I made an edit to the first post on this thread explaining that the claim of finding a golden wheel at the bottom of the Red Sea was a hoax.
I felt really betrayed when I found that out.
However, there are scholars who believe there is some evidence backing the Israelites living in Egypt and sudden departure from there.
David Rohl is one of those scholars.
Interestingly, he is an agnostic. He treats the Bible as a history book and has done much research on the Israelites in Egypt and the Exodus.
I’m not sure if I agree with all of his interpretations and his timeline, but he does present a good case for the Exodus in his books and when appearing in the documentary
Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus.
http://davidrohl.blogspot.com/2012/01/about-david-rohl.html
With degrees in Egyptology, Ancient History, Mycenaean Archaeology and Levantine Archaeology, Rohl is a genuine scholar with a full list of academic credentials, but, at the same time, is seen as a highly original thinker. The Kirkus Review called his best-selling first book ‘a ground breaking analysis of archaeological evidence for the historicity of the early books of the Old Testament … a work with profound implications for both Biblical and Egyptian history … a breathtaking archaeological tour de force.’
has a lot of information on David Rohl’s work.
Patterns of Evidence Trailer
Patterns of Evidence review:
https://www.icr.org/article/encore-presentation-patterns-evidence
Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus discusses many interesting archaeological artifacts and site excavations that can be interpreted as supporting the biblical account. I really enjoyed watching it. It is free to watch on tubitv:
https://tubitv.com/movies/500738/patterns_of_evidence_exodus
00:29:00 David Rohl discussed 12 tombs that could belong to Joseph and his brothers as well as a possible statue of Joseph
00:31:00 Dr. Charles Aling, Egyptologist, University of Northwestern, St. Pau, discusses the likelihood of the statue being of Joseph
00:40:00 What could have been Joseph’s tomb was empty, which corresponds with the biblical account that the Israelites took his body with them in the Exodus
00:50:00 Discussion about an egyptian papyrus from the 13th Dynasty, the middle kingdom, called the “Brooklyn Document” naming asiatic slaves. Some of those names are the same as Hebrew names also found in the Bible.
01:05:00 “Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage” - similarities between an ancient Egyption document and the 10 plagues (01:13:00 date of Middle Kingdom is given for document)
01:21:30 David Rohl discusses evidence of rapid burial and sudden abandonment
01:23:00 Egyptian tradition that God smote the Egyptians before they were conquered. Hyskos were likely the conquerors.
01:30:00 Summary of evidence of Jericho
01:37:00 Archaeological report detailing evidence of houses matching the description of Rahab’s house.
01:50:00 Timeline
Excerpt from an interview with David Rohl:
https://popular-archaeology.com/article/the-exodus-myth-or-history/
Question 6: So basically, if we look several centuries further back in time from the reign of Ramesses everything begins to fit together?
David Rohl: That is not quite the right way to see it. Ramesses II’s dates are now lower, shifting down by three centuries. He is now a king of the tenth century BC and therefore a contemporary of Solomon (whose dates have not shifted). It is then interesting to discover that Ramesses had a hypocoristicon or short-form of his name used throughout Canaan. He was called Shisha … does that remind you of a certain pharaoh who plundered the Temple of Solomon in 925 BC?
Looking further back in time, the biblical Exodus date of 1447 BC now falls in what Egyptologists call the Second Intermediate Period, which is the archaeological period known as the Middle Bronze IIA-IIB. It was at this time that we find a huge city, lying underneath the 19th Dynasty capital of Pi Ramesse (biblical Raamses), known in the contemporary texts as Avaris. And this Middle Bronze Age city, located in the land of Goshen, was teaming with Semites who had initially migrated from Canaan into the Egyptian delta. They then abruptly abandon the city and disappear. About half a century later the city of Jericho is violently destroyed, its walls falling down in an apparent earthquake. Jericho is then burnt to the ground and abandoned for nearly 600 years. All the cities described in the Book of Joshua as being ‘placed under the curse of destruction’ are also destroyed at this time.
