Why We Can Believe: The Exodus
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Elie Wiesel Story:
Elie Wiesel Story:
In March 1944, Germany occupied Hungary, thus extending the Holocaust into Northern Transylvania as well.[a] Wiesel was 15, and he, with his family, along with the rest of the town's Jewish population, was placed in one of the two confinement ghettos set up in Máramarossziget (Sighet), the town where he had been born and raised. In May 1944, the Hungarian authorities, under German pressure, began to deport the Jewish community to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where up to 90 percent of the people were murdered on arrival.[17]
Immediately after they were sent to Auschwitz, his mother and his younger sister were murdered.[17] Wiesel and his father were selected to perform labor so long as they remained able-bodied, after which they were to be murdered in the gas chambers. Wiesel and his father were later deported to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. Until that transfer, he admitted to Oprah Winfrey, his primary motivation for trying to survive Auschwitz was knowing that his father was still alive: "I knew that if I died, he would die."[18] After they were taken to Buchenwald, his father died before the camp was liberated.[17] In Night,[19] Wiesel recalled the shame he felt when he heard his father being beaten and was unable to help.[17][20]
Wiesel was tattooed with inmate number "A-7713" on his left arm.[21][22] The camp was liberated by the U.S. Third Army on April 11, 1945, when they were just prepared to be evacuated from Buchenwald.[23]
How can hopelessness be answered?
When a person doesn’t have the power they look to something greater than themselves. There was a time in Israelite history when the people faced a similar fate— complete annihilation.
Exodus is under scrutiny! Chronology
Late date; Ramesses ll, 1279-1213 BCE (sudden death of child successor)
Military might and power.
Early Date— Thutmose lV 1400-1390 BCE (Sudden death)
Egypt remembered as weak, apathetic, and embarrassing by Egyptians.
Middle Kingdom Date: Egyptian History is off in chronology
1299-1200 BCE
Most recent timeline
1390-1352 BCE: Amenhotep lll, reading of 1Kg. 6:1
Thutmose lll would have been the pharoah that died while Moses was in exile.
Exodus Under Scrutiny Location
Notes:
Statue of Rameses ll at Pi-Ramesses
The Pharoah had easy access to Moses and Aaron. During the plagues, Pharoah summoned them and they arrived in convenient time. Exodus 7-12. The 10th plague, the death of the first born children of every household, Pharoah summons Moses and Aaron in the middle of the night and the people are leaving the next morning.
Geographic location of the pharoah cannot be the in southern traditional capital of Thebes, because the Hebrews resided in the land of Goshen and were building the storage cities of Pi-Rameses and Pithon.
Therefore, Pharoah must have resided in Pi-Ramesses. The 13th century B.C. during the 19th dynasty of Egypt. The previous dynasty the 18th, resided in Thebes.
Updated place names lists in Genesis:
Joseph settled his father and his brothers, and granted them a holding in the land of Egypt, in the best part of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had instructed.
Genesis 14:14 (NRSV)
When Abram heard that his nephew had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in his house, three hundred eighteen of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan.
Rebuttal:
Exodus 1:11, claims that the people built the cities. The reference is to a specific act verses reference to an area.
Merneptah Stele 1208 BCE. Claims Hebrews are already out of Egypt.
The best start in proving the book of Exodus is with Exodus as the start to align it in historical accuracy.
No evidence of later forgery on the text.
Total of 26 loanwords (cognate words) and 381 occurences in Exodus.
First hand knowledge of language and customs. There is a high Egyptian influence.
Time for linguistic borrowing to occur is during the middle Bronze Age. 1200 BCE.
Exodus is attested to 120 times in the Bible. It is viewed not as mythology but as historicity.
Exodus 14 and 15 are written in a format similar to how an Egyptian historian would write. detail then poem. Longer then shorter. compare to the Kadesh inscription.
1265 BCE Ramesses ll’ successor unexpectedly dies. Also, peace treaty with the Hittites. Height of military strength but in 2 generations that might erodes. Merneptah allowed Libyans to invade the north. Sea people from the east took over Canaan land that was controlled by Egypt. Resource shortages because of the Exodus.
Ramesses ll, did not perish in the Red Sea. No historical account in the Bible nor in Egyptian record document. Possible that Ramesses now had lost his successor did not lead the soldiers into the waters after the Isr
Translation of Yam Suph
Translation of Yam Suph
Ex 10:19; 13:18; 15:4,22; 23:31 “I will set your borders from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates; for I will hand over to you the inhabitants of the land, and you shall drive them out before you.”
Nm 14:25; 21:4; 33:10,11 “They set out from the Red Sea and camped in the wilderness of Sin.”
Dt 1:40; 2:2; 11:4 “what he did to the Egyptian army, to their horses and chariots, how he made the water of the Red Sea flow over them as they pursued you, so that the Lord has destroyed them to this day;”
Jos 2:10; 4:23; 24:6
When I brought your ancestors out of Egypt, you came to the sea; and the Egyptians pursued your ancestors with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea.
“And you saw the distress of our ancestors in Egypt and heard their cry at the Red Sea.
Ps 106:7, 9, 22; 136:13, 15
but overthrew Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
Ps 135:13, 15
The idols of the nations are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
1 Kgs 9:26; Jer 49:21
At the sound of their fall the earth shall tremble; the sound of their cry shall be heard at the Red Sea.
King Solomon built a fleet of ships at Ezion-geber, which is near Eloth on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom.
At the sound of their fall the earth shall tremble; the sound of their cry shall be heard at the Red Sea.
but when they came up from Egypt, Israel went through the wilderness to the Red Sea and came to Kadesh.
In the four hundred eightieth year after the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build the house of the Lord.
Word Study
Yam Suph: Reed Sea. The Israelites did not use the Egyptian word the way Egyptians did.
King Solomon built a fleet of ships at Ezion-geber, which is near Eloth on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom.
The term yam suph, is the same used in Exodus 13.
Mt. Sinai,
Yam Suph is a cognate word borrowed from the Egyptian word TWF(Y).. A large lake or inland water body.
Aramaic cognate of soph is used in verbal form to mean “to come to an end”
Also, storm or whirlwind
Must use the suph word family context.
Possible definition “sea of the end, sea of the destruction” therefore there would continuity in its use to describe a body of water and not a sea of reeds.
Biblical Hebrew uses it differently than the Egyptian.
Septuagint translates Yam Suph as “Red Sea”
Therefore when the Bible states that wall of water were on the right and left, and that it fell in on the Egyptians makes more logical sense and than the outright exaggeration. Let’s face it, the Bible is not concerned with embarrassing itself for the sake of history. That is why we can believe the Bible. If the Israelites passed through a Sea of Reeds and the Egyptians got stuck then it would have said it.
The Bible is accurate but it is our understanding that needs wisdom.
Point of the Story:
God makes the way. Have you ever felt stuck? Defeated? Desperate? Imagine a people who only knew slavery were pinned between the impossible and certain death. What were they feeling? We can never understand what that is like but we can relate to despair and hopelessness.
Ex. Paul and Penny and the loss of Zachary minutes after his birth.
And my God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.