Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

Charles,
> 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."]

I wasn't offended at all.  Actually I was agreeing with you that the 
ha-ha's aren't warranted.  I rather enjoyed your post overall.

> 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.

Yes, I know.  Having engaged in a certain amount of apologetics in 
my time, I am very familiar with the syndrome you describe.  I still 
do a certain amount of apologetic work, but if I can't explain every 
detail of the plagues, my faith isn't going to crumble.

> 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?  

I'm not sure I understand this question.  Can you expand it a little 
for me?

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.

Nor do I.  My point was that the only time that some people seem 
to feel the need to do this is when they reject the notion of the 
supernatural a priori.

> 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.  

Okay, your point is well taken.  Bad example.  Instead, I could 
have pointed to my father's unexplained and instantaneous 
recovery from viral meningitis or something like that.

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?

I have no problem with the idea that the records go back to actual 
eyewitness accounts.  "What kind of history is this?"  This seems 
more than a little anachronistic to me.  The point of the account 
isn't to do history as we define it these days, but to discuss the 
history of a specific people, the Israelites.  The midwives made a 
brave and dangerous decision, and so are enshrined by name; the 
names of the Pharaohs were much less significant to the writer(s).  
Unless we insist on projecting our ideas of how history should be 
written back on the ancients, this is perfectly good history from the 
writer's point of view.

> 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. 

Charles, did I mention you by name?  Who is "we"?  By that 
pronoun I refer to an entire generation, several recent generations 
actually, of self-assured rationalist scholars who set themselves 
(ourselves) up above everyone and everything that went before.  It 
seems to me you're overly defensive here, because I said nothing 
at all about you personally.

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.  

I agree completely.

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.  

I'm not sure where you got this idea, but I don't buy the volcano 
explanation even for a second.  In this part of the thread, I have 
actually said nothing at all on that topic.

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.

Wrong.  I am completely satisfied with the text as it stands.  
Unless, of course, by "you" you are setting up two hypothetical 
viewpoints and simply calling them "I" and "you."  It's not really 
clear from this paragraph.

> 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?

Again, part of my point exactly.

> 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.  

That was not my intention, and I think you got a little too defensive 
and read it into my post.  I said nothing about you, rather, I 
characterized a way of thinking that says in a Humean fashion 
"These things don't happen so they couldn't ever have happened."  I 
don't consider that good science, either.  My point is that a view 
which rejects the possibility of violation of the framework we 
observe stands a good chance of missing the boat.  Nothing more.


Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth;
give me an undivided heart that I may fear your name.
                                   Psalm 86:11