Another excellent post on the fallacy of the Exodus with a great video.
Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 6:33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” –John 6:32
The Gospel authors and Paul certainly insinuate that Jesus of Nazareth believed in the historicity of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt. Yet not one shred of evidence has been found of a large population of ancient Jews living in Egypt as slaves or fleeing into the Sinai for forty years. Even modern Israeli archaeologists admit that the Exodus Story is a tall tale.
Jesus was wrong. Jesus was not an all-knowing god. This fact alone is sufficient evidence for every Christian church on the planet to close it doors and disband. No one needs to disprove the resurrection.
View original post 57 more words
A Tale Unfolds 
Truth or not, evidence or not … if you have faith, who the hell needs evidence?
LikeLike
The real problem is that so many people have been fed lies and accepted them as truth.
Faith does not always win when it has to complete with evidence and fact.
The ever growing number of deconverts is testimony to this.
LikeLiked by 4 people
“ever growing” is that wishful (sigh) or fact (yay!)?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Stats suggest that deconversion is on the up and up.
LikeLiked by 2 people
If so, and your sources are accurate, things could turn rather nasty. There comes a time in the affairs of Per when survival is seen to require violence.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The fact that there is no evidence for the exodus at all… is the final straw that led me on my own Exodus out of Christianity.
LikeLiked by 3 people
The rabbis really ought to hold a global discussion on this. But of course, the evangelicals will ignore it, and the Muslims will simply say “No shit, that’s not the original Torah, of course it’s going to be wrong.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
How about a World Tour in conjunction with archaeologists?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Be nice, wouldn’t it. They could call the tour “Hey, we need to talk…”
LikeLike
Or …. ”Exodus ….The Rock Show you need to see.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
They’d not believe it, because there’s nothing to see. It’s very hard to show ‘not there’. Even harder to show ‘never happened” and who is going to believe a bunch of archaeologists, anyway? Look at all the stories they made up about dinosaurs and how old they pretend the earth is, when everyone knows it’s right there in the bible…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Some will believe it, as Kia’s comment testifies.
LikeLike
addendum: if they were in that desert for 40 years, does that mean they wore the same clothes every single day? Where did the food come from? And the water? I would think after about a month of this people would start saying, ‘screw this, I gotta get home, I really need some clean clothes and the wife is starting to complain, and you NEVER want to hear her when she hits high C on something…”
LikeLiked by 2 people
They had garment factories in the desert, don’t you know?
LikeLiked by 1 person
When I was a person of faith I found that such practical considerations were explained away by using the word ‘God’.
For a long time I excepted such an explanation, but I eventually concluded that it did not make sense for ‘God’ to have acted that way if subsequent history showed no interaction. Such as why would ‘God’ allow 100% of the Japanese Christians to be slaughtered by the Samurai in Japan in the 17th century or the Nazi’s to slaughter the Jews in the 20th century.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Peter — God didn’t ‘allow’ it. He ordained it.
So the responsibility for any sin is entirely His.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Deuteronomy 29:5, Judy,
Yours,
John/.
LikeLike
LikeLike
ahhh. polyester and fiberglass to the rescue once again…thanks, john.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That wasn’t the only mistake Jesus made. I read that in one place in the NT he got the name of the high priest wrong.
It is also passing strange that none of his “disciples” are mentioned in any of the epistles. The only place they show up by name is the gospels and then the names are not the same in all four (or even any two?).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Why stop at exodus.
The whole book is a tall tale. I don’t know how people still believe it in this century
LikeLike
I like to see it like the end of the original Planet of the Apes movie where Dr Zaius warns Taylor that he may not like what he will find, as he leaves the Apes at the end of the movie:
LikeLike
The Exodus story always read as myth. Common sense alone should have been enough to discredit it. But evangelicals have poor comprehensive skills. They really don’t read very well, as David Robertson demonstrates every time you posit a reasonable objection, like this current one, to one of his posts.
He can claim to know the Bible backwards, but to what avail if the foundational Judeo-Christian stories are without evidential historicity?
LikeLiked by 1 person
As you know, Chris,
the original Laconic reply was ‘If.’ It seems an appropriate response here. ‘[I]f the foundational Judeo-Christian stories are without evidential historicity then we are in deep trouble.’ ‘If.’
Yours,
John/.
LikeLike
It looks like you’re in deep trouble, John, never mind ‘if’.
It’s funny when secular Israelis and diaspora Jews roll their eyes at the Exodus story. It’s merely tawdry when evangelical gentiles take Hebrew folk-tales about origins completely at face value.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t think it’s tawdry to do what Jesus did, Chris,
but it’s a no brainer, really: the choice here is ‘Jesus was wrong’ or ‘Gary is wrong.’ Christians who’ve thought through the issues might be the target for Gary’s scorn but we’re hardly the target audience. He’s quite open at the end of the video that he is appealing to those who will fund his efforts; I think that his financial backers should tell him how to improve his argument; but I’m sure it’s difficult to see the flaws when you’re down the same rabbit hole.
Pity.
Yours,
John/.
LikeLike
Perhaps you’d help us all out by identifying the flaws in his argument?
In actual fact the choice should be: What evidence is there that the words claimed to have been spoken by the biblical character Jesus of Nazareth can be verified? Answer:None. Or the complete lack evidence for the biblical tale of the Exodus fully supports Gary’s argument.
Now, that is a no brainer.
There are numerous videos, books, and peer-reviewed published papers that tell the same story and many of these are funded, as are most archaeological digs.
And if we want to find rank sleaziness from a punter then look no further than your blog pal David Robertson.
Out of curiosity, how much do you fund his Quantum Patron and his Third Space venture?
At least the bloke in this video is not claiming any supernatural/divine intervention and relies on evidence alone to make his argument.
And there’s a good chance if he reaches his target viewership then the money from adds will cover his expenses.
LikeLike
Making no complaints about Gary soliciting funds, Ark,
the labourer is after all worthy of his hire. I’m merely pointing out that Christians are therefore obviously not the target audience and that it should be for those who pay for him to attack what Christians believe to tell him how to improve his attack! Your evidence denial confirms that it will be very difficult for him to find such advice.
Yours,
John/.
LikeLike
Gary isn’t soliciting funds. Where the Gehenna did you get that idea from?
Obviously Christians won’t fund anything that disproves their silly beliefs. What a bloody stupid thing to say.
However, there is nothing to stop them watching the videos and maybe there will be some who will pause for thought.
I note that you didn’t answer how many shekels you drop in the coffers of David Robertson.
Surely you’re not afraid to at least tell that you do donate through Patron.
Well, you do, don’t you?
LikeLike
You are reading something sleazy into the expression ‘soliciting funds’ that I don’t recognise, Ark,
it’s a perfectly legitimate thing to do. Moreover, as you should know, I have a penchant for stating the obvious.
What you don’t know is that I’ve turned procrastination into an art form. I never got around to subscribing to Solas magazine and I haven’t donated anything to the Quantum podcasts. Third Space is an Australian thing.
Yours,
John/.
LikeLike
Sorry … you misunderstand.
I don’t consider what the bloke in the video does is sleazy, but rather your pal Robertson.
Really? I hadn’t noticed. Should anyone ask, however, a few words I would most likely use to describe your general ”blog” nature would be pedantic, obfuscate, ignorant.
LikeLike
To be pedantic, Ark,
you mean ‘obfuscated.’ But it’s not deliberate. Your assumption of my ignorance would not be the best way of acommodating my ‘idiocies.’
Yours,
John/.
LikeLike
No, John. My usage was correct. I simply listed the words. It was not meant as a grammar lesson.
Scratching around for the evidence I asked for?
LikeLike
Flaws, Ark?
There are a few.
1. Making the admission that all the effort is expended to avoid dealing with the Resurrection is counterproductive when Christians point to the Resurrection as the proof that Jesus spoke the Truth.
2. Pointing out how many papyri survive because of preservation in desert sand merely tells us why none have survived in delta mud.
3. Failed attempts to obliterate monumental records demonstrate that the practice might have succeeded in other cases.
4. You have to be very selective with what the Bible actually says in order to insist on the putatively impossible large numbers and early datings. Especially when you only want to set those up in order to knock them down.
5. The implications of the references to ‘iron chariots’ are by themselves enough to render most of Gary’s commentary about the Egyptian hegemony in Canaan redundant.
6. Leveraging what the 6th/7th century-authorship guys say (to get no-evidence, Minimalist conclusions that they don’t share) just does not work.
7. The *we now know better than Jesus did* conclusion is hubristic bravado and who needs it?
Yours,
John/.
LikeLike
7. You have to show with evidence that the character Jesus of Nazareth knew or said anything.
So far you have not even come close.
The rest of your points can be summarily dismissed until you can demonstrate point 7.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Evidence for Jesus speaking, Ark?
Certainly.
1. Somebody originally said the words that are attributed to Jesus and they themselves argue for having been spoken by a single exceptional person.
2. The continuing, self-authenticating authority of the words attributed to Jesus are the most powerful demonstration possible that the person who spoke them had the same unction in himself.
3. These words are uniquely polarising so that there is ultimately no middle ground between those for whom they have the fragrance of life itself and those for whom they have the stench of death.
4. What is reported as having been said by Jesus conforms exactly with what is reported to have been done by him.
5. The seven ‘Words from the Cross’ give us an holistically satisfying commentary on the suffering of Christ and as much insight as we are able to take into the mystery of Salvation.
6. Recent discoveries of the contemporary importance of the Bible’s insistence that the Disciples were ‘eyewitnesses from the beginning’ and of the universal virtues of communal memory are both in their own ways demands that the existing evidence that Jesus said exactly what he is reported to have said and the words themselves can neither be easily dismissed as unauthentic by those who don’t believe nor nuanced into ineffectual platitudes by those who say that they do believe.
7. Similarly, the removal of many supposed reasons to doubt the authenticity of the Gospels has left high and dry those would-be defenders of the faith who put the shibboleths of their teachers above the claims of Scripture itself. Leveraging their pseudo-scholarly quibbles to claim that there is no evidence that Jesus ever existed, etc. will increasingly smack of desperation as the mountain of evidence continues to rise.
Yours,
John/.
LikeLike
Thank you. Interesting take.
Now, as to initial request….
Please show, with evidence that the character Jesus of Nazareth knew or said anything.
LikeLike
Don’t hold your breath (not sure how that idiom plays in other countries). If even one small church, synagogue, or mosque were to close due to evidence, I would be shocked in a very positive way.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, churches close due to evidence. Typically, it is the evidence that not enough money is coming in to pay the bills.
LikeLiked by 2 people
That would be the Catholic mob, I suspect. My old parish closed years ago and was combined with another. It happened often.
LikeLiked by 2 people