bfniii

this response didn't really answer the question i asked.

bfniii

i don't recall doing that. could you point out to me which post that was?

i think the problem is that you are under the misperception that traditional ideas addressed by finkelstein are refuted, which they are not. he has advocated opposing ideas. but they aren't conclusive refutations, at least not yet.

bfniii

dodge? perhaps you didn't read post #92. if you had, you would know that i didn't dodge the issue.

RED DAVE

From bfniii:
Just show us the slit trenches for 2-3 million people for 30+ years at Kadesh-Barnia.

And, while your at it, how about some evidence of the departure of a million or so people from Egypt in Egyptians records. You're nit-picking and blowing smoke. The Exodus never happened.

RED DAVE

Gullwind

There is also nothing external to the biblical narrative (in this particular area, anyway) that supports what it says and there is certainly enough opportunity for it to exist, not to mention numerous attepts to find it, all of which have failed so far. Lacking external corroboration to extraordinary events, when that evidence should be plentiful if the events actually happened, is justification for doubting the events occured, until such evidence turns up.

Is it logical to assume that an alien device caused the plagues? There is no evidence against that position, so any argument against it merely an argument from silence also, right?

So far, all you've shown is possibilities. I will be the first to acknowledge that they are possibilities, but that's all. They are certainly not enough to assume that such extraordinary events really happened, and they don't explain why so much evidence is lacking. If and when some actual evidence is discovered that supports the exodus, I will re-evaluate my position (I promise).

Gullwind

If no time frame is specified, than specifying any time frame is adding something.


Well, okay. I can imagine it too, but it sure lessens the impact of the plagues if they were spread out over a couple of years, don't you think?

So when you're reading a book and it says a person did something, "and then" he did something else, do you always assume that months passed between the two events?

Well, when I'm reading a text, and it says one thing happened, "and then" another thing happened, and they are related events involving the same people, I would assume that only a short interval separates them. Unless the text specifies otherwise, which as you have noted, the biblical account does not. That's how I would define "plain reading."

Maybe how you could explain how an entire population could avoid starvation having lost an entire year's crop and all domestic animals all at once. Even in years of famine, some food would be grown and there would be animals to provide some meat. Taking all that away would cause the population to move elsewhere to survive.

No less prominent than the Hebrews were in Egypt.

Documents recording the sale of large numbers of domestic animals to the Egyptians at the appropriate time-frame, descriptions of the unusual darkness, mass graves of not only large numbers of animals but of the firstborn, physical traces of a large population camped out in one area for thirty-eight years.

Why is any of this unlikely to exist?

xaxxat

Yeah, you're right. That stuff is too weak to even rate a dodge...

xaxxat

The next thing he's gonna tell us is that they ate Manna for 38 years and it left no solid waste. Or maybe gawd followed them arouind with a giant pooper-scooper...

Kosh

But of course. Haven't you heard the phrase "Holy Shit" ????

xaxxat

:notworthy: