02-27-2017, 01:00 PM
(02-27-2017, 12:49 PM)David Horn Wrote:(02-27-2017, 06:14 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(02-26-2017, 03:16 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: I mean, are you really doubling down on this pretentious idiocy?
Nah... I'm likely the last person to argue that the Bible makes sense in it's nitpick details.
I doubt any religious scholar takes anything in the Old Testament as more than an allegory these day. Archeology intervened. For example, the great battle of Jericho makes no sense when you consider the now known fact that Jericho, at the time, was little more than an encampment. Apparently, the Jews were never enslaved either. This is a good synopsis of the modern archeology of the region.
Ancient Middle Eastern history is not one of my strong points (there's too much of it and I can't pronounce most of the names), but as far as I can recall the Israelites emerged out of the highlands from the existing Canaanite population, and the first reference to them by the Egyptians was the Merneptah(sp?) Stele in 1209 BC. There was also a group called the Habiru, that was referenced by the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians, that was a nomadic class of vagrant farm workers, mercenaries, and raiders, but it does not appear to have been exclusively or even mostly West Semetic in origin and unlikely to be connected.