense - idle speculation.

How would I know when you are being serious? And why do you even bother posting nonsense, knowing it to be nonsense?

Frankly I figure Abraham (if he existed) was born in or near the hill country of southern Canaan.

Like this for example. The story is quite explicit that he was a migrant, and there is no reason for that to be in the story except-- he was. Why did you make up something else?

(But I loved hearing about the Kurdistan Ur - and would love to hear more.)

The genealogy of Abraham in Gen. 13 appears to be a mix of actual personal names (preserved presumably because people did something significant that is now forgotten) with words standing for significant events in the history of the people: as Peleg, "who was called Peleg because in his day the earth was p-l-g-ed", passive voice of a verbal root that is now obscure but turns out in Akkadian to mean "irrigate", that is, in his day the land was first irrigated. Toward the top of the genealogy is Arphakhshad, where arpha- is a Hurrian word used like the Sumerian ur- as the generic "burg, ville", thus Arphakhshad is actually the same name as Ur ha-Khashdim and its placement in the genealogy refers to the foundation of the town where these people lived. Ptolemy lists a place Arraphachitis on the upper Zab river between lakes Van and Urmia, in the foothills of Mt. Ararat above Harran (said to be founded by Abraham's immediate family) and Urfa (where a cave said to be Abraham's actual birthplace is still exhibited to pilgrims and tourists); Harran and Urfa both have tons of interesting history for being as small as they are, but I could find no archaeological excavations of "Arraphachitis"/Arphaxad/Ur of the Khashd, which is why I went looking for the place and found it.

The Zab river used to be called Gihon and was anciently almost as large as the Tigris (though nowhere near the size of the Euphrates), exceeding the Pison (a river that used to run through Nejd in northern Saudi, but has been bone-dry for millenia, though its course is still visible to satellites). In the KJV of Gen. 1, it is mis-stated that "the Gihon waters the whole land of Ethiopia", which has puzzled many commentators (how could it then join the Tigris and Euphrates and a river through Nejd to form the waters of Eden?) but results from an ancient misassignment of vowels, Kush "Ethiopia" for Kash "Kurdistan; Khashd country", so it should read "the Gihon waters the whole land of Kurdistan"; the name Gihon remained sacred to the Israelites, coming to be applied to the spring by Mt. Zion at the head of the Kidron brook, Jerusalem's only reliable flowing water, which is some confirmation that their ancient ancestors came from the Gihon river.

Hardly anything survives of the Khashd language, but it seems to be related to the Hurrian, Hattic, and Urartean, better-preserved but still poorly-understood languages, profoundly alien to the Semitic tongues but perhaps related to the Lezghi/Avar/Chechen languages of the northern Caucasus. The first thing Abraham had to do when he reached Canaan would have been to learn Hebrew! I do take seriously the Noah story as well, assuming that the Khashd were descendants from a boatload which wrecked on the slopes of Ararat (during one of the disastrous floodings that marked the late stages of the glaciation-breakup) carrying a family with their livestock, the survivors naturally assuming that the whole world except themselves had been destroyed-- but "Noah" in origin is a feminine name, so despite the patriarchal revamping of the story, I bet it was the Granny of the clan, rather than Grampa, who got a feelin' in her bones that there was a hard rain a-comin'. I take seriously also the element (not found in the Mesopotamian flood story, which the authors of Genesis have fused into the Noah story, but which I think refers to separate events, since there were numerous catastrophic floods in the period 6000-4000 BC) that among the first things the survivors did was to discover that grapes gone bad will make you drunk (the story of "Ham uncovering Noah's nakedness" makes more sense as heterosexual than homosexual incest).

Though I did read somewhere the thought that deep in prehistory, the Amorites originated from southern Arabia. Only later migrated north into Canaan and Syria, then raiding east into Mesopotamia.

(Haven't yet re-located the source of that postulate. And the Amorite language has died, so forensic linguists do not have a language-tool to track Amorite movement in prehistory.)
But yeah, more idle speculation.

No, THIS time is when you are on solid ground. "Amorite" as I told you before is just a generic term for the whole Canaanite group, including the Phoenician and Hebrew languages (as well as Moabite, Ammonite, etc.) so it is not "lost" at all. Linguistically, the Canaanite group is somewhat closer to the Arabic group (which includes various languages spoken in Yemen as well as the Classical Arabic and the modern dialects descended from it) than to the Aramaic group; though Arabo-Canaanite plus Aramaic in turn form a relatively tight "Central" or "North Semitic" group, as opposed to the "East Semitic" or "Akkadian" group (Assyrian, Babylonian, etc.) and "South Semitic" or "Ethiopic" group (Amharic, Tigre, etc.). The Semitic group began diversifying well before 10,000 years ago from a homeland on the east shores of the Red Sea, the migrations of the Akkadians northward and Ethiopics southward coming first, then the Aramaics splitting off from the rest of the Central Semitics, "Amorite"/"Canaanite" migration last.

 

[bob x]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

Bob, you either haven't read, or totally reject, Harold Bloom's reading of The Book of J. Bloom argues that from Genesis 2 to the death of Moses there is one unified story, by a writer with a brilliant literary voice, a book the equal of Homer's Iliad (written at about the same period).

I know of, and strongly approve, Bloom's views, which DISTINCTLY DO NOT INCLUDE any notion that the author of "J" is inventing any characters, any more than Homer invented the besiegers of Troy. That is a very late habit: in the late medieval and early modern precursors to the "novel", what we typically find is that authors are willing to invent background characters, but the central character of the story is always someone already known, although the author may freely exaggerate or outright invent details of his character and deeds. The first popular cycle of "romances" concerned Orlando, an Italian rendering of Roland from the Chanson de Roland, based on an actual general Hrotland in Charlemagne's army, whose story is already distorted in the Chanson (Hrotland's forces were ambushed and massacred by Basques; but Muslims obviously made for better villains)-- but the most poignant detail, about the alarm-horn which could be heard for miles and which was blown so strongly that it broke, is not an invention but a historical memory (the pieces of the horn were kept for centuries). The King Arthur, similarly, do go back to an actual British leader (I'm sorry, people who argue otherwise are just being silly), however little reliable information about his biography we can get from the stories (one problem is that "Arthur" became a popular name in various minor royal families in the centuries after the great Arthur; the Arthur who had an unfaithful wife Guenevere, and the Arthur who had a treacherous ******* son Mordred, are both historical figures as well, from Wales and Scotland respectively, but much later than the original Arthur).

Then what we find is authors who are willing to take secondary characters from existing romances and write new stories with these as the central character: Amadis of Gaul was a very popular work, about a character invented in the course of the Orlando romances. Authors who are willing to invent a central character out of nothing start to appear in the 16th century, before my "18th century" date for the start of the "novel" as a recognizable form; but my basic point is, THIS JUST ISN'T SOMETHING THAT ANCIENT PEOPLE DID, and it is a serious error to back-project rather modern styles of thought onto the ancients, as bad as Oliver Stone's "Alexander" depicting Brad Pitt as wrestling with "self-esteem" issues, something the real Alexander had none of.

Richard Elliott Friedman sees the same story, except extended to Solomon's succession to the Israelite thrown.

I think it highly probable that the author of "J" is, in fact, none other than king Solomon himself. The author of "J", obviously, was just about the most articulate and intelligent person of his generation, and we are told that Solomon was famously intelligent. (The "E" document is another matter, evidently a collaborative effort rather than from a single genius, and from the northern kingdom some generations after Solomon, perhaps in Omri's time, as a corrective to the southern focus of "J".)

It was written as a freehand speculation, not a hard-edged historical essay.

Each are different styles of writing with, each, having a peculiar voice all their own. I sometimes merge styles, but sometimes not.

I find it difficult to even dignify it with the word "speculation" when what you are doing is not just to invent without data, but to deny the given data for no reason at all.

But do consider Bloom's and Friedman's core contention regarding J and other Biblical material. Moses and Joshua are essentially literary figures, perhaps based upon actual historical figures, but maybe not.

Maybe created entirely out of whole cloth.

Not only is this not Bloom's or Friedman's "core" contention, it is not something that either of them ever suggest at all. You are taking it for granted, because you are only familiar with modern literature and not ancient literature, that part of what "literary" authors do is to create figures out of whole cloth-- that just isn't true of the ancient period, and neither Bloom nor Friedman are asserting this; you are just reading that in out of your own presuppositional mind-set.

I'm sure you have read Finkelstein and Silberman's The Bible Unearthed. I suggest you go back and reread Chapter 3 on "The Conquest of Canaan":

It is highly unlikely that the Egyptian garrisons throughout the country would have remained on the sidelines as a group of refugees (from Egypt) wreaked havoc throughout the province of Canaan. And it is inconceivable that the destruction of so many loyal vassal cities by the invaders would have left absolutely no trace in the extensive records of the Egyptian Empire.

Finkelstein, to be sure, is an over-the-top "minimalist" in a way that Bloom and Friedman are not, and while I enjoyed his book, his more extreme conclusions have not fared well in view of subsequent discoveries. The particular passage you quote is really bad: Egyptians did not have "garrisons throughout the country"; Egypt was not Rome, and did not have the administrative bureaucracy necessary to station legions in its vassal states, rather sent periodic expeditions out to overawe and assure continued submission, expeditions which essentially ceased (along with the awe and the submission) after the 20th dynasty; the areas in which Egypt was overlord were tributaries, not "provinces" in any kind of Roman sense. And he says that it is inconceivable that the records would not talk about the destruction of so many cities: but... those cities WERE destroyed; that's not the question; the question is about how abrupt the process was. Clearly the process was not nearly so abrupt as the book of Joshua portrays:

Joshua's invasion would have occurred in the late 13th century bce. Jericho and Ai were destroyed centuries earlier. Archeologically, many of the other conquest cities were untouched. (None of these cities were walled cities.) And those that do show signs of destruction ...

The kings of each of these four cities - Hazor, Aphek, Lachish, and Megiddo - are reported to have been defeated by the Israelites under Joshua. But the archeological evidence shows that the destruction of those cities took place over a span of more than a century.

Indeed. So Joshua did not capture them all, but I am sure that "Joshua" is a genuinely-remembered name of a general who sacked at least a couple cities, so that exaggerated retellings like the growth of "Arthur" could start attributing to him every sack of every city that ever happened during roughly that time.

That, Bob, is what we are reading ... when we read the Book of Joshua ... it seems to me.

Not history.
Not a religious tract.
But ...

Political mythology.

Yes. Its principal purpose is as political propaganda, and Finkelstein's dating of it, to the period of power vacuum after Assyria fell and Neo-Babylonia had not yet quite established itself as the successor state, with Judah attempting to move into the devastated territories of the kingdom of Samaria, so that it was useful to portray a southern hero as the one-time conqueror of everything in the region, makes perfect sense to me. Your attempt, spitting in the face of the data that a large number of cities did violently fall during the eclipse of New Kingdom Egypt, to think of the propagandistic version as pure invention rather than exaggeration, does not make any sense.

 

[Penelope]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

Can't help wondering, Bob, if King Josiah himself wrote the Book of Joshua ...
1. As a kind of 'battle plan' for his own "conquest of Canaan" - the reunification of David's kingdom.
2. As propaganda that would scare the bejabbers out of all citystates and their kings who might stand in his way.
3. As Yahweh-sanctioned justification for the violent aggression Josiah was planning to perpetrate.

Can't help thinking Josiah magically "found" the Book of Joshua the same way the "misplaced ancient" Book of Deuteronomy was magically re-located.

Speculation aside, Bob, doesn't the viciousness of imagination of Josiah (or his favorite scribe, or whoever wrote the Book of Joshua) deeply bother you, at times, as it does me? Joshua 10:
They captured it and struck it and its king and all its cities and all the persons in it with the edge of the sword. He left no survivors ... And he utterly destroyed it and every person who was in it.
This is a constant refrain in Joshua 10 like its author were singing it as a perky ballad.

Or try this, regarding 'Jericho,' (after the prostitute Rahab and her family were removed from the city - as payback for sheltering Joshua's spies) Joshua 6:24:
They burned the city with fire, and all that was in it. Only the silver and gold, and articles of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord.
Joshua looted the city, first. Locked the citizens in, and burned them alive.

I haven't read Babylonian or Egyptian or Canaanite stories, but I assume much of this vileness is just a commonplace of martial rhetoric, for its era. But still, doesn't some of this really get to you, Bob? ("How could these people think like this?")

Good thing it never really happened. And, if this was in fact King Josiah's battleplan for his 'conquest,' maybe it is a good thing that that 'conquest' never happened either - thanks to the diplomatic treachery of the Egyptians. (Maybe the Egyptians saw that this guy was nuts, a genuine psychopath - and decided to do the world a favor.)

I know, Bob. Speculation, speculation, speculation. No facts to back it up.
But what are your thoughts upon the vicious imagination endemic to the Book of Joshua?
And what about King Josiah? Could he be the author?

And is it just a linguistic coincidence ... the similarity of the two names 'Joshua' and 'Josiah'? (Does the name actually come from different a root word? Or from the same one, but just a more antique version?)

I can't help wondering if King Josiah - or his scribe - invented (from whole cloth) the name "Joshua" for his ancient hero (or he pulled a minor character - who happened to be named "Joshua" - from regional lore, and cast him for the 'lead role' in his epic) so that Josiah - on the battlefield to come - would have a powerful and resonant rallying cry to unite all Israelites:
I, Josiah, am your messiah! I am the new Joshua!

 

[Penelope]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

Maybe created entirely out of whole cloth.
Not only is this not Bloom's or Friedman's "core" contention, it is not something that either of them ever suggest at all. You are taking it for granted, because you are only familiar with modern literature and not ancient literature, that part of what "literary" authors do is to create figures out of whole cloth-- that just isn't true of the ancient period, and neither Bloom nor Friedman are asserting this; you are just reading that in out of your own presuppositional mind-set.

Like your style, Bob!

And, yeah, I will admit that you are correct. In the ancient and classical world, the heroes of legend-stories had, as their source, some real historical individual. Like you, I've never seen evidence to the contrary. The deep cultural memory of a people. A need, based in the oral tradition (and exaggerated by it), to hold onto brave deeds of remarkable forbearers.

& & &

The exception to this, as you say, are the tale's minor characters.

Also an exception, the dalliances of the gods interacting with each other. And the gods' interactions with humans, and their interference in human affairs. Folktales. Pure fiction - right, Bob? (Or are you claiming that these celestial protagonists actually existed, too?)

Gilgamesh was likely the real king of a Mesopotamian citystate. But is there a single lengthy adventure Gilgamesh had, recorded in the Akkadian and Babylonian tablets, which you believe to be based upon factual events? 'Cedar forest' episode? 'Underworld' episode? 'Mount Mashu' episode? Come on, Bob.

Folklore is not called 'lore' without reason. Extremely imaginative retelling. The 'storytelling' takes over from the 'reality,' very early in the process. All that is left, with any historical credibility, is the hero's name.

With Joshua, we are talking 6 centuries. Six centuries of reinvention in the oral tradition.

Who is to say that Joshua is actually, originally ... not an Israelite hero at all? Maybe he derives from a Canaanite tale, or an Egyptian one, or Babylonian. Maybe he is a composite figure. Lot of stories got passed around in that corner of the world. Everybody likes to hear a good story. "Hey, have you heard the one about Joshua?"

& & &

Finkelstein may be a "minimalist" but archeologist Amihai Mazar, who disagrees with Finkelstein on other issues, lays out the same case - city by city - in The Quest for the Historical Israel, then (page 62) concludes:
It is thus now accepted by all that archeology in fact contradicts the biblical account of the Israelite Conquest as a discrete historical event by one leader. Most scholars of the last generation regard the Conquest narratives as a literary work of a much later time, designed to create a pan-Israelite, national saga. Nonetheless, even this latter view does not exclude the possibility that certain conquest stories echo isolated, individual historical events that may have occurred during the late-second millennium bce, though perhaps not specifically in relation to Israel as a nation or Joshua as a military leader. Other stories seem to be etiologies rooted in situations relating to the period of the Settlement.

(Joshua 8:29 ...
He hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening; and at sunset Joshua gave command and they took his body down from the tree and threw it at the entrance to the city gate, and raised over it a great heap of stones that stands to this day.
Makes a nice story, but Ai was actually destroyed a millennium earlier.)

Which two cities, Bob, did the "historical Joshua" actually destroy? None had walls, most were uninhabited in that time-frame or had very small settlements, few were burned. Your best candidates are Lachish and Hazor.
Mazar (page 61-62):
Others, like Lachish and Hazor, were indeed important Canaanite cities, yet they were not destroyed as part of the same military undertaking since approximately one hundred years separate the destruction of Hazor (in the mid-thirteenth century bce) from that of Lachish (in the mid-twelfth century bce). At other sites, the archeological evidence is even more meager.
Which two cities, Bob?

Before modern archeology, the onus was on doubters to disprove the biblical Conquest tales. But today, the evidence against the Conquest is so broad-based and compelling, that the burden of proof is now upon those who believe-in some portion of the biblical account ... their burden to back up their contention with solid facts. (Saying that "there must be some truth behind the folklore" does not wash. What was it you were saying to me, Bob, about a "presuppositional mind-set"?)

& & &

Frankly, Bob, I see the emerging archeological truth about the southern Israelite settlements in the hills of south Canaan ... far more interesting than the saber-rattling legends. Far more interesting! Building town after town at the top of hills with protected valleys, starting of agriculture to supplement the herding ways, to eventually entirely replace herding at many locations. This is fascinating stuff, Bob. Plebian, and not very flashy - but fascinating, nonetheless.

Maybe the historical Joshua was a mercenary-bandit who put down his sword and "hammered it into a plowshare." Maybe he was the founder of one of these early hill-country settlements, and the legends grew around that. Bob, that would make more sense to me than the biblical account. Maybe you should focus your wonderful linguistic and analytic skills more along these lines, rather than along the saber-rattling lines.

(Or, if you are convinced that Joshua is a true martial figure, maybe he commanded a band of the "Sea People" - who invaded Canaan, amongst other places. And his stories - greatly exaggerated - survived in the region. But he later was converted by local lore into an Israelite figure, and his legend-stories eventually linked up with the emerging Israelite sage. Take a close look, Bob. Where do the linguistic clues point to, in the Book of Joshua?)

Speculation, on my part, Bob? No. Just a big question:
1. Yeah. Joshua probably did exist.
2. No. He did not lead a conquest of Canaan, because an Israelite "conquest of Canaan" never happened. A massive preponderance of evidence is against it.
3. So ... Who was Joshua, historically? What did he really do?

And I think that is the real question, here, Bob.
(If you persist in holding to the semi-Conquest theory, I think any reasonable person would say that the burden is upon you to prove it.)

 

[Penelope]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

Ur ha-Khashdim

Got out my world atlas and magnifying glass.
Found Lake Van and Lake Urmia. Found two Zab Rivers which are tributaries of the Tigris. I assume you are referring to the northern most, which merges with the Tigris about 50k south of Mosul (Mosul is just west of ancient Nineveh). Since there was an ancient highway from Nineveh west to Carchemish (on the upper Euphrates), I assume that is how Abraham's clan got to Haran, which - in Abraham's time - was the last big town on this highway before Carchemish.

How far north of Nineveh was Ur ha-Khashdim?
I know this region has connection to one of the ancient Flood stories (though most of the Flood stories stem from further south in Mesopotamia, and involve an actual devastating river flood which geologists have linked to extant Mesopotamian records). Also, one major theory about the location of the Garden of Eden stems from this region in eastern Turkey. (The other major theory involves the Persian Gulf as the original Dilmun/Eden ... and involves Mesopotamian re-writes of ancient Sumerian, or pre-Sumerian, stories.)

If the original "Garden" (Neolithic city) was in eastern Turkey, it would make sense that Abraham's clan carried this story with them to Haran, then - leaving most of his family in Haran - Abraham carried the tale with him when he headed south into Canaan. (Towns surrounding Haran carry the names of Abraham's extended family. But this could be back-projection by Israelite traders - "these towns must have been named for Abraham's family - got to tell my scribe friend down in Judah about that." Haran was a big, prosperous city in only two historical periods. One was the early 2nd millennium bce - the time Abraham lived. The other time-period was the early 1st millennium bce - the time when the "Abraham stories" were written down. So this coincidence of names, as evidence, can be looked at either way.)

But anecdotally, Bob, you seem to have a pretty good case, here. As you develop your theory, I'd love to see more!

 

[Penelope]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

I've been reading, off and on over the past year, a book called Renegade Tribe: The Palouse Indians and the Invasion of the Inland Pacific Northwest. History from my own backyard.

The ancestral home of the Palouse tribe was along the Snake River, between Hells Canyon and the Snake's confluence with the Columbia River. White 'authorities' had more trouble with the Palouse than with any other tribe in the NW. The Palouse played a role in the Whitman Massacre and the Yakima War, were major participants in the Battle at Steptoe Butte and the George Wright campaign, and even played a minor role in the Nez Perce War. The Palouse refused to sign a treaty with Territorial Governor Stevens, so they - alone - did not receive an independent Reservation later when White settlers overran the Inland Pacific Northwest. And the Palouse were extremely stubborn about giving up their native religion, where other local tribes more readily surrendered their beliefs under pressure from Government agents and the Christian missionaries from Back East.

(Drawing parallels with other cultures and other times is usually foolhardy, but a person might gain some useful insights from the Palouse - regarding a certain tribe in the Eastern Mediterranean, whose history is two-dozen centuries more ancient.)

& & &

The authors of the book, Clifford Trafzer and Richard Scheuerman, make an interesting point. Most scholars of American History privilege 'written' records over 'oral' ones. But, where Native Americans are concerned, this means their history is being largely told from the point-of-view of the victors: the US Army and the Government Indian agents, and the western newspapers. (These newspapers tended to be vocally anti-Indian.) (Or recorded, sometimes quite sensitively, by missionaries - who generally made serious inroads with native tribes only after they became defeated peoples.)

Trafzer and Scheuerman thinks 'oral history' is needed, to give the historical account balance. But admit that you need to read oral-history (like all "history") with a grain of salt.

& & &

Because the death of a warrior in a military campaign is so personal to the family of that warrior, his name is remembered. And an accurate count of the Indian dead on a battlefield has proved remarkably reliable (when set side-by-side with multiple, and confliciting, recorded counts from White sources).

Oral accounts by survivors of actual events, though, are a mixed blessing. Some prove scrupulously accurate. The terrain and weather and everything remembered in remarkable detail. That is, ...
Until the story is passed on. The new generation, growing up on a Reservation and having no familiarity with the actual place ... and the principle that takes over is that of ...
'The fish story.'
Grandpa Blue Eagle, who mortally wounded one soldier at Steptoe Butte, has now 'slaughtered ten White Eyes.'

& & &

If the stories are not transcribed from their original source, within a couple decades of the actually event, little factual truth remains after repeated retelling ...

Except for the participant's name.

 

[bob x]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

Can't help wondering, Bob, if King Josiah himself wrote the Book of Joshua ...

I doubt very much that the king himself would have had anything to do with scribing the book: I only suggest that in Solomon's case because Solomon was reputedly highly intelligent and literary, as the author of "J" clearly was; we don't get such indications about Josiah. That "Joshua" was written during Josiah's reign, as Finkelstein proposes, does seem quite logical:

1. As a kind of 'battle plan' for his own "conquest of Canaan" - the reunification of David's kingdom.
2. As propaganda that would scare the bejabbers out of all citystates and their kings who might stand in his way.
3. As Yahweh-sanctioned justification for the violent aggression Josiah was planning to perpetrate.

Yes, yes, yes: all of those are likely to have been propagandistic motives. But what makes Finkelstein's hypothesis sound is not just that we can come up with good reasons why this might have been done: there are also linguistic considerations about the stage of the Hebrew language in the book and what time that corresponds with; you know, actual evidence that it did happen this way, as opposed to a convincing story that it could have.

Can't help thinking Josiah magically "found" the Book of Joshua the same way the "misplaced ancient" Book of Deuteronomy was magically re-located.

No, Deuteronomy is a genuinely ancient book; the stage of the Hebrew language in which it was written is similar to the Hebrew of "J" or "E", and professor Mendenhall (who taught me Biblical history at U. of Michigan) proposed that parts of it specifically reflect the political situation late in Samuel's judgeship.

I haven't read Babylonian or Egyptian or Canaanite stories, but I assume much of this vileness is just a commonplace of martial rhetoric, for its era. But still, doesn't some of this really get to you, Bob? ("How could these people think like this?")

ALL ancient warfare was frankly and undisguisedly genocidal in aim. Keegan's War Before Civilization is a good antidote to romantic thoughts about how primitives lived idyllic lives of harmony with nature until modern technology screwed everything up.

Good thing it never really happened. And, if this was in fact King Josiah's battleplan for his 'conquest,' maybe it is a good thing that that 'conquest' never happened either - thanks to the diplomatic treachery of the Egyptians. (Maybe the Egyptians saw that this guy was nuts, a genuine psychopath - and decided to do the world a favor.)

Uh, it DID really happen: all those cities WERE burned down, and you better believe that there were few survivors on any of those occasions; the only part of the book of Joshua that is false is the pretense that this all happened within one generation, with one leader in charge of all those campaigns.
And the reason the Egyptians killed Josiah is because THEY wanted to be the ones slaughtering anybody who stood in their way.

I know, Bob. Speculation, speculation, speculation. No facts to back it up.
But what are your thoughts upon the vicious imagination endemic to the Book of Joshua?

That it is absolutely normal and typical of the times. Of course, that is one major reason why I do not look to Bronze Age texts for moral guidance, anymore than I look to them for scientific information.

And is it just a linguistic coincidence ... the similarity of the two names 'Joshua' and 'Josiah'? (Does the name actually come from different a root word? Or from the same one, but just a more antique version?)

Both include the Yehow- prefix (typically worn down to Yo- in pronunciation, rendered Jo- in English) which is the standard deformation of the sacred name YHWH at the beginning of names (the suffix -yahuw typically worn down to -yah is the standard form at the end of names; neither the prefix nor the suffix is, of course, the real pronunciation of YHWH which was too sacred for day-to-day usage). Otherwise, the names are unrelated.
Your subsequent suggestion that "Joshua" was originally the name of a general of the "Sea Peoples" is of course completely absurd: the "Sea Peoples" appear in the book as the Philistines, who captured a coastal territory (now basically what we call the Gaza Strip) which is acknowledged precisely as the area Joshua DIDN'T manage to take. They were from the Aegean, and spoke a language profoundly alien to Semitic (similar to Eteo-Cretan, which seems to have something in common with Etruscan, which would be much more helpful if we had more of a clue how to decipher Etruscan). No Philistine name would contain any form of YHWH of course, let alone combined with a Semitic verbal root.

 

[bob x]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

You have a post suggesting that "Joshua" might have originally been the name of a general of the "Sea Peoples", which is completely absurd: the "Sea Peoples" appear in the book as the Philistines, who captured a coastal territory (now basically what we call the Gaza Strip) which is acknowledged precisely as the area Joshua DIDN'T manage to take. They were from the Aegean, and spoke a language profoundly alien to Semitic (similar to Eteo-Cretan, which seems to have something in common with Etruscan, which would be much more helpful if we had more of a clue how to decipher Etruscan). No Philistine name would contain any form of YHWH of course, let alone combined with a Semitic verbal root.

Ur ha-Khashdim

Got out my world atlas and magnifying glass.
Found Lake Van and Lake Urmia. Found two Zab Rivers which are tributaries of the Tigris. I assume you are referring to the northern most, which merges with the Tigris about 50k south of Mosul (Mosul is just west of ancient Nineveh). Since there was an ancient highway from Nineveh west to Carchemish (on the upper Euphrates), I assume that is how Abraham's clan got to Haran, which - in Abraham's time - was the last big town on this highway before Carchemish.

Follow the "Greater Zab" up all the way to where it forms from three streams coming down off of Ararat; that is the town of Albayrek, also called Zabbashi "head of the Zab"; the site I identify as Ur ha-Khashdim is downstream just a little, halfway from Albayrek to Shkeft. Albayrek and Shkeft are way too small to see on anything except a detailed map of the area: this is northeast of Bashkale, the capital of the little Turkish province there on the southeast border, and somewhat southwest of Qutor, the disputed town on the Iranian border (claimed by Iran, but occupied by Turkey, at least when I was there).
"Abraham's time" was about four centuries before the foundation of the town of Nineveh or the first Assyrian state; there would have been no roads, major or otherwise, back then, think rather in terms of trails marked with occasional piles of rocks. All that sticks up from the mud at Ur ha-Khashdim is about one-third of a circular earthenwork wall, with holes punched through below the rim at regular intervals around (the regularity is what persuaded me I was looking at a manmade rather than natural formation) for archers to shoot through. In that time and place, a "city" like Ur ha-Khashdim would have had only a couple dozen regular inhabitants, though serving as a marketplace, on scheduled days, and as a refuge, in times of invasion, for hundreds from the surrounding area.

I know this region has connection to one of the ancient Flood stories (though most of the Flood stories stem from further south in Mesopotamia, and involve an actual devastating river flood which geologists have linked to extant Mesopotamian records). Also, one major theory about the location of the Garden of Eden stems from this region in eastern Turkey. (The other major theory involves the Persian Gulf as the original Dilmun/Eden ... and involves Mesopotamian re-writes of ancient Sumerian, or pre-Sumerian, stories.)

The name "Eden" is itself Sumerian, meaning "plain", and Genesis 1 describes it as being where the four rivers (the now-extinct Pison, the Zab, the Tigris, and the Euphrates) joined into a single river (now called the "Shatt": however, during the period of the floodings, all of that went underwater completely so that the Tigris and Euphrates emptied into the Gulf separately, upstream from where the Shatt now forms; it took millenia of silt deposition before there was a Shatt again).

(Towns surrounding Haran carry the names of Abraham's extended family. But this could be back-projection by Israelite traders - "these towns must have been named for Abraham's family - got to tell my scribe friend down in Judah about that."

Israelites were not "traders"; until the Babylonian conquest created the "Diaspora", they were very much the stay-at-home type. Josephus answers critics who question whether Israel had ever been prosperous or important on grounds that the Greeks and other peoples had no mention of Israel in their chronicles by pointing out that they had been a landlocked and sedentary people for most of their history: "but ask the Egyptians and the Syrians, our neighbors; they know who we are."

Haran was a big, prosperous city in only two historical periods. One was the early 2nd millennium bce - the time Abraham lived. The other time-period was the early 1st millennium bce - the time when the "Abraham stories" were written down. So this coincidence of names, as evidence, can be looked at either way.)[/SIZE][/FONT]

It was never particularly big. It did have two periods of political importance: after the fall of Nineveh, it was the capital of the remnant Assyrian state for a couple decades, the Assyrians managing to hold onto a very shrunken territory because the Babylonians, Medes, and Egyptians were fighting over the division-of-spoils from their former empire; then the high priest of the moon-god temple in Harran, a slippery weasel called Nabu-Na'id ("Nabonidus" in the Greek accounts), betrayed the last Assyrian king to Nabu-Kudrusur ("Nebuchadnezzar") for a post at the Babylonian court, and eventually managed to assassinate Nabu-Kudrusur's children and usurp the throne (he was the father of Bel-Sharusur "Belshazzar").
Centuries later, the buffer kingdom of Osroene had its main capital at Edessa Callirhoe (Urfa) but a secondary capital at Carrhae (Harran); it had leaned toward the Parthians, but promised to switch its allegiance to the Romans and to help Crassus, the third member of the First Triumvirate along with Pompey and Julius Caesar, who had influence because he was hugely wealthy, and had brokered the truce between Pompey and Caesar, but keenly felt the need for a military victory to give him the same kind of status as the other two. So he led a large army against Parthia, and at Carrhae the king of Osroene betrayed him, setting him up for an ambush, so Crassus died (causing a breakdown between Pompey and Caesar, sparking a fateful civil war) and much of his army was captured (Augustus Caesar would ransom them back decades later, by which time they were thoroughly Persianized; these troops introduced the Mithra cult to the Roman world).

 

[Amergin]

Re: EXODUS Did the Israelites exit from Egypt, or Egypt exit from land of the Israeli

The Egyptians abandoned - exited - the land of the Israelites (after many battles with Sea Peoples, over many generations). That is the historic truth.

The Exodus was in reverse.

I tend to believe the archaeologists who state that Egypt went into sudden miliary decline about 1600 BCE. Their hieroglyphs and those of the Minoans suggest that.

The Egyptians had pulled their army out of Palestine/Canaan possibly due to Hyksos or Sea Peoples. This left the Canaanite Cities undefended. Canaanites were peaceful traders and not skilled soldiers. They didn't need soldier skills with the Egyptian defending them.

Now they were very weak in defending against hard and vicious desert nomadic raider. Deuteronomy tells the biased side of the story as city after city was taken with brutality, mass murder of men, women, children, and babies. Israelites claim God said they could take the virgin girls for themselves. It was like a Nunnery with praying nuns defending themselves when Hell's Angels moved next door.

I think Israelites did exit Egypt because of the strikingly plausible words of Exodus.

1. Archaeologists two years ago unearthed under the Nile Delta mud the remains of the partially built City of Rameses on which the Hebrews were reported to be working. Moses who was looking for a sign, spotted a huge column of dark smoke on his left. Ex 13:21-22 "And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light; to go by day and night.: He took not away the pillar of cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people."

2. They debate on the exact year, 1500-1800 BC, but that is the time of the one of the most massive volcanic eruption since the Super-eruption of Mount Toba in Sumatra 70,000 years ago that almost wiped out humanity. The Exodus volcano is thought to be Thera on the Island of Santorini. The Ash deposited across Asia and Northeast Africa from the Aegean Sea. The dust flume could be seen as far away as Babylonia/Assyria and the Kingdom of Van. This fits with what Moses was seeing. He saw a dark cloud to his left curving toward the Middle East with the prevailing winds. At night the hot magma bursts glowed in the sky. This is associated with the destruction of Atlantis the Minoan Civilisation. Moses and the Hebrews likely followed that Pillar cloud and fire to the East toward Palestine.

3. Then Moses had to deal with the Red Sea or Sea of Reeds. And then the sea retreated far to the south (Just like in Banda Ache, Sumatra). So Moses took it as God helping them. So they crossed the mud flats toward Sinai. Ex 14:7 "And he took six hundred chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them." Ex 14: "But the Egyptians pursued after them....." Ex 14:16 "But lift up thy rod....over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea." Ex 14: "....the Egyptians, and they shall follow them...."

4. Ex 14:19 "....the pillar of cloud (dust) went from before their face, and stood behind them...." Was this a second in a series of massive eruptions or a change in wind direction? Ex: 14:20 "And it came between the camp of the Egyptians.....and it was cloud and darkness to them..." A humongous ash cloud in the shifting wind came down on the Egyptians like the Mt. St. Helens ash cloud brought darkness to Yakima, WA and choking dust in the air. Ex 14: 21 ".....and the Lord caused the sea go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land....." This is the typical stage one of the Tsunami. The sea recedes, sometimes many miles out exposing dry land. They showed pictures of this on BBC news.

5. Stage Two, the Tsunami: Remember the Egyptian chariot army was pursuing the Israelites across the Red Sea. Ex 14:28 "And the waters returned and covered the Chariots and horsemen, and all of the host of the Pharaoh that came into the sea (bed) after them; there remained not so much as one of them." But by that time, the Israelites had reached the high ground on the opposite shore reaching a safe altitude. But Egyptian records mention a terrible disaster after which Egypt was defenceless for several years. Neighbours attacked from Nubia, Cush, and Libya. It was chaos from the sudden loss of the Brilliant General and Pharaoh and the best army of the region if not the world at the time. The pharaoh of the Exodus was Amenhotep II, brilliant general of the 18th Dynasty.

6. An archaeologist in Cairo, emailed me (after I contacted him) and he says divers have found broken remnants of chariots, chariot wheels and green sword blades (oxidised bronze).

Amergin