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Thursday, 15 September 2011

Beyond Belief - The Ten Plagues of Egypt.


Why did an omniscient, omnipotent god need ten tries to convince Pharaoh?
  1. All the water turned into blood. The Egyptians never recorded this. Nothing happened.
  2. Frogs. Millions of frogs! The Egyptians didn't notice them either, so nothing happened.
  3. Lice. Nothing.
  4. Flies. Still Nothing.
  5. Pestilence to kill all the livestock. Nothing.
  6. Boils. Even the livestock... er... see 5 above.
  7. Thunder and hail. [Shrug]
  8. Locusts. Now this is just being silly. Still nothing.
  9. Make it dark for 3 days. You've guessed it. Nothing. Not even a marginal note in the official records.
  10. Kill all the ‘first born’. Even the ‘maidservant behind the mill’ (what did she do?), and the livestock, yet again. (And the Hebrews find lambs to sacrifice... even though they all died in the fifth plague).

Phew! After only ten tries!

But even then Pharaoh changed his mind again and sent the army after the Hebrews ... riding in chariots pulled by horses ... er... that had all been killed in the fifth plague.

Amazing how inept an omniscient god can be when the story requires one.
Exodus.

After Noah’s Ark, probably the least plausible story in the Bible.



Historical notes:
  1. The Egyptian word Apiru (foreigner) may be the origin of the word Hebrew.
  2. The Hebrew word Pharaoh (land-owner or owner of an estate) has passed into modern usage as the generic term for the rulers of Ancient Egypt through it's association with Egypt in the Bible. It was never used in that context in Ancient Egypt.
  3. Despite extensive searching by Israeli archaeologists, there is not a single piece of historical or archaeological evidence for any of the events or characters recorded in Exodus and there is no record in Egyptian history of a large foreign slave population, the destruction of the army or any of the plagues.
  4. The archaeological evidence shows that, at the time the events in Exodus purport to take place, the town of Jericho had no city wall. The events 'recorded' in Exodus appear to have occurred only in the minds of its author.
  5. There is tentative evidence to suggest the heretical monotheist Atenists were expelled from Egypt following the death of Akhenaten (formerly Amenhotep IV), their founder and father of Tutankhamen, in c.1335 BCE, and that they subsequently settled in Judea and merged with Judaism to become the Essene sect, so introducing monotheism to a former polytheist religion.


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2 comments:

  1. What I find especially disturbing about the flight from Egypt is that Pharoh wanted to let the Jews go after each disaster, but the Lord "hardened his heart",and in doing so prolonged the agony of both nations. What a horrible story.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That seems kinda inept. god tries to persuade pharoah to let them go & then hardens pharoah's heart against the idea. mmm.

    ReplyDelete

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