Tall Tales Of Wilderness Wanderings (Part 7 of 13): Logistical Improbabilities in the Wilderness-Wandering Tales Another Problem with the Quails

by Farrell Till

In "Yahweh's Quails," we saw the logistical absurdities that would have been involved in the biblical tale of quails that Yahweh caused to fall to a depth of three feet for 20 miles in all directions around the Israelite camp. Besides the sheer logistics that would have been involved in the gathering of these quails as claimed in the biblical text, this fanciful little tale presents another problem for biblical inerrantists. According to the story, Yahweh clearly said that he would give the complaining Israelites enough meat to last them a month, so much meat, in fact, that it would come out at their nostrils and become loathsome to them.

Numbers 11:18 "Therefore Yahweh will give you meat, and you shall eat. 19 You shall eat not only one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days, but for a whole month--until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you--because you have rejected Yahweh who is among you, and have wailed before him, saying, 'Why did we ever leave Egypt?'"

So Yahweh's prediction was that these bellyaching Israelites would chew on quails for a month until the meat came out their nostrils and became loathsome to them, but according to Yahweh's inspired, inerrant word, this isn't what happened .

Numbers 11:32 So the people worked all that day and night and all the next day, gathering the quails; the least anyone gathered was ten homers; and they spread them out for themselves all around the camp. 33 But while the meat was still between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of Yahweh was kindled against the people, and Yahweh struck the people with a very great plague. 34 So that place was called Kibroth-hattaavah, because there they buried the people who had the craving.

So one passage from Yahweh's inspired, inerrant word says that he told the people they would eat so much meat (for at least a month) that it would become loathsome to them, but another passage (just a few verses further along) says that the people never even had the opportunity to eat the quails, because Yahweh struck the people with a "very great plague" while the meat was still between their teeth, before it was consumed, and killed those who had had "the craving."

But there are no discrepancies in the Bible, are there?  

Tall Tales Of Wilderness Wanderings (Part 6 of 13): Logistical Improbabilities in the Wilderness-Wandering Tales Yahweh's Quails

by Farrell Till

In their wilderness wanderings, Yahweh's "chosen ones" bellyached about every little hardship. When they tired of the manna from heaven that Yahweh so generously provided them, they complained again: "If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at" (Num. 11:5). If the people wanted meat to eat, why they didn't slaughter some of their enormous flocks and herds from which they obtained their constant supply of animals to incinerate on Yahweh's altar is anyone's guess, but people in biblical times didn't seem to react to situations in logical, sensible ways. The "chosen ones" wanted meat, and so they complained to their god Yahweh, who was so angry at them for their latest rebellion that he promised to send them so much meat that it would come out their nostrils.

Numbers 11:16 So Yahweh said to Moses, "Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tent of meeting, and have them take their place there with you. 17 I will come down and talk with you there; and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself. 18 And say to the people: Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat; for you have wailed in the hearing of Yahweh, saying, 'If only we had meat to eat! Surely it was better for us in Egypt.' Therefore Yahweh will give you meat, and you shall eat. 19 You shall eat not only one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days, 20 but for a whole month--until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you--because you have rejected Yahweh who is among you, and have wailed before him, saying, 'Why did we ever leave Egypt?'"

Yahweh's statement confused even Moses, because he too reacted logically and assumed that Yahweh meant for meat to be obtained from the flocks and herds: "And Moses said, 'The people whom I am among are six hundred thousand men on foot; yet you have said, "I will give them meat, that they may eat for a whole month."' Shall flocks and herds be slaughtered for them, to provide enough for them?" (vs:21-22).

Tall Tales Of Wilderness Wanderings (Part 5 of 13): Logistical Improbabilities in the Wilderness-Wandering Tales Where Did They Get the Wood?

by Farrell Till

The fire on the altar at the door of the tabernacle was a permanent fire that never went out: "And the fire upon the altar shall be kept burning thereon; it shall not go out, and the priest shall burn wood on it every morning; and he shall lay the burnt-offering in order upon it, and shall burn thereon the fat of the peace-offerings. Fire shall be kept burning upon the altar continually; it shall not go out" (Lev. 6:12-13). Even if this statement were not in the sacred word, we would have to conclude that the fire on the altar had to burn continuously, because the daily sacrificial rituals, officiated by only three priests (four after Aaron's grandson Phinehas was ordained), would have had to have burned continuously. Even then, with three or four priests working nonstop, they could hardly have attended to all of the sacrifices necessitated by 2.5 to 3 million people trying to heed Yahweh's holy commandment to incinerate animals and birds and meal to him for their sins and other needs. Even if we assume that only the previously estimated 1.5 million adults in the band of three million refugees trekking to the promised land offered sacrifices and that each adult offered only an average of one sacrifice per year (which certainly would not have satisfied Yahweh's ordinances concerning sacrifices), the three (or four) priests would have had to officiate at over 1,000 sacrifices per day. If we divide these evenly among the four priests, each one would have had to officiate at 250 sacrifices per day, which would have averaged more but a division of labor like this would not have been possible, since all sacrifices had to be made on the altar at the door of the tabernacle. Perhaps we can imagine a scenario where one priest made an offering, while a second one prepared another, which he would slap onto the altar as soon as the first one had been duly incinerated, after which a third priest would throw on a third, etc. Even at this, each priest would have had to do 85 sacrifices per hour, if they had all worked nonstop without eating or sleeping. That would amount to 1.4 sacrifices, per priest, per minute, a scenario that would hardly have been possible, since the fire on the altar could not have consumed animals as large as bullocks that rapidly. We must also remember that the offal of the animals and the ashes left over from the sacrifice had to be carried by the priest "out of the camp" and duly disposed of in accordance with Yahweh's other holy ordinances. Since the tabernacle was always located in the center of the camp (already estimated at a conservative size of 9 square miles), the disposal of offal and ashes would have required at least a 1.5 trek, even if we visualize the chosen ones sleeping in their tents like sardines to keep the size of the camp to just 9 square miles. Of course, if the encampments were made to provide each person a little elbow room, the treks out of the camp would have been longer for the priests (who were all loaded down with offal and ashes). And inerrantists try to tell us that the Bible is a work of perfect harmony!

At any rate, we are told that the fire on the altar burned continuously. If that is so, we have to wonder where all of the wood was obtained in the Sinai wilderness to keep it burning. Every morning a priest had to put wood on the fire, but one would think that the years and years that this fire burned would have depleted what wood may have grown naturally in the area. This would be especially true, since we have to believe they the chosen ones wandered about in circles. One would think that once a circle had been completed, the need for wood would have been an especially acute problem for the priest who had to keep the fire burning on the altar. We have to wonder too where the people obtained wood for their personal fires, which they would have needed to cook and stay warm at night. With up to three million people in the encampments, there was surely keen competition for wood. Despite this, we are asked to believe that an altar fire was kept burning continuously and that somehow wood was always available for the altar in a region that would surely have been stripped of wood in the forty years of wandering about in circles.

I'm sure that there must be a simple explanation for this problem but that I have just overlooked it. Perhaps some inerrantist reader could tell us what the explanation is.  

Tall Tales Of Wilderness Wanderings (Part 4 of 13): Logistical Improbabilities in the Wilderness-Wandering Tales What About the Meal Offerings?

by Farrell Till
In "Sacrifices and the Size of the Hebrew Camps", we saw that it would have been logistically impossible for four priests to have officiated at all of the animal sacrifices that the Levitical law required of the Israelites during their wilderness years. In addition to the many bloody animal sacrifices decreed by the inscrutable Yahweh, the Israelites were required to make "meal-offerings" to Yahweh, and these were just as rigidly regulated as the animal sacrifices (Lev. 2:1-16; 6:14-21; 7:11-14), from all of which the priests were of course authorized to take their share.

The size of these "meal-offerings" was not designated, but let's just suppose that the average size was 4 ounces, which would seem like an embarrassingly small amount to offer to the almighty Yahweh, who had delivered the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. I mean, how ungrateful could one get? So if only one meal-offering per year, per person, were sacrificed in the wilderness wanderings, 750,000 pounds of meal per year would have been required. This would have equaled 375 tons of meal per year that went up in smoke while the Israelites were in the wilderness. Over the entire 40-year stretch, 15,000 tons of meal would have been sacrificed.

Now where could the Israelites have obtained in the wilderness the grain to make this much meal for their sacrifices? The Sinai was a desert terrain, which hardly seems like the type of land from which 375 tons of grain could have been harvested each year. Besides, there is not even a hint in the wilderness stories that the Israelites ever engaged in agricultural activities while they were wandering about.

Doesn't anybody besides me ever wonder about the logistical requirements that would have been necessary to make the wilderness-wandering tales historically accurate?  

Tall Tales Of Wilderness Wanderings (Part 3 of 13): Logistical Improbabilities in the Wilderness-Wandering Tales Sacrifices in the Hebrew Camps

by Farrell Till

In "The Size of the Hebrew Camps", I showed that an encampment of 2.5 to 3 million people would surely have required an area of at least 9 square miles and probably even more. Even the layout of the camp was divinely commanded, and the tabernacle was the center of the camp (Num. 2:2). The rest of Numbers 2 gave detailed instructions on where each tribe was to pitch its tents. These instructions are too detailed to quote, but for now we want to notice that the tabernacle was to be the center of the encampments. Sacrifices were offered on an altar that was located at the door of the tabernacle (Lev. 1:5), the fire of which was kept permanently burning (Lev. 6:12-13). Hence, the daily sacrifices were offered in the center of the Israelite encampment.

The book of Leviticus is mainly a catalog of sacrifices that had to be offered on the tabernacle altar. One of the more interesting ones was the purification sacrifice that a woman had to offer after giving birth. For giving birth to a male, a woman was unclean for 40 days, but for giving birth to a female, she was unclean for 80 days (Lev. 12:1-5). After this period, she was to offer a year-old lamb for her purification and a pigeon or a turtledove (v:6). If she couldn't afford this sacrifice, she could substitute two pigeons or two turtledoves (v:8). Who said that Yahweh wasn't a considerate god? Why, look at the concern he showed for the poor.

Tall Tales Of Wilderness Wanderings (Part 2 of 13): Logistical Improbabilities in the Wilderness-Wandering Tales The Size of the Hebrew Camps

by Farrell Till

In "The Population Claims," I noted that if we assume the accuracy of the census figures in Numbers, we have to conclude that there were about three million people in the exodus group. The books of Exodus and Numbers make several references to the Hebrew encampments during their wilderness wanderings, but a multitude of three million people would raise several questions about the logistic possibility of encampments that could accommodate this many nomadic people. If each person in the Israelite horde had had only a six-foot by three-foot plot to sleep on at night, this would have been 18 square feet. (A standard-sized twin bed provides 19.5 square feet of sleeping space.) Children would have used less space, of course, but there were undoubtedly many whose size would have required more than 6' x 3', so 18 square feet per person would not be an unreasonable average.

Three million people sleeping at night would have occupied 54 million square feet or six million square yards, even if there were no passage ways left open to accommodate passage for those who heard nature calling in the night. An acre consists of 4,840 square yards, so even if the Israelites had slept at night like sardines, they would have occupied 1,240 acres. This would have been almost two square miles. The family farm that I grew up on in Southeast Missouri had 120 acres, so the entire farm could have slept only a tenth of the Israelites packed together as described above.

Tall Tales Of Wilderness Wanderings (Part 1 of 13): Logistical Improbabilities in the Wilderness-Wandering Tales The Population Claims

by Farrell Till

The "tall tale" was a part of American folklore, which was expressed in the creation of characters like Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, and Johnny Appleseed. Tall tales, however, were not unique to American literature. They existed in earlier nations, including the ancient Hebrews, who left the world a maze of such stories that were best represented by the unlikely tales that were spun about their 40 years of wilderness wanderings after they had left Egypt. When these tales are examined carefully, critical readers should have no difficulty seeing in them elements that would tax the imagination of any rational person asked to believe their historical accuracy.

The books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy relate various adventures and misfortunes that the Israelites experienced after their exodus from Egypt. The logistics in many of these wilderness-wandering tales are too improbable to believe and in some cases even downright impossible. To see the absurdities in these tales, one has to understand first the improbability of the size of the Israelite horde that the Bible claims left Egypt. The census that Moses conducted the second year after the exodus (Num. 1:1) revealed that there were 603,550 men of military age (Num. 1:46). Military age began at 20, but there also seemed to be a provision that these men had to be physically able to "go forth to war" (vs:3, 20, 22, 24, 26, etc.). We have no way of knowing how many physically or mentally disabled men there would have been in this group, but we can reasonably assume that there were at least some. I will return to this matter later, but for now I want to establish reasonable population figures based on what the Bible directly claims. If there were 603,550 able-bodied men fit to "go forth to war," we can reasonably assume that there was also an approximate number of able-bodied females in the same age group. This would add up to 1,207,100 who were at least 20 years old. If there were this many who were at least 20, we could reasonably think that there were approximately that many who were 19 or younger. Hence, the population for these two groups alone would have totaled 2,414,200.