Class Seven
Plagues, Passover, and Law
Exodus 3 to Deuteronomy 34 and the claiming of a people
Next to the identity of Moses in some non-Biblical historical record one of the next big questions for traditional historians and Christian scholars is the identity of the Pharaoh of Exodus. Ussher dates the events of Exodus as being 1491BC. According to him, the king of Egypt who died in chapter 2, verse 23 was Rameses Miamun, who had reigned for 66 years over Egypt and had enslaved the Israelites to building projects. The slavery goes on another nineteen years under Amenophis. The discussion of names of kings and reigns can go on endlessly in this time period and you will find few historians or archaeologists who agree and when you do they are often from the same university or learned under the same scholar. This Amenophis is the second of that name to rule Egypt and he was of the 18th dynasty. According to the Egyptian historian, Manetho, as quoted by Ussher, he was the father of Sethosis or Rameses, who was the first king of the following dynasty. Floyd Jones, who did his calculations using computers, agrees with Ussher’s dating. The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History has Thutmosis III, a child, ruling starting in 1491BC under his aunt Hatshepshut’s authority. Durant has Rameses II, mentioned above as Ramses Miamun, as the pharaoh of Exodus, but places his reign much later. There are at least two theories of the traditional historian, one of which has a rather late Exodus in the 1200’s BC. Durant insists that there are no direct references outside of the Bible to either the Exodus or the conquest of Canaan. But Durant has already admitted that we are woefully lacking in our efforts to uncover history and I would add that we can not ever judge the Bible account based on what unbelieving archaeologists and historians have not yet found. What is missing in the historical record attests to our failure not, as the secular historian would have you believe, to any inconsistency or lacking in the Biblical record. Theoretically, given enough time, science might catch up to the Bible.
With regard to the plagues that God sends to the Egyptian nation with Moses announcing them beforehand, there are some interesting facts. While many agree that the direct correlation between the specific plagues and specific gods of Egypt is incomplete, it is apparent that God demonstrated his power over the gods of Egypt through these plagues. With turning the Nile to blood we have Khnum, creator of water and life, Hapi, the Nile god, and Osiris, who had the Nile in his bloodstream. The frogs, the lice, and the flies might have been Heket, the goddess of childbirth whose symbol was a frog. The plague on the cattle might be against Hathor, mother and sky goddess whose symbol was a cow, or Apis, the bull god. I’m not sure about the boils but it might be interesting to investigate it. The hail could be for Seth, the god of wind and storm. The locusts could be against Isis, goddess of life, and Min, goddess of fertility and vegetation, and protector of crops. Darkness could have been against Atum, Amon-re, and Horus, all sun deities. Finally, the death of the firstborn might have been against Osiris, judge of the dead and patron deity of the pharaoh. I took this particular line of conjecture from Barry Bandstra’s “Reading
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the Old Testament”. There are many differing theories on which gods of the many Egyptian “vanities” (Jeremiah 14:22, KJB) were under attack here as being impotent and meaningless. But, the one thing that most all agreed with was that there is some meaning in the plagues sent against Egypt and that there was some obvious connection with the gods of Egypt.
As an aside, I have written this survey of world history with the assumption in mind that all of you are familiar with the Bible. If you are not, then I would strongly suggest you get one and read it very carefully as this is the only historical record that is trustworthy, being written by the inspiration of the one who actually oversees history.
The Impuwer Papyrus from that time period laments the rivers turning into blood and the desolation wrought by the plagues. This connection between this papyrus and the plagues of Moses is at least as reliable as the claim made in 2003 by Egyptian university professor, Dr. Nabil Himli, that the Jews should be forced to make reparations for all of the gold and valuables allegedly looted by the Jews when they left Egypt 3500 years ago. This, in spite of the fact, that not only was the fortune given freely (Exodus 12:35,36) but Egypt under Shishak eventually came to Jerusalem and took it back (2 Chronicles 12:9).
Biblical archaeologist, Ron Wyatt, was controversial, to say the least, but he had claimed to have found the location of the Red Sea crossing and after retrieving one of the chariot wheels he discovered on a dive he took it to the director of Egyptian Antiquities, Dr. Hassan, who declared that that type of wheel was only used in the 18th dynasty and dated it to around 1446BC, which puts it within the range of Ussher’s 1491 date. There are many internet sites devoted to Wyatt’s claims for the underwater land bridge at Nuweiba, Egypt as being the location of the crossing.. I just want to warn you that Christian researchers are just as capable of fraud, unfortunately, as are nonbelieving scholars so please take any claims of finding Noah’s Ark, the Red Sea crossing, the Ark of the Covenant, etc. with a grain of salt and some common sense. When we hear something or read something that supports our beliefs, like any other group of people, we tend to jump on the bandwagon. Mr. Wyatt’s alleged discoveries are interesting and may even be 100% accurate but don’t automatically accept such claims as being a undisputed fact. If a good, God fearing, Christian scholar can tell you that the Codex Vaticanus is the oldest, most reliable document related to the Bible, which is an outright lie, and it has been said, then you must make it a discipline to investigate all absolute statements made by the modern intellectual elite, no matter what their beliefs seem to be.
The standard Christian position that you will find in the back maps of many Bibles is, sadly, an unbelieving, blasphemous, and apostate condition with so-called Christian scholars denying the Bible’s account, claiming rather a crossing of a reed sea, in very shallow water relegating the Bible account to the “not much of a miracle” category. The
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wall of water that arose on either side of the Israelites in verse 22 of chapter 14 of Exodus that smashed and drowned an Egyptian force chasing them is either a miracle you believe or you don’t. Attempting to explain it away by changing the location to a less miraculous place or trying to explain what happened by naturalistic means or anything that denies God’s providential hand is to be dismissed outright if you are a Bible believer. I have based this study of world history on one simple premise; the Bible is absolutely true and without one proven error. It is up to the naysayers to prove their position and it is intellectually dishonest to argue from lack of evidence when there are so many huge gaps in the historical record awaiting archaeology to close.
Moving to the Passover event, we find Christ revealed here as in every chapter of the Old Testament. The term “a lamb” from Exodus 12:3, which becomes “the lamb” in Exodus 12:4, and finally “your lamb” in 12:5 was one of those unintentional results of the King James translators that are so interesting as the statement that God would provide himself a lamb for sacrifice in Genesis 22:8. But, let’s move on to another, less momentous event in human history albeit an important one, the invention of written language expressed not in pictographs, cuneiform, or hieroglypics, but in letters.
Marc-Alain Ouaknin was the director of the Aleph center for Jewish studies in Paris and was associate professor of comparative literature at the Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv. In his book, “Mysteries of the Alphabet”, translated from the French, he gives an interesting and exciting theory about the development of alphabetic script and writing as we know it. In between the hieroglypics of Egypt and the cuneiform of Sumeria, came the ancient Hebrews. Ouaknin’s premise is that the second commandment forced the Hebrews to turn from pictographic script with pictures that formed the basis of writing to letters as we know them. Images were not to be worshipped and the pictures of past civilizations had to be abandoned for letters that were strung together to form words. Perhaps, this is one reason why, in the traditional text in Numbers 33:52, it says for the Hebrews to destroy the pictures of the people of the land they were to conquer. I will make this book available to read but it is a book I recommend be in every Christian’s library.
Historians such as Will and Ariel Durant, authors of the noteworthy ‘The Story of Civilization’, believe that the first mention of the Hebrews is found in the Tell-el-Amarna letters, which describe Palestinian and Syrian life just before this era as the ‘Habiru’. However, The Dictionary of the Ancient Near East claims that this term, mentioned in texts all over the Near East during the second millennium BC refers merely to outcasts, vagabonds, refugees, and fugitives living on the margins of society. They are bands of robbers and people outside of the control of the city-states near which they live and whom they raid quite frequently. The word is of Akkadian origin. Once again, we see that
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traditional historians are in disagreement. It is wise to inspect such things for yourself and to judge the evidence based on what the Bible says about them.
Historians and celebrities have been trying to explain away the events of Exodus by various means for hundreds of years. The renegade thinker, Velikovsky, explains the Red Sea crossing and the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud by coinciding it with natural and astronomical catastrophes while other, more traditional historians either deny they happened at all or refer to an earthquake and a freak wind being the cause. But, they will do almost anything, perform almost any mental gymnastic to deny the Bible account. It is interesting that they are forced to take the Bible account seriously enough to argue against it. Until the resurrection of Christ and after the Great Flood, there is no single event which so captivates the mind of the unbelieving scholar like the parting of the Red Sea and the drowning of Pharaoh and his six hundred chariots and numerous horsemen.
What is called the Mosaic Law, given by God, is mirrored in other cultures who obviously had heard of the law given by God to the Hebrews and formulated such laws for themselves. I refer to the virtues of Brahma, the Indian supreme god, as given by Manu.
What is called the Mosaic Law, given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, was the greatest framework of laws for living and dealing with others ever revealed in the history of humankind. Its importance in regard to personal relations and personal hygiene and sanitation can not be overestimated. It was one of the main ways that God providentially kept the Jews throughout history, particularly through the incredibly unsanitary Dark Ages in Europe. The laws of Egypt were supposedly given by Thoth, the sun-god Shamash gave Hammurabi his code, it was said, King Minos on Mount Dieta in Crete was given their laws by the gods, Dionysus, the lawgiver, gave the Greeks two tablets of stone on which their laws were inscribed, Zoroaster, praying on a high mountain in Persia was given his “Book of the Law” by the god, Ahura-Mazda, and so Satan inspired many cultures to copy the Mosaic Laws in some way to give credibility to their foundational laws. However, it must be stated that the earlier “Code of Hammurabi” was not really a code of practicable laws as I have shown previously and the later versions of Moses laws were mere copies and counterfeits. The laws God gave to Moses governed daily life for many centuries, when it was followed.
Mount Sinai today is the location of the famous Monastery of Saint Catherine where, in the mid 1800’s, a liberal Bible scholar named Tischendorf, found the so-called Codex Sinaiticus in a garbage heap, being methodically burnt as the trash it was, by the monks. This “find of the century” for liberal Christians had also been claimed to be the forgery of
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a notorious faker of antiquities and former monk, Constantine Simonides. Stranger things than this manuscript being used to attack the commonly used and accepted Bible have happened in history, I suppose. Needless to say, Mount Sinai today is a place bustling with tourists, much more so than when the American Archaeologist, Edward Robinson, climbed it in the 1830’s accompanied by Bedouin guides. But, in keeping with the controversy that permeates the study of ancient history, the Italian archaeologist, Emanuel Anati, claims that the location of the Biblical Mount Sinai is not here at all but at what is known as Mount Karkoum today, in Israel’s Negev desert.
Once again, the student is only treading on sure ground by staying with the scriptures and not being too awfully impressed with man’s conjectures and theories.
What happened at Mount Sinai, wherever it is, is how God separated the Jews from every other people on earth and how he gave them a distinctive identity as his people. The things that he told them they were not to do, as disgusting as those things are, are even more amazing as they represent the daily life of the nations they were to overthrow.
Read Leviticus 18:24,25.
The Shang dynasty in China has just recently conquered the Shao at the battle of Ming Chiao and the Shao are eliminated. It is about this time that the Shang Palace complex at Anyang, China is built and for the next 400 years or so all the palaces of the Shang will duplicate this. The Shang also develop a system of writing in pictograms similar in type to Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics as stylized pictures strung together to form ideas..
In this relative time period of around 1500BC traditional historians tell us that the Aegean volcanic island of Thera explodes bringing an end to the Minoan civilization on Crete. The resultant power vaccum allows for the expansion of both the Mycenaen of Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey as well as the Phoenicians who later spread the alphabet that found its origins at Mount Sinai, if Ouaknin is correct. Traditional historians give the Phoenicians credit for inventing what they spread. Of course, with the alphabet they also spread child sacrifice along with their mercantile practices. Within a century they would learn to use oared ships and to guide them by the stars to travel great distances with Phoenician coins even having been found in Brazil.
Around this time the Lapita Culture, the ancestors of the modern people of Micronesia, Polynesia, and Melanesia, migrated to the islands of the western Pacific. This culture is characterized by its intricately decorated pottery. The people of New Guinea started making freestanding stone figures about this time, as well.
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The primitive Jomon culture is the name given to the people that live in Japan. The Ban Kao culture is the name given to the primitives in Thailand and Malaysia as mankind continues to migrate outward from the Middle East or Western Asia.
Meanwhile, the Untice culture in Central Europe is flourishing. This culture was characterized, according to archaeologists, with bodies in burial arranged according to gender and according to compass direction. Their flat graves replaced the previous migrants burial mounds. Horses and a culture of horsemanship had arrived around 1800BC and trade moves throughout primitive Europe. Stonehenge was already probably a few hundred years old at this time. No one knows what it or many of the massive stone megaliths were for that were created from Wales to the Salisbury plains but it may have been for ceremonies associated with the changing of the seasons.
Troy rises in power and influence in what historians call its sixth city with one ruin built on another, utilizing sophisticated military architecture that rivals the Minoans. The Mycenaean civilization, as just mentioned, begins to grow in power using great engineering, designing and building bridges, fortifications, and beehive shaped tombs with elaborate drainage and irrigation systems with stone so large that later people thought that giants had built them. The remains found in the tombs do not give evidence that the Mycenaeans; Achilles, Agamemnon, or Odysseus, were giants in any respect other than their appetite for blood and pride. Giant human remains have been found, however, everywhere from the South Pacific to South Africa.
Speaking of giants, there have been some interesting finds reported. These are all highly controversial and often do not find their way into the typical science textbook. But, in physical anthropology courses in college (anthropology was my own major and degree) you may find them mentioned briefly. I will be glad to give you more information on this subject but you can just type in “Giant Human Remains” in your browser and read various websites taking them all as interesting but not believing wholly until you have investigated the sources for yourself. Once again, do not be deceived just because someone uses the words “God”, “the Bible vindicated”, etc. etc. Some claims are outright lies and some are just wishful thinking but for the percentage that are true a great many questions about the cherished theory of evolution are raised. My comment on giants ends this lesson and opens us up for some of the subject of our next.
