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Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
#1

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
I had in the past, created a quote list from a number of well regarded archaeologists who stated plainly that the archaeological evidence for the exodus demonstrated that the exodus was myth, not history.  Somehow, I seem to have lost my quote list.

I have recently gotten some new books so I am digging through these for more quotes, and I will be eventually recreating my list, with new quotes from imminent experts.  This will be an ongoing project over the next few months.

James Weinstein
...

Today, after more than a century of archaeological research in Egypt and
Palestine, nothing has been found that can be directly linked to either
the biblical account of the sojourn in Egypt or a large-scale migration by
the Children of Israel out of that country.

....

The material culture of the early Iron Age settle­ments in the central
highlands and closely adjoining areas (the regions where early Israelite
society appears to have developed most intensely) reveals few signs of
contact with Egypt— certainly nothing that would lead one to suppose that
the inhabitants of these places had any Egyptian heritage. Egyptian artifacts
are Conspicuous by their rarity or absence at these sites, and at those places
where they have been found they are lim­ited to a few small objects (mostly
scarabs and other small items) that could have been acquired almost anywhere and by almost any means.

....

The reactions of some religious conservatives to the recent archaeo­logical
discoveries have not been unexpected. A few simply ignore the
archaeological data and continue the hunt for ever more signs of Semitic
peoples in Egypt during the New Kingdom. Such an approach, however,
can never demonstrate the historicity of the Exodus. One cannot use
the discovery of a new literary parallel between the Old Testament and
an Egyptian text, or yet another "scientific" or "natural" explanation for
one of the biblical plagues or the "Miracle of the Sea," or the identifica­tion
of more Semitic names and Levantine material culture items in XVIIIth
and XIXth Dynasty Egyptian contexts, to postulate an exodus.

...

Exodus and Archaeological Reality
James Weinstein

The Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence
Editors Ernest 5. Frerichs Leonard H. Lesko
Eisenbrauns 1997 ISBN 1-57506-025-6.
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#2

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
Why would they go from one place Egypt controlled to another Egypt controlled ?
Here you can see eminent (cough)  Tongue   archaeologists discuss the matter.

Test
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#3

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
Egypt lost control of Canaan during the reign of Rameses VI. The last Egyptian garrisons were withdrawn then. However, at this time, the first hilltop farms in the highlands had already been founded for several decades.

Wikipedia
...
Ramesses VI Nebmaatre-Meryamun (sometimes written Ramses or Rameses, also known under his princely name of Amenherkhepshef C[note 1]) was the fifth pharaoh of the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt. He reigned for about eight years in the mid-to-late 12th century BC and was a son of Ramesses III and queen Iset Ta-Hemdjert.'
...
Egyptian presence in Canaan was terminated during or soon after Ramesses VI's rule,[91][92] with the last garrisons leaving southern and western Palestine around the time,[93] and the frontier between Egypt and abroad returning to a fortified line joining the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.[78] A 2017 archaeological study reached the same conclusion, namely that Ramesses VI's reign is the terminus post quem for the presence of the Egyptian military in Jaffa, which was twice destroyed around this time period.[94] Opponents of the Egyptian authority were of local extraction, probably originating in Canaanite cities of the Levantine coastal plain,[95] an opposition to Egyptian hegemony ultimately resulting from the arrival of the Sea People in the region during the reign of Ramesses III.
....

One of the most notable features of the Exodus tall tale and Joshua's invasion is the total lack of Egyptians in these tales. So the exodus reflects conditions post Rameses VI. But as the earliest proto-Israelites were already in the highlands before Rameses VI and the withdrawal of the last Egyptian garrisons, these tales cannot be historical.
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#4

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
That desert is not enormous.  It's a relatively small desert compared to others. It's a little smaller than the state of West Virginia.   One can walk from one end of the Sinai  to the other in a little over two and a half weeks and that's going from it's two greatest distances.   There is no possible way that almost 2 million people wandered around in this desert for 40 years.  It's impossible.  It didn't happen.  

Some believers try to claim that the desert has burried the artifacts under the sand.... except it's not a sandy desert. It is a desert of dirt and rock.  Religious nuts try every way they can to make this story work.

It's very telling that many Rabbis have realized the Exodus is a myth and they now celebrate Passover as symbolic of Jewish struggles rather than an actual event.
                                                         T4618
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#5

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
(01-21-2020, 04:31 PM)Dancefortwo Wrote: That desert is not enormous.  It's a relatively small desert compared to others. It's a little smaller than the state of West Virginia.   One can walk from one end of the Sinai  to the other in a little over two and a half weeks and that's going from it's two greatest distances.   There is no possible way that almost 2 million people wandered around in this desert for 40 years.  It's impossible.  It didn't happen.  

Some believers try to claim that the desert has burried the artifacts under the sand.... except it's not a sandy desert. It is a desert of dirt and rock.  Religious nuts try every way they can to make this story work.

It's very telling that many Rabbis have realized the Exodus is a myth and they now celebrate Passover as symbolic of Jewish struggles rather than an actual event.
  • 2mio people in 60.000km^2 of Sinai Peninsula gives an average population density of....Kansas.
  • The coastline from Port Said to the Gaza Strip strechtes for some 200km. If all the 2mio israelites were holding hands (assuming a span of 1m for each, which is quite easy) they could line up for 2000km.
  • Sinai is currently populated by 600.000 people of whom nobody got lost lately...afaik
R.I.P. Hannes
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#6

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-...story.html

Quote:Today, the prevailing theory is that Israel probably emerged peacefully out of Canaan--modern-day Lebanon, southern Syria, Jordan and the West Bank of Israel--whose people are portrayed in the Bible as wicked idolators. Under this theory, the Canaanites who took on a new identity as Israelites were perhaps joined or led by a small group of Semites from Egypt--explaining a possible source of the Exodus story, scholars say. As they expanded their settlement, they may have begun to clash with neighbors, perhaps providing the historical nuggets for the conflicts recorded in Joshua and Judges.

“Scholars have known these things for a long time, but we’ve broken the news very gently,” said William Dever, a professor of Near Eastern archeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona and one of America’s preeminent archeologists.


Sucks to be a xhristard!
Robert G. Ingersoll : “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”
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#7

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
(01-21-2020, 04:53 PM)Deesse23 Wrote:
(01-21-2020, 04:31 PM)Dancefortwo Wrote: That desert is not enormous.  It's a relatively small desert compared to others. It's a little smaller than the state of West Virginia.   One can walk from one end of the Sinai  to the other in a little over two and a half weeks and that's going from it's two greatest distances.   There is no possible way that almost 2 million people wandered around in this desert for 40 years.  It's impossible.  It didn't happen.  

Some believers try to claim that the desert has burried the artifacts under the sand.... except it's not a sandy desert. It is a desert of dirt and rock.  Religious nuts try every way they can to make this story work.

It's very telling that many Rabbis have realized the Exodus is a myth and they now celebrate Passover as symbolic of Jewish struggles rather than an actual event.
  • 2mio people in 60.000km^2 of Sinai Peninsula gives an average population density of....Kansas.
  • The coastline from Port Said to the Gaza Strip strechtes for some 200km. If all the 2mio israelites were holding hands (assuming a span of 1m for each, which is quite easy) they could line up for 2000km.
  • Sinai is currently populated by 600.000 people of whom nobody got lost lately...afaik

With details like that the idea that 2 million people were wandering around a desert for 40 years makes them either as dumb as a box of rocks or self suffering masochists or what is more likely, it's a made up story to bolster tribal unity.    Maybe all three.
                                                         T4618
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#8

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
Jesus was our copilot, but the fucker kept us lost for 40 years, so we fired his ass. Big Grin
[Image: Bastard-Signature.jpg]
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#9

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
(01-21-2020, 11:15 AM)Cheerful Charlie Wrote: Egypt lost control of Canaan during the reign of Rameses VI.  The last Egyptian garrisons were withdrawn then.  However,  at this time, the first hilltop farms in the highlands had already been  founded for several decades.

Wikipedia
...
Ramesses VI Nebmaatre-Meryamun (sometimes written Ramses or Rameses, also known under his princely name of Amenherkhepshef C[note 1]) was the fifth pharaoh of the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt. He reigned for about eight years in the mid-to-late 12th century BC and was a son of Ramesses III and queen Iset Ta-Hemdjert.'
...
Egyptian presence in Canaan was terminated during or soon after Ramesses VI's rule,[91][92] with the last garrisons leaving southern and western Palestine around the time,[93] and the frontier between Egypt and abroad returning to a fortified line joining the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.[78] A 2017 archaeological study reached the same conclusion, namely that Ramesses VI's reign is the terminus post quem for the presence of the Egyptian military in Jaffa, which was twice destroyed around this time period.[94] Opponents of the Egyptian authority were of local extraction, probably originating in Canaanite cities of the Levantine coastal plain,[95] an opposition to Egyptian hegemony ultimately resulting from the arrival of the Sea People in the region during the reign of Ramesses III.
....

One of the most notable features of the Exodus tall tale and Joshua's invasion is the total lack of Egyptians in these tales.  So the exodus reflects conditions post Rameses VI.  But as the earliest proto-Israelites were already in the highlands before Rameses VI and the withdrawal of the last Egyptian garrisons, these tales cannot be historical.

The point was that since conservatives and literalists date the Exodus around 1500 BCE, their dating is impossible.
https://www.christiancourier.com/article...from-egypt
Test
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#10

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
It was not a matter of being lost.  All land is occupied; it was a matter of the already established settlements outside the desert enforcing a no refugees policy in addition to enforcing a repel-all-invaders policy that kept them in the desert.  God's instructions were to conquer their way out of the desert (more genocide).  Moses dispatched 12 scouts to determine where an invasion would have the greatest promise of success, both in terms of successful genocide and livability of the landscape (water sources, agricultural potential, etc.).  10 of the scouts returned with discouraging reports;  genocide would be impossible, due to superior defensive capability (giants lived there).  2 scouts thought genocide would succeed, but Moses' followers believed the 10 scouts, not the 2.  This entirely reasonable conclusion pissed god off, and god locked them in the desert for 40 years as punishment for believing the wrong scouts.  It's unclear whether god actually locked them there using electric fences, minefields and other impediments or whether the "locking in" was simply believing invasion and genocide impractical.  God smote the 10 pessimistic scouts with disease and killed them.  After 40 years the 2 surviving scouts finally inspired mounting an invasion, which did succeed.

It's a tale only a child could conceive and only children would believe, but at the time this tale was concocted mankind was profoundly childish (we still are in many respects).

In any case, "lost" is the wrong term to apply to the situation; the more accurate term is "confined", where the confining was a combination of believing invasion of surrounding territory would not succeed and unspecified measures imposed by god as punishment for not mounting immediate invasion.
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#11

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
The big problem with that claim is that the nations of Edom, Moab, Ammon etc did not exist at the times of the supposed exodus and Joshua's destruction of their massive cities as claimed in the books of Joshua and Exodus.

William Dever
ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

Newer excavated evidence from Amman,the Beqa' Valley, Sahab, Irbid,
Tell es-Sa'idiyeh, Deir 'Alla, Kataret es-Samra, and a few other sites, as
well as surveys from northern Jordan, the Jordan Valley, and Edom,
all yield the same picture. Moab and Edom were not yet established,
fortified kingdoms that would have posed any threat to Israelite tribes
moving through the area in the late 13th or early 12th century B.C.E.,
and even Ammon was rather sparsely occupied and defended.1* Thus,
throughout most of southern Transjordan in Late Bronze to Iron L apart
from a few settled towns, pastoralists and nomads must have dominated
the countryside, like the Shasu tribes well known from Egyptian New
Kingdom texts.20 In Moab, Heshbon and Dibon did not become significant
urban centers until the ninth to eighth cen­turies B.C.E.21 The majority of the
Iron Age sites known in Edom through excavation began only in the eighth
or seventh century B.C.E.,such as ‘Aroer, Buseirah (Bozrah), Tawilan, and Umm el-Biyarah.
Thus the notion of large-scale 13th- to 12th-century B.C.E. Israelite military cam­
paigns in southern Transjordan, or even of peaceful settlement there, is
no longer tenable.

The Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence
Editors Ernest S. Frerichs Leonard H. Lesko
Eisenbrauns 1997 ISBN 1-57506-025-6.
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#12

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
William Dever

We can account for Israelite origins, historically and archaeologically,
without presuming any Egyptian back­ ground. As a Syro-Palestinian archaeologist,
I regard the historicity of the Exodus as a dead issue, despite this symposium's
raising it again. There are, no doubt, theological problems that this negative evidence
presents, but I leave such problems to others.

Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence
Posing the Problem : The Literary and Historical Issues
 - William Dever

The Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence
Editors Ernest S. Frerichs Leonard H. Lesko
Eisenbrauns 1997 ISBN 1-57506-025-6.
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#13

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
Israeli archaeologist, Amnon Ben Tor, certainly not a minimalist himself, edited a book called the Archaeology of Ancient Israel.  It was a collection of essays by other experts in the field and one of them was by Amihai Mazar, a man who, like Dever, did not start out as a minimalist but has come around.  Like Dever his reason for this is that he has studied the evidence something that religitards will never do!

This excerpt from Google Books opens on Page 282.  If you scroll back a page the first paragraph of the essay is at the bottom of pg. 281.  In the aftermath of the 1967 war, groups of young Israeli archaeologists fanned out across the areas recently overrun firm in the expectation that they would find evidence of the truth of their stupid fucking bible.  Mazar went to Sinai.  Israel Finkelstein went to the West Bank.  Both were utterly disappointed by what they found but, like true scholars, they did not pretend that it did not exist.  The wrote about what they found or did not find!

Enjoy.

https://books.google.com/books?id=m1b1Vg...ea&f=false
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#14

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
William Dever

"Or take the Patriarchal narratives. After a century of
exhaustive investigations, all respectable archaeologists
have given up hope of recovering any context that would
make Abraham, Isaac or Joseph credible "historical
figures". Virtually the last word was written by me
more than twenty years ago for a basic handbook of
biblical studies, "Israelite and Judean" history.1
And as we have seen, archaeological investigation of
Moses and the Exodus has similarly been discarded as
a fruitless pursuit. Indeed, the overwhelming archaeological
evidence today of largely indigenous origins for early
Israel leaves no room for an exodus from Egypt or a 40-year
pilgrimage through the Sinai wilderness."

William G. Dever "What Did the Biblical Writers Know &
When Did They Know It? - What Archaeology Can Tell Us
About the Reality of Ancient Israel"
2001 - William B. Eerdmans Publishing ISBN D-8028-4794-3

1
"The Patriarchal Traditions" in "Israelite and Judean
History", Ed. John H. Hayes and J. Maxwell Miller
Philadelphi: Westminister 1977
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#15

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
The busiest midwives in histor as Robert Ingersol noted.
(01-21-2020, 04:31 PM)Dancefortwo Wrote: That desert is not enormous.  It's a relatively small desert compared to others. It's a little smaller than the state of West Virginia.   One can walk from one end of the Sinai  to the other in a little over two and a half weeks and that's going from it's two greatest distances.   There is no possible way that almost 2 million people wandered around in this desert for 40 years.  It's impossible.  It didn't happen.  

Some believers try to claim that the desert has burried the artifacts under the sand.... except it's not a sandy desert. It is a desert of dirt and rock.  Religious nuts try every way they can to make this story work.

It's very telling that many Rabbis have realized the Exodus is a myth and they now celebrate Passover as symbolic of Jewish struggles rather than an actual event.

Actually, they did not wander for 40 years.  Most of that 40 years, about 38 of them, were spent camping out at Kadesh-Barnea.  Archaeologists know where that is located, and the site has been excavated.  Not a single sign of any such encampment has been found.  Numbers claims the Israelites of the exodus numbered 600,000 who could "draw the sword", of military ages.  Double that for old men and boys.  Double that for women.  Some 2.4 million Israelites.  Plus large numbers of cattle, large and small.
Even if we divided these claimed numbers to 1/10th, 240,000, that would still have made Kadesh-Barnea the largest city in the world at that time.  Exodus claims the Israelites had two midwives.  The busiest midwives in history as Robert Ingersol noted.
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#16

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
(01-22-2020, 12:35 AM)Cheerful Charlie Wrote: The busiest midwives in histor as Robert Ingersol noted.
(01-21-2020, 04:31 PM)Dancefortwo Wrote: That desert is not enormous.  It's a relatively small desert compared to others. It's a little smaller than the state of West Virginia.   One can walk from one end of the Sinai  to the other in a little over two and a half weeks and that's going from it's two greatest distances.   There is no possible way that almost 2 million people wandered around in this desert for 40 years.  It's impossible.  It didn't happen.  

Some believers try to claim that the desert has burried the artifacts under the sand.... except it's not a sandy desert. It is a desert of dirt and rock.  Religious nuts try every way they can to make this story work.

It's very telling that many Rabbis have realized the Exodus is a myth and they now celebrate Passover as symbolic of Jewish struggles rather than an actual event.

Actually, they did not wander for 40 years.  Most of that 40 years, about 38 of them, were spent camping out at Kadesh-Barnea.  Archaeologists know where that is located, and the site has been excavated.  Not a single sign of any such encampment has been found.  Numbers claims the Israelites of the exodus numbered 600,000 who could "draw the sword", of military ages.  Double that for old men and boys.  Double that for women.  Some 2.4 million Israelites.  Plus large numbers of cattle, large and small.
Even if we divided these claimed numbers to 1/10th, 240,000, that would still have made Kadesh-Barnea the largest city in the world at that time.  Exodus claims the Israelites had two midwives.  The busiest midwives in history as Robert Ingersol noted.

Thanks. I stand corrected.  I will amend my comments.  So they didn't wander for 40 years, only 2 years.   There weren't a little less than 2 million but more like 2.4 million and they encamped in one place for those 38 years.  Largest city in the world....not a shread of evidence anyone was there.  Got it.   Still makes me laugh.  

As far as I know there's no evidence anyone named Moses existed.
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#17

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
Over 2 million people and not even one among them with enough nouse to navigate a route using the stars.   Hmm
No gods necessary
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#18

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
[Image: religion-promised_land-christian-moses_w...31_low.jpg]
Robert G. Ingersoll : “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”
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#19

Biblical Archaeology - Exodus Is Not Historical
Long ago, when the net was young and usenet was king, I was still using DOS and Telix to acccess the net. I used to read alt.bible.errancy quite regulary with great interest. As Near Eastern archaeology started abandoning the idea that the Exodus et al was historical, I started getting books on the subject, and to create a quote list from immanent experts stating that fact open;y and plainly, supported by evidence.

In all the messy, old stuff Ii saved from various old hard disks, I finally found a copy of my early list. I am reposting it here. I had posted it at the old forum before it ended, but had lost track of where I had it on my hard disk.

The reason for this is that there are so many books, some out of print, that an interested atheist will have to spend quite a bit of money to find and read all of these for this information. The question is, "Is the OT history and is the OT trustworthy?" The answer is no.

Even today, Youtube is loaded with claims by Christians that the Bible is trustworthy and true. This list was meant to point interested atheists towards the true state of archaeology's findings as to the lack of evidence for Biblical claims. The Bible is not history. Who says so? Many of the most immanent Near east archaeologists. That's who says so. And here is my list of some of them.

---------

The Rise of Ancient Israel
A Symposium held at the Smithsonian Institution, October 26, 1991
Edited by Hershel Shanks
Biblical Archaeology Society 1992
ISBN 1-880317-07-9

Hershel Shanks Page 5

"Well, archaeology is no longer a crutch in the classic sense
of the conquest model. We simply cannot posit a series
of destructions in Canaan that can rationally be identified
as the result of the Israelite conquest. Recently, our
archaeological methodology has improved, we can date levels
much more securely, and more sites have been excavated. As a
result, we can longer say that archaeology supports what we may
call the conquest model of Israel's emergence in Canaan."

Page 22.

"The purpose of the biblical account is not what we bow regard
as history. The purpose of the biblical account is to explain
god's acts in relationship to man on this earth. It really
isn't concerned with detailed accuracy. That is not its purpose.
....
Most biblical scholars do not accept the bible as literally true.
So what you have to do, is treat it almost like an archaeological
tell, and excavate it as it were, and analyze it to see whether
what it says is historically true in the details, whether we
would accept it as historically accurate by modern historians'
standards."


William G. Dever
Page 28
"The word "history" does not even occur in the Hebrew bible.
The bible is not history and does not pretend to be. It is
literature, and a peculiar kind of *theological* literature
at that. It is a reconstruction of the past after the past was
essentially over, written, edited, and put together in
its present form, long after the collapse of of both the
Northern kingdom (Israel) and the Southern kingdom (Judah).
It therefore refracts as well as reflects the past.
The bible is a kind of revisionist history."

Page 29
"The conquest model is not subscribed to by most biblical
scholars today - certainly no one in the mainstream of scholarship -
and that's been true for some time. Moreover, there isn't a
single reputable professional archaeologist who espouses the
conquest model in Israel, Europe or America. We don't need
to say any more about the conquest model. That's that.
(laughter) Not to be dogmatic about it or anything, but ...
(laughter)."

Page 84
"The literal biblical story of an Exodus from Egypt, and
a subsequent pan-Israelite conquest of Canaan can no longer
be salvaged, for all the wishful thinking in the world."


From Nomadism to Monarchy - Archaeological & Historical Aspects
of Early Israel
Edited by Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Na'aman
Biblical Archaeology Society 1994
ISBN 1-880317-20-6

The Conquest of Canaan - Nadav Na'aman

Page 249
"It is commonly accepted that the majority of conquest stories
in the book of Joshua are devoid of reality."

Page 250
"The entire concept of an invasion and conquest of
the highlands in the thirteenth-twelth centuries is
alien to historical reality. The Iron Age I settlement
process in the hill country is hardly illuminated by
the biblical conquest tradition."

---
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