Storm and Stress

According to Exodus 12:37...600,000 men not including women and children, and beasts crossed the Red Sea. Lets be conservative and say a million people including beasts crossed over.

Now, how long would that take...a day..two?

After the Isrealites have seen the ten plagues,the Red Sea part, a Column of Fire keep the Eygptians back..you would have thought they would never have a doubt about God.

Instead, they through a wild pagan party, get naked on the advice of Aaron (Exodus 32:25)and worship a golden calf, because Moses has spent a long time away on Mt. Sinai?????

Thou shalt not kill, says the Lord...but in Exodus 32:37, he commands the Levites to go thru the camp and kill about 3000 men for their disobedience...mmmm?

And lets not forget the implications of the "hardening" of Pharoah's heart and who could make sense of Exodus 31:18..which describes the ten commandments inscribed by the finger of God, and later Moses will deliberately break those tablets. Would you throw two tablets written by the finger of God to the ground???

Is it just me...or am I reading mixed messages in the very strange case of Moses and Exodus?

[ January 04, 2002: Message edited by: Storm and Stress ]</p>

Kosh

What's worse is that the current batch of
writers in Hollywood don't seem to have gotten
much better at making up consistent fiction...

Muad'Dib

Strictly speaking, it's "Thou shalt not murder." According to the standards of the ANE (and apparently the OT as well), killing religious apostates was entirely justifiable; whether such a standard is appropriate today is an entirely different matter.

Celsus

Not to mention a people coming straight out of slavery, which they pleaded God to rescue them from, having slavery reinstitutionalised by Moses.

Dargo

It's interesting that Jews have maintained their religion in spite of having every incentive in the world to forsake it. According the Old Testament, their ancestors would forsake god on the drop of a hat despite having every incentive in the world to believe in him and trust him! What caused this mysterious transformation?

Foxhole Atheist

Archaeologists, to this day, have not been able to find evidence of 2 million people wandering in the Sinai and adjacent lands for 40 years as indicated in Exodus. Similarly, Egyptian historians have failed to record the events described in Exodus such as the many plagues, the deaths of all the firstborns, the many miracles as performed by Moses, the group of people held in “bondage” or the parting and subsequent crossing of the Red Sea.

As scientists and other investigators continue to investigate the premises of Exodus, as it is described in the bible, this legend is becoming more myth than fact.

-DM-

Not so fast. It's even worse than that.

EX 12:37, NU 1:45-46 The number of men of military age who take
part in the Exodus is given as about 600,000. Allowing for
women, children, and older men would probably mean that a total
of more than 2,000,000 Israelites left Egypt at a time when the
whole population of Egypt was less than 2,000,000.

[Taken from my <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/donald_morgan/absurd.html" target="_blank">Biblical Absurdities</a> listing in the Library.]

This is but one of many such "God"-ordered and/or "God"-ordained atrocities. [See my <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/donald_morgan/atrocity.html" target="_blank">Biblical Atrocities</a> and Bill's <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/bill_schultz/criminal-god.html" target="_blank">Is God A Criminal?</a>]

I think that the consensus of opinion these days is that it didn't happen. And it isn't just because of the lack of veracity apparent in the biblical account, there are a number of other factors such as that we don't see the evidence of the adoption of Egyptian characteristics in Hebrew and vice versa, for example, that one would expect to find were the story historical.

--Don--

Jeremy Pallant

Actually, the number of 1,000,000 is extremely conservative and not at all realistic. Modern estimates range from 2,000,000 to 3,200,000. It's a good point, however, and one I've researched a little.

Let's be generous, and use the Roman order of march. A four legion Roman army (20 - 24,000 men), including their baggage train, was fifteen miles long when on the march. Even marching 20 - 25 miles per day, by the time the rearguard left camp, the scouts were already looking out for the location of the next one.

Applying such a model to 3,000,000 Israelites, we have a column 1,875 miles long. Of course, the Roman army was disciplined, well-supplied and well trained, and could maintain their march. The Israelites cannot reasonably be assumed to have that degree of march discipline, and therefore their column would have grown in length considerably, possibly by as much as a factor of two or three.

Now if the Israelite column was as long as all that, then by the time Moses went up mount Sinai, the tail-end of the column was still sitting in Egypt. Indeed, assuming you were prepared to sit around for long enough, and assuming that the Israelites could maintain a marching distance of twenty miles per day, it would take the column three months to pass you. In reality, it would actually take much longer than that.

vaelarin

Even better than just wandering, Numbers 14, God says that except for Joshua and Caleb, not a single person over the age of 20, of those 2+ million people would enter the "promised land" alive.

So not only is there no evidence of 2+ million people being in Egypt, leaving Egypt, wandering in the desert - but there is no evidence for the 2+ million graves.

Kosh

Well, we have always wondered what all those
people ate in the desert....

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