The only good thing to say about this is that they succeeded in proving that one of Ramses' son was Ramses' son. Though this show predates more thorough treatments of the same subject - explaining the Plagues, exploring KV5, discovering Pi-Ramses - its treatment of the subject is sloppy, illogical and poorly thought out, like the part that has Ramses first born son killed as part of the last plague and then drowned when, as acting Pharaoh, he chases the escaping peoples of the Exodus (they weren't just former Canaanite descendants of Abraham) into the parted waters. Or the part where the discovery of Pi-Ramses somehow validates, by itself, the story of Exodus.
There have been much better treatments since, plausibly linking the plagues to natural phenomena much more tightly and even questioning the nature of the Exodus and 'Conquest' of Canaan themselves.
Fact is, as any undergraduate History Major familiar with the ancient Middle East should know, the point of Genesis was to give a certain group of Canaanites an identity distinct from their neighbors and that their One God, Yahweh, was not the only God they worshiped. Even in the Talmud it's clear that, from David to the exile, the Israelites worshiped many gods. It wasn't until the Return, compliments of Cyrus, that the Isrealites became monotheistic. Cyrus put one condition on the return to Canaan: that they learn how to be Jews as defined by their Talmud. That meant worshiping one God and this was the birth of Monotheism and Judaism as we know it.
The whole history of Exodus and the Conquest of Canaan is murky as hell, largely because of religious preconceptions and our shallow but virtually intractable attempts to read the Talmud as history; meaning that we keep carving up the pieces of the puzzle to fit those preconceptions despite what the archaeological evidence suggests. This show suffers from the defects engendered from that mind-set.
A good example is the show's attempt to link Akhnaten to the idea of monotheism - Akhnaten's goal was to break the back of too powerful sets of priests by replacing all of the other Gods of Egypt with the Aten. This was not a religious epiphany and the Aten was not a precursor of monotheism. It was all about politics. Akhnaten's revolution failed after his reign, his name was expunged and, by the time of Ramses, it's highly doubtful anyone would have dared mention Akhnaten's name or his attempt to usurp the power of the priesthoods. Moses, himself a highly questionable figure, as described in Exodus, would have been unlikely to have even heard of Akhnaten.
Recent archaeological evidence suggests that Canaan was going through political turmoil during the 13th century B.C. as the elites of its city-states alienated their subjects to the point of rebellion and that a small group of Egyptian exiles with Canaanite roots could easily have taken advantage of that turmoil to both join those rebellions and establish themselves and the native elements that joined them as a separate "people". For those native elements, becoming "Israelites" would have been an attractive alternative to remaining former subjects of whatever city-state whose power structure they'd just trashed.
Whatever the real history, the point is that Genesis was not written to be real history and shows like this that try to reconcile Genesis with real history just miss the mark.
There have been much better treatments since, plausibly linking the plagues to natural phenomena much more tightly and even questioning the nature of the Exodus and 'Conquest' of Canaan themselves.
Fact is, as any undergraduate History Major familiar with the ancient Middle East should know, the point of Genesis was to give a certain group of Canaanites an identity distinct from their neighbors and that their One God, Yahweh, was not the only God they worshiped. Even in the Talmud it's clear that, from David to the exile, the Israelites worshiped many gods. It wasn't until the Return, compliments of Cyrus, that the Isrealites became monotheistic. Cyrus put one condition on the return to Canaan: that they learn how to be Jews as defined by their Talmud. That meant worshiping one God and this was the birth of Monotheism and Judaism as we know it.
The whole history of Exodus and the Conquest of Canaan is murky as hell, largely because of religious preconceptions and our shallow but virtually intractable attempts to read the Talmud as history; meaning that we keep carving up the pieces of the puzzle to fit those preconceptions despite what the archaeological evidence suggests. This show suffers from the defects engendered from that mind-set.
A good example is the show's attempt to link Akhnaten to the idea of monotheism - Akhnaten's goal was to break the back of too powerful sets of priests by replacing all of the other Gods of Egypt with the Aten. This was not a religious epiphany and the Aten was not a precursor of monotheism. It was all about politics. Akhnaten's revolution failed after his reign, his name was expunged and, by the time of Ramses, it's highly doubtful anyone would have dared mention Akhnaten's name or his attempt to usurp the power of the priesthoods. Moses, himself a highly questionable figure, as described in Exodus, would have been unlikely to have even heard of Akhnaten.
Recent archaeological evidence suggests that Canaan was going through political turmoil during the 13th century B.C. as the elites of its city-states alienated their subjects to the point of rebellion and that a small group of Egyptian exiles with Canaanite roots could easily have taken advantage of that turmoil to both join those rebellions and establish themselves and the native elements that joined them as a separate "people". For those native elements, becoming "Israelites" would have been an attractive alternative to remaining former subjects of whatever city-state whose power structure they'd just trashed.
Whatever the real history, the point is that Genesis was not written to be real history and shows like this that try to reconcile Genesis with real history just miss the mark.