Archeology

Archeology:

A couple of months ago I caught the tail end of a National Geographic special about the archeology of the exodus from Egypt. There is no archeological evidence of the exodus. I thought “What? They’re lying!” Or they haven’t found it yet, or they just deny it.

Then I started reading. The thing is – there is little archeological evidence to support anything being the way it is told in the bible earlier than when Josiah was king, approximately 640 – 609 BCE. Prior to that time, there’s no evidence that there was any literacy in Judah or Israel, and in fact, the bible was not written down until the 7th century BCE. Therefore, Moses did not write the Pentateuch. Moses didn’t exist. The exodus never happened. The Israelites were never in Egypt in the first place. The wonderful, rich, powerful united kingdom under David and Solomon never existed. The walls of Jericho never came tumbling down because Jericho was not a walled city at the time of the nonexistent exodus. The northern kingdom, Israel, and the southern kingdom, Judah, really didn’t exist as anything that would be called a “kingdom” at the same time. Israel arose first and was conquered first, then later, Judah arose and was conquered. The bible was written and it is from the southern perspective and glorifies the southern kingdom’s “history”. It was written in an attempt to unify these two areas and so made up a common past to stir national pride.

Once I started digesting those things, my first thought was – God does not exist. I have to say that as I write this, I still feel that way somewhat, but I’ll go along with the idea of his existence for now. Second thought was – a tremendous sense of a weight, tons of it, being removed. All those years of being taught one thing, only to understand it was not literally true, opened up such a huge freedom, that I felt happy, at ease, relaxed for the first time.

It also gave me true freedom to believe or not. That may not make much sense to some, but it really does. I think that deep in their hearts most people that say they are Christians believe for only one reason, they think it will keep them from going to hell. Or as some put it, they’ve got fire insurance.