Instead of Moses getting the Israelites to leave Egypt, he leads a sucsesful Jewish Revolt, and Egypt is Jewish from the Nile Delta to the First Cataract. What happens next?
(btw, 1000th post!)
(btw, 1000th post!)
WI: Jewish Egypt?
- Thread starter Guildencrantz
- Start date
Not as directly recorded in the Torah, but a similar event actually occured, and was most likely the direct inspiration for the Exodus story.
There were a lot of Hebrews (not all of them were Jews) working in Egypt, but simply not enough of them to lead an empire. Certainly not enough to completely overpower the Pharoh.
Keenir
Banned
congrats on teh 1,00th post.
though, I think the Hyksos (who really did conquer Egypt for at least one dynasty-length of time) were Semitic.
You are well aware that the Egyptians regarded the Hyskos as being foreign and the term most used today to describe them was "Semitic".
I have seen some hypothesis that the events of the Exodus era were deliberately written out of Egyptian history.
And the term used to describe the Egyptian and Arabic races is also 'Semitic'. And sure the Hyksos were considered 'foreign'. So what? Athenians considered Thebians foreign, but they were all still Mediterranean Europeans.
An event that large would be effectively impossible to write out of history, considering that all of Egyptian history is accounted for. Besides, why would Egypt write out this event? They were perfectly willing to set down defeats against Hittites, Nubians, occupations by the same, revolts, etc, so why would this one slave revolt merit censuring?
Archeology doesn't help either. Despite Exodus claiming 600,000 Jews leaving Egypt, not one camp site has been found.
Rockingham
Banned
I think, at best, the Old testament is a heavily metaphorical and exaggerted text....
Not that it should be seen as hostile to religious beliefs....its not like God or Jesus never used exaggeration or metaphor to get their poin across, even if your read the bible with a litter perspective. And just where i nthe bible does it sya that the bible is literal? Forgive me if I am wrong, but IIRC from the one time i read it, it doesn't.
Hendryk
Banned
Well, if he means that it never took place as it is recorded in the OT, then he's right. A much less dramatic version may still have happened, I'll leave the last word to the archeologists about that.Congratulations! You win the "I Can Start a Flamewar!" award for this thread.
But to get back to the original question, I think the most likely way for Egypt to become "Jewish" is for the Jewish culture, such as it was at the time, to gradually influence the Egyptian one via intermarriage with the upper class. Incidentally, in OTL, didn't the Jews pick up the idea of circumcision from the Egyptians?