Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

>> >Exodus tells a story of God feeding his people with quail that fall
from the
>> >skies, perhaps this marker can identify the route of the Israelites ?
Every
>> >year near El Arish quail migrating from Europe fall exhausted from the
skies
>> >in their annual migration to Africa. They alight only near El Arish,
not the
>> >shores of the Red Sea, and the migration occurs only in the Autumn, not in
>> >the Spring, as portrayed in the Exodus narrative (Why did the biblical
>> >narrator have quail migrating in the spring and not the autumn ?).
>>
>> Just a simple note of fact. Migratory birds have to go in both directions,
>> perhaps you just mean they take a different route on the return journey.
>>
>> Bill Rea, Information Technology Services, University of
>
>That is a point worth considering.  

Bill's may be worth considering.

>What I might add to this is, Why does
>naturally-occuring phenomena have any real relevance?  

As we are dealing with history, all verifiable phenomena that can have some
bearing on a historical issue should be considered. I see no point in
choosing to turn a blind eye.

>It is, I suggest, a misguided
>quest to find naturally occurring phenomena as an explanation of otherwise
>extraordinary occurrences recorded in Exodus. 

I suggest that the writer is simply wrong.

>If you don't want to accept supernatural
>events, then no amount of stretching the known natural facts (of which
there is
>precious little for any time before the recent past) while accomplish the
task.  

If the writer were interested in history he would know that supernatural
events are in no direct sense verifiable and cannot in themselves have
direct bearing on a historical pursuit -- unless of course the writer can
propose some means of verification. Otherwise he is totally misguided.

>If
>you accept supernatural possibilities, none of the events in Exodus is a
problem.  

Quite so. But I can't see what that has to do with history. If one accepts
anything that one can't verify as evidence in some scientific endeavour,
one ridicules the scientific approach they appear to be trying to follow.

>So
>the possible fact that you think migration of quail happens in the wrong
time of year
>and in the wrong place is of little moment for the possible historical
veracity of the
>account.

Is there any relevance in the following?

>      I've read lots of stuff on historical figures that most people think
did exist,
>like Napoleon, for example.  One writer stated that Napoleon probably lost
the battle
>of Waterloo because of stomach trouble distracting him.  There is simply
no way to
>verify that Napoleon ever had stomach trouble, even if a close advisor of
his said
>so.  We can't go back in time and test it.  

The writer always seems to choose some totally inconsequential example to
make world shattering conclusions about. History, and I mean the serious
pursuit of history, usually has no interest whatsoever in the sorts of
trivial examples dealt with in this post. Why don't we instead take some
more important piece of Napoleonic history, the battle of the Nile for
example. Does the writer have doubts about the possibility of verifying
that event??

>Similarly, we can't go back in tie and
>test anything in Exodus.  

Then it probably cannot be taken as having any historical value, whether
that was its intention or not.

>As with virtually all documents which purport to provide an
>account of what happens in some fashion the issue is not, can we validate
all these
>things in a scientific way (which is impossible for any event in history)
but, Can we
>trust (in a legal sense) this source?  Not many transient events (like quails
>descending or seas parting or the like are open to empirical research now.
 Even if
>they happens, what would you expect for a trace?  The very best one might
hope for is
>other written corroboration, but since most ANE texts don't ever record
defeat of
>themselves, there is certain to be no Egyptian annal of this.  

It might be worth noting that Egyptologists have been divining the
significance below the rhetoric for a very long time. Also silence is a
testimony, but one needs to admit more than written sources to be able to
see how the written interplays with the other sources.

>So there's going to be
>a problem validating the event through any other source, but that's not a
problem for
>me.  The issue would be, Can I trust the book of Exodus as an historical
record?  

On what grounds would one start to consider the book of Exodus as a
historical record?? Is there some indication that says "read me, I'm
historical?"

>To
>this I can only say, I certainly trust it more than modern historical
works which deny
>the Holocaust or Japanese history texts that highlight the bombing of
Hiroshima but
>omit mention of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  

This is fine given your a priori knowledge regarding those histories.
However the analogy is not appropriate in any sense, is it?

>History writing in every age,
>including our own, is a matter of whether a source seems trustworthy in a
legal sense,
>not verifiable in a scientific one, and attempting to ignore this is a
dead end.  

I see nothing necessary about this statement.

>You
>can never validate any historical event by artifacts or scientific
observations
>alone.  

This of course is not true. Without literary records we know that Ebla was
destroyed in the later bronze age. We know that it was almost certainly the
Hittites who destroyed the city. Yet the event was not chronicled in any
way other than what could be divined from artifacts or scientific
observations alone. (I choose Ebla because the late bronze hasn't yielded
any useful written records whatsoever -- no administrative documents at all.)

>You always need texts to interpret the facts and those texts, Israelite,
>Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian, Egyptian, are all subject to various human
factors
>which  make them more or less trustworthy, but they are really all we have.  

The sorts of histories that one gets without pretty literary records is not
quite as attractive to the casual reader, though one could writer an
economic history without any worry, using the artifacts from the sites
concerned.

>You could
>never reconstruct Babylonian history without Babylonian texts, even though
some of
>them are clearly political cover-up of the real facts.

If one wanted a literary history then naturally this is correct. However,
we should note that there is a type of "schizophrenic" analysis here. There
seems to be a heavy split between the information supplied in "literary"
sources and physical data and never the twain shall meet and an a priori
extra value placed upon the former. The writer seems totally concerned with
the purely literary aspect and it is therefore not strange that physical
evidence is simply discarded.

The writer also does not make any separation between contemporary literary
evidence and undatable literary evidence -- the latter has very little
importance with regard to making historical analyses for any given time.
There are naturally problems with any literary source, yet a source from
the period concerned doesn't need to have its dating verified. It has the
possibility of being eye witness material. The first thing that a court
decides when dealing with witnesses is whether a testimony can be shown to
have some bearing on a case. The witness who cannot be placed on the scene
is usually not admitted. Undatable literary accounts are like those
witnesses who are dismissed because their evidence cannot be distinguished
from hearsay. Once the validity regarding the period has been ascertained
then the hard work of using the witness can begin.

However the most convincing arguments come from cases in which the physical
evidence and the epigraphic and even purely literary sources combine to
yield historical data. This makes some of the more recent investigations
into Roman history rather interesting scientifically.

The miraculous doesn't play much of a role in historical research. To
misquote a famous Scottish philosopher, the only way one can introduce
fantastic evidence is when it is more fantastic not to.

One has to work with texts to eke out why they were written, on what basis,
for whom. As there are fewer sacred cows in dealing with Egyptian
epigraphy, such texts have been analysed under all sorts of light, from all
sorts of directions, from all of the spectrum of credibility. When
confronted with the physical data that we have a clearer picture of what
happened almost always comes out. 

So, let me applaud Walter's attempts to deal with what physical evidence he
can muster. One doesn't simply poo-poo such evidence because it doesn't
suit one's approach to the endeavour; one deals with it, accepting,
rejecting or shelving it, depending on our evaluation of that evidence.
This will make this just that little bit clearer.


Ian