Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear Peter:

As you have seen, I have been sidetracked in my efforts to respond directly
to you.  But I think you have raised some important issues.  Thank you for
the kind words.  To you I use two well known quotations:   "Thou art not far
from the kingdom" (I think this is the correct form, apparently from the NT
and once used by a well meaning Christian student to me) and as John Wesley
said of his doctrine on original sin.  "I differ from Calvin not a hair's
breadth."

I agree that no one has suggested that the volcanic ash caused the death of
selective first borns in Egypt.  But  the point to me is that here, at the
crux of the biblical story, we encounter an affirmation of faith that simply
stands outside ANY attempt at scientific or rationalistic explanation.
Either we accept the Egyptian myth of the seamless movement from ruler to
ruler (Horus becoming Osiris while his bekhor becomes Horus) or we choose to
believe that the YHWH of the exodus and He alone kills and makes alive, or
in the words of the Yom Kippur liturgy, determines "who shall live and who
shall die."  If we agree on this point, all others become possible.

Your formulation:
{"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."}

Here is the problem with such a formula, as I perceive it.  How can we peel
off the layers of embellishment to reach the "core?"  I think we must avoid
an ideologically informed pick-and-choose method.  Niels would move  the
story out of the genre of "history," and in so doing is in many ways acting
faithfully to the text itself.  I am continually struck in reading the story
by the absence of the kind of details any of us would demand of each other
were we to offer a history of any period.  So how do we determine what is
"biblical history?"  As I would say, in agreement with Dave W, the reason
Puah and Shifrah are named and rewarded with "batim" while the two pharaohs
are nameless functionaries has to do with the perspective of the biblical
narrator even though this perspective does not serve our modern thirst to
know all the details.  To her (surely chapters one and two were written by a
woman!), anyone who feared god was more significant than someone who
pretended to BE god.

Peter Kirk again:
{"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."}

Here again, I would raise a simple issue.  First of all, I recommend
Hoffmeier's book on ISRAEL IN EGYPT about the Thera explanation and about
the supposed Hyksos connection.  Hoffmeier, who was a student of Redford,
comes close to a balanced presentation on both points.  Second, I fear that
such a view of the providential workings of God to explain otherwise
"miraculous" biblical events turns things upside down.  I do not wish to
make science, or the modern understanding of natural laws, the final arbiter
of what can and cannot be considered valuable in a biblical narrative.  So I
will repeat an earlier question to Dave.  Where in all of history anywhere
in the world do we find results of a volcano hundreds of miles away which
produce ten things, in precise biblical sequence, such as are found in
Exodus?  If there is a similar phenomenon, we have just destroyed what the
Bible itself says about YHWH's activity in Egypt being totally unique.  If
there is not, the volcano falls as a credible explanation of the biblical
tale.  Either way, I think it is more authentic to deal with volcano ashes
in one forum and biblical power-of-YHWH stories in another.  Neither one
bears on the other, it seems to me, except that biblically, I am certain
that "Moses" would ascribe all volcano activity everywhere to YHWH.

Third, would you say about the resurrection stories in the NT the same thing
that you say about the exodus?  Are they too merely a suspension of natural
law for a moment in a providential arrangement to allow the raising of
Jesus?  Or do they not stand outside the parameters of natural law and
science?  Must there be a historical kernel of veracity to the resurrection
also?  I realize that I am out of my depth here, but is not the resurrection
the major foundation myth of salvation for Christianity?  How can such a
story be related to history? I am asking because I do not know, not in a
rhetorical or caustic fashion.

I look forward to your responses.  Thanks to you too for the tone we have
established in the exchange.

Charles David Isbell