We actually do.

There's a lot of claims in the exodus story which would have left behind corroborative histories. For example, the death of a large amount of the population along with the pharaohs son. The destruction of pharaoh's army. Records of ancient hebrew slaves.

Ancient Egyptians left behind a pretty large amount of history and documentation. They were also surrounded by other civilizations that also left a decent bit of documentation.

▲

Brendinooo 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>The destruction of pharaoh's army

Given what we know about how the Egyptians recorded history, we would definitely not expect to find them writing about stuff that would have embarrassed them.

>Records of ancient hebrew slaves

Look up Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446 - it shows that Egypt held slaves with Semitic names in roughly the correct time period.

>They were also surrounded by other civilizations that also left a decent bit of documentation

Israel being one of them!

	▲	cogman10 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Given what we know about how the Egyptians recorded history, we would definitely not expect to find them writing about stuff that would have embarrassed them. That's exactly the sort of stuff they wrote about all the time. We know about the various wars and political conflicts throughout the second intermediate period precisely because that's what the Egyptians liked documenting. And, in particular, during the supposed time of the exodus the Egyptian kingdom was fairly divided. Even if one kingdom was too proud to write about a defeat, the others would be sure to document it. > Look up Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446 - it shows that Egypt held slaves with Semitic names in roughly the correct time period. Read up about the Canaanites. They were on the uprise during this period and they are also believed to be the actual origin of the Hebrews. > Israel being one of them! No even according to the bible. Israel didn't exist before the exodus. Definitely not for decades and even centuries afterwards. The oldest records of the exodus are nowhere near the event. The closest record we have is around 900BCE.

▲

palmotea 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> There's a lot of claims in the exodus story which would have left behind corroborative histories.

There's a lot of distance between having claims in the account not supported by evidence and it being an "entirely fictional account."

I wouldn't be surprised if truth is that it has a factual core with significant embellishment, to the point where the boundary is not discernible by history/archeology.

▲

cogman10 an hour ago | parent [-]

People wandering in the desert for 40 years, or even 1 year, leave traces. Especially when it's thousands of people (at a minimum).

The Hebrew language came long after the exodus. We have no earlier records of it that aren't written in Hebrew.

So what we have is writings written hundreds of years later documenting an event with no earlier writings verifying that documentation.

It's possible that a small group of slaves escaped egypt and that was the actual origin of the exodus story which just kept growing and growing with retellings.

	▲	xenadu02 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I liken it to the story of Noah. Whether that was the mediterranean re-joining the Atlantic and thus oral re-tellings from a much much earlier event or merely a localized flood you can certainly imagine someone preparing for a flood and surviving localized or wide-spread destruction. But two of every animal? That's not a stable genetic population. Hell there are 40,000 or more species of spiders! There is simply no possibility that you could even fit enough animals on a boat of any kind to make that story work. If it did happen the immediate result would be complete genetic collapse and extinction. The idea is abject nonsense but the core story probably happened. It is easy to imagine a large group of slaves escaping or being freed from Egypt. Maybe they or their ancestors were war captives. But wandering the desert for 40 years? Yeah right. Even if you want to grant miracles the idea that all of Egypt would even know about such events at that time is bananas. Information didn't travel that fast. Probably one group of people in one city. And the antagonist could easily have been a local lord. Over time it became the Pharaoh and the 18 months of wandering turned into 40 years. Only then it was written down.