When you say "at best" you no doubt mean "at best from the pov of someone who dismisses the stories as be in the truth."
This is probably the most ridiculous apologetic of all of the ridiculous apologetics. This makes the assumption that mythic supernatural legends should be believed first without evidence. Of course you don't really think that because you wouldn't want historians to assume every myth was true and have them writing histories of Zeus, Mithras and all Gods as if it was actual history. I imagine you just want your religious fiction to be taken as true. Special pleading at best.
But what you seem to be forgetting is that the EVIDENCE demonstrates to historians (in this case a Baptist Pastor who studied history) that the stories are taken from older myths and they also have evidence that the text was written way after the events described. That's what the best evidence shows. What you propose is absurd. That a historian would read a myth and not only assume it's an actual historical event but then upon finding older myths that are extremely similar they would use some apologetic to dismiss that fact rather than realize the story was taken from the older version.
This is dishonest. When I was Christian I remember saying that evidence is evidence and we should not expect scholars to just reinterpret facts just to fit my belief in stories. I had some way of reconciling it I guess which ultimately realized was self deception.
The fact remains that the consensus is that these are myths. Written like myths, taken from older myths and are equally as fiction as tales of Krishna or Osirus. No one outside of fundamentalists believe these legends are anything but tales to unite a new culture.
All of the surrounding nations had similar foundation myths, also taken from Mesopotamian sources and all of those religions were Hellenized around 3-100 B.C. just like Judaism was.
But the archeologists have different types of proof that these myths do not reflect actual history. As WIlliam Denver and Caroyl Meyers point out the Israelites came from Canaanite society not Egypt, there was no conflict and no archeology confirms any biblical story. But archeology does show a different story. Denver has stated that Biblical archeologists have been "letting the public down slowly" over the y
Official history coming from Egypt would not include the defeat of their gods by the God of the slaves that they were forced to release.
If you try, even a little, you can debunk your own apologetics. If you care about what is true. In 1300BC Amen became the one true God and the center of worship was Thebes. In the 7th century the Assyrians destroyed Thebes which lowered their main God Amen a great deal. This was not the first time defeats had changed the main God in Egypt.
No God in any culture is mentioned in any other culture because they are fiction. The actual Israelites are not mentioned because they were not in Egypt at that time, they are descendants of Canaan. That was the point of the words in that paper. He isn't suggesting Egypt doesn't mention the killing of firstborns because of God issues, he's pointing out that the archeologists are obviously correct that Israelites come out of Canaan.
The Israelites eventually became a nation and needed their own myths to write down laws and wisdom and unite the people. This is how things were done in 1000B.C.
Do you actually think KL Sparks, PhD Hebrew Bible, Baptist Pastor, doesn't already know of those absurd apologetics and realizes that educated people are not interested in psuedo-science crank?
William Denver, Israelites are in Canaan:
Is there mention of the Israelites anywhere in ancient Egyptian records?
No Egyptian text mentions the Israelites except the famous inscription of Merneptah dated to about 1206 B.C.E. But those Israelites were in Canaan; they are not in Egypt, and nothing is said about them escaping from Egypt.
Tell us more about the Merneptah inscription. Why is it so famous?
It's the earliest reference we have to the Israelites. The victory stele of Pharaoh Merneptah, the son of Ramesses II, mentions a list of peoples and city-states in Canaan, and among them are the Israelites. And it's interesting that the other entities, the other ethnic groups, are described as nascent states, but the Israelites are described as "a people." They have not yet reached a level of state organization.
So the Egyptians, a little before 1200 B.C.E., know of a group of people somewhere in the central highlands—a loosely affiliated tribal confederation, if you will—called "Israelites." These are our Israelites. So this is a priceless inscription.
Does archeology back up the information in the Merneptah inscription? Is there evidence of the Israelites in the central highlands of Canaan at this time?
We know today, from archeological investigation, that there were more than 300 early villages of the 13th and 12th century in the area. I call these "proto-Israelite" villages.
Forty years ago it would have been impossible to identify the earliest Israelites archeologically. We just didn't have the evidence. And then, in a series of regional surveys, Israeli archeologists in the 1970s began to find small hilltop villages in the central hill country north and south of Jerusalem and in lower Galilee. Now we have almost 300 of them.
