h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is what wikipedia has to say on the matter

"Since the 1970s, efforts to reconstruct a patriarchal age for Israel's past have come to an end as most historians of ancient Israel have abandoned the conclusions of earlier scholarship, as there is nothing specific in the Genesis stories that can be definitively linked to known history in or around Canaan in the early second millennium BCE. There is no solid evidence for any date during that period, as none of the kings mentioned are known, neither the anonymous Pharaoh who enlists Joseph into his services. Some scholars argue that historical inaccuracies exist, such as: the reference to Abimelech "King of the Philistines", when the Phlistines had not settled in Palestine until the later end of the millennium. Abraham coming from "Ur of the Chaldeans", when the Babylonians were not known as Chaldeans until a much later time. Laban identified as an Aramean, when Arameans did not become a known political entity before the 12th century BCE."

It certainly seems muddled. I think Genesis originates somewhere in Sumeria. Moses and Exodus seem to have no antecendent as story - so was it entirely made up like the Aeneid and the founding of Rome. Yet so many people down the ages have taken Mosed and Exodus seriously - could they all be deluded - or is there some basis of fact. I think some say it was all made up during the time of the Babylonian exile - which it itself seems to be based on fact.

Haven't been around for a while so I missed this.

The problem is essentially chronological. It is an accepted part of Egyptian history that the 13th dynasty/Middle Kingdom of Egypt ended in some form of major disaster, being followed immediately by the invasion of the Hyksos kings of the Second Intermediate period. This is dated to around 1700 BC, or maybe a little earlier. Before this the city of Avaris (later pi-Ramesses, the city named in Exodus as that of the oppression) on the eastern edge of the Delta was occupied by a Semitic people, who subsequently disappeared from the conventional history timeline. This is not controversial, and matches the main requirements for an Exodus event (disaster in Egypt, Semitic people leaving the country), although most of the details of the biblical story (probably embellished as it was written down much later) can't be corroborated. The problem is that the biblical date is some 250 years later, around 1450BC. So if this was the Exodus, one (or even both) of the chronologies must be wrong.

Pre-Joseph biblical history seems pretty certain to be at least mostly mythological. The later history of the kings from Omri (early 9th century) down to the Babylonian exile accords pretty well with the Assyrian annals and other sources, and certainly has a historical basis, despite some errors and probable inventions of details.

The article this conversation is appended to is, of course, incomplete. There are however some significant non-biblical arguments for thinking that it is the Egyptian chronology that is at fault.

Noggin