Reply #19: Loved the show, and have a different reaction to it [View All]

Rather than debunking the Exodus, it actually places it in a surprisingly close time frame--between 1279 BCE when Ramses II took power in Egypt, and ~1250 BCE which was the time of the dissolution of Hazor. It does say that not all of the self-identified "Israelites" were part of that Exodus, but that it remained a powerful defining event as the rest were lower class refugees from other places, especially the rebellion at Hazor.

It also describes the villages they built in the hills up until the time of King David's reign as eschewing class differences or conspicuous consumption. The description in the program, accurate or not, makes the early Israelites sound like the first Socialists--a group that knew of hierarchical societies and could afford at least some showy geegaws, but deliberately rejected such, valuing universal freedom above all.

The documentary also says that archaelogists have uncovered evidence of David's palace, and fortifications built by King Solomon. Most interestingly it describes the path to monotheism as erratic, with observance waxing and waning since its original adoption, and not taking firm hold until the exile in Babylon after the destruction of the first temple.

It even traces the 4 letter representation of the name of God to a specific locality where the Bible places Moses's burning bush. The Shasu people of this section of southern Canaan had a town and a god they called by the first 3 letters of that name.

The one thing the documentary does seem to debunk is the story of a pre-Exodus separate people in Canaan descended from an immigrant named Abraham. At this time the consensus seems to be that the Israelites were pretty much all lower-class Canaanites. But since in antiquity slaves were often people who had been captured or defeated in war, who knows if back in the mists of time, some of those rebellious slaves were not perhaps descended from captured nomads, somehow ethnically different from the ruling Canaanites?

Also the program recounts the latest evidence that early Hebrew was being written by ~600 BCE, much earlier than previously thought, meaning that the tales in the Bible could have gelled at that time.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bible/evid-flash.html

Perhaps because I've long thought of the Hebrew Bible as being mostly a compilation of metaphors, with, say, King David, standing for an entire tribe, my reaction was that the documentary established much more literal historic truth than I expected to exist. We do have some history from other areas dating back to the Bronze Age, so I probably shouldn't have been so surprised.