Did Moses Exist?

So, technically, Moses is the first man to download files from the cloud using a tablet.

I like that everyone is open minded here, they can discussed about Religious topic without being harsh on each other. Thanks man

This was well done! I studied the Bible as literature at university back in the day. We touched on several of these themes. Looking forward to the other portions.

As a historian I love the way you explain the historical method and the way you went through it throughoughly. I love this series! Also as a Muslim, I appreciate how open-minded you and other commentators are!

Poor bloke at the beginning. Imagine being king then passing away just for your body to be discovered hundreds of years later under a parking lot.

2 Minutes in and i just learned that Richard the third untill recently rested underneath a parking lot. History is sometimes so close.

Finding Richard the third under a parking lot is one of the coolest archeological discoveries ever.

I think what you also have to take into account is that, as Northrop Frye wrote, every historical text is not just "about" the time it depicts, but just as much "about" the time in which it was written, and the Bible would benefit a lot from being viewed in the same light. I think this is actually where the "truth" of the Bible lies, not necessarily in the question as to whether a person named Moses actually existed. I have heard somewhere that most of the Pentateuch (Five Books of Moses) was written at the time that the Israelites were in diaspora in Babylon; they had thus a vested interest in depicting a past for themselves which affirmed them as a united people, as well as their claim for the Holy Land. They lived as strangers in a strange land and they wanted out of it, they wanted an exodus, and what better way to affirm this than by depicting another exodus in their past, namely the one from Egypt, not to mention that the Bible as a whole is full of Exoduses as it is. And it is only conceivable that they would be inspired by the legends from the country they were living in just at that time, and adapting them to their own needs. The Five Books of Moses were in all likelihood written down by priests or scholars, and they would have had access to such material.

This channel: "Nowadays, history falls very clearly into the category of non-fiction..." History channel: A L I E N S 👽

Kind of unrelated, but Matt you should do a collaboration on the various flood narratives of the Middle East. It would be cool to see how they all match up and what differs and see if we can even pinpoint when they were written. Otherwise than that great video!

It's kewl that you brought up that all the prominent Levite names (including Moses) were Egyptian names. I learned years ago that Moses' name was, considering how close it is to the names of pharaohs Ahmose and Rameses (Hellenized version of the Egyptian name), but I hadn't realized the other Levites had Egyptian names. I"ve also heard it proposed that if the Red Sea crossing did happen, it wasn't at the deepest or widest part tha tmost people think, but at one of the narrow arms, such as the "Sea of Reeds", which is a lot narrower, as well as closer to the Canaanite lands and modern-day Israel. Since that is all part of the same tectonic rift system as the East African Rift and even the Jordan Valley, some fringe groups speculates that there was some sort of earthquake at the time and the parting was actually caused by the withdrawing of waters in anticipation of a subsequent tsunami. It's all fun to speculate on, but then, I do write science fiction and fantasy :-) One of the fringe speculators I read about tied it to the eruption of Thera that destroyed the Minoan civilization.

I thought I’d bring this up, since it wasn’t mentioned in the video and it’s one of my favorite fun little theories. It doesn’t comment at all on whether Moses was a real guy, but if you wanted to say that the basic plot points of the exodus story are based on real events, I think it’s the best way to try to date them. 1.) the battle of Kadesh is nowhere in the Torah. The single biggest battle in human history to that point, between Egypt and the Hittites, which turned them from rivals into trading partners, and there’s not a word. So if you want to have people faffing about in Sinai missing important events, that’s when you’d have them do it. It’s inconceivable that anybody living in Egypt wouldn’t have noticed such a transformative event, and since the battle physically occurred IN Canaan, they would have noticed it there as well. 2.) that’s also roughly when the transition of power between the Hyksos rulers and the 18th dynasty occurred. So if you wanted to have a guy be in tight with the Pharaoh as a youth, leave, and return as an adult to find a new pharaoh who hates him, that’s ALSO a good point to set that.

This colab idea was a match made in heaven.... literally

"Applying the Historical Method" would make a great series!

Your videos are eye openers it gives a good respect for historians and historical science

Sometimes without rigourous archelogical evidence, it's difficult to ascertain whether people from that far back actually existed at all because so much written works have long since been lost or destroyed and all that is left is oral history and written accounts from centuries later. It's basically like playing a 1000 year old game of telephone, eventually what the final receiver ends up hearing will be vastly different than what was originally conveyed. It's for the same reason that Homer's existence (the author of the Illiad) has also come into question.

"You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt." Now THAT'S a lesson to revisit in these modern times. Thank you for sharing this video with us.

It’s awesome to see such a passionate community of academic religious historians on YouTube, thanks for the really interesting videos! These videos have gotten me really interested in a topic I had no prior interest in! Wish my discipline of earth science had a similar thing to get a wider community interested

An excellent presentation, complete with much research. You are able, in all your videos, to present such historical findings in a way that does not threaten anyone's particular beliefs. Well done!

It’s weird that people keep arguing about if I ever existed 😂