Hello  To Jeffro above  The original and first reference that I put in was Thomas Cahill and his book The Gifts of the Jews  How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels   And I originally put that ref alone  The Wilson ref came later on from a search and at the request of Jeppiz   But Cahill alone I felt was overall sufficient at that point  And that Cahill book had literally zero to do with anything with Jehovahs witnesses or any JW books or journals or sermons    That wasnt even on my mind in that sense nor did I look at ANY Watchtower publications regarding this article or this specific matter  Cahill had nothing to do with that       And even Jeppiz admitted a number of times that it was a reliable source and ok       But the Wilson source I provided here later on and then soon on the article itself was only at the demand of Jeppiz for another source   He kept insisting to find something else etc so I did a search and the Wilson thing was even more pointed in a way and its in a proJW website strictly genteel which transcribed the noted WT book Is the Bible Really the Word of God and the link can be found here httpwwwstrictlygenteelcoukwordofgodwordofgodhtml       Also to DougWeller hello   Im still not sure why you say that I got the name of the book wrong   Thats whats stated as the source    JA Wilson   And The World History of the Jewish People   At least thats he main part of the name of the book and I believe Wilson was a coauthor of that or something    But to Jeffro you seem to think incorrectly that I probably had the Wilson ref as paramount when in actuality that was just a side thing and accident because of subsequent demands and circumstances on this Talk page   Cahill was actually my guy on this specific matter on the Exodus matter NOT Wilson necessarily nearly as much      The exact incontext quote from Cahills book says this     When we examine the considerable extant literatures of Mesopotamia and Egypt we find no obvious mention of the Israelites  If as the majority of scholars have provisionally concluded Israel escaped from Egypt in the reign of Rameses II about midway through the thirteenth century BC why is there no record of this marvellous defeat in any Egyptian text or inscription   Of course the defeat may have been so embarrassing to Egypt that like many great powers it could not allow itself to record honestly what happened    Alternatively the story of the drowning of Pharaohs army may have been inflated over time by Hebrew oral tradition and what had been a minor skirmish in Egyptian eyes we know for instance that Ramses II died not in a watery grave but in his bed was eventually puffed up beyond all recognition  Most radically  the Exodus may never have taken place but may be just a story concocted like Gilgamesh by nomadic herdsmen in need of an evenings entertainment    This last hypothesis though temptingly unambiguous can be maintained only by ignoring  undeniable aspects of the actual text of the Bible    There are real differencesliterary differences differences of tone and taste but far more important differences of substance and approach to materialbetween Gilgamesh and Exodus and even between Gilgamesh and Genesis  Cahill continues     The anonymous authors of Gilgamesh tell their story in the manner of a myth  There is no attempt to convince us that anything in the story ever took place in historical time   At every point rather we are reminded that the action is taking place once upon a timein other words in that pristine Golden Time outside of meaningless earthly time   The story of Gilgamesh like the gods themselves belong to the realm of the stars   It is meant as a model for the hearers who believed in any case that everything important everything archeteypal happened had happened was happeningit is impossible to fix this occurrence clearly in one tense since it occurs outside of timebeyond the earthly realm of unimportant instances   For all the ancients except the Israelites the people who would become the Jews time as we think of it was unreal the Real was what was heavenly and archetypal  For us the heirs of the Jewish perception the exact opposite is true  earthly time is real time Eternity if we think of it at all is the end of time or simply an illusion     The text of the Bible is full of clues that the authors are attempting to write history of some sortBut there is in these tales a kind of specificitya concreteness of detail a concern to get things rightthat convinces us that the writer has no doubt that each of the main events he chronicles happened      He makes it pretty clear that even though not saying it dogmatically he does