Why is Exodus so important to me?
Exodus was a crucial story for me. Simply because I grew up being taught that this and the rest of the Bible was literal truth of how the world came to be. This meant that everything happened the way it was written. Being the foundation of Judaism, Christianity and Islam I had to start my investigation from the beginning. I needed to search the oldest recorded civilizations to verify the story of Exodus and the claim that this is how the world came to be. 
Figure 1 Egypt is the oldest civilization and first to develop writing and have recorded much of their history.
First the Exodus tells us the people were not from Egyptian Africa they were Nomadic, Canaanite or Semitic in culture and language. So we go to Egypt that exists in both deeper Africa along the Nile (Upper Egypt) and North Africa along the Nile and into the marshes (Lower Egypt). Egyptians mention a Semitic people known as the Hyksos or Haibru around 1,720BC. The same time some may pick up the story of Jacob. According to Egyptian sources the Hyksos were allowed to settle in Lower Egypt due to the famine and harsh conditions of Canaan. Through superior weaponry these people eventually took control of Lower Egypt for 100 years. Upper Egyptian Pharaohs eventually took back their country and chased these people into Syria, claiming all the land in between and establishing the 18th Dynasty. The unconventional arguments to the right of this page opened a window to these people of war that worshipped a war god.
Then we have the claim that the founders of Monotheism (Belief in One God), were the same people that were lead out of Egypt and into the promise land by God. In the study of Egyptian Theology and Archeology you find something curios. The Egyptians worshipped many disciplines yet believed they were all under one God much the way Greeks believed Zeus was King of the God's. The Egyptian Sun God was much the same way. Until a Pharoah came along and wiped all other gods away in favor of the one true Sun God.
The Pharaoh named Ankhenaten, Amenophis, or Amenhotep IV depending on your text book, is credited with being the first Monotheist in history. Ankhenaten was a Theologian (studied religious matters) that was thrust into Kingship after the death of his older brother. As Pharaoh he concerned himself with religious affairs and sought to change Religion in Egypt from many disciplines or religions to the one religious decipline. It’s important to note that we worship what we do not understand or are in marvel of. We name this worship after discipline or science we develop to understand the marvel. Astrology is the worship of the stars and can tell us a lot about the seasons on Earth. Without star gazers ancient people wouldn’t know when to plant and when harvest. Religious ceremonies or holidays would mark the start of a season, time to harvest, or time to plant. Once Ankhenaten shutdown the many disciplines or religious temples in Egypt, he closed down the machinery that ran the greatest civilization in the world. After the death of Ankhenaten son Tutankhaten later renamed King Tut Egyptian rulers tried to erase Monotheism. They eventually re-opens its closed Temples and restart its civilization. The question is what happened to the followers of the Monotheistic religion founded by Ankhenaten?
el-Amarna today was Akenaten in Ankhenatens reign. He founded the city and moved the capital there. This was the seat of the Pharaohs’ power and religious reform. All who lived there had to worship the Aten as the one and only God. The city shows signs that it was abandoned and not destroyed. So what became of this Monotheistic multitude? The capital of the greatest land in the world had to be huge, with people from all over the known world. Now Hyksos or Haibru play a critical role in this story as they were exiled into the furthest reaches of Egypt (Syria). After the death of Ankhenaten, his son Tutankhamun, and his religious reforms the Pharoah Ay (once a priest of Ankhenaten’s Monotheistic religion) sends the people of Akenaten to the farthest reaches of Egypt. Could the great battles told in the story of Exodus be between the hated Hyksos (Philistines) and the expelled followers of the Aten (Chosen People)? The hatred of the Philistines would make sense if they were the Hyksos who were chased out of Egypt centuries before. The order to kill men, women, and children by God could only make sense if the one true God was a God King or Pharaoh.
The timelines of Archeology match the timelines of the Bible yet many don’t like what the matches forces them to conclude about history and therefore the future. There are no separate Chosen people from the rest of us. There is never a cause to hold oneself higher than another. The evil one may see in the eye of another is the evil reflected from his own. God has never ceased revealing himself or his works so the claim of last Prophet, last revelation, last anything is only in the eye of the dead. I don't publish these pages as a means to debunk or attack Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. My hope is that you take away the same deeper need to read and research the history for yourself. There is a unity that all religions speak of. I believe all people and all cultures are linked. These links are proven in DNA and now our archeology. They show a building over time, an evolving, not these great leaps each generation tries to lay claim to making. This causes us to question our individual beliefs, about whom, where, and when we are. Ultimately my great breakthrough was, as I tried to prove the validity of any religious dogma, as literal truth, I found myself listening to fundamentalist teachings and writings that would re-shape any view to conform their own. This would cause the morality to become blinded to the morality of others and It did not matter the religion or discipline. Ultimately I found a common thread in them all that would unite them and a common thread that would divide them. The difference is in finding the spirit of a faith and its meaning to uplift you or finding the religion of a faith and rituals for you to do out of fear. They are both one in the same the choice is left to each of us, hope or fear? 10thLetter
