Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Harold Holmyard <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Joel Stucki wrote:

> There is no text outside the Tanakh that supports the existence of the
> people and events described in it before the Monarchy. None at all.
> Please list even one reference to such a text. The works you cite
> (while I am not familiar with all of them) give contextual clues and
> supporting arguments of how the story could have fit inside the known
> history of the ancient world. They may also point out places in the
> text where events described match nicely with what is known about the
> time and place described. But this is only evidence that what they
> describe could have happened, not evidence that it did happen.
>
> For the record I believe in the general historicity of the Tanakh. I
> would love nothing more than for someone to unearth a copy of the
> Torah from 1200 BCE. Such a find would shake the world even more than
> the DSS. I would love for someone to find Egyptian records of Moshe,
> the exodus and the plagues. But alas these records have not been found
> and the support for the biblical claims rests entirely on faith.
>  


HH: I don't know how absolutely you are speaking, but let me mention the 
Merneptah stele, which at least mentions the name of Israel as a people 
in about 1230 B.C.:

http://www.allaboutarchaeology.org/merneptah-stele-faq.htm

Yours,
Harold Holmyard