Historical Evidence for the Exodus from Egypt (feat Bart Ehrman) (Titus Kennedy response)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ต.ค. 2022
- Is there any historical evidence for the biblical exodus from Egypt? Despite common claims to the contrary, Dr. Titus Kennedy believes a solid historical case can be made that the Bible got it right. Dr Bart Ehrman joins Paulogia to discuss key findings that support the traditional biblical chronology of the exodus.
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Historical Evidence for the Exodus from Egypt (with Titus Kennedy)
• Actual EVIDENCE for th...
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Apologist logic:
-We don’t expect to find much evidence for the Exodus.
-We don’t find much evidence for the Exodus.
-Exodus confirmed!
Sean McDowell can one up that. On AI.
Based on my worldview I predict artificial humanlike consiousness is not possible.
But if humans do create artificial consiousness it proves consiousness was created according to my worldview.
...and you use aggressive incuriosity in looking at your opponent's evidences to come to this ad hoc conclusion.
@@martylawrence5532
The important part is that Titus Kennedy openly admits that almost all experts disagree with his interpretation of the evidence.😉
Absence of evidence is... evidence of...no -absence! 🥴
The 2nd Exodus was a historical fact though, whatever you say about the 1st one.
I love how he says that we know the pharao‘s claims are false because he claims to have done things we know to be physically impossible but when it come to the claims in the bible the same logic doesn‘t apply for some reason. :D
There’s a story about a guy who cured blindness, raised people from from the dead, and walked on water. And that’s _TRUE!_
@@autonomouscollective2599 Taken as read .because the Bible says so.
@luca bertani
Did you not even watch the video?
@luca bertani 13:34, I was talking about Amenhotep II, an actual pharaoh and his actual claims.
@luca bertani 🤣 nice self-own.
That 'having an anti-supernatural bias' is considered an unfair prejudice is all I really need to know about what's considered evidence by the church crowd.
Yeah. If the supernatural exists, we could never tell one way or the other. It's annoying to be told the equivalent of "well you don't KNOW it doesn't exist." Well no shit, we can't tell if it's true or not. That's the whole problem!
Yeah. I feel no need to apologize or try to hide my bias against the supernatural. My default position is that it doesn't exist.
Whoever invented the notion of "anti-supernatural bias" was a genius propagandist.
My question is do we get to turn around and accuse theists of having an "anti-supernatural bias" because they don't believe in the historicity of stories of Zeus coming down from Mt. Olympus and banging everything that moves?
You will hear that mostly from Apologists who have no qualifications whatsoever…
But it’s always funny when they claim that Atheists are biased for not believing in miraculous stories that only exist in a single source, don’t fit anywhere into actual history, and contradict everything what we know about how reality works.😂
But the funniest part is that the vast majority of the people who reject the miracles of the Bible are people from other religions… who totally believe that miracles are possible and indeed actually happened.
So this "you just have an anti-supernatural bias“ really only works against Atheists.
I mean, even if there *were* a handful of chariot wheels at the bottom of a sea within walking distance of the headquarters of a major army that used chariots, how would that be evidence that *an entire army being led by 600ish chariots* were instantly crushed/drowned by divine fiat?
It's like saying that finding a car at the bottom of the San Francisco Bay is proof that Magneto tore the Golden Gate Bridge up and moved it into position to become a walkway to Alkatraz as depicted in the holy work X-Men 3: The Last Stand.
Only wheels ?
No chariots, metal work , studs, rivets, armour, Skeltons...
I'm convinced..not .
TBH, I actually cut Dr. Kennedy a break here, because he does say that evidence he has isn’t conclusive, and that the coral formations aren’t chariot parts.
@@DesGardius-me7gf I'm just speaking against that "argument" in general, not this particular apologist who doesn't hold to it.
A lot of what Titus argues are attempts to minimize the alleged events of Exodus (like saying there were less slaves at the time and so forth) specifically to excuse the lack of large-scale documentation of these events. He's kind of missing the point when he says that, because even if the amount of Hebrew slaves that escaped Egypt was small enough to not be recorded, the events of the Nile turning to blood, the entire kingdom being covered in darkness for several days, and every firstborn in Egypt dropping dead overnight definitely would have. Only by admitting that the supernatural claims in the book were embellishments can you get any mileage from this argument.
@@Ponera-Sama He _could_ use the Ipuwer Papyrus as evidence for the plagues, but the problem is that it’s a copy of an older piece of Egyptian apocalyptic literature from the time of the Middle Kingdom. Ironically, the Ipuwer Papyrus is proof of the Bible’s copying.
Regardless of the historical accuracy of the story, I still refuse to wear cotton/poly blend clothing, eat a cheeseburger, eat shrimp, or let my menstruating wife sleep in the house. It’s just common sense.
Don't forget to poop away from where you cook, sleep and eat.
That's just science!
Yes, and when I cook a kid in its mother's milk, I keep it to a simmer, never bringing it up to a boil.
@@johnnehrich9601 Sounds like the person who wrote that part just preferred slow cooked kid.
Menstruating women can still live in the same room as their husband, just not the same bed btw
But they can’t touch each other at all
As far as I’m concerned, the Exodus is essentially the Israelite Aeneid. A fantastical foundational story for a culture-nation with heavy themes of divine intervention that portray a narrative of a people destined for greatness as they originate as a refugee people making their home in a faraway place, with inklings of the future already showing. For the Romans, the Aeneid establishes a mythic foundation for their struggle with Carthage, and for the Israelites, the other peoples of Canaan. In reality in both cases, the less than exhilarating truth is that both peoples arose gradually and peacefully as a culture from the local populations of their respective regions.
Agreed, a part from the “peacefully” bit. Maybe I am cynical but I am inclined to trust the myths when they describe constant warring with neighbors.😅
Good point. It’s like King Arthur with England.
The Aeneid is based on a real event.There really was a trojan war. The exodus is bullshit from the word go.
@Hitler was a conservative Christian MCU has better writing.
@@blargblarg7875 Better characters too.
Archaeologists have found the remains of prehistoric campfires. I think a large population wandering around a desert for forty years would have left considerable traces of their presence.
Precisely.
Not least, quite a lot of them would have died over a forty year period. Where are the burials?
@@jeremypnet they ate them. Manna was the original Soylent Green.
If god made man out of dirt, then why is there still dirt?
This area is traversed for 2 million years and wholly covered in campfireash and sabretooths dildoes and humanoid cummm.
You would think millions of people wandering around in a desert for 40 years they would leave some trace.
They practiced “pack it in, pack it out.”
God made them wander bc he wanted the generation that made a golden calf to die out, he said only their children would ever see the promised land, so they should have found over a million bodies.
@@jamesfarquhar8507 deserts are really good at preserving things.
@@InigoMontoya- including with their feces, animal bones, unusable clothing and especially their dead! They carried grandma and grandpa around for 20 to 40 years so they wouldn’t “harm” the desert ecosystem!
Just a bunch of rubbish (stories) :P
The ancient Egyptians were really good at certain things. Building big stone monuments for one thing. And collecting taxes. They kept extensive and detailed tax records and there’s nothing in those records consistent with millions of Hebrew slaves living for generation after generation.
Much less suddenly leaving.
It was all covered up because they wanted to hide the truth of GOD!
Actually even the Bible doesn’t say the Hebrew’s were slaves for generations.
On the Egyptian side the only building sites with evidence of forced labour was Amarna - the new capital constructed by Akhenaten (Tutankhamen’s father) where multiple skeletons of youths showing signs of deaths from overwork.
A the same time a Semitic city in the Nile Delta, Avaris was depopulated and abandoned (and much later replaced by Rameses II with a new city in the same location PiRameses).
Akhenaten’s reign was blotted from the historical record starting with his son Tutankhamen (which was why Tutankhamen’s tomb wasn’t found - his simple existence was obliterated after his death).
So things happened in 13th Century BC that are not well documented.
@@allangibson8494 OK, but that city didn't have a population of millions in the 13th century BCE, so the point stands. The sudden depopulation of roughly half of the entire Egyptian population would have left some kind of record. And Akhenaten wasn't completely blotted from the record, or else we wouldn't know anything about him, when we clearly do. Yes, there were frequent attempts by successors to erase the records of their predecessors, but in most cases the sheer number of records left something behind for us to find.
The reason Tutankhamen was forgotten wasn't because his father was forgotten, but because he had a short reign (not as much time to create records), and was succeeded by someone outside his family line who needed to shore up his own support, and didn't want reminders of the dead dynasty.
@@danielbond9755 Avaris was the capital of lower Egypt under the Semitic Hyksos (1650 - 1550BC). The Hyksos were conquered by Ahmose I and driven out of Egypt…
Josephus (a millennium and half later) referenced the Hyksos as being Jewish.
So it depends on which timeline you uses.
The Egyptians under Rameses did similar expulsions with the Peleset (proto Palestinians) in 1150BC into southern Canaan.
3:30 It's hilarious that they're saying "Of course there's evidence, they're just not looking for it!" But then also say that you shouldn't expect any evidence, because they know there isn't actually any evidence. It's one or the other buddy.
I was checking out Biola University's mission statement etc., and if Sean or Titus started questioning the bible, they would have to leave their jobs.
That's a major problem with many of these so called 'biblical' scholars. They work at religious institutions that demand they not follow the evidence but shoehorn the evidence into the bible. You also have the problem with biblical scholars that if they too are believers they aren't going to sabotage their own religious beliefs. A Christian isn't going to look at the story of Jesus and say "this has no archaeological or witness support so the chances of it being a myth are strong". He's would be saying his religion is a lie.
Statements of faith are statements of intellectual dishonesty. WLC has signed it as well.
@@kosgoth It isn't like WLC has ever displayed intellectual honesty anyway.
B-iblically
I-ndoctrinated
O-rators
L-ie
A-lways
Churches hate free speech and that is why they are trying to ban every book that doesn't promote white supremacy.
FIRST question for Dr. Kennedy. Biola University is a Christian university with a "statement of faith" required of its faculty. It also has clearly defined theological positions stated on its website. "The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are without error or misstatement in their moral and spiritual teaching and record of historical facts."
My question - Dr. Kennedy, if you studied the evidence and came to the conclusion that the Old Testament account of Moses and the exodus was completely unsupported by evidence and that it was unlikely such evidence would come to light, and consequently could only conclude that the Bible account was extremely unlikely to be a correct account of history, would you lose your job and income?
Dr Kennedy is openly working for an organization that is completely ok with ignoring any evidence that doesn't lead them back to their god-claim.
The Discovery Institute is made up of propagandists, not historians or scientists. They are not honest people.
A lot of what Titus argues are attempts to minimize the alleged events of Exodus (like saying there were less slaves at the time and so forth) specifically to excuse the lack of large-scale documentation of these events. He's kind of missing the point when he says that, because even if the amount of Hebrew slaves that escaped Egypt was small enough to not be recorded, the events of the Nile turning to blood, the entire kingdom being covered in darkness for several days, and every firstborn in Egypt dropping dead overnight definitely would have. Only by admitting that the supernatural claims in the book were embellishments can you get any mileage from this argument.
True. The point of the story we have is that Yahweh ruined Egypt, an event that their history would be unlikely to miss. I have heard some try to link the Santorini-Thera eruption with the Exodus to account for the ten plagues, but I don't know how you could make that work with the chronology.
Meh. The Hebrews wouldn't be the first to claim that a few perfectly natural disasters were actually acts from a vengeful God against their enemies.
So maybe there's a bloom of red algae in the Nile, which drove out some frogs and killed some fish, and pretty soon there's diseases going round, and some children die (and maybe the Hebrews' dietary rules save _their_ kids from catching the same things). So a few hundred Hebrews decide to take advantage of all the confusion and beat feet away from Egypt. They make off with food and supplies, so they get chased. Maybe they cross some wetlands that chariots can't really traverse.
A few generations later, it's a grand tale of Divine Retribution, with a stirring, dramatic conflict between two leaders, and a series of immense disasters (bumped up to the significant number Ten). Waters that go a bit reddish become a River of Blood; a sickness that kills those with immature immune systems becomes an Angel of Death; and the small party of Egyptians who got their wheels stuck in the mud have become a great army drowned in a vast sea by the Power of God.
Edit: and the Plague of Darkness was just a sandstorm. _Booyah!_ I qualify as a Biblical scholar now, right...? LOL.
The place I learned that the Exodus never happened was actually from a college professor who was Jewish. It was during a discussion about "cultural origin myths," in the vein of Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, and he discussed the fact that even though the Exodus didn't happen, that doesn't make it any less important to his people.
It was very powerful because there were definitely some Christians in the class who were uncomfortable, but given the fact that they were face-to-face with a Jewish man saying this, they couldn't simply dismiss it.
Yeah its kinda funny but if you polled the two groups, you would almost certainly find that more Jews do not believe Exodus was real than Christians. Pretty much every Rabbi of any renowned does not hold to the Exodus story as being literal.
Years ago i was talking to a guy about Exodus and i even said to him "go to your preacher, and ask him for evidence of the Exodus" because we had been debating it for weeks (old Yahoo news story comments i think lol). He actually _DID_ talk to his preacher where he was shocked to find out the preacher told him "Exodus probably did not really happen". Yet every spring it did not stop that priest from telling the Exodus story to his followers as evidence for their faith.
never let facts get in the way of centuries of good victimhood
That's because Judaism allows for greater wiggle room when it comes to Mikrah interpretation. I am a Jew and I learned in Jewish school that the Tanach is not a historical account. It describes certain historical events, like the siege of Jerusalem, but it is not literally the infallible word of some god and therefore cannot err.
I don't know if it didn't actually happen then the story about how oppresed they are means nothing in that case. Couldn't Christians say the same thing about the resurrection of Christ and how even if it didn't happen it still means something to them ?
@@doomdimensiondweller5627 Secular Jesusists, some Jeffersonians, and a few strains of Christian esotericism and Christian mysticism actually do this. They don't see the literal resurrection of Christ, or even the historicity of Jesus, as important at all, but instead care about the teachings and symbolism of the gospels.
It's crazy that I've been listening to your channel since you had like 50k followers and now you've got one of the top biblical scholars appearing on your show regularly. Wild.
I concur. It's wild.
@@Paulogia It's well deserved recognition. Your work is important to the cause of truth.
It's very awesome, I think Bart is great for collaborative work with the younger youtubers. It's important to counter the insidious manipulation tactics of those who are trying to rule by religion.
Of course he does. V-tubers are big nowadays. ;)
Exodus/Shemot doesn't name the Pharaoh, which is our first clue.
That's some World Class mental gymnastics right there
Bart Ehrman seems to be very happy every time. 😃👍
I think cartoon Bart would be much more recognizable if the ends of his mouth turned down instead of up - compare to the photo. Doesn't stop him from laughing.
Can yah blame him? It's rather difficult to not laugh at the claims of apologists.
Bart Ehrman is not happy. he chortles and mocks. He enjoys his feeling of intellectual superiority.
I find his giggling insufferable and typically regard people who communicate that way to be covering for something
One thing that never seems to get discussed here is what the actual effects of the Exodus on Egypt should have been. A massive chunk of their population gets up and walks out with all their portable wealth. Their crops are destroyed. Their herds are decimated. Their main water source is befouled. All the firstborn sons die. The army is wiped out. Egypt would have been absolutely wrecked. And yet all the archaeological evidence we have says they were doing fine all through this period and only went into a gradual decline centuries later.
The smartest thing the author of Exodus did was to never name the pharaoh of Egypt. That way, who can try to pin them down for the actual event?
It was “The Unknown Pharaoh.” He always wore a paper bag over his head, so his true identity was never known.
@@InigoMontoya- A Papyrus Bag.
They may legitimately not known the name of the current pharaoh(s). He might have just been Ramses, or some other Egyptian dynastic name, or even simply known by some title such as Son of Ra.
After all, can you name the current emperor of Japan?
I would guess that the author didn't name a particular pharaoh, because he didn't know any of their names.
@@michaelsommers2356 , Moses was the alleged author, and he met the man face to face on several occasions. If he couldn’t remember the name, can we trust his recollection of the other events?
The irony. He dismisses claims of Amenhottep II deeds and powers as crazy. Yet the miracles of Moses are totally legit. 🤔
Seems like he’s the one with an anti-supernatural bias. If you’re going to accept one claim of miracles despite no evidence, then you have to grant them all.
@@NA-vz9ko In fact, granting only unevidenced supernatural claims would be special pleading, so to be logically consistent you should just believe every claim other people make.
Look up the list of the North Korean Kim dynasty’s deed trumpeted by the North Korean media. Same thing at work.
Well, you know, if it’s on your side it “miracle”, if it’s the other side it’s “sorcery”. An unbiased read of Exodus is cooler than Harry Potter, it has wizard stuff but like really epic.
Then they have the olympic level lack of self-awareness to talk about biases with a straight face. Wanting things to be true is one hell of a drug.
In his book _The Long Range Desert Group_ W.B. Kennedy Shaw recounts exploring the Western Desert between the wars, and at one point tells of finding a Roman camp right on the surface of the desert. So finding a trace of an alleged exodus would not be impossible.
Even when I considered myself a Christian, the Moses story always throw me. This is a good manifestation of my thoughts.
Many stories threw me when I was a believer, including this one. Side note: One nagging question I had at the time was why God didn't choose to just *POOF* enemies out of existence, but instead chose a bloody way of doing it.
@@VioletJoy that did always get me too.
Noah is worse
@@yeah-ww5rg ?
@@yeah-ww5rg I am confused as to what that statement has to do with my comment or the response to my comment.
What concerns me more than pseudoscience perpetuators is audiences that do not exhibit a healthy level of skepticism. Question any and all positive claims, no matter who is making it.
Wasn't Canaan under the Egyptian rule during 18th and 19th dynasties? So how could Israelites have "escaped" Egypt, by relocating to Canaan from Goshen ?
Back when I was a believer I said plenty of ignorant things like these. But boy, am I glad I was never caught on camera, exposing my shame for years to come and thousands and thousands to see.
There should be a lot of archaeological evidence left behind over that 40 year wilderness journal.
My Egyptology loving soul is cringing at the way Titus is saying these names.
😬
Man this was a really well-edited video. Super tight. Way to go bud
Awesome! Thank you!
It's always great to listen to what Bart has to say. He has a gift for teaching.
Is it that another western godless and souless theory that Western godless and souless idiots believe in because a western godless and souless person who does not even believe in the Bible say so?
Why you western godless and souless idiots are obsessed with the Bible???
Why do you even care if you do not believe in?
Why you always talk about God (when you do not have God, we do)???
Are you the typical western godless and souless idiots that only wants follow your own intincts but they change all the time???
Are the western godless idiots who thinks he will be NOTHING once death???
Why only westerns say such things????
If it is yes, just shut up and start to believe in God.
Why? Because you have no ashemed to deny God
How to pity you?
But May God bless you.
@@Mar-dk3mp We care because a billion people do believe in it and it conditions the way they treat everyone else around them. Because it makes them feel justified to treat everyone else like trash (like you're doing right here).
If your god exists let him defend himself, like when Joash challenged Baal to defend himself after Gideon destroyed his altar. He won't do anything though, cause he never did anything, the ones doing the work are always humans.
@@jonr9467flag (remove the l) response
It’s amazing how educated, motivated and brilliant people who are believers get so many things wrong because of their own confirmation bias. They want to believe so bad that they throw all of their critical thinking skills out the window when discussing matters that may contradict the beliefs of their faith.
Becuase if there is no faith, nothing in the life matters and there is nothing to live for...
I actually knew Moses. He was a guy who lived across the street and next door. He was a black guy and his wife was light skinned black.
She liked coffee and always seemed to be drinking it. I asked her one time why she always drank coffee and she told me that she was white, like me when she got married but she wanted to be black like her husband.
It must have been working because she was already much darker than me, but much lighter than her husband.
The couple had all grown children but they had a swimming pool in the back yard that they sometimes let us kids play in.
I really liked Moses and his wife. He was old, but he really didn't seem old enough to have lead the Exodus.
My view on the Exodus story is that it was probably based on the fact that the Land of Canaan (modern Israel, Syria and Lebanon) was an Egyptian province for 400 years.
I've always figured that the supposed slavery of the Israelites in Egypt was one Hebrew clan of a few hundred people who fell on hard times and sold themselves into slavery, not the entire tribe. And with tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of slaves in Egypt, the arrival or departure of a few hundred was insignificant.
This bit of it actually makes the Exodus account as we have it today pretty much impossible, the Israelites fled Egypt to settle in... another part of Egypt?
The Hebrews escaped Egypt to Egypt?
@@boogit9979 Or as Holy Koolaid put it, “The escaped from Egypt into More Egypt.”
If Exodus occurred as written, and Moses wrote the Pentateuch as many Christians and Jews believe, then why didn't Moses include Pharaoh's name. He was adopted by Pharaoh's daughter. Plus you would think Egyptian would be his native language.
The Egyptians believed names have power. If someone pisses you off, you erase their name. Welcome to the Bronze Age.
Akhenaten had his name erased…
(Ditto his son Tutankhamen)…
@@allangibson8494
And Hatshepsut. There are probably others, but if you successfully erase someone from history, there is by definition not going to be any records.
His name was Voldemort, and no one was allowed to speak it.
@@allangibson8494 Except that he didn't. Even though they tried.
If Titus takes his glasses off does he become Superman?
If he takes his glasses off he becomes Wonder Woman...
Funny how people who believe in magic are always desperate to show how their magic is verified by science and history.
What's funnier is that, by definition miricles cannot be explained by science which is why they would be deemed miricles in the 1st place
@@Lamster66 What’s claiming all matter and energy and the laws that govern them suddenly appearing uncaused from nothing that was something smaller than this sentences period? The order shown by the periodic table? The 95% missing mass-energy to explain the motion of the universe that’s labeled “dark” and that’s good enough?
Has anyone demonstrated how the 6 basic elements separated themselves from the 98 naturally occurring elements and arranged themselves into a cell capable of evolving? Miller Urey experiments didn’t come close. They didn’t even produce a single protein or more than 12 of the 20 specific amino acids that proteins consist of. They detected 23 total of 500+ kinds and no more than 12 of the specific ones. And they cheated, they didn’t start out with 98, they skipped that part an used 3 compounds and one element that provided only carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, that they knew amino acids consist of that some perfectly dead, dumb as rock, warm little pond, prebiotic soup or whatever managed to do. Not only that, those 4 elements of the 6 managed to form and assemble 6.8 billion of only those specific 20, in their 100% left handed forms, specifically oriented and sequenced and arranged in the 42 million proteins found in the simplest cell. So when are atheists/naturalists going to prove how even one single relevant protein emerged from the 98 naturally occurring elements without the influence of intelligence?
@@vernonchitlen8958
No not nearly good enough, but why invent a God just to pretend you have an answer? When the truth is that it is unexplained
But lets clarify shall we
*What’s claiming all matter and energy and the laws that govern them suddenly appearing uncaused from nothing that was something smaller than this sentences period?*
Well you appear to be strawmanning the Scientific position I'm not aware of any astro Physicist that subscribes to such a model. Most think that inbalanced Quantum effects in a scala field gave rise to an excess of matter.
Also the idea of a singularity is known to be a mathematical annomilly which suggest error in the mathematics.
*The order shown by the periodic table?*
The Periodic table is a human construct.
There are basically 18 types of elements arranged in collumns with increasing atomic numbers from left to right and like elements appearing below depending on increasing atomic numbers It's a very elegent representation of naturally occuring elements but it is none the less a human creation to represent this. Nothing amazing about it though.
*The 95% missing mass-energy to explain the motion of the universe that’s labeled “dark” and that’s good enough?*
Again its not "missing" Infact quite the opposite Scientist know there is more mass in the universe that is observed in visible matter. The label "Dark" is simply a name that indicated that it cannot be observed currently however it's effects can be measured. Again Scientist tend to "tell it how it is" so It's basically their way of saying there is something with mass that e can measure but cannot observe and thus far have no idea what that is.
That's a lot more honest than presenting a superbeing with no evidence for one!
That is nowhere near good enough for mot people.
@@Lamster66 All I would say is, It's lucky that all this happened in the late Iron Age, if it happened today, every single thing would be uploaded to Tik-Tok in seconds.
I love the interactions between yourself and professional academic scholars and yes I absolutely do include Dr Josh in the same category as Dr Ehrman IMO even though Dr Josh himself would probably baulk at the idea.
I've never before seen "balk" spelled with a "u".. like "caulk" or something.
Every family has this kind of a story. Something funny or weird or extraordinary happens, and the details get exaggerated in the telling. And I'm not talking generational stories (though that certainly happens) but stories from my kids childhood.
The fun is in the telling and the value is in the story. Nothing more supernatural than that. I expect these bible stories began similarly.
This is very true.
The "Some Guy" stories are always tweeked to be more humourous and the story is always much better if you witnessed it rather than hearing it third hand.
Love the mel brooks take of moses presenting the 15…..aehm 10 commandments 😂
glad someone caught that
An excellent way to determine whether the next 30 minutes of discussions would be worth it or not, would be to see if they begin off by some method to poison the well and basically set the premise, "the academia, all of those scholars, their peer-review process, source criticism is wrong." Unfortunately, as commonly seen, Mr. Titus does just that: Begin off with an explanation as to why "the scholars are stupid, but I'm not."
At that point, I just categorize such arguments a type of conspiracy theory.
I agree. And at least his transparency concerning those views gives us that info from the beginning.
I mean… it *is* possible for 1 person to be right and all the rest of academia to be wrong. It took almost 50 years for Alfred Wegener's plate tectonics to be generally accepted.
@@jursamaj You aren't wrong there, I remember hearing it also wasn't until about 20/30 years ago the majority of scholars stopped thinking Moses was based on a real person. Basically it's the old Christians that are holding up the boat, as it were though. Paradigm shifts don't normally happen without good reason. For Moses we have good reason.
@@jursamaj Yeah, but he called methodological naturalism "anti-supernatural bias." That's not a fringe theory; that's crank methodology.
It's Barty Time!
🤣
I don't recall Pharaoh Nameless the Whatevereth being depicted as being especially arrogant, especially since his subordinates could do magic that was arguably more impressive than anything Jesus did.
I seem to recall that God even had to harden his heart, so that he would follow the script, and not just release the slaves.
@@stevewebber707 Repeatedly, yeah, so that Yahweh would have an excuse to commit genocide in order to show off to people who already worshipped him.
@@lnsflare1 I sort of read it more as showing off to non worshippers. Mess with my tribe and you get a genocide!
Either way, God doesn't look good.
In the context of a polytheistic society, I guess he needs to distinguish himself somehow. What he distinguished himself to be, is quite the problem.
Why do they feel they need to justify their belief in wacky stuff, just say "I don't care about the truth or the facts or whatever, I just want to believe it" and we will all accept that and move on.
Right? I've never understood the desire to make poor attempts at grounding religious claims in science or history and push the "it was magic" bits into the corners and under the rug. If it was magic it was magic. Embrace it. Far more respectable and certainly less embarrassing. Anything else feels like an admission that they themselves aren't convinced.
Because they want to determine who everyone can or cannot marry. Or what days they can shop and a lit if other things.
@@stephenolan5539 Or, if you _don't_ believe it, they want to kill you.
Far from attempting to make the character “psychologically plausible”, the author(s) of Exodus repeatedly blamed God for the Pharaoh's behavior, saying that he “hardened his heart”; so the psychology of the Pharaoh is entirely irrelevant.
This was epic Paul!
Thank you, sir!
Am I confused? I thought God hardened the heart of the Pharaoh at one point, because the guy wasn't stubborn or arrogant enough to let God do all his plagues. What does the personality of any given pharaoh matter when mind control is involved?
I've heard it said that "Perhaps God isn't that mean and God simply allowed the Pharaoh to be as hard hearted as he naturally is."
But of course that brings up many problems too from a theoretical perspective. As others pointed out they're reducing the evidence requirement by reducing the number of people but what about the supposed 10 supernatural plagues that occurred on all of Egypt?
@@j.kaimori3848 Interpreting “God hardened his heart” as “God didn’t do anything at all because there was no need as the Pharaoh’s heart was already hard” is a ridiculous stretch to me. That’s an interpretation that’s basically the exact opposite of what the text actually says. If someone needs to assume the text means something totally different in order for their theory to make sense then I would dismiss the person and their theory immediately. It amazes me that people on the one hand say this text is the perfect, unambiguous word of an all powerful God, then on the other they do all sorts of mental gymnastics so they can ignore what it very clearly says!
@@JohnSmith-fz1ih usually it's the vulnerable that can't tell, children or those in dire situations. And if you believe in hell, anything is believable if it helps you avoid it.
@@j.kaimori3848 Exactly… motivated reasoning.
Great civilisations all around but none noticed exodus
Also, to Ehrman's comment that "moses" isn't a Hebrew name but an Egyptian one: the text calls him MOSHEH, and explains why (he was 'mashah' or 'drawn out' of the water, it's common Hebrew wordplay)
Do you not think he knows more about the subject than you?
Honestly, the guy is a world renowned biblical scholar...
@@bipolarminddroppings before you jumped in these comments, did you read the text or do any etymology whatsoever
So my Jewish teacher in my Jewish school was wrong when she said that Moshe (משה) was an Egyptian name given to the Hebrew boy by his adoptive Egyptian mother?
@@artemisia4718 did your teacher conjugate that root for you or discuss the etymology at all, or connect it to any egyptian whatsoever
@@bipolarminddroppings p.s. Ehrman is a *new testament* scholar and expert, as he describes on his own website
It's hard to "date" the Exodus.....because it's always walking away. 😮💨😮💨😮💨
Titus Kennedy works for Biola University, from their statement of faith we find the following:
_"The Bible, consisting of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, is the Word of God, a supernaturally given revelation from God Himself, concerning Himself, His being, nature, character, will and purposes; and concerning man, his nature, need and duty and destiny. _*_The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are without error or misstatement_*_ in their moral and spiritual teaching _*_and record of historical facts._*_ They are without error or defect of any kind."_
Given that, I don't think you can take anything he says seriously.
Can we take it seriously biased?
Funny thing I noticed in that statement of faith. "...They are without error or defect of any kind."
He made a special point of disputing the accuracy of the numbers of the exodus. I mean technically he was trying to support an alternative translation, but if it's unclear how to translate something accurately, I would not describe that as without defect.
So not only is he not doing serious scholarship, he's arguably running against that statement of faith as well.
@@stevewebber707 No, when Christians say, "The Bible is without error," they always mean the "real" Bible, you know, how it was originally written....so, yeah, the can never be wrong. If you find an error, well, sure, that was a human mistake, added later, don't cha know?
@@michaelsbeverly Yeah I've heard that approach. And a bible we don't have, and presumably could never have, is irrelevant. I'm pretty sure a lot of them don't claim that though.
Come to think of it, that mythological book bears a lot of commonalities with their God.
It can't be shown, or falsified for starters. Which means people can make up anything they want, without contradicting anything.
So please show some definite proof of an error in the Bible. Just one.
@@davidcrowley1951, writes _"So please show some definite proof of an error in the Bible. Just one."_
The Universe wasn't "created" in six days. The Eartha and plants weren't "created" before stars. Birds weren't "created" before land animals. No one can live for three days inside a fish. Staves can't become snakes. Donkeys can't talk. The world was not flooded. Moses wasn't a real person. There was no "exodus"...
Oh, you said just one thing. Sorry.
20:20 "the fif.... the 10 commandments" one my favorite movie lines.
Yeh, and don't forget - those 10 biggies came with a stack of T's & C's if you wanna be Kosher - more like 408 - 460 depending on your translator. Personally, if this God guy can create the Universe that stretches 46.5 billion light-years anywhere you care to look and has more stars than grains of sand in a very sandy desert - yet he wants me to erect altars and worship him - I have two words for him - one beginning with F and the other O.
That jingle gives me life; bless you.
*On this episode of Battle of the Bookshelves...*
Titus Kennedy, "a research fellow at Discovery Institute".. that alone means he isn't honest. They don't hire honest people. The Moses / Exodus story is a favorite of mine to use to show just how bad the fiction was written back then.
To begin with, if God had wanted to free the hebrew slaves then he would not have waited 80 years for Moses to grow up. Moses brought nothing to the party, any idiot would have sufficed.
Also, it followed the typical course of showing strength through brutality. In the story he forced Pharaoh to reject the freedom request. Not only does this mean Pharaoh might have approved such a request, it shows that God controlled the whole story. If he can harden the heart he can also soften it, and that would have been a much more amazing demonstration of power. Imagine if God had caused pharaoh to agree, and not only agree, dispatch his army to safeguard the freed slaves to their new promised land. Their former masters, their enemy, completely changing their stance and protecting them on their trip to freedom. That would have been an amazing show of power. But that form of power did not exist in those days, power to those writers was only shown through brutality. So instead they wrote the story to show just how brutal god could be.
Another aspect that makes 0 sense is the whole 'pharaoh killed the male children' to 'control the population'. They knew how breeding worked. Removing the young sperm donors would not slow the population growth at all. If you want to do that you have to remove the females from the herd. So again, nonsense.
It's a dumb story, end to end.
I've always thought that I pharaoh had been that hard hearted, and his eldest son had been killed, how many Israelites would have lived to see the next day. Remember he had an army they didn't.mreminds me of Samson and his asses jaw bone. Total bollocks . Ok a few go in get killed the rest of you stand a bit off and all throw spears at him. How long is he going to last
That's just your opinion. I for one think it is a brilliant literary creation on par with the origin myths of the other ancient south Asian civilizations. The characters are relatable to this day. The struggles for freedom and self-identity are still part of the human experience. And the poetry is amazing. The sound and the cadence of the Song of the Sea is just breathtaking in the original Hebrew.
When I read this story as a Christian, my question was always "Why were they hungry? Why did they only have manna that had to be supplied to them? They had their livestock with them."
Could the "chariot wheel" corals in the Red Sea have been part of the inspiration for the Exodus story? Some might have been brought up in fishing nets, leading to a legend that Egyptian charioteers had been drowned in some supernatural event.
@INDESTRUCTIBLE i think the coral things refers to a different hoax (the one where there is only a photo of a 'wheel' and therefore the whole moses' fable is true), not all hoaxes belong to wyatt.
Thank you so much for making this. I have always loved Ancient Egyptian history & I always felt that this bible story made the Ancient Egyptians sound uncivilized & cruel. Which is unfortunately how Ancient Rome saw them
Builders were paid & skilled workers. & most slaves were war captives. Most slaves wouldn’t have been Israelites & were not Christian. No research I’ve found has ever shown Israel & Egypt went to war in ancient times, excluding the one time y’all said Egypt conquered Israel. Meanwhile, Egypt went to war with other regions of Africa very often
I was wanting Ehrman to mention that even though we have that inscription about Israel it does not mean those were what we associate as Hebrews/Jews. Israel is named after the go El. It can be translated as Triumphant El. It would be centuries till EL and YHWH were merged in the Torah. Egypt went to war with El worshipers, not YHWH worshipers.
Not really the Bible portraits Egypt as the mapped world super power which is what it was
@@brianpeterson8908 oh fascinating! I didn’t know that. Thank you for the information 😊
Well, obviously there weren’t of been any Christians since this predated Christianity by over a 1000 years.
But there’s much to this story that has been lost. The Egyptians did take slaves and some of this slaves were Semitic so the original story probably had some kernel of truth.
That the Egyptians only (apparently) only conquered the Israelites once, we’re probably only talking a few thousand people at most in the reign of a single Pharaoh.
I'm not sure I heard that right.
In the defense of claiming the exodus happened as written in the bible, he says we don't know whether the biblical numbers are accurate.
Isn't there supposed to be an accurate account he's supposed to be defending?
Yes but apparently, this alleged inspired word of god that is also allegedly inerrant, ol' Titus here is insinuating that everybody has mistranslated that number except of him.
Christians. They have their conclusions already written in stone but no good evidence, so anything that might remotely have the connotation that it "could be" will be hijacked then have some manipulation added and then trotted out as evidence but it has to be done quickly and then move on, lest someone questions it.
The "Sun going dark" could coincide with a volcanic eruption over in Greece and the ensuing smoke and ash cloud.
Wow! So Amenhotep ll was .."extremely arrogant and stubborn . . . wrote that he was the greatest king ever . . . . talked about doing crazy deeds . . . . seemed to be compensating for something . . ."
I'm trying to think of somebody modern who sounds like that . . . .
Biola U profs do not dare contradict the literalist narrative. Thus they sweat and strain to find or invent “evidence” for it. It is pitiful.
Bart is absolutely wonderful in his lectures.
Thanks for the video :)
Like so many other myths and legends this is the result of smaller incidents and events, most likely not even related to each other, that has been passed down through generations and much later being written down as if they go together and when they wrote this became a series of happenings that happened together.
@S Gloval This is speculation on my part. Feel free to either dismiss it or expand on it
@S Gloval How do you know it actually happened?
@@paulcooper1223 Da book told him.
@@InigoMontoya- *Plays jingle*
@S Gloval Myth: a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.
So Sean is open to possible mistranslations in Exodus; tens of thousands as opposed to hundreds of thousands…how does he feel about Isiah 7:14 and the word “virgin” argued as a mistranslation?
The Quran says only a small band of israelites participated in exodus:
26: 52-56
Have you read a high school or university newspaper with overblown headlines like OUR SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAM WIPED THE FIELD WITH ANOTHER SCHOOL'S TEAM! Then the realization dawns on you that the opposing team players are still alive and well? Their school still stands, too? Bummer.
School papers claim to be divinely inspired? I didn't know that.
Otherwise no comparison.
Bart saying bye at the end, cracked me up.
Purchased. Love Bart!
awesome! see you there
So their argument is that their inerrant book of fable has its numbers wrong? So inerrant and wrong? And we're supposed to believe them?
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Also our God is the only God that exists, the rest are fake."
"There is evidence that Semites immigrated to Egypt at times of famine and that there is evidence of some Semites who also left or fled Egypt, therefore the story of Moses is a true story."
There's not even any consideration that the Exodus was a story that described stuff that actually happened but it was itself an exaggerated fictional stories and not an actual historical record.
@Brandon Letzco Yeah but they cheerfully claim that they and all other Gods are fake simply because their religion is....true (so they think)? But they don't have actual evidence that those Gods are fake, mere absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence after all.
I enjoyed how you put this together. I’m pretty ignorant and am likely to get bored. But I didn’t get bored and even understood the points.
I have to admit, Bart is my fave guest for sure. His newsletter/blog is great, and The Great Courses stuff he does (included with Audible subscriptions for those of you who are interested) is sooooo rich with content!! Thanks Paul for the hard work and turning me onto Bart!
I'd love to know what religious people think happened to all the people that lived before their cult of choice came into existence. There were people around long before any of the major religions came into being.
It seems more likely that something else happened. It could be entirely fictional, but there are too many egyptian words in Exodus for that to be the easiest solution. Another option is that some small group of people left Egypt at some point we can't pin down, they carried their stories with them orally, and through some game of telephone, their story was ultimately imported into the Hebrew canon. Something similar happened with the Noachian flood, where stories like Atra-Hasis were passed down, evolved through oral tradition, and then much later got fixed into Hebrew canon. In either case, there's some historical event that occurred, but the Biblical version only superficially resembles it.
Egypt controlled Canaan for 400 years. It's not terribly surprising that there are Egyptian words in the Hebrew language. What's a bit more surprising is so many Hebrew priests having Egyptian names in these stories
Ah!!!! Someone who understands how folklore actually works!!!!
Nearly every civilization has a creation myth that probably didn’t happen the way it was told. The Israelites are no exception to that.
@@justinb864 Whoever said they were an exception? You still laboring under the notion that I’m a Christian apologist? I’m a Pagan lol
@@teleriferchnyfain I wasn’t even replying to you. I was adding to the point, not arguing with anyone.
A Large number of people wandering in the desert for 40 years left no trace what so ever, come on it didn't happen.
One of the ways they hid their tracks was to not name their horses.
@Brandon Letzco men just won’t stop and ask for directions.
The Persians lost an entire army in the Egyptian desert…
Moooootivated reasoning. "Let's look for the best period the Exodus might have happened and then look for evidence, instead of just looking at the evidence."
Except we have evidence.
The evidence proves the Hebrews were just another Canaanite tribe living in the hills of Canaan.
But you don't want to look there do you?
I love Dr. Ehrman’s laugh about the Passover theory. 😂
Next book,... Finding Abraham, _still nothing_
😄
How did the Hebrews smelt a golden calf in the middle of a desert? Was one blacksmith blacksmith like "I'm keeping my anvil and my furnace and I'm taking it with me"
If the story is even true, which I don't believe, the statue probably wasn't solid and just hammered gold plate over a wooden statue.
Dr. E is a great guest on this topic
All supernatural claims are a total fabrication, except mine. 🙄
I just like to say that I've been following Paul since around 2000 subscribers and I am tremendously pleased by his growth and am happy for him that he's well enough respected to get leading experts on his show like Bart. That to me is unbelievable. I've read a few of Bart's books and I've read other books that cite Bart as " the guy" on the subject of biblical historicity. I can't fully expressed how happy I am to see this
Thank you, Phoebin
What a great intro mate
My favorite take on the whole Moses/Exodus thing is the one that says the Story of Moses is a telephone game version of AmenhotepIV/Akhenaten. This Pharaoh did move across the Nile from the Capital to establish a city in the middle of nowhere where only 1 god [the Aten, or disk of the sun] would be worshipped, with him as high priest. Amarna/Akhetateten only lasted a little over a decade, not 40 years, but things get exaggerated.
I'm not saying this IS the case, but it is a story that rhymes and happens between the "new chronology" of 1500s BCE and traditional chronology of 1200s BCE, happening roughly a century before Rameses II
Akhenaten actually was in contact with Canaanites, even negatively impacting them and sending troops there, so he might have influenced some of the myths, but we really don't know for sure.
@@AbandonedVoid
Canaan was part of Egypt at that time.
Hearing Evangelicals claim bias is rich.
Wait, so they cant tell me who was the ruler of Egypt at the time, and they cant tell me when it happened, to the closest century. So how do they know it happened?
Amazing. Greetings from Colombia.
The interesting thing with the Merneptah stele is that the hieroglyph for “people” is used when it mentions Israel instead of the hieroglyph that’s usually used when referring to land/territory.
How did millions of people suddenly pop up soon after the "great flood?"
I find it rather interesting how Sean McDowell admitted that believing there is "some very good evidence" for the story of Exodus being an actual historical event is a "contrarian position". I suspect that perhaps Sean accidentally admitted to a bit more than he intended. 😉
Good stuff.
There’s also the problem of the fact that Canaan was a vassal state of Egypt at the time Exodus was supposed to have taken place. During the Armarna period, we have correspondence letters between the pharaoh and the Moabite king of Uru-Salem (Jerusalem) regarding the encroaching Hyksos.
encroaching Habiru
@@fordprefect5304 thanks for the correction
Titus Kennedy: "The Exodus definitely happened because there's no evidence that the Exodus happened."
*Elef / Eleph cannot mean Clan/Chief in Numbers or Exodus count*
1. The numbers add up correctly in the odd-numbered verses from Numbers 1:21 thru 1:43, totaled in 1:46, if we translate _eleph_ as *Thousand* . They do *not* add up if _eleph_ means Clan or Chief. (I checked it on a spreadsheet.) A meaning of Clan or Chief would also render the non-eleph as gibberish. The non-elephs total 5,550, but in 1:46, there are only 550. Eleph has to mean thousand here. These same numbers are grouped into 4 camps in Numbers 2:4-32. The camp subtotals and the totals of the 4 camps add another layer of proof that eleph means 1,000.
2. In Numbers 31:48, there are officers and captains over 100 and 1,000. It is clear that the captains are *over* a number (100/1000) of men; “Captain” is not a synonym for eleph. The parallel at the end of the verse shows that _eleph_ is a number, just as the word for Hundred is.
3. In Numbers 3:21-39, the count of clans adds up only if A) _eleph_ means 1,300 or B) 1,000, but the author is rounding off. The passage would make *no sense* if _eleph_ means anything else, since A) the text says *500+600+200* from the *different* clans equals one _eleph_ . Since the hundreds are from different clans, eleph cannot mean Clan or Captain. B) There are nothing but elephs in the sum. The hundreds from different clans have converted into one eleph, so Eleph must be a number.
4. Using an ambiguous word in a count and total is a recipe for confusion. Since the numbers add up as if it means Thousand, the simplest interpretation is not only that it means thousand, but the author thought the meaning was unambiguous as written.
5. Exodus 38:26-29 uses _eleph_ for people and money, which would also be confusing if it could mean Chief or Clan.
6. Numbers 3:46-50 confirms that eleph means Thousand. 273 x 5 = 1,365.
Numbers 11:21-22 Moses says he is with 600 elef (people/men?), and doubts that all the fish in the lake/sea would feed them. Doubting the feeding of 600,000 makes more sense than doubting that all the fish would feed 600 men.
The math works as [eleph = thousand] whether the population count is part of an army or not.
How do the “implied” 22,273 families (at one firstborn per family) in Numbers 3:48 match the 603,000 adult men in 1:46?
Two general responses
1. That is a problem for the apologist. I am playing translator here and it is a bad practice in translation to change the translation to match a concept that is not in the text, e.g. “harmony among all passages according to modern perceptions.”
2. I still may be able to explain it a) in a way consistent with Exodus and Numbers, but with a little brutal reality mixed in, OR b) by redaction.
Maybe I can partly explain the apparent N1/2 vs N3 discrepancy, though, in light of the stories. The stories describe patriarchs having many sons. That would be more likely to happen in relatively stable, food-secure situations, such as they would have had, according to Exodus, in Egypt. But the child survival rate would plummet in the stress of flight and the difficulties of food and hygiene there. Miscarriages and infant mortality could skyrocket, as well as the death rate for young mothers giving birth.
The term Firstborn seems to apply only before that man has claimed his inheritance. That would eliminate only the eldest generation from the relationship, judging by the story of Jacob and sons.
(The youngest would not be old enough to have children, but then the oldest brothers among them would be firstborns.)
So if the oldest generation does not count anymore, and it is 1/3 of the 603,000, then there are 401,000 left. If there are an average of 12 male siblings (according to the story, not reality - I am trying to biblically steel man the apparent discrepancy between Numbers 1 and 3), that makes 33,417 firstborn among the 603,000, so it still doesn’t work, but that is for the author or an apologist to explain.
OR maybe firstborn refers only to the youngest generation, in which case the adults would account for 16,708 firstborns and the remaining 5,665 would be minors, the low number due to the miserable conditions referred to above.
*Redaction* would at least partially explain the discrepancy. According to Wikipedia, citing McDermott, John J (2002). Reading the Pentateuch: A Historical Introduction, “(Numbers) has a long and complex history; its final form is possibly due to a Priestly redaction (i.e., editing) of a Yahwistic source made some time in the early Persian Period (5th century BCE).”
One possible redaction is the removal of the story of a war or punishment by Yahweh that reduced the number of Israelites, a story which previously appeared between what are now chapters 2 and 3. The story may have been along the lines of the golden calf slaughter in Exodus 32:8.
So a combination of the infant mortality/birth rate issue and redaction could explain the N1-2 vs N3 discrepancy, or, if severe enough, either of those two could explain the apparent discrepancy.
1 Kings 20
In 1 Kings 20:15, all the sons of Israel numbered 7 elephs _(alapim)_ - 7,000. In 20:30, the wall fell on 27 _eleph ish_ of the Arameans. The syntax is different between v14 and v30, so the meaning of _eleph_ could be different. But if one tries to argue that eleph means the same in v14 and v30, then 1,000 is more likely. It is very unlikely that the authors meant that all the sons of Israel amounted to 7 captains.
Verses 13 and 28 refer to a vast Aramean army, so it should be considerably larger than the Israelite army. In verse 29, the Israelites killed 100 eleph foot soldiers. Maybe the change in syntax allows it to mean 100 “captains” and their men. But the ratio in the Israelite army was about 30 to 1, men to junior officers (v15), so that is still 3,000 men.
“How can eleph mean 1,000 in Exodus and Numbers? In 1 Samuel 6:19 Yahweh struck the people with a great slaughter of 70 men and 50 eleph and Tel Beth Shemeah covers only 7.5 acres.”
Problems with this argument:
1. We are translating, not assessing history, although I agree that one can aid the other. If we are going to translate according to physical reality, then the character called Yahweh must be purely physical, because that is the only type of agent we have evidence for. And Joshua couldn’t have referred to the sun standing still, because we know that’s not possible. “Possible” is not a yardstick for whether words maintain their apparent meaning in mythology. My estimate for the *possible* number of men killed by a supernatural being for the crime of disobeying his demands and looking at his little jewelry box is *zero.* But that doesn’t mean I am going to infer that _eleph_ means Zero.
2. Reverse the argument to see that there is another problem: “How can eleph mean Captain in 1 Samuel if it clearly means Thousand in Exodus and Numbers?” Answer: Words can mean different things in different syntax at different times to different authors. I demonstrated conclusively that eleph was a number in Exodus and Numbers. What it means in other syntax and books doesn’t change that.
3. The syntax in 1 Samuel 6:19 is different. In 1 Samuel 6:19 it says Yahweh struck 70 ish and 50 eleph ish. In Numbers and Exodus, the word _ish_ does not appear next to _eleph._ So looking at only the syntax, it appears that _eleph_ could be a non-numeric adjective in that verse, *because of the difference from the syntax in Numbers and Exodus* and the lack of numeric evidence to the contrary. In that case, Yahweh killed 120 men. One advantage to 120 is that it is a nice, round, symbolic number. One possible problem with 120 is that it is called a great slaughter, and by biblical standards, 120 is a small slaughter.
Possible solutions for the large numbers
1. They’re fabricated. The periods covered in Numbers and Exodus were nomadic. It is a bit difficult to believe that nomads cared about such detailed numbers or had the resources to record them.
2. They have symbolic meanings
3. They are derived from other war stories, such as from Assyria, Egypt, or Babylon. They may have taken the largest tribe’s numbers from some other estimate and invented the others. Or maybe each tribe’s numbers are from a different war story which was famous in the author’s culture.
4. They are approximate multiples of, for example 70, 100, or 144 of the “actual” numbers.
5. Some combination of the above
TLDR
The Romans used “centuries” that had 80 men as standard units for literally centuries of years. Reading absolute precision in historical numbers is a good way to lead yourself into errors without context.
Given that, at the supposed time of the exodus, Sinai and Canaan were at least under Egyptian influence, what did they escape?
What we're seeing here, in Paulogia amongst others online, is a democratization of access to facts and arguments, stripped of all the difficulty that previous generations, both social and technological, in getting access. It's really wild that we're seeing the secularization of so much of those in adolescence and young adulthood as a result, a real paradigm shift in human history just from access to internet argument.
Where are the Coprolites?
That many people leave A LOT of shit.
For some excellent scholarship on the origin of the Old Testament, I highly recommend the underrated "Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus" by Russell Gmirkin.
In the work, he lays out clearly the case that the Pentachuch was composed between 273 and 272 BC, at the library of Alexandria, right around the time that it was translated into Greek (the Septuigent or LXX).
Excellent. Coming from someone with a Bachelor of Theology from a bible college, and who was a missionary in Europe, and who is now an atheist.
Let us not forget that Canaan was ruled by Egypt until the end of the 12th century BC. Egypt would not have tolerated an invasion by Israel taking over Canaan if Amenhotep II was the pharaoh in the Exodus story.