darstec

Ha, David Copperfield could, after all he made the Statute of Liberty disappear, and I think, an entire train. What's so hard about turning a couple of rivers into blood? [Pharoah could have done that without the magicians -- a few thousand swords and tens of thousands of Hebrews. And as far as the plague of flies, ever been to a Hardy's restauraunt in Florida?]

Anat

bfniii,

For some reason you are willing to accept that the number of people in the exodus can be interpreted in other ways, but you do not accept the interpretation that the whole chain of events was symbolic of something entirely different. For example - the social, economical and political changes in Canaan at the transition from LB to Iron I, which included the weakening of Egyptian influenced cities, and eventually the almost total disappearance of Egypt from the local scene. Together with cultural memory of the Hyksos story this could lead to a tradition of Egyptian origin. Babylonian exile then gives the push for expanding the tradition as a message of hope for the exiles. We have current examples of refugees creating narratives about their origins which are only partially or loosely in correlation with facts, so this would not be a unique case.

But you said they had wagons with water jugs? How would they be thirsty in the first place? Just a few weeks into the journey they already ran into water problems, so I guess the water supply from Egypt didn't last long.

During the 38 years in Kadesh Barnea, long after finishing whatever water they brought from Egypt, what other water source did they have?

Reading comprehension problem. No matter how many people are doing the work, there is just that many sacrifices that can be offered if there aren't many places to offer them.

Johnny Skeptic

This thread is about the Exodus and the ten plagues. If the Exodus occurred, it was simply ordinary secular history that anyone living in that area could have recorded. If the plagues occurred, then that would be quite important, but Bfniii hasn't offered any historical evidence at all that the plagues occurred because he knows that there isn't any. One wonders why he is making posts in this thread except to get off topic.

aa5874

Bfniii, I repeat, no magician can do the magic tricks as described in the Ten Plagues. They are worthless myths. How can it be explained that the God of Abraham had a competition with magicians? This absurdity at its lowest level.

Jack the Bodiless

bfniii:
How do you make the gigantic leap from "I, bfniii, am not personally aware of any errors in the Bible (that I will accept)" to an assertion that there are NO known errors in the Bible (by implication, no errors known to anybody, not just yourself)?

Do the world's expert scholars agree on this? No, they don't. Is there at least a general scholarly consensus on this? No, there isn't.

I hereby declare that there are absolutely no known errors in the Vedas or the Upanishads. I say this with the confidence of one who has never read them. They are, as far as I know, inerrant.

Bfniii, your personal ignorance of these matters is not an argument. There are indeed many errors in the Bible: regardless of whether you know of them (or choose to accept that they are indeed errors).
Incorrect. An error doesn't cease to become an error if there is a "possible refutation": you have the burden of demonstrating that the "refutation" is a plausible explanation. We have seen what you consider to be "refutations", bfniii: redefinitions of well-understood words purely to avoid a Biblical error, ignoring context, ignoring rules of grammar, rewriting history, and so forth. Apply these standards to anything ever written, and there are no errors ANYWHERE. The statement "as of now, there are no known errors in the bible" becomes an entirely empty statement: as of now, there are no known errors in any book ever written.

As for your "study": your poor showing in Evolution/Creation shows that science isn't something you know much about, and your poor showing in this forum indicates that the Bible isn't something you know much about either. Or apologetics, for that matter: I'm reminded of your stumbling performance on the Daniel thread, where you misremembered the situation regarding the Greek musical instruments and were evidently unaware of several details of the "critical view" of Daniel. There is also your ongoing confusion between scholarship and apologetics, with results such as your "common knowledge" blunder discussed here (what you've "studied" appears to be a sort of "anti-knowledge").

And, of course, you have indeed been shown errors you have failed to refute. That's why you lost the Tyre argument (here and here, where I demonstrated that your interpretation of Ezekiel was grammatically incorrect). And, of course, there's the falsehood of the Genesis creation and Flood stories, where you lack the basic scientific knowledge to attempt any refutation at all: all you can do is say "I disagree..."

To wrestle this back on topic: there are many indications that the Exodus never happened, no real indication that it DID happen, and some rather large problems with any assumption that it happened (like the need to switch Kadesh Barnea with another in a parallel dimension, apparently). The sensible conclusion is that it didn't happen. Why should anyone conclude otherwise?

Jack the Bodiless

In case you were wondering: bfniii is bluffing here. He dodged the issue by citing the usual "It was a dream!" apologetic in response to the Bible's implications of flat-Earthism, then repeatedly evaded the Firmament issue by pretending I was still talking about flat-Earthism instead (in what I referred to as the "Great Firmament Dodge"). When eventually cornered, he tried to redefine the Hebrew "firmament" as the land!

And, yes, he did lose.

Relevant posts (on the Tyre thread, oddly): #392, #434, #458, #468, #471, #487, #500, #521, #527, #551 and #575 (Warning: those posts got quite long and rambling).

Oddly, I haven't yet seen bfniii attempt the explanation I've seen him use in the past: that the miracles of the Egyptian priests were due to "natural causes". There is a theory that some of the events in Exodus were inspired by phenomena relating to the Thera eruption (pillar of smoke, pillar of fire, tsunami, ash fallout polluting the river etc). Bfniii came up with the laughable notion that, every time Moses and Aaron invoked a miracle, a subsequent natural event coincidentally provided the Egyptian priests with an equivalent one! In characteristic fashion, he wouldn't listen to reason on this (especially when he invokes "Bible-time", in which events described as following after one another could be days/weeks/months apart). Oh, and the staves were just hypnotized snakes: apparently all Egyptian priests in the bfniii-verse had these readily available at all times, just in case someone pulled the "sticks to snakes" trick.

The actual explanation is, of course, quite straightforward: Exodus was written when the Hebrews still believed in the existence of other deities, and this is a "my god is better than your gods" duel.

darstec

"Bible-time -- that's a keeper. I'm stealing it.

FatherMithras

IE you don't read the bible too well. It's right with the bit abour bunnies chewing cud. And apparently you dodged the frimament issue. I wonder why you refused to reply to either of these...Seems the bible is errant.

cajela

If bfniii can't tell the difference between cud and shit, I'm NEVER going to his place for dinner. Not that I'm keen on cud, but who knows what else he might confuse with shit?

EthnAlln

Touché/!!!:notworthy: