Talk:Sources and parallels of the Exodus

New sub-article

This article is being introduced as a sub-article to "The Exodus", mostly containing materials which have been rejected as undue weight for inclusion in that main article. At this time, the references are a mix of harv-style and inline style. This will need to be fixed, but I'm waiting to see if the article survives any delete or merge discussions. JerryRussell (talk) 18:49, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Well, for what it's worth, I think something like this article should exist as an article itself. The discussion of how The Exodus does or does not mesh onto history is part of an extremely well-documented and long-lasting conversation that strikes me as very notable. Of course, an article like this could easily attract its own issues, but that's just the price Wikipedia has to pay for not sticking only to non-controversial topics. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets moved to another title, though. Alephb (talk) 20:47, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

The place to start with corrections is to look at who is doing what when. Egyptian Dynasties are strong if they can organize and schedule delivery and trade in all the materials and labor they need to function as a country but weak if bandits, mercenaries, warlords and rivals can steal away their profits.

The introduction of horses and ships with sails c 2000 BC are important historical markers. In the 12th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom Egypt has large cargo vessels rowed by crews who don't self identify as slaves but rather as entrepeneurs rowing all the way to the bab al mandab to acquire Frankencence, myhr and gold (nub).

2603:7081:7040:3D:A97F:EF18:8682:84C0 (talk) 20:40, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

By the 16th Dynasty the Hyksos have broken out of the emporia and are setting up their own trading arrangements outside of Sais. There is a lot of economic pressure to maintain monopolies that will see it take half a millenia before Egypt has to make treaties with Phoenicians and Greeks to keep its borders safe Israel has no significent role to play in the time of Merneptah but starving keepers of the Apis Bull do find a lot of injustice that wise diplomats manage to keep at a distance with big mac's c 1450 BC

Thanks. I wanted to avoid the title 'Historicity of the Exodus' because that would risk putting the entire article squarely in the "fringe" category. Whereas, the idea that there is some sort of oral cultural memory, or even some long-lost written antecedents, seems to be less academically disreputable. I think the sources I've recommended are reputable academics, even if not as timely or well qualified as one ideally might like. I would prefer to lose some content as undue or fringe, rather than getting the entire article isolated by WP:ONEWAY. JerryRussell (talk) 21:16, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Sources of article text

Parts of this article have been copied, at one time or another, from Wikipedia articles Akhenaten, Hyksos and Osarseph. Also, some of it was presented on The Exodus article and talk page by IP editor 76.11.94.233, who also introduced it at RationalWiki. And I'm about to include some content from Minoan eruption momentarily. JerryRussell (talk) 20:25, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Rosenberg comparison between Exodus & Amarna period

I am not sure about Rosenberg's qualifications, or why he is publishing in the popular press instead of in journal articles. Similar speculations are found in popular books by Ahmed Osman and Ralph Ellis. The facts seem mostly if not entirely verifiable from academic sources. Does anyone know of any academic RS that address this in a serious fashion, or debunk it? JerryRussell (talk) 21:25, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

In the Jerusalem Post article, Rosenberg says he's a fellow at Albright Institute. This seems to have been true in 2014, see:

http://www.aiar.org/fellows-and-their-projects-class-of-2014-2015/

JerryRussell (talk) 21:34, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

The Albright Institute is one of three branches that make up ASOR, which publishes the well-known archaeological peer-reviewed journal BASOR. At least in terms of employment, there's nothing that smells fishy here. Alephb (talk) 01:32, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

I've removed this as the Jerusalem Post isn't really up to stuff as a source for history and archaeology. Has Rosenberg actually published anything on the subject?--Ermenrich (talk) 14:29, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Rename

Should we rename this article Sources and parallels of the Exodus narrative?Editor2020 (talk) 23:47, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

This is an interesting question to me and I'm ambivalent, as we could assume that it's about the book. On the other hand, since the scholarly consensus is that it was not an actual event, it may be justified to use "book of Exodus" or "Exodus narrative", "Exodus founding myth", etc... Another previous argument I remember about this article is that it may exist to promote the idea that it occurred by presenting speculative evidence (I'm not saying that's the impression I get when reading it, and understand that it could contain material inspired from historic events)... —PaleoNeonate – 03:07, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Real events don't have sources and parallels ("Sources and parallels of William the Conqueror's invasion of England"? "Sources and parallels of the assassination of JFK"?). PiCo (talk) 07:34, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Haha, that's... well said. —PaleoNeonate – 07:44, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Sourcing issues

The following are cited in the article but do not appear in the bibliography:

1. Killebrew 2005
2. Sparks 2010
3. Davies 2015
4. Redmount 2001
5. Barmash 2015b
6. Moore & Kelle 2011
7. Dever 2001
8. Shaw 2002
9. Miller 2009
10. Cline 2007
11. Dever 2003
12. Grisanti 2011
13. Pratico & DiVito 1993
14. Van Seters 1997
15. Soggin 1998
16. Finkelstein & Silberman 2002
17. Faye 2013
18. Hayes & Miller 1986
19. Davies 1998
20. Thompson 1999
21. Hoffmeier 2005
22. Fretheim 1991
23. Foster 1996
24. Davis 1990
25. Wiener 1998

Obviously this is a major problem. Some of these (probably) appear at The Exodus, but not all of them.--Ermenrich (talk) 17:57, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

If you look at the edit history, a lot was copied from other articles. That's probably the reason. It would probably be possible to go edit by edit through the history where large chunks were copied, but that would be a pain.

A worse problem is the disconnect between this article and others. Eg the expulsion of the Hyksos doesn't match Hyksos, and this article still keeps Josephus's false etymology. Doug Weller talk 18:09, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for working up the list, Ermenrich. I'd noted two, but didn't have the time to press on. You went the extra mile. One just mustn't copy from other wiki articles like this and create a synthesis. For one the practice assumes wiki is reliable, whereas, as we all know, any source taken from one page in such a process must be controlled and verified before re-adaptation. At the risk of chucking out the possible baby in the barfwater (with apologies to Mario Liverani who used this in reviewing Bernal's work), I reckon the above gives sufficient grounds for giving the whole article the flick pass (cockney football slang). Editors just shouldn't be burdened with ferreting out a potential nugget in a mullock heap of recycled 'stuff'. The neat format gave the same impression as a Potemkin village. Nishidani (talk) 18:35, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

The problem Doug identifies is a real one - I'm having quite a laborious time of it with the little section I moved over on Egyptian parallel narratives trying to make the text conform to the sources. My feeling is that probably this article should simply be redirected back to The Exodus#Origins and historicity. Maybe there's something that can be salvaged from here, but it won't be easy.--Ermenrich (talk) 19:56, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Texts from the Ramesside Period - A proposal

The article on The Exodus states that most scholars who believe that some sort of Exodus happened place its date around the times of the Ramesside Period, that is, somewhere between the reign of Ramses II and that of Ramses III. However, this article does not have any section dedicated to any proposed sources or paralles of the Exodus coming from that specific period, nor it makes reference to any of the texts or inscriptions that the proponents of this theory, such as Manfred Bietak[1][2], have aduced in support of this position.

Given our previous discussion at Talk:The Exodus, I suggest this article should have a section dedicated to the Ramesside Period and refer to the texts that Bietak and other scholars have cited as probable sources and/or paralles to the biblical story.

@tgeorgescu, @Ermenrich: What is your opinion about my proposal? Potatín5 (talk) 15:01, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

@Potatín5: I say go ahead. You might not guess it, but I'm fairly tolerant with WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV stuff. tgeorgescu (talk) 17:33, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

@Potatin5: go ahead. This article is generally very bad, it used to be part of The Exodus until someone decided to split it off over here. I think I went through and removed some of the most egregious stuff a few years ago, but this article suffers from the illness of many split-off Wikipedia articles no body wants to invest the time to fix it but is judged too likely to be deserving of a separate article to delete when someone proposes merging or deleting it.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:56, 21 November 2022 (UTC)