http://abcnews.go.com/International/exo ... d=18068905Link is an article suggesting a far smaller exodus, and noting the likely influence of an earlier Egyptian monotheistic pharaoh.
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http://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/cgi/v ... ntext=aussLink is a paper largely concerned with moderating the value ascribed to non-evidence, or the use of lack of archeological evidence to assert a theory.
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chrome-extension://gbkeegbaiigmenfmjfclcdgdpimamgkj/views/app.html
12/24/01 US News & World Report
The Fight for History
In the Holy Land, archaeology itself is a battleground. Will the Bible win out?
By Jeffery L. Sheler
Excerpt 1: THE EXODUS. As with the patriarch stories, there is no direct archaeological data to corroborate the biblical account of Hebrew slaves in Egypt, their release by a pharaoh after a series of plagues, or the existence of Moses. But that has not prompted the Bible's defenders to cede the field to the minimalists, who argue that the Exodus never happened. "Absence of evidence," says Kitchen, "is not evidence of absence."
Excerpt 2: The biblical details do "conform to the Canaanite experience of Late Bronze Age Egypt," says Baruch Halpern, a professor of ancient history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University. "There were Semites there (Egypt), there was forced labor, there was brick making, there was intense building activity under Ramses II." There were even reports in ancient Egyptian papyri of small numbers of runaway slaves fleeing into the Sinai desert. Though far short of proving the Exodus, some scholars argue, such evidence gives the story a ring of truth.
Excerpt 3: SETTLING THE PROMISED LAND. As the book of Joshua tells it, the Israelites took possession of the Promised Land swiftly and violently. After wandering 40 years in the Sinai wilderness, they crossed the Jordan River from the east and invaded Canaan, destroying city after city until the land was theirs. It is a story amplified--some say contradicted--in the book of Judges, where the settlement of Canaan is depicted as a long and arduous struggle marked by military and moral setbacks for the Israelites.
It is also a story that has not held up well under archaeological scrutiny. Citing a lack of evidence of sudden destruction at several key sites--such as Jericho and Ai, neither of which appears to have been occupied at the time--mainstream scholars for years have rejected the biblical description of a military conquest of Canaan. Instead, many now theorize that ancient Israel arose out of a gradual and generally peaceful infiltration, or perhaps as a result of internal social upheaval.