WVIncagold

well not that I am a scholar on the subject but that is according to what i could pull off the net. I have always been interested in the so call exodus because of my military training and looking at troop movements. It would of been a logistical nightmare and any quartermaster will pretty much tell you it would of been impossible.

semiopen

The Amelikites gave them all kinds of trouble... Here is some little tribe wandering around the Sinai for no good reason, engages the 600,000 strong Hebrew army, and is only fought to a stalemate because Moses invokes YHWH by raising his arms for the whole day.

There is the additional difficulty of the feeble falling behind

Deuteronomy 25:17

It's well known that the length of the Israelite line must have been close to several hundred miles long, so how does one get from say being 20 miles from the front to 150 miles from it when they are travelling at probably less than two miles per hour. Also, how could a competent General leave his rear that exposed?

renassault

The manna came from the sky so that's not really a problem as to the capacity. Manna and quail=Some had manna, some had quail, not all had manna + quail.

How did you determine that it takes 51 days? And if it did, so what?

Multiple trails may have been used, but aside from that the only way it would be 150 miles long is if everyone stood behind each other by 3 feet...It most likely would not have been one straight line, since you can't really defend that.

Yeah, maybe if we couldn't do 3rd grade math it wouldn't.

Wikipedia?? Man you've really done your research there.

renassault

Everyone knows this is an allusion to Christ. This was recognized as early as Justin Martyr.

The whole line wouldn't stop just for them.

A rear is never protected from behind, which is where the Amalekites went, going behind the march, regardless of it being in a well organized commander's army or not..that's why it's the rear... It wasn't needed to be hundreds of miles long. Average travel time is about 2.5 miles per hour.

Dark Virtue

I'm not sure why you wrote this.

The story is in the Bible, doesn't it mean it happened?

Why the doubt?

Dark Virtue

How do you know what to treat as allusion and what to treat literally?

WVIncagold

Actually it is quite a problem considering the amount of caloric intake it takes to keep that many people on the move.


Normal marching speed of an army ten abreast. ( actually that is double the amount usually used) Keep in mind that number did not inlcude animals and pack trains. It would stretch out over 300 miles in length. And if it took 51 days from the begining of the train to leave egypt to the end of the train to leave egypt, well lets say the whole Pharo chasing them through the red sea kind of is a joke that and the whole leaving without knowledge of the Pharo. He could of picked them off at will with some archers.


Space ships MAQY have been used as well as long as we are going to use speculation of may. thats not what the bible says though is it? Actually the train would of been much longer. Animals, carts, women and children, and this all slows down a pack train to a crawl. Logisitcally a nightmare to defend and to keep supplied. Let alone to water that many people and keep hydraated for any period of time. Any open source of water would of become polluted very quickly thus poisioning those at the rear of the movement.

Care to share?



all I can say is apprently more than you have.
oh how quaint okay here is the math. I have posted this already and did not feal the need but i guess there is one in every crowd.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus numbers at 2 million or more given in the bible that’s not including livestock.
3 million walking 10 abreast with 6 ft between rows would extend for around 340 miles (3,000,000 / 10 * 6 = 1,800,000 ft. = 340 mi)
That’s 340 miles. To give a idea of distance that’s from Bunker Hill WV to 40 miles outside Columbus OH! That takes 6.5 hours to drive at 65 miles an hour. I know I drive it to visit my son there who is attending the university.
That’s ten abreast people. Better yet it is only 345 miles from Cairo to Jerusalem!
So being the civil war buff that I am I took some applied knowledge from southern troop movements considering they were less fed and equipped than union soldiers.
The Confederate authorities carefully outlined the expected rations in the army regulations issued in 1861. Each soldier was to receive per day .75 lbs. of pork or bacon or 1.25 lbs. of fresh or salt beef, and 18 oz. of bread or flour or 12 oz. of hard bread or 1.25 lbs. of corn meal. In addition, for each 100 rations, there was to be issued: 8 quarts of peas or beans, or in lieu thereof, 10 lbs. of rice; 6 lbs. of coffee; 12 lbs. of sugar; 4 quarts of vinegar; 1.5 lbs. of tallow candles; 4 lbs. of soap; and 2 quarts of salt. On marches, the bread ration was to be 1 lb. of hard bread.
However, the army began to have difficulty in supplying this ration almost immediately. Vegetables were very scarce during the winter of 1861-62, and in April 1862 the meat ration was reduced to a pound of beef or a half pound of bacon or pork, with some reductions also in the ration of flour and meal. During the retreat up the Peninsula, rations were limited to flour, meal and salt meat, and frequently troops received only parched corn, with four ears of corn per man as the standard issue

So taking into this that quail as the meat source and manna as the bread source I think most would find this acceptable “replacement”. So a one pound quail will give approximately .50 to .75 lbs of meat source that means every day they would have killed 3 million quail and 3 million pounds of bread per day just to keep the people moving. That comes out to being about half a pound of excrement a day per person. Never mind that quail could not keep that population suggested and that bread does not fall from heaven (if that is what manna is) that’s one and a half million pounds of poop a day just from the people.
I would also like to point out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_Bread_Company that it takes this bakery one week to produce 60,000 loafs.
Now lets look at 3 million birds per day and bread form the sky. What do birds do when you scatter bread? So the Hebrews would have been competing for the manna with not only the 3 million quail they would be killing that day but the 900,0000,000 birds needed in order to maintain this consumption for just one month. Since they only breed and can lay 300 eggs per year. It takes 17-18 days of incubation or 15 days to hatch depending on temperature. In any case 900,000,000 is a lot of birds doing what birds do best, eat and poop. So allot of that bread will not be usable because of loss to birds and just plain poop contamination. In any case that’s allot of poop. Keep in mind we are not talking the beast of burden included just the humanity and the birds god sent for them to eat. Also I would like you to consider this
An average six-ounce skinless quail contains about 123 calories, 40 percent of the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of protein, 50 percent niacin, 30 percent vitamin B6, and 28 percent of iron. The same bird has only 1.2 grams of saturated fat, 1.2 grams monounsaturated fat, 1.1 grams polyunsaturated fat, and 64 grams of cholesterol. Not allot to go on per day. By the bible god was starving his people and they were knee deep in excrement. Great for today’s fat conscience not so go for starving people who need the fat a nutritional source.
Just a thought how would you like to be the last 10 people in line? Think about it traveling 6 miles per day. 10 abreast for 40 years. 1.5 million pounds of human feces per day. That’s 547,500,000 pounds of poop a year. For a grand total of 21,900,000,000 pounds of human excrement in 40 years if there population stayed at its constant of 3 million. That’s twenty one BILLION pounds of poop stretched from Egypt to the lands of Canaan. Anyone want to think about the flies?
Now what would this of done to the watersheds of the Nile? The fecal chloroform and nitrates from this much waste would have spoiled all the water in the area basically killing any in the back of the pack. Keep in mind we are not talking today’s world but the ability to get water from open running sources only or already dug wells. Water was even more precious in those days and is a pretty hard commodity even today in third world countries. Imagine a horde of people stretching as far as you can see that would take approximately 58 days to pass you by from beginning to end. All of them wanting your villages water source. No wonder they were not received well. Very quickly the water source would have been vile and polluted. One need only study Andersonville prison to see what the conditions would be like for the 58 days it took to “pass” you by.
I think this alone brings all of Exodus to a “never happened” and a mere myth. Look at a map and imagine an army column stretched from Columbus Ohio to Morgantown WV. The logistics and the mere amount of waste if we ignore the whole magic of food appearing in itself shows the mind boggling (excuse the expression) crap that the bible expects us to swallow and many inerrant believers expect us to swallow as truth.

origianlly posted http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=235554 here

semiopen

How do you know that everyone knows this is an allusion to "expletive deleted?"