Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Charles David Isbell" <cisbell AT home.com>]

Dear Dave:

I am the person who wrote the sentence that so offends you.  ["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."]

Please reread it to understand what I said.  I am not laughing at you or
anyone else.  I am caricaturing what I believe to be an incorrect emphasis
of SOME who profess to be believers in miracles, but circle the intellectual
globe in an attempt to PROVE the biblical story.  What you do or do not
believe is not my concern.

You make one affirmation that seems to me correct, but the inference you
draw from it is flawed.  You say: "in actuality, no history can be verified
in the sense that scientific convention currently defines it."  Is that not
the point!  How can a volcano or a posited 300 foot flame verify a
miraculous account?  Please note that I am not debunking the biblical story.
In fact, I rather think I respect it on its own terms quite deeply.  I  have
no need to import science or ancient weather forecasters to "prove" the
Bible.

I also find interesting your connection between something that happened
yesterday (that would be not at all out of the ordinary) with something that
happend millennia ago that the biblical narrative claims is sui generis.
Your words:  "I can't verify that I had breakfast yesterday any more than I
can verify the plagues of Egypt.  But if I tell you that I had breakfast
yesterday you likely take my word for it because I was there."  But you see,
I take your word for it because it is such a commonplace occurrence, not
because you were there.  If you told me that yesterday morning something
happened at your breakfast table that had never before happened in the
history of the world, then I would be very skeptical.  And who in your
scheme was "there" to furnish us an eye-witness account of the plagues?  A
writer of history who gave us the names Puah and Shifrah but failed to
identify either Pharaoh, leaving us open to the 21st century attack of the
Hyksos?  What kind of history is this?

Again you scold me.  "We may be overly smug in our attitude toward the
ancients, but it's an unwarranted smugness."  My Dear Dave, did you actually
read my posting?  I am accusing of smugness those who feel the need to
import science to prove the Bible. Perhaps that includes you, perhaps not.
My respect for the ancients credits them with the good sense to have been
able to recognize a recurring phenomenon of nature if that had in fact been
what happened.  They did not believe they witnessed the results of a volcano
coming from hundreds of miles away, they thought YHWH was overpowering the
Pharaoh in his own home town.  That is THEIR story and I would like for them
to be allowed to stick with it.  You on the other hand believe that a
volcano explains the mystery of the biblical story so tightly that I and all
others with whom you disagree must be compelled to see the error of our
ways.  In what way is your belief superior to mine?, when you are the one
importing a natural weather phenomenon into the biblical text, apparently
because you are not satisfied with the text as it stands.

And by the way, can anyone on the list point us to any other time anywhere
in the cosmos when a volcano caused ALL ten plagues, in just that order,
including the selective slaying of the first-born?

I don't mind that we disagree.  I do, however, refuse to accept your
characterization of yourself as the more pious of the two of us, the more
believing.  In a subsequent post, I will be speaking directly to some of the
points raised by Peter Kirk.

Kol Tuv,
Charles