How Likely Is It? (4)

From the Errancy Discussion list, 5-4-97:

TILL
After the Israelites saw another demonstration of Yahweh's power 
when he afflicted Miriam with leprosy for daring to challenge the 
leadership of Moses, they traveled from Hazeroth and camped in 
the Wilderness of Paran. Surely, the people had seen enough by 
now to understand that their god Yahweh was all-powerful, able 
to provide them with their every need, and above all not to be 
crossed in any way, but such was not the case. While they were 
at Paran, Moses sent spies into the land of Canaan to "see the
land, what it is, and the people therein, whether they are few or 
many, and what the land is that they dwell in, whether it is good 
or bad, and what cities they dwell in, whether in camps or in 
strongholds, and what the land is, whether it is fat or lean, 
whether there is wood therein, or not" (Num. 13:17-20). At 
this point, rational readers of these stories can only ask, "Why 
would Moses, of all people, have sent spies into Canaan to find 
out all these things?" He had routinely met and chatted with the 
all-powerful Yahweh, who had already told him that Canaan was 
a land "flowing with milk and honey" (Ex. 3:8, 17), so are we 
supposed to understand that after all of the demonstrations of 
Yahweh's might and power, Moses wasn't quiet sure to believe 
him about the abundance of the land unless he had independent
confirmation from a band of spies? We also have to wonder why 
Moses would have been concerned about whether there was 
"wood therein," because the Israelites had been incinerating 
animals by the millions in the wilderness of Sinai, on an altar 
whose fire never went out, so if they could find enough wood 
for that in a desert wilderness, Moses shouldn't have been too
concerned about whether there was wood in the land flowing 
with milk and honey.

How Likely Is It? (3)

From the Errancy Discussion list, 5-3-97:

Till

After the Israelites had seen Yahweh deliver them from the Egyptians by

parting the Red Sea so that they could cross on dry land and then sending

the water crashing in on the Egyptian army, they sang a hymn of praise to

Yahweh and turned inland to march across the Sinai, but they had traveled

only three days from the Red Sea when they began to complain because

there was no water to drink (Exodus 15:22-24).

How Likely Is It? (2)

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1993/July-August:

by Farrell Till 
When Pharaoh refused to release the Israelites from Egyptian bondage, the Hebrew god Yahweh performed wonders unlike anything the world had ever seen. Ten plagues were rained down on Egypt with the implication--and sometimes even direct statement--that the Israelites were spared the horrors of the plagues. When hordes of flies swarmed over Egypt, the land of Goshen, where the Israelites dwelt, was "set apart" so that "no swarms of flies [would] be there" (Ex. 8:22). Likewise, when the plague of murrain decimated the flocks of Egypt, the livestock of the Israelites was spared (9:6). When the hail came, which was more grievous than any hail that had ever struck Egypt (9:24), none fell on the Israelites in the land of Goshen (v:26). When darkness fell over the land, the Israelites "had light in their dwellings" (10:23), and when the firstborn of Egypt were struck dead, the firstborn of the Israelites were saved through the Passover ceremony.

To say the least, those Israelites witnessed some amazing miracles while Moses and Aaron worked to gain their release from bondage, but the wonders didn't cease when Pharaoh finally relented and gave permission for the people to leave Egypt. They saw Yahweh going before them in "a pillar of cloud" by day and in "a pillar of fire" by night (13:21). And these were not just occasional appearances that Yahweh made to the people, because "the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night departed not from before the people" as they marched out of Egypt (v:21).

Plagued By Inconsistencies: Discrepancies in the Egyptian-Plague Narratives - Part Two of Four

Here a Frog, There a Frog,
Everywhere a Frog Frog

by Farrell Till

As I noted in Part One of this series, the problem of the Egyptian magicians having done “likewise with their enchantments” remains unexplained, but that was far from the only problem in the Egyptian-plague stories. Pharaoh, being the impious sort that he was, still was unimpressed after Aaron and Moses had changed the water throughout all the land of Egypt into blood. He witnessed the exchange of miraculous feats between Aaron and the Egyptian sorcerers there by the riverside, then “turned and went into his house, and he did not take even this to heart” (v:23). So Yahweh sent the plague of frogs against Egypt, which was a typical Yahwistic response, by the way. The Egyptian populace had had nothing to do with this dispute between Pharaoh and Moses, but they were the ones who had to bear the brunt of Yahweh’s wrath. Already they had frantically dug for seven days along the Nile for water to drink (vs:24-25), and now, as if this were not enough suffering for their ruler’s obstinacy, Yahweh decided to zap them with a plague of frogs. This Yahweh that biblical inerrantists admire so much has a strange sense of justice and fairness.

Plagued By Inconsistencies: Discrepancies in the Egyptian-Plague Narratives - Part One of Four

                                The Tit-For-Tat Problem

by Farrell Till
For sheer absurdity, few tales in pagan mythology can match the biblical stories of the Egyptian plagues. The incidents that led eventually to the death of all firstborn in the land and quickly thereafter to the Israelite exodus from Egypt began with a tit-for-tat confrontation between Moses and Aaron and pharaoh’s magicians (Ex. 7:8-13). To show the power that Moses and Aaron had in reserve, Aaron, we are told, cast his rod down, and, presto, it became a serpent. Apparently unimpressed by Aaron’s demonstration, pharaoh called for his magicians and sorcerers, who “did in like manner with their enchantments.” Aaron’s rod, however, swallowed the rods of pharaoh’s magicians. At this point, we might wonder why the “inspired” writer of this quaint little tale said that Aaron’s rod swallowed the rods of pharaoh’s magicians. Surely it would have been the serpent that had been Aaron’s rod that swallowed the serpents that had been the magicians’ rods. To spare inerrantists the trouble of lecturing us on the figure of speech called ampliatio, however, I won’t quibble about the word used to designate what swallowed what, although this does seem to be a careless bit of writing by one whose hand was presumably guided by the omniscient god who created the universe. Just suffice it to say that Aaron’s rod or serpent, whichever the case may have been, saved the day by swallowing the magicians’ rods or serpents, whichever the case may have been. Score one for Yahweh and the good guys.

If one accepts the premise that God once routinely and personally intervened in the affairs of men to achieve whatever results he desired, there is admittedly nothing in this story so far that could be characterized as preposterous. Beyond this point, however, as we will soon see, that situation changed dramatically, and absurdity was quickly piled upon absurdity. What we want to glean from this part of the story before we wade through the sea of absurdities that follows is the evident fact that whoever wrote this part of the Bible obviously intended the tale of the Egyptian plagues to be perceived as a confrontation between the power of Yahweh invested in Moses and Aaron and the magic of pharaoh’s magicians. The writer’s strategy seemed to be to tell the story as a tit-for-tat contest between the power of Yahweh and the power of pharaoh’s sorcerers until finally the latter would have to give up and admit that Yahweh’s power was greater than theirs.

An Unbelievable Story

From the Errancy Discussion List, 1997:

Izz 4/29
Three million people leave Eygpt, and we have no records of it by the 
Egyptians. Strong evidence that it simply did not happen, or that the
numbers are highly exaggerated. Maybe at one time 300 people left, 
and the tale later grew in the telling. But we have already swallowed
greater miracles than believing in the size of the exodus. At the start,
we had to believe that sticks turned into snakes and rivers to blood.
And we had to believe in the slapstick story, that it was not enough
that Aaron created a plague of frogs; Pharaohs's magicians created
a plague of even more frogs! I bet that made Pharaoh happy:

Exodus 8:6-7 "So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt,

and the frogs came up and covered the land. But the magicians did the
same things by their secret arts; they also made frogs come up on the
land of Egypt."

Yoel has pointed out that the Bible was pornographic; here we see it also
invented comedy. Pharaoh probably lined up his magicians and slapped
them all at once, like in the "Three Stooges", for being idiots and making
more frogs.

TILL
This is a point that I made in a written debate with Jerry Moffitt, which
he has apparently abandoned. It is unreasonable to believe that when
Aaron and Moses changed all of the water throughout all the land of
Egypt into blood, pharaoh's magicians would have done "likewise with
their enchantments." Well, as I have already noted in an X but not X
posting, it would have been a logical impossibility for the magicians to
have done likewise with their enchantments, because there would have
been no water left for them to change into blood. But if we assume that
such a feat was logically possible, it was certainly a stupid act on
pharaoh's part. If, for example, terrorists should contaminate all water
east of the Mississippi with a deadly chemical, the president would be
an idiot if he ordered his agents to do the same thing to all water west
of the Mississippi. How idiotic! The story would have been more
reasonable if the magicians had been presented as agents of
pharaoh who undid the plagues that Aaron and Moses inflicted on
Egypt. Instead, we find this tit-for-tat premise in the story of the plagues.
At the beginning whatever Aaron and Moses did, the magicians did
likewise with their enchantments. A & M changed all of the water
in Egypt into blood, and then the magicians somehow changed all of
the water in Egypt into blood. A  M brought forth the plague of frogs,
and then the magicians brought forth even more frogs. Who can believe
such nonsense? Why didn't the magicians show their power by taking
away all of the frogs?

Farrell Till

The Jannes-Jambres Syndrome

The following article is from *The Skeptical Review*, January-February 1991:

By Farrell Till

Is there no limit to what bibliolaters will resort to in order to defend the inerrancy doctrine? We thought we had heard just about every desperate grasping for straws possible on this subject until we received the October 1990 issue of the Christian Courier. On a front-page article entitled "The God of Infinite Knowledge," editor Wayne Jackson, who is also a staff writer for Apologetics Press of Montgomery, Alabama, made this incredible attempt to prove the inspiration of the Bible:

How did Paul know the names of the magicians who opposed Moses (2 Tim. 3:8)? This information is nowhere found in the Old Testament. Obviously the God of history inspired the writing of this epistle to Timothy.

The passage Mr. Jackson alluded to in this "argument" says in its entirety, "And even as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these (ungodly men) also withstand the truth; men corrupted in mind, reprobate concerning the truth.

As invariably happens when a bibliolater formulates an inerrancy argument, Mr. Jackson assumes far more than his "evidence" warrants. For example, Paul (or whoever wrote 2 Timothy) identified Jannes and Jambres only as opposers of Moses; he did not specify that they were the magicians who had opposed Moses. Since Moses (if we are to believe the Bible) was often opposed during the wilderness trek by unnamed adversaries, one might as well, in the total absence of any historical record of who Jannes and Jambres were, identify them as the leaders of one of those many rebellions as to say that they were pharaoh's magicians who opposed Moses during the inflicting of the plagues. If not, why not? We will gladly give Mr. Jackson space in our next issue to explain how he knows that Paul meant for us to understand that these men were pharaoh's magicians rather than some other adversaries of Moses.

If he accepts the invitation, he should be able make a good case for his claim that Paul was referring to pharaoh's magicians, but in building that case, he would reduce his "argument" for inspiration to nothing. As Mr. Jackson correctly said, the names Jannes and Jambres were "nowhere found in the Old Testament," but there was a widely circulated tradition in both secular and apocryphal writings that they were pharaoh's magicians. They were mentioned in The Gospel of Nicodemus, The Acts of Peter, and The Acts of Paul and were frequently referred to by early writers like Pliny, Apuleius, and Numenius. In these writings, various claims were made about them. One source (Yalkut Reubeni) said that they were proselytized and left Egypt in the Hebrew exodus; another (Tikkunim) claimed that they persuaded Aaron to make the golden calves while Moses was on Mt. Sinai. In Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, James H. Charlesworth, a leading authority on apocryphal literature, said this of Jannes and Jambres:

The names of Jannes and Jambres appear with considerable frequency in ancient and medieval sources, and traditions about their activity and fate are extant in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, and Latin. Christian, Jewish, and pagan writers found occasion to refer to these two magicians at the Pharaonic court who plied the art of magic in opposition to Moses....

It is now beyond doubt that in antiquity there existed, on the one hand, traditions about Jannes and Jambres, and on the other, a book that detailed some of their exploits. Not yet entirely clear, however, is the precise relationship between the loose traditions and the written composition (Vol. 2, p. 427).

Obviously, then, a widely known oral and written tradition that Jannes and Jambres were pharaoh's magicians existed before and during the time that 2 Timothy was written. To say that a simple reference to this tradition constitutes wonderful proof that the Bible was inspired of God is typical of the superficial thinking that characterizes most arguments used to defend the inerrancy doctrine. Upon careful scrutiny, they are invariably found to be empty of substance.

Even in the absence of the body of tradition that identified Jannes and Jambres as pharaoh's magicians, there would still be no proof of divine inspiration in 2 Timothy 3:8. As noted earlier, without tradition to aid in interpreting this passage, one could never know if the writer was referring to pharaoh's magicians or to two of the many other adversaries Moses had to confront as leader of the exodus. Furthermore, without the tradition, the writer could have whimsically used just any names, and there would have been no criterion to use in evaluating the accuracy of the information. If, for example, a writer should say that Jeeter and Joomer were the leaders of the rebellion against Moses at Meribah (Num. 20:2-13), would this prove (since the names of these leaders are "nowhere found in the Old Testament") that the writer was inspired of God in so saying or would it prove nothing more than maybe he had just made up the names? We'll just let Mr. Jackson and those who may have been impressed with his argument try to escape the cutting edge of Occam's razor on this point.

The real tragedy in this matter, however, is not that bibliolaters like Mr. Jackson would have no more intellectual pride than to offer such superficial arguments as this one in support of the inerrancy doctrine but that so many of their readers will gullibly accept them without critical analysis. It is a syndrome that enables Bible fundamentalism to survive in an era that should have laid the inerrancy doctrine to rest long ago.

Priests When There Were No Priests

From *The Skeptical Review*:

By Farrell Till 

When the Israelites were camped in the wilderness of Sinai, Moses "went up unto God" (Exodus 19:3), which was no big deal in those days. People were always going up to God or God was coming down to them. Anyway, Moses went up to God and Yahweh called to Moses out of the mountain and said that he would make a "holy nation" out of the children of Israel (vs:5-6).

Sins Of The Fathers (2)

Farrell Till answers David Ariel's reply to Till's first post: ARIEL  MY answer to Mr. Till's question: A) Exodus 30:11-13 states: "God spoke to Moses saying:  When you  take a census of the Children of Israel, according  to their numbers,  every man shall give God an atonement  for his soul when counting  them so that there will not be a  plague among them when counting  them. This shall they  give, everyone who passes through the census, a half-shekel (coin)..." It is Jewish tradition that counting the people will cause a  plague because it expresses a symptom of haughtiness and  general lack of realizing that one must always work on spiritual  growth.

TILL
This may be a Jewish tradition, but you won't find any basis 
for it in  the text you quoted above. The text is stating that the 
"plague" would  come if the census tax of a half shekel of silver 
was not paid by those  who were counted. In other words, the 
census wouldn't have caused  the plague but failing to pay the 
tax would have, so are you suggesting  that if everyone who 
was counted in David's census had paid a half  shekel of silver, 
there would have been no plague? If so, quote the  language 
in the text of 2 Samuel 24 or 1 Chronicles 21 that justifies 
this conclusion?

Sins Of The Fathers (1)

On the old II Errancy discussion list Farrell Till had a debate with David Ariel in which Ariel defended the inerrancy of the Old Testament. Till began the discussion with the following post, May 3, 2002. More of the debate will follow in the coming days:

TILL

David Ariel has agreed to engage in a debate in which he will be defending the inerrancy of the Old Testament (Tanakh). I will begin the discussion by posting what I consider to be an example of biblical discrepancy, which he will then respond to.

In the debate on biblical inerrancy that Mr. Ariel has agreed to engage in, I will not be confronting him with examples like the discrepancies about the number of horses Solomon had or the age of Ahaziah when he began to reign, because these are the kinds of discrepancies that biblicists will pass off as copyist errors. Instead, I will be showing that the Bible contradicts itself on fundamental points of doctrine. In other words, the Bible will claim one doctrinal point here but a contradictory doctrine elsewhere, or the Bible will teach a doctrinal point that important biblical characters, including even Yahweh himself, ignored or disobeyed. These are discrepancies that cannot be dismissed on the grounds that the "original autographs" may not have contained these or that scribes miscopied or such like. They are discrepancies that require sensible explanations, and I will be interested to see how Mr. Ariel fares in giving us those sensible explanations.

In this posting, I am going to recycle an argument that I posted when Joe Carter was on the Errancy list trying to defend biblical inerrancy. It should be interesting to compare what Mr. Ariel says with the "explanation" that Carter posted to a discrepancy in the Old Testament concerning vicarious punishment. The Old Testament very plainly teaches that descendants were not to be punished for the crimes of their ancestors. My purpose in this first posting will be to explicate relevant passages to show that this doctrine was clearly taught in the OT. Then later I will explicate examples that show this doctrine was flagrantly violated with not just Yahweh's approval but sometimes as a result of his own decrees.

Unreasonable Belief

The following is a comment by former Church-of-Christ preacher Farrell Till from his Errancy Discussion list from 1997, about the Bible's claim that Aaron and Moses followed Yahweh's command to inflict incredibly destructive plagues on Egypt in order to get Pharaoh to let the Israelite slaves go free. And that Pharaoh, unbelievably, had his own magicians attempt the same destructive plagues on his own people to prove that he was as powerful as Aaron and Moses' god (please see my comments in blue at the end):

It is unreasonable to believe that when Aaron and Moses changed all of the water throughout all the land of Egypt into blood, pharaoh's magicians would have done "likewise with their enchantments." Well, as I have already noted in an X but not X posting, it would have been a logical impossibility for the magicians to have done likewise with their enchantments, because there would have been no water left for them to change into blood. But if we assume that such a feat was logically possible, it was certainly a stupid act on pharaoh's part. If, for example, terrorists should contaminate all water east of the Mississippi with a deadly chemical, the president would be an idiot if he ordered his agents to do the same thing to all water west of the Mississippi. How idiotic! The story would have been more reasonable if the magicians had been presented as agents of pharaoh who undid the plagues that Aaron and Moses inflicted on Egypt.

Instead, we find this tit-for-tat premise in the story of the plagues. At the beginning whatever Aaron and Moses did, the magicians did likewise with their enchantments. A & M changed all of the water in Egypt into blood, and then the magicians somehow changed all of the water in Egypt into blood. A & brought forth the plague of frogs, and then the magicians brought forth even more frogs. Who can believe such nonsense? Why didn't the magicians show their power by taking away all of the frogs?

Farrell Till

At first thought one might wonder, why biblical inerrantists don't come up with insightful, reasonable thinking like this, but when one realizes the irrational thought process that they are working with--wanting to believe the Bible is inerrant and only looking for reasons to believe that it is inerrant, rather than simply looking for the truth--it's no wonder at all. (KWH)