Re: Egyptian records

Farrell Till (jftill@midwest.net)
Tue, 29 Apr 1997 22:43:20 -0500 (CDT)

Izz 4/29
Three million people leave Eygpt, and we have no records of it by the
Egyptians. Strong evidence that it simply did not happen, or that the
numbers are highly exaggerated. Maybe at one time 300 people left,
and the tale later grew in the telling. But we have already swallowed
greater miracles than believing in the size of the exodus. At the start,
we had to believe that sticks turned into snakes and rivers to blood.
And we had to believe in the slapstick story, that it was not enough
that Aaron created a plague of frogs; Pharaohs's magicians created
a plague of even more frogs! I bet that made Pharaoh happy:

Exodus 8:6-7
So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt,
and the frogs came up and covered the land.

But the magicians did the same things by their secret arts;
they also made frogs come up on the land of Egypt.

Yoel has pointed out that the Bible was pornographic; here we see it also
invented comedy. Pharaoh probably lined up his magicians and slapped
them all at once, like in the "Three Stooges", for being idiots and making
more frogs.

TILL
This is a point that I made in a written debate with Jerry Moffitt, which he
has apparently abandoned. It is unreasonable to believe that when Aaron and
Moses changed all of the water throughout all the land of Egypt into blood,
pharaoh's magicians would have done "likewise with their enchantments."
Well, as I have already noted in an X but not X posting, it would have been
a logical impossibility for the magicians to have done likewise with their
enchantments, because there would have been no water left for them to change
into blood. But if we assume that such a feat was logically possible, it
was certainly a stupid act on pharaoh's part. If, for example, terrorists
should contaminate all water east of the Mississippi with a deadly chemical,
the president would be an idiot if he ordered his agents to do the same
thing to all water west of the Mississippi. How idiotic! The story would
have been more reasonable if the magicians had been presented as agents of
pharaoh who undid the plagues that Aaron and Moses inflicted on Egypt.

Instead, we find this tit-for-tat premise in the story of the plagues. At
the beginning whatever Aaron and Moses did, the magicians did likewise with
their enchantments. A & M changed all of the water in Egypt into blood, and
then the magicians somehow changed all of the water in Egypt into blood. A
& M brought forth the plague of frogs, and then the magicians brought forth
even more frogs. Who can believe such nonsense? Why didn't the magicians
show their power by taking away all of the frogs?

Farrell Till
Skepticism, Inc.
jftill@midwest.net