Apologist logic: -We don’t expect to find much evidence for the Exodus. -We don’t find much evidence for the Exodus. -Exodus confirmed!

I love how he says that we know the pharao‘s claims are false because he claims to have done things we know to be physically impossible but when it come to the claims in the bible the same logic doesn‘t apply for some reason. :D

As far as I’m concerned, the Exodus is essentially the Israelite Aeneid. A fantastical foundational story for a culture-nation with heavy themes of divine intervention that portray a narrative of a people destined for greatness as they originate as a refugee people making their home in a faraway place, with inklings of the future already showing. For the Romans, the Aeneid establishes a mythic foundation for their struggle with Carthage, and for the Israelites, the other peoples of Canaan. In reality in both cases, the less than exhilarating truth is that both peoples arose gradually and peacefully as a culture from the local populations of their respective regions.

That 'having an anti-supernatural bias' is considered an unfair prejudice is all I really need to know about what's considered evidence by the church crowd.

I mean, even if there *were* a handful of chariot wheels at the bottom of a sea within walking distance of the headquarters of a major army that used chariots, how would that be evidence that *an entire army being led by 600ish chariots* were instantly crushed/drowned by divine fiat? It's like saying that finding a car at the bottom of the San Francisco Bay is proof that Magneto tore the Golden Gate Bridge up and moved it into position to become a walkway to Alkatraz as depicted in the holy work X-Men 3: The Last Stand.

One thing that never seems to get discussed here is what the actual effects of the Exodus on Egypt should have been. A massive chunk of their population gets up and walks out with all their portable wealth. Their crops are destroyed. Their herds are decimated. Their main water source is befouled. All the firstborn sons die. The army is wiped out. Egypt would have been absolutely wrecked. And yet all the archaeological evidence we have says they were doing fine all through this period and only went into a gradual decline centuries later.

Archaeologists have found the remains of prehistoric campfires. I think a large population wandering around a desert for forty years would have left considerable traces of their presence.

3:30 It's hilarious that they're saying "Of course there's evidence, they're just not looking for it!" But then also say that you shouldn't expect any evidence, because they know there isn't actually any evidence. It's one or the other buddy.

I was checking out Biola University's mission statement etc., and if Sean or Titus started questioning the bible, they would have to leave their jobs.

FIRST question for Dr. Kennedy. Biola University is a Christian university with a "statement of faith" required of its faculty. It also has clearly defined theological positions stated on its website. "The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are without error or misstatement in their moral and spiritual teaching and record of historical facts." My question - Dr. Kennedy, if you studied the evidence and came to the conclusion that the Old Testament account of Moses and the exodus was completely unsupported by evidence and that it was unlikely such evidence would come to light, and consequently could only conclude that the Bible account was extremely unlikely to be a correct account of history, would you lose your job and income?

You would think millions of people wandering around in a desert for 40 years they would leave some trace.

The place I learned that the Exodus never happened was actually from a college professor who was Jewish. It was during a discussion about "cultural origin myths," in the vein of Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, and he discussed the fact that even though the Exodus didn't happen, that doesn't make it any less important to his people. It was very powerful because there were definitely some Christians in the class who were uncomfortable, but given the fact that they were face-to-face with a Jewish man saying this, they couldn't simply dismiss it.

A lot of what Titus argues are attempts to minimize the alleged events of Exodus (like saying there were less slaves at the time and so forth) specifically to excuse the lack of large-scale documentation of these events. He's kind of missing the point when he says that, because even if the amount of Hebrew slaves that escaped Egypt was small enough to not be recorded, the events of the Nile turning to blood, the entire kingdom being covered in darkness for several days, and every firstborn in Egypt dropping dead overnight definitely would have. Only by admitting that the supernatural claims in the book were embellishments can you get any mileage from this argument.

It's crazy that I've been listening to your channel since you had like 50k followers and now you've got one of the top biblical scholars appearing on your show regularly. Wild.

The ancient Egyptians were really good at certain things. Building big stone monuments for one thing. And collecting taxes. They kept extensive and detailed tax records and there’s nothing in those records consistent with millions of Hebrew slaves living for generation after generation.

Regardless of the historical accuracy of the story, I still refuse to wear cotton/poly blend clothing, eat a cheeseburger, eat shrimp, or let my menstruating wife sleep in the house. It’s just common sense.

Exodus/Shemot doesn't name the Pharaoh, which is our first clue.

Even when I considered myself a Christian, the Moses story always throw me. This is a good manifestation of my thoughts.

That's some World Class mental gymnastics right there

In his book _The Long Range Desert Group_ W.B. Kennedy Shaw recounts exploring the Western Desert between the wars, and at one point tells of finding a Roman camp right on the surface of the desert. So finding a trace of an alleged exodus would not be impossible.

Bart Ehrman seems to be very happy every time. 😃👍

The irony. He dismisses claims of Amenhottep II deeds and powers as crazy. Yet the miracles of Moses are totally legit. 🤔

Back when I was a believer I said plenty of ignorant things like these. But boy, am I glad I was never caught on camera, exposing my shame for years to come and thousands and thousands to see.

What concerns me more than pseudoscience perpetuators is audiences that do not exhibit a healthy level of skepticism. Question any and all positive claims, no matter who is making it.

This was epic Paul!

It's always great to listen to what Bart has to say. He has a gift for teaching.

The smartest thing the author of Exodus did was to never name the pharaoh of Egypt. That way, who can try to pin them down for the actual event?

Man this was a really well-edited video. Super tight. Way to go bud

Wasn't Canaan under the Egyptian rule during 18th and 19th dynasties? So how could Israelites have "escaped" Egypt, by relocating to Canaan from Goshen ?

If Exodus occurred as written, and Moses wrote the Pentateuch as many Christians and Jews believe, then why didn't Moses include Pharaoh's name. He was adopted by Pharaoh's daughter. Plus you would think Egyptian would be his native language.

I actually knew Moses. He was a guy who lived across the street and next door. He was a black guy and his wife was light skinned black. She liked coffee and always seemed to be drinking it. I asked her one time why she always drank coffee and she told me that she was white, like me when she got married but she wanted to be black like her husband. It must have been working because she was already much darker than me, but much lighter than her husband. The couple had all grown children but they had a swimming pool in the back yard that they sometimes let us kids play in. I really liked Moses and his wife. He was old, but he really didn't seem old enough to have lead the Exodus.

My view on the Exodus story is that it was probably based on the fact that the Land of Canaan (modern Israel, Syria and Lebanon) was an Egyptian province for 400 years.

It’s amazing how educated, motivated and brilliant people who are believers get so many things wrong because of their own confirmation bias. They want to believe so bad that they throw all of their critical thinking skills out the window when discussing matters that may contradict the beliefs of their faith.

I love the interactions between yourself and professional academic scholars and yes I absolutely do include Dr Josh in the same category as Dr Ehrman IMO even though Dr Josh himself would probably baulk at the idea.

Far from attempting to make the character “psychologically plausible”, the author(s) of Exodus repeatedly blamed God for the Pharaoh's behavior, saying that he “hardened his heart”; so the psychology of the Pharaoh is entirely irrelevant.

There should be a lot of archaeological evidence left behind over that 40 year wilderness journal.

My Egyptology loving soul is cringing at the way Titus is saying these names.

If Titus takes his glasses off does he become Superman?

Titus Kennedy, "a research fellow at Discovery Institute".. that alone means he isn't honest. They don't hire honest people. The Moses / Exodus story is a favorite of mine to use to show just how bad the fiction was written back then. To begin with, if God had wanted to free the hebrew slaves then he would not have waited 80 years for Moses to grow up. Moses brought nothing to the party, any idiot would have sufficed. Also, it followed the typical course of showing strength through brutality. In the story he forced Pharaoh to reject the freedom request. Not only does this mean Pharaoh might have approved such a request, it shows that God controlled the whole story. If he can harden the heart he can also soften it, and that would have been a much more amazing demonstration of power. Imagine if God had caused pharaoh to agree, and not only agree, dispatch his army to safeguard the freed slaves to their new promised land. Their former masters, their enemy, completely changing their stance and protecting them on their trip to freedom. That would have been an amazing show of power. But that form of power did not exist in those days, power to those writers was only shown through brutality. So instead they wrote the story to show just how brutal god could be. Another aspect that makes 0 sense is the whole 'pharaoh killed the male children' to 'control the population'. They knew how breeding worked. Removing the young sperm donors would not slow the population growth at all. If you want to do that you have to remove the females from the herd. So again, nonsense. It's a dumb story, end to end.

It's Barty Time!

Every family has this kind of a story. Something funny or weird or extraordinary happens, and the details get exaggerated in the telling. And I'm not talking generational stories (though that certainly happens) but stories from my kids childhood. The fun is in the telling and the value is in the story. Nothing more supernatural than that. I expect these bible stories began similarly.

Titus Kennedy works for Biola University, from their statement of faith we find the following: _"The Bible, consisting of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, is the Word of God, a supernaturally given revelation from God Himself, concerning Himself, His being, nature, character, will and purposes; and concerning man, his nature, need and duty and destiny. _*_The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are without error or misstatement_*_ in their moral and spiritual teaching _*_and record of historical facts._*_ They are without error or defect of any kind."_ Given that, I don't think you can take anything he says seriously.

Funny how people who believe in magic are always desperate to show how their magic is verified by science and history.

Am I confused? I thought God hardened the heart of the Pharaoh at one point, because the guy wasn't stubborn or arrogant enough to let God do all his plagues. What does the personality of any given pharaoh matter when mind control is involved?

Why do they feel they need to justify their belief in wacky stuff, just say "I don't care about the truth or the facts or whatever, I just want to believe it" and we will all accept that and move on.

An excellent way to determine whether the next 30 minutes of discussions would be worth it or not, would be to see if they begin off by some method to poison the well and basically set the premise, "the academia, all of those scholars, their peer-review process, source criticism is wrong." Unfortunately, as commonly seen, Mr. Titus does just that: Begin off with an explanation as to why "the scholars are stupid, but I'm not." At that point, I just categorize such arguments a type of conspiracy theory.

Love the mel brooks take of moses presenting the 15…..aehm 10 commandments 😂

That jingle gives me life; bless you.

*On this episode of Battle of the Bookshelves...*

Great civilisations all around but none noticed exodus

It's hard to "date" the Exodus.....because it's always walking away. 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨

I don't recall Pharaoh Nameless the Whatevereth being depicted as being especially arrogant, especially since his subordinates could do magic that was arguably more impressive than anything Jesus did.

Wow! So Amenhotep ll was .."extremely arrogant and stubborn . . . wrote that he was the greatest king ever . . . . talked about doing crazy deeds . . . . seemed to be compensating for something . . ." I'm trying to think of somebody modern who sounds like that . . . .

Also, to Ehrman's comment that "moses" isn't a Hebrew name but an Egyptian one: the text calls him MOSHEH, and explains why (he was 'mashah' or 'drawn out' of the water, it's common Hebrew wordplay)

When I read this story as a Christian, my question was always "Why were they hungry? Why did they only have manna that had to be supplied to them? They had their livestock with them."

Thank you so much for making this. I have always loved Ancient Egyptian history & I always felt that this bible story made the Ancient Egyptians sound uncivilized & cruel. Which is unfortunately how Ancient Rome saw them Builders were paid & skilled workers. & most slaves were war captives. Most slaves wouldn’t have been Israelites & were not Christian. No research I’ve found has ever shown Israel & Egypt went to war in ancient times, excluding the one time y’all said Egypt conquered Israel. Meanwhile, Egypt went to war with other regions of Africa very often

I'm not sure I heard that right. In the defense of claiming the exodus happened as written in the bible, he says we don't know whether the biblical numbers are accurate. Isn't there supposed to be an accurate account he's supposed to be defending?

The "Sun going dark" could coincide with a volcanic eruption over in Greece and the ensuing smoke and ash cloud.

20:20 "the fif.... the 10 commandments" one my favorite movie lines.

There were Gnomes in my basement last week, now they are extremely neat so they don't leave anything behind, so if my basement is empty, thats exactly what you would expect.

So their argument is that their inerrant book of fable has its numbers wrong? So inerrant and wrong? And we're supposed to believe them?

Biola U profs do not dare contradict the literalist narrative. Thus they sweat and strain to find or invent “evidence” for it. It is pitiful.

Could the "chariot wheel" corals in the Red Sea have been part of the inspiration for the Exodus story? Some might have been brought up in fishing nets, leading to a legend that Egyptian charioteers had been drowned in some supernatural event.

I have to admit, Bart is my fave guest for sure. His newsletter/blog is great, and The Great Courses stuff he does (included with Audible subscriptions for those of you who are interested) is sooooo rich with content!! Thanks Paul for the hard work and turning me onto Bart!

So Sean is open to possible mistranslations in Exodus; tens of thousands as opposed to hundreds of thousands…how does he feel about Isiah 7:14 and the word “virgin” argued as a mistranslation?

Have you read a high school or university newspaper with overblown headlines like OUR SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAM WIPED THE FIELD WITH ANOTHER SCHOOL'S TEAM! Then the realization dawns on you that the opposing team players are still alive and well? Their school still stands, too? Bummer.

I love Dr. Ehrman’s laugh about the Passover theory. 😂

Moooootivated reasoning. "Let's look for the best period the Exodus might have happened and then look for evidence, instead of just looking at the evidence."

I just like to say that I've been following Paul since around 2000 subscribers and I am tremendously pleased by his growth and am happy for him that he's well enough respected to get leading experts on his show like Bart. That to me is unbelievable. I've read a few of Bart's books and I've read other books that cite Bart as " the guy" on the subject of biblical historicity. I can't fully expressed how happy I am to see this

Like so many other myths and legends this is the result of smaller incidents and events, most likely not even related to each other, that has been passed down through generations and much later being written down as if they go together and when they wrote this became a series of happenings that happened together.

All supernatural claims are a total fabrication, except mine. 🙄

Bart saying bye at the end, cracked me up.

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Also our God is the only God that exists, the rest are fake." "There is evidence that Semites immigrated to Egypt at times of famine and that there is evidence of some Semites who also left or fled Egypt, therefore the story of Moses is a true story." There's not even any consideration that the Exodus was a story that described stuff that actually happened but it was itself an exaggerated fictional stories and not an actual historical record.

Next book,... Finding Abraham, _still nothing_ 😄

The ancient Egyptians believed in magic. They built temples with spells carved into the walls to ward off hostile magic from rival nations, Kush (Ethiopia) and Libya in particular. And yet, there is not a single record of--much less any response to--their entire country getting wrecked by a Hebrew wizard. No mass graves, no piles of bones from dead livestock, nothing. Not even any disruption of their rule over Canaan during the time when the Exodus and the supposed conquest of Canaan under Joshua took place.

How did the Hebrews smelt a golden calf in the middle of a desert? Was one blacksmith blacksmith like "I'm keeping my anvil and my furnace and I'm taking it with me"

I'd love to know what religious people think happened to all the people that lived before their cult of choice came into existence. There were people around long before any of the major religions came into being.

Bart is absolutely wonderful in his lectures.

A Large number of people wandering in the desert for 40 years left no trace what so ever, come on it didn't happen.

Wait, so they cant tell me who was the ruler of Egypt at the time, and they cant tell me when it happened, to the closest century. So how do they know it happened?

Hearing Evangelicals claim bias is rich.

It seems more likely that something else happened. It could be entirely fictional, but there are too many egyptian words in Exodus for that to be the easiest solution. Another option is that some small group of people left Egypt at some point we can't pin down, they carried their stories with them orally, and through some game of telephone, their story was ultimately imported into the Hebrew canon. Something similar happened with the Noachian flood, where stories like Atra-Hasis were passed down, evolved through oral tradition, and then much later got fixed into Hebrew canon. In either case, there's some historical event that occurred, but the Biblical version only superficially resembles it.

Dr. E is a great guest on this topic

Given that, at the supposed time of the exodus, Sinai and Canaan were at least under Egyptian influence, what did they escape?

How did millions of people suddenly pop up soon after the "great flood?"

My favorite take on the whole Moses/Exodus thing is the one that says the Story of Moses is a telephone game version of AmenhotepIV/Akhenaten. This Pharaoh did move across the Nile from the Capital to establish a city in the middle of nowhere where only 1 god [the Aten, or disk of the sun] would be worshipped, with him as high priest. Amarna/Akhetateten only lasted a little over a decade, not 40 years, but things get exaggerated. I'm not saying this IS the case, but it is a story that rhymes and happens between the "new chronology" of 1500s BCE and traditional chronology of 1200s BCE, happening roughly a century before Rameses II

The interesting thing with the Merneptah stele is that the hieroglyph for “people” is used when it mentions Israel instead of the hieroglyph that’s usually used when referring to land/territory.

I enjoyed how you put this together. I’m pretty ignorant and am likely to get bored. But I didn’t get bored and even understood the points.

Purchased. Love Bart!

I find it rather interesting how Sean McDowell admitted that believing there is "some very good evidence" for the story of Exodus being an actual historical event is a "contrarian position". I suspect that perhaps Sean accidentally admitted to a bit more than he intended. 😉

(09 December 2023) My understanding on the date for the Exodus? IT IS A CONFLATION OF EVENTS SPANNING A PERIOD OF TIME FROM CIRCA 5000 BC (Neolithic Times) to Late Iron Age II Times, circa the 6th century BC. (1) The Neolithic settlement (5000 BC) on the plain Er-Raha, in the shadow of Ras Safsafeh (discovered in the late 1980s), miss-dated 1446 BC by the Iron Age II Israelites and it was miss-identified as being Moses' settlement. Ras Safsafeh being Mount Sinai/Horeb (2) Early Bronze Age II settlements, ca. 2300 BC like Ai (Et_Tell, and Arad). miss-dated 1446 BC by the Iron Age II Israelites. (2) A recasting of the Hyksos Expulsion of circa 1530 BC, as noted by Professor Donald Bruce Redford (an Egyptologist). (3) The sudden appearance of Iron Age I settlements on both sides of the Jordan River (circa 1200-1100 BC), miss-dated 1446 BC by the Iron Age II Israelites (cf. 1 Kings 6:1). (4) Late Iron Age II Settlements (ca. the 7th/6th centuries BC) in Edom, Moab, and Ammon, as noted by Dr. Burton MacDonald. **THE ELUSIVE KEY* I STUMBLED UPON, TO *UNSCRAMBLE* THE EXODUS DATE? My "Ah-ha moment" came when I read the diary of a Christian Pilgrimess called Egeria (4th century AD). Her Christian guides, pointed out to her stone circles in the valley approach to Mount Sinai (today's Gebel Musa for some). Her guides said the large stone circles were the remains of hut foundations built by Moses' Israelites over the year spent at Mt. Sinai. Archaeologists have excavated some of these stone circles and determined Egeria's Christian Guides were WRONG, the pottery debris associated with the stone circles was that of Early Bronze Age II Times, ca. 2300 BC, not 1446 BC, not 1260 BC. I came to realize that IF EGERIA"S GUIDES HAD MISDATED THESE STONE CIRCLES WHY NOT THE IRON AGE II ISRAELITES? No one knew the age of any ancient site or artifact until Sir Flinders Petrie of England developed by 1890 AD Pottery Typologies to date sites and artifacts by! An ancient Iron Age Israelite would not be able to tell the difference between a Neolithic sherd and a Late Bronze Age Sherd, as to when it had been made! ***It is my assumption that the Iron Age Israelites who composed the Exodus account MISS-DATED EVERY ARTIFACT AND SITE IN THE SINAI AND NEGEV, AS CIRCA 1446-1406 BC, the World of Moses, according to 1 Kings 6:1.*** Ask any Iron Age Israelite (1200-562 BC) to show you the "physical proof" of Israel's presence in the Sinai and Negeb and he probably would have shown you the hundreds of stone circle nomadic goat-herder camps (camps from Neolithic to Iron Age Times). WHY did the archaeologists FAIL to find Mount Sinai? They were looking in the WRONG ERA! Either 1446-1406 BC (based on 1 Kings 6:1) or 1260 BC and the world of Ramesses II, ca. 1260 BC, neither of which, could be found! The archaeologists reported back that there was no archaeological evidence of Moses and Israel for those two dates. ***These archaeologists had failed to realize the Iron Age Israelites had no way to properly date any site or any artifact.*** Accordingly, my research has identified Mt. Sinai, and the remains of the Ten Commandments, and the Golden Calf, but not by searching for artifacts of either 1446-1406 BC or 1260 BC! If interested in my findings, google my papers posted at "Academia Profile, Walter R. Mattfeld." For me, the archaeologists FOUND MOSES' SHATTERED TEN COMMANDMENTS, BUT WERE UNAWARE THEY HAD DONE SO! TODAY THE TEN COMMADMENTS REST IN A EGYPTIAN MUSEUM, THE CURATORS UNAWARE OF WHAT THEY HAVE! MOSES' NAME ALSO HAS BEEN FOUND IN THE SOUTHERN SINAI, IN THE AREA OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS AND GOLDEN CALF!

Good grief, the very fact that it has to be studies so deeply and conclusions are so vague and contestable surely suggests that an omnipotent being could not possibly have overseen the writing of this ancient book. The whole concept is utterly ridiculous

hypocrisy of paulogia...he is so against slavery but he keeps owning Christians every week

Titus Kennedy: "The Exodus definitely happened because there's no evidence that the Exodus happened."

My church believes Satan was allowed by Jesus to hide all the evidence of the exodus to test the faith of the faithful. Those who do not believe then will have a bad thing happen to a family member as punishment. Example of David child dying to punish him for his affair with bethsheba. All praise to the merciful God who loves you.

This is ridiculous, have you ever heard of a leader saying they are smarter than their generals, how they are the chosen one, or brag about how good they are at golf, I mean a sport. 🙄

*Elef / Eleph cannot mean Clan/Chief in Numbers or Exodus count* 1. The numbers add up correctly in the odd-numbered verses from Numbers 1:21 thru 1:43, totaled in 1:46, if we translate _eleph_ as *Thousand* . They do *not* add up if _eleph_ means Clan or Chief. (I checked it on a spreadsheet.) A meaning of Clan or Chief would also render the non-eleph as gibberish. The non-elephs total 5,550, but in 1:46, there are only 550. Eleph has to mean thousand here. These same numbers are grouped into 4 camps in Numbers 2:4-32. The camp subtotals and the totals of the 4 camps add another layer of proof that eleph means 1,000. 2. In Numbers 31:48, there are officers and captains over 100 and 1,000. It is clear that the captains are *over* a number (100/1000) of men; “Captain” is not a synonym for eleph. The parallel at the end of the verse shows that _eleph_ is a number, just as the word for Hundred is. 3. In Numbers 3:21-39, the count of clans adds up only if A) _eleph_ means 1,300 or B) 1,000, but the author is rounding off. The passage would make *no sense* if _eleph_ means anything else, since A) the text says *500+600+200* from the *different* clans equals one _eleph_ . Since the hundreds are from different clans, eleph cannot mean Clan or Captain. B) There are nothing but elephs in the sum. The hundreds from different clans have converted into one eleph, so Eleph must be a number. 4. Using an ambiguous word in a count and total is a recipe for confusion. Since the numbers add up as if it means Thousand, the simplest interpretation is not only that it means thousand, but the author thought the meaning was unambiguous as written. 5. Exodus 38:26-29 uses _eleph_ for people and money, which would also be confusing if it could mean Chief or Clan. 6. Numbers 3:46-50 confirms that eleph means Thousand. 273 x 5 = 1,365. Numbers 11:21-22 Moses says he is with 600 elef (people/men?), and doubts that all the fish in the lake/sea would feed them. Doubting the feeding of 600,000 makes more sense than doubting that all the fish would feed 600 men. The math works as [eleph = thousand] whether the population count is part of an army or not. How do the “implied” 22,273 families (at one firstborn per family) in Numbers 3:48 match the 603,000 adult men in 1:46? Two general responses 1. That is a problem for the apologist. I am playing translator here and it is a bad practice in translation to change the translation to match a concept that is not in the text, e.g. “harmony among all passages according to modern perceptions.” 2. I still may be able to explain it a) in a way consistent with Exodus and Numbers, but with a little brutal reality mixed in, OR b) by redaction. Maybe I can partly explain the apparent N1/2 vs N3 discrepancy, though, in light of the stories. The stories describe patriarchs having many sons. That would be more likely to happen in relatively stable, food-secure situations, such as they would have had, according to Exodus, in Egypt. But the child survival rate would plummet in the stress of flight and the difficulties of food and hygiene there. Miscarriages and infant mortality could skyrocket, as well as the death rate for young mothers giving birth. The term Firstborn seems to apply only before that man has claimed his inheritance. That would eliminate only the eldest generation from the relationship, judging by the story of Jacob and sons. (The youngest would not be old enough to have children, but then the oldest brothers among them would be firstborns.) So if the oldest generation does not count anymore, and it is 1/3 of the 603,000, then there are 401,000 left. If there are an average of 12 male siblings (according to the story, not reality - I am trying to biblically steel man the apparent discrepancy between Numbers 1 and 3), that makes 33,417 firstborn among the 603,000, so it still doesn’t work, but that is for the author or an apologist to explain. OR maybe firstborn refers only to the youngest generation, in which case the adults would account for 16,708 firstborns and the remaining 5,665 would be minors, the low number due to the miserable conditions referred to above. *Redaction* would at least partially explain the discrepancy. According to Wikipedia, citing McDermott, John J (2002). Reading the Pentateuch: A Historical Introduction, “(Numbers) has a long and complex history; its final form is possibly due to a Priestly redaction (i.e., editing) of a Yahwistic source made some time in the early Persian Period (5th century BCE).” One possible redaction is the removal of the story of a war or punishment by Yahweh that reduced the number of Israelites, a story which previously appeared between what are now chapters 2 and 3. The story may have been along the lines of the golden calf slaughter in Exodus 32:8. So a combination of the infant mortality/birth rate issue and redaction could explain the N1-2 vs N3 discrepancy, or, if severe enough, either of those two could explain the apparent discrepancy. 1 Kings 20 In 1 Kings 20:15, all the sons of Israel numbered 7 elephs _(alapim)_ - 7,000. In 20:30, the wall fell on 27 _eleph ish_ of the Arameans. The syntax is different between v14 and v30, so the meaning of _eleph_ could be different. But if one tries to argue that eleph means the same in v14 and v30, then 1,000 is more likely. It is very unlikely that the authors meant that all the sons of Israel amounted to 7 captains. Verses 13 and 28 refer to a vast Aramean army, so it should be considerably larger than the Israelite army. In verse 29, the Israelites killed 100 eleph foot soldiers. Maybe the change in syntax allows it to mean 100 “captains” and their men. But the ratio in the Israelite army was about 30 to 1, men to junior officers (v15), so that is still 3,000 men. “How can eleph mean 1,000 in Exodus and Numbers? In 1 Samuel 6:19 Yahweh struck the people with a great slaughter of 70 men and 50 eleph and Tel Beth Shemeah covers only 7.5 acres.” Problems with this argument: 1. We are translating, not assessing history, although I agree that one can aid the other. If we are going to translate according to physical reality, then the character called Yahweh must be purely physical, because that is the only type of agent we have evidence for. And Joshua couldn’t have referred to the sun standing still, because we know that’s not possible. “Possible” is not a yardstick for whether words maintain their apparent meaning in mythology. My estimate for the *possible* number of men killed by a supernatural being for the crime of disobeying his demands and looking at his little jewelry box is *zero.* But that doesn’t mean I am going to infer that _eleph_ means Zero. 2. Reverse the argument to see that there is another problem: “How can eleph mean Captain in 1 Samuel if it clearly means Thousand in Exodus and Numbers?” Answer: Words can mean different things in different syntax at different times to different authors. I demonstrated conclusively that eleph was a number in Exodus and Numbers. What it means in other syntax and books doesn’t change that. 3. The syntax in 1 Samuel 6:19 is different. In 1 Samuel 6:19 it says Yahweh struck 70 ish and 50 eleph ish. In Numbers and Exodus, the word _ish_ does not appear next to _eleph._ So looking at only the syntax, it appears that _eleph_ could be a non-numeric adjective in that verse, *because of the difference from the syntax in Numbers and Exodus* and the lack of numeric evidence to the contrary. In that case, Yahweh killed 120 men. One advantage to 120 is that it is a nice, round, symbolic number. One possible problem with 120 is that it is called a great slaughter, and by biblical standards, 120 is a small slaughter. Possible solutions for the large numbers 1. They’re fabricated. The periods covered in Numbers and Exodus were nomadic. It is a bit difficult to believe that nomads cared about such detailed numbers or had the resources to record them. 2. They have symbolic meanings 3. They are derived from other war stories, such as from Assyria, Egypt, or Babylon. They may have taken the largest tribe’s numbers from some other estimate and invented the others. Or maybe each tribe’s numbers are from a different war story which was famous in the author’s culture. 4. They are approximate multiples of, for example 70, 100, or 144 of the “actual” numbers. 5. Some combination of the above

Loved the prince of Egypt. I wore that vhs out! Lmao

I haven't read through 1,300+ comments, but of those I have, everyone seems to be missing a major point. Exodus and Numbers were written in the 5th century BCE, about the origins of Israel some 700+ years earlier. The writers knew that the proto-Israelites had been Egyptian slaves, knew they later lived in Caanan, and had to come up with an explanation, which a (fictional) Exodus and Conquest does. What they _didn't_ know in the 6th century BCE was that prior to the Bronze Age Collapse in the 13th Century BCE, Egypt's territory stretched all the way up the Levant to the borders of the Anatolian Hittites (with Ugarit sandwiched in between). Caanan then was effectively _in_ Egypt and its inhabitants effectively slaves of the Pharoah, because Kings in that era regarded all their subjects as slaves, and referred to them as such in correspondence with each other and with subordinate administrators. Due to the Bronze Age Collapse, Egypt could no longer control the Levant and contracted back to the Nile Delta and Valley, so the former Caananite/Israelite 'slaves' in Caanan were no longer slaves and no longer in Egypt, despite not having moved at all. Doubtless some Israelites had been sent to Egypt now and then when a Pharoah had needed a workforce for a mining or other project, and after the collapse a few of them, or their descendents, likely returned to Caanan/Israel. It's interesting that of the 'Tribes of Israel' (more than 12 are known), only the Levites tended to have Egyptian-style names - perhaps they were the ones who returned from Egypt 'proper' with the idea of monotheism, leading to them gaining their monopoly on priesthood while lacking their own territory.

Without infallible evidence, reasoning or theories it becomes belief not truth, end off, and believers cannot distinguish between the two.