That Evil ... Pharaoh? ...

[pasithea]

4:21 And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into
Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have
put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let
the people go.

Um... So God gives Moe these parlour tricks to perform then says, "But I'm going to make Pharaoh hate your act. Why? Oh, because I've got an itch to do some smiting and this makes a good excuse."


And what's so bad about a plague of frogs exactly? Frogs are good eatin' and they eat bugs. Wouldn't that help your crops?

Also, we have a gazillion artifacts from that time period, and many tombs that were not discovered until modern times were already in place by then. Why isn't there evidence the water in the vessels turned to blood? Why isn't it in the geological record? Why doesn't anyone else remember it? And shouldn't we find some evidence of the corpses of all those dead stinky fish, frogs, lice, flies, and exploding cattle?

Come on guys. This doesn't pass the lightest examination.

Comments

[ataramos.livejournal.com]

Oh! I know this! Well, sort of. I saw a program somewhere, likely the Hitler Channel, where they were speculating that the 'blood' in the river was actually volcanic runoff from a volcano down in Africa somewhere going off, and the ash and other delightful things managed to turn the Nile reddish brown. Or it was an infestation of red alge, which is highly toxic and not so fun. (But if I recall correctly there is some sort of geological record for the volcano idea, just not much due to the desert on one side, and the Nile flooding all the time on the other) Both of these could have been toxic to the fish and frogs, and killed off thousands of them. There wouldn't really be any evidence of the corpses because well, they're fish and frogs. Not exactly the hardiest of skeletons and it's not been nearly enough time for it to form into a fossil. And the Nile's shifted course a few times, not always flowing in the same bed. Oh, and there's some mild theory but not terribly popular or evidential proof that Moses might have actually been worshiping that one Egyptian sun god, the solitary one that the one Pharaoh pissed everyone off with because he said all the other gods didn't count and it was just this one and he left Luxor and all the high priesets were irritated. I can't remember names as it's quarter to three and Im exhausted. XD

There's likely -some- truth to Exodus, just, like all myth, it's been blown way way way out of proportion.

[kyhwana.livejournal.com]

There was an Egyptian sun god called Ra, that the one you're thinking of?

[schlake.livejournal.com]

Mithra, born on December 25th. Symbolised by a phallus, just like the phalluses worshiped so often in Genesis.

[moonscream.livejournal.com]

No, she's talking about Akhenaton, and the god's name was Aton (also spelled Aten). His wife was Nefertiti, and the finding of her wooden head is one of the few artifacts from the city they built, which was pulverized after Tutankamun (who's original name may have been Tutankaton) was convinced to return the rule of Egypt to one of the other cities. Its unknown for certain what relation he was to Akhenaton and Nefertiti - possibly son or brother.

--Zhora

[jackytar.livejournal.com]

<sarcasm>
But it's in the Bible, and holy, and stuff. Who are you to set yourself up agin' that?
</sarcasm>

[schlake.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should mail you a copy of the FOUL Manifesto. I have both the Old and the New Testicles.

I'm firmly in the trench of the Bible being a very accurate historical record. I can't think of a single miracle in the Bible that doesn't have a perfectly plausible explaination once you try to strip away the myth and fantasy of people who wrote it. The seven plagues seem best explained by anthrax. One way or another, it could caused almost everything the bible says. All you need then is an explosion, like the one at Thera, to fill in the holes. Any maybe an exclipse, I can't remember if the sun went out too for those plagues.

Jesus rising from the dead. No problem. People recover from "death" every once in a while. We still call it a miracle. Mary a virgin? Easy. Not only can women reproduce asexually once in a great while, but a virgin is just an unmarried woman back then, and worked as a prostitute in a temple.


The important thing to remember is that Christianity is a religion of faith. Religion doesn't operate on proof. If there was proof of God, and of Hell, then faith goes right out the window. It becomes a matter of fact that people can't be evil or they will burn. If Hell is unproven then people have a choice. Any proof of the existance of God would descredit him.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

I'm of the bible being a book of myths made up to explain then-contemporary things by incorporating other legends and stories into a nominally coherent narrative.

[paka.livejournal.com]

The whole issue of who the historical Pharaoh might have been is incredibly confused. Ramses II is the usual candidate, and there's nothing that makes sense there either. Whatever's going on, it's pretty clear that you're not going to find exact literal proof of 10 plagues hitting New Kingdom Egypt.

The hardening Pharaoh's heart deal; the explanation I got is that if you read carefully, G-d repeats this line for some of the plagues - not the last ones. The last ones? Pharaoh brings it all on himself by being a jerk. The first ones get explained as, if G-d doesn't show what She can conceivably do, nobody's going to believe a word of it.

I can kind of see that one - okay, so you're a slave and someone tells you that any moment now "great god will come from the sky, take away everything and make everybody feel high." Yeah, right buddy. Sure. When I see some freakin' miracles.

On the other hand it still seems really, really inhumane!

[kynn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the whole "hardening his heart" thing is silly. Quite frankly, it's an explanation that is inserted into the story because someone stood up and asked the storyteller "wait, why wouldn't the Pharaoh give up after the first or second plague?"

"Oh um er well GOD did it."

Like that makes sense.

You have to remember that the biblical texts are basically highly edited (by several different editors at different historical periods) written versions of a variety of oral myths. I.e. they are synthesized fictions woven together.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Makes just as much sense to me to have a very weak Pharaoh who listens to advisors who just want the slaves to keep working like before. Then God's boy shows up and announces a plague, and he says "Go!". Then the priests and advisors come up and yammer at him, and he says "Wait! Can't leave yet!"

[kynn.livejournal.com]

Yeah but that's not the bible story. :)

[moonscream.livejournal.com]

Actually, there would be little or no proof coming out of Egypt if it was something done by Moses, and the reason is this: if the Pharoahs didn't like what happened, they struck it from the record. Akhenaton and Hatshepsut were wiped from every record that could possibly be found by their descendants. (Hatshepsut's temple was left, tho...probably out of fear, and explained as a temple to Hathor) The only record left behind of the Hebrews even having any KIND of dealings with Egypt around the time of the Exodus, despite even being their neighbors to the north, is a statement on a stelae recorded by one of the Ramases - "I have wiped the Hebrews from the face of the earth."

There ARE, however, passages in the history written by an Egyptian Priest named Manetho (which can be found in the Loews Classical Library on the Greek side) claiming that Moses was actually the leader of a revolt among lepers and slaves, and was formerly a priest of one of their gods (Osiris, I think). The history was written as an answer to Herodotus, and was partially reconstructed from the writings of the Josephus - who had done research and writings in Roman times intended to prove the ancestry of the Hebrews.

--Zhora