Crossing the Red Sea

[Dan_473]

I checked. (I went to college to be an English teacher and learned some stuff.)

His long-explanation was written at a 7.3 grade level. (Anyone who has been in seventh grade for roughly three months can read it.)

The article you copied and pasted is written at a 12.6 grade level. (Anyone who has finished their first semester of college can read it.)

I appreciate your good research.

 

[valiant]

It's wilderness, not dessert. Enough space for all those peoples' sheep and cattle to graze for 40 years, and enough space for those already living their to support themselves. There were plenty of folks already living there.

It's not scriptural, but I imagine them like our self-sustaining folks -- people willing to put in greater effort to live a simpler life than I am. For me, give me indoor plumbing, electricity, a supermarket, a comfortable chair and bed, and an indoor kitchen. I'll live off someone else's effort and pay for the privilege. Those folks already living there wanted to be left alone.

The thing they had against the Israelites was obvious -- their cattle were eating up the food for the inhabitant's cattle. Think bigger. New Yorkers moving in mass to Texas. There's going to be problems. lol

Plenty of room for 3 million people who needed constant water and food for their herds and crops? How many oases do you think would be required? Are you kidding?

 

[Jason0047]

I will list the evidences of what I believe are the true sites for the Red Sea Crossing and Mt. Sinai.

And I will provide Bible verses to go with it.

After listing them, then folks can make up their mind or not.

In the mean time, may God bless you and may the Lord Jesus Christ guide us all into His truth in order for Him to be glorified.

 

[Dan_473]

You have to remember that although the Israelite army was numbered at just over 600,000 this does not mean that the entire army was assembled for battle in every encounter. Most often is was only a small contingent that was dispatched to attack a much larger force.

what is the source that they only send out a small force? why would one do that?

the Israelites aren't trying to conquer sinai, or build an empire... imo it would make the most sense to stay together as a camp, which moves as the cloud moves, and only fight when attacked... and the entire military force would be close together...

 

[Jason0047]

I will list the evidences of what I believe are the true sites for the Red Sea Crossing and Mt. Sinai.

And I will provide Bible verses to go with it.

After listing them, then folks can make up their mind or not.

In the mean time, may God bless you and may the Lord Jesus Christ guide us all into His truth in order for Him to be glorified.

For... Sanctify them with your Truth, for thy Word is Truth.

And God's Truth (His Word) is in harmony with Science and History.

 

[valiant]

Okay, it looks like things have slowed down in this discussion so let' begin looking at the plagues shall we.
Let us begin with the water into blood.
The Plague of Blood, 14- 25 - Water into blood. Like the staff into the serpent, this miracle defies the laws of physics. Even the natural elements are going to respond to the will of God. In the natural process of physics, water molecules remain water molecules no matter what you do to them. You can turn it into a solid, you can convert it into steam/vapor/gas, and you can return it to its natural liquid state but, in each state, the water molecules still remain two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. They never simply transform into some other substance. Yet, they did! And they did it in a liquid state. When Aaron stretched his staff over the water, all the water of the land became blood.
A. Pharaoh's sorcerers duplicate the miracle. If they can duplicate the miracle, then Pharaoh can simply shrug it off to naturalistic explanations and disregard the power behind Moses demands. And God allow it to be so. What the magicians could not do was turn the blood into water.

which is the giveaway. or do you really think they turned water into blood? The word for blood means a red liquid. See Gen 49.11.

B. Naturalistic explanation – Many explanations are offered by commentators attempting to explain the miracle of blood. They try to present each miracle as a chain reaction with each new event being the result of the one that preceded it. This theory was advanced by Greta Hort in the 1958 and this has since come to be known as 'Hort's Chain Reaction'. The “rivers into blood” has been attributed to:
1. A massive infusion of red clay into the Nile causing the river to take on a red color.

A reasonable explanation. It happened quite often. What was unusual was the intensity of it resulting from God's activity. It became deep red.

2. The presence of red algae in the water.

Neither of these would have killed all the fish nor would it have made the water undrinkable.

of course it would if there was sufficient of it.

Questions:

a. Were the people so ignorant that the did not know the difference between red colored muddy water and blood?

quite likely. they would not distinguish thick red liquid from blood. After all blood is thick red liquid.

b. If the waters has simply become red due to some natural process, then why did the magicians duplicate the event?

because they had never seen the like of what had happened. it was worse than anything they had ever known. They had to do something to satisfy Pharaoh.

C. The magnitude of the miracle
1. All the waters of Egypt
a. The rivers - All seven branches of the Nile that existed at the time.
b. The streams
c. The pools
d. The reservoirs

This would eventually be inevitable.

e. And whatever water was stored in all vessels of both wood and stone. These were for the household use. So, even the water that had been gotten earlier in the day for the daily use of the household was also turned into blood.

as so often you are reading in what is not said. it says nothing about water 'gotten earlier in the day'. eventually there would be nowhere where they could fill the vessels except red water sources. 7.24 is the giveaway. The Egyptians DUG FOR WATER, and seemingly found it. Had God forgotten the underground water?

2. All the marine life dies, the river became foul and undrinkable. The putrid smell of blood that begins to sour in the sun would have made the land intolerable to live in. In addition to this would have been the smell of the decaying marine life in every river, stream, and pool.

yes the consequence would be devastating because the water had turned into thick sludge.

D. The duration of the plague was seven days. The impact upon both the people and the livestock would have been devastating.

very true.

 

[Dan_473]

Define "reasonable." Empirical evidence? (Man-made logic.) It can't be done. (The evidence disappeared millennium ago.) God reasonable? Anything can be done.

That's been OldHermit's point all along.

by reasonable implication, I mean that's what I think a common reading of the text would lead an average person to think...

could God have caused each wheel on the chariots to miraculously freeze up? certainly!

suppose the ground is very moist... dry enough to be called 'dry ground', and dry enough for people and livestock to walk on easily...

I think we don't know if the Israelites had carts, let's assume they didn't...

have you ever ridden a bike over ground that you could easily have walked on, but the bike wheels, each time they go around, pick up a little more dirt? that could easily happen to chariots, especially since the ground had already been churned up by the israelites and the horses pulling the chariots...

to me, that's the picture that arises in my mind from the text...

 

[Dan_473]

The entire body of scholars responsible for English translations have rendered this the same way in every instance, even in the Jewish Bibles I have seen. This is not because the knowledge was supposedly lost in some bygone age. It is because these numbers mean precisely what they say. The Jews certainly know how to translate their own value system of numbers.

I agree that every english translation I've seen uses the larger numbers... I think it's the majority opinion...

knowledge is sometimes lost, and the translators have to make a guess... for example, sometimes the masoretic text is corrupt, that is, the letters don't make sense, and the translators have to try to figure out how altering the most likely letters will render a workable solution... sometimes they use the lxx...

consider that Jewish people today don't know how to pronounce 'yhwh', which had vowels at one time...

 

[oldhermit]

what is the source that they only send out a small force? why would one do that?

the Israelites aren't trying to conquer sinai, or build an empire... imo it would make the most sense to stay together as a camp, which moves as the cloud moves, and only fight when attacked... and the entire military force would be close together...

The first battle of Ai in Joshua 7 and the second battle for Ai in chapter 8 are two very good examples.

 

[oldhermit]

I agree that every english translation I've seen uses the larger numbers... I think it's the majority opinion...

knowledge is sometimes lost, and the translators have to make a guess... for example, sometimes the masoretic text is corrupt, that is, the letters don't make sense, and the translators have to try to figure out how altering the most likely letters will render a workable solution... sometimes they use the lxx...

consider that Jewish people today don't know how to pronounce 'yhwh', which had vowels at one time...

And you are using this as a argument to suggest that the knowledge of number usage was some how lost? This is nothing more that speculative nonsense. If you think this particular field of knowledge was some how lost and effects how one reads the text then show me proof and not merely conjecture as a means of marginalizing the text.

 

[oldhermit]

which is the giveaway. or do you really think they turned water into blood? The word for blood means a red liquid. See Gen 49.11.


A reasonable explanation. It happened quite often. What was unusual was the intensity of it resulting from God's activity. It became deep red.



of course it would if there was sufficient of it.

IGNORE.........

 

[Dan_473]

It's wilderness, not dessert. Enough space for all those peoples' sheep and cattle to graze for 40 years, and enough space for those already living their to support themselves. There were plenty of folks already living there.

It's not scriptural, but I imagine them like our self-sustaining folks -- people willing to put in greater effort to live a simpler life than I am. For me, give me indoor plumbing, electricity, a supermarket, a comfortable chair and bed, and an indoor kitchen. I'll live off someone else's effort and pay for the privilege. Those folks already living there wanted to be left alone.

The thing they had against the Israelites was obvious -- their cattle were eating up the food for the inhabitant's cattle. Think bigger. New Yorkers moving in mass to Texas. There's going to be problems. lol

I think the resources in sinai are not as great as in some areas, like say, mesopotamia... I don't think there have been any great cities or empires there... not very many resources there...

dryish areas can often support a limited number of grazing livestock... I think...

the 'self-sustaining' folks tend to be sparcely populated, I think...

there's no question why they would dislike the israelites... the question for me is how they could mount any significant resistance...

maybe not so much ny moving into tx, I think, maybe china moving into tx...

 

[Dan_473]

Nonsense............

if I may comment here (and I'm not saying this is for sure what's going on)

sometimes people are of a mind to want things 'nailed down'... often then they will want to read resources or commentaries only from the most conservative writers... those writers in turn usually want things 'nailed down', and present their data as such...

so, when presented with the suggestion that there is a translation question, the reaction is 'it cannot be'...

 

[valiant]

The first battle of Ai in Joshua 7 and the second battle for Ai in chapter 8 are two very good examples.

yes and God condemned Joshua for only sending a small force.

 

[valiant]

And you are using this as a argument to suggest that the knowledge of number usage was some how lost? This is nothing more that speculative nonsense. If you think this particular field of knowledge was some how lost and effects how one reads the text then show me proof and not merely conjecture as a means of marginalizing the text.

what was lost was the LACK of number usage. Initially eleph meant an extended family, a sub-clan, a military unit. Thus the early Israelites would speak of 30 sub-clans (30 eleph). After eleph had eventually become used for 1000 it would be natural centuries later to translate as 1000. The Israelites would have no reason to think otherwise. They would have no conception of the problems that it produced.

To most Israelites 1000 was a number beyond their thinking capacity. Until the time of David they never had to use such large numbers, and they had no mathematical education. Maths would be left to the few experts. Counting ability would be limited. They thought visually. (It has taken my granddaughter three years to be able to count to a hundred. And that with a teacher as a mother and a nuclear scientist as a father. Counting does not come naturally.)

I realise you are unable to adjust your thinking. But there are some on here who are willing to actually think about things.

 

[valiant]

IGNORE.........

LOL a good obscurantist attitude.

 

[Dan_473]

The first battle of Ai in Joshua 7 and the second battle for Ai in chapter 8 are two very good examples.

I think josh 7 is during the conquest of canaan... so, conquest, which is different, imo...

anything about the time in sinai? maybe there is... they would be on a defensive footing, there...

 

[Dan_473]

And you are using this as a argument to suggest that the knowledge of number usage was some how lost? This is nothing more that speculative nonsense. If you think this particular field of knowledge was some how lost and effects how one reads the text then show me proof and not merely conjecture as a means of marginalizing the text.

"And you are using this as a argument..."

what does the 'this' refer to? that the vowels related to yhwh have been lost? yes, I am using that as an argument... knowledge can be lost, even related to the bible...

I don't think there is proof of how hebrew numbers worked back then... so there is some amount of uncertainty for any of the methods... imo...

imo it's not about marginalizing... it's about gaining deeper understanding of the bible...

 

[Dan_473]

To most Israelites 1000 was a number beyond their thinking capacity.

I think we westerners tend to take things like a place-value number system and the number zero for granted... even the roman empire didn't have those things...

 

[MarcR]

Since I know absolutely nothing about the Hebrew language can you break this down for me?

Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet has both a phonetic value and a numeric value. (Right to left)


א=1, ב=2, ג=3, ד=4, ה=5, ו=6, ז=7, ח=8, ט=9, י=10


כ=20, ל=30, מ=40, נ=50, ס=60, ע=70, פ=80, צ=90

ק=100, ר=200, ש=300, ת=400



Numbers between or larger numbers are formed by combining