Toto

Pliny the Younger wrote to Tacitus about the eruption from his own observation. There are some excerpts of his letters here.

GakuseiDon

As Toto pointed out, Pliny the Younger seems to be the only one.
Not as far as I know.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to Gakusei Don: The ten plagues in Egypt is just one of many cases where if the Bible is true, rational people do not find what they expect to find. If God is loving, you would not expect him to make people blind, deaf, and dumb, reference Exodus 4:11. You would not expect him to punish people for sins that their ancestors committed, reference Exodus 20:5. You would not expect him to reward and punish people collectively, like he rewarded and punished Old Testament Jews. You would expect him to reward and punish people individually. You would not expect him to say that killing is wrong, and hypocritically people with hurricanes, including some of his most devout and faithful followers, and babies. You would not expect him to tell Christians via James to give food to hungry people, but withhold food from starving people, with no possible benefits for himself or for anyone else, but he withheld food from one million people who died of starvation in the Irish Potato Famine. You would not expect him to refuse to protect women from rapists, especially since he sometimes protected Old Testament Jews from their enemies. You would not expect him to prevent the Bible writers from clearly opposing slavery in terms that are much easier to understand. You would not expect him to indiscriminately distribute tangible benefits without any regard for a person's needs or worldview, but that is what he does today. You would not expect him to refuse to directly participate in the spreading of the Gospel message. In the first century, God discriminated against people who lived in China by refusing to tell them about the Gospel message. He knew that they would all die without hearing the Gospel message. The spreading of the Gospel message in the first century was obviously not one of God's top priorities regarding his own personal involvement, or in any other century for that matter, but for some strange reason Jesus told the disciples to make it one of their priorities. Most importantly you would not expect God to withhold information from some people that would cause them to become Christians if they were aware of it. If you want to convince people that you exist, and what you want them to do with their lives, the last thing that you would do would be to require faith. Requiring faith greatly limits the number of people who will accept you. Requiring faith could not possibly benefit God or mankind in any way. One wonders if God has mankind’s best interests at heart, or his own best interests.

Based upon the preceding evidence, and a lot of other evidence, rational people know that even if a God exists, it is very unlikely that he is the God of the Bible. The Bible depicts God as being a moral and perfect being, but the extra-Biblical evidence against God's character is much more credible than the biblical evidence for God's character. The integrity of the Bible rests not only upon God's existence, but upon his character. If he is not moral and perfect, he cannot fairly require that anyone else be moral and perfect.

Copies of copies of ancient texts will never be sufficient evidence that God has good character. James Holding tried to overcome complaints from skeptics regarding textual criticism with his admittedly flagship article that is titled ‘The Impossible Faith’. Holding basically hypothesizes that the results of Christianity would have been impossible without God’s involvement. However, Holding’s results are much less convincing than the awful results that I mentioned previously. Holding’s results are speculative, but my results are uncontestable. Surely you do not believe that hurricanes create themselves and go wherever they want to go.

The simple truth is that if any being other than God did and allowed what God sometimes does and allows, you would not accept him. Why is that?

Atheos

I don't think that it's fair to compare the eruption of Vesuvius to the alleged 10 plagues of Egypt. The eruption of Vesuvius was a one-time event that left behind a scarred landscape. It was sudden, and (apart from aftershocks) was over in a matter of hours. Like hurricanes, tsunamis, floods and earthquakes, it was merely a disaster that can be verified in a number of different ways. There are historical records, geological evidence, archaeological evidence, etc.

But somehow the 10 plagues of Egypt happened without leaving the slightest trace of their occurrence. This is unlikely in the extreme, as posited by the article referenced by Johnny Skeptic. Invading hoardes were a dime a dozen in those days and Egypt would have been ripe for the plundering. After being pushed to the brink of dehydration and starvation because they went for several days without drinkable water and there was no fish, grain or livestock to eat (water to blood, death of livestock, hail, locusts) and treated to horrible boils all over their skin, few egyptian soldiers would have been left with the strength to defend against invading marauders eager to pilliage the vast gold and treasuries of the Egyptians. And without any horses to pull their chariots they would have been at a severe disadvantage. It wouldn't have been the Israelites leaving the land, it would have been the Egyptian citizens themselves. By the start of the eighth plague Pharoah would be presiding over a kingdom not much bigger than his palace.

In short, the linked article makes a strong case that those 10 plagues would have been the end of the Egyptian dynasty, and would have had tongues wagging throughout the Mediterranean coasts. There is no arguing that it would have created incredible amounts of trade opportunities for people to make insane profits shipping livestock to Egypt to replace what had been destroyed in the plagues.

To summarize, the 10 plagues and exodus result in the egyptians losing:

• All freshwater marine life
• All their livestock
• All their crops
• Many of their people to disease
• Their entire army (like there would be one left by this time) by being drowned in the red sea
• An entire slave workforce of nearly 2 million people

Yet not one scrap of evidence exists anywhere to chronicle such a disaster. All the evidence indicates that Egypt just rocked and rolled merrily along throughout the time in question with nary a blip. Except for the extrordinary claims of one god-myth, it's as if it never happened. Which, of course, it didn't.

Johnny Skeptic

Now that was really good, Atheos. Thanks for your help. As I said in the first sentence of my OP, "If the ten plagues in Egypt occured, they were perhaps the greatest coverup in history." I now wish to restate that as "If the ten plagues in Egypt occured, they were [instead of were perhaps] the greatest coverup in history, which invites the question 'who is responsible for the coverup?'"

Vesuvius left a quite noticeable aftermath which was apparent to everyone. On the other hand, the ten plagues did not leave an aftermath that was noticeable to anyone, including to the writer of the myth. While Vesuvius was considered by many people to be an act of nature, if the ten plagues occured, virtually no one would have believed that they were acts of nature, especially the deaths of all of the firstborn males. A supernatural aspect of the plagues would have been widely believed, making the story much more newsworthy than a natural event.

GakuseiDon

OK. So, back to my original question:

For the Mt Vesuvius event: How many accounts should have survived, IYO? And how would you calculate that number?

For the 10 plagues event: How many accounts should have survived, IYO? And how would you calculate that number?

Johnny Skeptic

Atheos adequately refuted your Mt. Vesuvius argument in his post #15. Did you read it? As Atheos and the source that I quoted basically said, if the plagues occured, Egypt would essentially have been destroyed as a nation. You can't hide the destruction of a powerful nation. I suggest that you reread the source that I quoted in my opening post, and reconsider what the plagues would have been like if they occured. Do you believe that there is sufficient evidence that the plagues occured? How about the creation of the earth by the God of the Bible? How about Jesus' conception by the Holy Sprit? How about the claim that Jesus never sinned? How about the claim that Jesus' shed blood and death atoned for the sins of mankind? None of those claims are reasonably verifiable by any means.

Predispositionalism is not helpful if you want to find the truth. You have assumed your conclusions in advance of what research says. You disregard any research that disagrees with your beliefs no matter what the research says. On the other hand, if God were to show up and create a new galaxy, I would conclude that at least one being exists who is able to create a new galaxy, and possibly that the supposed God of the Bible created the universe. I am willing to consider new evidence and change my opinions accordingly. Are you?

Perhaps you can explain to me how you found God in copies of copies of ancient texts without any current tangible evidence that the God of the Bible exists and is concerned with the tangible needs of mankind. If you are like most Christians, you initially became a Christian without conducting any research at all. Kosmin and Lachman wrote a book that is titled 'One Nation Under God.' The authors provide a lot of documented research that shows that in the U.S., the chief factors that influence religious beliefs are geography, family, race, ethnicity, gender, and age. Those factors are entirely secular.

GakuseiDon

I didn't make an argument. I was asking you a question.

For the Mt Vesuvius event: How many accounts should have survived, IYO? And how would you calculate that number?

For the 10 plagues event: How many accounts should have survived, IYO? And how would you calculate that number?

I also eat babies and hang out my washing partially naked (one of those statements is true)

militant agnostic

Two things bother me about comparing Vesuvius to the Biblical annihilation of Egypt.

One is that while the plagues struck all of Egypt in a purposefully shocking or damaging way Vesuvius was really just a blow to a single city. People who lived there would have moved into other urban areas or just died in the eruption. Because of that the writing surrounding it would have probably been on the same level of a big fire displacing allot of people. The only difference would be that someone would have probably described the eruption for the simple fact that it was an unusual event. This catastrophe would have constituted a sudden change to an urban area, but that is not that unusual. In addition it’s not like anything that couldn't be rebuilt was destroyed. Food supplies and a working army were not taken away from the nation like with Egypt. Considering the nature of the event I think the amount of references to it are about what we would expect.

The events that took place in Egypt are of a differnet nature. These weren’t urban development disasters they were blatantly miraculous disasters that would have crippled or destroyed the entire nation, and have done so in an emotionally disturbing or impressive fashion. That is kind of thing we would expect to see noticeably in historical records.

The second is that while the historical writings about Vesuvius are not enormous the archeological evidence is staggering. Many sections of the city are preserved in a way that can only be explained by being buried in hot ash. Huge amounts of burned bodies and artifacts were also recovered. In addition the testable time that these artifacts were buried matches the time of the eruption in recorded roman history. So the fact that the eruption occurred is plainly evident.

But the Egyptian disasters have left us no record of their existence in any of the places we would think to look. There are no chariots at the bottom of the Red Sea. There is no indication that the Hittites or any other neighboring cultures ever noticed that the Egyptian army was wiped out (and if biblical numbers were correct they would have to be) or that any of the other disasters that the Bible claims happened. Considering the fact that the Hittites were at war with them and surrounding regions traded with them you would think someone would notice.

At this point I would say that the chances of these things having actually happened are about as likely as the prophecy about Egypt being wiped out by fireballs and being so damaged that no animal or plant could walk on it for forty years being true. I think that was in Ezekiel.

GakuseiDon

OK. That's reasonable.

My question here, then, is how many would you expect? And how do you arrive at that number? Is there a precedent that you are following?

The point in question is not whether we can prove the event itself happened. It is "how many references to the event would we expect to have survived?" Mt Vesuvius is perhaps a good test case to use as a control, since we know that it erupted, and that we only have the one eye-witness account.

Yes, I agree. All these indicate that the events recorded in the Bible almost certainly didn't happen. But if they HAD happened, how would we calculate the number of references that we would expect to see extant? That is my question to Johnny.

If Johnny wants to stick to the archeological evidence and say "there is no evidence for it", that's fine (and I would agree with him). But since he appears to be claiming that we should expect references to it to survive today if it had actually happened, I'm curious to see if he can back that up.