Can we make sense of the Biblical plagues?
The Book of Exodus in the Bible describes ten Egyptian plagues that bring suffering to the land of pharaoh. Are these Biblical plagues plausible on any level? In the following article, “Three Ways to Look at the Ten Plagues,” Ziony Zevit looks at these Biblical plagues from various vantage points. There’s something unique about these Egyptian plagues as presented in Exodus in the Bible. They’re different from the curses to Israelites as mentioned in Leviticus. Some have connected the Egyptian plagues to natural phenomena that were possible in ancient Egypt. Torrential rains in Ethiopia could have sent red clay (“blood”) into the Nile, which could have caused a migration of frogs, further causing lice and flies, which caused the death of cattle and human boils. A second set of meteorological disasters, hailstorms (the seventh of the Biblical plagues) and locusts, may have been followed by a Libyan dust storm—causing darkness.
Many of the Egyptian plagues could also be interpreted as “attacks against the Egyptian pantheon,” Zevit notes. Many of the Egyptian plagues mentioned in Exodus in the Bible have some correlation to an Egyptian god or goddess. For example, Heket was represented as a frog and Hathor as a cow. An ancient Egyptian “Coffin Text” refers to the slaying of first-born gods.
A third way to look at the Biblical plagues is by asking, “why ten?” Ultimately the plagues served to increase the faith of the surviving Israelites. On this count ten could be connected to the ten divine utterances of the creation account of Genesis 1. In relating the ten Egyptian plagues, the Exodus in the Bible could represent a parallel account of liberation, affecting all aspects of the created world.
by Ziony Zevit
When the enslaved Israelites sought to leave Egypt, Pharaoh said no. The Lord then visited ten plagues upon the Egyptians until finally Pharaoh permanently relented—the last of the plagues being the slaying of the first-born males of Egypt. Some of the plagues are the type of disasters that recur often in human history—hailstorms and locusts—and therefore appear possible and realistic. Others, less realistic, border on the comic—frogs and lice. Still others are almost surrealistic—blood and darkness—and appear highly improbable.
Many questions have been raised about the plagues on different levels. Some questions are naturalistic and historical: Did the plagues actually occur in the order and manner described in Exodus? Are there any ancient documents or other types of evidence corroborating that they took place or that something like them took place? Can the less realistic and surrealistic plagues be explained as natural phenomena? Other questions are literary and theological: Is the plague narrative a hodgepodge of sources pasted together by ancient editors (redactors)? What is the origin of the traditions in the extant plague narrative? What is the meaning of the narrative in its biblical context? Beyond the obvious story, did the plague narrative have any theological implications for ancient Israel?
My research has not provided answers to all these questions, but it will, I believe, provide some new insights.
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For centuries exegetes have been struggling with the order, the number and the meaning of the plagues. As early as the medieval period, Jewish commentators noticed certain patterns in the narrative that reflected a highly organized literary structure. In the 12th century, a rabbi known as the Rashbam (Rabbi Samuel ben Meir),1 who lived in northern France, recognized that only certain plagues were introduced by warnings to Pharaoh, while others were not. To appreciate the pattern, divide the first nine plagues into three groups each; in the first two of each group, Pharaoh is warned that if he does not let the Israelites go, the plague will be visited on the Egyptians; in the third plague of each group, the plague strikes without warning.
In the 13th century Bahya ben Asher2 and in the 15th century Don Isaac Abravanel3 noted a certain repetitive pattern in who brought on the plagues. The first three plagues are brought on by Moses’ brother Aaron, who holds out his staff as the effective instrument (Exodus 7:19; 8:1; 8:12).a In the next group of three, the first two are brought on by God and the third by Moses (Exodus 8:20: 9:6; 9:10). In the last group of three the plagues are brought on by Moses’ holding out his arm with his staff (Exodus 9:22–23; 10:12–13; 10:21 [the last without mention of his staff]).
These patterns indicate that the plague narrative is a conscientiously articulated and tightly wrought composition.
Taking the plagues as a whole, however, it is clear that they differ considerably from the curses with which the Israelites are threatened in the so-called curse-lists of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. In the curse-lists, the Lord tells the Israelites what will happen to them if they do not obey the Lord’s laws and commandments, if they breach the covenant. They will suffer, according to Leviticus, terror, consumption, fever, crop failure, defeat at the hands of their enemies, unnecessary fear; wild beasts will consume their children and cattle; they will die by the sword; they will be so hungry that they will eat the flesh of their children and, in the end, go into exile (Leviticus 26:14–26). Similarly in the augmented list of curses in Deuteronomy 28:15–60, they will suffer confusion, consumption, inflammation, madness, blindness, social chaos, military defeat, etc.
The maledictions in the curse-lists of Leviticus and Deuteronomy have been shown to be part of a stock of traditional curses employed during the biblical period in the geographical area extending from Israel to ancient Mesopotamia. Not only are they attested in the Torah (the Five Books of Moses), but also in the prophets; they also appear in the “curse” sections of contemporaneous ancient Near Eastern treaties.4 These “curses” reflect the kinds of things that could, and probably did, happen in this geographical area as a result of natural or humanly-impose calamities. True there is some overlap between these curses and the plagues. Dever (pestilence) occurs both in the Egyptian plagues and in the curse lists of Leviticus. 26:25 and Deuteronomy 28:21. “Boils” occurs in the curse list of Deuteronomy 28:35 while a locust-like plague is mentioned in. Deuteronomy 28:42. Nevertheless, in the Pentateuchal curse lists, the Israelites—on their way to the Promised land—are threatened with disasters they might expect in the ecological system of the land to which they were headed, not those of the land of Egypt from which they were fleeing.
The plagues visited on the Egyptians are quite different.5 To understand their significance we should focus on Egypt in particular rather than the ancient Near East as a whole.
The most sophisticated attempt to relate the Egyptian plagues to natural phenomena does so in terms of Egypt’s ecosystem. According to this interpretation, the first six plagues can even be explained in their sequential order: The naturalistic account is connected initially with the violent rain storms that occur in the mountains of Ethiopia. The first plague, blood, is the red clay swept down into the Nile from the Ethiopian highlands. The mud then choked the fish in the area inhabited by the Israelites. The fish clogged the swamps where the frogs lived; the fish, soon infected with anthrax, caused the frogs (the second plague) to leave the Nile for cool areas, taking refuge in people’s houses. But, since the frogs were already infected with the disease, they died in their new habitats. As a consequence, lice, the third plague, and flies, the fourth plague, began to multiply, feeding off the dead frogs. This gave rise to a pestilence that attacked animals, the fifth plague, because the cattle were feeding on grass which by then had also become infected. In man, the symptom of the same disease was boils, the sixth plague.
A second sequence of plagues, according to this explanation, is related to atmospheric and climatic conditions in Egypt. Hailstorms, the seventh plague, came out of nowhere. Although not common, hailstorms do occur rarely in Upper Egypt and occasionally in Lower Egypt during late spring and early fall. In this reconstruction, the hailstorm was followed by the eighth plague, locusts, a more common occurrence. The ninth plague, darkness, was a Libyan dust storm.6
The final plague, the death of the first-born, although not strictly commensurate with the other plagues, can be explained in ecological terms. It may be a reflection of the infant mortality rate in ancient Egypt.7 There is a problem with this explanation, however. According to the biblical narrative, the tenth plague struck all first-born males of whatever age, not just new-born infants.
This ecological explanation of the plagues does not prove that the biblical account is true, but only that it may have some basis in reality. As indicated, it also has weaknesses: The ecological chain is broken after the sixth plague, there being no causality between the plague of boils (the sixth plague) and the hail. The chain is again broken between the ninth and tenth plagues. In addition, there is no real link between the plagues in the seventh-eighth-ninth sequence (hail-locusts-darkness). Nevertheless, this explanation does firmly anchor the first six plagues in the Egyptian ecosystem, just as the curse-lists in the Torah reflect real conditions in the Land of Israel.
Moreover, two ancient Egyptian texts provide additional support. One is relevant to the first plague, blood. In “The Admonitions of Ipu-Wer,” dated at the latest to 2050 B.C.E., the author describes a chaotic period in Egypt: “Why really, the River [Nile] is blood. If one drinks of it, one rejects (it) as human and thirsts for water.”8
The second text, known as “The Prophecy of Nefer-Rohu” dates towards the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, about 2040–1650 B.C.E.; it relates to the ninth plague, darkness: “The sun disc is covered over. It will not shine (so that) people may see … No one knows when midday falls, for his shadow cannot be distinguished.”9
The ten plagues may also be interpreted as a series of attacks against the Egyptian pantheon. This suggestion finds support in Numbers 33:4 where we are told that the Egyptians buried those who had died by the tenth plague, by which plague “the Lord executed judgments against their gods.”
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According to this suggestion, the plague of blood (No. 1) was directed against the god Khnum, creator of water and life; or against Hapi, the Nile god; or against Osiris, whose bloodstream was the Nile. Frogs (No.2) was directed against Heket, a goddess of childbirth who was represented as a frog. The pestilence against cattle (No. 5) might have been directed against Hathor, the mother and sky goddess, represented in the form of a cow; or against Apis, symbol of fertility represented as a bull. Hail (No. 7) and locusts (No. 8 ) were, according to this explanation, directed against Seth, who manifests himself in wind and storms; and/or against Isis, goddess of life, who grinds, spins flax and weaves cloth; or against Min, who was worshiped as a god of fertility and vegetation and as a protector of crops. Min is an especially likely candidate for these two plagues because the notations in Exodus 9:31 indicate that the first plague came as the flax and barley were about to be harvested, but before the wheat and spelt had matured. A widely celebrated “Coming out of Min” was celebrated in Egypt at the beginning of the harvest.10 These plagues, in effect, devastated Min’s coming-out party.
Darkness (No. 9), pursuing this line of interpretation, could have been directed against various deities associated with the sun—Amon-Re, Aten, Atum or Horus.
Finally, the death of the firstborn (No. 10) was directed against the patron deity of Pharaoh, and the judge of the dead, Osiris.
Additional data from Egyptian religious texts clarifies the terrifying tenth plague. The famous “Cannibal Hymn,” carved in the Old Kingdom pyramid of Unas at Saqqara, about 2300 B.C.E., states: “It is the king who will be judged with Him-whose-name-is-hidden on that day of slaying the first born.” Variations of this verse appear in a few Coffin Texts, magic texts derived from royal pyramid inscriptions of the Old Kingdom and written on the coffins of nobility of the Middle Kingdom, about 2000 B.C.E. For example, “I am he who will be judged with Him-whose-name-is-hidden on that night of slaying the first born.”11 Although the first-born referred to in the Coffin Text and probably also in the “Cannibal Hymn” are the first-born of gods, these texts indicate that an ancient tradition in Egypt recalled the slaying of all or some of the first-born of gods on a particular night.12
Assuming that some form of this pre-Israelite Egyptian tradition was known during the period of the enslavement, it may have motivated the story of the final plague. However, in the biblical story, he who revealed his hidden name to Moses at the burning bramble bush revealed himself as the Him-whose-name-is-hidden of the Egyptian myth, and alone slew the first-born males of Egypt. In this final plague, then, there was no conflict between the Lord and an Egyptian deity; rather through this plague the triumphant god of Israel fulfilled the role of an anonymous destroyer in a nightmarish prophecy from the Egyptian past.
One weakness in interpreting the plagues solely as a religious polemic against Egyptian gods, however, is that some of the plagues are unaccounted for; and not all of the plagues can be conveniently matched up with Egyptian gods or texts. Specifically, divine candidates are lacking for the third, fourth and sixth plagues—lice, flies and boils. Even if scratching through Egyptian sources might produce some minor candidates that could fill these lacunae, there is another difficulty with the religious polemic interpretation. The Egyptian material on which this interpretation rests comes from different times and different places. The extant data do not enable us to claim that the perception of the pantheon presented above was historically probable in the Western Delta during the 14th–12th centuries B.C.E. when and where Israelites became familiar with it. Nevertheless, despite these difficulties, the Egyptian material describing links between Egyptian deities and natural phenomena does provide us with some insights into the way the plagues were intended to be understood.
Another line of interpretation, however, results from Posing the questions: Why ten plagues? Why these ten plagues?
According to Exodus 7:4–5, the function of the plagues is didactic: “I will lay my hands upon Egypt and deliver hosts, my people, the Israelites, from the land of Egypt with great acts of judgment. And the Egyptians shall know that I am God when I stretch out my hand against Egypt.” Despite the reference to the Egyptians learning a lesson—namely, the Lord’s power—it seems clear that the real beneficiaries of the plagues were not intended to be Egyptians. If the education of the Egyptians was the reason for the plagues, the lesson was certainly lost on the intended beneficiaries. The true beneficiaries of the lesson that God said he would teach were the Israelites. As we read in Exodus 14:31: “When Israel saw the mighty act [literally ‘hand/arm’] which the Lord had done in Egypt, the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.”
What ignited the faith of the Israelites was not their physical redemption from Egypt, but rather “the mighty act which the Lord had done in Egypt”—that is, the plagues.
What was there about the plagues that triggered Israel’s response in faith? Through the plagues the Lord demonstrated that he was the God of creation. As we examine the narrative closely, we will see how this notion is conveyed.
The first plague, blood, is described in Exodus 7:19. There we are told that Aaron is to take his staff and hold it over all of Egypt’s bodies (or gatherings) of water and they will become blood. The Hebrew word for “bodies” or “gatherings” of water is mikveh. This is the same word that appears in the opening chapters of Genesis when God creates the seas: “God called the dry land Earth, and the gatherings (mikveh) of waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:10). The use of the word mikveh in Exodus 7:19 in connection with the plague of blood cannot fail to evoke an association with the creation of the seas in Genesis 1:10 and indicates the cosmic import of the plague. Similarly, the expression in Exodus 7:19 “Let them become blood” echoes the use of “Let there be(come)” in the creation story in Genesis.
However, in contrast to the creation, where the primeval waters are not altered by a creative act, the first plague demonstrates that God is able to change the very nature of things.
Plagues two, three and four—frogs, lice and flies—form an interesting triad. The frogs are associated with water, the lice with earth, and the flies with air. Frogs, we are told, came out of the “rivers, the canals, and the ponds of Egypt” (Exodus 8:1). In Exodus, the Nile swarmed with frogs which then covered all the land (Exodus 7:28–29), while in Genesis God says, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures” (Genesis 1:20). Understood against the background of Genesis, the frog plague in Egypt was a new creation of life, although not a beneficent one.
Similarly, with lice (the third plague) that came forth from the dust of the earth (Exodus 8:12–13). The lice correspond to the crawling creatures (remes) that come forth from the earth in Genesis 1:24.
Flies (the fourth plague) correspond to the flying creatures; in Genesis God orders that “flying creatures multiply in the land” (Genesis 1:22). In Egypt, the flies not only multiplied in the land, they filled the land. After the fly plague the situation in Egypt was a complete reversal of the one anticipated by the divine blessing to mankind in Genesis 1:28, where God tells man to “Rule the fish of the sea, the winged creatures of the heavens, and all living creatures which creep on the earth.” In Egypt, these creatures were totally out of control.
Was Moses more than an Exodus hero? Discover the Biblical Moses in “The Man Moses” by Peter Machinist, originally published in Bible Review and now available for free in Bible History Daily.
The fifth plague (pestilence) affected only animals, not men; and only the field animals of the Egyptians, not those of the Israelites (Exodus 9:3–7). In Genesis 2:18–20 the animals are created specifically for man. In the plague of pestilence, the domestic animals that were under man’s dominion were taken away from the Egyptians. That which was first created for man was first removed from the Egyptians by the first plague directed specifically against created things.
The sixth plague, boils, is the only one that does not fit easily into the pattern I have been describing. Perhaps it should be understood against the background of the Torah’s laws of purity: A person afflicted with boils is ritually unclean (Leviticus 13:18–23). This is complemented by the stringent demands of Egyptian religion during the New Kingdom, about 1550–1080 B.C.E., concerning the ritual and physical purity requited of priests before entering a sanctuary.13 Egyptians considered themselves superior to other peoples. Pharaoh himself was a god and his officers were priests. Perhaps the image of these superior, “holier than thou” individuals suffering from boils, a painful and unaesthetic affliction, was humorous to the Israelites and was considered a barb against Egyptian religion.
The next two plagues, hail and locusts involve the destruction of another part of creation, primarily vegetation. What was not destroyed by the hail was consumed by the locusts. When these two plagues had run their course, Egypt could be contrasted to the way the world appeared after the third day of creation: “The land brought forth vegetation: seed bearing fruit with seed in it” (Genesis 1:12). By contrast, in Exodus 10:15 we are told that “nothing green was left of tree or grass of the field in all the land of Egypt.”
Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the plagues is darkness, the ninth plague. In Exodus 10:21–23 we read that a thick darkness descended upon all the land of Egypt for three days. “People could not see one another, and for three days no one could get up from where he was; but all the Israelites enjoyed light in their dwellings” (Exodus 10:23). What is described here is not simply the absence of light. The darkness is something physical, “a darkness that can be touched” (Exodus 10:21b). The alternation of light and darkness, of day and night, has ceased. Yet darkness and light exist side by side in geographically distinct places. The Israelites did have light. In short, in Egypt, God had reverted the relationship between darkness and light to what had been prior to the end of the first day of creation—that is, to the state that existed briefly between Genesis 1:4 and Genesis 1:5.
The final plague, the death of the first-born, is only a forerunner to the complete destruction of all the Egyptians at the Red Sea, or Reed Sea.b Here we hear a twisted, obverse echo of the optimism expressed in Genesis 1:26, where God said, “I will make man in my image and after my likeness.” Instead of creating, he is destroying—first, the first-born, and then, at the sea, all of Egypt.
At the end of the narrative in Exodus, Israel looks back over the stilled water of the sea at a land with no people, no animals and no vegetation, a land in which creation had been undone. Israel is convinced that her redeemer is the Lord of all creation. It is this implicit theological principle that motivated the explicit creation of the literary pattern. He who had just reduced order to chaos was the same as he who had previously ordered the chaos.
One question still remains. What is the significance of the number ten in the Exodus tradition? Why ten plagues? The answer, I believe, is clear. The number of plagues in Exodus was meant to correspond to the ten divine utterances by which the world was created and ordered (Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26, 28, 29).14 The destruction of Egypt was part of the redemption of Israel, so the Exodus narrator tied his story of redemption to the story of creation through subtle echoes and word plays.15
Interestingly enough, there are two other accounts of the plagues in the Bible, one in Psalm 78:44–51 and the other in Psalm 105:28–36. These psalms differ somewhat between themselves; they also differ with the narrative in Exodus—regarding what constitutes a plague and the order in which they occurred.16 These differences can be taken to indicate that the specific number and order of the plagues was less important to Israel than the fact of the plagues and what was revealed to Israel through them.
For the psalmists, authors of liturgical texts, there were only seven plagues, a number clearly evoking the seven days of creation. In Egypt, however, the cycle did not end in a Sabbath; it culminated in a silent devastation. At the end of the seventh day (plague), creation in Egypt had been undone.
This tangle of threads—creation, on the one hand, and deliverance from slavery, on the other—is gathered together and neatly knotted in the Sabbath commandment of the Ten Commandments. In the Ten Commandments as set forth in Exodus, the motivation for observing the sabbath (the fifth commandment) is to commemorate creation: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God: You shall not do any work … for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day” (Exodus 20:9–11). In the Ten Commandments as set forth in Deuteronomy, however, the reason Israel is commanded to observe the sabbath is different—not creation, but the delivery from Egyptian slavery. After being told to refrain from work on the sabbath—in the same language as in Exodus—the reason is given: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God freed you from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm [a reference to the plagues]; therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the sabbath day” (Deuteronomy 5:15).
As we have already noted, Psalms 78 and 105 preserve a tradition of seven plagues. In the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, Israel is told to remember the seventh-day sabbath to commemorate the six-day creation; in Deuteronomy 5, Israel is to observe the seventh-day sabbath to commemorate the deliverance from Egyptian slavery by God’s outstretched arm involving, according to the tradition in the Psalms, seven plagues.
This explanation of the plagues and their number also answers some historical questions concerning the biblical tradition of the ten plagues:
These two points lead me to conclude that a historical kernel must underlie the Egyptian plague traditions preserved in the Bible.
The Israelite traditors, those who passed on the tradition, were no longer familiar with the Egyptian cultural milieu in which the disasters had been theoligized and made meaningful by their ancestors. These traditors, therefore, made them meaningful within their own world view by connection the plagues, which initiated the emergence of Israel as a covenant community, with the creation of the world.
For further details, see “The Priestly Redaction and Interpretation of the Plague Narrative in Exodus,” Jewish Quarterly Review 66 (1976) 193–211. The present article contains new material, however, some of which was not available when the aforementioned study was written, as well as a reevaluation of the significance of the data discussed there. Readers interested in a more technical discussion or in the literary history of the plague narratives or in more bibliographical information that is presented here may consult my earlier study and the remarks of N. M. Sarna, Exploring Exodus (New York: Schocken Books, 1986) 68–80.
“Three Ways to Look at the Ten Plagues” by Ziony Zevit originally appeared in Bible Review, June 1990. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily in July 2011.
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a. The verse citations follow the traditional Hebrew enumeration. See, for example, the New Jewish Publication Society translation (Philadelphia: 1985).
b. See Bernard F. Batto, “Red Sea or Reed Sea?” BAR, July/August 1984.
1. Commentary to Exodus 7:26. The verse citations follow the traditional Hebrew enumeration.
2. Commentary to Exodus 10:1.
3. Commentary to Exodus 7:26.
4. D. R. Hillers, Treaty and the Old Testament Prophets (Rome: PBI, 1964); M. Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomy School (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. 116–146.
5. The devastating plague of locusts described in the book of Joel (6th century B.C.E.) is considered a unique event, not comparable to the Egyptian plagues. Similarly, in Joel 3:3–4 (2:30–31 in English), where the moon turns to blood and the sun to darkness; this is very unlike the plagues in Egypt if, in fact, the images in Joel are to be taken literally and not metaphorically.
6. G. Hort, “The Plagues of Egypt,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 69 (1957), pp. 84–103; 70 (1958), pp. 48–59. This is a very important and very sophisticated study which is most humble in drawing its conclusions.
7. P. Montet, L’Egypte et la Bible (Neuchatel: Paris, 1959), pp. 97–98.
8. J. B. Pritchard Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (ANET), (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), p. 441.
9. Pritchard, ANET. p. 445.
10. J. Cerny, Ancient Egyptian Religion (AER) (London: Hutchison’s University Library, 1952), pp. 119–120.
11. M. Gilula, “The Smiting of the First-Born—An Egyptian Myth?” Tel Aviv 4 (1977), p. 94. Technical references and additional discussion are available in this brief study. M. Lichtheim renders the line from the ‘Cannibal Hymn’: “Unas will judge with Him-whose-name-is-hidden on the day of slaying the eldest,” noting that the line is difficult (Ancient Egyptian Literature. A Book of Readings. Vol 1: The Old and Middle Kingdoms [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973], pp. 36–38). The Coffin Text cited is CT VI:178.
12. M. Gilula, p. 95.
13. Cerny, AER, 118; S. Sauneron, The Priests of Ancient Egypt (New York: Grove Press, 1960), pp. 37–39.
14. Cf. Mishnah Aboth 5:1, 4.
15. This conclusion does not contradict the findings of source criticism. According to source criticism, the final redactor of the plague narratives and of the creation stories was from the priestly school, P.
16. Both psalms are pre-Exilic, and probably formed part of the temple liturgy. (D. A. Robertson, Linguistic Evidence in Dating Early Hebrew Poetry [Missoula, Montana: SBL, 1972], pp. 135, 138, 143, 15–52; A. Hurvitz, The Transition Period in Biblical Hebrew: A study in Post-Exilic Hebrew and Its Implications for the Dating of Psalms [Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1972] finds no linguistic reason to consider these psalms late.) A comparison of the three different presentations indicates a certain plasticity in the Israelite tradition of the plagues. The coexistence of conflicting, somewhat contradictory, parallel plague traditions tells against any attempt to explain the order of the ten plagues as reflecting a connected series of natural catastrophes and provides a qualification to the discussion above concerning the possibility of a sequential disaster. Although it is not impossible that some natural disasters ultimately lie behind the various plagues, the traditions in their extant forms cannot be employed to reconstruct what actually occurred. The implication of the three lists of plagues is that Israel did not preserve the details of the plagues or their number for their own sake, but rather recalled the significance of the plagues as events demonstrating a theological principle.
17. Natural disasters would be perceived as forms of divine communication. Compare Amos 4:6–12.
18. Cf. the contest between Elijah and the priests of Baal in 1 Kings 18.
Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination
Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination
Collection: The Biblical Moses
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An academic discipline in which speculation is seen as having merit is not a worthy discipline. Speculation produces only words, not facts.
“The sixth plague, boils, is the only one that does not fit easily into the pattern I have been describing”
— The boils are the most informative plague.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesses_V
“The mummy of Ramesses V was recovered in 1898 and seemed to indicate that he suffered and subsequently died from smallpox”
The first born son of a pharaoh who dies of boils. At a time when the land of Ramses(Pi-Ramese) existed. The boils give you an actual plague at an actual timeframe(1145BC), and are historically proven. And Ramses IV mentions Apiru in Sinai. And Ramses 9(1129BC) is in the mix(Khenefres). It’s a small window of time.
BAS IS ONLY MEANT FOR BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY,BUT IT IS NOT FOR IT’S MAIN BASE .NEWS NETWORK ARCHAEOLOGY RECENTLY DISCOVERED THUTMOSE 2 MUMMY AND BROUGHT IT INTO LIMELIGHT CONCERNING ONE OF THE PLAGUES OF EXODUS .BOILS ON THE SKIN OF THE MUMMY OF THUTMOSE THE SECOND.
Interesting insights from a humanistic point of view ziony. If I may, the Lord being familiar to your rhetoric on the Psalmist where you state there were only seven plagues compared to the 10 which can be found in Genesis and attributed to the 10 commandments, how would you integrate Genesis 41:36 “Let the food become as a reserve for the land for the seven years of famine which will occur in the land of Egypt, so that the land will not perish during the famine.” ?
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.” Isa 55:9
Nell, each of the ten plagues was an assault or affront to an Egyptian god or gods.
1. Nile to blood – Hapi……..(probably not too hapi about it)
2. Frogs – Heqt
3. Dust into gnats – Thoth
4. Gadflies – Wadjet
5. Pestilence on livestock – Hathor, Nut and Apis
6. Boils – Thoth, Isis and Ptah
7.Hail – Reshpu and Thoth.
8. Locusts – Min
9. Darkness – Ra, Horus and Thoth
10. Death of firstborn – Amon-Ra
Not only does this show the creators control over his creations, but it also shows how God can be selective when bringing down his punishments.
Sorry BAS there is only one way to look at the ten plagues and that is from the Bibles standpoint, especially if one claims to be Christian – because as a Christian one should accept the Bible as it truly is – the inspired word of God, and as 1 Timothy 3:16 says: ALL scripture is inspired of God, and 2 Peter 1:20, 21 tell us that prophecy contained in God’s word was not written or conceived by men, BUT, only from God.
This means that we cannot pick and choose what we want to believe and deny those things we may not wish to believe – you either believe the Bible is God’s written word or you do not.
I watched tv documentary “Planet Egypt” about the Israelits ghetto in Egypt. The director of Cairo museum showing to the commentator in front of camera 2 tablets of God of Israel’s punishment on Egypt: locusts & Egyptian chariot swallowed by sea. They both silent 100%!!! I’ve tried to find the images on internet but not successful. Could you help me maybe. Thank you.
We can certainly make sense of the biblical plagues is that they could of happened over centuries. Example the red blood is caused by algae in a red tide that takes oxygen out of the sea and rivers and kill fish. There is no evidence that all these plagues happened as described as the Egyptian population would of died off. How can 150,000 Egyptian children be killed in one night.For sure the exodus did not take place as described. How can 2 million people life without 2 million gallons of water per day , 2 tons of food and 5 tons of firewood for the night temp which drops to minus 40 degrees, as well as 400,000 tents. Why are the pyramids not mentioned and why was the name of the pharaohs missing. The writers had never lived in Egypt or the Sinai desert. Egypt under Ramses 2 at the time of the exodus controlled an empire from Sudan to Libya to Transjordan, Canaan up to Syria with an iron fist. The forts went up to Canaan from Egypt. Joshua story did not happen as the Egyptians were there before him.athe story of the exodus was written 600 years after they were reported to take place.There is no archeology evidence of the exodus or large influx in Canaan. No potttery or any inscriptions
If we take 2 million people eight abreast they will form a column 150 miles long. So they could not go through the red.reed sea in a day.Dont forget the Red Sea is 785 feet deep.
Santorini ash being found in Egypts is no proof of anything. How much was found? Where was it found. People forget that the plagues were a timed event, did Moses sit around with the latest Thebes chronicle describing the Santorini disaster and make a calendar around when the alleged ash cloud would hit Egypt? How would he know to predict each plague for X amount of time and just luckily hit the jackpot with his prediction of darkness. As to the waters turning red with Blood, do people think one of the greatest intelligent Civilization that built the Pyramids could not tell red tide or rust from blood? Hell there is synthetic blood today. Dont ask what blood type it was. God just turned the Nile into one big blood jug.
You think that the Egyptians didnt know rust or pollution from Sangua? I dont think so.
The blood was real blood here’s how … chloroplasts are identical to human blood except that the chelate is mg ours is iron .back in the early 1900’s Europe and others found that chloroplasts could be used as a blood substitute .once in the body the mg is replaced by iron and it typed to the person’s type…. So there goes ….in Egypt it’s very fertile the waters have a lot of micro plant material in the ponds in the river ect. A volcano eruption on the other side of the planet sends iron in just the right form it settled in the water an joined to the chloroplast and made real blood not a fack .the number ten is the number of humanity like ten fingers on your hands or the last ten looked for at Sodom .of the ten needed for a congregation. When you really look closely at Passover in Scriptures the explanations don’t work out be cause at that time the Hebrews were under the sun calendar .that’s why Aran didn’t die when he lift his house after midnight .unless it was morning no special Favor’s for him the angel of death would have killed him .he wass the eldest son .I think that’s right ? It was when the Hebrews were dragged off to Babylon staying for five generations they lost their way of things . it’s the sun calendar that’s God’s calendar .it resets every year at the spring equinox no confusion no leap years no lost seconds no hebrewish confusion .they have been missing there appointed times for hundreds of years .look at this picture the sun’s at noon infrount is the beginning of a new cycle behind the end of a cycle …Yom… In the middle the sun the great symbiotic picture of God .now read ID back wards from the English like in hebrew. The beginning and the end overshadowed by God . good luck with the blind leading the blind the ditch is just over there . jim
This was fascinating. In thinking about the 6th plague, I notice that we’re specifically told that the Egyptian magicians ‘could not stand before Moses because of the boils.’ I find it interesting that the ‘priests’ so to speak, of the Egyptians are specifically mentioned as being afflicted and unable to stand before Moses (and presumably Aaron).
Man was made on the 6th day; he is invited into the 7th-day rest of the Lord; he is made for relationship with the Lord. And man offers sacrifice to the Lord, meaning he has a priestly function ‘built in’ to his nature, so to speak.
Perhaps there is some connection here, that God not only made man on the 6th day, but made him specifically priestly, to offer sacrifice to God (in this way, he is different from the animals also made on the 6th day). If the ‘priestly’ function of the Egyptians is ‘undone’ by the 6th plague, can there be some kind of connection there? That their priestly function is corrupt, directed at false gods, and so it is being ‘undone’ by making the priests ritually impure? The Israelites are unaffected, and they will be able to perform the ritual slaughter of the lamb at the Passover; their priestly/sacrificial function remains intact. They have not been ‘dehumanized’ by being disabled from their priestly function and thus from their ability to ‘relate’ to God through ritual sacrifice.
I’m probably not using the correct language; it was just the priestly function of man made on the 6th day and the ritual impurity of the Egyptian ‘priests’ that struck me. The Israelites retain their priestly purity which was part of the nature of man made on the 6th day, but the priestly purity of the Egyptians is ‘undone’ by a sixth plague. In this sense, the Egyptians in a way lose something of the dignity of their very humanity: that close relationship with God which involves priestly sacrifice to God (or gods, in their case). In a way, they become more like the animals created on the 6th day than man created on the 6th day, since the plague caused ‘festering boils on humans AND animals.’
Santorini ash HAS been found in Egypt.
The order of the plagues – starting with “blood” (a red bacteria blooming and dying in slow moving warm waters caused by a drought – evidenced at the time – and dying as water got less and hotter), followed by frogs driven out in vast numbers, followed by flies unimpeded by frogs…. and a volcanic dustcloud causing hail…
The whole lot is very well explained here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/7530678/Biblical-plagues-really-happened-say-scientists.html
I suggest that the tenth plague was a full lunar eclipse around the midnight. That phenomenon maybe required the slaying of the first-born?
God or gods
Humiliation of Egyptian gods during plagues. ~ “battle of the gods”.
Understanding the Background.
Religion. Egypt was an ultra religious land, rife with polytheism. Every city and town had its own local deity, bearing the title “Lord of the City.” A list found in the tomb of Thutmose III contains the names of some 740 gods. (Ex 12:12)
Frequently the god was represented as married to a goddess who bore him a son, “thus forming a divine triad or trinity in which the father, moreover, was not always the chief, contenting himself on occasion with the role of prince consort, while the principal deity of the locality remained the goddess.” (New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, 1968, p. 10) Each of the chief gods dwelt in a temple that was not open to the public. The god was worshiped by the priests who awoke him each morning with a hymn, bathed him, dressed him, “fed” him, and rendered him other services. (Contrast Ps 121:3, 4; Isa 40:28.)
In this the priests were apparently regarded as acting as the representatives of the Pharaoh, who was believed to be a living god himself, the son of the god Ra. This situation certainly emphasizes the courage shown by Moses and Aaron in going before Pharaoh to present him with the decree of the true God and adds significance to Pharaoh’s disdainful response, “Who is Jehovah, so that I should obey his voice?”—Ex 5:2
The plagues Jehovah visited upon Egypt in the time of Moses were manifestations of his great power and caused his name to be declared among the nations. (Ex 9:14, 16) For generations afterward their effects were talked about by other peoples. (Jos 2:9-11; 9:9; 1Sa 4:8; 6:6) Also, these plagues proved that the gods of Egypt were powerless.—Ex 12:12; Nu 33:4;
http://source4good.blogspot.se/p/osiris-his-consort-isis-and-their-son.html
Hey guys! Lighten up a little. If Cecil B. DeMille says it’s so it must be so. Hollywood lives!
Was There an Exodus?
Many are sure that one of Judaism’s central events never happened. Evidence, some published here for the first time, suggests otherwise.
http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2015/03/was-there-an-exodus/
Read Dr Immanual Velikovsky’s “Ages in Chaos” before adding to these comments.
While the Israelites were wandering for 40 years in the wilderness before reaching Midian (in north-west Arabia today). Moses has plenty of time to write his Books. The two tablets of the 10 Commandments were carried in the Tabernacle for centuries. Writing was therefore known to some if not all Israelites. The Egyptians themselves or at least their educated classes – could write even if only in glyphs, but the glyphs were intended to be read by people or why carve or paint them everywhere. Joseph, himself became the “Prime Minister” – hardly a job for an illiterate herdsman. The Israelites were slaves for only half their sojourn in Egypt and were free to do as they pleased before the bondage period They did not only work in building trades but were probably in the planning “offices” as well, as architects, perhaps as masons and carvers of the monumental messages. They certainly knew their genealogy and history although admittedly, that could have been learned orally. Once in their new Land of Israel, they were able to organise tribal “states” and , later, into Kingdoms. They then wrote the Books of Kings, Prophets and other Biblical books.
Don’t underestimate the Israelites ability to have written – and learned – the Books of Genesis and Exodus from the hand of Moses.
Why is there little recorded matter by the Egyptians of the Exodus? Remember the Crossing of the Reed Sea and the drowning of the Egyptian King and his entire army? The Israelis then headed EAST or south east away FROM Egypt and were attacked by the Amalekites/Hyksos heading WEST TOWARDS Egypt. The Hyksos found Egypt in physical ruins and the population decimated and without a king or army. They took over “without any resistance”. Hence there were no royal engravings or papyrus to record those Israeli happenings.
Dr Velikovsky has written “Ages in Chaos” which explains the whole situation and mentions one papyrus (in Leiden University) which does record the plagues and the Exodus. Read Velikovsky and the discussion will end. The Hebrew Bible is correct. The date was 1500-1450 BCE. The dates tally with the burning of Jericho and other archaeological finds but which are often dismissed as “too early or too late”. Accept the true dating and all fits in well.
As to when the Bible was written, Moses received or wrote the 10 Commandments IN WRITING. He was literate as a prince in Egypt would have been. He wrote (or dictated) the Books of Genesis and Exodus (except the concluding verses depicting his death) and probably the other three Books of the Bible.
How about something simple for the ten plagues and later the Ten Commandments. It’s something God wants us to remember, so what is easier than counting them off on your very own fingers! God tends to keep it simple for us simple folks.
RAY’s initial comments are so loaded with over-generalizations that they are neither helpful nor accurate. His comment — “The proper analytic approach is to accept the archaeological hard-evidence facts given and reach a sound conclusion from those empirical facts” — is methodologically naïve and loaded with every bit as much presupposition as the position he seeks to discredit. It assumes that theological narratives can have no basis in fact (when there is no inherent reason why they cannot), it assumes that the exodus left the specific kind of archaeological traces that he expects (and when they are not there, we are supposed jump to the conclusion that it never happened), and it fails to acknowledge one of the most basic tenets of all archaeological evidence, namely, that archaeological evidence needs to be interpreted, and the regular method that scholars use to do that is to turn to the ancient texts to provide a context. Contrary to RAY’s insistence, reliance on archeological evidence and ignoring the texts is not how it is done. The statement “There is not even miniscule evidence that an Exodus occurred. This fact is supported by the archaeological evidence ” is an objection based on his own selectivity and borders on the self-contradictory, and his remark “We know from the archaeological landscape that ancient Egypt was meticulous in recording major historical events” is a fine case of circular reasoning. While having the appearance of scholarly analysis, his comments are, in fact, lacking in scholarly precision.
For the moderately vision impaired could you please arrange for the option to increase the print size and also darken the print in the section covering ‘Comments.’
Santorini. Another BS story in the vein of Chariots of the Gods.
The “Santorini” theory is not consistent with Bible chronology.According to the biblical record, the exodus from Egypt occurred 480 years before the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel (1 Kgs. 6:1).It is now generally accepted (based upon archaeological and chronological data) that the fourth year of Solomon’s reign was about 966 B.C.Working backwards, therefore, one arrives at the date of 1446/5 B.C. for the time of Israel’s departure from bondage (see Gleason Archer, “The Chronology of the Old Testament,” The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979, I.366).
By way of contrast, the current theory is that the Santorini eruption occurred in the 16th century B.C. —considerably before the exodus event.
Santorini is more than 500 miles from the Egyptian coast.It is hardly likely that the ash from this island would have been so thick in Egypt that for three days the Egyptians “saw not one another, neither rose any one from his place” (Ex. 10:23).
Aside from that, the “ash” theory contradicts several biblical facts.
The Scriptures explicitly state that the darkness occurred as a result of Moses stretching forth his hand toward heaven at the behest of Jehovah’s command (Ex. 10:22).
“[A]ll the children of Israel had light in their dwellings”(Ex. 10:23).If this was a natural event, it certainly was a selective “ash deposit”!
Pharaoh, who was witness to the plagues, did not interpret them as natural disasters; he knew their point of origin!
The “darkness” could not have been an ash-deposit which precipitated the other plagues, because the “darkness” was the ninth plague — the-next-to-last one!
The “tidal wave” notion does not fit the facts.Santorini is to the north west of Egypt.Yet the strong wind that parted the Red Sea came from the east (Ex. 14:21).The direction is wrong.
Further, the waters of the Sea were “divided,” producing a “wall” on each side of Israel’s path. The waters were said to have “congealed” (Ex. 15:8; cf. Psa. 78:13). The Hebrew term signifies to thicken; the waters became “firm walls” (Brown, Driver, & Briggs, Hebrew & English Lexicon, London: Oxford University, 1907, p. 891).These circumstances are not consistent with the “tidal wave” concept.Clearly, the parting of the sea was a miracle, not a natural phenomenon.
The children of Israel marched across the Sea on “dry ground” (Ex. 14:16,21,29).They went through “on foot” (Psa. 66:6), and yet were “dry shod”(see Isa. 11:15, i.e., with their sandals; Isaiah’s imagery is based upon the Hebrews’ departure from Egypt).Such a condition is not created by a tidal wave.
It would have been a curious circumstance indeed that the “tidal wave” was so discriminating, destroying all of Pharaoh’s armies (Ex. 14:27-28), while not a single soul in Israel lost his life.
The report of this disaster spread throughout the region and made a lasting impression upon neighboring nations for years afterward (see Josh. 2:10); moreover, it was not attributed to a far-away volcanic explosion!
There is no archaeological evidence that Solomon even existed. The rest of your post is downhill from there.
Far from sacrificing the first-born, in most cultures, Egypt especially, first-born males were the priests of the families. That’s why that would have been such a devastating plague.
It really confuses me when someone tries to interpret the Exodus in naturalistic terms. What are they trying to prove? That God doesn’t exist? That God is nature? That the exodus really happened, but it was all due to nature? In terms of the plagues being against the pantheon of egyptian gods, as pointed out, all the plagues aren’t covered by the egyptian deities. The first plague turning the nile and streams into blood is a direct attack on the Egyptian livelihood, not an attack against an Egyptian god. The nile was the source of life for all Egyptians. Moses was retrieved from the waters of the nile. The nile was seen as a life sustainer and this is why it was the first to be targeted by God. This event would have had an immediate and significant effect on both the Egyptians and the Israelites. We have to remember that the 10 plagues purpose was to prove to the Israelites who God was, and that He had a direct influence on the natural word as well as the spiritual. God was introducing Himself to the Israelites. The Egyptian theme is vital to the Israelite’s foundation in Canaan. Egypt had always been the mother country to the ancestors of the Israelites, whenever their lives were threatened by war or famine or disease they always fled to Egypt. God was showing the Israelites that even the mighty Egypt was no match for His outstretched arm.
Psalms, book of
From the Psalms we learn that “deputations of angels” were involved in bringing the plagues upon Egypt (78:44-51)
44 And how he turned the Nile canals into blood
So that they could not drink from their streams.
45 He sent swarms of gadflies to devour them
And frogs to bring them to ruin.
46 He gave their crops to the voracious locusts,
The fruit of their labor to the swarming locusts.
47 He destroyed their vines with hail
And their sycamore trees with hailstones.
48 He gave their beasts of burden over to the hail
And their livestock to the lightning bolts.
49 He inflicted his burning anger on them,
Fury and indignation and distress,
Companies of angels bringing calamity.
50 He cleared a pathway for his anger.
He did not spare them from death;
And he gave them* over to pestilence.
51 Finally he struck down all the firstborn of Egypt,
The beginning of their procreative power in the tents of Ham.
http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200274502
So Interesting.I Love Learning Abt Biblical History.
Thank You For Lettin Me Study For FREE!
ZIONY ZEVIT is a professor/author and A creature. God YHWH is the CREATOR of the whole creation of the universe that includes Ziony Zevit. Now, can God be accommodated in Ziony’s mind and His processess of creation be squeezed into his little book? .Why,can Ziony explain how God started the process of creation?
[…] The maledictions in the curse-lists of Leviticus and Deuteronomy have been shown to be part of a stock of traditional curses employed during the biblical period in the geographical area extending from Israel to ancient Mesopotamia. Not only are they attested in the Torah (the Five Books of Moses), but also in the prophets; they also appear in the “curse” sections of contemporaneous ancient Near Eastern treaties.These “curses” reflect the kinds of things that could, and probably did, happen in this geographical area as a result of natural or humanly-imposed calamities. (…) perhaps a series of natural disasters occurred in Egypt in a relatively short period of time. Egyptian religion would have had to explain it. A link between these disasters and various Egyptian deities (expressing their displeasure) formed. No matter how Egyptians interpreted these disasters, Israelites could have accepted the notion that they were divinely caused but would have viewed them as contests between their patron and the gods of Egypt, the result of which were judgments against the gods of Egypt and their earthly representatives.Trace of this stage in the development of the tradition can be found in the Biblical narrative. During this, the interpretative stage, the plagues were theologized, providing cosmic meaning to the natural phenomena even as they were removed from the realm of what we would call “nature.” The Plague traditions, which were maintained orally by the Israelites until some time after the establishment of the monarchy, continued to be reworked in the land of Israel. There, far from the ecological context of Egypt, some phenomena natural in Egypt would have appeared incomprehensible to them and even fantastic, inviting imaginative embellishment. The Israelite traditors, those who passed on the tradition, were no longer familiar with the Egyptian cultural milieu in which the disasters had been theoligized and made meaningful by their ancestors. These traditors, therefore, made them meaningful within their own world view by connection the plagues, which initiated the emergence of Israel as a covenant community, with the creation of the world. Ziony Zevit […]
[…] The maledictions in the curse-lists of Leviticus and Deuteronomy have been shown to be part of a stock of traditional curses employed during the biblical period in the geographical area extending from Israel to ancient Mesopotamia. Not only are they attested in the Torah (the Five Books of Moses), but also in the prophets; they also appear in the “curse” sections of contemporaneous ancient Near Eastern treaties.These “curses” reflect the kinds of things that could, and probably did, happen in this geographical area as a result of natural or humanly-imposed calamities. (…) perhaps a series of natural disasters occurred in Egypt in a relatively short period of time. Egyptian religion would have had to explain it. A link between these disasters and various Egyptian deities (expressing their displeasure) formed. No matter how Egyptians interpreted these disasters, Israelites could have accepted the notion that they were divinely caused but would have viewed them as contests between their patron and the gods of Egypt, the result of which were judgments against the gods of Egypt and their earthly representatives.Trace of this stage in the development of the tradition can be found in the Biblical narrative. During this, the interpretative stage, the plagues were theologized, providing cosmic meaning to the natural phenomena even as they were removed from the realm of what we would call “nature.” The Plague traditions, which were maintained orally by the Israelites until some time after the establishment of the monarchy, continued to be reworked in the land of Israel. There, far from the ecological context of Egypt, some phenomena natural in Egypt would have appeared incomprehensible to them and even fantastic, inviting imaginative embellishment. The Israelite traditors, those who passed on the tradition, were no longer familiar with the Egyptian cultural milieu in which the disasters had been theoligized and made meaningful by their ancestors. These traditors, therefore, made them meaningful within their own world view by connection the plagues, which initiated the emergence of Israel as a covenant community, with the creation of the world. Ziony Zevit […]
[…] Exodus in the Bible and the Egyptian Plagues […]
[…] Exodus in the Bible and the Egyptian Plagues […]
[…] This site quotes two ancient Egyptian texts as supporting the general proposition, but they were written: The Admonitions of Ipu-Wer‘ (see also this table for other references), and ‘The Prophecy of Nefer-Rohu‘. But both these texts are dated to a time before the Exodus events are believed to have happened. […]
[…] other research, I found an article by Ziony Zevit, http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/exodus/exodus-in-the-bible-and-the-egyptian…, and it talks about many things in relation to the plagues. He states that hail, locusts, and […]
The whole natural disaster scenario lacks much. Red Alge that killed the fish the drove the frogs out of the nile etc.
First I think the Egyptians knew the difference between Algae and the blood that gushed out from the bodies of enemies and sacrifice.
Second, these were timed plagues, they occurred on cue, with Aaron or Moses using their rods mostly Aaron.
Third, Moses was raised in Pharaohs palace. I think he had the education to know what was a trick and what was the hand of God. It seems at first that science called the Bible a bunch of fairy tales. Then when they started serious archaeology ruined cities and Stella and such bearing testimony to many of the events started to come out. Now the archaeologists want to say okay so some of it may be based on true events or naturalistic events. This is the song many sing now. Its just face saving as far as I’m concerned because their bigotry towards the bible caused them to overlook many historical events of the ancient days.
Now they publish books and many are bigshots, and many still want to reinterpret what they found as though those who were there were a bunch of blind people guessing at what caused certain events. You wanna re date things, fine do what you want. But some like David Rohl rewrite the characters as other people and force fit them into the box they are comfortable with. Problem is that while using events of a characters life, take Rohls analysis of Kng Saul’s life relates him to someone name Labaya and writes a different story. Labaya fights Egyptians not Philistines and is killed by ordinary citizens in an area near about todays Jenin. It says nothing relating to Samuel, nothing about Saul’s and his sons bodies hanging on the walls of the philistine temple nor the rescue of those bodies by residents of nearby Jabesh.
I guess since such revisionists are alive today, they control the present and ergo the past and like Orwells Ministry of Love, rewrite yesterdays headlines in order that future generations only are taught whey they wish them taught, right or wrong. faulty scholarship and all.
I am gambling, but, with respect to the tenth plague, I would like to know if exists some kind of literary or archaeological evidence that confirms the practice of the sacrifice of the first-born at some period of the second or thrid millenium B.C.E. In case of exists, would have this practice some connection with the same phoenician ritual offered to Moloch and strongly condemned in Deuteronomy 18:10 and others. This plague, could be a sentence of a practice that remains in the collective memory or even was still held in cases of extreme necessity.
Anthrax does NOT infect fish or frogs. That puts the naturalistic theory out of reach.
STEWART, Ted T. SOLVING THE EXODUS MYSTERY – Volume 1: Discovery of the True Pharaohs of Joseph, Moses and the Exodus. Lubbock (TX): Biblemart.com, 2003.
This book identifies the names and detailed activities of all thes twelfth-dinasty Pharaohts, including the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Egyptologists date the twelfth dinasty 300 year before the Bible dates. However, carbon-14 dating and NEW astronomical dating prove that the twelfth dynasty should be redated 300 years later in confirmation of Bible dates.
“Leiden papyrus” which contains excellent allusions to the events of exodus and Hyksos has the better support from the historical standpoint but a philological consideration makes us wish to,put back the date of the composition as far as possible. The language was found beyond doubt to be not of the New Kingdom but of an earlier time. The text also contains some references to the establishment of “Great Houses” (law courts), which became obsolete in or soon after the Middle Kingdom.
During 1159-1140 BC there was a cold climate period in Northern Europe, and possibly also in the Middle East. There is discussion whether it was caused by a volcano or a by a comet. That might have caused weather effects in Egypt at that time, and an easier desert travel. The tenth plague could be a lunar eclipse, if the Egyptians interpreted it as a bad sign. There was a total eclipse visible in Egypt after the midnight in 1159 BC, ten days after the spring equinox. Moses returned to Egypt after a long time, after the pharaoh had died (Ramses 3), thus exodus was in Ramses 4 time. Quite late, but fits in the 1120 BC settlement theory. If we think that 40 years means one generation = 20 solar years, then after 12 generations we get 920 BC, which is Solomon’s time
I just read Graham Phillips book Atlantis and the Ten Plagues. A volcanic eruption would explain most of the plagues and the fact that the pharoahs did not have male children for fifty years around that timeline goes toward explaining the story of firstborn’s as there were no sons.
UP results 10th 2014
Exodus in the Bible and the Egyptian Plagues – Biblical Archaeology Society
[…] But after the angel of death passed through, the grief was so great that Pharaoh practically forced them to leave (at first, he had a change of heart later.)123 […]
[…] Three Ways to Look at the Ten Plagues […]
[…] Three Ways to Look at the Ten Plagues […]
Tit for Tat
An Egyptian historian, Ahmed Behgat, has published a book charging that “during the Exodus ancient Israelites smuggled gold out of Egypt and used it to make the golden calf.” Mr. Behgat’s research into ancient Egyptian archives has led him to conclude that Israel should pay Egypt $40 billion (U.S.) but without interest, according to Islamic law. However, when his findings were published, according to an item in World Press Review, “the Voice of Israel radio demanded reparations for the slave labor the Pharaohs pressed on the Israelites.”
Accuracy, Truthfulness. On the part of the writer of Exodus “an intimate acquaintance with Ancient Egypt may be discerned. The position of the Egyptians with respect to foreigners—their separation from them, yet their allowance of them in their country, their special hatred of shepherds, the suspicion of strangers from Palestine as spies—their internal government, its settled character, the power of the King, the influence of the Priests, the great works, the employment of foreigners in their construction, the use of bricks, . . . and of bricks with straw in them, . . . the taskmasters, the embalming of dead bodies, the consequent importation of spices, . . . the violent mournings, . . . the fighting with horses and chariots . . .—these are a few out of the many points which might be noted marking an intimate knowledge of Egyptian manners and customs on the part of the author of the Pentateuch.”—The Historical Evidences of the Truth of the Scripture Records, by George Rawlinson, 1862, pp. 290, 291.
Authenticity of the Exodus Account. An objection against the Exodus account has been that the Pharaohs of Egypt did not make any record of the Exodus. However, this is not unusual, for kings of more modern times have recorded only their victories and not their defeats and have often tried to erase anything historical that is contrary to their personal or nationalistic image or to the ideology they are trying to inculcate in their people. Even in recent times rulers have tried to obliterate the works and reputations of their predecessors. Anything regarded as embarrassing or distasteful was left out of Egyptian inscriptions or effaced as soon as possible. An example is the chiseling away by her successor, Thutmose III, of the name and representation of Queen Hatshepsut on a stone monumental record uncovered at Deir al-Bahri in Egypt.—See Archaeology and Bible History, by J. P. Free, 1964, p. 98 and photograph opposite p. 94.
Manetho, an Egyptian priest who evidently hated the Jews, wrote in the Greek language about 280 B.C.E. The Jewish historian Josephus quotes Manetho as saying that the ancestors of the Jews “entered Egypt in their myriads and subdued the inhabitants,” and then Josephus says that Manetho “goes on to admit that they were afterwards driven out of the country, occupied what is now Judaea, founded Jerusalem, and built the temple.”—Against Apion, I, 228 (26).
While Manetho’s account is in general very unhistorical, the significant fact is that he mentions the Jews as being in Egypt and as going out, and in further writings, according to Josephus, he identifies Moses with Osarsiph, an Egyptian priest, indicating that, even though Egyptian monuments do not record the fact, the Jews were in Egypt and Moses was their leader. Josephus speaks of another Egyptian historian, Chaeremon, who says that Joseph and Moses were driven out of Egypt at the same time; also Josephus mentions a Lysimachus who tells a similar story.—Against Apion, I, 228, 238 (26); 288, 290 (32); 299 (33); 304-311 (34).
Absence of information concerning Israel. This is not surprising, since the Egyptians not only refused to record matters uncomplimentary to themselves but also were not above effacing records of a previous monarch if the information in such records proved distasteful to the then reigning pharaoh. Thus, after the death of Queen Hatshepsut, Thutmose III had her name and representations chiseled out of the monumental reliefs. This practice doubtless explains why there is no known Egyptian record of the 215 years of Israelite residence in Egypt or of their Exodus.
The pharaoh ruling at the time of the Exodus is not named in the Bible; hence, efforts to identify him are based on conjecture. This partly explains why modern historians’ calculations of the date of the Exodus vary from 1441 to 1225 B.C.E., a difference of over 200 years.
Read more:
http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/s/r1/lp-e?q=EXODUS (From Egypt)&p=par
Great article fantastic, incites. I think that Ray’s Comment is in-appropriate archaeology be such a precise science and all especially when the archaeologists have a particular anti religious bias. I do believe that evidence for a population of Hebrew does exist both in the area known as Goshen.
Very shortly this web page will be famous among all
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[…] are really catastrophic natural and environmental disasters. Other scholars have noted how they link up with the Genesis 1 creation story. We’ll see in later pronouncements that these messages are designed to communicate not only […]
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When I originally commented I clicked the “Notify me when new comments are added” checkbox and now each
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Approvo interamente insieme le idee espresse finora. Andate avanti cosi.
Has no one read Dr. Imanuel Velikovsky’s works explaining the Exodus?
His theory with vast supporting evidence should have obviated all the above.
Mervyn
Too much of the written material on ancient Israel and biblical archaeology is Sophistry at best.
Writers clearly take a theological conclusion from the Torah-Old Testament and attempt to prove it by bending facts to fit their “chosen” conclusion.
Sophistry is incongruous reasoning.
The proper analytic approach is to accept the archaeological hard-evidence facts given and reach a sound conclusion from those empirical facts.
Warping the facts to reach an unproven premise serves no one’s interest.
Interesting article, but you fail to evidence the fundamental premise that an Exodus or mass migration of Hebrews ever occurred. We know from the archaeological landscape that ancient Egypt was meticulous in recording major historical events. There exists no reference to a mass migration of Jews from ancient Egypt. The absence of relevant artifacts or epigraphic evidence establishes that no Exodus occurred. This conclusion is reinforced by the absence of “any” epigraphic evidence by neighboring or regional civilizations which would have recorded this historical event in Egypt. There is no evidence of an Exodus. Further, we know from DNA studies and recorded history of Sea Peoples at Medinet Habu that ancient Israelites “migrated” as small independent nomadic tribes from Western Syria, Mesopotamia and the Sub-Sahara region (Ehiopia). Ancient Israelites migrated into Palestine-Canaan centuries after the Pelesets of the Sea Peoples’ invasion from the north, Southern & Central Europe, Black Sea Region and Western and Northern Anatolia occurred in 1180 BC. King Ramses III records this invasion and his concession of all land occupied by the Pelesets up to the Nile River. Pelesets called their new land, “Palestine.” Pottery dating shows Athenian, Mycenaean pottery being introduced into Palestine decades later than the establishment of Palestine by the Pelesets. There is not even miniscule evidence that an Exodus occurred. This fact is supported by the archaeological evidence and historical record available on KRIII’s victory stele at his funerary temple at Medinet Habu. If you cannot prove an Exodus, references to supernatural curses and plagues are reduced to mythology and stories.
Cf: Sanford Holst, World History Conference, on the Sea Peoples.
RAY OLIVER, ESQ.