[egypt/_private/disc1_ahdr.htm]

Egyptology that may disprove the philosophical basis for the Bible

From: Durand Sinclair
Date: 30 Jul 1999
Time: 00:22:32
Remote Name: 198.142.201.14

Comments

I have heard an argument for why the Bible has to be true, but I believe that there is an 18th or 19th dynasty Pharoah who left a stela that disproves the argument. Would anyone know which one this is. Here is the story: It has been said that an account of a revelation before an entire people (eg, the splitting of the Red Sea, or the Mount Sinai story) cannot be faked, because if a later day sage came to a community and said "Your own ancestors were witnesses to this major turning point in our history", then the people would have said "So how come I've never heard of it before?" Because there were so many alleged witnesses in the story, it would have made it harder to fake being made up. HOWEVER, In the 18th or 19th dynasty, there is a stela which gives an account in front of loads of witnesses which I believe is a counterexample to this. One of the Pharoahs marched his army north to battle the Hittites at ... (probably Meggido), and although the Hittites surprised him and decimated his army, he wrote on the stela that "Amun was with me, and I gazed upon them (the Hittites) and turned a thousand of them to corpses..." bla bla bla.. .you know, Pharoah wins the day single handedly because Amun is with him. But he had a whole army there with him! If he made it up, he made it up in front of a whole army of witnesses to the contrary. So if this Pharoah could do it, then so could any other people writing an account of a public revelation! The only problem is I can't remember which Pharoah it was. Would anyone know? And also, would anyone know where I can get the text of the stela? (Incidentally, the Pharoah made peace with the Hittites the next year, and Hittite excavations indicate that their account of the battle was that the Hittites won! So historians reckon it was a draw.)

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