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

[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. :)