Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Niels Peter Lemche <npl AT teol.ku.dk>]

> From: Jonathan D. Safren [SMTP:yonsaf AT beitberl.beitberl.ac.il]
> Sent: Wednesday, 26 January, 2000 19:34
> To:   Biblical Hebrew
> Cc:   b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
> Subject:      Re: Dating the Pentateuch- Canaan's Conquest Anomalies
> 
>       
> 
        ... Let's assume for a moment that that's true. In Ex. 19 the
Israelites are commanded
> to wash their clopthing and purify themselves before the Divine revelation
> on Mt.
> Sinai. They have maybe 3 days to do it (God is to come down upon the
> mountain on the
> third day, not after 3 days). There is no depiction of a Niagara Falls or
> even the
> Mediterranean Sea anywhere near Mt. Sinai. So where would they have foun
> dthe water,
> and even assuming they did find vast amounts of water, how would 2,000,000
> people
> massing at the foot of one mountain have managed to do all this by the
> third day?
> The logistics are simply impossible, even with all the miracles God can
> muster.
> People remain people, they can only work so fast, and they need legroom.
> The whole story falls apart if you want to accept every detail in it as
> accurate.
> Take away the 600,000 (men, plus women, children and elderly) and replace
> it with a
> few hundred, and the picture changes entirely.
> Yours,
> --
> Jonathan D. Safren
> Dept. of Biblical Studies
> Beit Berl College
> 44905 Beit Berl Post Office
> Israel
> 
        [Niels Peter Lemche]  So what is most important? To keep the
biblical narrative or the history supposed to lie behind? You cannot have
both. If you keep the historical part (if any) no biblical story remains any
more about a great nation leaving Egypt, and of the promise to the patriarch
that he should go there and become a great people. And if you keep the
biblical version, no history left, only at the most a vague memory of
something that might have happened. So no way to exscape the conclusion, you
cannot have both history and story.

        NPL