Talk:The Exodus/Archive 18

This is an archive of past discussions about The Exodus. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 15

Archive 16

Archive 17

Do we need to mention that Moses is a mythical figure?

Do we need to have the tacked on thing about Moses being mythical in the historicity section? It does not strike me as entirely relevant for this article (or at least it needs to be given more context than it currently has). I'll note that it was copied over from Moses, probably by Fajskasafsa but maybe by one of the anti-Exodus IPs.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:45, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

If there ever was a "real" Moses, he is lost to history. That could be mentioned, but I wouldn't lose much space with it. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:29, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

The article is fairly clear that the Exodus is a myth, that would reasonably make the named people in it mythical by default. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:34, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Not necessarily - it is quite possible that a myth is constructed around a historical figure - albeit a much-distorted story. It would be better to at least mention that, if there ever was a "real" Moses, he is lost to history. Wdford (talk) 22:28, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

15:23
but what about Moses himself surely 15:27 there must be some evidence for this 15:29 most famous Old Testament hero perhaps 15:32 the most famous of all Old Testament 15:34 figures even if there's no evidence of 15:37 the exodus they must surely be some 15:39 record of a leader as important as him 15:43 the name Moses is a name which is very 15:47 popular from early periods right down 15:51 into late periods so it's a fairly 15:54 common Egyptian name that's that's all 15:57 that we can say there is no text in 16:00 which we can identify this Moses or that 16:04 Moses as the Moses the question of the 16:08 historicity of Moses is the same as the 16:11 question of the historicity of Abraham 16:12 that is to say maybe there was a figure 16:16 maybe there was a leader I am NOT here 16:20 to 16:22 undermined historicity of Moses I think 16:25 that it is possible but I would say it's 16:27
beyond recovery

John Van Seters and Israel Finkelstein from Bible Unearthed Discoveries of Old versions of the bible) on YouTube. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:55, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

I think those last two comments basically agree with each other. I'll try to think of a better way of mentioning that no one has been able to identify Moses as a historical figure.--Ermenrich (talk) 02:55, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Expand section on Exodus narrative?

Does anyone else feel that this section could use some expansion? At the moment it doesn't even hit the "Clif's Notes" version:

It begins with the Israelites in slavery. Their prophet Moses leads them out of Egypt and through the wilderness to Mount Sinai, where Yahweh reveals himself to his people and establishes the Mosaic covenant: they are to keep his torah (i.e. law, instruction), and in return he will give them the land of Canaan.

It leaves out probably the most memorable parts of the narrative: Moses's struggle with Pharaoh, the demonstration of Yahweh's superiority over the Gods of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea. It also fails to explain why the Bible says the Israelites were in Egypt, etc. If I came to this page without knowing these things, I would have a hard time figuring them out. I would also suggest renaming the section "Biblical Narrative" rather than just "Summary".--Ermenrich (talk) 20:52, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

I agree, although the I expect part of the reason those details were left out is to avoid overlap with Book of Exodus. However, I think the synopsis there could use some expansion, too. Neither article is anywhere near as long or detailed as it could reasonably be, given the enormous impact that the story has had over the millennia. A. Parrot (talk) 23:55, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

I think we should have an expanded section called "Biblical narrative", and perhaps include a section on the later Egyptian versions by Manetho and I-forget-his-name (Moses as leper) with some introduction to where they're from etc. Given that no one thinks any of them happened as described, I would say that they are of equal value to the biblical narrative at least. Alternatively they could go in their own section.--Ermenrich (talk) 17:46, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

I'd keep Manetho and Apion separate from the main summary, perhaps as a subsection of a much-expanded "cultural significance" section. Judging by the sources used at Osarseph, it's not 100% clear that Manetho did link the Hyksos to the Jews or whether that was a later interpolation, and even if he did, the name of Moses may have been grafted onto Manetho's original version. Moreover, I have a 2007 translation and commentary on Against Apion that argues, in one of the appendices, that the Egyptian "exodus" story was a collection of xenophobic Egyptian tropes about foreigners that was applied specifically to Jews at a later time; Hecataeus of Abdera, as reported by Diodorus Siculus (book 40, ch. 3), relayed a version of this story as encompassing a wide variety of foreigners who were expelled from Egypt, a variety that included ancestors of the Greeks as well as of the Jews. The upshot is that the Egyptian tradition is not independent evidence of the Exodus story, just something that got conflated with the Exodus story in or not long before early Ptolemaic times. A. Parrot (talk) 18:59, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm sure it's dependent in some way on the Exodus tradition, right. Cultural significance seems like a good place for it. I think Assmann has a lot on it and also general Egyptian-Judaean hostility (which isn't something I had thought much about before, but makes perfect sense).--Ermenrich (talk) 19:25, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Article Bias

I understand that there is supposedly a "scholarly consensus" that the Exodus is a myth and has no historical basis. That being said, there are many scholars who would argue otherwise, and have published countless articles and books that make a case for its historicity. I think we should at least acknowledge that in the article summary. All that's present on the article are arguments that its a myth, and that there is no scholarly debate on the subject. I don't think it's fair to phrase things that way, and there are plenty of sources I could refer to that defend the historicity of the Exodus. Not the supernatural aspects of the story, mind you, but the history surrounding the story. I would like to add some counterarguments to the article. Would anyone object to that? Please note that I'm relatively new to editing, so I'm still trying to figure out how the community operates. Jgriffy98 (talk) 22:41, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Another problem I see with the article is the rather poor quality of the sources used. The claim that there's a "scholarly consensus" that the Exodus is fake comes from a questionable source to say the least. I looked up the book cited in the article for that claim, but the author of the source itself does not back up that claim with any empirical evidence. I have raised this issue before, but the response I got was that "any claim made by a scholar is true, because Wikipedia says they're true". In other words, as long as citations come from a scholarly source, Wikipedia says that every claim made by that scholar is truthful, and should be accepted at face value. If that's the case, then there are countless scholars who would argue that the Exodus actually happened. If I were to put that in the Wiki article, however, it would be taken down immediately. There seems to be a sort of anti-religious/anti-theistic narrative that this article is trying to push. Jgriffy98 (talk) 22:50, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Does anyone else have thoughts on this? Jgriffy98 (talk) 22:56, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

I would suggest actually reading what the article says (it emphatically does not say that no one believes the Exodus story is based on a historical event of some sort) and reading WP:RS. You can't just add your own observations/arguments to an article and if an RS says there's a scholarly consensus we report it as such.--Ermenrich (talk)

@Jgriffy98: It's not that "any claim that a scholar makes is true", but that positions must be represented on Wikipedia based on how much standing they have in the scholarly community. A significant minority may argue a viewpoint that the majority does not share, in which case both perspectives should be covered. If the consensus is overwhelming then the minority position is considered fringe and should either be excluded from mention entirely or (more rarely) described within the article and marked off as a fringe position rejected by most scholars. On Wikipedia this principle is known as "due weight"; see that page for more information.

There are many people who have argued for the historicity of the Exodus, but most of them are not scholars trained in the historical method, steeped in the evidence and arguments that have been made on this topic over the past several decades, and subjected to review by their peers. Whether you should add counterarguments depends on which sources you want to draw upon and how qualified they are. As far as I know, there are only two qualified scholars who argue that the Exodus as described in the Bible is plausible: James Hoffmeier and Kenneth Kitchen. But most scholars do not believe it is even plausible, and even Hoffmeier and Kitchen can't say that there's much positive evidence in its favor. I'm not sure which citation you're referring to when you call it "a questionable source to say the least", but from what I understand the consensus is strongly against the idea of a historical Exodus that's anything like the one described. Earlier generations of scholars did believe the story to be substantially more accurate than most do today, but careful reexamination, mainly of the archaeological evidence, made that position difficult to maintain. My understanding is based on only a few sources, but they're some of the most extensive and recent surveys of the scholarly literature (especially Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? by Lester Grabbe and Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective by Thomas Levy et al.). To argue that the sources used in this article are "low quality", you'll have to cite specific examples. Most of them are from highly qualified authors, and a few are studies within Levy's book.

That said, scholars don't regard the Exodus story as "fake" but as a cultural memory that may very faintly reflect some genuine historical event. I'm going to copy something I wrote in another recent comment, because I think this is a common problem for laypeople who read articles like this one. Many ancient texts describe events that happened centuries before they were written, which incorporate memories of genuine events along with legends. For instance, there really was some kind of attack on Troy in the 12th century BC, but people don't generally go looking for a historical Achilles. Scholars use the same criteria for analyzing the Bible that they use for these other ancient texts. To do otherwise would introduce bias by privileging the Bible above other ancient texts. Personally, I think anyone defending the accuracy of the early biblical books should read the Nibelungenlied and the Arthurian sections of Historia Regum Britanniae and compare them with what actually happened in northern Europe during the fifth century AD. Like those texts, the early biblical books represent a centuries-later understanding of a period of disorder and societal breakdown: the fall of the West Roman Empire in one case and the Bronze Age Collapse in the other. A. Parrot (talk) 00:02, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: I appreciate the response, Ermenrich. You make some very good points. Thanks for clarifying a few of the misconceptions I had regarding Wikipedia guidelines. There are a few things you said that I have slight disagreements with, and I will follow up on them in due time. I definitely agree that there isn't a scholarly consensus that the Exodus actually happened. My point was that I don't think a scholarly consensus has yet been established at all. There hasn't really been any survey of scholarly opinion regarding the Exodus. That's why I think we should refrain from claiming that any such consensus actually exists yet. Jgriffy98 (talk) 00:20, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

@Jgriffy98: How formal a "survey" are we talking about? Numerous sources refer to previous work on the subject, state what "many" or "most" scholars believe, and cite the most pertinent examples by name. The statement in the article lead that "The consensus of modern scholars is that the Bible does not give an accurate account of the origins of Israel" is backed up by two sources that do exactly that (Meyers 2005 and Moore & Kelle 2011). But scholars don't conduct regular polling of their own disciplines to establish what the consensus is for the benefit of Wikipedia. A. Parrot (talk) 00:29, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: First of all, I'd like to apologize. The last comment I posted was actually directed towards you and what you said. I got you confused with Ermenrich. Jgriffy98 (talk) 00:31, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: "But scholars don't conduct regular polling of their own disciplines to establish what the consensus is for the benefit of Wikipedia." True, they don't do it for the benefit of Wikipedia. I don't think any scholar cited in the article wrote about the Exodus with Wikipedia in mind. The point is that scholarly communities often do conduct polls to establish a consensus, depending on the specific field and subject matter of the question. I have read through the sources you have mentioned, and they do not provide any empirical evidence for a consensus. They simply claim that one exists. I do not think there is any consensus that the Exodus really occurred or did not occur. A consensus has not been properly established on the topic, and I think that's something a lot of people struggle with. At least, I think Wikipedia's guidelines are not geared towards that reality, the reality being that there can often be a lack of consensus among scholars. Jgriffy98 (talk) 00:40, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: My concern is that many editors I have talked to regarding this matter have told me that, "The scholars we cited do not need to provide evidence for their claim of consensus. The fact that they are scholars is evidence enough. Since this guy claims a consensus exists, we're going to state his claim as fact in The Exodus article." Jgriffy98 (talk) 00:49, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

@Jgriffy98: Perhaps some disciplines conduct polling of that kind, but I very much doubt that they all do. If you find such a poll on this subject it would certainly be worth looking at, but the guidelines don't assume that such polls will be available. In most cases they're not necessary. People who are capable of analyzing a huge volume of detailed evidence—which is true of just about everybody who qualifies as an RS—are generally capable of assessing the state of their own scholarly disciplines. If a source like Moore and Kelle says "The majority of current scholars believe the historicity of the Egyptian sojourn, exodus, and wilderness wandering that the Bible remembers cannot be demonstrated by historical methods" (p. 91), that assessment is considered reliable unless another source of equal or greater qualifications contradicts it. If Moore and Kelle, Meyers, and Grabbe all say that, and Meyers further says "The vigorous attempts to show historicity for the exodus narrative at best [emphasis mine] can show plausibility, as even those who have made such efforts concede," and she cites a book by Hoffmeier specifically for that sentence, and Hoffmeier himself concedes exactly that in that book, that's pretty authoritative. And I can find more sources if I really need to. A. Parrot (talk) 00:58, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

"that the Exodus is a myth and has no historical basis" The two statements are not equivalent. Myths are typically sacred narratives. There are plenty of scholars who speculate that the Exodus narrative is based on poorly-remembered events from the Second Intermediate Period of Egypt and the New Kingdom of Egypt. Dimadick (talk) 06:19, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Unfortunately, no such poll has ever been conducted. At least, not to my knowledge. If one did exist, it probably would be the best primary source to determine what most scholars think of the Exodus. Jgriffy98 (talk) 08:47, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: "The guidelines don't assume that such polls will be available." Forget about polls for one second. The claim that "most scholars believe the Exodus has no historical basis" is not backed by any empirical evidence, only the claim of an individual scholar. We're getting ready to go in a big circle here, so just follow my logic on this one. Imagine there is a scholar who is very religious, and he or she publishes an article claiming that "all scientists believe in the existence of God." Wouldn't that be a cause for skepticism, to say the least? If one biased academic publishes an article with made up claims of scholarly consensus, would it be logical to simply take his or her word at face-value? Jgriffy98 (talk) 08:49, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

There is the WP:PAG WP:RS/AC, so we do things around here. How a top professor knows what the consensus is: Video on YouTube. And, yes, we are biased for Ivy Plus. If you want to know what they teach there about the Exodus, see https://vimeo.com/showcase/5520294 Tgeorgescu (talk) 09:05, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

@Tgeorgescu: I watched the video you sent me, and it has absolutely no bearing on the discussion I'm having with editor A. Parrot. I'm willing to have a polite discussion with him regarding this matter, but not you. You have been rude as hell to me in the past, and I do not want your input. If you want to post something here, I can't stop you, but just know that you're wasting your time. I'm not going to listen to a single thing you say. I swear to God, you're the one editor on this website that I can't stand. For anyone else reading this, I don't usually talk to other editors this way. Tgeorgescu is rude and harrasses other editors, and I'm not putting up with him anymore. Jgriffy98 (talk) 09:17, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

@Tgeorgescu: I wasn't asking if Wikipedia was biased for Ivy Plus. I'm biased for Ivy Plus too. I'm biased for science, logic, and reason. Apparently, you are as well. Good for you! Now, please don't shove it in my face. Being biased for Ivy Plus doesn't make you special, and it doesn't make you sound smart when you tell other people that. Jgriffy98 (talk) 09:32, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

While I agree that Tgeorgescu's repetitive polemics are far from helpful, may I remind you that Wikipedia:Civility is part of Wikipedia's policy? If you feel that Tgeorgescu is harassing you, perhaps you should try reportng this to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. Dimadick (talk) 09:47, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

@Dimadick: Apologies for my language. I have dealt with Tgeorgescu in the past and it was rather irritating. I can have a short temper at times, and should not resort to ad hominem or vulgarity. Thank you for the suggestion. If Tgeorgescu continues this sort of behavior, I will report him, but it's not worth my time right now. Jgriffy98 (talk) 10:08, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

@Jgriffy98: I strongly suggest striking that language about Tgeorgescu. Such comments can quickly lead to blocking.--Ermenrich (talk)

@Dimadick: When confronted with cases such as Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Barok777, my view is that there is a group of editors unwilling to accept our WP:RULES, namely that one should not make a mockery of the historical method in historical articles ("just the historical facts" kind of articles). So this is the cause of my polemics: recurring similar edits from "newbies" (although I'm skeptical that all of them are truly newbies). I mean: such group of troublemakers are flatly unaware that the historical method itself rejects their POV as not done (no supernatural in history, that's the mandatory rule since the Enlightenment). Every reasonable human being would have got that point from the talk page of that article. Other than that, it is fairly simple to get a compromise solution from me, while the other party behaves reasonably. Between us: edits like [1] seem like shameless POV-pushing, while bashing (or misunderstanding) basic WP:RULES. E.g. I don't really care what "we" thinks. I am not obligated to follow the rules that "we" decides upon. You are citing misinformation. You are citing an unreliable source. Wikipedia's policy that these qualify as reliable sources is factually incorrect. Please stop citing misinformation and pushing an ideological narrative. Again, Wikipedia's standard for what constitutes a "reliable source" is incorrect, and it only serves to mislead people who visit the website. It is not right for you to justify the spread of misinformation with an incorrect notion of what constitutes truth, just because of a bogus policy guideline that is only in place to be used as a pathetic justification. I find it very ironic that you are citing sources from the academic community (which you claim to be "reliable"), but are using a completely different definition for "truth" and "reliability" than the academic community uses. Such edits promise nothing good, if you ask me. Otherwise, Peter Der Manuelian told as indicated at vimeo.com that there is zero evidence for the Exodus as told in the Bible. Shaye J. D. Cohen agreed with him. Tgeorgescu (talk) 17:24, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

I'll respond to Jgriffy's latest reply to me. If a religious scholar claimed "all scientists believe in God", the claim wouldn't hold up because it's contradicted by a mountain of evidence and reliable sources to the contrary. But, generally speaking, there's a presumption that a reliable source is accurate unless other reliable sources contradict it. Here, we have multiple reliable sources asserting the same thing. Moreover, they do cite some empirical evidence, namely other scholarly works that do indeed express skepticism about the Exodus story. For example, a single sentence from Grabbe, p. 93: "Whatever the reality [of the Exodus story], it is clothed in a thick layer of mythical interpretation (cf. Assmann 2015; Berner 2015; Finkelstein 2015; Hendel 2015; Maeir 2015; Propp 2015; Römer 2015; Russell 2015; Schmid 2015)." That's quite a list, and it doesn't even mention the studies by Dever, Faust, Na'aman, and Redford found within the same volume, let alone numerous other works. But standard Wikipedian practice doesn't even require that level of support. If a scholar in a relevant field says "Most scholars in my field believe X", then that scholar is treated as reliable unless other scholars in the same field contradict that assertion. If you can cite scholars who do so, produce them and we can evaluate whether they meet the criteria for reliability—but even if they do, it would take an awful lot of them to outweigh the multitude of sources to the contrary. Tgeorgescu's approach may be high-handed, but at some point you do have to accept Wikipedian standard practice if you want to work here. You can't arbitrarily raise the standard of proof. A. Parrot (talk) 17:44, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: I appreciate your response. I probably should have brushed up on Wikipedia guidelines before I jumped into this discussion. You're clearly a well-informed editor, and you definitely have a much better understanding of the policy guidelines than I do. That being said, I have not violated any of the rules. Please don't come at me with, "At some point you do have to accept Wikipedian standard practice if you want to work here. You can't arbitrarily raise the standard of proof." I wasn't trying to arbitrarily raise the standard of proof. In my opinion, there is no "higher standard" of proof. Facts are facts. Also, I have never once stated that I do not accept Wikipedian standard practice. I actually want to follow that practice, which is why I'm turning to editors like you to ask questions. I should read up more on the guidelines, but I have not violated them or said that I was planning on violating them in this discussion. I feel like we had a really good exchange yesterday. I'm just trying to better educate myself as an editor. I may disagree with some of Wikipedia's guidelines, but I have no intention of breaking the rules. Jgriffy98 (talk) 19:02, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Moving on. You said that scholars are "treated as reliable unless other scholars in the same field contradict that assertion." I could provide you with reliable sources that state an opposing point of view and have a much different opinion on the scholarly consensus of the historicity of the Exodus. Perhaps we should redirect our conversation and begin discussing these sources? How should we proceed? Jgriffy98 (talk) 19:14, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

@Jgriffy98: By all means, list those sources and quote what they say. You may not need to be told this, but just in case: it's better to have sources as recent as possible. The field has changed a lot in the past few decades. A. Parrot (talk) 19:33, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

question

I do not study this area regularly, but I have a question to the people here that do. Are there any RS studies that argue from the position of the complete dissonance between the Hebrew Bible and Egyptian archeology? I mean, the exodus could never have happened because the Hebrews were really never in Egypt at all. On the one hand, the Hebrew Bible does not mention the pyramids that are there clearly visible in Egypt for any one to see. When the Hebrew Bible describes the supposed slavery in Egypt it refers to mud and straw buildings and to cities, not to stone structures such as the pyramids that are now there visible. There is no Hebrew term in the Hebrew Bible to describe a pyramid at all. In modern Hebrew, the pyramids are called just that, pyramids (from the Greek geometrical term). And, on the other hand, the pyramids themselves never mention any Hebrew slaves that may have built them. Pyramid hyerogliphical studies cannot even identify any paleographic evidence that really explains or refers to how the structures were built at all. This is what I refer to as the complete and utter dissonance between Hebrew Bible myth, on the one hand, and modern archeological studies, on the other. I am assuming there are no studies cited in Wikipedia yet that start from such a purely skeptical point of view? Thanks, warshy ^(¥¥) 18:34, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@Warshy: The pyramids aren't relevant here because large-scale pyramids, the kind that were state-managed constructions, were all built during the Old and Middle Kingdom, too early for any possible date for the Exodus, which is pretty much limited to the New Kingdom. The biblical text refers to mud-brick, but virtually all buildings in Egypt other than temples and tombs were built of mud-brick and not stone, so any major city-building project would have included mud-brick construction. The biblical text describes a setting in the Nile Delta, and there were Semitic-speaking peoples, akin to those in Canaan, living in the Nile Delta in the right timeframe. So the disjunction between Egyptian archaeology and the biblical account isn't as large as you're suggesting. That said, the points I just listed are just about the only ones that the defenders and skeptics all agree on. A. Parrot (talk) 19:05, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you A. Parrot, for your learned response. What "setting in the Nile Delta" would the biblical text be referring to according to this hypothesis? warshy ^(¥¥) 19:53, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@Warshy: Broadly speaking, the Land of Goshen; there's dispute over where that name comes from, but nobody seems to argue that it's not the Nile Delta, no doubt partly because that's the part of Egypt proper that's closest to the Sinai. Exodus 1:11 refers specifically to the cities of Pithom and Rameses. The location of Pithom is, as that article indicates, disputed. Rameses is often identified as Pi-Ramesses, the capital built by Ramesses II. In that case this name would seem to be a genuine memory of the late New Kingdom, because the harbor at Pi-Ramesses silted up at the end of that period, and the local rulers who succeeded Ramesses XI abandoned it and moved their capital to Tanis. However, Donald B. Redford argues that place-names incorporating the name "Rameses" existed elsewhere for centuries after that, so the city-name could have been incorporated into the story at a much later time. Others have disputed this claim, based on detailed linguistic arguments that are too complicated to stick in my head. A. Parrot (talk) 20:20, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you again A. Parrot. You have satisfied my curiosity on the issue for the time being with your clear erudition on the area. warshy ^(¥¥) 20:32, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

The "overwhelming" "consensus" among scholars phrase in the Historicity section

"Overwhelming" is a term that does fall into the usage of subjective point of view.

Biblical scholars are also scholars.

It is true that the section should refer to the view that scholars in the field of History have about the topic, and that they mostly reject the idea of something like an "Exodus" having taken place.

Something is a Myth if it is studied by Anthropologists and declared as such.

Something is Historical for History scholars only if there is written or oral record. Or it can be Historical for Archeologists if there is record to support the idea of the event.

However, the reference provided to the work of Collins, for the alleged consensus among "scholars", needs at least a secondary source (and even a tertiary source) to attest the supposed consensus statement validity.

Also you need to know that scholars in other fields of knowledge have spoken favorably towards the idea of an Israelite Exodus having taken place from Egypt in the middle Kingdom (Egypt). Outside the biblical scholars you have Freud, an Scholar in the Field of Psychology, who wrote at length at the possibility of the Pharaoh Amenhotep IV being the pharaoh of Exodus or even the religious/social leader Moses himself; All of that from the Psychological point of view.

So the first line in the section of Historicity should be tweaked a little like this:

The consensus among scholars in the fields of History, Archeology, and Anthropology is that the Exodus story is best understood as a myth and does not accurately describe historical events.^[1]^{[citation needed]}^{[citation needed]}

OR much better:

The consensus among scholars in the field of History is that the Exodus is not a historical event. ^[1]^{[citation needed]} 181.51.32.52 (talk) 18:06, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

You do not make the WP:RULES. Part of the WP:RULES is WP:RS/AC, which the cited source passes with flying colors. End of the story, proposed edit thus rejected. Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:35, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

References

^ ^a ^b Collins 2005, p. 46.

I had not noticed you had another talk section about that same topic. I didn't check before posting on this Israel/Egypt topic.

Just as a means to point some minor changes, you look into it to see if you like an flamboyant style of writing for an encyclopedia or not:

the terminology "Overwhelming" does not comply with Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view (NPOV).

If most scholars or scientists in a field hold a common view, then that type of wording is the one that has to be accepted. Besides, as per WP:RS/AC: "A statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view." It is clear you have to specify the scope of the scholarship. History scholars cannot say the Dinosaurs are historical animals, as per the lack of written or oral traditions, but archaeologists can say the animals existed and thus it is considered pre-history. Academic Consensus about the Historicity of the Dinosaurs shouldn't be referenced in WP by History Scholars sources but by Archaeological scholars sources.

thus:

The terminology "overwhelming" should be removed as per WP:NPOV

The consensus for the Exodus to be considered a myth has to be properly referenced from Anthropological sources, which Collins is not. as per WP:RS/AC (User:ctmv) 181.51.32.52 (talk) 20:18, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

(I thought this topic was Egypt/Israel but seems WP has placed it within Christianity category as well. Then my last suggestion for you.)

Banned editor

According to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Fajkfnjsak, a certain editor is banned and thus may no longer suggest edits. Yup, there is some amount of WP:DUCK involved. Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:44, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

I don't think this is Fajkfnjsak. His big thing was removing the idea that anyone thought the Exodus was based on any sort of historical event and adding cherry-picked information saying the Exodus was completely fake to various other articles.

If the IP is a sock, it's more likely of Jgriffy, but he hasn't been blocked, meaning he doesn't really have much motive. Given the number of people who are really invested in the Exodus having occurred, it could just as easily be a random IP.

This article gets attacked by both the fundamentalists and the people who are really invested in the Exodus having no basis for ideological reasons, unfortunately.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:38, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

WP:NPOV and "subjective" at [2]. "Subjective opinion" and NPOV at [3]. Tgeorgescu (talk) 20:42, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

That doesn't really strike me as conclusive, and why why Fajknjsak now argue the opposite of what he's always been arguing?--Ermenrich (talk) 23:28, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

The IP address mentioned User:Ctmv as if trying to sign. Maybe Ctmv lost the account password. In any case, it doesn't seem like Jgriffy's writing style. A. Parrot (talk) 01:19, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Style aside, I already said that Fajknjsak might be a strawman sock, see [4]. He had a weird criticism of removing "subjective" scholarly opinions in the name of objectivity and NPOV. As if all people wouldn't be subjective. Or, as Bart Ehrman said, all people are biased in some way or another. I think he conflates objectivity with "the view from nowhere" instead of "intersubjectively valid". Going on wild tangents about objectivity at [5], [6] and [7]. See Doug Weller's criticism at [8]. Tgeorgescu (talk) 03:33, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

The IP editor does not have any similarities to Fajkfnjsak's editing style that I see, and I don't think the diffs you have provided are helpful to establishing any sort of case. However, if you disagree, then you should start a new thread on the SPI page you provided, rather than continue any discussion of the topic here. – Wallyfromdilbert (talk) 03:41, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Scholarly Consensus on the Historicity of the Exodus

@A. Parrot: Sorry it took me so long. Here is the evidence I was referring to earlier.

I am disputing the Wiki article's claim that "The consensus of modern scholars is that the Bible does not give an accurate account of the origins of Israel". This is simply not true. No such consensus exists. We need to make that clear in the Wiki article.

The source I am using is an article on the official website of the Biblical Archeology Foundation. The article itself is a free abstract from Manfred Bietak’s article “On the Historicity of the Exodus: What Egyptology Today Can Contribute to Assessing the Biblical Account of the Sojourn in Egypt” in Thomas E. Levy, Thomas Schneider and William H.C. Propp, eds., Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture and Geoscience (Cham: Springer, 2015). In Bietak’s article, the scholarly debate about the archaeological remains and the onomastic data of Wadi Tumilat is more elaborately treated.

The name of the BAS article is titled, "The Exodus: Fact or Fiction? Evidence of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt".

Here is the link to the article: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/exodus/exodus-fact-or-fiction/

The following are excerpts from the article by the Biblical Archeology Society:

"Is the Biblical Exodus fact or fiction? This is a loaded question. Although Biblical scholars and archaeologists argue about various aspects of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, many of them agree that the Exodus occurred in some form or another."

"Although there is much debate, most people settle into two camps: They argue for either a 15th-century B.C.E. or 13th-century B.C.E. date for Israel’s Exodus from Egypt." Jgriffy98 (talk) 22:49, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

This view is already represented in the article - see the second paragraph in historicity.--Ermenrich (talk) 00:01, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Jgriffy98: The "Exodus: Fact or Fiction" page links to the Bietak extract, which isn't publicly accessible, and it is not simply based on the extract. It is written anonymously by the magazine's staff, and their assessment of the field is not as reliable as that of a named and qualified scholar (particularly because, according to the WP article for Biblical Archaeology Review, the magazine has been criticized for some level of hostility toward minimalist viewpoints). "Although there is much debate, most people settle into two camps: They argue for either a 15th-century B.C.E. or 13th-century B.C.E. date for Israel's Exodus from Egypt" is misleading, assuming "most people" is intended to imply "most scholars". I don't know of anybody with standing in the field who argues for a 15th-century date. The 13th century is more plausible if one qualifies what one means by "the Exodus". I'll clarify what I mean by that in a moment.

I have Bietak's full article. Bietak argues that the place-names in the Egyptian portion of the Exodus story match the circumstances in the 13th century and later. Just about every one of his arguments is contested by somebody else, but even if he is right, that doesn't mean the Exodus happened as the biblical text describes it. There is nothing comparable in Egyptian records to the level of destruction inflicted on Egypt in the biblical text. No archaeological evidence from the Sinai region points to a mass migration in this time period. Moreover, the conquest narrative that follows the Exodus story is wildly incompatible with the political situation of the 13th century, when Canaan was ruled by several sophisticated city-states that were vassals of a very strong, very wealthy Egypt. The conquest narrative doesn't even seem to fit in the Bronze Age Collapse that followed, because there is little archaeological evidence for violent conquest in the cities that later formed the core of the Israelite nation.

The most accepted hypothesis for how Israel formed is the "mixed multitude hypothesis": several groups of Semitic peoples, from varying backgrounds, coalesced into a nation. (The name "Israel" is attested earlier, on the Merenptah Stele, but that presumably refers to one of the groups that later formed the kingdom, which did not exist in Merenptah's time.) Many scholars believe that some group of Semitic people living in the Nile Delta could have migrated out of it and later become one of the groups in that mixed multitude. A small migrant group like this would be impossible to prove or disprove. At some point much later, the dim memory of this migration—a cultural memory—was formed into the founding myth of the nation. That is why this article calls the Exodus a "founding myth", even if it is true in some manner, and why I pointed out the comparable examples of the Iliad, the Nibelungenlied, and the Historia Regum Britanniae. They are all based, to varying degrees, on cultural memories of this sort, from similar situations. If Bietak is right that the place-names in the Exodus story reflect the 13th century, it is still possible that those place-names survived in the Israelites' cultural memory.

Not all scholars think the Exodus story originated this way. Redford argues the story originated with dim memories of the expusion of the Hyksos from Egypt, back in the 16th century, and Na'aman argues that the memory of Egyptian rule over Canaan was enough to inspire it, which eliminates any migration by Israel's ancestors out of Egypt. Bietak rejects Redford hypothesis but doesn't entirely dispute Na'aman's: "According to Na'aman, the oppression of Egyptian rule in Canaan found its way into the Hebrews' collective memory in an altered form, with Canaan and Egypt interchanged, and it is in this 'reversed' route that it made it into the Biblical text. Na'aman also expressed the opinion that the narrative was remodeled according to the realities of the late eighth and seventh centuries in Canaan, integrating the experience with the Assyrian oppression and deportations. As explained in the following, the experience of severe domination in Canaan may have been integrated and fused into a single collective memory together with a real history of ordeals in Egypt itself" (p. 18). That is, Bietak is arguing that the biblical narrative is more accurate than many scholars believe it to be, but he is not disputing that it is a collective or cultural memory. The scholarly consensus stands. A. Parrot (talk) 00:13, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Why does it say "This BAR article is a free abstract from Manfred Bietak’s article" at the bottom of the webpage? Did it not occur to you that Bietak may be a staff member of BAR? If the article, as you claimed, was written by BAR staff, it would mean that Bietak is a member of BAR, because the article clearly states that, "THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM BIETAK'S ARTICLE". Jgriffy98 (talk) 02:43, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I found your response to be very annoying and biased. Given the clear anti-religious attitudes of every single Wiki editor I've talked to so far, I'm really not surprised that you're trying to derail this conversation and are now resorting to strawman arguments. Allow me to start over and address some of the things you just said.

“I have Bietak's full article.” I’m not taking your word at face-value. Please verify that you have access to this source. Any claim that you make about the content of Bietak’s article must also be verified. If the source is inaccessible to the general public, then it might be a good idea to share the article with your fellow editors.

“Just about every one of his arguments is contested by somebody else.” That’s not a good counterargument. You have neglected to mention any specific scholars who have directly contested Bietak’s claims. Every single argument in the history of the world has been contested by one person or another. That doesn’t it’s wrong or unbelievable.

You’re clearly very confused at the moment and have missed my points entirely. Please stay on track. My argument is that there is no clear scholarly consensus about the Exodus. I’m not arguing that the Biblical story of the Exodus actually occurred. You’re either trying to strawman me, or you simply have no clue what this entire discussion was about in the first place. Do you recall why we are having a dialogue with each other? Yes or no?

“I have Bietak's full article.” I’m not taking your word at face-value. Please verify that you have access to this source. Any claim that you make about the content of Bietak’s article must also be verified. This is a pretty good example of not assuming good faith. I've read Bielek's article too, it's not impossible to get. I think it might even be linked in this article's bibliography. Frankly you're not going to get any traction here making accusations when you discover your argument doesn't hold. The views of scholars who believe the Exodus has some historical basis or other are already represented (and labeled as the majority position) in the article, so it's not really clear what you are arguing for except for us to say that Exodus of the Israelites happened as in the Bible (although you claim not to be). Instead of throwing around accusations of bias, you need to make concrete suggestions beyond "the scholarly consensus quoted in the article is wrong", because it clearly isn't, nor does Bielek say it is.--Ermenrich (talk) 02:48, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Unicorns are real and 2+2=5. Oh, what's that? You don't believe me? I'm sorry. Please see our policy guidelines on assuming good faith. Do you see how fucking stupid that policy is? You have got to be kidding me. I don't know you, pal. I'm not going to believe a single word you say without EVIDENCE. Jgriffy98 (talk) 02:55, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I saw a dragon yesterday. You can't disprove a negative. Please remember the we must assuming good faith here on Wikipedia. Yeah, if that's how Wikipedia operates, then fuck Wikipedia. This is getting ridiculous. Jgriffy98 (talk) 02:58, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@Jgriffy98: I have the whole book. Obtaining books on ancient religions, by scanning them or by spending my spare money on them, has kind of become my schtick. If I put the whole article here it would be a copyright violation, not to mention a huge block of text to stick into a talk page just to prove a point, but I can paste selected passages if you so desire.

The BAR page is written confusingly, but it says "The article 'Exodus Evidence: An Egyptologist Looks at Biblical History' from the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review wrestles with both of these questions—'Did the Exodus happen?' and 'When did the Exodus happen?' In the article, evidence is presented that generally supports a 13th-century B.C.E. Exodus during the Ramesside Period, when Egypt's 19th Dynasty ruled." The footnote that says "This BAR article is a free abstract from Manfred Bietak's article 'On the Historicity of the Exodus'" immediately follos the words "from the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review". The title "Exodus Evidence" links to this page, which is subscriber-only. The accessible page is not the text of Bietak's article, so I have to assume that Bietak's work is behind the paywall.

The accessible page does repeat the conclusions in Bietak's article, but the claim that most people favor a 15th- or 13th-century date is not drawn from his study, and we do not know who its author is. Moreover, it goes against the many reliable sources that are already linked in this article: Anderson & Gooder 2017, Barnash 2015b, Collins 2005, Killebrew 2005, Meyers 2005, Moore & Kelle 2011, and so on. I don't know if you can access the Google Books previews for those, as Google Books access varies regionally, but I just checked them, and they all paint the same general picture: evidence for the biblical Exodus is hard to find, and most scholars today believe it is collective memory/cultural memory/myth with some vague and hard to discern historical basis. A. Parrot (talk) 02:59, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Please try to follow along: I...DO...NOT...AUTOMATICALLY...BELIEVE...YOU. You may have the article. You may not have the article. There's no point in continuing this discussion any further. You are way too biased to have an honest discussion. Jgriffy98 (talk) 03:02, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Bro, I really did see a dragon yesterday. Why don't you believe me? This is an outrage! You're not assuming in good faith. The fact that you keep saying that 2+2=4 is also an outrage. Please see our Wikipedia guidelines on 2+2=5. Jgriffy98 (talk) 03:04, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@Jgriffy98: Ye gods. I went on a tangent describing the historical situation to illustrate why scholars disbelieve the Exodus story, because you don't seem to have any familiarity with the field, and to show how Bietak fits into it. You repeatedly refuse to address the sources that are already in the article, which you may be able to access yourself—have you tried?—and when I try to show you why the one source you've provided isn't as reliable as those sources are, you call me a liar, even though I have already quoted from the article that you think I'm lying about. A. Parrot (talk) 03:14, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Please see our Wikipedia guidelines on how familiarity with fields is unnecessary. You might also want to check out our guidelines on how making shit up is preferable to facts. Lastly, I would highly recommend you scan through our guidelines on how to pull things out of your ass and claim them to be true. We assume in good faith here, sir. Jgriffy98 (talk) 03:36, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Did I just call you "sir"? I'm so sorry. I should have followed Wikipedia's guidelines on not assuming a person's gender. Jgriffy98 (talk) 03:38, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: "Ye Gods"? Really? Ok. You clearly did not read Wikipedia's guidelines on Monotheism. Jgriffy98 (talk) 03:43, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@Jgriffy98: Have you checked whether you can access the books linked in the works cited? They're handily linked, and I just now pointed out to you which ones establish that the scholarly consensus is indeed what I have said it is. If you barge in on the article about an extremely complex topic, accuse its editors of bias, can't be bothered to do the research on the topic, and respond with juvenile snark when people try to inform you about it, don't be surprised when editors like Tgeorgescu are "rude as hell". (He wasn't nearly as rude as you're being right now.) A. Parrot (talk) 03:52, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: I did check that. I actually found the super-duper special version of that article. Just so you know, it has way more information in it than the version you have. In this super version of the document, there's a direct quote from Albert Einstein that says 2+2=5. We assume in good faith here, sir. Jgriffy98 (talk) 03:56, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: In case I haven't made it abundantly clear at this point, I'm through with this exchange. You asked for evidence. I provided you evidence. You responded with dishonesty and strawman arguments. Also, you have no idea what went down between me and Tgeorgescu, so don't act like you know anything. He's a condescending asshole who bullies new editors. I don't care what you think about him. As for the "complexity of the article topic", there is none. The entire article was written by angsty atheist editors who love to jerk themselves off, and I'm fucking sick of dealing with it. I'm not religious, but I can recognize ignorant bias when I see it. Jgriffy98 (talk) 04:02, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: It's clear Jgriffy just wants to argue. We shouldn't oblige him.--Ermenrich (talk)

There's really no point in continuing this discussion. And with Jgriffy98's behavior, I'd say an indef. block is justified. — JudeccaXIII (talk) 04:08, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@JudeccaXIII: That's what I just said, smart guy. I said I'm done with this discussion. Please, for the love of God, block me. It would be an honor. You guys really do a disservice to the general public by allowing the spread of misinformation and propaganda on this website. I gave Wikipedia a shot, and I now realize how fucked it is. Please block me. Have fun with your circle jerk. Jgriffy98 (talk) 04:12, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@Jgriffy98: You gave one piece of evidence that you honestly believed was from Bietak. It's an understandable mistake because of the confusing way the page was written, but it's not his work, and the crucial passage you cited was not derived from his work. When I pointed that out, you threw a tantrum and called me a liar. The article topic is complex because it's based on reams and reams of research into place-names, personal names, textual analysis, the nature of cultural memory, and archaeological evidence from Egypt, Israel, and the Sinai. The biblical text cannot be assumed to be accurate because many other texts from similar situations are wildly inaccurate, even if they are built around small cores of truth. And the great majority of scholars have concluded, based on all those reams of research, that the book of Exodus is much like those texts are. But it has a privileged position in our culture because of its religious significance, so people furiously reject that conclusion, even though nobody reacts the same way when presented with the truth about the Nibelungenlied. A. Parrot (talk) 04:14, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Bro, I found that article in the span of 30 seconds. If I wanted to, I could give you a hundred different articles by Biblical archeologists and historians who argue in favor of the Biblical Exodus. It doesn't matter if I sent you a thousand sources, you would have rejected them instantly without a second thought, regardless of weather the information was reliable or not. Jgriffy98 (talk) 04:17, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: All it takes is one Google search to realize that there are thousands of scholars who don't agree with the bullshit "consensus" that the Biblical Exodus does not have a historical basis. Yet you people are desperately pushing this narrative that "most scholars say the Bible is full of lies and nothing it says is true." Jgriffy98 (talk) 04:20, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: This is a joke, right? Please tell me this is all a big joke. I GAVE YOU AN ARTICLE FROM THE FUCKING BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. And you come back saying how it's a bad source, and that it's not better than the ones that push your atheistic narrative. It's disgusting. Given the very short amount of time that transpired between me posting the article and you responding to it, I know for a fact that you never even bothered reading half of it. Sorry it didn't fit your political narrative. Jgriffy98 (talk) 04:31, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Fuck it. I'm going to say one more thing. Just for the record, I tried to respond to your comments politely and maturely. I was doing that until you responded back with "You're not believing everything I say. You're not acting in good faith". THAT'S WHAT PISSED ME OFF. It wasn't the fact the we disagree over this issue. It wasn't anything else you said. It was that you made a baseless claim, and then threw Wikipedia guidelines in my face for why I have to believe everything you say, even if you don't provide evidence for it. Why the fuck is that a policy guideline? Who was the fucking idiot who decided, "Hey, if other editors don't believe me, I should be able to accuse them of not following Wikipedia guidelines." And now you people are trying to portray ME as the bad guy here. Threatening to have me permanently blocked. I SAY GOOD RIDDANCE. Nothing about Wikipedia is honest or has the slightest tinge of academic integrity. If this was a fucking college exam, and you told your professor half the excuses you told me tonight, you would be kicked out of the university immediately for sounding like a dumbass. "Hey, professor. I'm sorry you didn't like my essay. I know I didn't back up any of my claims with primary sources, but you're not behaving in good faith. I deserve an A+." Jgriffy98 (talk) 04:47, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Funnily enough, I wasn't even the one who brought up the "assume good faith" guideline. I've mentioned specific sources repeatedly, and a comprehensive list shouldn't be necessary when a bunch of them are already there in the article and linked for you to read. A. Parrot (talk) 04:52, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Uh, newsflash: You are the one who brought that up. Here's the direct quote, "This is a pretty good example of not assuming good faith." You said that to me, because I was unwilling to assume that you had a source that could not be publicly accessed. What is wrong with you? Jgriffy98 (talk) 04:57, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

You even had a link directing me to the page of that specific policy guideline. Did you forget about our previous conversation, or what happened? Jgriffy98 (talk) 04:59, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

That was Ermenrich's comment, not mine. I did express irritation at the implication that I am a liar, but I also offered to quote selected passages from the article to demonstrate that I have it (and had already quoted one such passage in a prior comment). A. Parrot (talk) 05:01, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

You know what? I really couldn't care less. When there's a total of five different editors posting comments directed towards me at the same time, it's not that hard to see why I would get you guys mixed up. Try juggling a conversation with 5 fucking people and not accidently misquoting someone. Literally the definition of an honest mistake. Jgriffy98 (talk) 05:06, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

You can go ahead and quote passages from the article. How am I supposed to verify that those passages are actually from the article, and not something you wrote to fit a narrative? Oh, that's right. It all comes down to good faith. Silly me. Jgriffy98 (talk) 05:10, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I was NOT implying for one second that you were a liar. I was trying to imply to you that I do not accept claims without evidence. You keep saying that "I gave you direct quotes from the article", but I have no way of knowing if those quotes actually came from there. Maybe they did. I'M NOT CALLING YOU A LIAR. Jgriffy98 (talk) 05:12, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Well, I can't paste the whole thing here because it's a copyright violation. If we could all paste our sources into Wikipedia, verification would be a lot easier. Of course, you could look at those Google Books links. A. Parrot (talk) 05:15, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Look, I know I've already gone way too far in terms of ranting. I do feel like my concerns are justified though. A person would have to be very simple-minded to not think that the Exodus article is biased. It's one of the most openly anti-religious articles I've come across on Wikipedia. Many of the editors I've talked to either don't seem to care, or are openly antitheistic and damn proud of it. I'm just going to walk away from this discussion now, even though I've already said that three times now. I'm probably going to get banned anyway, but I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. Again, I'm not taking back what I said about Wikipedia, but insulting you was not the right way to vent my frustration. Jgriffy98 (talk) 05:21, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Now, Tgeorgescu is going to post something in response like, "We ARE biased for Ivy League. We are biased for science and blablabla. Derp." Jgriffy98 (talk) 05:24, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

You haven't hurt my feelings, aside from the aforementioned irritation, but given your latest remark, I think now would be a good time for you to disengage. To other editors, I actually wonder if the archconservatives like Hoffmeier and Kitchen are worthy of mention, while being bracketed as a minority view, within the article. Are there more qualified scholars like them? Are they numerous enough to warrant mention here? A. Parrot (talk) 05:42, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

It depends on how many you would consider to be numerous enough. During our exchange, you quoted quite a few reliable sources, but it was still only a handful of scholars. That seems to be the problem here. I could easily give you another source from someone across the aisle. Going back to the first one I gave you; My understanding of that article is the same as yours. It was written by the staff of the BAR. The only reason I attributed it to Biatek was because the article itself said that it was written by Biatek. Yes, it was very confusing for me at first. Let's set aside Biatek for a moment. We have the Biblical Archeological Society on record saying, in a 2019 article, that most scholars are divided on the historicity of the Exodus and fall into separate camps. I don't understand why that's any different from an article that claims the exact opposite (like the one cited in the Wiki article). In answer to your question, yes. There are numerous scholarly sources that believe the Biblical narrative of the Exodus holds water (not the supernatural aspects, mind you). I'm afraid now's not the time for me to start searching for more articles to give you. I'm tired and burnt out from this discussion. I will try to provide you with some more sources we can discuss (assuming I'm not banned). Hopefully, I can be a little more civil next time. Jgriffy98 (talk) 06:28, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Forget about Oxford University Press, Harvard University Press and Princeton University Press, which are among the most reputable academic publishers. Do you think that Augsburg Fortress Publishers, Eerdmans, Westminster John Knox, Society of Biblical Literature, Paulist Press, Eisenbrauns, etc., are anti-theistic? Because they are all WP:CITEd in our article, that's why. And you accuse the article of being openly antitheistic. If you ask me it is not antitheistic in the same sense that MythBusters is not antitheistic. Tgeorgescu (talk) 10:32, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

You're just name-dropping different organizations to prove a point. That's not actually the official stance of Oxford, Harvard, or Princeton University Press. Jgriffy98 (talk) 20:04, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

@Tgeorgescu: Forget about the Biblical Archeology Society. Jgriffy98 (talk) 16:39, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

@Jgriffy98:, I'm a completely uninvolved editor on the subject here via the discussion at WP:AN. Regardless of the point you're trying to make or "side" you're on, the manner in which you're doing it is completely inappropriate. The incessant swearing, hostility, and incivility is not conducive to the goals of Wikipedia. Regardless of the actions of others, maintain your civility or you will be blocked. Buffs (talk) 16:02, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

@Jgriffy98:, Ditto. Your poor attitude, "head in the sand" and "fingers in the ears / I CAN'T HEAR YOU" communcation style and vulgur mouth just need to stop. Ckruschke (talk) 19:21, 5 September 2019 (UTC)Ckruschke

@Ckruschke: It sounds like you really don't know what you're talking about. Saying that "my hand is in the sand" is just as pointless and meaningless as me telling you that your head is stuck in the sand. See how empty words accomplish nothing? Also, you're a little late to the party, my dude. This exchange happened days ago. I've moved passed it. I'm not really sure why you felt the need to say anything. You're like the 50th editor to come at me in this discussion. I know you probably feel self-righteous and brave for "standing up" to me, but, in reality, you just saw other editors arguing with me and decided to jump on the bandwagon. Don't you people have something better to do with your lives? It seems like the only thing you people care about is my attitude and cursing. It's not my fault you're a sensitive woose. Again, this conversation ended days ago. Stop trying to start shit up again. Oh, I'm sorry. Did I say another naughty word. Shame on me. Jgriffy98 (talk) 19:47, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Quote from up above: "You haven't hurt my feelings, aside from the aforementioned irritation, but given your latest remark, I think now would be a good time for you to disengage. To other editors, I actually wonder if the archconservatives like Hoffmeier and Kitchen are worthy of mention, while being bracketed as a minority view, within the article. Are there more qualified scholars like them? Are they numerous enough to warrant mention here?" (By A. Parrott)

Answer (a personal one of course): No, they're not worth mentioning at all, because they represent about the same position in biblical studies as flat earthers represent in geography. The mainstream ignores them and doesn't bother to answer their books and articles - there is no debate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.45.217.141 (talk) 11:12, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

That's not strictly true. There are certainly fewer of them than of minimalists though. I dont think Bielek counts as a "maximalist" though, technically. I wouldn't object to a short paragraph, in proportion to their support and including why they aren't generally accepted; at the moment they're just mentioned in as "the most conservative scholars". Also, on the 15th c date: Redmount does mention that date as a possibility.--Ermenrich (talk)

Yup, except he declared to a documentary that Exodus in the 15th century BCE would have meant that the Israelites were fleeing from Egypt to Egypt (Canaan was occupied by Egypt). Oops, I have conflated her with Donald B. Redford. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:45, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I've found why some advocate a date in the 15th century: this paper by Hoffmeier, which rejects such a date, points out that those who advocate it are basing it on 1 Kings 6:1. This is obviously not a plausible date (not only does the political situation in Canaan in the 15th century make no sense for an Exodus, but who would have kept records during those 480 years, and in what script?), and even Hoffmeier recognizes it as symbolic, but that's where the date comes from. Bryant Wood, whose arguments Hoffmeier is specifically addressing, is... well, for those not familiar with him, look at the WP article about him. On p. 231 of Hoffmeier's paper, he lists several conservative scholars who support a 13th century date (some of whom are now dead). Many of those names are the same as the participants in this book, which seems to be the most forceful recent effort to defend the Exodus' historicity: [9]. No, I don't have the book this time. A. Parrot (talk) 15:47, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, Redmount says that the 15th century is based on a literal reading of the Bible on page 78, and she points out all the problems with that. She also says lists a 16th century dating for those who believe that the Exodus=the Hyksos, but argues for the thirteenth century as the most likely one.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:04, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Correction needed in lead

The first sentence of the third para of the lead currently reads:

The consensus of modern scholars is that the Bible does not give an accurate account of the origins of Israel, which formed as an entity in the central highlands of Canaan by the 13th century BCE from the indigenous Canaanite culture.[5][6]

The sources are Carol Meyers' "Exodus", pp.6-7, and Moore and Kelle's "Biblical History...", p.81. My first problem is that in neither of these can I find a reference to the consensus of scholars, or words to that effect - I can't even see that Moore/Kelle is relevant to this sentence. My second is with the wording to the effect that Israel formed in the highlands "by the 13th century BCE" - again, neither source seems to say this, and to the contrary, Meyers on page 6 implies to my mind that they formed in the 12th/11th centuries, which is substantially later. (She does mention the 13th century on p.7, but says this was a time of turmoil which preceded the emergence of the highland settlements that became Israel.) I leave it to others to make any edits, as the article is locked to unregistered users and I have no intention of registering. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.45.217.141 (talk) 00:39, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

The stuff about Canaan was probably added by Fasjkjnak, so it makes sense if its inaccurate. The sources were originally just for the Exodus being inaccurate history, I bet. We could just delete that part, but I'm sure there are better sources for the canaanite origins of Israel already in the article somewhere.--Ermenrich (talk)

In any case, I've found a passage that states the consensus in the field more explicitly than anything I remember seeing in this argument so far. From Grabbe 2017, p. 36: "The impression one has now is that the debate has settled down. Although they do not seem to admit it, the minimalists have triumphed in many ways. That is, most scholars reject the historicity of the 'patriarchal period', see the settlement as mostly made up of indigenous inhabitants of Canaan and are cautious about the early monarchy. The exodus is rejected or assumed to be based on an event much different from the biblical account. On the other hand, there is not the widespread rejection of the biblical text as a historical source that one finds among the main minimalists. There are few, if any, maximalists (defined as those who accept the biblical text unless it can be absolutely disproved) in mainstream scholarship, only on the more fundamentalist fringes." Might be worth adding this source to the article. A. Parrot (talk) 06:45, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

I've added a citation to this passage to this sentence, and I've adjusted the date to "the late second millennium BCE". The reason somebody specified the 13th century is probably the Merenptah Stele, which shows that the name "Israel" existed then, but the formation of Israel as we think of it seems to have been after the collapse and would thus have taken place during the 12th, 11th or 10th centuries—the earliest contemporary records of it date to the ninth century. For now, "late second millennium BCE" seems safely vague. A. Parrot (talk) 04:24, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Re-organization of historicity section

Based on A. Parrot's recent edit on the basis of Grabbe, I wonder if it might be best to edit the historicity section as follows:

As an opening paragraph, using Grabbe, state: "There are two main positions on the historicity of the Exodus in modern scholarship. The majority position (citations to Redmount, Sparks, Faust) is that the biblical Exodus narrative is based on a real event, but one that was quite different from what is described in the Bible. The other main position, often associated with the school of Biblical minimalism, (cite to Graham Davies) is that the Exodus has no historical basis. Both positions are in agreement that the biblical Exodus narrative is best understood as a founding myth, not an accurate depiction of the history of the Israelites.(cite Collins, Sparks) A third position, that the biblical narrative is essentially correct ("Biblical maximalism"), is today held by "few, if any [...] in mainstream scholarship, only on the more fundamentalists fringes." (cite to Grabbe 2017, p. 36)."
Second paragraph (minus myth sentences): why the majority believes that the biblical narrative is implausible.
Third paragraph: why a majority believes that some sort of event lies behind it nevertheless.
fourth paragraph: outline the minimalist position, possibly include some criticism as currently from Graham Davies.

We could potentially add a fifth paragraph briefly dealing with those maximalists who belong to mainstream scholarship, emphasizing their near-fringe status.--Ermenrich (talk) 12:55, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

I support the outline, but when you're talking about "historical basis" you have to specify what you mean. We have at least three hypotheses: a migration out of Egypt toward the end of the New Kingdom by a very small group who later became part of Israel (Faust and others); a much older folk memory of the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt at the beginning of the New Kingdom (Redford); and a folk memory of Egyptian rule in Canaan during the New Kingdom (Na'aman, with Bietak supporting a combination of this and the first hypothesis). Technically, all three of those count as "a historical basis". There may well be other scholars who argue the story was made completely out of whole cloth, but I don't know who they are. A. Parrot (talk) 17:34, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

What about Niels P. Lemche, Thomas L. Thompson, and Phillip R. Davies? And also Israel Finkelstein, of course. These are all in my basic minimalist reading list, whenever I can get to it. Am I missing anyone? Thanks, warshy ^(¥¥) 18:04, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

@A. Parrot:, I think it's best to leave the further explanation of the positions to the individual paragraphs/sections. How about adding something like

Scholars are divided on what exactly this historical basis might have been, however

after the statement about it? We have enough material that we could even transform each paragraph into a subsection of the historicity section if we added a bit more.--Ermenrich (talk) 19:20, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, "Scholars are divided about what this historical basis may have been" works fine. A. Parrot (talk) 19:51, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

I've added the text as discussed here (slightly different wording in some cases). A. Parrot, would you be able to add a citation to Redford's Hyksos theory to the what is now the third paragraph? I don't have access to him (or an indirect citation) of him, but his theory is obviously important and should be mentioned. I think Jan Assmann is probably also worth mentioning: if I understand correctly, he thinks the exodus is a mishmash of various events, including Atenakhen. I haven't found his thesis expressed succinctly anywhere though.

Given the amount of material, we may want to think of splitting the third paragraph into multiple paragraphs.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:01, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Redford points to the memory of the Hyksos expulsion as the source for the Exodus, which is already mentioned in the third paragraph, so I just added a citation to Redford 1992 to the end of that sentence. As for Assmann, getting him to express a thesis succinctly is no small task. (His main area of expertise is ancient Egyptian religion, in which field he is a giant, so I know his style all too well.) But I don't think he actually has a thesis about what inspired the Exodus. He's interested in the impact of the story, not its origins. From his paper in Levy et al. 2015, p. 5: "The decisive property of a myth is that it is a well known and widely shared foundational story irrespective of its historical or fictional base. Golgatha is a myth, but few people doubt that a historical person by the name of Jeshua ha-Nosri has in actual fact been executed by crucifixion. The same may apply to the Exodus from Egypt of a tribe by the name of Yisrael. But this is exactly the kind of question that I would like to put in brackets. My question, again, is not what really happened but who told the story, why, when, to whom, and how?" A. Parrot (talk) 05:38, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

A. Parrot, he has a chapter here specifically on the historical background of the Exodus, some of which can be seen in the preview, but he does sort of dismiss the question in his opening pages. Then again, he lists several events that could have inspired in the table of contents. I'll see if I can get a hold of the full chapter so that it can be cited in some way. Just the preview has already included some really cool insights: Assmann suggests a connection between Yahweh and "Seth-Baal", the God of the Hyksos, for instance (p. 36). Assmann's books look like great sources for expanding other areas of this article as well, which is woefully compact.

Ideally, I think we should keep expanding this section and potentially sub-section it for historical theories and minimalists in the future.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:36, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

I see. I don't have that one, but I might get around to obtaining it sometime. Expanding the section over the long term sounds like a good idea. There's one edit I can suggest now: moving the historicity section before the one on cultural significance. I can see why historicity comes after the summary and the composition history—because we today start from the extant text and have to work backwards to figure out how it came to be—but I don't see why it goes before cultural significance. (That section also deserves a lot of expansion, but I have even fewer sources on it.) A. Parrot (talk) 16:48, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Just got Assmann's book from the library. There is just a ton that can be added from it, I'll be making additions, large and small, like I just did with a note on the magicians. Assmann connects them to Egyptian traditions of dueling magicians - not sure where that would fit in the article...--Ermenrich (talk) 21:44, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Sources on The Exodus

@A. Parrot: It's been some time, but I would like to carry on the conversation we started months ago and see if we can find some common ground. First of all, I sincerely apologize for my behavior in our previous exchange. My attitude has changed since then, and I will not converse as rudely as I did the last time. Would you still be interested in discussing sources? You made some really good points last time, and I enjoyed our conversation.

When we were discussing The Exodus, I shared an article written by the Biblical Archeology Society (BAS), which you did not accept as a reliable source of information. You wrote a pretty long explanation for why the article is not a valid source, and why it wasn't as reliable as the sources already cited in the WP article for The Exodus. I wanted to break down everything you said and discuss one claim at a time. Here is the full quote of what you said regarding the BAS article:

The "Exodus: Fact or Fiction" page links to the Bietak extract, which isn't publicly accessible, and it is not simply based on the extract. It is written anonymously by the magazine's staff, and their assessment of the field is not as reliable as that of a named and qualified scholar (particularly because, according to the WP article for Biblical Archaeology Review, the magazine has been criticized for some level of hostility toward minimalist viewpoints). "Although there is much debate, most people settle into two camps: They argue for either a 15th-century B.C.E. or 13th-century B.C.E. date for Israel's Exodus from Egypt" is misleading, assuming "most people" is intended to imply "most scholars". I don't know of anybody with standing in the field who argues for a 15th-century date. The 13th century is more plausible if one qualifies what one means by "the Exodus". I'll clarify what I mean by that in a moment.

I have Bietak's full article. Bietak argues that the place-names in the Egyptian portion of the Exodus story match the circumstances in the 13th century and later. Just about every one of his arguments is contested by somebody else, but even if he is right, that doesn't mean the Exodus happened as the biblical text describes it. There is nothing comparable in Egyptian records to the level of destruction inflicted on Egypt in the biblical text. No archaeological evidence from the Sinai region points to a mass migration in this time period. Moreover, the conquest narrative that follows the Exodus story is wildly incompatible with the political situation of the 13th century, when Canaan was ruled by several sophisticated city-states that were vassals of a very strong, very wealthy Egypt. The conquest narrative doesn't even seem to fit in the Bronze Age Collapse that followed, because there is little archaeological evidence for violent conquest in the cities that later formed the core of the Israelite nation.

The most accepted hypothesis for how Israel formed is the "mixed multitude hypothesis": several groups of Semitic peoples, from varying backgrounds, coalesced into a nation. (The name "Israel" is attested earlier, on the Merenptah Stele, but that presumably refers to one of the groups that later formed the kingdom, which did not exist in Merenptah's time.) Many scholars believe that some group of Semitic people living in the Nile Delta could have migrated out of it and later become one of the groups in that mixed multitude. A small migrant group like this would be impossible to prove or disprove. At some point much later, the dim memory of this migration—a cultural memory—was formed into the founding myth of the nation. That is why this article calls the Exodus a "founding myth", even if it is true in some manner, and why I pointed out the comparable examples of the Iliad, the Nibelungenlied, and the Historia Regum Britanniae. They are all based, to varying degrees, on cultural memories of this sort, from similar situations. If Bietak is right that the place-names in the Exodus story reflect the 13th century, it is still possible that those place-names survived in the Israelites' cultural memory.

Not all scholars think the Exodus story originated this way. Redford argues the story originated with dim memories of the expusion of the Hyksos from Egypt, back in the 16th century, and Na'aman argues that the memory of Egyptian rule over Canaan was enough to inspire it, which eliminates any migration by Israel's ancestors out of Egypt. Bietak rejects Redford hypothesis but doesn't entirely dispute Na'aman's: "According to Na'aman, the oppression of Egyptian rule in Canaan found its way into the Hebrews' collective memory in an altered form, with Canaan and Egypt interchanged, and it is in this 'reversed' route that it made it into the Biblical text. Na'aman also expressed the opinion that the narrative was remodeled according to the realities of the late eighth and seventh centuries in Canaan, integrating the experience with the Assyrian oppression and deportations. As explained in the following, the experience of severe domination in Canaan may have been integrated and fused into a single collective memory together with a real history of ordeals in Egypt itself" (p. 18). That is, Bietak is arguing that the biblical narrative is more accurate than many scholars believe it to be, but he is not disputing that it is a collective or cultural memory. The scholarly consensus stands.

I wanted to respond to some of the things you said in that quote, and will do so piece by piece.

The "Exodus: Fact or Fiction" page links to the Bietak extract, which isn't publicly accessible, and it is not simply based on the extract.

That statement is true, and the BAS article does seem to draw heavily from the work of Bietak. Let’s be clear though, the statements made in the article represent the official stance of the BAS. In other words, the BAS supports the idea that a 15th-century Exodus did in fact occur.

It is written anonymously by the magazine's staff, and their assessment of the field is not as reliable as that of a named and qualified scholar (particularly because, according to the WP article for Biblical Archaeology Review, the magazine has been criticized for some level of hostility toward minimalist viewpoints).

While I agree that the article was written by the BAS, your assessment of the organization is inaccurate. The BAS is a reliable primary source, and its staff is made up of many named and qualified scholars. Furthermore, I would argue that the opinions of a qualified organization are much more reliable than those of qualified individuals. For example, would it be reasonable to dismiss the opinions of NASA regarding climate change based on the opinions of an individual scientist? Of course not.

In regards to the reliability of the BAS, you stated that, "according to the WP article for Biblical Archaeology Review, the magazine has been criticized for some level of hostility toward minimalist viewpoints". That is not a valid reason to dismiss the organization as unreliable. In fact, there are several problems with the WP article for the BAS:

1. The article is a stub with barely any content to speak of. The “Controversies” section of the article is four sentences long and cites only one source (which is the only source used in the entire article).

2. The article doesn’t even cite the BAS as a source, which is very odd, because the article is about the BAS. There is a link to the organization’s official website, but it is not used as a citation in the article.

3. The WP article only cites one source, which is another article published by Discovery News. I looked into the so-called “controversy” that the article talks about, and I didn’t find anything that would denigrate the academic integrity of the BAS. If you would like to go into detail about the controversy in question, I would be happy to discuss it with you.

4. The WP article does not say anything about the BAS showing "hostility toward minimalist viewpoints".

"Although there is much debate, most people settle into two camps: They argue for either a 15th-century B.C.E. or 13th-century B.C.E. date for Israel's Exodus from Egypt" is misleading, assuming "most people" is intended to imply "most scholars".

I find that to be somewhat nitpicky, however, you may have a valid point. From my perspective, the term “most people” was clearly intended to mean “most scholars”, but I could be wrong. It might be a good idea to contact the BAS for clarification on this matter, which is something I’d be open to doing.

I don't know of anybody with standing in the field who argues for a 15th-century date. The 13th century is more plausible if one qualifies what one means by "the Exodus".

That seems rather anecdotal. First of all, I’ve already given you examples of scholars with standing in the field who argue for a 15th-century date, namely the scholars who work for the BAS. Bietak would also fall under that category, but you have called his reliability into question as well. There are many other scholars I could point to who support of 15th-century date for the Exodus, but I wanted to settle the issue of the BAS before we proceed any further.

I have Bietak's full article. Bietak argues that the place-names in the Egyptian portion of the Exodus story match the circumstances in the 13th century and later.

I believe you do have Bietak's full article. It would be nice if you could share that with me somehow. I would be very interested to read through it.

Just about every one of his arguments is contested by somebody else, but even if he is right, that doesn't mean the Exodus happened as the biblical text describes it.

Just because a claim is contested does not mean that it is false. Every scholar in history has had their work contested to some degree. Scholars have also contested the works of Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, but that does not mean their claims are false. Also, I am not arguing that the Exodus happened exactly as the Biblical text describes it. I'm simply arguing that there isn't a scholarly consensus on the historicity of the Exodus.

There is nothing comparable in Egyptian records to the level of destruction inflicted on Egypt in the biblical text. No archaeological evidence from the Sinai region points to a mass migration in this time period. Moreover, the conquest narrative that follows the Exodus story is wildly incompatible with the political situation of the 13th century, when Canaan was ruled by several sophisticated city-states that were vassals of a very strong, very wealthy Egypt. The conquest narrative doesn't even seem to fit in the Bronze Age Collapse that followed, because there is little archaeological evidence for violent conquest in the cities that later formed the core of the Israelite nation.

Again, I'm not arguing that the Bible gives a completely accurate historical narrative. I'm simply stating that there is not scholarly consensus on the historicity of the Exodus. I do believe that a 15th-century Exodus occurred though. Jgriffy98 (talk) 23:03, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Well, the IP seems to think that the historical method is the most pestilential doctrine ever vomited out of the jaws of hell. Sorry, we cannot turn back the clock several centuries! Hoffmeier and Kitchen don't say "the Exodus has been proven true", but "it has not been proven false". Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:19, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

True; I misspoke. There is no evidence proving the Exodus true, so "It has not been proven false" is all they can say while retaining any scholarly credibility. A. Parrot (talk) 19:54, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

GBRV: "there wasn't any archaeological evidence to confirm the existence of Bablyon, Nineveh, Asshur, or other cities mentioned in the Bible". That's right, until there was evidence, there wasn't any evidence. (And it is misleading to suggest that references to contemporary cities at or near the time of writing confirm the veracity of tales that supposedly happened in a much earlier period.) If at some point there is evidence for the Exodus, then the article will say there is evidence. It is not a violation of WP:NPOV to say there is no evidence for something for which there is no evidence. It isn't even an assertion that something didn't happen. It's just a statement indicating that there isn't a good reason for believing that it did, especially for claims that are extraordinary.--Jeffro77 (talk) 01:52, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Quoted by Tgeorgescu. To sum up the WP:RS/AC: there was some real event or probably memories of several quite different events behind the legend of the Exodus, what we can be sure is that Israelites were born from Canaanites by a process of identity formation rather than through conquest of the Holy Land by the Israelites. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:07, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

@Tgeorgescu: I'm talking about the Biblical Archeology Society and whether or not it should be considered a reliable source. If you have any thoughts on that, please share them. I'm not really sure how anything you just said is relevant. Jgriffy98 (talk) 23:26, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

In other words, the BAS supports the idea that a 15th-century Exodus did in fact occur. Restating the obvious: in that case they were fleeing from Egypt to Egypt (Canaan was occupied by Egypt, we know this since we have correspondence between Egyptian garrisons and central government). Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:27, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

When you say "Egypt to Egypt", are you referring to the country of Egypt as we geographically know it today, or the lands that were controlled by Egypt during the 15th-century BC Jgriffy98 (talk) 00:44, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

See map. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:51, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, the New Kingdom of Egypt controlled Palestine during the 15th-century BC, so technically it would be considered fleeing "from Egypt to Egypt". It appears I may have confused the 15th and 13th-century dates. The Biblical account has the Exodus occuring in the 13th-century BC. Sorry, I got that confused.

The dating from the Biblical account can't be trusted, that's why scholars have advanced a date around 1250 BCE. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:09, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

The article I cited from the BAS actually supports the idea of a 13th-century Exodus. The 13th-century narrative is the one I support, and the article from the BAS is what I presented as evidence. Jgriffy98 (talk) 01:14, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

It's complicated, see Levy, Thomas E.; Schneider, Thomas; Propp, William H.C. (28 March 2015). Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture, and Geoscience. Springer. p. 60. ISBN 978-3-319-04768-3. The Israelites simply did not conquer the Holy Land. Not in the 15th century, not in the 13th century, etc. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:23, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

@Jgriffy98: I think the fundamental problem is that it's hard not to talk in binary terms: the Exodus happened/the Exodus didn't happen. The BAR article falls into that trap. But it's like saying the Trojan War happened. Troy VIIa was burned, and the Mycenaean Greeks are a prime suspect. Does that mean the abduction of a single woman set off a ten-year siege involving kings from every corner of Greece? Obviously not. I wouldn't bet on any of the narrative details from any of the classical Greek traditions about the war being true, except features of the landscape and possibly the names of some of the participants. If it's not the Trojan War of Greek mythology, which everyone pictures when hearing the words "Trojan War", should we even call it the Trojan War?

The same applies to the Exodus, except there the story is even more familiar and more emotionally charged. Talk to a member of the lay public about "the Exodus" and they envision what the biblical text describes, with mental illustrations supplied by Cecil B. de Mille. But aside from the handful of people like Hoffmeier, the scholarly community isn't even talking about that narrative. They're talking about what event inspired that narrative and whether any of the narrative details are true. After our previous discussion had flamed out I noticed in Grabbe 2017 the most explicit statement of the scholarly consensus I have yet seen: "The impression one has now [about the general historicity of the Bible] is that the debate has settled down. Although they do not seem to admit it, the minimalists have triumphed in many ways. That is, most scholars reject the historicity of the 'patriarchal period', see the settlement as mostly made up of indigenous inhabitants of Canaan and are cautious about the early monarchy. The exodus is rejected or assumed to be based on an event much different from the biblical account. On the other hand, there is not the widespread rejection of the biblical text as a historical source that one finds among the main minimalists. There are few, if any, maximalists (defined as those who accept the biblical text unless it can be absolutely disproved) in mainstream scholarship, only on the more fundamentalist fringes."

Fortunately, I found that Bietak has posted his paper here. As you can see, it argues that some of the topographic details in the biblical narrative reflect cultural memories from a migration of Semitic peoples, ancestral to the Israelites, out of the Nile Delta 13th or 12th century BC. But it also says that migration could have occurred at the same time as the settlement of Canaan by other proto-Israelite peoples, and both the memories from the Delta and the memories of Egyptian rule in Canaan could have contributed to the formation of the biblical narrative. Other scholars, such as Grabbe and Redford, argue that the Delta place-names reflect a much later period in Egyptian history and prove nothing, but both those positions are within the scholarly mainstream. It's roughly equivalent to arguing whether there really was a sack of Troy, in the absence of any evidence as clear-cut as what we have from Hisarlik, which isn't even all that clear-cut. But even if Bietak is right—and he very well could be—would a small group of people leaving Egypt and joining the already-forming mixed multitude in Israel constitute "the Exodus"? I would say this article should avoid implying the Exodus happened, because if it does, people will be misled by the preconceptions created by the biblical narrative. A. Parrot (talk) 06:36, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

"That is, most scholars reject the historicity of the 'patriarchal period', see the settlement as mostly made up of indigenous inhabitants of Canaan and are cautious about the early monarchy." Not entirely surprising. There is no archaeological evidence for the existence of the patriarchs, other characters from the Book of Genesis, or named cities such as Sodom and Gomorrah. The archaeological searches in Judea have found sufficient evidence for a Canaanite descent of the Israelites. The historicity of the early kings of Israel and Judah is still debated, based on different interpretations of archaeological findings. The seeming minimalist victory has much to do with the maximalists having failed to support their claims with hard evidence.

I suspect that the continuing belief in the Exodus among the public at large has less to do with any specific film adaptation of the story, and more with the cultural significance of Moses as a founding figure for the Abrahamic religions. He might be a mythological character, but the public is taught more about him than several actual historical figures. Dimadick (talk) 12:17, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Equally opaque remain the mechanisms that may have created the memory of a departure from Egypt in the first place: Was it the memory of a small group later transferred to Israelite society as a whole? Was the Exodus memory a matrix for repeated emigrations from Egypt to Palestine that became conflated? Was it more generally a space of memory where critical components of Israel’s identity could be etiologically anchored? Did the memory of salvation from Egyptian oppression originally pertain not to Egypt but to the period of Egyptian dominance in LBA Palestine? What groups carried that memory and how can we explain its attachment to the Northern Kingdom? And how do those assumptions tie in with our evidence on the emergence of Israel in early Iron Age Palestine, and its later political and social history? Here again, the abundance of modern hypotheses multiplies the historical variables and potential scenarios.
— Schneider, op.cit., p. 538

Quoted by Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:38, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Dimadick: I was being a bit flippant when referring to de Mille. The story's religious significance is of course why people are so attached to it, but the 1956 film is possibly the most familiar single source for the iconic imagery that accompanies the story: thousands of Israelites fleeing Egypt between walls of water. But not only was there no miraculous parting of the sea, there were no thousands of Israelites. Mention the Exodus, and people automatically picture those thousands. Therefore, this article must be very careful to distinguish between "the Exodus" and "hypothetical event that might have inspired the Exodus". A. Parrot (talk) 00:01, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

The long notes in the Composition section

I wonder if we shouldn't bring parts of the two long notes in the composition section into the text or (and I think this is the case for most of the information in them, unfortunately) delete them. The first note in particular appears to be making an argument (rather than neutrally presenting facts) about the historicity of the Exodus rather than its date of composition. Some of the information might fit into the historicity section. The second appears unnecessary - we can just have a citation to a source saying that the line in Micah is an interpolation.--Ermenrich (talk) 00:45, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Looking at it some more, I think the whole section needs some serious re-writing. It's focused mostly on the final assembly of the Pentateuch, while almost everyone acknowledges that the Pentateuch had older sources. It mentions earlier mentions of the Exodus, but does not clearly differentiate them from the final product. As I've found more and more about sources for the Pentateuch containing portions of the Exodus, I think this information needs to be reframed.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:34, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Agree Ckruschke (talk) 15:56, 18 September 2019 (UTC)Ckruschke

I think the section should be renamed something like "Development and composition", which allows us to deal with the pre-Pentateuch biblical mentions, some of which vary from what is actually in the Pentateuch, and then the sources that formed the Pentateuch. This removes the focus on the Pentateuch (which is something for the article Torah anyway). I guess there are a few minimalists who think nothing in the bible is older than the sixth century, but they seem to be a very tiny minority.--Ermenrich (talk) 01:26, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Agree with this as well. Ckruschke (talk) 14:04, 19 September 2019 (UTC)Ckruschke

I'm trying to get hold of the physical books needed to rewrite this section. As I'm a bit busy and have to evict some other work from my sandbox still, this may take a little while.--Ermenrich (talk) 19:37, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

I've started work in my sandbox. I don't have all the sources I want yet, so anything currently there might change substantially. If you have anything to add/correct, please do so!--Ermenrich (talk) 14:49, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Unfortunately I'm a bit too busy in my life to keep working on this. I may return to it in the future. It's a really complex topic and I don't turn out to have anywhere near the knowledge base for it, so there's a chance I'll leave it as is though, even when I do have time again.--Ermenrich (talk) 17:37, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Date of the Exodus

@Tgeorgescu: You stated that, "The dating from the Biblical account can't be trusted, that's why scholars have advanced a date around 1250 BCE." The Biblical account of the Exodus has the event occurring during the 13th-century BC (1300 to 1201 BC). Forget about the Biblical Archeology Society for a moment. Let’s agree on the facts real quick, because I'm getting a little confused here. Jgriffy98 (talk) 01:29, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

See Levy, Schneider and Propp: basically there were lots of dates advanced for the Exodus and the 1250 BCE date comes from disbelieving the chronology of the Bible. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:38, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Okay. I'll give it a read. Biblical chronology has the event taking place in the 13th-century, which corresponds to the 1250 BC date. I'll read the source you gave me, but how is your view different from that of the Biblical account in terms of a 13th-century date? Jgriffy98 (talk) 01:43, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Here is an excerpt from the BAS article I discussed earlier. It says the following: So, is the Biblical Exodus fact or fiction? Scholars and people of many faiths line up on either side of the equation, and some say both. Archaeological discoveries have verified that parts of the Biblical Exodus are historically accurate, but archaeology can’t tell us everything. Although archaeology can illuminate aspects of the past and bring parts of history to life, it has its limits. Here is the link to the article: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/exodus/exodus-fact-or-fiction/ Jgriffy98 (talk) 02:11, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Jgriffy98, you say that "the Biblical account of the Exodus has the event occurring during the 13th-century BC (1300 to 1201 BC). This is not so - the bible is much more precise, and the date it gives falls outside that range. It can be approached in two ways: first, the bible dates events from the creation, and in this system the exodus takes place in AM2666. This, of course, isn't very useful to us, although it was extremely important to the people who wrote the bible, as 2666 date came two-thirds of the way through the history of the world, which lasted just 4000 years and ended around 164 BC. For an explanation for all this, see the article Biblical chronology.

A date based on creation won't, of course, correlate with a date in real history. (Hardly surprising, as there was no exodus in real history). More useful is to use the data given in 1 Kings 6: "And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord." So Solomon began building the Temple exactly 480 years after the exodus. (The biblical chronology is always exact - it's a symbolic count, not a real one, and the numbers have meanings). Solomon's reign began in 970, so his fourth year was 964, and by adding 480 years we arrive at 1444 BC for the exodus. Which, of course, is outside the dates you give. But I repeat, the biblical dates are not meant to be taken as anything other than symbolic, and the exodus is a myth - meaning not a fiction but a story told to explain the origins of the Jewish peoiple and their relationship to their God.124.171.138.122 (talk) 11:05, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

The statement "there was no exodus in real history" is totally untenable. As with all historical events, there is no way of categorically proving it did or didn't happen; all we have are very ancient and sporadic historical accounts to go on, mostly from documents copied or written down centuries later. There are countless events that happened but any records are lost, so we have no way of knowing about them. There are many events that are written down, in which case they may well have happened, but we can't be 100% sure they happened exactly as written. Check out the records of the American Civil War and you'll see how people describe the same event differently in a way that's often hard to correlate. The common line that "if it's in the Bible it didn't happen unless we find independent corroboration" is just bias. The bible is simply a collection of documents, some historical, some poetic, some theological and some a mixture, to be assessed along with any other sources. Bermicourt (talk) 19:47, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

The Exodus is a legend. It is quite likely inspired from one or more real events, but it nevertheless is a legend. It's like the historicity of King Arthur. Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:58, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Myth, event or both?

The opening sentence emphatically states that "the Exodus is the founding myth of the Israelites", citing Sparks (2010). Interestingly, when you read Sparks, he doesn't seem to use that phrase. Moreover, he provides a table of all modern scholars, one of the columns of which is their position whether they believe it was a myth or an event. Almost all of them believe it was both. So it would seem that, not only does the sentence not reflect the source it cites, but that it does not reflect the consensus of modern scholarship which is that the Exodus is both a myth and an event, something the body of the article also seems to reflect quite well. I've had a go at tweaking the opener to align it more with Sparks and the literature, but it's been reverted. So it'd be good to understand what the objection is and reach a consensus on a more balanced form of words. Bermicourt (talk) 20:24, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Sparks says: "The entire Book of Exodus can be generically understood as a 'charter myth'..." In other words, he does indeed use that phrase or its equivalent (a charter myth is a founding myth). Nor can I find any sign that "almost all" modern scholars believe the exodus was both myth and fact - where did you get that from? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.171.138.122 (talk) 21:50, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

@Bermicourt, you've confused Kenton Sparks (the "Sparks 2010" from the lead, which provides the validation for the exodus as myth) with Brad Sparks, whose contribution to the 2015 book "Israel's Exodus..." follows it in the bibliography. Brad Sparks's piece is titled "Egyptian Texts Relating to the Exodus" and includes a table on (quoting from the abstract) "some 30 Egyptian texts with Exodus 'parallels' or Exodus-like content", plus an additional 90 texts apparently identified "in the present study". As Sparks makes clear, these parallels do not imply that the exodus was a real event, but that the authors based their story (or incidents from it) on Egyptian texts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.171.138.122 (talk) 07:25, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Precisely, Kenton Sparks doesn't use the phrase "founding myth" and also points out that the word "myth" to describe Exodus is potentially confusing and goes on to say that "most scholars concede that the Exodus tradition reflects genuine history. Yet we are citing him in support of the opening sentence which baldly describes Exodus as a myth, full stop. The source doesn't support that so either the wording should change or another source found (provided of course that it reflects the consensus which, according to Sparks, it doesn't). Bermicourt (talk) 22:01, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Kenton Sparks uses the term "charter myth", which is another word for "foundation myth". The confusion arises when peoplev don't understand the scholarly use of the term myth and imagine that it means fiction instead. Our article is clear as to the genuine history reflected in the exodus story - it may, quite possibly, be a distorted version of the Hyksos episode, compounded with the experience of the Canaanite highlands under Egyptian imperial domination plus the experience of Semitic shepherds who have always crossed over from Canaan into Egypt in search of pasture. But as for actually being history, no, definitely not, and not even Hoffmeier would say it is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.171.138.122 (talk) 22:42, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

The truth is, no-one can prove one way or the other whether it was actually historical, narrative based on history or fictional. What we and Sparks are all agreed on is that "myth" is potentially confusing. I think we probably also agree that the consensus is that there is some historical event upon which it is based - certainly Sparks' table shows that almost every scholar believes there are ingredients of both event and 'myth'. So what I'm saying is that the opening statement is a little too strongly worded bearing in mind that the average reader will take 'myth' to be 'fiction'. So is there a better way of expressing it in a way that more accurately reflects the consensus to the lay reader? Bermicourt (talk) 19:37, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

We can add a note that myth does not mean false, it means unproven (according to mainstream Bible scholars). Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:48, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Tgeorgescu, we already have a note explaining the word myth. Bermicourt, you still haven't grasped that scholars agree that the story in the bible is a myth, not a historical record, and that if it has any basis in history it's very distant and very tenuous - not a single event, because the Israelites were never in Egypt (they emerged in Canaan from a Canaanite population), but more a distant and very confused "memory" of the Hyksos episode, which served as an element of the story written about 450 BCE. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.171.138.122 (talk) 21:05, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

How rude? Perhaps you haven't quite grasped my point? I am simply going from the table in one of the quoted sources (BC Sparks) in which the position of at least 35 scholars on the Exodus is listed. For 21 it is "Myth + Event", for 11 it is "Event + Myth" and for 3 it is "Event". Not one believes it is myth only according to Sparks (not according to me). Bermicourt (talk) 09:15, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

To clarify, the key to the table says: "In the Scholar's Position column, 'Event' signifies the position that at least some aspects of the Exodus represent a historical event and some may be distorted in the course of transmission of oral tradition or may be mythological, in varying degrees depending on the scholar. 'Myth + Event' means that the Exodus is deemed primarily mythological and only partially historical. 'Event + Myth' means roughly the reverse, partially historical, partially mythological". A. Parrot (talk) 14:45, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 January 2020

This edit request to The Exodus has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

The Exodus is a central theme of the second book of the old testament and the basis for the Passover Holiday celebrated by Jews throughout the world

(I am requesting this change because the opening phrase of the Exodus being a "charter myth of the Israelites) is offensive and inaccurate. The balance of the article sets forth the scolarly questions regarding the story, but the opening phrasing I believe is highly objectionable Botach1 (talk) 00:45, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

People repeatedly trying to remove things they find offensive from this page is precisely why it's semi-protected. Alephb (talk) 01:24, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Not done: Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 01:25, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I should have expressed my concern regarding the phrasing differently

First of all, the first sentence--charter myth of the Israelites seriously needs to be re-written. First of all--"Israelites" has no valid meaning in this discussion. The Exodus is a major story from the Old Testament and the basis for the Jewish Holiday of Passover. Regardless of the veracity of the story, calling it the Charter Myth of the "Israelites" is meaningless.

The entire discussion of the article is whether there is any basis in fact for the story in the Bible. Starting the article with the word--myth--denegrates and pre-judges the rest of the discussion. The first sentence should be an introduction to the discussion, not an unsupported conclusion. I am not suggesting that the body of the discussion be changed, but the first sentence I believe gives an inaccurate explanation of what THE EXODUS represents, and does not properly summarize the discussion that follows— Preceding unsigned comment added by Botach1 (talk • contribs)

"Myth" is often used to refer to stories that have cultural importance, whether they are true or not. For example, a passage in The Pentateuch (2012) by Walter J. Houston, describing Jan Assmann's perspective on myth (p. 139): "…Assmann applies the term 'myth' to foundation stories… without necessarily implying anything about the actual historicity of those that are set in historical time. The heroic defense of Masada and the suicide of its defenders in 73 CE is an example of an undoubtedly historical event that has become a myth for modern Israelis. The past enters cultural memory, becomes a 'myth', when it has meaning for the present and the future, when it is 'a reality of a higher order, which not only rings true but also sets normative standards and possesses a formative power.'"

Moreover, the scholarly consensus is that the Exodus did not happen in the form described in the biblical text. At most, there was a small group of people who migrated out of Egypt, and some current hypotheses suggest there was no such migration and the story originated in Canaan. If there was an event that inspired the story, it was of vastly less significance than the story itself, whose significance comes from its status as a founding myth. A. Parrot (talk) 23:52, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Cultural significance

About the "has reverberated through world history."-paragraph (The_Exodus#Cultural_significance). It reminds me of Moses#Legacy_in_politics_and_law. En-WP is of course significantly written by Americans (you invented the thing), who like everybody else will write about what they know and are interested in.

Still, it wouldn't hurt if we could add something good but non-American in these areas. Matching the DUE-ness of "Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin recommended for the Great Seal of the United States to depict Moses leading the Israelites across the Red Sea." shouldn't be impossible. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:02, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Minimalists vs. maximalists

@Editor977: Agree that these are now derogatory terms, and most germane, it was a dispute from the 20th century. It seems that most mainstream scholars from the 21st century are neither minimalists nor maximalists. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:19, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

we use the labels found in our sources.—Ermenrich (talk)

just because a few scholars created derogatory terms to call each other does not mean those derogatroy terms belong on unrelated wikipedia page. see minimalism page to learn what that is — Preceding unsigned comment added by Editor977 (talk • contribs) 20:11, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

agreed, the editor who added them likely did so for bias. which is consistent whith prior wording and choices in old version of historicity section when that was added. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Editor977 (talk • contribs) 19:32, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
@Ermenrich:
consensus to change to new version with cited material added... see latest version ermenrich undid 3 times. is this what you want? consensus that reliable sources can be added? @Ermenrich: do you even have an issue with any of the reliable sources? try starting with naming 1 instead of edit warring without any stated complaint with the edits

suprise...@Ermenrich: goes silent when asked to present a concern with the edits. but has all the time in the world to edit war. @El C: @Tgeorgescu: @Dimadick: since ermenrich wont say offer any complaint about the edit, could any of you offer your opinion on the latest edited version I made where I added only cited material and explained each edit in the edit summary? unfortunately, youll have to look back to my last edit manually, since erminerch refused to go to talk and edit warred until the page was locked. so just fyi the current version is not my last edit. just look at the last one I edited thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Editor977 (talk • contribs) 20:00, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

You are the one edit warring. You are violating rules on wp:balance by pushing one wp:pov in scholarship.—Ermenrich (talk)

~~you edit warred removing cited material repeatedly. and without any justification. even when asked repeatedly. i only added consensus claims that were cited.~~

there is a reason you continue to refuse to raise even 1 issue with 1 specific edit. just vague generic accusations of pov. your actions speak for themselves. again, if you find an issue with 1 of the edits that are all consensus and cited, see the sources instead of just edit warring and removing them without reading them, then by all means post even 1 concern. also dont follow me to every page i edit, its harassment — Preceding unsigned comment added by Editor977 (talk • contribs) 20:14, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

ex:"The lack of evidence for the Exodus events is what leads most scholars to omit them from comprehensive histories of Israel." the source I cited even lists examples, not that you even read it before you edit warred to try to remove it. reliable sources do not have the exodus as a historical event in Israels history. see the source — Preceding unsigned comment added by Editor977 (talk • contribs) 20:26, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Uninvolved comment It's ironic you're both accusing each other of edit warring, and yet you both gladly violated WP rules on edit warring until the article was blocked. Both of you have been reported. Now might be a good time to take a break for a little while. Jeppiz (talk) 20:44, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Now that the Fajsanadvs sock has been blocked: the text doesn’t mention maximalists, only minimalists. In this particular case maximalists have a fringe position, the debate is really between those who deny any historical basis to the Exodus (identified in cited sources here as minimalists) and those who believe something or other lies behind it.—Ermenrich (talk)

Having reviewer the edits, there is indeed a mention of maximalism. However, again, it is the term used in the sources cited. Most scholars today do not fall into either category, obviously, but that does not change the accuracy of the descriptor for scholars taking extreme positions on the historicity of the Exodus.—Ermenrich (talk)

The minimalist debate of the late 20th century is essentially over, but when it was a live issue it applied to the books of Samuel and Kings, not to the Pentateuch, whose historicity has been rejected since the 80s.Achar Sva (talk) 04:33, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Myth

Why do you keep changing the description from a myth to a "story"? Dimadick (talk) 19:14, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

I don’t. I was referring mostly to the other changes. No problem with saying myth.—Ermenrich (talk)

do you want to list an issue with a change? ex: the source says Moses is a mythical figure according to overwhelming scholarly consensus. although this was already cited and explained in the summary of edit. @Ermenrich:

I will point out that the sock changed the description from story to myth, not the other way around.—Ermenrich (talk)

Why does it have to be a myth? Chairman Mao's Long March was many, many times more difficult and the organisation survived. 2A00:23C5:C102:9E00:74EC:3BBA:D27E:A52D (talk) 19:55, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

It is a myth because that's what WP:CHOPSY teach about it.

Dispute resolution won't do any good. The feedback you've gotten so far is the exact same kind of feedback that you would get in Wikipedia's dispute resolution systems. To simplify it somewhat, Wikipedia reflects the kind of scholarship that you find at leading secular universities, such as those mentioned at WP:CHOPSY: the kinds of things you would find taught at Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton, the Sorbonne, and/or Yale. If a view is considered fringe in those kinds of circles, you can bet that it will be considered fringe at Wikipedia. Now, that may not seem fair, especially if you believe the CHOPSY outlook is wrong. But that is the way Wikipedia has been since its inception, and it would be very unlikely if you could talk the Wikipedia community out of the approach that they've used since the beginning. As William Dever put it in "What Remains of the House that Albright Built?', "the overwhelming scholarly consensus today is that Moses is a mythical figure." That's from William Dever, who is on the conservative side of much of the debate currently going on within mainstream biblical studies. The great majority of mainstream scholars have abandoned the idea of Moses as a historical figure. Alephb (talk) 00:10, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Quoted by Tgeorgescu (talk) 22:19, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Should we add an FAQ about the "myth" designation? I've never been deeply involved in an article that had one and don't know the conventions for using one, but most of the discussion on this page seems to be occasioned by new people coming along and asking why we call the Exodus a myth. A. Parrot (talk) 00:25, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Comment For anyone who hasn't noticed, WP:CHOPSY is neither policy or a guideline. It is in fact part of WP:ABIAS, an essay created by Tgeorgescu. Jerm (talk) 00:50, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

So we should ignore the fact that reliable sources call it a myth, or what’s your point?—Ermenrich (talk)

I never said to ignore reliable sources or consensus. I just don't want any editor to feel discouraged about editing or feel intimidated by pretense-like policy, and I certainly don't like the ideal of using an essay to substitute for policy. And with that, I have nothing more to add. Jerm (talk) 01:07, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jerm: I never claimed that WP:CHOPSY were policy. But it is a pretty honest rule of thumb for how Wikipedia works. WP:EXTRAORDINARY applies to giving the lie to those universities, especially when they all toe the same line. E.g. I would be surprised if several of https://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/choosing-university/worlds-top-100-universities teach at history faculties that the Exodus did happen, precisely as told in the Bible (i.e. two million people for 38 years at Kadesh Barnea). Or pick top 100 from here: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2020/world-ranking#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats Tgeorgescu (talk) 03:46, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

There is evidence of the Exodus in the middle kingdom of ancient egypt. In the old city of Avaris. This premise of a "Myth" renders the whole article inaccurate and misleads the public . There is plenty of evidence for the Exodus, and the archeologists know it. They are scared to tell the truth. They knew it since 1942 when the city of Avaris, which was named after Joseph, was discovered by Prof Manfred Bietak.

WilliamWestcott (talk) 21:45, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Yup, conspiracy theory. That's all you got. Forgetting that the archaeologist who will establish that the Exodus were a fact will get the million dollars from Dan David Prize, and, of course, world fame. And Bietak was 2 years old when he discovered Avaris??? If your statement wasn't intended to be humoristic, it should have been. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:27, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

197.185.102.95 (talk) 10:38, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Surely the narrative is too detailed to be classified as a myth? Myth is also a misleading term but it commonly refers to something that is not true and there is an historical basis for the Israelite people being in Egypt. See https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/exodus/exodus-fact-or-fiction/

Please can myth be removed as it is not a good description.

Top 100 universities from The Times Higher Education Supplement do not agree with you. This is the end of the matter for the foreseeable future. There weren't two million Jews in Egypt and they didn't build the pyramids. And there isn't any trace of two million people for 38 years at Kadesh Barnea. As stated previously, the Exodus is mythologized history. That whole story with Kadesh Barnea is preposterous, unless angels were teleporting their feces to another planet. It would have been a gigantic engineering project to get rid of their feces. Tgeorgescu (talk) 11:29, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

"Myth" is the term used to describe the exodus in a reliable source - you can find which source, and a definition of myth, in the article.Achar Sva (talk) 09:39, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

10th plague

I'd like to insert this image in the narrative section, between the other two. Opinions? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:21, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Looks Good to me!—Ermenrich (talk)

Added. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:39, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources#WP:RSPSCRIPTURE

Discussion about to what extent "Biblical account" sections (and similar) needs secondary sources. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:54, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Since the results of that discussion currently appear unclear, I'd suggest that anyone with easy access to secondary lit that summarizes the Exodus add citations to the narrative section here. I've already added a few footnotes from Redmount (and there's a few others already present there).--Ermenrich (talk) 12:56, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Good thinking. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:04, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Harv warning messages

The bibliography section is full of "Harv warning" messages indicating unused citations. If you add this:

importScript('User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors.js'); // Backlink: User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors.js

to your common.js page (e.g. User:SlimVirgin/common.js), you'll see them. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:22, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

By all means remove them.Achar Sva (talk) 08:29, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, this article has been plagued by uncited works for a while. I've removed some, I was keeping others for an expansion of some material that I got too burned out to do, but go ahead and remove them.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:34, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Yahweh

I have no objection to using God instead of Yahweh. The book uses more than one name for God anyway. Zero^talk 13:40, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I think we need to at least mention the name Yahweh, as the Exodus includes the I am that I am scene and many scholars discuss the god of the Exodus as Yahweh or Yhwh (the later of which inevitably gets changed by other editors who think it's a typo). We have a number of citations in the body already of scholars saying one or the other. I guess I don't have a strong feeling, but most WP articles discussing the development of Judaism tend to use Yahweh based on a quick scan, and I believe this in common with scholarship.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:33, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

It isn't really appropriate for this article, but there is debate among archaeologists over whether the (pre-)Israelites were monotheistic yet in that time period. There is quite a bit of evidence that YHWH and El were originally different gods. Zero^talk 00:07, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Sure, but when discussing "God" at the time of that the Pentateuch was composed, my impression is most scholars refer to Yahweh, for instance [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], just to name a few items in the article bibliography.--Ermenrich (talk) 00:29, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

I've restored God, rather than "their tutelary deity" or "their god". Looking at Islam and articles that flow from it, God is the most common term. SarahSV ^(talk) 05:26, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm sure God at least will thank you for his restoration -looking a bit worn out these days! Seriously, Sarah. God is appropriate, as indeed per the Islam articles (and Allah is what Christian Arabs call, um, it:a gender-sensitive neutral term, faute de mieux). Why however the capitalization. A reasonable compromise between the traditional monotheistic capitalization. and arrant pagans, would be to simply write 'god' (one of a score of thousands who, in ethnography are never capitalized, except when the name is cited). Is that too 'radical'? Nishidani (talk) 06:16, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Because the whole point of this is that He is God. Not one god, but One God. We should also bear in mind the readership and not be insulting. It's also what's in the scholarship that I've looked at in the five seconds I've spent on research today. SarahSV ^(talk) 06:53, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

The idea that the god of Israel is the only god in existence is generally thought to have emerged in the time of Deutero-Isaiah. It's not an inherent part of the Exodus story, which can be, and probably originally was, read as proof that the god of Israel was superior to the gods of the Egyptians, not that they didn't exist. (When the text of the Book of Exodus attained its final form is a very complex question, but the Exodus story existed in some form long before Deutero-Isaiah.) That said, I take no position on whether the article should say "Yahweh" or "God", particularly because the English word is a direct translation of his other name, "El". But if we use "God", it must be capitalized, because it only makes sense as a name. If the word isn't treated as a name but as a common noun, you have to specify which god, either by naming him or through phrases such as "their god". A. Parrot (talk) 07:14, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Sorry SV, but that assertion is an anachronistic reading back on the basis of later theological traditions. In Exodus he is not One God (15:11), and elsewhere he is the king of all the other gods (umelek gadol al kal elohim).

The readership is global. That quarter of mankind that is Chinese, for instance, would find this priorization of a God by the capitalization somewhat insulting to their notion, if they retain it, of tiān(天)/shàngdì(上帝), to note just one of many objections. And by the way it was Matteo Ricci who introduced the convention of transcribing these with initial capitals to make an analogy with Latin usage. It's Eurocentric to capitalize the seminal figure of occidental religious metaphysics as the god. In the LXX Greek text, the incipit of Genesis doesn't capitalize, as was a perfectly feasible thing (Θ/θ)to do (Θεὸς). Instead we have the lower case '(the) god who made heaven and earth,'(ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς (not (ὁ Θεὸς))τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν) since that convention was lacking in the Hebrew original. As far as I know, capitalization only began, with Jerome's vulgate: 'In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram.' It's a mystery to me that you think the suggestion is 'insulting'.Nishidani (talk) 14:29, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

I think we either have to say God with a capital G to emphasize its his name, or say Yahweh/Yhwh (which, as I've noted, is what scholars tend to do. There's nothing "offensive" about capitalizing God if that's seen as a proper name.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:38, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Aren't we lucky that "G-d" is out of fashion? Zero^talk 15:21, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Well, yes the tetragrammaton is fine by me, because that is his name (generally) in the Tanakh. The name could not be mentioned except once a year in the inner sanctum of the temple by the high priest, as everyone knows. 'God' on the other hand is not a personal name like YHWH: it as, as you know better than I and I presume anyone else here, an early Germanic term that is best translated by the Latin numen, which appears to have been masculinized only with the advent of Christianity. The appellative denoted a numinous presence, not a specific named deity. Of course, our God, as the missionaries told the natives for centuries is the only one, and deserves an honorific capital. But since people read an article like this to find out something they usually aren't told, and since Exodus does not make the distinction later Christian usage introduced, cleaving to something redolent of its alien origins, and to its originative Hebraic form, seems, to me, more 'encyclopedic'.Nishidani (talk) 16:57, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Recent large scale revert

Achar Sva, I have reverted your large scale revert back to before the changes made by SlimVirgin. I had added significant content, all of which was sourced, since then. If you just want to change the lead, please do it manually. If your problem is with my additions, please edit them , but they’re all sourced, so please don’t revert en Masse.—Ermenrich (talk) 12:01, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

I might also note that there is a discussion ongoing regarding at least some of the other changes, so I would hold off there too.—Ermenrich (talk) 12:08, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Why the insistence on including Assmann in the lead please? His comment is hardly a consensus of scholars, and it adds very little - why should it be included in the lead? Wdford (talk) 17:06, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Wdford, who's insisting? The revert wasn't about Assmann. I don't see why you object to a quote on the cultural importance of the Exodus though. What's your reasoning? There is certainly a consensus that the Exodus is a culturally important narrative, isn't there?--Ermenrich (talk) 17:13, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Firstly, Assmann is not much quoted in the body of the article, and this quote itself does not appear elsewhere in the article, so why in the lead?

Second, the lead paragraph already explains (using facts) the cultural significance of the Exodus story. We don't actually need to add a quote/opinion, especially one so "grandiose", and especially when it is not factually accurate to begin with. The story of Noah is far more grandiose than the story of Moses. As regards influence, the Roman Empire did not adopt the religion of Moses as it's state religion, thus causing Europe to become a Jewish continent, nor did the subsequent European colonial empires slaughter their way around the New World converting the natives to the religion of Moses.

Third, Assmann makes it clear on that same page that the significance of the Exodus story is not the foundation of Israel or about liberation struggles generally, but rather the "shift from polytheism to monotheism". This is nowhere explained in the article, and the use of the quote in its current context is thus seriously misleading.

Wdford (talk) 18:18, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Feel free to remove it then, if others agree. Other scholars (e.g. Redmount) say very similar quotable things though.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:23, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Myth yet again

IZAK is removing the word "myth" from the lead again. As I have said before, "myth" is often used to refer to stories that have cultural importance, whether they are true or not. For example, a passage in The Pentateuch (2012) by Walter J. Houston, describing Jan Assmann's perspective on myth (p. 139): "…Assmann applies the term 'myth' to foundation stories… without necessarily implying anything about the actual historicity of those that are set in historical time. The heroic defense of Masada and the suicide of its defenders in 73 CE is an example of an undoubtedly historical event that has become a myth for modern Israelis. The past enters cultural memory, becomes a 'myth', when it has meaning for the present and the future, when it is 'a reality of a higher order, which not only rings true but also sets normative standards and possesses a formative power.'"

Moreover, the scholarly consensus is that the Exodus did not happen in the form described in the biblical text. At most, there was a small group of people who migrated out of Egypt, and some current hypotheses suggest there was no such migration and the story originated in Canaan. If there was an event that inspired the story, it was of vastly less significance than the story itself, whose significance comes from its status as a founding myth. A. Parrot (talk) 01:36, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: I have noticed that a number of editors such as User:Ermenrich have been acting in a WP:OWN attitude in articles relating to Judaism and go all out to deny what classical Jewish commentators and scholarship has to say. Very nice that you can quote SECULAR anti-religious profs xyz, but they know beans about Jewish theology and just have an ax to grind against anything Biblical and even Jewish. That's the story for now! — Preceding unsigned comment added by IZAK (talk • contribs) 02:02, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a secular Encyclopedia. If you want to write an Encyclopedia from the perspective of Orthodox Judaism or whatever, you can go find another Wiki to edit. We summarize what reliable scholarship says on a subject, and reliable scholarship calls the Exodus a myth, regardless of whether people believe in it or not. There has been no evidence to support it found by archaeology or historians.--Ermenrich (talk) 02:18, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

And by the way, IZAK, I would be very careful casting WP:ASPERSIONS that editors are motivated by antisemitism just because you don't like what reliable sources say on a topic! You've been here over 17 years I see, surely you must know better than that!--Ermenrich (talk) 02:23, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: I have had this argument countless times, but here goes again: Wikipedia is just an Encyclopedia, an online Encyclopedia, it is NEITHER secular NOR religious. One can write about ANY topic under the sun as long as it is written from a WP:NPOV and using WP:RS, end of story. So both your radical secularism and my religiosity can live side by side and respect each other's methodologies. Your allegation that one cannot "quote" the Bible in WP arguments is ridiculous because that is precisely what YOU are doing, you quote the Bible to disparage it by citing so-called secular anti-religious professors, while I am relying on the ongoing scholarship of Torah by Jewish sages from ancient to modern times, just that you may not have heard of all of them, the following would and do assert and affirm what I have to say about the veracity of the Hebrew Bible and that The Exodus is 100% true and the 100% reliability of Judaism's Oral Torah: ALL in Category:Rabbis by rabbinical period -- thousands of Jewish scholars spanning two millennia that would ALL agree with what I am trying to DESCRIBE and EXPLAIN. You have to make way for a more religious POV just like I have to make way for your secular POV, it's as simple as that. Hope we can agree on some common ground. IZAK (talk) 03:13, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your views. Wikipedia has a strong bias in favor of academic sources for history. That is how it should be. If archaeology says Beersheba was founded 6000 years ago and the bible says it was founded 4000 years ago, archaeology wins. Zero^talk 13:06, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

@DLWyer: We kowtow to Ivy Plus, we don't kowtow to true believers, be them Jewish, Christian, Muslim or Hindu. ... . E.g. it is highly unlikely that a full professor from BIU or TAU would tell his/her students that the Exodus really happened, precisely as reported in the Torah. The position that the Exodus happened as described in the Bible is WP:FRINGE/PS at Ivy Plus, it is WP:FRINGE/PS at BIU and TAU. And this is how every experienced Wikipedian knows that you have already lost this debate. Tgeorgescu (talk) 16:42, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

BIU means Bar Ilan University; TAU means Tel Aviv University. Tgeorgescu (talk) 12:03, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

You can’t remove “radical secular” views from Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a “teach the controversy” sort of place: all academic scholars are in virtual agreement, we’re discussing history and archaeology here, not theology. You’re welcome to believe whatever you want, but you can’t promote those beliefs here according to your wp:agenda. You’ve been here 17 years, I suggest you acquaint yourself with our sourcing policies like WP:RSPSCRIPTURE and WP:RNPOV.—Ermenrich (talk) 12:12, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Agree, we tell it the Ivy Plus way, the Bar Ilan University way and the Tel Aviv University way. There our article would be recognized as a fine, up-to-date summary of mainstream Bible scholarship.

Dispute resolution won't do any good. The feedback you've gotten so far is the exact same kind of feedback that you would get in Wikipedia's dispute resolution systems. To simplify it somewhat, Wikipedia reflects the kind of scholarship that you find at leading secular universities, such as those mentioned at WP:CHOPSY: the kinds of things you would find taught at Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton, the Sorbonne, and/or Yale. If a view is considered fringe in those kinds of circles, you can bet that it will be considered fringe at Wikipedia. Now, that may not seem fair, especially if you believe the CHOPSY outlook is wrong. But that is the way Wikipedia has been since its inception, and it would be very unlikely if you could talk the Wikipedia community out of the approach that they've used since the beginning. As William Dever put it in "What Remains of the House that Albright Built?', "the overwhelming scholarly consensus today is that Moses is a mythical figure." That's from William Dever, who is on the conservative side of much of the debate currently going on within mainstream biblical studies. The great majority of mainstream scholars have abandoned the idea of Moses as a historical figure. Alephb (talk) 00:10, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Quoted by Tgeorgescu (talk) 12:15, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Izak also appears to be wp:canvassing, see [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20]. This does not inspire confidence in their good faith. As a 17-year veteran, Izak should be aware that the appropriate place to attract attention to discussions is neutral noticeboards such as WP:WikiProject Judaism.--Ermenrich (talk) 12:27, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

As myth is causing disputes, I've swapped it for "defining narrative" and added a better and more recent source. [21] SarahSV ^(talk) 01:16, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

SlimVirgin that might be a good solution. In addition to people who want us to say that the Exodus is the absolute truth, we also have some editors who go all out on it being “false”, so not calling it a myth will not solve the whole problem, but it might be a start.—Ermenrich (talk) 02:09, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

I thought, and still do think, the Malinowskian 'foundational charter' spot on, and as the best solution, after mulling alternatives like mnemohistory or mythistory. 'Defining narrative' is far too bland, a kind of euphemism that bleaches out what everyone knows, that these fascinating compositions, the most striking stories in the bible, are astute novelettes, patched up from a store of legendary tales, undoubtedly referring to some event, but which imagination and cultural memories have remade, much like the Iliad, or the Aeneid. 'Myth' after all has the same aetiological function as historiography, it just uses the praeternatural as the primum mobile. Any one can have a 'defining narrative': Silvio Berlusconi, Trump's model I guess, has as his 'defining narrative' his 'crossing of the desert' (5 years in opposition), an Exodus trope. In a world where fundamentalist trends have rebounded powerfully everywhere in opposition to a century of secularization (predictable but astonishing for all that) I don't think a global encyclopedia should quiver and compromise with terminology that skirts (dresses up) the known facts, in this case that basically we are dealing with myths, myths with historical echoes or historical varnishings (like this one, with its double narrative reflecting the Persian conquest of Egypt, and the recasting of the language in Egyptian resonances that clearly reflect facts or knowledge about it garnered from the 6th century BCE onwards). Does one need to bend over backwards in a 'compromise' when only a single fundamentalist is worried by the usage? Nishidani (talk) 05:15, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Something to keep in mind is the article link: the text said "charter myth" and linked to Origin myth#Founding myth. The link is essential, and whatever text we use in the sentence, it's best if it resembles the link target. A. Parrot (talk) 07:14, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

I think I support keeping "myth" or "charter myth". The current lead does a poor job of explaining what the Exodus is before saying it never happened.--Ermenrich (talk) 12:47, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Can be have a vote on charter myth vs/and defining narrative? As per above, I think the former option cogent and not controversial. Baden's term is also fine, but the other has been in the literature for 24 years. If there are diaagreements one can easily take the sensible path of writing 'charter myth(sources) or 'defining narrative' (Baden). I.e.

The Exodus is the defining narrative^[1] or charter myth of the Israelites.^[2]^[3]^[a]

K. Van Der Toorn 'Inventing a National identity: Exodus as Charter Myth' in his Family Religion in Babylonia, Ugarit and Israel: Continuity and Changes in the Forms of Religious Life, BRILL 1996 ISBN 978-9-004-10410-5
Nadav Na’aman,'Out of Egypt or Out of Canaan: The Exodus Story Between Memory and Historical Reality,' in Thomas E. Levy, Thomas Schneider, William H.C. Propp eds. Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture, and Geoscience, Springer, 2015 ISBN 978-3-319-04768-3 pp.527-535 p.530 Nishidani (talk) 15:05, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

^ Baden 2019, p. xi.
^ van der Toorn 1996, p. 287.
^ Sparks 2010, p. 73.
^ Na’aman 2015, p. 530.

"Narrative" implies that the stories are historically true. We need to use the word "myth", otherwise we need for the first sentence to specifically state that the Exodus story is not considered to be historical fact. "Foundation myth" is more understandable than "charter myth" for many people. We are directing the blue-link to "origin myth", which would be fine for me as well. Wdford (talk) 17:04, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm afraid you are just wrong on English usage. 'Narrative' does not imply the truth of what is told, as any consideration of its use will rapidly reveal if one's Sprachgefühl has, momentarily, to make an atrocious pun, run out of gas. I.e.,in anthropology (shaman's narrative - i.e. imagined experience of the other world; historiography -i.e. the 'historical memoirs of Edmund Backhouse or the travels Marco Polo have often had their 'narrative' authenticity questioned; or the two narrative lines in the Genesis creation, or the narrative of Cain and Abel which no one takes to be factual.Nishidani (talk) 19:02, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree that narrative does not imply truth, it's an entirely neutral term in terms of veracity. I think a combination of both might work, but maybe "founding myth" is better than charter myth, as charter myth seems sort of jargon-y.--Ermenrich (talk) 19:10, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm biased. I love Malinowski's work, and the idea of some kinds of myth as charters proved to be very influential in several fields. Perhaps it's not in vernacular usage, but one of the functions of an encyclopedia is to clue readers in to what the real world (to me) of scholarship does and thinks, especially in terms of key terms like this. Still, that's just my take (or leave it) on a thing like this.Nishidani (talk) 19:19, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Source

This looks like a useful source:

Baden, Joel S. (2019). The Book of Exodus: A Biography. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-16954-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

See Joel S. Baden, Professor of Hebrew Bible, Yale Divinity School. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:57, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that is a good source. Zero^talk 02:23, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Baden certainly meets the requirements for RS, but he is a proponent of what's called the neo-documentary hypothesis, which holds that Wellhausen was essentially right and the Torah was composed from documents. This is a valid position in scholarship, but it's worth noting that it's a minority one. Achar Sva (talk) 08:20, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Having had a browse through Baden's book, I must say it's not at all a good source for this article. He fails to even mention that the DH is now a minority position, and the argument is very much much around high school level.Achar Sva (talk) 05:29, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

This is much too simplistic. There is no single DH but rather multiple competing variations. Baden argues for one variation, so do others. Even David Carr (cited at Documentary hypothesis for the collapse of the DH) is happy to distinguish the "priestly" source P from other sources. I see hardly any support (other than from a religious perspective) for the diametrically opposite viewpoint of single authorship. The last part of your comment is out of place here. Zero^talk 07:21, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

You're correct in saying that nobody believes that Moses wrote the Torah - if that's what you mean by single authorship. What Baden is supporting is the "new" DH, to replace the "old" Wellhausen model, which has been pretty much dropped since the 1970s. The dominant model today is a Priestly source (a body of authors and editors) working with what's called "non-priestly" sources (which might be documents, folktales, and other traditions). So the dominant model talks about P and non-P, not, as Baden does, P,J, and E. This leaves the Deuteronomist to one side, as it's universally agreed that the D source exists but is confined to Deuteronomy (plus a few other books outside the Torah). Achar Sva (talk) 08:33, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps I should explain the various meanings of "source". Everyone agrees that sources lie behind the Torah (i.e., it doesn't have a single author, whether Moses or anyone else). They disagree as to what those sources were. Wellhausen said they were documents, each document being a single coherent narrative stretching from Genesis to the end of Numbers (with Deuteronomy quite separate). Baden agrees. The rest of the academic community - the majority, in fact - believe that a tradition of authors and editors, with a corporate existence formed in the exile and stretching over several centuries thereafter, used a host of materials of many genres, and no doubt their own invention, to construct the books from Genesis to Numbers, so that it makes no sense to talk about J and E. That's what's meant when you see casual references to "non-P" in the literature. Achar Sva (talk) 08:40, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Most of the Book is about how the Exodus has been used by various groups, Baden’s position on the documentary hypothesis is unlikely to play a role there.—Ermenrich (talk) 12:10, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Achar Sva I’ve only read one chapter of the new book. In that, clearly we are looking at a popularization of scholarship, and that should not be taken as something pitched to a high school level (university undergraduate level, yes), and perfectly RS. That was Zero's point. Baden states quite categorically that 'the Bible is not history' in his earlier book on David and 'not particularly trustworthy'. His basic premise is how spin refashions a pristine historical core, and not as in much contemporary scholarship tailored out of whole cloth – a dangerous but valid assumption , esp. in the formulation ’it is in fact, the very existence of the biblical spin that argues in favour of David’s existence (There is no need to spin a story that has no basis in reality’) – and that by stripping away the successive overlays and rewriting, one can seize on the historic core. In his earlier book on David ^[1]he elicits this seminal tale’s ‘historicity’ by examing the apologetic elements in Samuel, the earliest form. and argues that 'recognizing the text as an apology allows us to date it to a period roughly contemporanry with the times it describes. (p.46) In his Boston talk to the Christian congregation at Trinity church he is even more specific about 'the earliest narrative of David’s life’. It 'interprets events’, and the author of those earliest Davidic sections in Samuel was 'a contemporary of David’ (17:16-20)

The traditional dating for David is 1010–970 BCE. The Tel Dan stele, which appears to mention a ‘house of David’, is dated one and a half centuries later. But, the point is that it is difficult to conceive of ‘writing’ at the indicated time of David’s life, since that alligns with the first attested use of the Phoenician script, and a proper distinctly Hebraic version emerged around the late 800sBCE, again a century and a half later. This implies only one of two things: (a) Baden’s author of the Davidic core of the 1 Samuel accounts of David’s early life lived around the turn of the millenium (1000BCE),before a functional script was available, or (b) he lived contemporary with David but not at that early date, sometime before 850, when the script had just come into use for inscriptions.

The Tanakh has 429 references to writing and written documents. Inscriptions on clay tablets or stone are one thing: bureaucratic documents and court histories another, and usually date much later, esp. in the Levant where papyrus was a rarity at that time. Both (a) and (b) are thus highly improbable, for the simple reason that the earliest sample to date for a Paleo-Hebrew /Phoenician alphabetic script dates to the Zayit stone, about a century after the traditional date ascribed to David, while the development of courtly/kingly scribal experts (סוֹפְרִים sopherim) with ample access to papyri for non-bureaucratic narrative purposes would postdate 850. Take the Greek case. After the initial inscriptions of the alphabet, perhaps 150 years passed before an author like Archilochus can be imagined to have written on papyrus. One has to assume a court, a scribal order, one that wrote documents having no bureaucratic function, but rather one that was concerned with the commemoration on scarce papyrus of contemporary events etc. It is a very strong set of assumptions- perhaps betraying a tacit, residual 'fundamentalism'. But almost everything on this particular religious tradition is unusually bogged down in large premises. Wikipedia articles, with their partial précis(es) of bits and pieces, barely attest to the difficulties. In any case, Baden is entitled to his assumptions, but he should clarify this kind of crux and, perhaps, for a lay audience, taken more cognizance of the way oral 'literature' is conserved over centuries, before it is written down. Oral memory can be as faithful to an initial composition, as tenacious as a written document, but can often play with even the earliest stuff, as much as throughout the Tanakh, scribes endlessly tinkered and rewrote the traditions (just as Baden notes Kings and Chronicles manipulated the theorized Samuel document) until a final form was agreed on.Nishidani (talk) 12:35, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

^ Joel Baden, The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero Harper Collins, 2013 ISBN 978-0-062-18833-5

So Nishidani, does that mean you are fine with using Baden's book as a source here? As I mentioned, most of it is not about the composition of the Torah, but rather about the use of the Exodus by exegetes and laypeople as an influential story.--Ermenrich (talk) 12:44, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Absolutely. A very fine scholar, and we should appreciate the importance of scholars of his standing in getting out a broad synthesis of current thought in a format that is readily understandable for a larger audience. Very engaging speaker as well. His, um, deeper thoughts, intuitable but unexpressed, are pretty, um, 'audible' in his replies to the disconcerted elderly Episcopalians in the audience at question time. His books skirt that kind of difficulty, but his research doesn't. Different strokes for different folks. Nishidani (talk) 13:50, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Why are you writing all this about King David?Achar Sva (talk) 21:11, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Dear me. Because I was responding directly to a generic statement about Baden's scholarship you made when you wrote:'he is a proponent of what's called the neo-documentary hypothesis, which holds that Wellhausen was essentially right and the Torah was composed from documents'.This is somewhat slipshod and was brushing off his work as high school stuff. Not having access to the 2019 work I clarified Baden's approach by his earlier book on David - the method and principles are identical, one book illustrating the other, which you trashed. That should have been obvious Really, editors should remember what they write.Nishidani (talk) 21:34, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

We're talking about the documentary hypothesis, not King David.Achar Sva (talk) 22:28, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Actually, you are talking about the documentary hypothesis, introducing that, when Sarah, seconded by Zero, opened a section suggesting the relevance of a new book by Baden, which does not divagate on Wellhausen and meta-issues like the documentary hypothesis. I stuck to the original suggestion, and incorporated your generalization about Baden's work by combining their remarks and your broader focus, to make a general analysis. What I did was take your tangent and bend it back into the circle of Baden's work (overall), and I did not talk about King David. I wrote of Baden's work on K David to illustrate the documentary method's premise re germinal written materials, and a concrete difficulty Baden's use of it creates as notable in his early work on David. This is how any serious conversation functions. Really, come now, this is petty, esp. since you have made some serious points elsewhere. Nishidani (talk) 06:52, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Exodus as foundation myth

The definition of the exodus as a foundation-myth has been stable for many years, and accepted by all past long-term editors. It is supported by a reliable source. As the proposed change controversial this existing text should be kept while discussion continues.Achar Sva (talk) 21:19, 13 June 2020 (UTC) Incidentally, what does this rather bizarre post by SarahSV mean?: "Because the whole point of this is that He is God. Not one god, but One God. We should also bear in mind the readership and not be insulting. It's also what's in the scholarship that I've looked at in the five seconds I've spent on research today. SarahSV (talk) 06:53, 12 June 2020 (UTC)" The editor's argument seems to be that she finds the definition insulting.Achar Sva (talk) 21:22, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

I support Achar Sva’s change.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:38, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Idem.Nishidani (talk) 06:53, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Ditto. warshy ^(¥¥) 19:57, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree. Wikipedia should never deny the obvious, i.e. that according to mainstream historians it is a myth. Tgeorgescu (talk) 20:45, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Supported. starship .paint (talk) 04:17, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Me too. Zero^talk 04:33, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

FYI: User talk:IZAK#WP POLICY PROPOSAL BY IZAK REGARDING RECONCILING TORAH SCHOLARSHIP WITH SECULAR SCHOLARSHIP.--Ermenrich (talk) 22:31, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Someone please check this source for me

I deleted this sentence from the end of the first para of the lead:

the covenant's terms are that Yahweh will protect his chosen people for as long as they keep his laws and worship only him.

The source is Bandstra, pages 28-29. On page 29 Bandstra does not say this; but page 28 is not available to me and perhaps it's there. Can someone who has access please check, because it would be a useful thing to include? Achar Sva (talk) 06:37, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Try this. It is the exact page. If it still doesn't work, I'll transcribe it eventually (busy now).Nishidani (talk) 07:58, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

The first covenant, starting p28, is that God will not destroy the world again by flood. The text you deleted is closer to the third covenant in 3.1.3 on p29. Zero^talk 08:00, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. Nishidani, I have access to page 29 but not page 28. Page 29 says of the "Israelite covenant" (I see it more often referred to as the Mosaic covenant) that "the people expressed their solidarity with God ... by observing the Sabbath day ... and by keeping the other laws." That doesn't support the deleted sentence. This is a pity, as I "know" the sentence is correct, but we need a source.Achar Sva (talk) 08:34, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

There might be something useful in Romer's "Invention of God", which highlights the nature of the Mosaic covenant. Achar Sva (talk) 08:43, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Correct or not, I think the best principle is, nothing must be added to an article unless an linked immediate source warrants the paraphrase. That would simplify everything. One option in such cases is just to take out the source that failed verification, and add a cn note. If no one can provide a strong source within a month, then remove the said passage to the talk page.Nishidani (talk) 11:09, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Proposal on terminology: "Israel" "Israelites" "Judaism" "Jews"

Due to some discussions elsewhere, I'd like to propose that we adopt the following style in the article:

The people should be called the Israelites, to avoid confusion both with modern Jews and with the state of Israel
Israel should only be used to refer to Kingdom of Israel (Samaria), which had that name
Jew/Jewish/Judaism should only be used to refer to the "modern" religion (roughly Hellenistic period onward), as the Israelites themselves would have practiced Yahwism.

Comments?--Ermenrich (talk) 13:08, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

(We seem to follow this for the most part already, but I though we should make it explicit)--Ermenrich (talk) 13:36, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

What happens with exact quotations from sources which don't follow this terminology? Dimadick (talk) 16:21, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Most historians I think follow the date of change given in our Jews as "The term Jew originated from the Roman "Judean" and denoted someone from the southern kingdom of Judah.[98] The shift of ethnonym from "Israelites" to "Jews" (inhabitant of Judah), although not contained in the Torah, is made explicit in the Book of Esther (4th century BCE),...". So not just "modern Jews". Johnbod (talk) 16:35, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

To Dimadick: we should quote sources exactly, even if they don't follow this suggestion.

To Johnbod: I've corrected my proposal based on your comment. Not sure on the exact wording.--Ermenrich (talk) 17:03, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

What to do about the POVFORK Christian interpretations of the Exodus?

The page Christian interpretations of the Exodus appears to have been created by a banned sock of Archangelbris (talk · contribs) explicitly as a WP:POVFORK (see [22]). It's had an essay tag since 2016 when it was created. The question is: is there anything that can be folded back into this article (which is badly in need of sections on theology and religious interpretation)? My own brief review of the sources used suggests not really, but maybe someone else has other ideas.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:56, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

A related question would be whether Sources and parallels of the Exodus is a wp:CONTENTFORK, but that strikes me as less clearcut.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:10, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

@Ermenrich: as there have been no substantial edits to the sock created article, I think I'll delete it. Doug Weller talk 09:55, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, Christian interpretations of the Exodus has no serious sourcing legs to stand on, and a it is tottering, a friendly nudge into the bin would be merciful.Nishidani (talk) 10:38, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

That seems more than fair.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:18, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Does anyone have an opinion about Sources and parallels of the Exodus? I've moved over a little bit on Greek/Egyptian parallel narratives. However, a lot of that article seems much too detailed (the section on the Hyksos) or wp:fringe (Thera eruption), or belong in the Moses article (Akhenaten and Freud). Some of the sourcing is also questionable for an article of this sort (Jerusalem Post or Science Daily). There seems to be a certain amount of wp:Synth going on, based on my rewriting of the Hellenistic parallels section for this article.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:44, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, I think it was created as a response to discussions on this talkpage, around Talk:The_Exodus/Archive_16#Faust's_article_is_a_bit_more_nuanced. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:03, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Hmmm, thanks Gråbergs Gråa Sång! I've made a few small edits over there to remove the worst offending info, but I'm not convinced the other article is serving its purpose, at least in its current form. It's sort of a dumping ground for various theories, some crackpot (Freud), some not (Assmann), without much rhyme or reason or even information on how they've been received by other scholars (there's no criticism of the Thera eruption theory, for instance, although attempts to find natural sources for the Plagues of Egypt take a lot of flak generally). @JerryRussell, PiCo, Alephb, and Editor2020: (everyone involved in the previous discussion except Doug plus the one other person who's used Talk:Sources and parallels of the Exodus): I'm not sure we wouldn't be better served just folding it back into this article.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:36, 21 June 2020 (UTC) Oops, forgot @PaleoNeonate:.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:37, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Sorry for intruding. I'll just make the point that the naming of the article is oblique to the point of ineptness. It's nicely formatted however. I haven't given it a close look but much of it might, I imagine, once checked, be reincorporated into pre-existing articles, like The Exodus. Certainly, until that is done, (and it would require a notable sacrifice of someone's time) it should probably stay.Nishidani (talk) 15:42, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

I think that Sources and parallels of the Exodus is a useful daughter article, and should be kept and developed. It is around 33k on its own, and contains valuable and interesting material which supports this article without directly overlapping too much. It does however need cleaning up, and then perhaps some further expansion. At some point a name change would also be appropriate - perhaps to Non-Biblical parallels of the Exodus or similar wording? Wdford (talk) 11:13, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree that in principle it's a good idea to have such an article, however if you look at talk:Sources and parallels of the Exodus#Sourcing issues you'll see that most of that 33k is questionably sourced. It needs more than just a little work, sadly, and someone basically needs to rewrite it from scratch, and I don't know who's going to do that.--Ermenrich (talk) 12:35, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I have imported all the sources referred to, except for Faye and Fretheim. We now need to check that the references all say what the text claims they say. Perhaps it would be best to first edit the text, in case lots more of it gets deleted. For instance, concerns were raised about the Hyksos section? Wdford (talk) 19:17, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Well I think the Thera eruption section should be deleted entirely. There's exactly one RS in it and it's by a geologist. The Hyksos section will also need redoing (I just rewrote the main article, which was also a huge mess). My main suspicion is that there's some synth going on, especially in the long first section. I don't think that there's currently any mention of the Habiru in the article? Honestly, Wikipedia should have an "Origins of the Israelites" article, but I'm not volunteering to write it.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:52, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

How are these examples by Izak acceptable?

A very very quick glance on my way to take a shower turned up

"Although it may be an unpopular view, but it is irrefutable that the Orthodox, Haredi, Hasidic mainstream regards the Exodus" and

" From ancient Written Torah and Oral Torah sources to modern day websites run by mainstream Orthodox communal and educational organizations, the centrality and veracity of the Exodus cannot be stressed enough."

How is this acceptable in an encyclopedia? I can see why Izak got his ~~topic ban~~, ~~perhaps it didn't go far enough~~ block from editing this article. Doug Weller talk 17:09, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

I did not get any topic ban. We are in the midst of a discussion. Ermenrich asked for and agreed to theological=Judaism input. IZAK (talk) 17:35, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, your block from this article which just expired. I doubt that Ermenrich expected what you actually wrote. Doug Weller talk 18:14, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

That's putting it mildly, Doug. The current text is significantly better though, despite a number of issues.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:24, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

After all, I am a Wikipedia:WikiDragon and I try to be thorough when I do my job as a WP editor. IZAK (talk) 19:18, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

210 years

"lasted 210 years" The cited source does not say that the Exodus lasted for 210 years. It says that the period from the original arrival of the Israelites in Egypt to the Exodus was 210 years. The text should change accordingly. Dimadick (talk) 18:48, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Feel free to correct it if need be. It would be most helpful. IZAK (talk) 19:16, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

I think the point Dimadick is making is that the time Israel spends in Egypt prior to the exodus, whatever length it may have been, wasn't the exodus. Achar Sva (talk) 02:55, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).

[FOOTNOTECollins200546-1] Collins 2005, p. 46.

[FOOTNOTEBaden2019xi-2] Baden 2019, p. xi.

[FOOTNOTEvan_der_Toorn1996287-3] van der Toorn 1996, p. 287.

[FOOTNOTESparks201073-4] Sparks 2010, p. 73.

[FOOTNOTENa’aman2015530-5] Na’aman 2015, p. 530.

[7] Joel Baden, The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero Harper Collins, 2013 ISBN 978-0-062-18833-5

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