Re: Egyptian records
Rick Chapman (rchap@en.com)
Fri, 02 May 1997 20:09:13 -0400
Farrell Till wrote:
>
> 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
Ask David Court. He can explain this nonsense.
Rick