Customer Reviews

The Exodus Decoded (History Channel)

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

From minute one the host of this fantastic program engages your mind. The views are cold and hard edged in that they did not bother to remain politically correct. Instead they give an awaking view of the events of the Exodus historically, biblically, scientifically and archeologically. Anyone, Christian or not, could appreciate the lengths to which these brave individuals go by traveling to hostile territory to put to film evidence of this highly debated event of the Exodus.

Tensions build as the Egyptian government's armed presence on site tries to deter the explorers from filming archeological evidence that could very well prove the stories true. After all if a mighty empire such as the one of the Egyptians was placed in such peril by a group of slaves, it is no wonder they try to keep the truth permanently buried in the sands of the desert.

A must see. Intriguing!

I just saw The Exodus Decoded on History Channel.

At the beginning I found it very interesting and perhaps even convincing.

As the argument progressed, I became frustrated and exasperated!!! The extent of manipulation of Greek archaeology was amazing... As an experienced Greek archaeologist, who specializes in prehistory, I was appalled by the interpretation of a number of the Mycenae grave stelai, and further more of the golden ornament with the doves.

It is very easy to interpret an artifact in such a way to fit one's story. The grave stele are decorated with motifs that have been portrayed in Greek art since the 3rd millennium BC, and the golden ornament portrays a Minoan tripartite shrine (a motif very well documented in Minoan Art/Crete). Furthermore, the implications that the people who were buried in Mycenae/Greece were Hebrew, are beyond comment... Only someone who has no knowledge of Greek history and archaeology, would ever imply this.

The interpretation of the Thera fresco has also been manipulated to fit the Exodus story, too.

It is a great pity that a widely viewed channel, such as History Channel is, instead of stimulating people's minds, creates misconceptions of world history by offering dangerously misleading arguments, falling pray to the propaganda of certain producers and directors.

Mrs Maria Kamoulakou
Archaeologist

You can listen, watch and process the information presented. While the controversy surrounding the Exodus has existed for thousands of years, there are indeed facts associated with it.

The Producer, James Cameron, and the host, Simcha Jacobovici, an Emmy Award winning filmmaker, pull together and weave a compelling narrative that is historically, scientifically and Biblically engaging. The science is solid and accurate. The comparisons between the Bible's account and the review of facts that are pulled together, provide a fresh perspective that is well thought out and appears to be a valid rewrite of the "scientific" and "historical" record.

This film does NOT attempt to remove God from the story, only that God could have utilized the Earth and its natural forces to affect the outcome of a people and this time in history.

Highly recommended if you are open to a means of defining a Biblical account using science to show what could have really happened, via God's hand (or not).

I think that this documentary is correct in that the Ipuwer papyrus and inscription of El Arish are related to events in the Book of Exodus. However, the documentary should have given credit to Immanuel Velikovsky (1895-1979) who was the first to propose that these Egyptian texts contain historical memories of events in the Book of Exodus. Velikovsky discussed these texts in his 1950 'Worlds in Collision' and in his 1952 'Ages in Chaos'. Also, although the Ipuwer-Exodus parallels are indeed striking, the papyrus does not mention a hail of mingled fire and ice as claimed in the documentary.

The documentary's idea that the Israelites were Hyksos is not realistic. The Hebrews would not have made up the idea that they were slaves, especially if they had been Hyksos rulers of Egypt who were expelled during a civil war. However, Velikovsky's main ideas on the Exodus and on the identity of the Hyksos in 'Ages in Chaos' really make sense.

The claim in the documentary that Ahmose was the pharaoh of the Exodus is probably wrong, for Ahmose probably lived centuries after the Exodus. Based on books by Velikovsky it appears that some pharaohs, including Ahmose, have been dated centuries too early in the conventional chronology of ancient Egypt. If their dates are moved forward to correct this, Egyptian history fits more convincingly with the histories of neighboring countries. The respective histories then shed light on each other. Unfortunately, many archaeologists today probably know little or nothing of the real content of Velikovsky's works because Velikovsky has been widely misrepresented for decades.

The documentary does well in showing how earthquakes and volcanism might explain extraordinary events in the Book of Exodus. Interested readers would also enjoy books by Velikovsky or 'Unwrapping the Pharaohs' by John Ashton and David Down.

I picked up this title because I found the idea compelling, but seeing so much of what could have been evocative became hyperbole, I could not recommend it. Nothing within this documentary could be construed as proof, yet everything is presented as such. It has all the hallmarks of snake-oil salesmen telling people what they want to hear. If the suppositions had been set aside and the material allowed to stand on it's own, it presents some interesting information, but the majority of the presentation misrepresents the facts, and often the content of the Bible in order to fit the narrative.

I see this ultimately as something more damaging than encouraging, and suggest that anyone with a mind too weak to see through the distortions of this documentary not be exposed to it.

I do hope that the research continues, perhaps in the hands of those without such a transparent agenda.

Right off the bat I will admit that I am not a scientist or religious scholar as some commenting can legitimately claim. I am college educated in Sociology and other subjects, yet work in an academic environment where research and sourcing has always been a vital core. I am not religious, although I know about many religions. However, watching the Exodus Decoded was an enjoyable experience. I have always been very interested in using the primary documents of various people along with archeology to try and sniff out the past.

History Channel International provided me the chance to see this documentary and my hat goes off to Simcha for the effort. I intend to buy this on DVD as well. Despite the comments here, I feel the importance of this documentary is not in proving anything. Its value is in opening a dialog with the past. Too often the scientific community is more concerned with fighting over theories or differences in opinion. This documentary gets you thinking about the Bible and other documents as they should be seen: as a basis for exploration not for absolute verification of past events. The texts are an evolution of thought over time by various people, as well as a snapshot of our ancestors.

Documentaries pose a problem to those wanting citations explained in more detail in that the vehicle's main goal is often reporting on the experience had while researching or providing support for a theory, or both. Simcha does this, while using sources gathered. You can glean from watching how much effort it took to convince certain authorities to allow them access to the sites and artifacts in question. The film comments quite early as to the need to take the documentary as you desire to, with mention to experts who aided him even failing to agree with his view. This is his perspective, and you may gather what you wish from it whether that be ammunition against his theories, support for one of your own, or merely another view on the Exodus that you may not have humored previously.

I have not obtained my copy yet to see if perhaps a DVD-ROM session on the disc provides additional documentation or resources to look into the sources used by Simcha. It appears I am overly used to a works cited page. This may be included in part in the credits, though I do not have high hopes of total transparency. The importance of having the references utilized available becomes clearer when this item is used in an academic setting (or for personal research). To accept this as reference material, one needs to be able to get to the meat and fat that Simcha chewed on to find what he saw as answers.

Regardless of this potential flaw, given an open and critical mind your time will not be wasted watching this documentary. The case made is compelling and while it may well dissolve after closer inspection by the academic community, the experience and conscious-raising you will undergo while watching is well worth the effort. Overall you get a great potential picture of one slice of the ancient world thousands of years ago.

I would like to say that I enjoyed watching this documentary a lot. In fact it influenced me to do a research paper on the Hyksos for my Ancient Egyptian history class. After doing such research, I realized how selective Jacobovici is. I'm sure for the average believer from an Abrahamic faith who hasn't studied much ancient history, archeology, or anthropology, this documentary may improve and reinforce their faith.

However, with the knowledge I have now, I see the selectivity in Jacobovici work. He uses the Bible as his base, picks the parts of Egyptian history which seem convenient for his purposes, and totally ignores the fact that the Hyksos were not slaves (and there isn't a historical record for the ancient Hebrews being slaves in Egypt outside the Bible). He completely portrays the Hyksos as the Hebrews described in the OT of the Bible rather than what we know through modern day Egyptology (a small group of Semitic nomads from Palestine who through infiltration took advantage of political weakness during the Second Intermediate Period and rose to power in the 15th Dynasty). Furthermore, the Hyksos were able to gain control of Lower (Northern) Egypt due to their advanced military technology. For example, Exhibit N in the film portrays a man on a chariot chasing another man, according to the film these are "the Egyptians chasing the Hebrews." However, there is strong evidence to show that during this period, the Hyksos reintroduced the chariot which had fell into disuse until that time in ancient Egypt. The ancient Egyptians adopted many new military technologies and used them to drive out the Hyksos.

Nonetheless, I would give credit to Jacobovici to having done such research such as looking into the scientific explanation for the plagues, how Hebrews (or Hyksos) may have traveled to present day Greece, and few others.

I also understand that many of these networks are moderate to conservative in their presentation of history so not to offend any religious people by giving a whole new twist or proving anyones history false. Whether you are a believer or not, this documentary is fun to watch and will educate you.

Take note of the name Manfred Bietak. He's a renown German archaeologist who's expertise on the Hyksos pharaohs of Egypt is used as the crux of the entire documentary's false thesis.

Having identified the Hyksos pharaoh, Yacoboam (the biblical Jacob), he establishes the 16th century B.C.E as the time reference for the Hyksos expulsion, i.e. the Exodus. The journalist/filmmaker, Simcha Jacobovici (aka, the Naked Archaeolgist), uses this to turn the clock back more than 200 years from the generally accepted date of the 14th century B.C.E. for the Exodus occurring in the reign of the pharaoh, Ramases the Great. At one point, Bietak states that this is a "conundrum" but never explains why.

But the reason is obvious to anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the Bible. Jacobovici is putting Moses in the same time as Jacob, his generational ancestor. Of course, the subject of this "conundrum" is never broached beyond Bietak's simple conclusion because it negates all of the Old Testament stories and prophets between Jacob and Moses. This is extremely problematic for any archaeologist, especially one with a religious agenda.

Towards the end, Jacobivici claims to identify the real Mt. Sinai as Hashem el-Tarif. But he does so without a shred of evidence that can link a 16th century B.C.E, Hyksos presence to that site. At no time does he state whether the site has ever had any previous research done on it or any collections associated with it. Instead, Jacobivici plants the impression throughout the program that the Egyptian antiquities authorities operate a closely guarded and armed encampment trying to "hide" the evidence either by intent or incompetence.

This sort of bias is essentially propaganda driven by prejudice given the fact that Egyptian antiquities are dominated by European and American universities and academics. Even so, the recent uncovering of Cleopatra's tomb by a female lawyer from the Dominican Republic is further evidence that Egyptian archaeological excavations are hardly a closed shop.

Nevertheless, Exodus Decoded does have some redeeming value. For example, the Greek connection is full of false claims, but not without pointing out the historical connection between the Danaans and the biblical tribe of Dan. The documentary claims this tribe "split" from Moses and settled in Greece but never raises the likelihood of Hyksos colonization of Lower Egypt with origins in Macedonia (home of the Danaans) rather than Canaan. However, Jacobovici's thesis would inevitably lead to the unsupported claim that Alexander the Great was a Jew. Perhaps, he's saving that tale for another episode on his wild and wacky T.V. show.

Sometimes we are so intent in wanting to believe something that we quell all reasonable doubts about it. We accept everything that tends to support what we want to believe and ignore evidence to the contrary. This is a mistake. It would be gratifying to believe that at last we understood the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, that we had incontrovertible evidemce that the Biblical account was accurate within the laws of physics. But this program, alas, falls far short.

Timelines are rearranged, as well as Greek history, vulcanology, physics, and about everything else. Not taken into account is the fact that there are no Egyptian tales of Moses and his miraculous escape across the Red Sea. In fact, the one account we have is in the Bible, an account that would appear to deny the laws of physics as we know them, e.g., the parting of the waters to let the Jews cross the sea and the closing of the waters to thwart the Egyptian pursuers. One would think that an event that miraculous would have been mentioned somewhere in Egyptian lore.

The attempt in this DVD documentary is to prove that no miracles were required, that Moses' escape was a result of the explosion of Santorini, a Greek/Minoan volcano. That one event caused the plagues in Egypt, parted the sea, etc. I'd rather have the miracles than bend physics to explain it all.

Exodus Decoded is titled far more assertively than it delivers - it's more "Exodus sort of looked at in a different way than most others have done while still leaving a lot of questions and some loopholes in process."

The production values are certainly of the highest quality here - the computer graphics are whizbang, look very cool, and actually do contribute to the arguments and narrative that Jacobovici is offering.

Unfortunately, the level of scientific facts do not succeed in achieving the same heights of excellence as the whizbang graphics.

I'm not as willing as some other reviewers to call this entirely nonsense, but I'm also not as willing as some others to just accept everything here as absolute fact and go running around proclaiming "See! The Bible is historically perfectly true!"

The truth is, we really don't know when (or even if) the Exodus happened, and if it did happen, don't really know how. Other than the account in the Bible, there isn't much secondary proof out there of any of the biblical claims. And trying to piece together anything that far back into history is somewhat of a fool's errand.

Given that we probably will never really know the details, I think Jacobovici offers some compelling stuff to think about, but not a lot to take super duper seriously, or consider as definitely "solved".

Watch this, but watch it with a critical eye and have your hermeneutic of suspicion set on 11 and ready to use at a moment's notice. Who knows? The Exodus could very well have happened in the mid-1400s BCE, as he proposes; the stele could show bas reliefs of the crossing of the Reed See; Sinai could be where he says it is; and so on.

Perhaps the best way to sum this up is to say that is worth watching, so long as you remember that everything Jacobovici says should be preceded with "maybe" or "possibly" or could end with "but I might be wrong".

Unfortunately, Jacobovici rarely offers that kind of humility and academic honesty in this documentary, and offers his statements as finished, completely researched and proven facts.

And that's why I give it three stars, and not five. If he'd said "Here's some cool stuff I'm thinking about, and why - let me show you, and see what you think", I'd like this a lot more. But when people say, especially about history, "Here's what happened", I grow weary and wary.

I am buying a copy to use in my church adult education, but I will be sure to offer it as a possibility and generator of discussion, not as scientific or even scholarly fact.