Minimalist

Arnoldo, you do understand that the tale told on the tel Dan stele contradicts the bible account, don't you?

The king of Damascus states on the stele that HE killed the kings of Israel and Judah in battle. Your bible stories claim that some guy named Jehu did it and then went and killed Jezebel for good measure.

So, if you want to claim that the stele proves your bible then you also have to accept that the stele refutes the notion of biblical inerrancy.

Your choice.

arnoldo

So in your opinion is the stele giving the correct version of the events? If so do you have any other sources which leads you to believe the stele is correct and the OT is wrong?

arnoldo

David wrote about the Exodus in Psalm 106

Our fathers in Egypt did not understand Your wonders;
They did not remember Your abundant kindnesses,
But rebelled by the sea, at the Red Sea.
8 Nevertheless He saved them for the sake of His name,
That He might make His power known.
9 Thus He rebuked the Red Sea and it dried up,
And He led them through the deeps, as through the wilderness.
10 So He saved them from the hand of the one who hated them,
And redeemed them from the hand of the enemy.
11 The waters covered their adversaries;
Not one of them was left.
12 Then they believed His words;
They sang His praise.

Toto

So the purported author of this Psalm, who you claim without proof to have been King David, made reference to the Exodus myth.

This is totally nonresponsive to the question.

Minimalist

Seeing as how I think the bible story was written several centuries later I'll go with the contemporary inscription of the King of Aram-Damascus.

Johnny Skeptic

Natural causes? How cute. If the causes were natural, then God did not have anything to do with them.

Are you going to tell us that all of the firstborn males in Egypt died of natural causes?

Are you going to tell us that Moses' foreknowledge of the plagues was natural too?

Even if the Ten Plagues were natural occurrences, if they happened, they would have been the biggest news stories of the millennia in the entire world, but history makes no mention of them.

Logically, the odds against ten serious plagues all naturally occuring within the borders of Egypt are astronomnical.

bacht

If you really are a skeptic, why would you accept any of this as historical? Why go through torturous exercises trying to explain mythology as fact? These stories are no more verifiable than Homer's.

afaik the only evidence for an exodus is some settlement in Canaan around the 12th C. Why not assume that storytellers embellished what may have been an internationally insignificant event?

Johnny Skeptic

What did I say that I accept as historical?

bacht

sorry, my mistake