The Exodus Decoded

[Minimalist]

Simcha Jacobovici's departure from reality.

All Aboard!

[Guest]

i will post later this evening as i did take notes so i could refer to specific points made.

this statement:

Simcha Jacobovici's departure from reality

is close to the reality and once i saw James Cameron on screen i knew i was in for trouble or a long 2 hours. i was not wrong in that assessment though i did start laughing at the greek connection.

that was so out there that hancock ducked as it flew by.

there were some good points made but i would like to hear a general overview from beagle, leona , you and others who saw it before getting down to specifics.

my gut feeling was, his research was sloppy, incomplete and manipulated as the hyksos were not even close to the israelites in culture, religion, technology (among others) plus their sojourn in egypt was 300 years shorter than the hebrew people.

obviously 2 hours is too short to put together good format but there were too many holes and too many conclusions that left one wondering how they got to that point.

his biblical research also was something that was not done properly as details were left out or just ignored. i could imagine minimalist jumping up and down for joy when ever Dever came on the screen but my impression of him was, as it always has been, that he is a closed minded man not wiling to listen to anyone elses thinking.

hopefully we can avoid statements such as, "there were no israelites' etc since we are discussing a documentary that has Israel as it main theme. so we must agree to, even hypothetically, accept their existence for sake of argument and a good discussion.

i have more to say but i will now wait for the others to post.

[Minimalist]

There were no Israelites (you are free to hope but hope rarely pans out) but there were Canaanites called the Hyksos by the Egyptians and they were there........but that's about as far as it gets.

[Beagle]

Before you all get started, I saw Hawass on TV the other day. He was telling some fella that the "Jews" were not part of building the pyramids, they lived in Egypt later, after they were built.

[Minimalist]

There were enormous Jewish communities in Alexandria. They were merchants....not slaves.

[Guest]

i thought this was about the documentary? the jews in alexandria came long after the exodus and not germane to the issue.

I saw Hawass on TV the other day. He was telling some fella that the "Jews" were not part of building the pyramids, they lived in Egypt later, after they were built

did he present any proof? knowing about him, i would say----i doubt it

[Minimalist]

Strictly speaking, Hawass is correct. There were Jewish communities in Egypt later (much later) in their history. A temple has been found on Elephantine Island near Aswan in the Nile. Estimates are that the temple was abandoned around 410 BC...which would have been 80 years before Alexandria was even founded. But it has nothing to do with Jacobovici's opus.

[Minimalist]

Allright, I'll take the first shot.

Early on, Jacobovici describes something called the Ahmose Stele which, as I remember his words, he claimed "mirrored" the biblical account of the Exodus.

On this web site is a translation of the stele. It describes a flood. Would that FEMA had been as effective as Ahmose's people in relieving the suffering of the people of New Orleans.

http://www.therafoundation.org/articles ... gnofahmose

An English version of Vandersleyen's translation, beginning with the description of the storm, is offered here for the convenient of Aegean specialists. This version is not intended to substitute for Vandersleyen's two publications, which provide the essential information: the physical description of the stele and an authoritative philological discussion of the text and its interpretation. Many of the specific elements of the Egyptian text are unique or rare, and Aegean specialists who wish to cite it must consult Vandersleyen's extensive critical notes.

(7) ... the gods expressed
(8 ) their discontent ... The gods (made?) the sky come with a tempest of (rain?); it caused darkness in the Western region; the sky was
(9) unleashed, without ... ... more than the roar of the crowd; ... was powerful... on the mountains more than the turbulence of the
(10) cataract which is at Elephantine. Each house, ... each shelter (or each covered place) that they reached...
(11) ... were floating in the water like the barks of papyrus (on the outside?) of the royal residence for ... day(s),
(12) with no one able to light the torch anywhere. Then His Majesty said 'How these (events) surpass the power of the great god and the wills of the divinities!' And His Majesty descended
(13) in his boat, his council following him. The (people were?) at the east and the west, silent, for they had no more clothes (?) on them
(14) after the power of the god was manifested. Then His Majesty arrived in Thebes ... this statue; it received what it had desired.
(15) His Majesty set about to strengthen the two lands, to cause the water to evacuate without (the aid of) his (men?), to provide them with silver,
(16) with gold, with copper, with oil, with clothing, with all the products they desired; after which His Majesty rested in the palace - life, health, strength.
(17) It was then that His Majesty was informed that the funerary concessions had been invaded (by the water), that the sepulchral chambers had been damaged, that the structures of funerary enclosures had been undermined, that the pyramids had collapsed?
(18 ) all that existed had been annihilated. His Majesty then ordered the repair of the chapels which had fallen in ruins in all the country, restoration of the
(19) monuments of the gods, the re-erection of their precincts, the replacement of the sacred objects in the room of appearances, the re-closing of the secret place, the re-introduction
(20) into their naoi of the statues which were lying on the ground, the re-erection of the fire altars, the replacement of the offering tables back on their feet, to assure them the provision of offerings,
(21) the augmentation of the revenues of the personnel, the restoration of the country to its former state. They carried out everything, as the king had ordered it

If this was Simcha's idea of 'mirroring' I knew we were in for a long evening. No locusts...no boils....no death of the first born....no hail....no blood in the water, etc.

[Guest]

Early on, Jacobovici describes something called the Ahmose Stele which, as I remember his words, he claimed "mirrored" the biblical account of the Exodus.

this is a point where i can agree. i noticed jacobovici didn't display the examples, like the ahmost stele, when he took liberties with the evidence.

he did explain the logical order of the plagues and using thera made sense BUT any volcano could have done the same thing. it doesn't have to be thera, though thera can't be ruled out completely, either.

humphreys makes a great case about this and he makes more sense than jacobovici.

i am still trying to figure out how they came to a date of 1500, (i know the said the hyksos but they didn't really explain the time period too well) but the hyksos just don't line up well with being the Israelites, as i mentioned earlier.

i had many problems with this show and this was one of them. now doing this from memory and not my notes, they may have mentioned the biblical record but they did not explain how Jacob's descendents rose so quickly to being the hyksos (since they equated the two, not me).

that sudden equaliation left too many gaps and too many questions for me.

[Minimalist]

That's easy.

Ahmose was pharoah around 1500. Having already decided that he was the pharoah involved, Jacobovici has no choice but to hang on to that date....despite modern geological findings that Thera blew around 1625 BC.

[Minimalist]

he did explain the logical order of the plagues

Yes....to a point, and that has been done before except for the 10th plague which had me howling when he went into that one. But more on that later.

His reliance on a tsunami from Santorini/Thera is absurd. We know from the Indian Ocean tsunami that it would have covered the distance from the volcano to the Egyptian coast in about an hour. The bible tells the story that it was only AFTER the ten plagues that pharoah 'let' the Israelites leave. But even if each plague took only 1 day to develop the tsunami would have been long over by the time Moses got there. He ignores that little problem.

Also, the bible claims that god told Moses to avoid the northern route because that was the land of the Philistines. Except in 1500 BC the Philistines were not there and did not arrive for another 350 years. He ignores that little problem, too.

[Guest]

that has been done before except for the 10th plague which had me howling when he went into that one.

that one got me too. though i undserstand about such things, how would it be so consistantly selective?

But even if each plague took only 1 day to develop the tsunami would have been long over by the time Moses got there

i am going tohave to agree with you on this one for now, i don't see how the tsunami would have taken the scenic route as it would have left thera almost immediately. so that just doesn't jive.

Except in 1500 BC the Philistines were not there and did not arrive for another 350 years. He ignores that little problem, too.

you may need to give me a reference on this one as i would need some corroboration of that date.

[Minimalist]

The Egyptians originally coined the name "Peoples of the Sea" for the foreign contingents that the Libyans brought in to support their attack on Egypt in c. 1220 BC during the reign of Pharaoh Merneptah. In the records of that war, five Sea Peoples are named: the Shardana, Teresh, Lukka, Shekelesh and Ekwesh, and are collectively referred to as "northerners coming from all lands".

In Egyptian records of the second wave of Sea Peoples attacks in c. 1186 BC, during the reign of Pharaoh Rameses III, the Shardana, Teresh, and Shekelesh are still considered to be a menace, but new names also appear: the Denyen, Tjeker, Weshesh and Peleset. An inscription mentions that they "made a conspiracy in their islands", but these may have only been temporary bases, not their actual homelands.

http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/hitt ... people.htm

[Frank Harrist]

The guy didn't go into a lot of detail. He left out a lot and took a lot of things for granted. Basically the show was a farce. His times didn't jibe with anything. He just lined up his big time wheel to convenient dates and had to tweek a couple dates to even do that. I have never heard of a river releasing gas like the lakes did. As someone mentioned, the tsunami had to have taken weeks to get to shore for his timeline to work. It was like a child trying to explain something. It was total bunk.

[Minimalist]

I loved the part where William Dever says "you cannot adjust Egyptian chronology by more than 10 years, up or down" and Simcha blandly states...."but maybe we have to!" Duh.