Wikiposters discuss the historical merits of the Biblical Exodus

This 911roofer post introduced me to /r/wikipedia, a subreddit where apparently redditors post wikipedia articles . From a brief glance it seems that most of these posts are blatant agenda posts designed to bait politisperging and slapfights Let's take a look shall we?

I found this thread pretty quickly: the linked article is Sources and Parallels of the Exodus. Immediately redditors jump in crowing how fake the bible is:

Not really surprising. All peoples had their origin myths but not all of them wrote them down or had people read them for thousands of years. Most everything in the Bible pre-Babylonian exile is questionable because that's the time at which the strict Yahwists became predominant over the polytheists. The Exodus story makes more sense if you imagine it as one told by an exile community in Babylon trying to reinforce their faith and cultural cohesion. Or returning from exile and refounding a kingdom. There was certainly continuity with earlier legends and memories, but even the best kept legends aren't quite historical records.

Very few people create a myth where they were all slaves at some point in the past.

Another comment springs a multi pronged

Wow shocking….a religious text not being historically accurate after thousands of years and translation…I mean who'd of thunk it

He gets dunked on immediately for being such a neckbeard

Nearly every ancient 'historical' text has the same problem.
Also, the dead sea scrolls are 2300 years old and are in Hebrew and Aramaic, so the translation point doesn't really apply. It's not about translation whatsoever. If genesis is translated or not, it doesn't change the fact that it's an origin mythology, just the same as exodus. (+63)

Ok Ted take it easy. It wasn't meant in the literal sense…see what I did there (-41)

You posted a cringey Reddit atheist take, so I was just actually discussing the content of the article and adding some context to your basically unrelated comment.

Ahh yes the great debate stage of the Reddit machine. I didn't say anything of atheist ideology there Ted. Take it easy will ya..everyone sees how smart you are

Why is this guy calling the other one Ted? I don't get it. Anyhow, the other side of that chain:

Translation has nothing to do with it. It's not some game of telephone Hebrew to Aramaic to Greek to Latin to English or whatever, we understand the Hebrew just fine. It's that the standards and purpose of history writing were radically different back then than now. Also "religion" as a category didn't really exist.

We understand Hebrew in the context of what? Don't you think that's a bit arrogant? I'm sure we understand the technical aspects of Hebrew, but we could never understand the spirit of the text when and while it was written. We argue about the constitution in the US and it's not even 250 years old! Three ancient languages were used and you think we understand the spirit of well enough to understand the multiple translations…nah dawg

K, first of all, it's entirely in Hebrew. Only the fan fiction starts dealing in other languages. Second, we never stopped using Hebrew at any point, so no, it's not arrogant to say we're translating it correctly. Third, yeah, there might be some points we don't fully understand -- heck, we've straight up forgotten the meaning of a handful of words.
But fourth, that doesn't mean that any of the issues here are translation issues. If you're making the argument that it was originally considered metaphorical and not literal or something, that's a historical argument, not a linguistic one. But it's not historically inaccurate because of translation issues, it's historically inaccurate because it was never historically accurate, and I don't see how even possibly translation issues could account for such massive discrepancies.

Never fear though Christcels , a champion has arisen to defend your honor!

Then the scholarly consensus is wrong. (-59)

Why?

An actual good faith engagement with this?

I believe in Jesus and he endorses the Old Testament.

A separate subthread:

You think Moses parting the sea is historical rather than mythological?

Yes

Moron

Christ still died for you and I rejoice in that.

This really got them mad:

You rejoice in someone's death ? Seems rather cruel.

Except he didn't actually die, judging by how most Christians seem to think he still exists, and since he is God, all this really means is that God had a weird fetish and needed to inflict torture on himself in order to feel capable of forgiving people who sinned as a result of conditions he set up.

After reading this incredibly intelligent discussion I wanted to go into the article itself to see what was happening No real drama on the talk page unfortunately but I did notice some fun stuff in the article itself:

>Egyptologist Jan Assmann suggests that the Exodus narrative combines, among other things, the expulsion of the Hyksos, the religious revolution of Akhenaten, the experiences of the Habiru (gangs of antisocial elements found throughout the ancient Near East), and the large-scale migrations of the Sea Peoples into "a coherent story that is fictional as to its composition but historical as to some of its components."

Hmm, very interesting. So just in these few lines we have: the Jews were kicked out (chuds is this country 1/109?) and the Hebrews were originally insular, antisocial, and criminal?

And all written by a guy named Assman

I highly encourage all dramatard to seek out arguments on this wonderful subreddit