Blood, Water and Magicians (rain and the nile)
Farrell Till jftill@midwest.net
Thu, 01 Oct 1998 22:32:22 -0700 (00907324342, 2.2.32.19981002053222.0089316c@midwest.net)
At 10:13 PM 10/1/98 +0200, Jan Haugland wrote:
>JAN
>I've tried to follow this long-winded debate, and I cannot remember to have
>seen the CCBE bring up the topic of *rain* and the flow of water.
>
>If we accept the interpretation that it would be sufficient for the
>magicians to make *some* water into blood to do "likewise" (we don't, but
>for the sake of argument...), it would be possible for the magicians to make
>some water into blood even if all the water in Egypt was made into blood.
>
>First, the water of the Nile flows from a source far south of Egypt, so
>(depending on the flow), new water would start flowing into Egypt (even the
>lower Egypt, where this incident allegedly occurred) from the Nile before
>the end of this period. Actually, if we do not bind ourselves to the natural
>flow of the story (ie. the magicians' miracle came more or less immediately
>after Aaron's), it would be possible for the magicans to *perfectly*
>duplicate the trick: make *all* the (new) water in Egypt into blood.
>
>Second, some water could have been provided by rain fall. The problem with
>this idea is that rainfall is sparse, to put it mildly, in Egypt. I am not
>certain about current weather patterns, but I doubt it rains very much in
>the early spring. Egypt is and was totally dependent on the Nile for its
>agriculture.
>
TILL
There are two problems in your solution. First, you are doing the same
thing that Bell and the CCBE did, i.e., proposing solutions based on what
the text does NOT say. Their argument is that since the text does not say
that the magicians did not dig for water, find some, and change it into
blood, they can therefore assume that this is what happened. I have already
responded to this approach by pointing out that if the inerrancy of a text
is going to be proven on the basis of what it does NOT say, then anyone
could prove any text to be inerrant. I, in fact, made the point that the
text does not say that the magicians did not cause a torrent of rain to fall
and then change this water into blood, and so since the text does not say
that this did NOT happen, then their line of argumentation would justify
claiming this as a solution. I also pointed out that the text does not say
that the magicians did not levitate billions of cubic meters of water from
the Red Sea and dump it onto Egypt, and so the CCBE's approach to solving
this discrepancy would entitle them to propose this as a solution. There
would be no end of solutions if an inerrantist would be allowed to solve the
problem by proposing solutions that the Bible did not say did not happen.
The second flaw in your solution is that Exodus 7:25 indicates that the
plague of blood lasted for seven days, so water flowing in from the south
evidently didn't flow in very fast.
Farrell Till
Skepticism, Inc.
jftill@midwest.net