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  • From: "Peter Kirk"<peter_kirk AT sil.org>
  • To: <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re[2]: Date of the Exodus (still shorter)
  • Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 01:48:03 -0500


Dear Charles,

Thank you for your thought-provoking and inspiring posting. I am
grateful to you for bringing our thinking back to the deepest meaning
of the Exodus etc accounts which is (in part) that YHWH liberates his
people, that he, not the gods of Egypt, is in control.

However, your description of the thinking of those of us who try to
tie up the Exodus with historical and natural events is far from my
thinking, indeed totally opposite. Also, I am not insisting on a
column of fire thousands of metres high, and I don't think anyone has
suggested that only the firstborn were killed by volcanic phenomena. I
can't speak for others' thinking, but let me explain my own thinking.

To start with, I would suggest that "foundation myths" (of any people)
are commonly not fictional accounts but accounts of real events which
have perhaps acquired various accretions during centuries of perhaps
oral transmission e.g. numbers exaggerated, unusual events dressed up
to become miraculous and then explained as divine intervention etc.
Compare the Iliad, based on an attack on a real Troy. That makes them
no less significant as foundation myths. So to say (as some might, I'm
not saying this) that the Exodus story is an embellished version of
the historical escape of a small band from Egypt is in no way to
debunk the wider significance of the event. It is more than "mere
history", but that does not mean it has no historical core which might
be discoverable by historical research.

Then you wrote: "But the argument being made seems to be that the
ancients thought (ha ha) that God did a miracle, but we moderns know
that it was a volcano that fooled them into thinking YHWH had acted
for them." That is not at all my argument. I would rather argue that
they were right, that YHWH did indeed act for them, not by suspending
natural laws but by providentially arranging for the volcano to erupt
(or whatever) at just the right time to arrange for the Israelites to
escape. Now I know that the self-appointed scholars' ha ha's will now
be directed at me rather than at the ancients. Let them laugh. Or they
could say that the Israelites cleverly took the opportunity of the
confusion caused by the natural disasters to escape and then
attributed the whole thing to YHWH as an example of his sovereignty,
so fitting the theological purpose of the book. I would not really
quarrel with that. But in general, the ancients were (as you say)
smart enough to recognise natural phenomenon for what they were, and
also perceptive enough to realise that when these phenomenon took
place at just the time that they were needed, that was not chance but
the sovereignty of the God who was working for them.

Peter Kirk



______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
Subject: Re: Date of the Exodus (still shorter)
Author: <cisbell AT home.com> at Internet
Date: 28/01/2000 10:30


I hope Niels will be pleased that we have found an issue on which he and I
can fully agree. Not only is he correct that the Thera explanation strains
the credulity by demanding a series of coincidences, but there is an even
higher hurdle for those who wish to take seriously the biblical account.
Attributing the plagues (one or all of them) to natural phenomena because we
are so advanced in our understanding beyond the poor, simple Hebrews
actually turns the biblical portrayal on its head. And surely there is no
one on the list who would argue that volcanic ash from somewhere else killed
just the first born and not everyone else!

<snip>

..I believe by taking the biblical text seriously, and allowing it to make
its theological affirmation as it intends to do about the sovereignty of
YHWH, we are entitled to assume that the ancients were smart enough to have
recognized a natural phenomenon and would have labeled it properly even
while attributing it to YHWH. But the argument being made seems to be that
the ancients thought (ha ha) that God did a miracle, but we moderns know
that it was a volcano that fooled them into thinking YHWH had acted for
them. How quaint!

And the lengths to which we go to "prove" a particular view of the story. A
fire hundreds of feet high so that two million people could see it at once?
Surely such a fire would have scared hell (sic!) out of the poor simple
souls presumed to have been completely fogged over by a series of fortuitous
natural disasters that they foolishly assumed YHWH did for their benefit.

To this day, I along with millions of other Jews on Pesah, begin recounting
the story of the exodus with the words, (avadim hayinu, "we used to be
slaves." That the biblical story reflects a kernel of some event thousands
of years ago I do not doubt. But for me, the story is far more than a once
for all, one time only literary artifact to be dusted off once in a while
and defended against skeptics like Niels. It is a foundational myth of
faith that teaches a clear perspective about who YHWH was/is and the lengths
to which we believe He will go to create liberation and defeat oppression.
No single story, chained to a single point in time and imprisoned in a
single naturalistic, rationalistic explanation, could function over
centuries of time as the world's greatest myth about liberation and freedom
wrought by the God of the little guy, YHWH. Explaining away the story
destroys it.

Doffing the cap to Niels, Sign Me,
Charles David Isbell, a true believer in Baton Rouge.





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