10 reactions
As an ex-Christian, I feel like every Christian should know we have very strong evidence that the Israelites were never slaves in Egypt and the Exodus never happened
I was born and raised evangelical and had what was considered a "good" Christian education all the way through private Christian college. In all my studies, this fact was never mentioned. Or, more accurately, it was systematically shielded from me. Now, as an adult, I've looked more deeply into biblical archaeology out of curiosity and the facts are stunning.
Fact 1: We have millions (!) of artifacts from ancient Egypt, including during the time the Bible says the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt. Given the abundance of data, we would strongly expect to find evidence of a million+ enslaved Israelites. But there is exactly none. In fact, at the Israel Museum, there is a room dedicated to the Exodus: It is intentionally completely empty.
Fact 2: Modern archaeological techniques can reveal almost any level of human activity during the time periods at play here, especially in otherwise uninhabited areas. Bone and pottery are inevitably left behind, and we can detect even trace amounts. The Bible states 600,000 men plus women, children, and animals (so 1.5 to 2M people) left Egypt (Exodus 12:37) and wandered 40 years in the Sinai desert. It says they stayed at one campsite, Kadesh Barnea, for 38 of the 40 years (Deut. 2:14). Now, besides the fact that the claimed number of people is astronomically high for the time period, and the desert could not sustain any number of people for this amount of time (the Bible claims manna from heaven to handle this), and Egypt controlled all the northern land routes to Canaan at this time, with military outposts throughout (so Pharoah chasing them down doesn't make any sense)... We have searched every corner of Sinai for evidence of the Israelite migration, and there is absolutely no trace of them. We've identified the site of Kadesh Barnea, and while it was occupied much earlier and much later by small nomadic groups, it was *completely uninhabited* for the centuries surrounding the biblical narrative. **This is strong evidence that the Law passed down by Moses at Sinai - the core of the Old Testament and the foundation out of which the New Testament emerged - never happened.** It also shows that major parts of the OT are extremely unreliable (i.e., unlikely to be from a divine source...).
Fact 3: The biblical account of the conquest of Canaan is strongly contradicted by the archaeological evidence of Jericho. Jericho, the most famous city to fall to the Israelites in the Bible, was uninhabited during the relevant time period.
Fact 4: The famed kingdoms of David and Solomon have little supporting archaeological evidence, and the evidence available indicates Jerusalem and other cities at the time were little more than small settlements without centralized state functions or trade. The nature and extent of their rule is disputed by scholars.
(Now, to the Bible's credit, many of the major historical events *after* the events mentioned above have been supported by archaeological evidence -- conquests of cities, empirical rule by Assyria and later Babylon, names of kings, etc.)
I share this because when I was a Christian as an adult, evidence actually did matter to me (I was persuaded by evolution, age of the universe, Genesis as myth, etc.), and it changed my thinking. It was not "faith alone" against all reason, as it is for some. I think there are others now in that same boat, including my still-Christian family -- but the facts are actively withheld by Christian educators and communities. I wish these facts were shouted from the rooftops, so that it wasn't just up to an individual's curiosity to seek them out.
I was born and raised evangelical and had what was considered a "good" Christian education all the way through private Christian college. In all my studies, this fact was never mentioned. Or, more accurately, it was systematically shielded from me. Now, as an adult, I've looked more deeply into biblical archaeology out of curiosity and the facts are stunning.
Fact 1: We have millions (!) of artifacts from ancient Egypt, including during the time the Bible says the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt. Given the abundance of data, we would strongly expect to find evidence of a million+ enslaved Israelites. But there is exactly none. In fact, at the Israel Museum, there is a room dedicated to the Exodus: It is intentionally completely empty.
Fact 2: Modern archaeological techniques can reveal almost any level of human activity during the time periods at play here, especially in otherwise uninhabited areas. Bone and pottery are inevitably left behind, and we can detect even trace amounts. The Bible states 600,000 men plus women, children, and animals (so 1.5 to 2M people) left Egypt (Exodus 12:37) and wandered 40 years in the Sinai desert. It says they stayed at one campsite, Kadesh Barnea, for 38 of the 40 years (Deut. 2:14). Now, besides the fact that the claimed number of people is astronomically high for the time period, and the desert could not sustain any number of people for this amount of time (the Bible claims manna from heaven to handle this), and Egypt controlled all the northern land routes to Canaan at this time, with military outposts throughout (so Pharoah chasing them down doesn't make any sense)... We have searched every corner of Sinai for evidence of the Israelite migration, and there is absolutely no trace of them. We've identified the site of Kadesh Barnea, and while it was occupied much earlier and much later by small nomadic groups, it was *completely uninhabited* for the centuries surrounding the biblical narrative. **This is strong evidence that the Law passed down by Moses at Sinai - the core of the Old Testament and the foundation out of which the New Testament emerged - never happened.** It also shows that major parts of the OT are extremely unreliable (i.e., unlikely to be from a divine source...).
Fact 3: The biblical account of the conquest of Canaan is strongly contradicted by the archaeological evidence of Jericho. Jericho, the most famous city to fall to the Israelites in the Bible, was uninhabited during the relevant time period.
Fact 4: The famed kingdoms of David and Solomon have little supporting archaeological evidence, and the evidence available indicates Jerusalem and other cities at the time were little more than small settlements without centralized state functions or trade. The nature and extent of their rule is disputed by scholars.
(Now, to the Bible's credit, many of the major historical events *after* the events mentioned above have been supported by archaeological evidence -- conquests of cities, empirical rule by Assyria and later Babylon, names of kings, etc.)
I share this because when I was a Christian as an adult, evidence actually did matter to me (I was persuaded by evolution, age of the universe, Genesis as myth, etc.), and it changed my thinking. It was not "faith alone" against all reason, as it is for some. I think there are others now in that same boat, including my still-Christian family -- but the facts are actively withheld by Christian educators and communities. I wish these facts were shouted from the rooftops, so that it wasn't just up to an individual's curiosity to seek them out.
| 49,000 mlx | |
| 51 | |
| 10 |