- Scientist Defends Account Of Exodus
- Conservative Jews: Bible is Mainly Myth
- As Rabbis Face Facts, Bible Tales Are Wilting
|
Posted on 04/18/2014 9:01:57 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
With Passover here, it is a propitious time to address the central issue of the holiday: the Exodus.
Specifically, did the Exodus happen?
My friend Rabbi David Wolpe announced some years ago that it didn’t matter whether the Exodus occurred. In his words, writing three years later: “Three years ago on Passover, I explained to my congregation that according to archeologists, there was no reliable evidence that the Exodus took place — and that it almost certainly did not take place the way the Bible recounts it. Finally, I emphasized: It didn’t matter.”
“The Torah,” he continued, “is not a book we turn to for historical accuracy, but rather for truth. The story of the Exodus lives in us.”
I cite Rabbi Wolpe because of my respect for his intellectual honesty, for his Jewish seriousness, and because what he says represents the thinking of many modern Jews.
I do, however, differ. I think it does matter if the Jews were slaves in Egypt and whether the Exodus took place. First, the Jewish people would not have survived, let alone died for their faith, if they had not believed that the Exodus really happened. It takes much more than metaphors for a small, dispersed and horribly persecuted people to survive for thousands of years. And this will be equally true in the future. If Jews come to believe that one of the Torah’s two most important stories (the other, as I will explain, is the Creation) never happened, it is hard to imagine that they will devote their lives to Judaism — no matter how much “truth” a myth may contain. The ancient Greek stories, as, for example, those of Homer, also contained “truth.” But they didn’t perpetuate Greek culture, which was wholly taken over by Christianity. And few, if any, Greeks outside of Greece have ever retained a strong Greek identity thanks to Homer’s stories.
Second, as noted, the Exodus is one of the two essential stories not only of the Torah, but of Judaism and Jewish history. Our prayer book regularly contains the phrases zecher l’ma’asei bereshit and zecher litziyat mitzrayim — “to commemorate the acts of Creation” and “to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt.” Just as Christianity is founded on two events — the atoning death and the Resurrection of Jesus, so Judaism is predicated on two events: Creation and Exodus. The Shabbat Kiddush consists of two paragraphs. The first recounts Creation; the second, the Exodus.
Apparently God (or, if you prefer, whoever gave the Ten Commandments) thought the Exodus significant enough to open the Ten Commandments with reference to one event — the Exodus: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the Land of Egypt.” Even one who doesn’t believe that God gave the Ten Commandments would have to explain why reference to something that never happened would so move the ancient Israelites. In addition, the two versions of the Ten Commandments — the one from God in Exodus and the one from Moses in Deuteronomy — differ with regard to the reason for Shabbat. The first version’s reason is the Creation (by keeping the Shabbat, we reaffirm weekly that God created the world); the second version’s reason is the Exodus (“You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt” — and only free people can have a day of rest each week).
Third, if the Exodus never happened, what biblical story did? Did Abraham live? Did Moses? Was there a revelation at Mount Sinai? Did the Jews enter the Promised Land? Did King David live? According to scholars such as Niels Peter Lemche, an internationally recognized biblical scholar at the University of Copenhagen, “The David of the Bible, David the king, is not a historical figure.”
Are they all fables? If so, it’s really hard to make the case for taking the Bible particularly seriously, let alone base one’s identity and values on it.
Fourth, that we cannot prove that the Jews were in Egypt means little to me. Many biblical stories that were once dismissed as fables were later shown to have a historical basis. Therefore, my belief in the Exodus story does not depend on archaeologists telling me whether they have concluded that Jews were enslaved in and later left Egypt. In any event, what archaeological evidence can one expect to find? The Egyptians didn’t record defeats. And the Jews were in the desert/wilderness with temporary dwellings that would hardly leave traces after 3,000 years.
Logic, however, does strongly argue for the historicity of the Exodus story. What people ever made up as ignoble a past as the Torah and the rest of the Hebrew Bible relate about the Jews? Every other people in the world made up a grand and powerful history for themselves. They were all mighty and courageous. We Jews, on the other hand, were slaves, idol worshippers, rebels and ingrates.
Why make that up? And why make up that so many non-Jews were heroes — such as the daughter of Pharaoh, the Egyptian midwives and the pagan priest Jethro? Why make up that Moses was raised an Egyptian? Why credit God for the Exodus rather than bold Israelites?
At the Passover seder, you have good reason to believe avadim hayeenu b’eretz mitzrayim, “we were slaves in the land of Egypt.” Recite it with conviction.
____________________________________________
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host (AM 870 in Los Angeles) and founder of PragerUniversity.com.
Dennis...if you are Dennis....I like you and you’re a smart guy. But I hope you do a little archeology research before you write about things outside your ‘thang’ in the future. I declare that there is no credible evidence you wrote this narrative. Dennis would have known better.
The OT is full of references to “You were a slave in Egypt.”
“I brought you out of the house of bondage in Egypt.”
There are too many references to Egypt to just be a myth.
Exactly. And the only arguments against this people who were so brutally honest about their own history are nothing more than arguments from silence, most of which have been disproven since:
They told us that there was no evidence that the Hitties ever existed, that the Bible just made them up. Then we found their libraries.
They told us that Ninevah could not possibly have been as big as the Bible claimed. Then we found the ruins, and it indeed matched the Bible's descriptions--it was just so thoroughly destroyed that it took a long time to find it.
They claimed that there was no evidence of the Jews living in the Land before the Babylonian exile. Now we've found numerous stellas and seals that prove the opposite--some of them from David's time.
They told us that Pontius Pilate was never procurer of Judea. Then we found his plaque.
They told us that Acts was full of historical inaccuracies and must have been written in the 2nd-3rd Centuries. Then Sir William Ramsey actually went to Turkey to do the excavations and found out that Luke got every detail right.
Every time they attack the Bible's historocity on a particular point, God provides the evidence needed after stringing the skeptics along for a few decades. I predict that He'll do it again now.
A great part of humanity believes that the holocaust is a fable. Germany invented Photoshop it seems. Archeologists who have evidence of biblical confirmation are scorned by their peers...and forced.....kneeling... to mutter under their breath that “ It does move.”
I saw a History Channel show that asserted that the Hebrews were contractors hired to build temples and pyramids, and were chased out after trying to rip off the Pharoah’s stuff.
And what was the historical or archeological or documentary basis by which they determined that the Hebrews tried to rip off the Pharoah’s stuff?
I don’t remember what they offered as evidence.
Jews in Egypt were long gone before the pyramids were buillt...according to credible evidence.
Well, since evidence is not important, I’d go out on a limb and surmise that the Hebrews tried to organize a labor union to agitate for better wages and the Pharoah was displeased.
They watched Yul Brenner and determined to twist the plot on an historically inaccurate narrative.
Every Easter it’s the same thing.
The great pyramids were much earlier, in the Old Kingdom, more than 1000 years for the dates usually assigned to the Exodus (which was in the New Kingdom period).
The myth would certainly have to also include a tale detailing man or collection of men writing the ten commandments..
And that man or men used four of those ten to tell others to love, woship and obey something other than the man/men who came up with those commandments...
Our leaders today and historically disprove that possibility daily...
Only one answer.. and people just don’t like the answer...
|
lol the pyramids are 36,000 years old
Everyone that wants to discredit the Bible really wants to eliminate Sodom & Gomorrah; TV stations that started on doubts about the great flood and divine intervention in Exodus (it was a change of tides) are now pushing the meteor theory for Sodom & Gomorrah.
So they don’t appear as atheists, they throw in those missing “gospels”...
They told us that there was no evidence that the Hitties ever existed, that the Bible just made them up. Then we found their libraries.That's not what happened. The archive was found, and between the world wars Emil Forrer discovered that the cuneiform included a number of different languages, all unknown, one of which he realized was related to his native German; before that time the otherwise unassigned ruins had been given the name Hittite, which was borrowed from the Old Testament.
They told us that Ninevah could not possibly have been as big as the Bible claimed. Then we found the ruins, and it indeed matched the Bible's descriptions...Whomever "They" are, I'd never heard that particular version of that one -- usually the line is that Nineveh, like the Hittites, were said to never have existed. If any actual scholar ever wrote down either of those, it was definitely a unique opinion. It was assumed that the Assyrians had existed, and obviously the existence of the Assyrian Orthodox Church was common knowledge.
They claimed that there was no evidence of the Jews living in the Land before the Babylonian exile. Now we've found numerous stellas and seals that prove the opposite--some of them from David's time.There's the Mesha Stele aka the Moabite stone, which refers to the House of David, and twenty years ago the Tel Dan stele fragment; both were erected by enemies to commemorate a victory over Israel. AFAIK there are no other steles; in very recent years there have been a handful of other written traces, such as a name, or a reference to the monarchy.
“The Torah,” he continued, “is not a book we turn to for historical accuracy, but rather for truth. The story of the Exodus lives in us.”
This pretty much sums up the attitude of all modern religion, Jewish and chrstian.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
