Where Did the Bible Happen

Egypt knew no Pharaohs nor Israelites by Ashraf Ezzat
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Biblical archaeology has always been in a conundrum. The archaeology does not support the narrative of the Old Testament. No proof of the patriarchs, no strong proof of the First Temple. Egyptian records scarcely mention the Israelites who had been slave there for over four hundred years. No left overs of the Israelite exodus in the Sinai desert and nothing remains from King David and Solomon. This has lead many in Israel and abroad to speculate that the bible is naught but a collection of Faery tales.

Other historians, most notably in the Arab world, feel that the Biblical stories are true. After all they are repeated in the Koran. They supposedly happened elsewhere, in Southern Arabia and North Yemen. Historically Egypt had never been called Misr or Mizraim. It was always called gobt or copt. Kemerovo was an orientalist name attached to the country. So this author contends. I have my doubts in this. Egypt has kings and queens not pharoahs. Pharoahs actually meant house in ancient Egyptian. This I know to be true. The descriptions of land scape do not match what is described in Egypt rather a walled fortress in Arabia. In the Asir region of Arabia there is a town or village called Misra and it was lead by a titular office of Faroan. Plutarch and Herodotus went rough Egypt and there was no mention of Israelites. Had the story take place there, along with the ten plagues the Egyptians would have definitely remembered. Nor was there any mention of Jews or Israelites mentioned in the land of Canaan. More over when the Israelites supposedly escaped the Holy Land was under Egyptian control. It has been noted that during the tenth century BC there is no evidence that Jerusalem was capital of the kingdom many of the place names correspond to p,aces in Arabia as do the tribal names corresponding to tribes in Arabia. The author contends that the Baby.onian and Assyrian invasions were meant to control the spice trade routes which never crossed into what we call Canaan. What started this so called fraud why the Septuagint written by 70 Rabbis.

The author is not the only one subscribing to this theory. Back in the 1980's the theory was advanced by professor Kamal Salibi, who noticed e similarity of biblical place names in Arabia. I found him much more level headed in his presentation. This author is highly opinioted often times criticizing Zionism and calling their information and beliefs propaganda. Such talk has no place in a book of this nature. Stick to facts. For sources I would say that sadly half of them were from Wikipedia and the other half legitimate. Too bad because it looks like it could be a hypothesis worth investigating if the Saudis would allow archaeological digs to take place there. There was once a Jewish Himyarites kingdom there and Jews do have extensive history there. I do believe Mount Sinai is located in Arabia and that part of their wandering so took place there.

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