The first historical mention of Israel is from the years around 1200 BCE. There is no Egyptian record of the Ebiru (Hebrew?) or Israelites captive in Egypt at any time. Had they been in Egypt en masse the Egyptians would most certainly have known about it and recorded it. The reverse is actually true; the Egyptians being situated next door so to speak and infinitely more powerful than Israel at any given time were in Canaan, the de facto rulers of the territory Israel occupied. Although absolutely central to the Jewish story justifying their claim to land in Palestine, captivity and exodus in Egypt is just another myth like much of the OT.
Yesterday's WT slip up
by neat blue dog 34 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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JW GoneBad
It's sad to note that even though over 3,000,000 left Egypt...only 2 (Joshua & Caleb) of the original three million Israelites reach the Promised Land 40 years later. The vast majority left Egypt only to die in the desert...just as they feared would happen!
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Crazyguy
Yes half banana and I believe the Merneptah Stella was miss translated, the Moibite stone only says house of Omri so does one found in Assyria and the other one is says something altogether different. There was no nation of Israel before 1948. Just Jews and Canaanites.
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JW GoneBad
...begs the question:
Of the millions of faithful Jehovah's Witnesses to survive the Great Tribulation and Armageddon...how many will actually reach the Greater Promised Land? :-) :-) :-)
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Half banana
The Watchtower as always gets everything wrong. Since there were no Israelites in 1513 BCE we are off to a bad start but if we were to to go forward to the early Iron Age around 1100 BCE, I seem to remember the figure of around 40,000 for the highland population of Cannnan. So much for Biblical accuracy. Most of the archaeology of early Israel shows an impoverished and backward people with little in the way of material development.
The Bible is full of gross exaggerations--it was the normal style of political bluster which the Israelites resorted to in an attempt to inflate their importance.
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stuckinarut2
So is the issue the date, or the number of people?
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Crazyguy
It one wants to be technically correct then they the Jews were in the desert for 40 years so missed out on Thutmose I but as they came into the promise land they would have ran smack dab in to Thutmose III and he was even more of military conquerer then Thutmose I.
Thutmose III not only campaigned through the promise land and into Syria but he did it several times. How he managed to go through that area not once coming into contact by the Jews is something of a miracle. I mean according to Egyptian records they governed over the area known as Israel all the way up through most of what’s called Lebanon and parts of Syria. Yet at the same time the Jews were running all over that area killing and raping and killing some more and know one in Egypt knew about it. It’s as if the whole story and the people and thier exploits were made up.
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steve2
Is it not AMAZING beyond belief that three million people LEFT NO TRACE in the desert
Not at all amazing Nathan because those three million people were invisibly present so of course no trace has been found.
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FedUpJW
I asked a few how they could reasonably explain 3,000,000 in the camp of Israel in light of this:
(Deuteronomy 23:12, 13) . . .And a private place should be at your service outside the camp, and you must go out there. 13 And a peg should be at your service along with your implements, and it must occur that when you squat outside, you must also dig a hole with it and turn and cover your excrement. . .
How would THAT work? Imagine having to walk across chicago or some other similar sized city far enough to get out of the city just so you could take a dump?
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hoser
FedUpJW beat me to it
Hell Sometimes I have a hard time making it downstairs when I have to take a crap.