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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yep. And in a significant portion of media that portrays the Exodus, Egypt is decimated by all of this. And in some versions, the pharaoh himself is killed along with his charioteers. Bear in mind that chariots in the Bronze Age were very much prized possessions of the armies of their respective nations. If the Exodus as described had happened, Egypt would probably fall into a period that would probably be known by scholars if it happened as the Egyptian Dark Ages, only to emerge as a mere shadow of its former self centuries later. To top that off, the rest of the Bronze Age world, particularly the Near East and the Mycenaeans, would've been decimated themselves. It would be like the real life Bronze Age Collapse but far more destructive, since the Egyptians were actually one of the countries who came out relatively unscathed from the Bronze Age collapse compared to the rest of the Near East. It'd be like if the United States just one day collapsed in on itself.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@@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!
@@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?
@@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.
@@iseriver3982 The man who wrote 2001 which became a hit movie said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C. Clarke.
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 . . . .
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 ?
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
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.
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?
@@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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
The ancient Egyptians believed in magic. They built temples with spells carved into the walls to ward off hostile magic from rival nations, Kush (Ethiopia) and Libya in particular. And yet, there is not a single record of--much less any response to--their entire country getting wrecked by a Hebrew wizard. No mass graves, no piles of bones from dead livestock, nothing. Not even any disruption of their rule over Canaan during the time when the Exodus and the supposed conquest of Canaan under Joshua took place.
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.
My church believes Satan was allowed by Jesus to hide all the evidence of the exodus to test the faith of the faithful. Those who do not believe then will have a bad thing happen to a family member as punishment. Example of David child dying to punish him for his affair with bethsheba. All praise to the merciful God who loves you.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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?
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?
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.
The " Exodus " is a mish-mash of half remembered tales originating during the Late Bronze Age collapse. Even the name " Moses " is a bastardization of " Ramasses ". This was the time of the " Sea Peoples " and decades long famine. Surely, Moses didn't invade Mycenaean Greece, or conquer the Hittite Empire, also.
I've personally seen spaghetti fly with mine own eyes, I tell ya.. Why do toddlers ALWAYS throw their spaghetti from the high chairs? Exactly. It's because their pure hearts can still perceive the FSM. As it is written: When thine child tosseth their pasta from the chair of heights, thine house has been blessed by the spirit of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose noodly appendages didst save our souls. 🍝 R'amen, and parmesanelujah 🙌
Good grief, the very fact that it has to be studies so deeply and conclusions are so vague and contestable surely suggests that an omnipotent being could not possibly have overseen the writing of this ancient book. The whole concept is utterly ridiculous
This is ridiculous, have you ever heard of a leader saying they are smarter than their generals, how they are the chosen one, or brag about how good they are at golf, I mean a sport. 🙄
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"
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 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.
I haven't read through 1,300+ comments, but of those I have, everyone seems to be missing a major point. Exodus and Numbers were written in the 5th century BCE, about the origins of Israel some 700+ years earlier. The writers knew that the proto-Israelites had been Egyptian slaves, knew they later lived in Caanan, and had to come up with an explanation, which a (fictional) Exodus and Conquest does. What they _didn't_ know in the 6th century BCE was that prior to the Bronze Age Collapse in the 13th Century BCE, Egypt's territory stretched all the way up the Levant to the borders of the Anatolian Hittites (with Ugarit sandwiched in between). Caanan then was effectively _in_ Egypt and its inhabitants effectively slaves of the Pharoah, because Kings in that era regarded all their subjects as slaves, and referred to them as such in correspondence with each other and with subordinate administrators. Due to the Bronze Age Collapse, Egypt could no longer control the Levant and contracted back to the Nile Delta and Valley, so the former Caananite/Israelite 'slaves' in Caanan were no longer slaves and no longer in Egypt, despite not having moved at all. Doubtless some Israelites had been sent to Egypt now and then when a Pharoah had needed a workforce for a mining or other project, and after the collapse a few of them, or their descendents, likely returned to Caanan/Israel. It's interesting that of the 'Tribes of Israel' (more than 12 are known), only the Levites tended to have Egyptian-style names - perhaps they were the ones who returned from Egypt 'proper' with the idea of monotheism, leading to them gaining their monopoly on priesthood while lacking their own territory.
There is no evidence of the Hebrews having been enslaved in Egypt and no archeological evidence of any large population living in Sinai...ever. Isn't that born out by the fact that during hundreds of years of made up stories about Egypt the pyramids are never mentioned once.
I tried to watch this but Bart and Paul are just unlikable. They are basically quote pyramiding the guy as he talks and making all sorts of insinuations about the guy for having an alternative hypothesis. Trying to load the deck against the hypothesis instead of letting the audience decide. That there might be interpolations from an earlier event to make it applicable to later events for propaganda - or simply error at the time (not everyone could read good during the Bronze Age Collapse) is not beyond the realm of possibility. Repeated ad hominem and appeals to authority further undermine their credibility - I'm perfectly capable of assessing the evidence for myself, tyvm. Regardless, things like laughing at the other person's ideas - it seems to be a very American thing that they don't realise is extremely rude in all other cultures - and odious to the viewer. These ideas are bit too niche to be laughable - it's an intellectual snobbery - which is ironic given Ehrman's equally credulous in his defence of Jesus' historicity. Is it easier for him to write off the Jewish part of the book? This seems like an excuse to sneer down at people, rather than any attempt at scholarly discussion or analysis. This kind of behaviour demonstrates why Americans are so uniquely unsuited to intellectual pursuits; might we recommend Bart and Paul stick to something more befitting their roots, perhaps say, anvil shooting.
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."
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. 😉
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
@S Gloval as far as we can tell, this isn't supernatural since it happens in nature all the time. You take in non-living materials all the time and convert them to living tissue, for example. Abiogenisis is similarly an entirely natural process; "creating life" is perhaps a loaded term to many religions but life almost certainly occurred because of this (or indeed these) process(es).
@S Gloval so a god can be eternal, but a cosmos cannot, and this god can make a man from dirt, but life cannot develop through some sort of natural process? It sounds like you are proponent of filling in the answers to things we don’t know with a god (which cannot be proven), instead of continuing to seek REAL answers. Had we followed your ilk, we would still believe the Earth is set on pillars, and the stars are hung from the firmament of the sky, and can fall to Earth. I prefer to not live my life according to people who thought illness was caused by the supernatural.
@S Gloval "Well you don't because you believe in supernatural things such as non living things creating life." You mean chemical processes leading to life forming? That's not supernatural. How do you think life started?
@S Gloval "Sir when has something non living give rise to life? No origin of life research has ever made such a stupid statement because if that was the case there wouldn't be an origin of life field" Does the origin of life research say a god was responsible? I'm guessing you also deny evolution is a thing.
So let me get this straight. The Pharaoh's first born son is killed in a plague. An entire captive demographic tens of thousands. If not, hundreds leaves Egypt amidst all of this. And there's no record of it. It was so small and trivial that the Egyptians didn't bother to record it. Driving out their enemies would have been something that the pharaohs would have posted. They would have turned a defeat into a victory as they so often did with their inscriptions. Anybody who knows or understands Egyptian history slightly is laughing at this proposition
That sick apologetic laugh of his says it all doesn't it. He tries to ride both ends of the horse 🐎 lol. The Exodus never happened. No one wandered in a desert you can walk across in less than 2 weeks haha
(09 December 2023) My understanding on the date for the Exodus? IT IS A CONFLATION OF EVENTS SPANNING A PERIOD OF TIME FROM CIRCA 5000 BC (Neolithic Times) to Late Iron Age II Times, circa the 6th century BC. (1) The Neolithic settlement (5000 BC) on the plain Er-Raha, in the shadow of Ras Safsafeh (discovered in the late 1980s), miss-dated 1446 BC by the Iron Age II Israelites and it was miss-identified as being Moses' settlement. Ras Safsafeh being Mount Sinai/Horeb (2) Early Bronze Age II settlements, ca. 2300 BC like Ai (Et_Tell, and Arad). miss-dated 1446 BC by the Iron Age II Israelites. (2) A recasting of the Hyksos Expulsion of circa 1530 BC, as noted by Professor Donald Bruce Redford (an Egyptologist). (3) The sudden appearance of Iron Age I settlements on both sides of the Jordan River (circa 1200-1100 BC), miss-dated 1446 BC by the Iron Age II Israelites (cf. 1 Kings 6:1). (4) Late Iron Age II Settlements (ca. the 7th/6th centuries BC) in Edom, Moab, and Ammon, as noted by Dr. Burton MacDonald. **THE ELUSIVE KEY* I STUMBLED UPON, TO *UNSCRAMBLE* THE EXODUS DATE? My "Ah-ha moment" came when I read the diary of a Christian Pilgrimess called Egeria (4th century AD). Her Christian guides, pointed out to her stone circles in the valley approach to Mount Sinai (today's Gebel Musa for some). Her guides said the large stone circles were the remains of hut foundations built by Moses' Israelites over the year spent at Mt. Sinai. Archaeologists have excavated some of these stone circles and determined Egeria's Christian Guides were WRONG, the pottery debris associated with the stone circles was that of Early Bronze Age II Times, ca. 2300 BC, not 1446 BC, not 1260 BC. I came to realize that IF EGERIA"S GUIDES HAD MISDATED THESE STONE CIRCLES WHY NOT THE IRON AGE II ISRAELITES? No one knew the age of any ancient site or artifact until Sir Flinders Petrie of England developed by 1890 AD Pottery Typologies to date sites and artifacts by! An ancient Iron Age Israelite would not be able to tell the difference between a Neolithic sherd and a Late Bronze Age Sherd, as to when it had been made! ***It is my assumption that the Iron Age Israelites who composed the Exodus account MISS-DATED EVERY ARTIFACT AND SITE IN THE SINAI AND NEGEV, AS CIRCA 1446-1406 BC, the World of Moses, according to 1 Kings 6:1.*** Ask any Iron Age Israelite (1200-562 BC) to show you the "physical proof" of Israel's presence in the Sinai and Negeb and he probably would have shown you the hundreds of stone circle nomadic goat-herder camps (camps from Neolithic to Iron Age Times). WHY did the archaeologists FAIL to find Mount Sinai? They were looking in the WRONG ERA! Either 1446-1406 BC (based on 1 Kings 6:1) or 1260 BC and the world of Ramesses II, ca. 1260 BC, neither of which, could be found! The archaeologists reported back that there was no archaeological evidence of Moses and Israel for those two dates. ***These archaeologists had failed to realize the Iron Age Israelites had no way to properly date any site or any artifact.*** Accordingly, my research has identified Mt. Sinai, and the remains of the Ten Commandments, and the Golden Calf, but not by searching for artifacts of either 1446-1406 BC or 1260 BC! If interested in my findings, google my papers posted at "Academia Profile, Walter R. Mattfeld." For me, the archaeologists FOUND MOSES' SHATTERED TEN COMMANDMENTS, BUT WERE UNAWARE THEY HAD DONE SO! TODAY THE TEN COMMADMENTS REST IN A EGYPTIAN MUSEUM, THE CURATORS UNAWARE OF WHAT THEY HAVE! MOSES' NAME ALSO HAS BEEN FOUND IN THE SOUTHERN SINAI, IN THE AREA OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS AND GOLDEN CALF!
Before the fall of a Bronze Age around 1200BC Egyptian records show that the land that is now Israel and Palestine used to be a colony of Egypt. If Jewish faith existed at that time, they would be part of the Egyptian Empire. It is strange that the Bible/Torah does not mention this, however.
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.
Isaiah 9.14-15, describes the "historical" Israel as the four constellations Leo, Virgo, Libra, and Scorpio. For those wishing to visit the historical Israel you will need a powerful space ship.
Being a 'professor' at Biola University and expecting to be taken seriously is like being a pornographic comic strip writer and expecting to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
I got a book on telling ghost stories for Boy Scout late night fireside entertainment. All you need to do is memorize and outline , a few REAL facts and develop a story inflating all to be real. It is frightening simple. Sit by a lake, note its shape, point out some landmarks, name an object of note that everyone has seen and build a story of total imagination using those pieces and you will have every child at your knees wide eyed and filled with expectation of the supernatural. Put that in a book, call it gods word a poof, it becomes legend. Like ALL good stories make sure there are a few known real items in the story. My favorite is when I invented a story one night and a kid cried out...."I've heard this story before"........total confirmation, it was beautiful.
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?
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.
*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
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.
