If the Israelites really had spent centuries in Egypt, then Hebrew should be filled to the brim with Egyptian loanwords and Jewish culture should contain Egyptian influence. But only a small percentage of Hebrew is Egyptian in-origin and is primarily limited to a few individual names and technical terms rather than everyday vocabulary. Egyptian influence on Jewish culture is also minimal or outright non-existent.For comparison, we know the Jews did actually spend 70 years in Babylon and look at that those 70 years did; Hebrew was replaced by Aramaic as the common language of the Jews, the Israelite calendar was replaced by the Babylonian one, and even the Bible (particularly Genesis) has Mesopotamian influences. In addition, look at the Norman conquest of England and how much Norman rule made the English language more French than Germanic.The fact that Egyptian influence on Jewish culture is minimal or outright non-existent proves the Israelites could not have spent centuries in Egypt.
They were working under the rule of the Egyptian Empire. Lots of societies were. Of course it was dramatized to say that they personally used God to trick Pharaoh into letting them go. But really they were a Canaanite offshoot far away from the royal palace. However it's still very clear that they inherited from Egyptian civilization since the spoken and written languages are cousins and there was constant cultural exchange. It's also very normal to represent some impossibly complex information as stories about people doing things, just like all the other religions like to do. In this case it would've been about the hardship of the Bronze Age Collapse with military skirmishes, famine, migrations, political realignments and so on.
>>18702624The "Israelites" were still polytheistic Canaanites at the time of Exodus. It wasn't until centuries later that they gradually started to transition from polytheism to henotheism to monotheism.
>>18702624Why didn’t Egyptians write down anything that happened in Exodus?
>>18702708not OP but personally I think they reformed from Canaanite polytheism because they were ashamed of how it let others identify them. Israelites could see the superiority of every kingdom surrounding them, even their Canaanite cousins to the north in Cathage. I think it caused Israelites to try and re-brand so they could detach from their identity as inferiors. For all the sacrifices they made to their polytheistc gods, Israelites were never given the strength to defend their most holiest of holiest from being destroyed by invaders. Multiple multiple times lol. Genuinely Israelites are some of the biggest losers in history. Carthage at least put up a fight in some wars against Rome, which they lost, but still. A proper account of defense was made for themselves. Worshipers of Ba'al in Carthage seemed more effective than worshipers of Yaweh to strengthen/advance Canaanite civilization, and I'm sure that made the Israelites seethe while they worshipped Yaweh in the south.
>>18702727Because "exodus" wasn't a biblical event. There was never a a sudden migration of millions of slaves in Egypt. A few dozen, maybe. In any case it was a number so insignificant that it wasn't even worth recording. The bible is propaganda and lies.
>>18702729Also, the narrative of polytheism being apostasy is most certainly a retcon. In reality polytheism was the original religion and monotheism is the innovation, not the other way around. This is backed up by the fact that even after the Israelites “repented”, polytheism remained the sole religion of the region deep into the Persian period as evidenced by the Elephantine papyri, meaning that Ezra most certainly did not exist.Jewish monotheism as we know it did not exist at all until the late 3rd century BC at earliest. The exodus narrative was certainly written as a response to Manetho, not the other way around and the archeology around the Hyksos and Shasu of Yahweh has vindicated Manetho.
>>18702624This could be argued for the Canaanite languages as a whole. Canaan was ruled by Egyptians for at least 300 years, and most of them don’t have significant Egyptian borrowing, to my knowledge, only Hebrew does.This makes more sense when realizing that Egypt didn’t go out of their way to enforce language conformity because of economic convenience. By the estimated Exodus era, there were significant Canaanite populations working in the western Sinai in mining operations (i.e. gold, precious stones) which predated the conquest of Canaan (c. 1500 BC) by at least 400 years. Disrupting their supply of precious materials by forcing a new language on the mining populations would cost a great deal of effort for very little gain.>Just speaking the same language doesn’t make you mine more/faster.So the Semitic languages in Egypt were left alone for economic reasons.An Exodus in this timeframe would then expect Hebrew to NOT have changed, yet it does retain Egyptian influence. By the story’s bare bones, they would’ve lived among the native Egyptians, not just in the desert near them, so being bilingual necessarily becomes more common.It’d show despite Egyptian economic policy to not force their language onto Canaanites, Hebrew acquired Egyptian influence anyway, showing it was in much closer proximity to Egypt than any other Canaanite tongue, by extension placing its speakers there too.The difference with Babylon and Aramaic then is twofold:>the Israelites at that time were conquered strictly for conquest’s sake. There was no economic incentive like in Egypt to preserve Hebrew for trade, so the language got displaced.>Aramaic and Hebrew are much closer together as languages than Egyptian and Hebrew, at times mutually intelligible. It’d be like placing an English & Dutch speaker in a room together versus an English & Greek speaker. Because Dutch is closer to English than Greek, Dutch would take hold much faster. Likewise Aramaic with Hebrew.
>>18702624Everything about Christianity needs you to bury your head in the sand to believe in this man-God who died for your sins.It's no wonder it's dying, and its last adherents are like rabid dogs on this board. not one religious bone in them
>>18702624that would make sense except it is obvious to misproove because hebrew is babylonian. that captivity there (which came long after egypt) completely floored their language and culture to that of babylon.
>>18702774>Egypt didn’t go out of their way to enforce language conformityActually they did as the vast majority of surviving Levantine texts from this time are in Egyptian
>>18702973my understanding was egyptian texts like those were mainly administrativecertainly from a practical standpoint it would not be good to enforce on the plebs because their hieroglyphic system was extremely difficult to learn and use consonant based writing (which was inspired by hieroglyphics) was much better for everyone who had to address non-imperial matters
>>18702973>>18702985>my understanding was Egyptian texts like those were mainly administrativeThat about fits the archaeological remains we have.We have a lot of fragments written in the Canaanite scripts from Sinai and Canaan, particularly on everyday and personal items.While there were certainly some writings in Egyptian at this time in the region (i.e. Nahr al-Kalb stelae of Ramesses II, picrel), the writing on commonly used objects is significantly Canaanite. Possibly indicative of a bilingual culture, but Canaanite was certainly used and popular.Online sampling of Canaanite fragments:https://grammar.katabiblon.com/?page=ea
>>18702985Have you considered there’s a difference between spoken language and written language? Obviously they wouldn’t have learned to write hieroglyphs, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have learned spoken Egyptian
>>18702624But anon, have you considered that uh... God deleted all traces of Exodus, or maybe it was the Egyptians, or the Jews. YOU JUST HAVE TO HABEEB IT.
>>18702624Interestingly evidence points to Jews adopting circumcision from the Egyptians.
