The Evidence Behind Alien Abductions and UFOs

Ufologist Dr. David M. Jacobs has worked with  hundreds of people around the world who say they’ve been abducted by aliens — and in case after case, the details are uncannily similar.

Dr. David M. Jacobs has interviewed hundreds of people from around the world who have memories of being abducted by aliens. (Spoiler alert: It’s not quite like Mexican pulp fiction novels depict it.)

Like Fox Mulder on The X-Files, I want to believe. 

The universe is infinite — though physicists now believe that it somehow has an edge and is still expanding. These concepts hurt my brain and offer no clarity. But if homo sapiens developed due to a series of just-right conditions, surely we can’t be the only planet that developed life in a nearly limitless universe. Heck, perhaps there’s not even just one universe and we should actually call it the multiverse. 

See, there I go again, hurting my brain. 

“Eggs are taken from women and sperm is taken from men. There’s an instrument that takes sperm away. We have very detailed drawings of this device from across decades around the world. It looks kind of like a flashlight connected to a hose that hooks up to the genitals.

This is all typical stuff. I’ve heard this a hundred times.”

— Dr. David M. Jacobs

Imagine how excited I got when Alex, one of my best buds at work, told me his father, a retired history professor from Temple University, is also a preeminent researcher of UFOs and alien abduction! 

I’m an open-minded guy, always willing to alter my worldview if you present a convincing enough argument. It was time to look at the evidence. 

Alex, with his dad, David Jacobs, one of the top alien abductee researchers. (And no, neither believes they’ve ever been abducted.)

Alex invited me over to interview his father, Dr. David M. Jacobs, on his back porch over beers amidst the lingering COVID-19 pandemic. 

After a fascinating couple of hours in conversation with two extremely intelligent men, I came away convinced there’s something to this phenomenon, as crazy as it seems at first. –Wally

A report of a mystery airship in The Chicago Times-Herald, back in April 1897

What’s the evidence for alien abductions? 

It’s massive. It’s mind boggling. And I have to say this a thousand times now: It’s global. It is not an American phenomenon. The first and most important thing is that people around the world, in China and all through Europe and India and Latin America, all say the same things, thinking nobody else has ever said them before. The second thing that’s very obvious is that abduction reports follow hereditary lines: So if you’re an abductee, your children will be and at least one of your parents will have been an abductee as well.

How did you get started researching UFOs and alien abductions?

I’ve been looking at this subject since about 1966 when I went to a UFO conference at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

The big event was a relatively close-up film of a UFO spinning in the air. It was astonishing! If you squinted your eyes hard enough, you could avoid seeing the string the model was hanging on. 

But for some reason or another, I stuck with it and began to read books about the subject. 

I went off to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison for a doctorate in history. There, I joined a UFO organization called the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in Tucson, Arizona. When there were UFO reports, I would investigate them as part of this group. I eventually wrote my dissertation on the subject of unidentified flying objects in the United States.

I had to convince my advisor that this was a subject that wasn’t crazy, that the Air Force had been involved with it for decades already by that time. 

My dissertation was soon published by Indiana University Press in 1975 as The UFO Controversy in America.

Eventually I went on to teach at Temple University in Philadelphia, where I taught the only accredited university course on alien abductions for about 30 years. It was hugely popular — and extremely frightening for many students.

I’ve had students break down, start weeping, say they gotta get out of there. Many students had prior experiences with alien abductions but didn’t realize it until they started talking about the subject in the classroom. 

The 1958 photo of a possible UFO taken over Trinidade Island in the South Atlantic is thought by many to be a hoax.

When did abductions start taking place?

Our best guess is that the phenomenon began around 1896, when people across Europe and North America began to see strange craft in the sky — called the “Mystery Airship” wave at the time. One person mentioned in a newspaper article that he spotted an airship from a train and that it flew faster than he was moving. But at the time, no airships could fly that fast and controlled. The Wright Brothers didn’t launch their flyer until 1903. So these sightings were a big deal at the time.

Why are you so sure that was the beginning?

I don’t care how many people say, “Well, back in Ancient Egypt…” If it started in the 18th century, say, stories would be written about these odd things in the sky. But that didn’t happen until the 1890s. Skeptics like to say these reports are simply hoaxes, or UFO mania at the time—but, of course, these are the kinds of narrow arguments they’ve made about almost all facets of the abduction phenomenon.

Alex: In addition to the global sightings of mystery airships, stats might prove it also. Back in 1992, polling was done through my dad and the Roper Center at Cornell University to look at the potential prevalence of UFO abductees in the United States. Based on those numbers, if you work back, knowing what we do about how the phenomenon spreads, the origin date would be somewhere in the late 19th century. Because if abductions started at the time of the Ancient Egyptians, everyone would be an abductee by now.

Reports of aliens have been alarmingly similar for decades from all over the world. Most recently, abductees talk of alien-human hybrids.

What made you switch from studying UFO sightings to alien abductions? 

At first I wasn’t interested in the craziness of the abduction phenomenon. I couldn’t go there. 

I had a friend, Tracy Tormé, son of the famous singer, Mel Tormé. 

I met him in Central Park one afternoon, and Tracy said, “Let’s go see my friend, Budd Hopkins, a UFO and abduction researcher.” I told him I had better things to do, like stare into space or eat my dinner.

But he pushed me into a cab, and we rode downtown to Chelsea. When we were finally with Budd in his living room, he stood up and said, “Wait a minute. I’ll be right back.” He ran and brought back my first book for me to autograph. That’s when I knew he was a good person [laughs]. 

I began to come up to New York City to visit Budd and meet some of the abductees that he was working with. The evidence he had was just too strange and too disturbing for me to just totally dismiss. He let me sit in on the interview sessions he’d conduct with abductees. I sat in on dozens over four years. Then, in 1986, I started to conduct these hypnotic regression sessions myself.

When did you start doing your own sessions with abductees?

After 35 years, I’ve probably worked with over 200 abductees and conducted over 2,000 individual interviews — always free of charge and always confidential. 

One of the things that became clear after seeing Budd work with his abductees, is that someone’s initial memories can be really untrustworthy. That’s why Budd developed a technique called hypnotic regression with a psychologist.

To be clear, hypnosis is about 95% B.S. and another 5% B.S. It’s nothing but talking to somebody and saying, “I want you to relax.” People are always conscious and alert the whole time — it’s just some simple mindfulness exercises to get people focused.

You have to get the person relaxed and focused because they are about to remember something that they’ve never remembered. You have to be careful about how you question people, and how you find people too. 

Before anything else, when someone would come to me, I’d have people fill out a screener form and then, if I knew they were honest, I had them call me so I could assess things. I would usually tell them, “Don’t do it. You’ll ruin your life.”

What many people don’t understand is that the realization that you’re an abductee can be so incredibly traumatic and life-changing it can drive someone over the edge — especially if you’re young. That’s why I was extremely careful with who I interviewed. You had to be at least 21 years old and settled in life. 

Another thing I made sure to do was warn each abductee that your husband or wife may not like this at all. Even though you may want to investigate your experiences with aliens, your spouse or family might be completely terrified — so much so that things could result in divorce or terrible family tensions.

Some of them didn’t call me back. Some did. 

Given how unbelievable this phenomenon is, I preferred to work with well-educated people. Doctors, psychologists, psychotherapists — all of whom were telling me this stuff, saying the same things. 

These drawings were done by Dr. Jacobs’ interviewees. In this one, a woman recalled a procedure aboard a UFO where her eggs were extracted.

What are the sessions with alien abductees like? 

People know that indescribable things have happened to them. Here’s a common scenario: A guy goes to bed late at night, then wakes up. He’s standing in his backyard. “What the hell? What am I doing here?” The doors to his house are locked — the keys are in the lock on the inside. He finds a baseball bat and has to break open a window just to get back in, wondering, “How could this possibly happen?” Then he says to himself, mysteriously, “Well, I just won’t think about this anymore.” This is typical. 

These kinds of stories were what first got me interested in the abduction phenomenon. 

What’s a typical alien abduction like?

Adults are taken at night or in the daytime when nobody is around. If it’s at night, a person wakes up while their husband or wife is sleeping next to them. 

In our session, they’ll say to me, “There’s a light in the room.” 

I say, “You mean it’s a regular light? Where is it?”

They’d say, “The light is coming through the window.”

“OK. So what happens next?”

“Well, there’s some people around me.”

I say, “People around your bed, you mean?”

“Yes. One is next to me, and two are at the foot of my bed.” 

I say, “OK. And what are they doing?”

“Well, they’re looking at me.”

“What happens next?”

“I’m getting out of bed.”

“Wait a minute. Why are you getting out of bed?”

“I don’t know. I have to. They’re telling me to get out of bed.”

“What happens next?”

“They’re walking me to the light in the window. I’m out the window.”

I say, “Whoa, wait a minute. You opened the window first?”

“Yes, yes, yes, no, I don’t know.”

“One of the beings opened the window?”

“No, no, no, not at all.”

“Does the window open by itself in some way?”

“No,” they say. “I’m going right through the glass window.”

It would be easier for people to say, “Of course I opened the window.” But how many people ever said that? The answer is zero.

Alex: The point my dad’s making is that in hypnosis, some of the skeptics like to claim that he’s asking questions to try to script the narrative, when actually he spends most of his time trying to ask purposefully misleading ones.

David: Exactly. 

I say, “What happens next?

“I’m flying. I’m going up there.”

“Where are these beings?”

“One’s in front of me. We’re all going up.”

“Straight up?”

“No, no, it’s an angle, about 45 degrees.”

I say, “What do you see?” and one guy tells me, “I can see all the leaves and stuff in the gutters.”

Abductees have spotted missing toys or roof damage while being abducted and, of course, the next day or so after the event, they’ll go to their roof and, sure enough, it’s exactly as they saw it. 

An abductee recalls a small gray alien carrying a baby.

Do abductees get taken more than once?

This is not a phenomenon that happens to people by chance. It starts in early childhood and goes on over and over again all the way until…we don’t really know, but maybe until an abductee turns about 80. 

All they know is they wake up in the morning and they’re tired. Sometimes people are abducted overnight and the whole next day because nobody else is home. I’ve had people who were gone for three, seven, eight days. But nobody’s around looking for them. So here’s the question: How do the aliens know that this person can be unaccounted for for a week? I don’t know the answer to that. 

It’s the same thing if a person decides that they’re going to go deer hunting. They’re out in the woods, and then they’re abducted. But how do the aliens know what they’re doing? We are dealing here with extremely advanced not only technologies but physiologies as well.

Abductees have described incubatoriums where the small gray aliens are grown.

What are the spaceships and aliens like?

The abductees are taken on board a circular ship. They describe gray aliens, slender, big heads and eyes, four fingers. There are two kinds of grays, actually. One type is smaller, about 3 feet tall, and they do the menial tasks. The taller gray aliens seem to be their bosses, and perform more of the medical procedures. 

What is the probability of the gray aliens being from another planet? It’s low — because we know they grow them on board. I would never come up with anything like that. But a whole bunch of people have described incubators where grays are being grown. It’s so crazy, off the wall, who could imagine something like that, even if he had a great imagination?! But this is common, whether it’s someone born and raised in rural India or Brazil. It doesn’t matter. It’s all the same.

So the small gray aliens will lead the abductee down a curved hallway and into a room. Abductees always say the hallway is curved.

And then I say, “What happens next?”

They say, “I’m getting on a table.” 

I say, “The table has four legs?” Not a single person has ever said yes. The way the tables are described is they come right out of the floor. That’s a good example of one of the incredibly consistent details. Everything has this metallic sort of rounded surface. 

While they’re laying there, their clothes have already been taken off. Then they have a series of procedures done to them.

A male abductee has his sperm collected via a strange device, while an alien performs “the staring procedure,” in which they rifle through a person’s brain.

What are these procedures like?

Eggs are taken from women and sperm is taken from men. There’s an instrument that takes sperm away. It was not a sexual thing. We have very detailed drawings of this device from across decades around the world. It looks kind of like a flashlight connected to a hose that hooks up to the genitals.

This is all typical stuff. I’ve heard this a hundred times.

Are the aliens conducting other procedures on humans?

The reproductive procedures are really the first part. The point of them is for something much bigger: The aliens are creating other beings with this human DNA. And, obviously, they’re doing that for a reason.

What are the stakes?

There’s never been anything like this in human history. And if it’s not happening, it’s one of the most important brain malfunctions ever found.

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If you want to learn more, read David M. Jacobs’ books: 

• Secret Life: Firsthand, Documented Accounts of UFO Abductions

• The Threat: Revealing the Secret Alien Agenda

• Walking Among Us: The Alien Plan to Control Humanity

AND READ PART TWO of our interview with Dr. Jacobs:

Alien-Human Hybrids: A Plot to Conquer Earth?

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The (Belated) Rise of Jerusalem and the Jewish Religion

Despite the stories of the Old Testament, the kingdom of Judah did not rise to power or become a monotheistic center until much later than the reigns of King David and Solomon.

Within one generation, thanks, in part, to an influx of refugees from Israel, Jerusalem swelled as a city, and its Temple became the center of the budding Jewish religion.

The Bible makes it very easy to determine which of the kings of ancient Judah were sinful and which were not. Those who are described as doing “what was right in the eyes of the Lord” typically had nice long reigns and avoided defeat in the many skirmishes of the time.

“Most shockingly, an inscription from Sinai refers to the goddess Asherah as the consort of Yahweh!

It seems God originally had a wife!”

We three kings: The rulers of Israel were judged good or bad in the Bible, and it seemed as if the traits skipped generations. Here’s Ahaz (bad), Hezekiah (good) and Manasses (bad).

It’s almost as if a king who had the misfortune of losing a war was later recast as someone despicable. Take Ahaz, who was accused of burning his son as an offering to a pagan god and, heaven forbid, burning incense in high places and under every green tree (2 Kings: 16:2-4). 

There King Ahaz goes again, worshipping other gods than YHWH. This one likes tasty babies as offerings.

Much of the Old Testament deals with the comparison of sinful Israel in the north and the sometimes good, sometimes bad kingdom of Judah in the south.

“Despite Judah’s prominence in the Bible, however, there is no archaeological indication until the eighth century BCE that this small and rather isolated highland area, surrounded by arid steppe land on both east and south, possessed any particular importance,” write Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts.

A model of ancient Jerusalem, which didn’t rise as a power until the late 8th century BCE, after Israel fell to the Babylonians

The Rise of Jerusalem

It wasn’t until the fall of Israel in the late 8th century BCE, that Judah was finally in a position to prosper. 

“The royal citadel of Jerusalem was transformed in a single generation from the seat of a rather insignificant local dynasty into the political and religious nerve center of a regional power — both because of dramatic internal developments and because thousands of refugees from the conquered kingdom of Israel fled to the south,” the authors explain. 

New suburbs developed, which were enclosed within a defensive wall. The city of Jerusalem grew from a mere 12 acres to 150, and its population increased from 1,000 to 15,000 — all in the span of a generation.

The ruins of the citadel and Tower of David

The rest of Judah, including its agricultural hinterland, also experienced rapid growth. Where there were once only a few villages and modest towns, about 300 settlements of all sizes popped up. The population of the region grew from 30,000 or so to around 120,000.

Long after the reign of Kind David, Israelites worshipped multiple deities — fertility goddesses like these were particularly popular.

Yahweh: One God of Many 

Despite the Bible’s claim that the worship of YHWH (aka Yahweh, or, you know, capital-G God) was, for the most part, the norm from the reign of King David on, archaeological evidence shows that there were numerous instances of other gods being worshiped throughout the time of the kingdom of Judah. Clay figurines, incense altars, libation vessels and offering stands throughout the region reveal that people worshiped a variety of fertility deities as well as their ancestors — and certainly not just Yahweh. 

It must come as a surprise to most people that Judaism, one of the first monotheistic religions — Pharaoh Akhenaten previously decreed the worship of a single deity for a brief time in Ancient Egypt — actually started out as polytheistic. 

“[T]he great sins of Ahaz and the other evil kings of Judah should not be seen as exceptional in any way,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “These rulers merely allowed the rural traditions to go unhampered. They and many of their subjects expressed their devotion to YHWH in rites performed at countless tombs, shrines and high places throughout the kingdom, with the occasional and subsidiary worship of other gods.”

Judahites at the time treated hilltops as holy sites, burning incense there to honor the sun, moon and stars.

“[T]he clearest archaeological evidence of the popularity of this type of worship throughout the kingdom is the discovery of hundreds of figurines of naked fertility goddesses at every late monarchic site in Judah,” write Finkelstein and Silverman.

The goddess Asherah, as carved on an ivory box from around 1300 BCE found in Syria, was once worshipped as the wife of Yahweh, the Jewish and Christian God!

Most shockingly, there’s an inscription from northeastern Sinai that refers to the goddess Asherah as the consort of Yahweh! Could God originally have had a wife?!

In the late 8th century BCE, Jerusalem grew rapidly in size (from 12 to 150 acres) and population (1,000 to 15,000 residents).

The Birth of Judaism

Despite the perception that the Israelites were monotheistic long before this time, it wasn’t until Jerusalem was a booming metropolis that we at last had the rise of the exclusive worship of Yahweh at the city’s impressive Temple. 

The true monotheism of the Judeo-Christian tradition most likely began in the 8th century BCE — 200 years after the Bible claims. Part of this movement to worship YHWH alone was born of a new political aim: the unification of Israel. Coming out of this, the religious establishment decreed the “proper” way to worship — not just at the Temple but throughout rural Judah as well. 

“It is easy to see why the biblical authors were so upset by idolatry,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “It was a symbol of chaotic social diversity; the leaders of the clans in the outlying areas conducted their own systems of economics, politics and social relations — without administration or control by the court in Jerusalem.”

Perhaps it’s cynical to suggest that Judaism (and by extension, Christianity) arose because of a desire to consolidate power and economic control — but heavens knows it wouldn’t be the first time a religion was guilty of that. –Wally

Israel Finkelstein (top) and Neil Asher Silberman, authors of The Bible Unearthed

The Fall of Israel in the Old Testament Explained

The Bible states that the kings of Israel sinned greatly. But Israel fell because it was just too attractive to the Assyrians. 

At first the Assyrians ignored Samaria, then the capital of Israel, thinking it was too isolated. But eventually they attacked it and conquered the city, along with rest of the kingdom.

If you believe the Old Testament, the kingdom of Israel suffered and ultimately fell because its rulers and people just couldn’t be monogamous with the god Yahweh. (They also supposedly burned their sons and daughters as offerings and practiced divination and sorcery, among other sins.) 

But, looking at the archaeological record, “Israel’s greatest misfortune — and the cause of its destruction and the exile of many of its people — was that as an independent kingdom living in the shadow of a great empire, it succeeded too well,” write Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts.

Yes, Israel fell because of jealousy — not God’s but the Assyrians’. 

“Israel — with its rich resources and productive population — was an incomparably more attractive target than poor and inaccessible Judah,” the authors explain. 

Israel’s prosperity sparked Assyria’s envy. The minute the Israelites considered a revolt, the Assyrians launched an attack.

Assyria’s Bitch: The Complaints of the Prophets Amos and Hosea

For a time, Israel was a subservient vassal to Assyria, paying tribute to maintain peace. 

This age of prosperity began around 800 BCE and greatly upset two biblical prophets, Amos and Hosea. They abhorred Israel’s dependence upon Assyria and its economic disparity between the ruling elite and the poor. Amos railed against those who slept on beds of ivory, chilled out on couches, ate lamb and calves, sang songs while playing the harp, drank wine from bowls, anointed themselves with fine oils and built houses of hewn stone, amongst other egregious transgressions. 

The prophet Amos railed against the rich and their exploitation of the poor.

His contemporary Hosea didn’t appreciate deals made with Assyria or the export of oil to Egypt. 

Hosea, another prophet, ridiculed allegiances with Assyria and Egypt.

This condemnation of a wealthy lifestyle and foreign influence on the Israelite way of life would greatly influence the Old Testament’s stodgy philosophy.

The Assyrian monarch Tiglath-pileser III, who conquered Israel

The Decline and Fall of the Israelite Kingdom

A new Assyrian king, Tiglath-pileser III, also known as Pul in the Bible, began a campaign to conquer and annex the region, deporting its residents at his whim.

Israel at this time had been subject to the assassinations of four kings in 15 years. A military officer named Pekah joined with King Rezin of Damascus to attempt a united resistance against Assyria. 

The plan backfired. Tiglath-pileser III conquered and/or destroyed city after city, executing Rezin and bringing Israel to its knees. Ironically, the one city that was spared Assyria’s wrath was Samaria, which happened to be the capital of Israel. Why? Tiglath-pileser felt it was too “isolated,” as he boasted on a monumental inscription. 

A man named Hoshea assassinated Pehkah, becoming what would be the last king of Israel. In the time between the death of Tiglath-pileser and the succession of Shalmaneser V to the Assyrian throne, Hoshea devised a plan. He asked the lords of the Egyptian delta for help and, in the meantime, stopped paying tribute to Assyria. It didn’t turn out well.

Shalmaneser instantly marched upon Samaria, laying siege to the city. Either he or his successor, Sargon II, who came to the throne in 722 BCE, finally bested Samaria’s defenses. Many Israelites, possibly the aristocracy and artisans, were deported deep into Assyrian territory, while people from other conquered countries were brought to repopulate Samaria. 

The kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians, its cities conquered and its people deported.

“It was all over,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “Two stormy centuries had come to a catastrophic end. The proud northern kingdom and a significant part of its population were lost to history.” –Wally

The Forgotten History of King Ahab, Jezebel and the Omride Dynasty

The Old Testament maligns these rulers, glossing over the fact that they founded the first Israelite kingdom — not David and Solomon. 

Vilified in the Bible, King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, as seen in this painting by Frederic Leighton, circa 1863, were among the first rulers of Israel as a true kingdom.

King Solomon, son of the legendary giant-killer David, has long been held up as a founder of the first Israelite kingdom. Historical and archeological evidence, though, shows that this wasn’t the case. 

King Solomon has been given credit for many of the impressive building projects that actually happened during the Omride Dynasty.

“Most Jews and Christians don’t want to hear that the first kingdom of Israel wasn’t founded by David or Solomon but by the supposedly devious sinners Ahab and Jezebel. ”

A true kingdom — featuring monumental building projects, a professional army and bureaucracy — didn’t appear on the ancient Near East scene until the early 9th century BCE, during what’s known as the Omride Dynasty. 

This won’t sit well with biblical literalists, given that the most famous figures from this line are King Ahab and his notorious wife, Jezebel, a demonized princess from Phoenicia. 

Jezebel, in an 1896 painting by John Liston Byam Shaw, wouldn’t be the first woman to get a bad rap in the Bible. (Incidentally, she was originally painted nude, but the work wasn’t selling, so Byam Shaw added clothes.)

Ahab and Jezebel’s Bad Rap

The most famous (or should I say “infamous”?) Omride couple, King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, are accused of “repeatedly committing some of the greatest biblical sins: introducing the cult of foreign gods into the land of Israel, murdering faithful priests and prophets of YHWH, unjustly confiscating the property of their subjects, and violating Israel’s sacred traditions with arrogant impunity,” explain Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origins of Its Sacred Texts. 

Judging by the evidence, the authors of the Bible could instead have said that Ahab was “a mighty king who first brought the kingdom of Israel to prominence on the world stage and that his marriage to the daughter of the Phoenician king Ethbaal was a brilliant stroke of international diplomacy,” the authors write. “They might have said that the Omrides built magnificent cities to serve as administrative centers of their expanding kingdom.”

Part of their success was certainly due to the fact that they had one of the most powerful armies in the region. 

Omri, the founder of the dynasty, and his son Ahab weren’t particularly pious and did act brutally on occasion. “But the same could be said of virtually every other monarch of the ancient Near East,“ say Finkelstein and Silberman. 

King Omri founded the first powerful Israelite dynasty — sorry, King David!

Israel vs. Judah: The North vs. the South

The Bible tells us that the Israelite kingdom of Judah developed in the south, home to the city of Jerusalem. But it was actually the northern region of Israel that progressed faster.

“Judah was always the most remote part of the hill country, isolated by topographical and climatic barriers,“ write Finkelstein and Silberman. “By contrast, the northern part of the highlands consisted of a patchwork of fertile valleys nestled between adjoining hilly slopes.”

That northern region, Israel, was a more productive area, allowing for grain growing as well as the cultivation of olive orchards and vineyards. With the specialization of oil and wine, some villages turned to trade to get the grain and animal products they needed.

“The result was increasing complexity of the northern highland societies and, eventually, the crystallization of something like a state,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “Export trade to the people of the lowlands and, more important, to the markets in the great cities of Egypt and the ports of the Phoenician coast pushed things still further.“

King David didn’t rule over a powerful kingdom — he was a mere hill country chieftain.

A Look at the Evidence 

The story of Ahab and Jezebel’s bad behavior was written over 200 years after their deaths. “The biblical narrative is so thoroughly filled with inconsistencies and anachronisms, and so obviously influenced by the theology of the seventh century BCE writers, that it must be considered more of a historical novel than an accurate historical chronicle,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. 

In the 9th century BCE, we finally have firsthand testimonies of events and personalities from the Old Testament in the records of the Assyrians and other neighboring powers. Omri is mentioned in the Mesha stele, found in 1868 in Jordan, at the site of biblical Dibon, the capital of the kingdom of Moab. 

Most famously, the Monolith Inscription, discovered in the 1840s at the ancient Syrian site of Nimrud, mentions how fierce an enemy Ahab was. 

The archaeological evidence shows that Omri and his court arrived at Samaria, what would become their capital city, around 880 BCE. The remains of an impressive palace have been unearthed there. 

“For visitors, traders and official emissaries arriving at Samaria, the visual impression of the Omrides’ royal city must have been stunning,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “Its elevated platform and huge, elaborate palace bespoke wealth, power and prestige.”

The cities of Megiddo, Hazor and Jezreel followed. The architectural styles all follow certain patterns and were built during Omride rule — and not a century before by King Solomon, as had been previously supposed. 

The Monolith of Shalmaneser III mentions a battle the Assyrian army fought against “Ahab the Israelite.”

On top of this, there’s the pottery. You'd be amazed by how much archaeologists can learn from broken pots. They’re all distinct in their way and help pinpoint dates and populations in the various layers of ancient sites. The shards of pottery at these and other locations can be used as a clear dating indicator for the Omride period. 

In a battle with the king of Aram, Ahab disguised himself — but was slain by a stray arrow.

Israel’s Forgotten First Kingdom

I’m sure most Jews and Christians don’t want to hear that the first kingdom of Israel wasn’t founded by David or Solomon but by the supposedly devious sinners Ahab and Jezebel. But that’s what happens when you don’t take the Bible as the gospel truth (so to speak) and look to architectural and historical evidence to corroborate (or, as the case may be, disprove) the ancient stories. 

Ahab coveted a garden, but when its owner, Naboth, refused to sell it, Jezebel had him stoned to death. The prophet Elijah shows up to curse the couple.

Looking with an open mind and trusting in science — two admittedly rare qualities when dealing with religion — we learn “that David and Solomon were, in political terms, little more than hill country chieftains, who in administrative reach remained on a fairly local level, restricted to the hill country,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. 

The supposedly sinful Jezebel is thrown from the palace to her death.

For those with whom the evidence doesn’t sit well, take heart in the prophecy of Elijah, described in the Old Testament book of 1 Kings, which supposedly came to pass: Jezebel was thrown from an upper window of the palace, with only her skull, feet and palms remaining. The rest had been eaten by stray dogs. –Wally

As prophesied by Elijah, dogs tore apart and ate most of the corpse of Queen Jezebel. Queen Jezabel Being Punished by Jehu by Andrea Celesti, from the second half of the 17th century

Did King David and King Solomon Really Exist?

Shocking evidence answers this question as well as whether David was a successful warrior king and Solomon built his legendary temple and palace. 

Historical evidence reveals that the legendary kings of Israel, David and Solomon, actually existed.

They’re the first two legendary kings of Israel: David, who as a youth defeated the Philistine giant Goliath with a single stone from his slingshot, and Solomon, gifted with otherworldly wisdom and wealth. (Okay, so there was one king before them, Saul — but God was already planning his replacement when Saul committed suicide after the Philistines killed his sons.)

The City of David, thought to be the original site of Jerusalem, is now Wadi Hilweh, a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood.

“The actual extent of the Davidic ‘empire’ is hotly debated,” write Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. “Digging in Jerusalem has failed to produce evidence that it was a great city in David or Solomon’s time. And the monuments ascribed to Solomon are now most plausibly connected with other kings. Thus a reconsideration of evidence has enormous implications.”

“A shard of a monument sent shockwaves throughout the world of biblical scholarship — and provided the oldest proof of a biblical patriarch: namely, the legendary King David.”

We’ve seen that the first books of the Old Testament, the Jewish Torah, fudged the facts: There wasn’t a mass Exodus out of Egypt. There wasn’t a conquest of Canaan by God’s Chosen People. So how about David and Solomon — are they a myth as well?

Michelangelo’s iconic statue of David

King David: What’s the Proof He Existed?

“David and Solomon are such central religious icons to both Judaism and Christianity that the recent assertions of radical biblical critics that King David is ‘no more a historical figure than King Arthur,’ have been greeted in many religious and scholarly circles with outrage and disdain,” Finkelstein and Silberman write.

At first, things didn’t look good: “for all their reported wealth and power, neither David nor Solomon is mentioned in a single known Egyptian or Mesopotamian text,” the authors continue. 

Was King David, who, as a mere boy, killed the giant Goliath with a single blow, just a myth? David und Goliath by Osmar Schindler, 1888

But often it only takes one single archeological artifact to revolutionize our version of history. We see this constantly in Egypt, where a scrap of papyrus or engraving on a statue completely alters our understanding of a pharaoh’s reign. 

And it was a shard of a monument that sent shockwaves throughout the world of biblical scholarship — and provided the oldest proof of a biblical patriarch: namely, the legendary King David.

David holds up the head of the giant Goliath.

In 1993 at the site of Tel Dan in northern Israel, archeologists discovered a fragment of a black basalt monument that dates to around 835 BCE. While it spoke of a horrific defeat of Israel and Judah (which were separate kingdoms at the time) by Hazael, the king of Damascus, amidst his boasting he mentions the House of David. 

The Tel Dan Stele, dating from 835 BCE, mentions defeating the House of David — making it the oldest proof of a biblical patriarch.

This means that David’s dynasty “was known throughout the region; this clearly validates the biblical description of Judahite kings in Jerusalem,” Finkelstein and Silberman write.

David wasn’t actually the best guy. As described in the Bible, he fell in love with another man’s wife and sent him off to the front line of a battle to be killed.

But Was David a Warrior King?

While biblical literalists can be pleased to find evidence that King David did once live and rule in the Levant, they’re sure to be bummed that there’s no way he could have embarked on a military campaign of any sort. 

“There is absolutely no archaeological indication of the wealth, manpower and level of organization that would be required to support large armies — even for brief periods — in the field,” according to Finkelstein and Silberman.

Next thing you know, they’ll be saying David didn’t actually slay the gigantic hero of the Philistine army with a single shot from a slingshot.

A color sketch by Edward Poynter for his 1890 painting The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon

King Solomon: Was He Really a Master Builder?

David’s son Solomon, to whom God gave “wisdom and understanding beyond measure,” is said to have commissioned numerous building projects, including a magnificent temple to YHWH and a nearby palace. The Old Testament, as well as the Nevi’im section of the Hebrew Bible, describes him as fortifying Jerusalem, along with the important provincial cities of Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer. 

Ancient Jerusalem, with Solomon’s Temple at its center (note: probably not drawn to scale)

So some archaeologists and biblical scholars were downright giddy at the discovery of somewhat similar six-chambered gates at Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer. Surely this was a sign of Solomon’s famous public works projects! 

If that is indeed the case, though, I wonder why there isn’t a gate like that at Jerusalem, Solomon’s capital city? 

The six-chambered gate at Gezer was once thought to have been built by Solomon — but it was actually constructed decades after his reign.

It turns out that renewed analysis of the archaeological styles and pottery showed that they dated to the early 9th century BCE. The trouble with that? It happens to be decades after Solomon had died. 

Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem — though it probably wasn’t anything as grand as it’s depicted.

Petitioners came to Solomon for his judgements. He was basically the Judge Judy of his time.

Solomon was said to possess a magic ring that allowed him to control demons and jinn.

Mythic Kings as Propaganda

“The material culture of the highlands in the time of David remained simple,” Finkelstein and Silberman write. “The land was overwhelmingly rural — with no trace of widespread literacy that would be necessary for the functioning of a proper monarchy.” Jerusalem was no more than a typical highland village. Only about 5,000 people lived in the vicinity.

Archeological remains of King David’s palace show that at the time, Jerusalem was a relatively small town.

And even though King David’s deeds have been aggrandized, he must have been a talented ruler who joined his region together. “Such a small and isolated society like this would have been likely to cherish the memory of an extraordinary leader like David as his descendants continued to rule in Jerusalem over the next four hundred years,” the authors say. 

At the time these stories in the Old Testament were written, in the 7th century BCE, Jerusalem had grown into a relatively large city, dominated by the Temple to the God of Israel, with an impressive army and administrative bureaucracy. 

The stories of the powerful King David made for good propaganda at the time of Josiah. David and Goliath by Titian, circa 1544

God gives Solomon his famous wisdom.

Building up the reputation of legendary kings of the past served the current ruler, Josiah. This useful bit of propaganda connected Josiah as an heir of David, the man who was said to have conquered the Promised Land and established an empire. It helped bolster support for Josiah’s “vision of a national renaissance that sought to bring scattered, war-weary people together, to prove to them that they had experienced a stirring history under the direct intervention of God,” according to Finkelstein and Silberman. “The glorious epic of the united monarchy was — like the stories of the patriarchs and the sagas of the Exodus and conquest — a brilliant composition that wove together ancient heroic tales and legends into a coherent and persuasive prophecy for the people of Israel in the seventh century BCE.” 

If they had to fudge the truth to accomplish that, so be it. –Wally

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OTHER RELIGION POSTS

Did the Old Testament Conquest of Canaan Really Happen?

Archeological evidence shows that the Israelites’ destruction of Jericho and the other cities of the Promised Land was nothing more than propaganda. 

And the walls came tumbling down? Did the city of Jericho fall as it’s depicted in the Bible? The Taking of Jericho by James Tissot, circa 1902

I always felt bad for Moses. He suffered as his people were enslaved by the Egyptians and was instrumental in leading their escape — only to have them wander dejectedly through the desert for 40 years. And then, right as the Israelites were in sight of Canaan, at long last, poor old Moses keels over and dies. He never even got to set foot in the Promised Land. 

It seems like a cruel trick: After leading his people out of slavery and then for 40 years in the desert, Moses gets a glimpse of the Promised Land — but dies before entering it.

Turns out the Israelites most likely didn’t go on to engage in a conquest of Canaan as the Bible says, according to Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in their book The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. 

“Despite the string of fantastical victories described in the Bible, there’s no archeological evidence that the Israelites conquered the cities of Canaan. ”

At the time of the supposed conquest of cities like Canaan, the area was actually sparsely populated with no evidence of warfare.

Despite the string of fantastical victories described in the Old Testament of the Christians (the first five books of which make up the Jewish Torah), there’s simply no archeological evidence that the Israelites conquered the cities of Canaan. 

In fact, at the time the conquest is said to have happened, in the Late Bronze Age, the cities of the region were sparsely populated.

And despite the description of the walls of Jericho miraculously tumbling down at the blowing of some trumpets, the towns of Canaan weren’t fortified. There would be ruins of stone walls from the time — but there simply aren’t any. Makes for a dramatic story, though. 

A map of the Twelve Tribes of Israel from 1320

The First Israelites: A Peaceful, Gradual Expansion

Instead of a lengthy battle campaign in which the Israelites conquered the major cities of Canaan, archeological evidence points to a much more mellow birth of the Israelite people. 

A dense network of about 250 highland villages in central Canaan developed in the span of a few generations around 1200 BCE. Most were no more than an acre in size, home to an average of 100 inhabitants, half of which were adults and half children. 

There certainly wasn’t a strong cultural identity that united these people.

The Ancient Israelites didn’t go on a killing spree throughout Canaan; they arrived peaceably over the course of a few generations.

“In contrast to the culture of the Canaanite cities and villages in the lowlands, the highland villages contained no public buildings, palaces, storehouses or temples,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “Signs of any sophisticated kind of recordkeeping, such as writing, seals and seal impressions, are almost completely absent. There are almost no luxury items: no imported pottery and almost no jewelry. Indeed, the village houses were all quite similar in size, suggesting that wealth was distributed quite evenly among the families.”

Also conspicuously absent for God’s supposed Chosen People: shrines or any other evidence of their religious beliefs.

The early Israelites seem to have eked out an agricultural existence. Stone-lined pits dug between houses stored grain, and fenced courtyards secured animal herds at night. 

The Fall of Jericho by Tamás Galambos shows the city as a small metropolis. But the reality is that these were small unfortified villages.

Despite the biblical stories of conquest after conquest, the evidence shows that these people were actually peaceful. The villages weren’t fortified and showed no signs of burning or other sudden destructions that would indicate an attack. Nor were any weapons discovered during excavations.

The Ancient Israelites surely had a lot that differentiated them from other people in the area, like unique religious practices, right? Nope. Only one thing: an aversion to pork.

The One Defining Characteristic of the Early Israelites 

As mentioned, the remains of these villages offer scant clues as to what set apart the Ancient Israelites. There simply isn't any evidence of religion or culture. But there is one item that’s conspicuously missing from their diet: pig bones. While these were found in neighboring lands, the lack of remains reveals that no pigs were raised in the highlands during the Iron Age, the era of the Israelite monarchies. 

So what made the early Israelites unique? They didn’t eat pork. Th-th-th-that’s all, folks. 

“Half a millennium before the composition of the biblical text, with its detailed laws and dietary regulations, the Israelites chose — for reasons that are not entirely clear — not to eat pork,” Finkelstein and Silberman write. “When modern Jews do the same, they are continuing the oldest archaeologically attested cultural practice of the people of Israel.”

This site, known as the Tower of Jericho, reveals that the conquest of Canaan didn’t happen like the Bible says.

Contrary to the Bible

The archeological evidence just doesn’t support the tales of the Old Testament, the authors argue. In fact, it’s the exact opposite: “the emergence of early Israel was an outcome of the collapse of the Canaanite culture, not its cause,” they write. “And most of the Israelites did not come from outside Canaan — they emerged from within it. There was no mass Exodus from Egypt. There was no violent conquest of Canaan. Most of the people who formed early Israel were local people — the same people whom we see in the highlands throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. The early Israelites were — irony of ironies — themselves originally Canaanites!” –Wally

The Temple of Literature in Hanoi and Its Confucius Connection

Looking for things to do in Hanoi? Walk through the five courtyards of Van Mieu and Quoc Tu Giam, Vietnam’s oldest national university. 

A pair of stone steles outside the main gates instructed everyone — even the emperor — to dismount their horses before entering the compound. It’s not as much of a concern nowadays.

One of the perks of staying in Hanoi’s Old Quarter is that its many attractions are within walking distance. 

En route to one of the must-see destinations, the Temple of Literature, Wally, our friend Vanessa and I passed a shop selling trendy men’s short sleeve shirts. Sadly, even an XL in Vietnam would have been too small. 

The Temple of Literature is this way — but who’s right? Wally or Vanessa?

We also passed the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long on our way to the temple. 

The Temple of Literature was built to honor Confucius, who strived to have his followers live up to their ideal selves.

Quoc Tu Giam University

Van Mieu, the temple-cum-university, is located in the Dong Da district, a leafy green neighborhood about a 35-minute walk from the Prince II Hotel, where we were staying.

The temple was originally conceived and built in 1070 to honor Chinese philosopher Confucius.

A mere six years later, Quoc Tu Giam, literally translated as the “Temple of the King Who Distinguished Literature,” was established within the complex. The prestigious academy opened in 1076 to teach the doctrines of Confucius and his 72 disciples to the royal family and elite members of society before opening its doors to bright commoners in 1253. Students accepted into Van Mieu’s Quoc Tu Giam attended for three to seven years. The curriculum was influenced by Imperial China and involved rigorous study in classical Chinese literature, poetry and penmanship. 

“The man who says he can and the man who says he can’t are both usually right.”

— Confucius

The core of Confucianism is aimed at creating the ideal man, emphasizing the disciplines of social, ethical and political conduct. It’s believed that if everyone followed these principles, the right balance would be attained, and social order would prevail. 

Five courtyards lead through the complex.

Making an Entrance: the Great Portico

One of the first things you’ll see as you approach the historic structure is the impressive two-tiered main temple gate, Van Mieu Mon. The grand portico contains three doorways. The largest is in the center and was traditionally reserved for the emperor. To the left is a stylized relief of the “Tiger of the Mountain” and to the right, the “Dragon in the Cloud.” These flank the main doorway and represent symbols of the power of the king and the success of students and past scholars. 

The second level holds a bronze bell that was rung when a notable person entered the temple complex. For some reason, it didn’t ring when we came in.

The three pathways beyond run the entire length of the complex. 

Van Mieu’s design and layout are based upon Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius, located in the northeastern province of Shantung, China. Visitors take the central path, which leads to Dai Trung Mon, an open-air pavilion supported by red painted columns. Atop the middle of the roof, two carp with raised tails flank a gourd-shaped vase. 

Bonsai trees are planted in the temple grounds.

The Five Courtyards 

The Temple of Literature is divided into a total of five courtyards. Behind its high brick walls are a pair of courtyards where students would relax among the ancient trees and manicured lawns. 

In the center of the second courtyard is the Khue Van Cac, the Constellation of Literature pavilion. Khue is the name of the brightest star in the constellation of 28 in the Milky Way. The square wooden structure is supported by four white stone columns and has an elaborate terra cotta-tiled double roof. Its circular windows with spoke-like slats symbolize radiating suns. 

Well of Heavenly Clarity? More like Pond of Murky Greenness.

Muddy Waters at the Well of Heavenly Clarity

Wally, Vanessa and I passed through the Khue Van Cac and entered a third courtyard, where we found Thien Quang Tinh, the Well of Heavenly Clarity. Ironically it’s neither clear nor a well, but rather a large basin of murky green water. 

Le Cour des Steles, as the French would say, as it was back in 1890

A similar shot of the Well of Heavenly Clarity, this one from the 1970s

Thien Quang Tinh and the Doctors’ Steles

Two great halls stand to either side of Thien Quang Tinh, containing the treasured stone steles placed atop the backs of turtle statues. In Vietnamese culture, turtles are a symbol of wisdom and longevity. 

These tombstone-like monuments honor graduates and sit atop turtles, which represent wisdom.

The names commemorate more than 1,300 students who attained doctoral ranks in the triennial royal court exams held at Quoc Tu Giam and provide details about the greatness of the monarch issuing the exam, as well as some regional history. Over time, the turtles’ foreheads have become burnished by the touch of thousands of hands — it was considered good luck for students to rub the heads of the statues before their exams. 

Shrines to two of Confucius’ followers

The Ceremonial Hall and Sanctuary of Great Success

The fourth courtyard is where you’ll find the Ceremonial Hall and Dai Bai Duong, the Sanctuary of Great Success, which was once considered so sacred that even the emperor was forbidden entry. Today, anyone may enter.

Inside is an elaborately decorated altar to Confucius and his four disciples Yanhui, Mencius, Zisi and Zheng Shen. One each side stands a bronze crane atop a turtle’s back.

Wally loves a giant crane — but feels bad for the poor turtle it’s standing on.

The Sanctuary of Great Success houses a shrine to Confucius.

This part of the temple was once so sacred that even the emperor was forbidden entry. Today, you’re free to roam about its confines.

From University to Pagoda of Crows

The fifth and final courtyard is where the actual university, Quoc Tu Giam, once stood. It lay abandoned when the French arrived in 1883 and was referred to pejoratively by them as the Pagoda of Crows since a flock of the black birds nested in an old mango tree on the site. The French razed the original building to accommodate the sick and wounded during wartime.

The roots of a massive banyan tree allow Wally to take a dramatic shot.

Duke taking a break while exploring the temple

Today, there are several exhibits within the reconstructed academy, including a statue of Chu Van An, one of the academy’s rectors and a beloved figure in Vietnamese history for his dedication to teaching. 

Fortunately, the Temple of Literature has retained most of its original architectural style and character through multiple wars and restorations. It was declared a monument historique in 1906 by the French administration and restored by the École Française d’Extrême-Orient in 1920. Admission is 30,000 Vietnamese dong, or about $1.30. –Duke

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TAKE A 360-DEGREE VIRTUAL TOUR of the Temple of Literature

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A dragon undulates along the rooftop of the sanctuary.

Temple of Literature
58 Quốc Tử Giám
Văn Miếu
Đống Đa
Hà Nội 100000
Vietnam

 

The Legend of Hoan Kiem Lake in the Hanoi Old Quarter

A magical sword with the power to change fate is given to the warrior king Le Loi by a golden turtle who lives deep beneath the waters of  Hoan Kiem Lake. 

Legend has it that beneath the waters of Hoan Kiem Lake in the Hanoi Old Quarter, a turtle god guards a magic sword.

Hoan Kiem Lake, the tranquil body of water located within Hanoi’s Old Quarter, plays an important role in Vietnamese mythology. While there are several variations of the tale, all include the central figure of Le Loi, a great warrior defending Vietnam from the Ming Dynasty of China, as well as a fisherman, a deified golden turtle and Thuan Thein, a powerful weapon bequeathed to Le Loi by a Dragon King.

“Imbued with magic, the sword enlarged Le Loi to giant size and gave him the strength of 1,000 men, bringing one victory after another, until he was able to vanquish the invading Chinese army. ”

Emperor Le Loi holds his magic sword, which could transform him into a giant, while Kim Qui, the golden turtle god, looks on.

Le Loi and Le Than: The Warrior and the Fisherman

Le Loi was a real person who lived in the 1400s. A revolutionary who became emperor, he began a dynasty that would last 360 years. 

According to the nation’s founding myth, the Vietnamese people are the offspring of a sea dragon and a mountain fairy. With such fantastical creatures running around, perhaps it’s not surprising that a local god, Long Vuong, called the Dragon King, happened to possess a magical sword.

The legend of Le Loi as depicted on a Vietnamese stamp

The weapon was divided into two parts: the blade and its handle. The blade was discovered in Than Hóa Province by a fisherman named Le Than. Believing he had caught a big fish, he was bewildered to find a long thin piece of metal entangled in his net. He tossed it back into the water and recast his net in a different location. He was puzzled to have the same thing happen again. When the sword ended up in his net for a third time, he accepted his fate and decided to take it home with him. 

Meanwhile, the young general Le Loi set out to assemble an army. While recruiting from the surrounding villages, he paid a visit to the province of Than Hóa, happening to stop at the fisherman’s home. Though the interior was dimly lit, the blade unexpectedly emitted a shimmering glow in Le Loi’s presence. Le Than sold the blade to Le Loi, which was inscribed with the words “Thuan Thein” (According to Heaven’s Will).

There was only one problem — there wasn’t a safe way to grasp it. 

Sometime later, while fleeing the Ming army, Le Loi climbed a banyan tree to conceal himself, and it was there that he discovered the sword’s hilt. The two pieces fit together perfectly. Problem solved.

Imbued with magic, Thuan Thein enlarged Le Loi to giant size and gave him the strength of 1,000 men. The sword brought Le Loi one victory after another, until he was able to vanquish the invading Chinese army. 

With echos of the Le Loi legend, King Arthur returned his magic sword, Excalibur, to the Lady of the Lake.

The Lake of the Restored Sword

Like the legend of Excalibur, the magical weapon wielded by King Arthur, Thuan Thein had to be returned to its watery source. After the war, Le Loi rowed out onto Luc Thuy, Green Water Lake, in Hanoi’s Old Quarter, and was met by the golden turtle god Kim Qui. In a human voice, it asked Le Loi to return the sword to its divine owner, lest it corrupt him. The noble emperor drew the sword and cast it into the lake. With great speed, Kim Qui caught the sword in its mouth and retreated to the bottom of the lake, never to be seen again. 

A relief from Trấn Quốc Pagoda, on an island in Hoan Kiem Lake, features the turtle deity with the magic sword strapped on its back.

To commemorate this extraordinary event, Le Loi renamed the lake Hoan Kiem, Lake of the Restored Sword.

Turtle Tower, or Thap Ruá, sits in the middle of Hoan Kiem on a small island, built to honor the tale of the Restored Lake and its guardian, Kim Qui.

A stone structure now rises from a small islet in the lake. Known as Thap Ruá, or Turtle Tower, it was built to honor Kim Qui, the magical aquatic guardian of the sword. –Duke

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VISIT the Temple of the Jade Mountain in Hoan Kiem Lake in the Hanoi Old Quarter

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Did the Exodus Really Happen?

Evidence reveals that the Hyksos were Canaanites — and their story later morphed into the Exodus to serve as a rallying cry against Egypt. 

Could over 600,000 Hebrew slaves revolt and escape their captors in Egypt? Spoiler alert: The Exodus is more folk tale than actual history.

Egyptian pharaohs steadily ruled their empire for thousands of years — except during a foreign occupation that lasted over a century.

An Egyptian historian named Mantheno, who wrote in the 3rd century BCE, “described a massive, brutal invasion of Egypt by foreigners from the east, whom he called Hyksos, an enigmatic Greek form of an Egyptian word that he translated as ‘shepherd kings’ but that actually means ‘rulers of foreign lands,’” write Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. Inscriptions and seals from the time of the invasion have names that are West Semitic, or Canaanite.

“If a great mass of fleeing Israelites had passed through the border fortifications of the pharaonic regime, a record should exist.”

— Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, “The Bible Unearthed”

The Hyksos in this Egyptian painting are depicted as wearing brightly patterned clothes, which Wally much prefers to plain old white skirts.

Were the Hyksos Actually the Hebrews?!

Archaeological excavations in the eastern Nile delta “indicate that the Hyksos ‘invasion’ was a gradual process of immigration from Canaan to Egypt, rather than a lightning military campaign,” the authors write. “The fact that Manetho, writing almost fifteen hundred years later, describes a brutal invasion rather than a gradual, peaceful immigration should probably be understood on the background of his own times, when memories of the invasions of Egypt by the Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians in the seventh and sixth centuries BCE were still painfully fresh in the Egyptian consciousness.”

The biggest clue that the Hyksos were none other than the Hebrews is something else Manetho wrote: He suggests that after the usurpers were driven from Egypt, they founded the city of Jerusalem and built — you guessed it — an important temple there.

Israel gets a brief mention on the Merneptah Stele in a long list of conquered kingdoms.

When Did the Exodus Happen? The Merneptah Stele

If we take the story of the Exodus at face value for now, what evidence is there to provide a date for it? The Ancient Egyptians kept quite a written record, and, when paired with archaeological digs, the expulsion of the Hyksos is typically placed around 1570 BCE. If we go by the Old Testament account that this occurred 480 years after the construction of the Temple, that means the Exodus happened in 1440 BCE. 

But the Bible mentions the Hebrew slaves helping to construct the city of Raames (Exodus 1:11) — a name that’s inconceivable at that time, according to Finkelstein and Silberman. “The first pharaoh named Ramesses came to the throne only in 1320 BCE — more than a century after the traditional biblical date,” they write. “As a result, many scholars have tended to dismiss the literal value of the biblical dating, suggesting that the figure 480 was little more than a symbolic length of time, representing the life spans of twelve generations, each lasting the traditional 40 years.”

The Battle of Kadesh, in which Ramesses II battled the Hittites, as shown on a wall of the Ramesseum, the pharaoh’s mortuary temple

A city named Pi-Ramesses, or the House of Ramesses, was built with the help of Semites in the delta during the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II, who ruled from 1279-1213 BCE. 

What’s more, though, is the famous stele of Merneptah, Ramesses’ son. The inscription is the sole mention of Israel in all of the artifacts from Ancient Egypt. The tribe is part of a list of people who were decimated during a Canaan campaign. Merneptah went so far to exclaim that Israel’s “seed is not!” 

This would mean that if a historical Exodus did indeed take place, it would have occurred in the late 13th century. The evidence doesn’t match up, though.

The Israelites Leaving Egypt by David Roberts, 1828

The Exodus: A Lack of Evidence

It’s highly unlikely that a large group of slaves could have made it out of Egypt at the time, given the guard posts all along its borders, argue Finkelstein and Silberman. “If a great mass of fleeing Israelites had passed through the border fortifications of the pharaonic regime, a record should exist,” they insist.

And if the slaves did somehow get out, there would be archaeological records of the Hebrews as they wandered in the desert. “However, except for the Egyptian forts along the northern coast, not a single campsite or sign of occupation from the time of Ramesses II and his immediate predecessors and successors has ever been identified in Sinai,” write Finkelstein and Silberman. “And it has not been for a lack of trying.”

Numerous excavations haven’t turned up anything: “not even a single sherd, no structure, not a single house, no trace of an ancient encampment,” they continue. “One may argue that a relatively small band of wandering Israelites cannot be expected to leave material remains behind. But modern archaeological techniques are quite capable of tracing even the very meager remains of hunter-gatherers and pastoral nomads all over the world.”

Whether it actually happened or not, the Exodus makes for a great story — especially the dramatic parting of the Red Sea and the drowning of the pursuing Egyptians.

Dating Exodus — a Great Piece of Propaganda?

All of the archeological evidence, including a reference to the kingdom of Edom, which refuses to help Moses, indicates that the Exodus narrative was completed during Ancient Egypt’s Twenty-sixth Dynasty — that is, during the 7th and 6th centuries BCE (shortly after, one would imagine, the stories of Abraham and the other patriarchs told of in Genesis). That’s 600 years after the events were supposed to have taken place!

What was the purpose of the Exodus story, if we put it in context of that time in history? “The great saga of a new beginning and second chance must have resonated in the consciousness of the seventh century’s readers, reminding them of their own difficulties and giving them hope for the future,” Finkelstein and Silberman write. 

Was Exodus written to bolster the agenda of King Josiah of Judah?

Josiah, the young ruler of Judah, sought to escape from the yoke of the newly crowned Pharaoh Necho II, who reigned Ancient Egypt from 610-595 BCE. 

Connecting Josiah’s confrontation with the Egyptian empire to that of Moses and the pharaoh of Exodus, complete with miracle after miracle to demonstrate the Hebrews as Yahweh’s Chosen People, would have been a powerful piece of propaganda. 

“[A]ncient traditions from many different sources were crafted into a single sweeping epic that bolstered Josiah’s political aims,” the authors conclude.

There simply is no evidence that a mass Exodus as described in the Old Testament ever happened. –Wally 

The Story of Moses, the 10 Plagues of Egypt and the Exodus

A concise summary of the Old Testament book of Exodus, from the burning bush to the parting of the Red Sea. 

Don’t upset a friend of Yahweh or you might end up with a dead son, as the pharaoh of Egypt did in the Old Testament tale of the Exodus. Death of the Firstborn by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1872

The poor Hebrews of the Old Testament. For years, they just couldn’t catch a break. 

This ethnic group, which traces its roots to the 12 tribes formed by the sons and grandsons of Jacob, grew in power over 430 years. But the pharaoh of Egypt, fearing he would be betrayed to one of his many enemies, enslaved the Hebrews and forced them into construction gangs. 

“To save their firstborns, Yahweh gave his Chosen People a secret code: Sacrifice a lamb and smear its blood on the doorposts.

That way Yahweh knew to spare that child by passing over the home — the origin of the Jewish festival of Passover (get it?). ”

Things got even worse after that. In a despicable form of population control, the pharaoh ordered that all male Hebrew children be drowned in the Nile. One child, though, from the tribe of Levi, was set adrift in a basket woven from bulrushes. It floated along until rescued by one of the pharaoh’s daughters. The child was given the name Moses, from the Hebrew root “to draw out,” and was raised in the royal court.

Pharaoh’s daughter rescued baby Moses in his basket adrift upon the Nile, as shown in another painting by Alma-Tadema, The Finding of Moses, from 1904.

When he grew into adulthood, Moses saw an Egyptian taskmaster flaying a Hebrew slave with a whip. Moses flew into a rage and killed the taskmaster, hiding the body in the sand. He still worried he’d be caught, though, and fled into the wilderness. This is where he heard the voice of the God of Israel, who revealed his mystical name, YHWH (throw in some vowels and you get Yahweh). The voice came from the depths of a burning bush that didn’t get consumed by the flames. It told Moses that he’d be the savior of his people and would lead them out of Egypt. 

Moses and the Burning Bush, Edward Knippers, 2008

But did the event predicted by the talking bush, the Exodus, really happen? What does archeological and historical evidence reveal?

The plague of locusts devoured every last plant living in Egypt.

Out of Egypt: Escape of the Hebrew Slaves

Back to the beleaguered Hebrews. Pharaoh, taking out his wrath toward Moses, intensified the suffering of the slaves. Yahweh told Moses to give the pharaoh a warning that he’d better let the Hebrews go — or else. That “or else” turned out to be the 10 plagues, starting off with the Nile turning to blood, working through frogs, gnats, flies, a livestock disease, boils, hail, locusts and darkness, and ending with the slaughter of every firstborn in Egypt. 

In one of the plagues, Yahweh caused the livestock of Egypt to contract a fatal disease.

To save their firstborns, Yahweh gave his Chosen People a gruesome secret code: Each Hebrew family sacrificed a lamb and smeared its blood on their doorposts. That way Yahweh knew to spare that child by passing over the home — the origin of the Jewish festival of Passover (get it?). 

Yahweh swept through Egypt, laying waste to all the firstborns as depicted in this creepy painting And There Was a Cry in Egypt by Arthur Hacker from 1897.

Pharaoh didn’t learn his lesson. When the 600,000 or so slaves fled on foot into Canaan, the Egyptian ruler decided to pursue them. Yahweh parted the Red Sea, allowing the Hebrews to pass through, and then brought the waters crashing down upon the Egyptians. 

The Red Sea parted for the Hebrew slaves seeking freedom in the Exodus — but came crashing back down to drown the pursing Egyptians.

Moses and the Ten Commandments by Barbara Goshu

The Ten Commandments: Thou Shalt Not Piss Off the Lord God

The Hebrews were hardly models of propriety. Moses was up on Mount Sinai getting the Ten Commandments written upon stone tablets from Yahweh, and by the time he returned, his people had started worshipping a golden calf. 

Those fickle Hebrews. Moses wasn’t gone too long before they started worshipping a false idol, as seen in Nicolas Poussin’s The Adoration of the Golden Calf from 1634.

Moses was so upset he threw the stone tablets onto the ground, shattering them, and had to have God write up a new set. 

Later, when spies reported that the cities of Canaan were well fortified and populous, the Hebrews had the gall to rebel against Moses, insisting they’d rather go back to being Egyptian slaves! At least their physical safety would be assured, they reasoned. 

Well, this understandably pissed off Yahweh, who questioned his decision to name the Hebrews his Chosen People. They didn’t deserve no Promised Land; instead he decided to force them to wander the wilderness for 40 years to think about what they had done wrong. –Wally

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Did the Exodus really happen? See what the evidence says!

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