11-06-2015, 02:49 PM
(11-06-2015, 02:22 PM)Benton Wrote: I haven't read all of your and bfine's back and forth, but one thing here. The Semitic tribes date back to at least 3000 BC, and are believed to be older for some of them. The Memphis pyramids are believed to have started construction around 2600 BC. The groups that are or would become "jews, hebrews, isrealites" could have built the pyramids as they were around.
Well, there were Habiru tribes at the time, but they were a very general, widespread group, not to be confused with the biblical Hebrews; in fact most modern scholars do not link the Habiru to the Hebrews at all.
Levantine mercenaries who shared no ethnicity or religion and predate the kingdom of Judah are not Jews, nor Israelites, nor even Hebrews yet. And even if one wanted to presume (and it is a big presumption) that those are the same peoples who eventually became the Hebrew Jews and therefore they "count", we are talking about an absolutely minute group of them becoming indentured servants in Egypt; nowhere near the million-plus required for anything like the classical Exodus account to be true.
