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Sea Peoples

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Re: Sea Peoples

#3
When I took world history at university, one of the biggest points taken from the bronze age section was that there hadn't been any hard evidence discovered to support an exodus of Israelites from Egypt to Palestine (Canaan), and that instead the evidence leaned more toward the "Sea Peoples" being the original progenitors of Israel.

Can anyone comment on whether this is still the most common accepted theory?

Re: Sea Peoples

#4

When I took world history at university, one of the biggest points taken from the bronze age section was that there hadn't been any hard evidence discovered to support an exodus of Israelites from Egypt to Palestine (Canaan), and that instead the evidence leaned more toward the "Sea Peoples" being the original progenitors of Israel. Can anyone comment on whether this is still the most common accepted theory?

I think you may be confounding two related theories, from what I learned. There is little to no evidence for the Israelites ever being in Egypt, though there was a brief dynastic period (known to ancient historians as Hyksos, IIRC) of Canaanite rulers in Egypt, ostensibly as a brief post-war outcome, and it is possible but without evudence that some Israelites migrated during that time.

The "Sea Peoples", a term itself controversial because they don't seem to have any strict delineation in language, art, or leadership, subsumed a much larger presence in the Mediterranean, and it is during their height that we have the earliest solid evidence of Israelites, but also of other Bronze age tribes elsewhere in Greece, Anatolia, etc.

Re: Sea Peoples

#5

When I took world history at university, one of the biggest points taken from the bronze age section was that there hadn't been any hard evidence discovered to support an exodus of Israelites from Egypt to Palestine (Canaan), and that instead the evidence leaned more toward the "Sea Peoples" being the original progenitors of Israel. Can anyone comment on whether this is still the most common accepted theory?

It seems modern evidence might be leaning towards the Philistines being a subset of the Sea Peoples and having an Aegean origin (making them Greek?).

One of these findings is really recent:

These findings may represent the most conclusive evidence that Philistines were not indigenous to Canaan which is indicated by ceramics, architecture, burial customs, and pottery remains with writing – in non-Semitic languages. Lawrence Stager of Harvard University believes that Philistines came to Canaan by ships before the Battle of the Delta circa 1175 BCE. DNA was extracted from the skeletons for archaeogenetic population analysis.[14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistines#Burial_practices

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples#Philistine_hypothe...

That doesn't answer your question, but the Hebrew origin stories always place them further east from Canaan in Mesopotamia. If the Philistines were the Sea People, it makes the clash of those two different cultures (Aegean vs Near East) make sense.

Re: Sea Peoples

#6

When I took world history at university, one of the biggest points taken from the bronze age section was that there hadn't been any hard evidence discovered to support an exodus of Israelites from Egypt to Palestine (Canaan), and that instead the evidence leaned more toward the "Sea Peoples" being the original progenitors of Israel. Can anyone comment on whether this is still the most common accepted theory?

> here hadn't been any hard evidence discovered to support an exodus of Israelites from Egypt to Palestine (Canaan),

Indeed not. This is a subject that I am beginning to investigate myself, but a couple of things to note:

1. The region the Israelites stayed, Goshen, was in the Nile delta and hence a much wetter climate than the southern parts of Egypt where, as I understand it, we tend to get better preserved artifacts. The wet climate facilitates decomposition and so we have to calibrate our expectations as to what we can find.

2. The Exodus story was written several hundred years after the event. Something notable is that the story refers to the construction of the city of Pi-Ramesses, a city which did exist but had long been dismantled before the Exodus story had been written (the stones were used to build the city of Tanis). It seems strange that the writers would have gotten the detail right if the Israelites had not been there (though not impossible).

Re: Sea Peoples

#7
post #2

See Also Extra Credits on the Bronze Age Collapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkMP328eU5Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMBM1qazAXE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-8uv4D7cOE < This one in particular

Wow thanks, these were great. Can't wait for the next video in that series about the theory of systems collapse. Watching and reading about this stuff, I can't help but think about how prophetic these lessons may turn out to be for the world as we come to grips with the global effects of climate change.

Re: Sea Peoples

#9
post #4

When I took world history at university, one of the biggest points taken from the bronze age section was that there hadn't been any hard evidence discovered to support an exodus of Israelites from Egypt to Palestine (Canaan), and that instead the evidence leaned more toward the "Sea Peoples" being the original progenitors of Israel. Can anyone comment on whether this is still the most common accepted theory?

I think you may be confounding two related theories, from what I learned. There is little to no evidence for the Israelites ever being in Egypt, though there was a brief dynastic period (known to ancient historians as Hyksos, IIRC) of Canaanite rulers in Egypt, ostensibly as a brief post-war outcome, and it is possible but without evudence that some Israelites migrated during that time. The "Sea Peoples", a term itse…

This is fascinating to me. From the Wikipedia page, the story of the Hyksos and how they were driven out of Egypt sounds very similar to the book of Exodus. Even the words Hyksos and Exodus sound similar.

Re: Sea Peoples

#10
post #7
post #2

See Also Extra Credits on the Bronze Age Collapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkMP328eU5Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMBM1qazAXE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-8uv4D7cOE < This one in particular

Wow thanks, these were great. Can't wait for the next video in that series about the theory of systems collapse. Watching and reading about this stuff, I can't help but think about how prophetic these lessons may turn out to be for the world as we come to grips with the global effects of climate change.

All of extra history is great and so is crash course world history if you aren't familiar with all of world history.
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