Course on Biblical Egyptology from the ULC Seminary

The highly debated issue concerning the existence of empirical proof lending support to the Biblical Exodus was handled in great detail in this class.  When I studied theological training 30 yrs. ago, I had been taught that there was absolutely no evidence external of the Bible that is in support of the Exodus.  That was the prevailing view among scholars from the day, but Dr. Federspiel has done a good job of updating my know-how on the subject, and I have felt convinced to agree with him that there's indeed considerable empirical proof in support of aspects of the Biblical account.  He did not give unquestionable proof about the Exodus, but there exists certainly a preponderance of proof that a thing approximating the Biblical account occurred nearly three thousand five hundred years ago.

Although I had been advised that there was no extra Biblical empirical proof that supports the Exodus, I accepted the existence of it as both a matter of belief and together with the know-how that the Bible hadn't been written like a fictional version but was trying to be factual and was accepted as unquestionably serious by Jews, Muslims, and Christians.  Although I had been told the first 11 chapters of Genesis were essentially tribal myth and should not be taken literally, from Abraham forward, there has been empirical support for the Biblical version and archeological finds, has supported the facts surprisingly well.  Numbers may have been exaggerated, but there has been support for the existence of the folks as well as the places discussed from the text.

Because the Exodus is made reference to inside part from the Bible dealing with history as well as was taken by the Hebrew folks as true, I have at all times been accepted that the simple facts of the story are.  That doesn't necessarily mean that I accepted all of the events as literally real, as they had been recollections of men and women carried through the centuries, of a heroic history.  We existing in the modern times often exaggerate the exploits of our ancestors, and I expected no less from the Children of Israel, nevertheless in the simple facts, I always thought there has to be a general fact, which would include their arrival in Egypt hundreds of years prior to the Exodus, and the leadership of a person by the name of Moses to take a group of Semitic folks out of that land.  It did not need to appear the Hollywood version with the story to be generally real.  There may have been a relatively small number of Jews going out of Egypt along with settling contained in Palestine with the story to be real contained in my intellect.  Dr. Federspiel has convinced me that what I had assumed was indeed correct along with some thing definitely happened.  Furthermore, although it appears that a substantial amounts of Egyptian history was destroyed because of internal squabbling, fighting, wars, along with natural disasters, adequate circumstantial proof exists to support the existence of huge numbers of Semites in Egypt who came to be in Jerusalem.

I became interested to learn that a staff was found in Jordan of Tuthmoses IV ?Moses II, inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols and Graham Phillips guessed that it had belonged to Moses.   Though it is not irrefutable proof, it really is a curious hypothesis that I feel requires more analysis.  Most certainly, it proves that Egyptian along with Semitic men and women were in contact with each other within the region of modern day Israel .

1 matter that seems sure is that Moses had been a real individual.  He was referenced by both the name ?Manetho? as well as the name ?Artapanus?.  Manetho stated that the Egyptians were "troubled by calamities, in order that the divine wrath may have been averted, expelled the foreigners?their leader said to have been Moses."  If a pagan Egyptian priest living three hundred years before the Common Era had a record of the person by the name of Moses who was kicked out of Egypt to appease the gods, Moses probably existed.   Moses is actually a common Egyptian name, not a Hebrew one.  It's doubtful that the Hebrew writers of the events would have created the name from thin air.  Just the fact that they had been able to come up with an Egyptian name for their hero suggests some understanding of Egypt.  To have an Egyptian pagan priest agree with the simple facts of the story is more than an ?interesting? coincidence.  It hints that the basic events from the story really occurred along with acquired a tremendous impact on Egypt.

Don't forget that Manetho was sharing an event that occurred far more than a thousand years before his birth.  We seldom remember trivial events that occurred long ago.  Something significant must have taken place.  As a by-the-by, with the proof of an Egyptian priest, I?m convinced that the Exodus was much more significant an event than I?d first thought.  My expectations for that Exodus had been small.  I figured that a relatively few number of people escaped from Egypt then settled themselves in Palestine.  I really thought little of it in my mind, the onset of the plagues, having been the recipient of a liberal theological education.  After looking at the empirical proof submitted by Dr. Federspiel, I am nudged into becing accepting of the chance that even the plagues along with the proclaimed miracles might have some validity.   That the plagues ended up being recorded as well as remembered for 1000 years in all of Egypt, they had to have occurred, and Moses should be given credit for them.

Another thing, it seems very likely that the defeat of the military in the "Red Sea" may well have occurred also, as that could well be a reasonable reason the people recalled Moses.

It's too bad that a fire decimated the Alexandria Library and that the anti-pagan movement throughout the Christian timeframe lead to the ruination of so much material contained in Egypt.   It truly is also a tragic thing that early European Archeologists who were collecting samples from ancient Egypt had been so sloppy that they destroyed irreplaceable papyri codices as well as fragments.  Because so much material has been forever destroyed, we will never understand the complete picture of Moses and the Exodus. On the other hand, to say there is no empirical proof that has survived today appears to be far from being true.  We possess a lot of circumstantial evidence preserved by Josephus and Eusebius.  Additionally, there is possible archeological evidence being dug up to this day, though our knowledge of the hieroglyphs makes it extremely hard to decipher.  With time and further practice on deciphering of Egyptian Hieroglyphs, it seems a certainty the existence of Moses might be proven without question.