Where are all our ancestors / Dr. Yechiam Sorek

From "go-go" to "we came to the land" / the fathers in the service of the nation or the Bible contains "state secrets"

Dr. Yehiam Sorek

If we go with a roving microphone through the streets of the volume and interview passers-by, there will probably be a comprehensive answer to the question: Where did the people return from exile to work in Egypt? - for the just liberation of his promised land! is that so?! To deal with the question we must present ourselves with three pointed questions: a. Where were the founding fathers: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? B. Did they go down to Egypt and did they return as a people? third. What did they do when they came?

Before the reader, who is already annoyed with me due to my sharp, somewhat "treacherous" questions, closes his eyes at the list in question, he should know that all the data I will present are based on biblical and archaeological sources and not on a fantasy created by personal sleeplessness.

And the following question/statement should already be internalized: did they come to resettle, to "liberate" or perhaps it is about sources mobilized to justify the settlement, the settlement and the occupations?

A. Where were the founding fathers?

Avraham left Haran and made his way to Canaan. In the incarnation of his life in which the construction of altars to God stands out, he was seen in Alon Mora, Beit El and in the Negev. Avraham, who lives in tents and owns herds of sheep and cattle enough to come down from Egypt because of famine in the country and returns to the Negev. He receives Jehovah's promise that the whole earth, its inhabitants and its people will belong to him and his seed after him, and these are like the stars of the sky and the blue on the shore of the sea.
Avraham lived in Gerar in the "Land of the Philistines" under the auspices of Abimelech and planted Eshel in Be'er Sheva. (By the way, the fact of mentioning "Land of the Philistines", many years before the arrival of the Philistines shows that the text was written late, at least from the period of the settlement). It should be noted that archaeological data confirming the activity of Abraham or figures like him are not found.
Yitzchak lives in the "Negev Land" and receives confirmation of the promise of the land from Yahweh. The center of Yitzhak's activity is in Be'er Sheva. It should also be noted here that there is no archaeological data confirming the activity of Isaac.
Jacob lives in Be'er Sheva, comes to Bethel and builds an altar there.

The ancestors therefore lived in two central centers: Nablus and Be'er Sheva. Not in the lowlands, not in the coastal plain, not in the eastern Jordan, not in the Galilee and not even in Gilboa. In other words, even if we reduce the area of ​​their yeshiva to the Canaan area, we are only referring to a rather microscopic area. Moreover, we will look in vain for any archaeological confirmation of those biblical sources. We will not find the long-awaited confirmation either in the Canaanite inscriptions or in the Egyptian inscriptions of the same years. The lack of objective reference to the biblical testimonies drops even the little that emerges from these stories. And even if the connection between the Hafiru-Afiru and the Hebrews is confirmed, it follows from this that our ancestors were bands of nomads who endangered the security of the land.

B. The descent from Egypt

The descent from Egypt is shrouded in mists of information and from the supporting archaeological data we can learn about a classic movement of travelers, merchants and just "your people" who moved along the axis of the fertile crescent, from the Euphrates and the Tigris to the Egyptian river, and it is believed that the members of the Jacob family also moved along this stream, at least Some of them, to "break a rift" in Egypt. Even if they stayed in Egypt for a long period of time and their level of fertility skyrocketed, they could not climb to the level of the mentioned multitudes who returned from Egypt. And by the way, no archaeological Egyptian source, even outside of Egypt, has anything to support, even with the slightest hint, of the presence of a people of slaves in Egypt, and even of a non-Egyptian entity (Canaanite or other) who caused trouble for Pharaoh and left there while marveling at his plagues on the Egyptians (See the entry "Hyksos" and "Khafiru").

third. We came to Israel

At most we can talk about a few hundred nomads, including dozens of warriors, who made their way from the desert, and perhaps not from Egypt at all, and broke into the "green lungs" of Canaan. Even before they entered Canaan, the locals had time to swallow with anxiety the horror stories that the nomads cast along their route in the desert.
According to the stories of the Bible, the invasion of the nomads into Canaan was accompanied by a mask of conquests and takeovers and not with silk gloves. Jericho was confiscated, for example, "from man to woman, from boy to old man to ox, sheep, and donkey according to the sword." The people of Ai were beaten "until they did not leave a remnant and a refugee" and the number of those who fall "from man to woman is twelve thousand all the people of Ai". In front of the literary astronomical numbers (which were not recorded except with a clear deliberate intention) it is worth knowing that the number of all the inhabitants of the region - Judea, Negev, Arava and the southern coastal plain - only reached a few thousand. The Gibeonites were enslaved and turned into hewers of wood and water-drawers - slaves to wanderers. and why? So! Looking for morals, please: Joshua tempts the five kings who were hiding in the cave (the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Yarmot, the king of Lachish and the king of Eglon) with sweet lips and promises. These go out and are slaughtered by order of Joshua and hanged on five trees.
Yehoshua captured Makkah and did not leave a remnant or a refugee in it, and this is how he behaved in Lachish, Gezer, Eglon, Hebron, Hazor and more.
Ask: What was the "crime" of the kings of Canaan? These dared to oppose the travels and moves of Joshua who wanted to inherit the land.
inherit the land? In the name of whom and in the name of what? In the name of Jehovah's promise, so the Bible claims. But all the stories in the Bible, and especially the prophecies of Yahweh's promise to the forefathers of the people, were written in a very late period and from a clear direction - to sanctify the Jewish royal house and justify its conquests. Putting the biblical stories in front of the archaeological indication, the real one, puts the entire scroll of biblical mythology into one big question mark. More than that: the supposed entry of the heavenly wanderers into the land took place somewhere at the end of the 13th century BC, when the land was ruled by the Egyptian kingdom. This fact has no basis or remnant in the biblical literature, and on the other hand, the biblical stories have no basis in the Egyptian archaeological finds, which leads us to conclude that the nomadic people were microscopic in their dimensions and perhaps even their parts were nothing but of distinct Canaanite origin that underwent a transformative process of Hebrewization.

So what did we have? And from the biblical stories only:

A mythological group of ancestors that covered only a tiny part of the land of Canaan in its meeting and demographic distribution, but was equipped, according to her, with megalomaniac promises from Jehovah. This called to the land of Egypt for survival and economic reasons and returned (if at all it is the same group) when the occupation was raised in its throat, and it indeed amazes with its cruel blows on its "enemies" and gradually swallows up their possessions.

So what did we have? And from archeology only:
physically? A pretzel hole, with the exception of a very problematic mention of the word Israel in Pharaoh's inscription from Ranpetah in 1220 BC, which indicates the conquest of cities in the land of Canaan, including Ashkelon, Gezer and Winoam. The next line reads "Israel was destroyed (was desolate). He doesn't have a grain (seed) anymore." Whether the reference is to the city, to a community estate or to some area, it is impossible to know, and in any case it is about ruin and destruction. And while we place the lack of archaeological finds on the documentary minority that emerges from the Bible and we seek to be honest with ourselves, we have almost no end of a thread that can testify to that mysterious and vanished people, and the questions where did it grow? Who was? What was? and what happened? Burials are still within the folds of history.

If so, whoever still holds to the saying that the people returned to their country from Egypt, when they demand what is due to them, let them be reinstated!

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