Monday, July 14, 2008

New Movie To Expose Efforts To Deny History Of The Exodus

A new movie is coming out:


In her article Deniers of Ancient Israelite History Exposed, Rachel Neuwirth, political commentator and analyst, gives more detail about the movie:
Filmmaker Tim Mahoney’s "The Exodus Conspiracy",[1] due to be released within a few months, seeks to demonstrate the historical accuracy of the Biblical narrative of the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt on the basis of recent archaeological discoveries and geographic explorations. A secondary thesis of the film is that the “Red Sea” crossed by the Israelites was the Gulf of Aquaba (called the Gulf of Eilat by modern-day Israelis), rather than “Sea of Reeds” in Egypt, as most Biblical scholars have always assumed, and that the true “Mount Sinai” or “Mount Horeb” of the Exodus narrative is in northern Saudi Arabia, and is not the Mt. Sinai shown to pilgrims and tourists over the centuries in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
What is especially interesting about the movie is the side issue of the attempts in the Arab world to deny the historic ties of Jews to Israel. Apparently, Palestinian Arabs are not alone in this regard.

For instance, Egypt has done its share to deny history:
To bolster the case for the historicity of the exodus, Mahoney cites recent archaeological work in the region that was once called “the land of Goshen,” described in the Bible as the home of the Israelite people during their four hundred year sojourn in Egypt. These archaeological explorations have uncovered the presence of a substantial Semitic population there—which suddenly disappeared in the 13Th Dynasty of Egypt. This just happens to be the same era in which, many historians have surmised from surviving Egyptian historical records as well as references in the Biblical account, the Exodus must have taken place.

The people who lived in this region on the eastern edge of the Nile Delta, until their sudden and mysterious disappearance, kept sheep, which the Israelites raised and the Egyptians did not raise. The architectural style of their houses was characteristic of the Fertile Crescent region and different from that of contemporary Egyptian houses.

Most interestingly, perhaps, there is an elaborate tomb in this area of a high official of a Pharaoh’s government, which could easily be the tomb of the patriarch Joseph. Remnants of paint on a statue of the man even suggest that he wore a coat of many colors!

At around the same time and the same place, there is evidence of a sharp increase in deaths and mass graves have been found, as if victims of a plague were hastily buried without the usual funeral rites. Evidence of the slaying of the Egyptian first-born by the angel of death, as the Book of Exodus records?

Yet no archaeologist working in this region of Egypt has been willing to say publicly that he or she believes that the Semitic people who inhabited the Land of Goshen , and then mysteriously disappeared from it, were the Israelites. Why not? According to several scholars and archaeologists whom Mahoney interviewed, the answer is fear: the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr. Zahi A. Hawass, decides personally which archaeologists will be allowed to work in Egypt, and he would never allow any archaeologist who expressed a belief in an ancient Israelite presence in the country to work there.
To the east of Israel, Saudi Arabia--which is behind the upcoming meeting of religious leaders in Madrid--apparently also has something to hide:
If there is subtle, quiet intimidation of archaeologists in Egypt, the intimidation of them in Saudi Arabia has been anything but subtle. Explorers convinced that the Biblical ‘mountain of God,” where He revealed the Law to the Israelites, is in northern Arabia, rather than in the Sinai Peninsula where post-Biblical tradition places it, have encountered fierce opposition from the Saudi authorities. One exploration party was subjected to 78 days of imprisonment. Several have encountered armed Saudi soldiers and police ordering them to evacuate the area immediately. Even the personal physician to a high-ranking Saudi prince, armed with a personal letter from the prince authorizing him to explore anywhere in Saudi Arabia, was denied entry to this area by armed guards. Why, Mahoney and his interviewees ask, is the Saudi government so intent on hiding ancient ruins and inscriptions?

One reason may be that the explorers have discovered a mountain on which are located the remains of religious altars, ancient Semitic inscriptions, and evidence of major encampments by nomads at the base of the mountain—all of which are elements, of course, of the Biblical narrative of the Revelation at Sinai. If the Exodus really took place in northern Saudi Arabia as Mr. Mahoney and his interviewees maintain, then the Arab claim to be the sole “indigenous” inhabitants even of the Arabian Peninsula itself, let alone “Palestine,” could be thrown into doubt.
Then of course, there are always the Palestinian Arabs denying historical fact as well--by destroying the proof:
Mahoney also places the obstructionist tactics of the Egyptian and Saudi governments within the broader context of the archaeological “front” of the Arab-Israeli conflict—a “front” that includes denials by Palestinian Arab religious and political leaders that there ever was a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, despite the overwhelming historical and archaeological evidence of the presence of two magnificent Jewish temples there over a 1,000-year period. As a part of their effort to cover up the ancient Jewish presence at the Temple Mount, the Muslim religious authorities who have been allowed to control the site by Israel have carted away and dumped tons of rich ancient soil containing archaeological remains of the two Temples. The shocking desecration and destruction of the tomb of the Biblical patriarch Joseph, who first led the Israelites to Egypt, by Palestinian Arab “militants” in Nablus (the Biblical Israelite city of Shechem) was yet another “action” in the archaeological- historical front of the war. It is as if the Palestinian Arab “militants” think that they can erase the ancient Jewish inhabitant of the land by destroying the surviving physical remains of that presence. The Arabs are waging a war against history itself in an effort to uphold their claims. The Israeli diplomat and scholar Dore Gold, author of The Fight for Jerusalem,[8] in a brief on-camera interview in the film, lucidly summarizes the Jerusalem-Palestine “front” in the Arab war against Israelite-Jewish history. However, additional documentaries are needed to explore more fully this front of the propaganda-misinformation war against Israel and history.
More information about the movie is available at http://www.exodusconspiracy.com.
It should be interesting. According to Mahoney:
"I've shown it to rabbis and pagans, and I've gotten excellent reviews from both,"
I guess you can't do better than that.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Egypt's not only into denying history, but there's now a proposed law that would control present day reporting; it would:

"establish a new national agency to issue all broadcast licenses, and to regulate and censor all forms of broadcast media. It defines broadcast media very broadly to include the internet and all other forms of communicating text, video or audio." What oppression, what indoctrination. And Egypt's called a "moderate" and a "democracy"!

Daled Amos said...

It is a measure of the desperation to find moderates in the Middle East.

We are accustomed to assuming that labeling terrorists as freedom fighters is purely a reflection of anti-Zionism. There is that, but there is also a real need in the West to reassure ourselves that there really is something noble and not just the bloodthirsty murder by Islamists that occurs with such frequency.