Amos

If you are writing this for me I am glad you stopped because I am not about to study OT history if I see no history in the bible. It would be a cruel and malicious thing to do.

Jesus used the children of Isreal to juxtapose good with evil, or the right way with the wrong way.

I like the daughter becomes "God wife" thing and the bible is loaded with such inconsistencies. That is kind of like "the child becomes the father of man" and "the woman who gives birth to the child becomes the bride of the child."

Don't you see that the anomalies are there to distract you from the literal interpretations? These, I should add, are never mine to give but are yours to grasp.

WRW Mattfeld

Dear Jeremy,

Some scholars (notably Prof. Mendenhall)have suggested that the Hebrew word elph, translated as thousand can also mean family. Thus they suggest 600 families left Egypt, not 600,000 warriors with wives, children, parents extrapolated to 2 million souls. The problem with this line of argument is that the narrator envisions Israel filling the land from Dan to Beersheba which would make sense with 2 million people, but no sense with 600 families. But aside from the logistics problems, no archaeological evidence exists according to some archaeologists who have studied the archaeological survey reports of the Israeli archaeologists who combed the Sinai after the 6 days war with Egypt (they were looking for evidence of their ancestor's Exodus). I have discovered the "missing" archaeological evidence and present it in my article on the Exodus. cf. the following url

<a href="http://www.bibleorigins.net/ExodusTimnaSerabitelKhadim.html" target="_blank">http://www.bibleorigins.net/ExodusTimnaSerabitelKhadim.html</a>

Jayhawker Soule

What Mendenhall writes is as follows, with emphasis added: [ November 02, 2002: Message edited by: ReasonableDoubt ]</p>

Celsus

davidH

I think you are begging the question in a way, since you assume that Deuteronomy is unadulterated historical fact. The number 40 itself as Moses' age (and number of days and nights it rained, and number of years in the wilderness, and reigns of David and Solomon, and time spent by Jesus in the desert) should make you suspicious. I would be much more confident of the number if it had been 39 or 41, because 40 has numerological significance in Jewish myth. As it is, it is probably simply a recognition of a generation, or a really really long time.

As most Christian apologists should tell you, numbers don't count in Biblical history.

Joel

Amos

Parables are works of art wherein words are used to describe the reality behind the surface images that are presented by the words. Parables can be very misleading which is why poetic translations always serve us best because they force us to look beyond the words.

Numbers, places, rivers, hills, deserts, waters, sun, stars, clothes, tribal names and all such use of images are there to direct us in the poetry of the prose.

I should add that archeology is much the same as trying to prove that the earth is flat. The flat earth is a metaphor to make heaven round and beauty the infinite pursuit of truth.

[ November 02, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Celsus

Thank you Amos, you've just done exactly what I said any good Christian apologist would do.

Amos

So joe, you would agree that there is no history in the bible but that a historic desription is used to make a number of timeless messages known. Very good, and this should be true for all parables including the flat earth, the flood, and also the life of Jesus.

If the above is true we should not look in history for answers but in our understanding of the myth . . . which is real nonetheless, or it could not have been a parable that speaks on behalf of truth.

[ November 02, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Mendeh

I think it might be useful to make a comparison with the Trojan War. There does indeed seem to have been a war fought at Troy, but no archaeologist is going to proclaim that Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector, Helen, etc. were real historical characters, or that the Greeks went into Troy hiding inside a wooden horse. All that contemporary evidence backs up is that there was a war fought at troy.

At most, all that one could show is that, IF the Israelites were ever in Egypt (for which there is no even slightly conclusive evidence at all), then the 18th Dynasty would be a pretty good time for them to be there. One can't prove a massive exodus, or that Moses was a historical figure (especially if we are seriously expected to swallow Moses living 120 years in the 15th Century BC), or that the ten plagues of Egypt occurred, or that the successor to the throne drowned, etc., because there is simply no contemporary evidence to back any of those claims up. Also, there has as yet been demonstrated no good reason at all for trusting Biblical dates relating to the Exodus. At the moment, it just seems to me that one misshapen card (the historicity of the Exodus) is being balanced with another (the validity of Biblical dates), without a solid foundation being provided for either.

Asha'man

Pharaoh made the decision to let Moses go, and then God overrode that decision. Multiple times. Look at Exodus 4:21, 7:3, 7:13, 9:12, 10:1, 10:20, 10:27, 11:10, 14:4, 14:8, and look for the phrase “harden his heart.” God took away Pharaoh’s free will and forced him to make a stupid decision, and then punished everyone else in the country for making that decision.


It reminds me of a bully in 2rd grade who would grab your hand and hit you in the face with it, all the while saying “stop hitting yourself.”

Amos

The Exodus is truly the stuff Senecan tragedies (failed divine comedies) are made of.