Talk:Exodus of Israel

Dual-user provenance

This article is a dual submission of original work. I am the same user as Temlakos on CreationWiki, and this article is based upon this version of the CreationWiki article, which is entirely my own work.

Archaeological Evidence

Some issues with this part of the entry I'd like to raise:

"Egyptian history is of little to no help in substantiating the Exodus, much less dating it. The reason is that, to an Egyptian, history was not an objective inquiry into past events, but rather was a medium of propaganda. The willful destruction or defacement by succeeding Pharaohs of the monuments, stelae, and other records of his predecessors is a common theme in Egyptology"

Doesn't address lack of archaeological evidence, i.e. workers accommodation, tools, huge and sudden increase in population, economic restructuring etc. Also administrative papyri?

In 2003, amateur diver Peter Elmer discovered coral-encrusted chariot wheels and other chariot parts submerged in the Gulf of Aqaba, the eastern offshoot of the great body of water called the Red Sea today.[20] This is not, however, conclusive.

Suggest rephrase. This suggests the evidence is solid but not conclusive. This find however is far from archaeologically sound and has not been published in any major archaeological journal, not has any evidence or further follow up work been presented. The SCA, meanwhile, has been not, as an institution, confirmed anything about this find.

The revised chronology of David Down and John Ashton[1] strongly suggests that the beginning of the Intermediate Period is the best time for the Exodus.

WHICH intermediate period? This could really use expansion, discussing the research and reasoning behind the "new chronology"

Chariot wheels

We should remove any references to the "chariot wheels" being found, as they are fraudulent. The biblical scholar and archaeologist Douglas N. Petrovich says the following regarding whether or not these wheels are legitimate:

"The short answer: no, this claim is not reliable whatsoever. It makes for great TV, and it makes for provocative conversations, but the truth is that the entire concept is flawed beyond measure. Why? (1) We have no certainty about where the Israelites crossed the Sea of Reeds, let alone a strong idea. (2) We have no certainty about the extent to which the Sea of Reeds projected to the north in 1446 BC. If the Sea of Reeds had the same variance in its shoreline during various periods of antiquity that was true of the Persian Gulf, whose shoreline-positions we know at various periods, the point to which it extends now is radically different than it was in Moses's day. (3) These self-proclaimed archaeologists forget to tell you that sedimentation processes probably would have resulted in burying these chariot wheels in silt many centuries ago. (4) Even if we somehow were to stumble across the actual chariot wheels, there is no way to confirm that they belonged to the army of Amenhotep II in Year 9 of his reign, the time when the exodus occurred in Egypt's history."

I hope to quickly remove this, because informed readers of Conservapedia may come to believe that Conservapedia is unreliable if they see references to established forgeries/frauds in our articles.

We should also remove this:

"The revised chronology of David Down and John Ashton[1] strongly suggests that the beginning of the Intermediate Period is the best time for the Exodus. By this scheme, the Hyksos overran Egypt when conditions could not have been more favorable to invaders: a country first devastated by multiple meteorological, agricultural, and epidemiological disasters is suddenly deprived of its leader and its entire army in a single battle."

This is ambiguous and therefore irrelevant in its virtual entirety. The "beginning of the Intermediate Period" -- which Intermediate Period? There were three of them in Egypt's history. It does not even specify that this is an intermediate of Egyptian history -- why not our readers consider this an intermediate period of the Hittite Kingdom?

Removal of irrelevant data

I think we should remove everything under the subheadings "background", "the mass peuricide", "the birth of moses", "moses in exile" and "moses finds a wife" -- whilst this information may or should be included in Conservapedia's pages on Moses or the Book of Exodus and Genesis, it is completely irrelevant to the exodus. This page should discuss the biblical text regarding the exodus in the Book of Exodus and later biblical books, not what happened before it or after it (that information requires their own Conservapedia pages).Korvex (talk) 21:45, 12 March 2017 (EDT)

I just made a considerable expansion to the part of the page Historicity of the Exodus. If anyone has any thoughts, feel free to respond to me here or on my Talk Page.Korvex (talk) 18:30, 7 April 2017 (EDT)

NOTE: I'm going to delete the last phrase in the article that says the following:

More to the point, most of these projects have assumed that the Pharaoh of the Exodus was either Ramesses II or his son Merenptah. This supposition is based either on Late Date chronology or on Manetho's initial mistake in assuming that all Dynasties of Egypt ran consecutively.

This contains obvious errors. All the dynasties of Egypt DID obviously run consecutively, as all egyptologists know and understand. The idea of Ramses being the exodus-pharaoh is not based on the late date chronology, or anything to do with Manetho, it was based on Exodus 1:11 where the city of Ramses (constructed by Ramses II himself) is mentioned. That is why the 13th century exodus-date theory is made. I am in favor of a 15th century BC exodus, and thus have no bias in this statement. That sentence simply contains errors and so I will remove it.Korvex (talk) 20:39, 7 April 2017 (EDT)

There is much evidence that the Egyptian dynasties overlapped with each other. Some good Egyptologists disagree with your statement. In fact, there is much evidence that our dating of Egyptian history is plain messed up. See these two articles: [1][2] (the second article shows that the city of Ramses may not have actually been built by Ramses the Great). Just to make myself clear, in case you or anyone else has anything against Answers in Genesis, they cite reliable sources, so either way these are reliable articles. --1990'sguy (talk) 21:29, 7 April 2017 (EDT)

I have looked into it and come to found that some Egyptologists do believe that these chronologies overlapped. However, I would advise against bringing back the old edit -- because I think the supposed overlap of these chronologies is irrelevant. The old edit stated "most of these projects have assumed that the Pharaoh of the Exodus was either Ramesses II or his son Merenptah. This supposition is based either on Late Date chronology or on Manetho's initial mistake in assuming that all Dynasties of Egypt ran consecutively." -- but as I noted earlier, the reasons for the 13th century exodus date advocates is not based on Manetho's chronology or the supposed overlap of dynasties, but is rather based on Exodus 1:11. I made an edit to add this information in, revert it if you disagree.Korvex (talk) 12:42, 8 April 2017 (EDT)