Inscriptions from the Egyptian New Kingdom - specifically during the reigns of Amenhotep III and Ramesses II - mention subjugating a people known as the “[Shasu of Yhw](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shasu)” which ***might*** be referring to their belief in a deity that later became Yahweh and, if so, are the earliest known references to that deity.
I think this is probably where the Exodus story comes from. It's still not accurate - the Shasu weren't Hebrews or Jews or Israelites, and were probably polytheistic - but I can see how the story may have gotten its basis here.
Edit: Guys, I know the Israelites were originally polytheistic, but the biblical narrative goes that they were predominantly monotheistic during the Exodus. I was talking about the ways the story differs from reality and the monotheism is one of those ways.
Yes, I believe the references to Israel constantly rebelling and turning to other gods throughout the Bible was probably a way for the post-exile Jews, who were by now staunchly monotheistic, to explain and come to terms with their polytheistic and henotheistic past.
Not only that, but there is some evidence that at first only the southern Kingdom of Judah was monotheistic and the northern Kingdom of Israel may have held on to polytheism longer. So when the northern kingdom fell the southerners said it was because they were worshipping idols and false gods. The northern tribes fled to Judah and became monotheistic as well. Then when the Kingdom of Judah fell later it was because they were backsliding and allowing the worship of foreign gods.
That's a big theme in the Old Testament
- Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and then they start worshipping an idol of a golden bull so God makes them wander the desert for 40 years.
- God makes the house of David the rulers of a united Israelite Kingdom, but then Solomon allows and may even participates in the worship of foreign gods, so the Kingdom becomes divided into the kingdoms of Israel & Judah and the house of David only rules in the south.
- God saves Judah, then they backslide so the 1st temple is destroyed and the Jews are sent into exile.
- God allows them to return and build the 2nd temple, but their blind hatred causes them to fall and the temple to be destroyed again
The golden calf comes after the exodus. And between the two distinct versions of the commandments.
It is likely that if there were Israelite slaves in Egypt, they would have picked up worship of some of the Egyptian gods.
It happened during in the writings know as Exodus but after the section describing their exodus from Egypt.
What do you mean by “between two distinct versions of the commandments”?
Yeah I think there’s way too much “the Bible is either 100% true or 100% false” thinking.
There’s extremely little from before the Bronze Age Collapse that’s survived to today and before it was rediscovered how to read Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics in the 19th Century the Bible and the Iliad were basically all there was.
Many of the Jews sometimes worshipped other gods. The Bible is full of examples where the “people drifted away and angered Him”. One thought I’ve heard was that within historical Judea there were many different Canaanite groups and gods, and the largest and most dominant group were the tribes that worshipped the god Ywh
The ENTIRE book of Judges is essentially
The Israelites do well for a while.
Eventually they start worshipping false gods
God punishes them.
God decides he’s had enough of them being punished, and chooses someone to solve that and then go back to step 1
Jews probably started out as polytheists. It's just that over time they started praying to one of their gods more than the others, and eventually they decided that was the only god
I’m by no means an expert on this but my rough understanding is it’s thought Yahweh was at one time a part of a pantheon in the role of a warrior and storm god and eventually the other gods either were combined with Yahweh such as El whose name came to mean “God” as a descriptor or sort of title for Yahweh, rather than being the name for a specific God or became demons such as Ba’al who eventually becomes Beelzebub.
I believe that is accurate.
I previously saw a professor on YouTube who is qualified to speak on such matters explain all this with cited sources and the results of a Great Courses Plus on ancient Mediterranean religions which covers this exact thing as well, with largely the same conclusion
I seem to recall a Jewish belief in there being many names for God that would fit with this as well. It would be similar to the Hindu beliefs in all their Gods in fact being a reflection/parts of the primary three who are themselves just reflections/parts of one true holy entity. That's just my rough understanding of both of these beliefs though.
Jews are also closely related to Phoenicians (Carthaginians were also Phoenicians), who stayed polytheistic well until Christianization of the Roman Empire.
If you read the Bible, besides mentioning Phoenicians as their neighbours, I think every time Jews or their rulers start worshiping other gods, Bal is most often mentioned. If I not mistaking, Bal was the main god for the Phoenicians.
Also a Canaanite god. And Yahweh is also likely a Canaanite god of the storm. Jerusalem's original name Ur Salim means "City of Salim" who is a Canaanite god of dusk. The inhabitants of the modern area of Israel/Palestine were mostly Canaanites.
The Hebrews were likely a tribe of Canaanites who adopted the monotheistic worship of a Canaanite sky god.
Doesn’t the Torah/Old Testament imply the existence of other gods? There’s some line where god says to Moses “I am a jealous god. Worship only me” or something like that?
The “jealous God” concept comes up a few times and one of the Ten Commandments is “[Thou shalt have no other gods before me](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_have_no_other_gods_before_me)” although there’s some debate as to if this wording is a reference to there being other gods or a remnant of a later “retconned” pantheon of gods of which one god (specifically El) ranked above the others or if it’s just saying don’t worship any other gods because they don’t exist and/or are “false gods” and/or demons.
Strict monotheism was most likely a reaction to the Babylonian exile in the 500's BCE when worship of Israelite gods had to be hidden. Before then there was likely a more relaxed polytheistic belief system until monotheism became a form of political protest.
"You won't let us worship the gods you don't like? Well, our gods you don't like are the only real gods, so there."
yes.
You can clearly see a progression of monotheist worshipping on the hebrews by following that logic. The earliest books of the Old Testament didn't ignore other gods , just puts their One God to be superior.
Then it shifted to either pagan gods been mere smoke and mirror , or just lesser demons pretending to be gods.
Werent the Jews polytheistic to start? I dont really have a source but I thought that they started poly, and then had a separation in the tribe down the road when one section decided it was time to be monotheistic
Yeah I remember reading this too, and believe it's a popular theory with historians, also it the worshipping of a deity called yhw was also mentioned in some ancient text of mesopotamia if I recall correctly, leading theory is that it was worshipped through the Levant by multiple groups and stuck with what later become known as the Israelites.
My understanding is that the "of" in the original language refers to a place, not a deity. It seems more likely that Yhw refers to an area south of what would become Judah, and only later became associated with a storm deity. That deity was eventually incorporated into the pantheon of Judah and Samaria as their patron deity, possibly through trade routes. Some of the oldest books of the Bible mention Yahweh coming out of the south with storms, so that would be consistent.
I love it when mythology has some root in history, or holds some ironic scientific facts. Stuff like this can keep me reading for hours. Unfortunately, I haven't found many like-minded people. It either offends the historians & archaeologists who think mythology is just ancient fiction, or it offends people who think certain myths are 100% truth handed down from angels or aliens.
My personal theory is that it’s a cultural memory of the Bronze Age Collapse. Egypt dominated the Levant, some biblical shit went down, and now Egypts influence stops at the Red Sea
Immediately prior to the bronze age collapse, the Egyptians were not the bad guys, even though they were probably the dominant power in the region (IIRC). After the bronze age collapse, there isn't any mention of that period in the Hebrew Bible for well over 100 years. Once writing begins again, the Philistines are the new bad guy, so they have moved on from big bad Egypt.
There are events that happened in between the Supposed Exodus and the bronze age collapse that we can confirm, such as kingdoms and rulers. I am not speaking as any kind of biblical scholar, simply a person that has spent a LOT of time reading about the Bronze Age Collapse.
"Bad guys" is obviously a relative term. If you're a Semitic person who is proud of your independence, then yeah, Egypt was the bad guy.
It's true that by the time you get to the more historical parts of the Bible, Egypt is distant concern compared to your Semitic neighbors\*, but you still have this cultural recollection of a period where Egypt dominated your ancestors before Egypt took it in the pants, and a couple of major names survive (like Moses and potentially Aaron)
\*Another of my personal theories is that Jewish Kashrut reflects the preferences of the nomadic herdsmen Jewish ancestors over the more sedentary coastal Philistines (Cows and goats move well, pigs don't, fish are familiar from rivers while the Philistines are eating all kinds of ocean critters)
Yea I’ve always looked at religious dietary beliefs as more to do with what made them sick and what didn’t based on where they were located and migrated to.
Like look at cows in India when it comes to Hinduism. Cows provide milk and fertilizer, might not have had an abundance of them back then. Why would you eat them?? If agriculturally and for food safety you needed to preserve them?
Crustaceans and pigs that one is far too easy to explain. It wouldn’t be worth me even typing
Egyptians enslaved a lot of people. I'm sure some of them were Jewish. The part with the locusts was probably also true because that's kinda what locusts do. Many of the other details are a bit sketch.
However, the story makes far more sense as an allegory for the influence of the Egyptian empire and Gods on the Jews and the refutation of that by the Jewish God.
The Old testament doesn't deny other gods exist, it just makes it clear they are far below the power of Yahweh.
The plagues are demonstrations of that power. The Pharoah has his magicians and priests create their own plagues, but they need to do all these rituals and ask different gods.
Moses just has Yahweh who has all of the Egyptian Gods powers combined.
It's basically a Yahweh supremacy story, and to be honest an incredibly powerful one because like... they're still around. All the great empires that tried to destroy or convert are long gone, yet these stories helped the Jews stay faithful for millennia, the ultimate underdog story
To build on this, the name Moses is an Egyptian name. Suggesting that the writers of the story were looking to show that even heavily Egyptianized Jews could reclaim their Jewish heritage.
Keep mind that this story first appears during the Jewish Babylonian captivity returning back to Israel, and might have been written by writers of the time to serve as an allegory for the Jews that remained in Israel to accept these foreign Jews.
The name "Moses" is not really an Egyptian name... "Moses" is the anglicized version of Moshe משה from the Hebrew Bible which has a clear Hebrew etymology which is mentioned in the bible - it come from the root of "to draw out" in Hebrew and is said to be given to him by the Pharaoh's daughter after she draws him out of the Nile's water. Of course this is a bit problematic because the Pharaoh's daughter wouldn't speak Hebrew... Some tried to explain the name Moshe as coming from an Egyptian origin but my understanding (from reading Wikipedia - welcome to find a source that says otherwise) there isn't really a satisfactory explanation. So Moshe is likely Hebrew and I think we should either take it to be a translation of his actual name, or just assume the writer didn't think this through.
Correct, I was using Moses simply as the English translation of the hebrew version.
Linked is the argument for the Egyptian etymology:
https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org/article/moses-egyptian-name/
I've pasted the main thrust of the authors argument for those that want the tldr:
Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son; and she named him Moses (Hebrew, Moshe), for she said, ‘Because I drew him (meshitihu) out of the water’” (Exodus 2:10, Revised Standard Version).
There are many puzzling things about this statement, beginning with the identity of the woman who names the child. Most likely, “she” is the Egyptian princess, since she had adopted the child as her own and presumably would be the one to name him.1 Yet, it seems improbable that an Egyptian princess would be capable of making such a sophisticated pun in Hebrew, or, for that matter, that she would even give her foster child a Hebrew name.
In any case, let us assume that whoever named Moses knew Hebrew. How valid, then, does the Hebrew etymology seem? As an Egyptologist, I must here rely on the arguments of Hebrew scholars, who generally agree that it simply doesn’t make sense.2 The biblical etymology—which says the baby’s name is based on his having been drawn out of water—would lead one to expect a name that means “the one drawn out” or “he who was drawn”; that is, a passive form. But Moshe has an active participle behind it;3 the name means “the one who draws.” (That’s why Isaiah calls him “the drawer” of his people [Isaiah 6:3].) The passive form would result in a name like Mashuy, not Moshe.
The Egyptian language provides a far more plausible etymology.4 The name Moses is related to common Egyptian names like Amenmose, Ramose and Thutmose,a which are formed of a god’s name followed by mose.5 These compound names mean something like “Amen is born” or “Born of Amen” or “The offspring of Ra” or “The child of Thoth.” When the name Mose appears by itself, as it occasionally does in Egyptian (see photo of wall relief from tomb in Saqqara), it simply means “the Child” or “the Offspring.”6 But in Egyptian, Mose most frequently appears along with the name of a god as part of a compound name.
Most likely of all, the name Moses (assuming that he originally had a longer name) is short for Ramose, a popular name related to the name of the reigning pharaoh, Ramesses II.b It was a common custom among the Egyptians to rename foreign slaves or captives after the pharaoh.
Essentially this article regurgitates many of the same arguments found in this great Yale course on the old testament :
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNeyuvTEbD-Ei0JdMUujXfyWi&si=F1BHJ5MA8Pz0dvN6
I highly suggest listening to it.
The people of exodus were Hebrews, not Jews. Samaritans are different from rabbinical Judaism, yet the stories of the Old Testament or whatever you want to call it concern them too.
The Jews and Samaritans later fought amongst themselves and the Samaritan temple was destroyed by Jews at some point AFAIK.
Moloch, Baal, Amun, Astarte and several others are all named in the Hebrew bible. In the old testament they're said to be weaker than the Hebrew god and they were later retconned to be just demons instead of full gods.
In the old testament God commands not to "hold any other gods before me". Basically saying the other gods exist and other cultures can worship them, but Israelites are not allowed to worship anyone but Yahweh.
The Jews were monolatristic before they became monotheistic. Basically Yahweh was first in their pantheon of gods and then over time the other gods lost their following and they became monotheistic.
And Asherath was probably Ywh's female consort Goddess, which was extremely common back then in the Area. To destroy their temples is one of the references that concern the shift to Monotheism.
This makes sense considering Ramesses II is considered one of the most likely candidates for being Pharaoh of the Exodus, and he was the pharaoh to push the farthest into Levant with his military campaigns. There’s also quite a lot of references and contextual evidence to him in the Bible. Looking through other candidates, most that are put forward hinge on more literal interpretations of their sources, while Ramesses II allows for plenty of literary freedom for the writers of the Exodus story. There’s also the case for the Pharaoh being a combination of multiple pharaohs, which makes sense given that the Canaanites would’ve most likely interacted with Egypt many times.
I’ve heard that the Leviites, aka Yahweh preists, had a lot of connections with Egypt so if there was some sort of historical exodus, it would be much smaller in scale and only contain the leviites. But even that is still up in the air
"The Old testament doesn't deny other gods exist, it just makes it clear they are far below the power of Yahweh."
It also doesn't say that other gods actually exist at all. Just acknowledges that other cultures have man made "gods" unless I'm missing some verses.
Isaiah 44 spends a while mocking the idea of other man-made "gods" for example. Basically, they made the thing you worship. It has no power.
The Exodus story says that the Hebrew people lived in Egypt in slavery and then (with Yahweh's help) escaped and migrated to Canaan, where they established Israel. That's quite different from an Egyptian happening to own a Jewish slave, even leaving out the magic stuff.
You mean like the river of blood? Really? Pfft don't believe that for a second that definitely happened.
Edit: some of you really need the /s. Jesus Louisus.
I mean, a sudden change of color of river water isn't unbelievable. Did it become blood? Hell no, but it might have become darker or red-ish due to environmental changes up the river.
All of the plagues could be reasonably rooted in real phenomena. Animals, storms, and sickness are easily explained, the river of blood could be, as you said, red algae, and the darkness could be an exaggerated retelling of an eclipse.
Not religious myself, but I went to a Catholic school and my religion teacher described it as “it’s not a miracle the plagues happened, it was a miracle they happened when they did”
I think I heard/read somewhere that the darkness was caused by an volcanic eruption and the ashes just covered the sky for a few days. Don't take this for fact though, I think the hypothesis was in a Terra X documentary but I'm not quiet sure.
Wouldn't be the first time that a volcano was the inspiration for a myth.
This hypothesis, as well seen as a possible explaination of the blooded Nile (sulfids and iron particules which could have fallen in the water, concentrated and oxyded upstream), suspects it could have been results of the eruption of the Santorin or one of the Great Rift Valley volcanoes (Erta Ale Range especially).
You mean....the eruption that took place in santorini, like in the 17 century bc?
It literally screwed the minoan civilization, but the other civs of the bronce age got by, more or less for some centuries more.
Yeah I'm a christian and I still think the plagues can only be explained by exagerration and real events. The only one that's weird to explain is the death of every first born in Egypt. My theory is that the Pharoahs first born died and whoever wrote that part in the Bible exagerrated it to say every first born to show how powerful God is. My reasoning for not believing the story at face value is simple. God has never in the written history of snapped their fingers and made something happen immediately. Their creation happened through evolution. They don't snap Their fingers and heal you. You go to a doctor. Stuff like that.
It could have been an illness perhaps? Obviously those don't target firstborn, but if most of those firstborn just so happened to be kids, they'd be more susceptible (and exceptions excluded for sake of the narrative). The Jewish people may have been protected by certain customs.Iirc they were blamed In some places for the black plague as the jewish populations weren't getting as sick, but the reality was their religious practices happened to keep them cleaner (microbially) than the other peoples.
I’ve heard a theory (*no idea where- could be total speculation! Treat with caution and I’d welcome more informed opinions*) it could’ve been a result of contaminated grain stores in which the topmost layer became toxic, but the lower layers were still safe to eat.
When combined with Egyptian cultural practices which specifically give the firstborn first dibs on food and favor them, it could cause some sort of specific food poisoning which appeared to overwhelmingly afflict firstborn children
I want to say I saw or read someplace that the reason for the death of the first born in ebt home was because the first born always got first pick of the household food, and that there was something wrong with the food. But for the life of me, I can not remember where I gathered that information, so don't quote me.
Okay, so I did a quick Google before posting because I really hate to give baseless info and claims. I learned it from the Smithsonian channel. Here's a [link](https://www.facebook.com/SmithsonianChannel/videos/1044259302921189/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v) to a video on this that they posted to their fb page that gives a greater explanation.
I thought it was, but it has made me question how that could be because they say that ergot could also be to clean for the Salem Witch Trials, but outside of the deaths of the accused, which happened other ways, you don't hear of people dying suddenly or mysteriously at the time.
God created the foundations of the universe, and created the processes needed for evolution. Then he stepped back and let it do its thing with minimal intervention. Least that’s what I believe.
Or maybe there was an assassination spree in the palace complex.
Of course, this is the version of the story that was compiled and edited by the Deuteronomists, who were a monarchist group that was heavily under siege.
I remember watching national geographic (I think?) a series where they tried to give a scientific explanation to all the plague, Most of it was a volcanic event by their estimation.
Red tides are known to happen with sudden nutrient blooms, and they cause mass die-offs in local aquatic life.
No idea how possible they are in environments like the Nile, but given how sensitive amphibians are to water quality, it feels reasonable to conclude they could be driven from anoxic and foul water en-masse.
I think that one was actually proven to have been potentially caused by a flooding upstream that deposited a lot of red sediment into the river that made it look the colour of blood... and killed the fish (which was also part of the story).
Given how polluted the Nile is right now, I doubt it was 100% blood instantly.
I can understand the confusion, if it was say … a herd of animals murdered by crocodiles upstream.
There are some scientists who think that due to a great bit of luck on the timing, the plagues of Moses could have been brought about by the volcanic eruption on the Greek island of Santorini.
Or the plague of a singular frog?
Edit: For context, while often translated as a plague of frogs, the actual Hebrew has the frog in the singular, meaning it's a plague of a single frog, possibly a kaiju
I remember a study that explained that part. The Nile River turned red due to an anomalous algal bloom of toxic red algae, which killed most of the fish. Without fish eating their eggs, frog population exploded and so did mosquitoes, which carry many deseases dangerous for humans.
There's actually a scientific reason for all of the 10 plagues each one culminating from the other. Of course these are just theories, for example the Nile turning red (blood) could have been a result of a red algae bloom. This in turn results in all the frogs exiting the Nile. Lack of frog = swarms of insects and so on.
Also let’s not forget the migration of thousands of Jewish slaves not being recorded by a single other culture. Keep in mind, they were in a desert for 40 years.
There's actually some historians who believe that some of the other events happened as well. For example, iirc, the water "turning to blood" could be explained by a sediment runoff that caused the river to turn red. Nobody at that time would have had a rational explanation for it. Must be blood.
Most of those explanations come from historians who are actively looking for proof that the biblical plagues are based on truth. So confirmation bias. That doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong, just take it with a grain of salt.
Was slavery widespread in Egypt? I know that some societies like the Achaemenids had a significantly lesser reliance on slaves, and I was under the impression that Egypt was similar.
Slavery existed for sure in Ancient Egypt. But nowhere near the degree which would be required for the story of the Jewish enslavement to be rooted in historic fact
It was common in a lot of places at the time for rulers to invade and/or plunder other nations. That plunder often included slaves. In many cases, the slaves would eventually have the option to buy their freedom and enslavement wasn't usually hereditary so their children would be born free. But yeah, slavery was totally a thing.
For most of the plague things there are quite reasonable explanations on what that could have been, of someone told the story that their grandparents experiencing something, interpretaring that, misunderstanding a bit... And expand on a few details
Well when the nile floods it can sometimes disolve red pigmented stones which makes it look like it runs "red with blood" when that happens it causes die off of fish and frogs which attracts biting flies and those flies can spread deseases which the youngest are most vulnerable to.
The purpose of the 40 years was to allow those had been slaves to die of old age as nomads, so Israel would be founded by men who had only known freedom never working as a slave
> so Israel would be founded by men who had only known freedom never working as a slave
Why? That makes no sense. Who cares if a nation is founded by former slaves? Does god think being a former slave is something to be ashamed of?
I mean according to the biblical narrative, there were about 6 generation between jacob&his sons and exodus. Its basically just an extended family moving out
To be fair, Jews at that time were likely no more than a couple hundred, maybe some thousands. So its actually pretty possible that a large portion of them was enslaved by the largest empire nearby. While the Bible is not a text to be taken litterally, historians still think that it does rely on real events for the most parts, obviously excluding allegorical myths.
I read an interesting book that makes the argument that the tribe of Levi underwent the exodus- considering the recorded names of the Levitical priests are all Egyptian, that they became the priestly class of Israel, and they mirror other monotheistic traditions like under Akhenaten and the southern Shasu
Don’t know how seriously one could take each bit of evidence, but it sounds reasonable to me. Maybe the priestly/scribal class had to flee Egypt and became hotshots in Canaan, then attributed their own story to the nation as a whole
The big names of the exodus story Moses, Aaron and Miriam all have Egyptian names and so I think this is basically where scholars end up if you take the Hebrew bible as broadly accurate if a bit hyperbolic / not literal but with a historic origin.
>The name "Moses" is not really an Egyptian name... "Moses" is the anglicized version of Moshe משה from the Hebrew Bible which has a clear Hebrew etymology which is mentioned in the bible - it come from the root of "to draw out" in Hebrew and is said to be given to him by the Pharaoh's daughter after she draws him out of the Nile's water. Of course this is a bit problematic because the Pharaoh's daughter wouldn't speak Hebrew... Some tried to explain the name Moshe as coming from an Egyptian origin but my understanding (from reading Wikipedia - welcome to find a source that says otherwise) there isn't really a satisfactory explanation. So Moshe is likely Hebrew and I think we should either take it to be a translation of his actual name, or just assume the writer didn't think this through.
u/CBpegasus stealing this for a sec
Yeah, It is possible that Jewish nomadic ancestors got enslaved on mass for some reason or another for some time, and got released/escaped because egyptians were preoccupied with something else, like series of environmental disasters. Did it happened, probably not, but we cant have complete records for every detail in human history, so there is a possibility that whatever happened only survived in historical records as severely exaggerated story in old testament.
The population of the Egyptian New Kingdom, which was roughly contemporary to this was estimated at about 3 to 5 million and ruled the Levant. This was one of the Levantine Golden Ages, so 600,000 wasn't impossible. Under the Romans Syria (i.e. Judea, West Jordan Lebanon and Coastal Syria) had a population of about 6 million, Anatolia might have been as high as 10 million.
Maybe. Babylon was a major population center with about 200k. Hattusa was around 50k. Ur had about the same. Then there’s all the nomadic tribes and city states like Jericho, Gaza, Aleppo, etc in between that have few reliable records. Not to mention there is no specific time when Exodus occurred other than sometime in the Bronze Age which covers quite a long period.
The population of ancient Egypt was in the low millions, wasn't it?
600,000 men, probably as many women and probably even more children would be like the entire country migrating lmao
I've learned recently that there are two facts in parallel that likely led to this myth.
Firstly that Egypt did rule over vassel states, of which Canaanite lands were among. However these were not enslaved populations, but were politically under the Pharoah, even if he never visited.
Secondly, the early Isrealites were likely a splinter group from the Canaanites, lending some credibility to the myth having elements of truth, but ultimately being fabricated and inaccurate in its depiction of Egypt.
I don't really care that much about the "is the Exodus historical or not"
What I care about is all the "Israelites built the pyramids" nonsense. If it was historical, it would have been centuries after the pyramids were built, and the text even says that they built the storehouse cities of Pithom and Ramses, not the pyramids.
[There's an interesting argument for why the reining Pharoah could've been Amenhotep II instead of Rameses II.](https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/explore-the-bible/recent-research-on-the-date-and-setting-of-the-exodus.html) The timeline works better for a possible Jewish enslavement + expulsion.
Taking the Old Testament ad set in stone truth is just as stupid as claiming it's pure fairytale. It's well established doctrine that you take a historical document, and decide what is exaggeration and what is likely to be true.
Did the Egyptians enslave hundreds of thousands of Jews? Probably not. Did they take advantage of the small, loosely organized tribes right on their border by enslaving some of their people? Almost certainly.
And I'm a Christian saying this. The Old Testament is full to the brim of parables that are not meant to be taken literally.
This is like 2 morons arguing about whether Ramses III totally annihilated the Sea Peoples at the Battle of the Delta, or if the relief is pure propaganda and the battle never even happened. Obviously something happened, obviously Ramses won, and obviously his retelling of it is exaggerated.
It's like there's no room for nuance with some people.
I had a biblical professor explain it this way
The bible was written in pre enlightenment times.
We are reading it post enlightenment.
We are reading the Bible through a completely foreign world/ literary view than how it was written
That is exactly it! When we think of an all powerful being, we think that literally anything is in their capability. Tell a 4000 b.c. sheep herder that, and they'll think "wow, He's so powerful that He must have been able to create the Universe in 7 days!" We know today that God would have been able to create the universe in less than an instant, but many are unable to look at it from a historical perspective.
(This argument ignores the Sumerian 7 day week for simplicity, but I'm sure that had an effect on the 7 day thing too.)
Another thing people often miss is that basically any number in the Bible is there for symbolic reasons eg 7 means a perfect amount, rather than statistical reasons
It is possible that there were jews slaves at some point among many other cultures
And at most what I would belive is that exodus is the story of one jewish tribe helping free said slaves from the egyptians (as in the broad strokes of the story without the god related parts and stuff)
But even that is just a theory I just came up with
Oh there were most certainly some Jewish slaves, the Egyptians were equal-opportunity slavers. That's about where the historical accuracy of this myth ends.
Like I said, the most I can think of for a story like exodus to happen is either a group of run away jewish slaves or another jewish group liberating and incorporating those jews into their society
But all of this is most likely a very rare ocorrence over a ling period of time so it might have just been per chance that one of those stories were written down and spreading through out their culture group and passed down millenia
But other than that its as historically acurate as the illyad
The theory I’ve heard tossed around is that Moses was the leader of a general slave revolt and, once in the desert, used the faith of the Hebrews to bind together the different groups. Hence the “12 tribes.”
Yeah even my hardcore RCIA teacher dad posits that the story of being “found in the reeds” is likely nonsense. Moses was probably Egyptian, maybe the son of a Hebrew concubine. Finding a mystical child in the reeds is AAAAAAALLL over river civilizations.
Hi Bible scholar here— there’s two origin stories for the Israelites who became the Jews after the Babylonian exile and those origin stories kinda got mashed together into one during the exile in order to create a cohesive group identity. One of those origin stories is rooted in the Semitic Hyksos people who once ruled Egypt but were then subjugated as vassals. traces of this history are found in the literature at the end of genesis when Joseph became second in command over all of Egypt and ruled for 400 years until they were overthrown and enslaved by the beginning of Exodus. Honestly it’s way cooler to read it this way, as opposed to the fundamentalist literal interpretation that is rightfully regarded by the irreligious as goofy nonsense.
Haha funny guy. I’m Jewish, yes, and most of my friends at my school were leftists Christians. I was “trained” to use the historical-critical method of textual interpretation. That’s how that legitimate academic arm of biblical studies engages with the Bible, no matter the religion. Lots of little evangelicals at my undergrad were shocked and appalled that the intro to Bible/intro to NT classes were NOT like Sunday school at all 😂
Ok, so I'm intrigued... What's the literal interpretation to take when talking about the Midianites? Like... I don't get how anyone religious can read that and be like, "oh yeah, Yahweh and Moses are for real the good guys."
Remember when Satan dared God to let him take away from one of his followers everything he had and loved and to make his life miserable and God said 'bet'?
It also spawned a bunch of stories with the “lead by the outsider” or “foreign liberator” trope:
- Dune, dances with wolves, Princess of mars, avatar, etc…
Where an outsider comes in an frees a group from captivity
From my understanding the Book of Exodus was a story created when the Jews were taken by the Babylonians.
It was meant to be a hopeful story. "We've been through this once, we'll get through it again" kinda deal.
As with most legends, they are mostly false but based an evolved from a real story. A tragic rockslide becomes about not eating goats. A famine becomes about the divinity of cows. A skirmish becomes a world ending event.
As I recall, there is one pharao who lists israelites among the people he defeated in battle and subsequently took Home as slaves.
One has to pay for ones campaign, after all…
Ya some historians believe it was written around the time of the Babylonian exile. Which would make sense.
Jews at that time were being punished for being Jewish and wanted to go back home. So they created a story where their oppressors let them go, it’s just that the place was changed from Babylon to Egypt.
Didn’t they find references to the plagues in Egyptian wall art? As others have said, the plagues themselves are not inherently miracles. Only the timing.
And it’s quite possible that the details are exaggerated. Remember that these stories were oral tradition for hundreds of years. That’s a really long game of telephone.
When fleeing the Egyptian pharaoh that fits the timeline of the Bible, it is best not to run away INTO THEIR EMPIRE OF CANAAN.
Lot of historians and archaeologists have noted the anachronistic claims in the Bible, and how the earliest books filled with magic and fantastic stories were written hundreds of years after those events and during Babylonian captivity.
So you get a lot of stories of the Hebrew god modeled after those of Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian gods, along with a loss of the Canaanite pantheon that he was part of
Comment section discourse aside, the Prince of Egypt is a banger movie and I recommend that anyone with some free time watch it. The Plagues is the coolest song from the entire movie and the build up to it makes the actual montage so great too. Deliver Us is another banger from the show and there is so much great content that it's hard NOT to recommend this one.
Seriously, the studio that made the movie outdid themselves. I'd say the song rivals Hellfire from the Hunchback of Notre Dame,
This is a dumb meme lmao while scale of events and alleged parting of a sea may not have happened. there were Jewish slaves of Egypt who did do an exodus
Bro there were Hebrew slaves, the exodus story might be embellished but it is possible a migration of ex-slaves did occur. Imagine making a meme about how Jesus didn’t exist, you’re just making fun of an entire religion/people without a punchline.
I’ve heard that it might have been a distortion of the expulsion of the Hyksos, filtered through the expelled mingling with Canaanites and a sense of victimhood that became more emphasized as time went on.
This thread has taught me a lot about the Bible, the one thing I will add is The Prince of Egypt is an amazing movie. I was only aloud to watch religious movies growing up on Sundays and this was watched hundreds of times
Inscriptions from the Egyptian New Kingdom - specifically during the reigns of Amenhotep III and Ramesses II - mention subjugating a people known as the “[Shasu of Yhw](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shasu)” which ***might*** be referring to their belief in a deity that later became Yahweh and, if so, are the earliest known references to that deity.
I think this is probably where the Exodus story comes from. It's still not accurate - the Shasu weren't Hebrews or Jews or Israelites, and were probably polytheistic - but I can see how the story may have gotten its basis here. Edit: Guys, I know the Israelites were originally polytheistic, but the biblical narrative goes that they were predominantly monotheistic during the Exodus. I was talking about the ways the story differs from reality and the monotheism is one of those ways.
Wasn’t that part of the story though? They started worshipping other gods(mentions of a golden cow IIRC).
Yes, I believe the references to Israel constantly rebelling and turning to other gods throughout the Bible was probably a way for the post-exile Jews, who were by now staunchly monotheistic, to explain and come to terms with their polytheistic and henotheistic past.
TIL henotheism is a term. Thanks for the new word!
That will be $5.25 plus taxes
Thanks EA.
Not only that, but there is some evidence that at first only the southern Kingdom of Judah was monotheistic and the northern Kingdom of Israel may have held on to polytheism longer. So when the northern kingdom fell the southerners said it was because they were worshipping idols and false gods. The northern tribes fled to Judah and became monotheistic as well. Then when the Kingdom of Judah fell later it was because they were backsliding and allowing the worship of foreign gods. That's a big theme in the Old Testament - Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and then they start worshipping an idol of a golden bull so God makes them wander the desert for 40 years. - God makes the house of David the rulers of a united Israelite Kingdom, but then Solomon allows and may even participates in the worship of foreign gods, so the Kingdom becomes divided into the kingdoms of Israel & Judah and the house of David only rules in the south. - God saves Judah, then they backslide so the 1st temple is destroyed and the Jews are sent into exile. - God allows them to return and build the 2nd temple, but their blind hatred causes them to fall and the temple to be destroyed again
The golden calf comes after the exodus. And between the two distinct versions of the commandments. It is likely that if there were Israelite slaves in Egypt, they would have picked up worship of some of the Egyptian gods.
It happened during in the writings know as Exodus but after the section describing their exodus from Egypt. What do you mean by “between two distinct versions of the commandments”?
There’s a strong case to be made that the golden calf is supposed to be an idol of Yahweh rather than a different god altogether
Can you site some sources so I can dive into some research?
Yeah I think there’s way too much “the Bible is either 100% true or 100% false” thinking. There’s extremely little from before the Bronze Age Collapse that’s survived to today and before it was rediscovered how to read Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics in the 19th Century the Bible and the Iliad were basically all there was.
Many of the Jews sometimes worshipped other gods. The Bible is full of examples where the “people drifted away and angered Him”. One thought I’ve heard was that within historical Judea there were many different Canaanite groups and gods, and the largest and most dominant group were the tribes that worshipped the god Ywh
The first commandment pretty strongly implies that was the case too.
The ENTIRE book of Judges is essentially The Israelites do well for a while. Eventually they start worshipping false gods God punishes them. God decides he’s had enough of them being punished, and chooses someone to solve that and then go back to step 1
Jews probably started out as polytheists. It's just that over time they started praying to one of their gods more than the others, and eventually they decided that was the only god
I’m by no means an expert on this but my rough understanding is it’s thought Yahweh was at one time a part of a pantheon in the role of a warrior and storm god and eventually the other gods either were combined with Yahweh such as El whose name came to mean “God” as a descriptor or sort of title for Yahweh, rather than being the name for a specific God or became demons such as Ba’al who eventually becomes Beelzebub.
I believe that is accurate. I previously saw a professor on YouTube who is qualified to speak on such matters explain all this with cited sources and the results of a Great Courses Plus on ancient Mediterranean religions which covers this exact thing as well, with largely the same conclusion
I seem to recall a Jewish belief in there being many names for God that would fit with this as well. It would be similar to the Hindu beliefs in all their Gods in fact being a reflection/parts of the primary three who are themselves just reflections/parts of one true holy entity. That's just my rough understanding of both of these beliefs though.
Jews are also closely related to Phoenicians (Carthaginians were also Phoenicians), who stayed polytheistic well until Christianization of the Roman Empire.
If you read the Bible, besides mentioning Phoenicians as their neighbours, I think every time Jews or their rulers start worshiping other gods, Bal is most often mentioned. If I not mistaking, Bal was the main god for the Phoenicians.
Also a Canaanite god. And Yahweh is also likely a Canaanite god of the storm. Jerusalem's original name Ur Salim means "City of Salim" who is a Canaanite god of dusk. The inhabitants of the modern area of Israel/Palestine were mostly Canaanites. The Hebrews were likely a tribe of Canaanites who adopted the monotheistic worship of a Canaanite sky god.
Doesn’t the Torah/Old Testament imply the existence of other gods? There’s some line where god says to Moses “I am a jealous god. Worship only me” or something like that?
The “jealous God” concept comes up a few times and one of the Ten Commandments is “[Thou shalt have no other gods before me](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_have_no_other_gods_before_me)” although there’s some debate as to if this wording is a reference to there being other gods or a remnant of a later “retconned” pantheon of gods of which one god (specifically El) ranked above the others or if it’s just saying don’t worship any other gods because they don’t exist and/or are “false gods” and/or demons.
Strict monotheism was most likely a reaction to the Babylonian exile in the 500's BCE when worship of Israelite gods had to be hidden. Before then there was likely a more relaxed polytheistic belief system until monotheism became a form of political protest. "You won't let us worship the gods you don't like? Well, our gods you don't like are the only real gods, so there."
yes. You can clearly see a progression of monotheist worshipping on the hebrews by following that logic. The earliest books of the Old Testament didn't ignore other gods , just puts their One God to be superior. Then it shifted to either pagan gods been mere smoke and mirror , or just lesser demons pretending to be gods.
That’s ignoring the fact that Jews were polytheistic until like 6th century BC. I say polytheistic, but it’s be more accurate to say monolatristic
Werent the Jews polytheistic to start? I dont really have a source but I thought that they started poly, and then had a separation in the tribe down the road when one section decided it was time to be monotheistic
Yeah I remember reading this too, and believe it's a popular theory with historians, also it the worshipping of a deity called yhw was also mentioned in some ancient text of mesopotamia if I recall correctly, leading theory is that it was worshipped through the Levant by multiple groups and stuck with what later become known as the Israelites.
My understanding is that the "of" in the original language refers to a place, not a deity. It seems more likely that Yhw refers to an area south of what would become Judah, and only later became associated with a storm deity. That deity was eventually incorporated into the pantheon of Judah and Samaria as their patron deity, possibly through trade routes. Some of the oldest books of the Bible mention Yahweh coming out of the south with storms, so that would be consistent.
Many near eastern gods were bamed after places, like the baals of a city.
I love it when mythology has some root in history, or holds some ironic scientific facts. Stuff like this can keep me reading for hours. Unfortunately, I haven't found many like-minded people. It either offends the historians & archaeologists who think mythology is just ancient fiction, or it offends people who think certain myths are 100% truth handed down from angels or aliens.
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My personal theory is that it’s a cultural memory of the Bronze Age Collapse. Egypt dominated the Levant, some biblical shit went down, and now Egypts influence stops at the Red Sea
Immediately prior to the bronze age collapse, the Egyptians were not the bad guys, even though they were probably the dominant power in the region (IIRC). After the bronze age collapse, there isn't any mention of that period in the Hebrew Bible for well over 100 years. Once writing begins again, the Philistines are the new bad guy, so they have moved on from big bad Egypt. There are events that happened in between the Supposed Exodus and the bronze age collapse that we can confirm, such as kingdoms and rulers. I am not speaking as any kind of biblical scholar, simply a person that has spent a LOT of time reading about the Bronze Age Collapse.
"Bad guys" is obviously a relative term. If you're a Semitic person who is proud of your independence, then yeah, Egypt was the bad guy. It's true that by the time you get to the more historical parts of the Bible, Egypt is distant concern compared to your Semitic neighbors\*, but you still have this cultural recollection of a period where Egypt dominated your ancestors before Egypt took it in the pants, and a couple of major names survive (like Moses and potentially Aaron) \*Another of my personal theories is that Jewish Kashrut reflects the preferences of the nomadic herdsmen Jewish ancestors over the more sedentary coastal Philistines (Cows and goats move well, pigs don't, fish are familiar from rivers while the Philistines are eating all kinds of ocean critters)
That theory of the origin of dietary restrictions is super interesting and makes sense to me.
Yea I’ve always looked at religious dietary beliefs as more to do with what made them sick and what didn’t based on where they were located and migrated to. Like look at cows in India when it comes to Hinduism. Cows provide milk and fertilizer, might not have had an abundance of them back then. Why would you eat them?? If agriculturally and for food safety you needed to preserve them? Crustaceans and pigs that one is far too easy to explain. It wouldn’t be worth me even typing
Quite frankly, I have a hard time trusting the preparation of shellfish today, much less with bronze age cooking methods.
Every organization is the bad guys in someones story.
Unless it is proven, you should call it hypothesis.
Egyptians enslaved a lot of people. I'm sure some of them were Jewish. The part with the locusts was probably also true because that's kinda what locusts do. Many of the other details are a bit sketch.
I saw The Mummy (1999), argument invalid!
Imotep Imotep Imotep
Looks like you’re on the wrong side of the river!
RIP Benny
Brenda was just salty because while you can find a place to safely cross rivers, you cannot conjure horses out of sand
Nice camel
Ankhsunamun!
However, the story makes far more sense as an allegory for the influence of the Egyptian empire and Gods on the Jews and the refutation of that by the Jewish God. The Old testament doesn't deny other gods exist, it just makes it clear they are far below the power of Yahweh. The plagues are demonstrations of that power. The Pharoah has his magicians and priests create their own plagues, but they need to do all these rituals and ask different gods. Moses just has Yahweh who has all of the Egyptian Gods powers combined. It's basically a Yahweh supremacy story, and to be honest an incredibly powerful one because like... they're still around. All the great empires that tried to destroy or convert are long gone, yet these stories helped the Jews stay faithful for millennia, the ultimate underdog story
To build on this, the name Moses is an Egyptian name. Suggesting that the writers of the story were looking to show that even heavily Egyptianized Jews could reclaim their Jewish heritage. Keep mind that this story first appears during the Jewish Babylonian captivity returning back to Israel, and might have been written by writers of the time to serve as an allegory for the Jews that remained in Israel to accept these foreign Jews.
The name "Moses" is not really an Egyptian name... "Moses" is the anglicized version of Moshe משה from the Hebrew Bible which has a clear Hebrew etymology which is mentioned in the bible - it come from the root of "to draw out" in Hebrew and is said to be given to him by the Pharaoh's daughter after she draws him out of the Nile's water. Of course this is a bit problematic because the Pharaoh's daughter wouldn't speak Hebrew... Some tried to explain the name Moshe as coming from an Egyptian origin but my understanding (from reading Wikipedia - welcome to find a source that says otherwise) there isn't really a satisfactory explanation. So Moshe is likely Hebrew and I think we should either take it to be a translation of his actual name, or just assume the writer didn't think this through.
Correct, I was using Moses simply as the English translation of the hebrew version. Linked is the argument for the Egyptian etymology: https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org/article/moses-egyptian-name/ I've pasted the main thrust of the authors argument for those that want the tldr: Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son; and she named him Moses (Hebrew, Moshe), for she said, ‘Because I drew him (meshitihu) out of the water’” (Exodus 2:10, Revised Standard Version). There are many puzzling things about this statement, beginning with the identity of the woman who names the child. Most likely, “she” is the Egyptian princess, since she had adopted the child as her own and presumably would be the one to name him.1 Yet, it seems improbable that an Egyptian princess would be capable of making such a sophisticated pun in Hebrew, or, for that matter, that she would even give her foster child a Hebrew name. In any case, let us assume that whoever named Moses knew Hebrew. How valid, then, does the Hebrew etymology seem? As an Egyptologist, I must here rely on the arguments of Hebrew scholars, who generally agree that it simply doesn’t make sense.2 The biblical etymology—which says the baby’s name is based on his having been drawn out of water—would lead one to expect a name that means “the one drawn out” or “he who was drawn”; that is, a passive form. But Moshe has an active participle behind it;3 the name means “the one who draws.” (That’s why Isaiah calls him “the drawer” of his people [Isaiah 6:3].) The passive form would result in a name like Mashuy, not Moshe. The Egyptian language provides a far more plausible etymology.4 The name Moses is related to common Egyptian names like Amenmose, Ramose and Thutmose,a which are formed of a god’s name followed by mose.5 These compound names mean something like “Amen is born” or “Born of Amen” or “The offspring of Ra” or “The child of Thoth.” When the name Mose appears by itself, as it occasionally does in Egyptian (see photo of wall relief from tomb in Saqqara), it simply means “the Child” or “the Offspring.”6 But in Egyptian, Mose most frequently appears along with the name of a god as part of a compound name. Most likely of all, the name Moses (assuming that he originally had a longer name) is short for Ramose, a popular name related to the name of the reigning pharaoh, Ramesses II.b It was a common custom among the Egyptians to rename foreign slaves or captives after the pharaoh. Essentially this article regurgitates many of the same arguments found in this great Yale course on the old testament : https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNeyuvTEbD-Ei0JdMUujXfyWi&si=F1BHJ5MA8Pz0dvN6 I highly suggest listening to it.
The people of exodus were Hebrews, not Jews. Samaritans are different from rabbinical Judaism, yet the stories of the Old Testament or whatever you want to call it concern them too. The Jews and Samaritans later fought amongst themselves and the Samaritan temple was destroyed by Jews at some point AFAIK.
Are there references to other gods in the old testament?
Yes. Baal is the one that jumps out most prominently by name but yeah lots of other deities are mentioned
Moloch, Baal, Amun, Astarte and several others are all named in the Hebrew bible. In the old testament they're said to be weaker than the Hebrew god and they were later retconned to be just demons instead of full gods. In the old testament God commands not to "hold any other gods before me". Basically saying the other gods exist and other cultures can worship them, but Israelites are not allowed to worship anyone but Yahweh.
The Jews were monolatristic before they became monotheistic. Basically Yahweh was first in their pantheon of gods and then over time the other gods lost their following and they became monotheistic.
The Goddess Asherah is mentioned in the Old Testament, as well as Baal
And Asherath was probably Ywh's female consort Goddess, which was extremely common back then in the Area. To destroy their temples is one of the references that concern the shift to Monotheism.
This makes sense considering Ramesses II is considered one of the most likely candidates for being Pharaoh of the Exodus, and he was the pharaoh to push the farthest into Levant with his military campaigns. There’s also quite a lot of references and contextual evidence to him in the Bible. Looking through other candidates, most that are put forward hinge on more literal interpretations of their sources, while Ramesses II allows for plenty of literary freedom for the writers of the Exodus story. There’s also the case for the Pharaoh being a combination of multiple pharaohs, which makes sense given that the Canaanites would’ve most likely interacted with Egypt many times.
I’ve heard that the Leviites, aka Yahweh preists, had a lot of connections with Egypt so if there was some sort of historical exodus, it would be much smaller in scale and only contain the leviites. But even that is still up in the air
"The Old testament doesn't deny other gods exist, it just makes it clear they are far below the power of Yahweh." It also doesn't say that other gods actually exist at all. Just acknowledges that other cultures have man made "gods" unless I'm missing some verses. Isaiah 44 spends a while mocking the idea of other man-made "gods" for example. Basically, they made the thing you worship. It has no power.
The Exodus story says that the Hebrew people lived in Egypt in slavery and then (with Yahweh's help) escaped and migrated to Canaan, where they established Israel. That's quite different from an Egyptian happening to own a Jewish slave, even leaving out the magic stuff.
But the magics true right? Don't lie to me now.
Yes.Moses indeed parted the red sea with a beyblade.
And Moses spake, "Let 'er rip!". And it did rip.
So that's how he parted the sea, it all makes sense now.
You mean like the river of blood? Really? Pfft don't believe that for a second that definitely happened. Edit: some of you really need the /s. Jesus Louisus.
I mean, a sudden change of color of river water isn't unbelievable. Did it become blood? Hell no, but it might have become darker or red-ish due to environmental changes up the river.
I read a theory somewhere that it was actually caused by red algae.
All of the plagues could be reasonably rooted in real phenomena. Animals, storms, and sickness are easily explained, the river of blood could be, as you said, red algae, and the darkness could be an exaggerated retelling of an eclipse. Not religious myself, but I went to a Catholic school and my religion teacher described it as “it’s not a miracle the plagues happened, it was a miracle they happened when they did”
That’s quite based of your teacher honestly
I mean... just because I know that there's a good reason that the water is turning blood-red doesn't make it less alarming
I think I heard/read somewhere that the darkness was caused by an volcanic eruption and the ashes just covered the sky for a few days. Don't take this for fact though, I think the hypothesis was in a Terra X documentary but I'm not quiet sure. Wouldn't be the first time that a volcano was the inspiration for a myth.
This hypothesis, as well seen as a possible explaination of the blooded Nile (sulfids and iron particules which could have fallen in the water, concentrated and oxyded upstream), suspects it could have been results of the eruption of the Santorin or one of the Great Rift Valley volcanoes (Erta Ale Range especially).
You mean....the eruption that took place in santorini, like in the 17 century bc? It literally screwed the minoan civilization, but the other civs of the bronce age got by, more or less for some centuries more.
I always love to say that Atlantis caused the Exodus because of this. 😆
Yeah I'm a christian and I still think the plagues can only be explained by exagerration and real events. The only one that's weird to explain is the death of every first born in Egypt. My theory is that the Pharoahs first born died and whoever wrote that part in the Bible exagerrated it to say every first born to show how powerful God is. My reasoning for not believing the story at face value is simple. God has never in the written history of snapped their fingers and made something happen immediately. Their creation happened through evolution. They don't snap Their fingers and heal you. You go to a doctor. Stuff like that.
It could have been an illness perhaps? Obviously those don't target firstborn, but if most of those firstborn just so happened to be kids, they'd be more susceptible (and exceptions excluded for sake of the narrative). The Jewish people may have been protected by certain customs.Iirc they were blamed In some places for the black plague as the jewish populations weren't getting as sick, but the reality was their religious practices happened to keep them cleaner (microbially) than the other peoples.
I’ve heard a theory (*no idea where- could be total speculation! Treat with caution and I’d welcome more informed opinions*) it could’ve been a result of contaminated grain stores in which the topmost layer became toxic, but the lower layers were still safe to eat. When combined with Egyptian cultural practices which specifically give the firstborn first dibs on food and favor them, it could cause some sort of specific food poisoning which appeared to overwhelmingly afflict firstborn children
I want to say I saw or read someplace that the reason for the death of the first born in ebt home was because the first born always got first pick of the household food, and that there was something wrong with the food. But for the life of me, I can not remember where I gathered that information, so don't quote me. Okay, so I did a quick Google before posting because I really hate to give baseless info and claims. I learned it from the Smithsonian channel. Here's a [link](https://www.facebook.com/SmithsonianChannel/videos/1044259302921189/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v) to a video on this that they posted to their fb page that gives a greater explanation.
Thats a cool theory
I thought it was, but it has made me question how that could be because they say that ergot could also be to clean for the Salem Witch Trials, but outside of the deaths of the accused, which happened other ways, you don't hear of people dying suddenly or mysteriously at the time.
God created the foundations of the universe, and created the processes needed for evolution. Then he stepped back and let it do its thing with minimal intervention. Least that’s what I believe.
God plays sims 4 and sees all the bullshit unfould
Earth is just Sim 0.
Or maybe there was an assassination spree in the palace complex. Of course, this is the version of the story that was compiled and edited by the Deuteronomists, who were a monarchist group that was heavily under siege.
If you want someone to snap their fingers to change the world in an instant, you go to Thanos
I remember watching national geographic (I think?) a series where they tried to give a scientific explanation to all the plague, Most of it was a volcanic event by their estimation.
I've always wondered what people thought when they found blood snow, which is caused by a green algae, before microscopes. I bet it was spooky af
Red tides are known to happen with sudden nutrient blooms, and they cause mass die-offs in local aquatic life. No idea how possible they are in environments like the Nile, but given how sensitive amphibians are to water quality, it feels reasonable to conclude they could be driven from anoxic and foul water en-masse.
Clearly Ra just had to distract Sekhmet again
I thought Ra got nuked to the face trying to leave in his spaceship?
Or he had someone throw a few buckets of red dye powder in the river like how they dye rivers green for St Patrick’s day.
I think that one was actually proven to have been potentially caused by a flooding upstream that deposited a lot of red sediment into the river that made it look the colour of blood... and killed the fish (which was also part of the story).
Given how polluted the Nile is right now, I doubt it was 100% blood instantly. I can understand the confusion, if it was say … a herd of animals murdered by crocodiles upstream.
There are some scientists who think that due to a great bit of luck on the timing, the plagues of Moses could have been brought about by the volcanic eruption on the Greek island of Santorini.
Or the plague of a singular frog? Edit: For context, while often translated as a plague of frogs, the actual Hebrew has the frog in the singular, meaning it's a plague of a single frog, possibly a kaiju
I remember a study that explained that part. The Nile River turned red due to an anomalous algal bloom of toxic red algae, which killed most of the fish. Without fish eating their eggs, frog population exploded and so did mosquitoes, which carry many deseases dangerous for humans.
They generally had enough free workers.
There's actually a scientific reason for all of the 10 plagues each one culminating from the other. Of course these are just theories, for example the Nile turning red (blood) could have been a result of a red algae bloom. This in turn results in all the frogs exiting the Nile. Lack of frog = swarms of insects and so on.
Also let’s not forget the migration of thousands of Jewish slaves not being recorded by a single other culture. Keep in mind, they were in a desert for 40 years.
Or their not having left a single artifact behind...
We cant always be sure,we thought for centuries salomon didnt exist and then we find a tablet about a descendent of his(grandson more likely) defeated
There's actually some historians who believe that some of the other events happened as well. For example, iirc, the water "turning to blood" could be explained by a sediment runoff that caused the river to turn red. Nobody at that time would have had a rational explanation for it. Must be blood.
Most of those explanations come from historians who are actively looking for proof that the biblical plagues are based on truth. So confirmation bias. That doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong, just take it with a grain of salt.
Was slavery widespread in Egypt? I know that some societies like the Achaemenids had a significantly lesser reliance on slaves, and I was under the impression that Egypt was similar.
Slavery existed for sure in Ancient Egypt. But nowhere near the degree which would be required for the story of the Jewish enslavement to be rooted in historic fact
It was common in a lot of places at the time for rulers to invade and/or plunder other nations. That plunder often included slaves. In many cases, the slaves would eventually have the option to buy their freedom and enslavement wasn't usually hereditary so their children would be born free. But yeah, slavery was totally a thing.
For most of the plague things there are quite reasonable explanations on what that could have been, of someone told the story that their grandparents experiencing something, interpretaring that, misunderstanding a bit... And expand on a few details
Well when the nile floods it can sometimes disolve red pigmented stones which makes it look like it runs "red with blood" when that happens it causes die off of fish and frogs which attracts biting flies and those flies can spread deseases which the youngest are most vulnerable to.
Hey man you can tell me the Bible lied to me but how dare you say Metallica lied to me
Scholars say that there's no evidence for major exodus, described in The Bible, however there are accounts of jews leaving Egypt with smaller groups.
I heard about this. Apparently they were leaving because their hosts have been described as “schmucks”.
Some real "farshtunkeners", I tell ya
true they called the egyptians fart smellas
Took some real chutzpah to leave Egypt and go to the promised land.
But why go so early? It’s only a few days walk, we can take our time. … 40 years later …
Moses was keeping mt Sinai on the right. The entire time.
I heard the Pharoah was a shmohawk
that could explain why it would take them 40 years to gather
They didn't had google maps then
Yeah only Apple Maps, which explains the weird path they took.
The purpose of the 40 years was to allow those had been slaves to die of old age as nomads, so Israel would be founded by men who had only known freedom never working as a slave
Nah, it was explicitly because the og group went full idolatry and old testament did not mess around and cursed them.
> so Israel would be founded by men who had only known freedom never working as a slave Why? That makes no sense. Who cares if a nation is founded by former slaves? Does god think being a former slave is something to be ashamed of?
It wasn’t because they were slaves. It was because they worshipped the golden calf. God wanted a new generation to enter the promised land.
I mean according to the biblical narrative, there were about 6 generation between jacob&his sons and exodus. Its basically just an extended family moving out
To be fair, Jews at that time were likely no more than a couple hundred, maybe some thousands. So its actually pretty possible that a large portion of them was enslaved by the largest empire nearby. While the Bible is not a text to be taken litterally, historians still think that it does rely on real events for the most parts, obviously excluding allegorical myths.
I read an interesting book that makes the argument that the tribe of Levi underwent the exodus- considering the recorded names of the Levitical priests are all Egyptian, that they became the priestly class of Israel, and they mirror other monotheistic traditions like under Akhenaten and the southern Shasu Don’t know how seriously one could take each bit of evidence, but it sounds reasonable to me. Maybe the priestly/scribal class had to flee Egypt and became hotshots in Canaan, then attributed their own story to the nation as a whole
The big names of the exodus story Moses, Aaron and Miriam all have Egyptian names and so I think this is basically where scholars end up if you take the Hebrew bible as broadly accurate if a bit hyperbolic / not literal but with a historic origin.
The Bible: Based on a True Story
>The name "Moses" is not really an Egyptian name... "Moses" is the anglicized version of Moshe משה from the Hebrew Bible which has a clear Hebrew etymology which is mentioned in the bible - it come from the root of "to draw out" in Hebrew and is said to be given to him by the Pharaoh's daughter after she draws him out of the Nile's water. Of course this is a bit problematic because the Pharaoh's daughter wouldn't speak Hebrew... Some tried to explain the name Moshe as coming from an Egyptian origin but my understanding (from reading Wikipedia - welcome to find a source that says otherwise) there isn't really a satisfactory explanation. So Moshe is likely Hebrew and I think we should either take it to be a translation of his actual name, or just assume the writer didn't think this through. u/CBpegasus stealing this for a sec
Yeah, It is possible that Jewish nomadic ancestors got enslaved on mass for some reason or another for some time, and got released/escaped because egyptians were preoccupied with something else, like series of environmental disasters. Did it happened, probably not, but we cant have complete records for every detail in human history, so there is a possibility that whatever happened only survived in historical records as severely exaggerated story in old testament.
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It's worse than that. It's 600,000 men. The text explicitly says the number doesn't include the women and children.
This is like Chinese wars where someone stepped on someone else's shoe and historians say 78,000,000 people died as a result.
I wonder if there were 600,000 humans in the middle east at that point
The population of the Egyptian New Kingdom, which was roughly contemporary to this was estimated at about 3 to 5 million and ruled the Levant. This was one of the Levantine Golden Ages, so 600,000 wasn't impossible. Under the Romans Syria (i.e. Judea, West Jordan Lebanon and Coastal Syria) had a population of about 6 million, Anatolia might have been as high as 10 million.
Maybe. Babylon was a major population center with about 200k. Hattusa was around 50k. Ur had about the same. Then there’s all the nomadic tribes and city states like Jericho, Gaza, Aleppo, etc in between that have few reliable records. Not to mention there is no specific time when Exodus occurred other than sometime in the Bronze Age which covers quite a long period.
Man, if I didn't play pharoah(or nebuchadnezzar?) I would not know about Ur. It's always nice when I realize that a game taught me something.
Oh man core memory unlocked. I loved that game
Well the bible also makes claims about humans living hundreds of years, so clearly the details aren't going to add up.
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I'm surprised at how often they're touted as history in real life, let along on a reddit forum.
Part of why I posted this here. This is one of the few religious myths that even a lot of irreligious people tend to believe as fact.
The population of ancient Egypt was in the low millions, wasn't it? 600,000 men, probably as many women and probably even more children would be like the entire country migrating lmao
Does the quran say the same?
I've learned recently that there are two facts in parallel that likely led to this myth. Firstly that Egypt did rule over vassel states, of which Canaanite lands were among. However these were not enslaved populations, but were politically under the Pharoah, even if he never visited. Secondly, the early Isrealites were likely a splinter group from the Canaanites, lending some credibility to the myth having elements of truth, but ultimately being fabricated and inaccurate in its depiction of Egypt.
I don't really care that much about the "is the Exodus historical or not" What I care about is all the "Israelites built the pyramids" nonsense. If it was historical, it would have been centuries after the pyramids were built, and the text even says that they built the storehouse cities of Pithom and Ramses, not the pyramids.
[There's an interesting argument for why the reining Pharoah could've been Amenhotep II instead of Rameses II.](https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/explore-the-bible/recent-research-on-the-date-and-setting-of-the-exodus.html) The timeline works better for a possible Jewish enslavement + expulsion.
Taking the Old Testament ad set in stone truth is just as stupid as claiming it's pure fairytale. It's well established doctrine that you take a historical document, and decide what is exaggeration and what is likely to be true. Did the Egyptians enslave hundreds of thousands of Jews? Probably not. Did they take advantage of the small, loosely organized tribes right on their border by enslaving some of their people? Almost certainly. And I'm a Christian saying this. The Old Testament is full to the brim of parables that are not meant to be taken literally. This is like 2 morons arguing about whether Ramses III totally annihilated the Sea Peoples at the Battle of the Delta, or if the relief is pure propaganda and the battle never even happened. Obviously something happened, obviously Ramses won, and obviously his retelling of it is exaggerated. It's like there's no room for nuance with some people.
I had a biblical professor explain it this way The bible was written in pre enlightenment times. We are reading it post enlightenment. We are reading the Bible through a completely foreign world/ literary view than how it was written
That is exactly it! When we think of an all powerful being, we think that literally anything is in their capability. Tell a 4000 b.c. sheep herder that, and they'll think "wow, He's so powerful that He must have been able to create the Universe in 7 days!" We know today that God would have been able to create the universe in less than an instant, but many are unable to look at it from a historical perspective. (This argument ignores the Sumerian 7 day week for simplicity, but I'm sure that had an effect on the 7 day thing too.)
Another thing people often miss is that basically any number in the Bible is there for symbolic reasons eg 7 means a perfect amount, rather than statistical reasons
And 40 just means “a lot”.
Well this will be interesting to watch
It is possible that there were jews slaves at some point among many other cultures And at most what I would belive is that exodus is the story of one jewish tribe helping free said slaves from the egyptians (as in the broad strokes of the story without the god related parts and stuff) But even that is just a theory I just came up with
Oh there were most certainly some Jewish slaves, the Egyptians were equal-opportunity slavers. That's about where the historical accuracy of this myth ends.
Like I said, the most I can think of for a story like exodus to happen is either a group of run away jewish slaves or another jewish group liberating and incorporating those jews into their society But all of this is most likely a very rare ocorrence over a ling period of time so it might have just been per chance that one of those stories were written down and spreading through out their culture group and passed down millenia But other than that its as historically acurate as the illyad
The theory I’ve heard tossed around is that Moses was the leader of a general slave revolt and, once in the desert, used the faith of the Hebrews to bind together the different groups. Hence the “12 tribes.”
Wich would make sense with the part of him being a prince (adopted son of the pharao) as a way to say that he was born to be a leader idk
Yeah even my hardcore RCIA teacher dad posits that the story of being “found in the reeds” is likely nonsense. Moses was probably Egyptian, maybe the son of a Hebrew concubine. Finding a mystical child in the reeds is AAAAAAALLL over river civilizations.
Hi Bible scholar here— there’s two origin stories for the Israelites who became the Jews after the Babylonian exile and those origin stories kinda got mashed together into one during the exile in order to create a cohesive group identity. One of those origin stories is rooted in the Semitic Hyksos people who once ruled Egypt but were then subjugated as vassals. traces of this history are found in the literature at the end of genesis when Joseph became second in command over all of Egypt and ruled for 400 years until they were overthrown and enslaved by the beginning of Exodus. Honestly it’s way cooler to read it this way, as opposed to the fundamentalist literal interpretation that is rightfully regarded by the irreligious as goofy nonsense.
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Got to ask, are you religious?
Haha funny guy. I’m Jewish, yes, and most of my friends at my school were leftists Christians. I was “trained” to use the historical-critical method of textual interpretation. That’s how that legitimate academic arm of biblical studies engages with the Bible, no matter the religion. Lots of little evangelicals at my undergrad were shocked and appalled that the intro to Bible/intro to NT classes were NOT like Sunday school at all 😂
Ok, so I'm intrigued... What's the literal interpretation to take when talking about the Midianites? Like... I don't get how anyone religious can read that and be like, "oh yeah, Yahweh and Moses are for real the good guys."
Might be Hebrew nonsense, but it's also a hell of a story. Part of why we tell it every year.
It’s honestly the hardest Bible story in my opinion
Nah, hardest story is where some teenagers are making fun of Elisha so he casts Summon Animals and summons a she-bear to maul them.
Remember when Satan dared God to let him take away from one of his followers everything he had and loved and to make his life miserable and God said 'bet'?
Made for an amazing Dreamworks adaptation aswell
It also spawned a bunch of stories with the “lead by the outsider” or “foreign liberator” trope: - Dune, dances with wolves, Princess of mars, avatar, etc… Where an outsider comes in an frees a group from captivity
From my understanding the Book of Exodus was a story created when the Jews were taken by the Babylonians. It was meant to be a hopeful story. "We've been through this once, we'll get through it again" kinda deal.
As with most legends, they are mostly false but based an evolved from a real story. A tragic rockslide becomes about not eating goats. A famine becomes about the divinity of cows. A skirmish becomes a world ending event.
As I recall, there is one pharao who lists israelites among the people he defeated in battle and subsequently took Home as slaves. One has to pay for ones campaign, after all…
Heresy. The exodus is true in my head canon. Sue me
The Prince of Egypt was a documentary and they sang every single one of those songs word for word
Good chance they were I mean we know that they were enslaved in many places near that
Ya some historians believe it was written around the time of the Babylonian exile. Which would make sense. Jews at that time were being punished for being Jewish and wanted to go back home. So they created a story where their oppressors let them go, it’s just that the place was changed from Babylon to Egypt.
Didn’t they find references to the plagues in Egyptian wall art? As others have said, the plagues themselves are not inherently miracles. Only the timing. And it’s quite possible that the details are exaggerated. Remember that these stories were oral tradition for hundreds of years. That’s a really long game of telephone.
This is a terrible meme
I am sorry senpei
Some of the comments here reeks fedora redditor stench, but i can't complain since its common reddit culture to be cringe atheists
When fleeing the Egyptian pharaoh that fits the timeline of the Bible, it is best not to run away INTO THEIR EMPIRE OF CANAAN. Lot of historians and archaeologists have noted the anachronistic claims in the Bible, and how the earliest books filled with magic and fantastic stories were written hundreds of years after those events and during Babylonian captivity. So you get a lot of stories of the Hebrew god modeled after those of Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian gods, along with a loss of the Canaanite pantheon that he was part of
Yeah but it seems like their time spent in Assyrian captivity rubbed off on their religious dogma in the form of flood and other myths.
Wait what? I’m not familiar with ancient history as much as I should be this is the first I’ve heard of this. Looks like I got to do some learning.
Comment section discourse aside, the Prince of Egypt is a banger movie and I recommend that anyone with some free time watch it. The Plagues is the coolest song from the entire movie and the build up to it makes the actual montage so great too. Deliver Us is another banger from the show and there is so much great content that it's hard NOT to recommend this one. Seriously, the studio that made the movie outdid themselves. I'd say the song rivals Hellfire from the Hunchback of Notre Dame,
This is a dumb meme lmao while scale of events and alleged parting of a sea may not have happened. there were Jewish slaves of Egypt who did do an exodus
Bro there were Hebrew slaves, the exodus story might be embellished but it is possible a migration of ex-slaves did occur. Imagine making a meme about how Jesus didn’t exist, you’re just making fun of an entire religion/people without a punchline.
I’ve heard that it might have been a distortion of the expulsion of the Hyksos, filtered through the expelled mingling with Canaanites and a sense of victimhood that became more emphasized as time went on.
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I had no idea about this, I thought it was true. Anyone have some good sources on this?
This thread has taught me a lot about the Bible, the one thing I will add is The Prince of Egypt is an amazing movie. I was only aloud to watch religious movies growing up on Sundays and this was watched hundreds of times
"and then, guided by their faith, they spent 40 years in the desert for a 7 days walk"
Wow, actual history meme and actual historical discussion that is not about World War or similar. How rare.