Holy Moses! PBS documentary suggests Exodus not real

by ICBehindtheCurtain 12 Replies latest jw experiences

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  ICBehindtheCurtain

  This will be very interesting, I only wish it would make the rounds on the JW emails the same way "knocking" did, FAT CHANCE! We can only hope that PBS and Nova will jump on this bandwagon as well, sooner than later. Holy Moses! PBS documentary suggests Exodus not real http://www.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment/tv/orl-exodus2108jul21,0,7755323.story Holy Moses! PBS documentary suggests Exodus not real Hal Boedeker | Sentinel Television Critic July 21, 2008 BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Abraham didn't exist? The Exodus didn't happen? The Bible's Buried Secrets, a new PBS documentary, is likely to cause a furor. "It challenges the Bible's stories if you want to read them literally, and that will disturb many people," says archaeologist William Dever, who specializes in Israel's history. "But it explains how and why these stories ever came to be told in the first place, and how and why they were written down." The Nova program will premiere Nov. 18. PBS presented a clip and a panel discussion at the summer tour of the Television Critics Association. The program says the Bible was written in the sixth century BC and that hundreds of authors contributed. "At least the first five books of the Bible come together during the Babylonian exile," says producer Gary Glassman. The program challenges long-held beliefs. Abraham, Sarah and their offspring probably didn't exist, says Carol Meyers, a religion professor at Duke University. "These stories are unlikely to represent real historical events, but rather there's some kernel of ancient experience in there which has survived and which helps give identity to the people at the time the Bible finally took shape centuries and centuries later," Meyers says. There's no archaeological evidence of the Exodus, either, she says, but "it doesn't mean that there's no kernel of truth to it." Nova series producer Paula Apsell says she found it "extremely shocking" to learn that monotheism was a process that took hundreds of years. "I was always brought up to believe that the minute Abraham and the patriarchs came on the scene, the Israelites accepted one God and there was just always one God and that was it," Apsell says. "I think people are going to really be stunned by that." Another shocker: The program contradicts the biblical view that the Israelites came from somewhere else into the land of Canaan. "The film shows that they were Canaanites," Apsell says. IC
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  ICBehindtheCurtain

  What happened to the formatting? Sorry guys. IC
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  Galileo

  Learning that their was no archaeological evidence for the Exodus was one of the turning points of my belief in the bible. If the Exodus happened the way it was described in the bible, there would be literally trainloads of evidence all over the desert they were wandering in. There is not one scrap. That is as close as you can get to proving a negative. In a very real way, it is one of the greatest smoking guns, eclipsed only perhaps by the evidence agaist the flood story, that the entire bible is fiction.
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  VM44

  Can these statements be proven?
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  VM44

  Holy Moses! PBS documentary suggests Exodus not real

  Hal Boedeker | Sentinel Television Critic

  July 21, 2008

  BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Abraham didn't exist? The Exodus didn't happen?
  
  The Bible's Buried Secrets, a new PBS documentary, is likely to cause a furor.
  
  "It challenges the Bible's stories if you want to read them literally, and that will disturb many people," says archaeologist William Dever, who specializes in Israel's history. "But it explains how and why these stories ever came to be told in the first place, and how and why they were written down."
  
  The Nova program will premiere Nov. 18. PBS presented a clip and a panel discussion at the summer tour of the Television Critics Association.

  The program says the Bible was written in the sixth century BC and that hundreds of authors contributed.
  
  "At least the first five books of the Bible come together during the Babylonian exile," says producer Gary Glassman.
  
  The program challenges long-held beliefs. Abraham, Sarah and their offspring probably didn't exist, says Carol Meyers, a religion professor at Duke University.
  
  "These stories are unlikely to represent real historical events, but rather there's some kernel of ancient experience in there which has survived and which helps give identity to the people at the time the Bible finally took shape centuries and centuries later," Meyers says.
  
  There's no archaeological evidence of the Exodus, either, she says, but "it doesn't mean that there's no kernel of truth to it."
  
  Nova series producer Paula Apsell says she found it "extremely shocking" to learn that monotheism was a process that took hundreds of years.
  
  "I was always brought up to believe that the minute Abraham and the patriarchs came on the scene, the Israelites accepted one God and there was just always one God and that was it," Apsell says. "I think people are going to really be stunned by that."
  
  Another shocker: The program contradicts the biblical view that the Israelites came from somewhere else into the land of Canaan. "The film shows that they were Canaanites," Apsell says.
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  Galileo

  Can these statements be proven?

  Which statements? These are well known facts in archaeology. I came across them in a college course I was listening to on tape about the history of Egypt. I then verified it in multiple archaeology books and various resources on the internet. This was many years ago, but a quick google seach should turn up the same info.
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  Galileo

  I take that back about a "quick" google search, as I just did one and, as I should have known, I was bombarded by Christian Apologist sites. It may take some sifting to find a reputable site on such a potentially heated topic.
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  Robdar

  Doesn't much matter if the Exodus was real or not. However it happened, the jews have been a major force in shaping society as we know it.
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  ICBehindtheCurtain

  Thanks VM44 for re-formatting that, I wasn't able to do it at the time. I learned of some of these things a while back while doing research on the Bible stories, it really brought the whole thing tumbling down, that and when I read the passages in the bible where you can clearly see it is describing Yaweh as a Volcano god, yeah interesting indeed! IC
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  yourmomma

  Im going to watch it and research their claims. Hopefully its more honest than Zeitgiest. There are plenty of problems and questions about the Bible, there is no need to be dishonest about it.