Did Prophet Musa Actually Exist?

[Zendegi]

I have been reading few articles on the internet and I came across one which doubted that Prophet Muss ever existed and Exodus from Egypt never happened which is claimed Archaeologists and Historians citing new Archaeological evidence, historical evidence and related origin myths and also they claim there is no evidence of the Exodus ever happening or Moses ever existed outside of Religion. What are you guys thoughts on this claim that Moses never existed and neither did the Exodus ever happen? I am quite confused.

[Khalilallah]

Meh, atheist nonsense.

 

We are past proving Moses existed, how else do you explain the number of Jews?

[Zendegi]

Apparently they claim there is no historical evidence for the Jews being ever enslaved in Egypt other than in religious texts. There was extensive archaeology done on the Sinai Peninsula during the 40 years of wandering in the desert according to the Exodus and they couldn't find proof of any civilization according to what is said in the Bible and they claim the story of Moses and Exodus was rather a myth, which I can't obviously agree with but the finding seem very convincing.

[notme]

I have been reading few articles on the internet and I came across one which doubted that Prophet Muss ever existed and Exodus from Egypt never happened which is claimed Archaeologists and Historians citing new Archaeological evidence, historical evidence and related origin myths and also they claim there is no evidence of the Exodus ever happening or Moses ever existed outside of Religion. What are you guys thoughts on this claim that Moses never existed and neither did the Exodus ever happen? I am quite confused.

 

There is evidence that a time period in ancient Egyptian history was wiped from the books/monuments.  There is evidence if "Eber" slaves who migrated from the Canaanite region prior to the wiped away time period.  There is evidence of a Pharaoh who believed in monotheism (as in the story of Joseph/Yusuf), but was later hated, scorned, and his history erased by later pharaohs.  He was the father or grandfather (you can check, I forgot which) of Tutankhamen.  That is why Tutankhamen's tomb was unknown and therefore not robbed by the ancients - his history was not known.  Whether history has been preserved or not doesn't make a difference to faith, but it is interesting nonetheless.

[Haydar Husayn]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. A single archeological find can reverse a whole theory, so I wouldn't put too much emphasis on what they say. Also keep in mind that the story in the Quran of the Exodus is not the same as in the Bible. According to the Bible, around 2.5 millions Jews came out of Egypt, and that's why the archeologists assume that evidence should be easy to find. The Qur'an doesn't mention any such number.

 

Another interesting theory I once read, on a Christian Biblical archeology site, was that maybe we are looking in the wrong desert. The SInai desert we have today is very small, and it's a little hard to believe that people could be lost of 40 years in it (although obviously it could happen due to a miracle). The theory was that the sea the Jews crossed was actually the one separating Egypt from Arabia, and it was in the Arabian desert that they were lost for 40 years. As far as I know, the Quran doesn't specify where the desert was exactly.

 

In any case, there is a lot of unbelief out there, and since it is basically the default setting in academia, they will always favour explanations that cast doubt on religion. Obviously their theories do need to be answered, but I wouldn't let the fact that they haven't yet been able to find something allow you to lose faith.

[narsis]

We have to keep this point in mind that geologically it is possible that a land or peninsula could change during the time.

[Al-Khattati]

I have been reading few articles on the internet and I came across one which doubted that Prophet Muss ever existed and Exodus from Egypt never happened which is claimed Archaeologists and Historians citing new Archaeological evidence, historical evidence and related origin myths and also they claim there is no evidence of the Exodus ever happening or Moses ever existed outside of Religion. What are you guys thoughts on this claim that Moses never existed and neither did the Exodus ever happen? I am quite confused.

 

Salams,

 

I have a book by an archeologist/egyptologist called "On The Reliability of the the Old Testament": 

 

 

http://www.amazon.com/On-Reliability-Old-Testament-Kitchen/dp/0802803962/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414525528&sr=8-1&keywords=reliability+of+the+old+testament

 

He is actually a Professor Emeritus of Egyptology and Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Archaeology, Classics, and Oriental Studies at the University of Liverpool, England. He is one of the top scholars in the field and his book answers various questions regarding the existence of various biblical events and persons. 

 

Luckily enough, William Lane Craig has answered this question and even referred to this book so I will save myself some time and copy paste his response here:

 

As for the Exodus, I want to commend to you a book that I have here on my desk by the famed Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen entitled On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 2003). Kitchen’s lengthy chapter 6 is devoted to a discussion of the Exodus and the Sinai wanderings of Israel in light of archaeology. You’re quite right to say that archaeology does not afford a proof of the Exodus. But Kitchen explains in some detail why no such proof should be expected. For example, he points out,

 

 

The Delta is an alluvial fan of mud deposited through many millennia by the annual flooding of the Nile; it has no source of stone within it. Mud, mud and wattle, and mud-brick structures were of limited duration and use, and were repeatedly leveled and replaced, and very largely merged once more with the mud of the fields. . . . The mud hovels of brickfield slaves and humble cultivators have long since gone back to their mud origins, never to be seen again. . . . And, as pharaohs never monumentalize defeats on temple walls, no record of the successful exit of a large bunch of foreign slaves (with loss of a full chariot squadron) would ever have been memorialized by any king, in temples in the Delta or anywhere else. On these matters, once and for all, biblicists must shed their naïve attitudes and cease demanding ‘evidence’ that cannot exist (p. 246).

 

 

Kitchen also marshals positive evidence to show the historical credibility of the Exodus narratives (such as the otherwise inexplicable quintupling of the population of the land of Canaan between 1210-1150 B.C.). The salient question is not whether we have a proof of the historicity of the Exodus but whether the evidence disproves the historicity of the Exodus. It does not.

 

 

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/problems-with-the-old-testament#ixzz3HTGQwogC

Edited October 28, 2014 by Al-Khattati