Roger Pearse

Ah, but do you want to go and see if they left any extra commandments along the way?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Johnny Skeptic

What do you mean?

Sauron

I think it's a joke.

Anat

Haran, sorry you are leaving the thread, I was away from keyboard most of the day, so my response arrives late for you, but may still be of interest to lurkers. (BTW I thought that by choosing a Canaanite war goddess for my handle it would be obvious I'm female) I cannot accept the biblical account of the exodus as history or anything close to history without external evidence because the likelihood of a written account from the time is negligible, and oral traditions get distorted irrecognisably over time. (I have seen anthropologists claim that 20 generations would be pretty much the maximum, but I don't know how they arrived at this conclusion.)

As for whether the texts we have are solid, rather than point you to the very famous analysis of the flood stories, have a look at What Really Happened at Mount Sinai? that looks into the accounts of law giving in Exodus (and Leviticus and Numbers). You'll see that if taken as is, the biblical account has insanities such as God telling Moses to go up the mountain when Moses is already there, inconsistencies wrt the people's emotional state in reaction to God's speech, places where it seems the whole law had been given to Moses on the mountain, but in contrast he was given even more laws in the tabernacle, inconsistencies between God's words to Moses and God's actions (calls Moses to receive laws but instead gives tabernacle instructions?) and so on. So the story looks corrupted, and a promising way to resolve the problems is by having the corruption be the result of combining different accounts.

You say you are convinced the account is historical due to the presence of details. IMO many of the details are there for literary reasons. Several of the names of the camp sites are symbolic, such as rephidim - weak hands, dophka - spur and rithma - restraint. There are parallels between events before and after the revelation on Sinai. So with that in mind, what of the events is historical and what was added for literary purpose?

Doug Shaver

It can be risky. I'll take my chances.

Doug Shaver

I would be feeling quite foolish right now, if I had been familiar with the Canaanite pantheon.

Johnny Skeptic

Possibly, but we need to know if Roger believes the story of the Exodus and the ten plagues. How about it, Roger? Do you believe the story of the Exodus and the ten plagues, and are you an inerrantist?