Exodus Contradiction was it 66 70 or 75 who went to Egypt

Faith & Science Conversation
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I thought i would start this thread because the website Exodus : Contradictions is referenced
in another thread on these forums by someone whom individuals here might seem is knowledgable enough to take his word as gospel. In fact, the claim being referenced is not a c ontradiction at all. The website referenced also has quite a number of supposed other contradictions in an effort to discredit the Exodus narrative. I would suggest that in future, before believing conspiracy theorists and their nonsense, one checks with some sound scholarly research instead of referring to websites with names like this one that are clearly not scholarly at all.

As is almost always the case with these liars, their main aim is to corrupt the authenticity of the bible and they do this by intentionally misleading the unknowing reader into a web of deceipt via litte white lies.

The answer to the O.P question is well explained by a number of responses on stack exchange.

I wont waste my time in looking at all of the supposed contradictions, however, i will address one or two others (because they are so ridiculous its an insult to the intelligence of anyone reading it)

Who appeared to Moses in the burning bush

the apparent contradiction is whether it was God, The angel or the Lord, or just an Angel. And thats a problem? really??

I have to say to the author of that website, one should actually do some academic research before blurting out nonsense like what i see there.

In the fourth generation they shall come hither again. Genesis 15:16

Well heres the thingā€¦God also told Abraham that the Israelites would be enslaved for 400 years. Given that the exact time was 430 years i really dont see the 4th generation thing as being relevant. What is interesting is that 4 or 5 generations lasted over 400 years in the first place. Thats hugely problematic for the naturalism claim that we are living longer now than we were back then as the current timespan for a generation according to google is about 30 years! the full answer to this apparent dilemma is also on stack exchange referent identification - Fourth from whom in Genesis 15:12-16? - Biblical Hermeneutics Stack Exchange

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Just because we can imagine a logically possible solution to an apparent discrepancy in the Bible, that does not mean there is not an error there or that we should accept said solution. Unless your view is that scripture cannot err on ANY matter whatsoever, it is sometimes better to accept these as contradictions.

In my view, the most reasonable position to take is that the Pentateuch consists of traditions written by multiple authors that disagree on some details.

That the text cannot contain a single error on anything is just a pure faith position and an assumption with little evidence in its favor. The arguments advanced on this front are either non sequiturs or circular in nature. It seems far less convoluted and much easier to just admit some of the thousands of apparent discrepancies are genuine errors in details (that are often irrelevant to matters of faith)

i find the whole process of harmonization inconsistent with how Jesus and early Christians used scripture. Itā€™s inconsistent with how scripture uses itself. Itā€™s inconsistent with a number of statements science shows to be incorrect and outdated. Itā€™s inconsistent with the copying and transmission of the text. Itā€™s inconsistent with how ancient Jews used scriptureā€¦ and on and onā€¦

Stephen quoting the Septuagint vs a different number in the MT is a problem for strict inerrancy advocates. 70 is not 75. With my approach to the Bible, such a discrepancy is meaningless. I donā€™t even bat an eye at it. I might try to dig deeper and find out why it happens but it has no impact on the authority or purpose of the Bible to me.

One could also go the route of a thousand caveats and claim a speech by Stephen is recorded in the Bible but not inerrant or infallible. The Bible retells what people say but that doesnā€™t mean all of imwhat they say must be correct. Though Luke may be responsible for a substantial part of that speech and Luke is an inspired author.

Vinnie

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When supposed contradictions are utilised in order to change biblical theology and doctrine then yes, i most definately do have a problem with it. None of the contradictions, errors, whatever you want to call them, change theology or doctrine.
In this example, the contradiction is used specifically to discredit the historicity of Moses account of Joseph and the Exodus. You should have a big problem with thatā€¦i certainly do and for good reason. Once one starts tearing pages out of the bible, the book loses not only its message, but its relevance. Salvation becomes a mythical fairytale that has no history/substance.

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So letā€™s be clear. Itā€™s not my word being taken. A shared a link. The link goes to a page with almost 60 contradictions. You read through some, and picked one. You also chose to leave off something I mentioned.

What donā€™t think it means when I said, some donā€™t have legitimate solutions and some do?

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Should also note that the first discussion was over is the exodus story history, or is it mythicized history. One thing brought up is that there is no archeological evidence to support a million men, women and kids spending 40 years in the wilderness. Then it was highlighted that given the nature of the story, and all the contradictions, that the story was probably never meant to be read as actual history, just like much of genesis is not, just like Esther, Job and Jonah are not and so on.

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Given your doctrines the Moses account must be historical. Contradictions arenā€™t allowed so you just explain them away. That doesnā€™t mean they actually go away.

Important to you but not to everyone. It is certainly possible to be a good Christian and not read the Bible literally with a modern worldview.

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One theory:

the earliest authors of Gen 46 did not compose the list, but used an earlier list of Jacobā€™s 75 descendants. I would postulate that this listā€™s original context was as the continuation of the fragment אלה ×Ŗולדו×Ŗ יעקב in Gen 37:2; in its current context only Joseph is mentioned here! When this list was moved and became interwoven into its current context was it changed in a variety of ways.

In the first stage, Er and Onan, who had died in Canaan, were excluded from the tally, and Dinah, who was not mentioned in the original listā€”was added. (The same editor added the phrase בניו ובנו×Ŗיו in v. 15, so the addition of Dinah would be less conspicuous.) These changes were made at an early stage, and are found in all of the textual witnesses, including the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint, and the Samaritan Pentateuch.

In a second stage, the redactors of the MT made several changes to resolve chronological problems presented by the insertion of this list into its current context. They deleted the passage of Manasseh and Ephraimā€™s descendants, and all the descendants of Benjamin, who ranged over three generations, were transformed into his sons. The number of Jacobā€™s descendants accompanying him to Egypt was then adjusted to 70.

Jacobā€™s Descendants Who Go to Egypt: MT Versus LXX

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The irony here is that the people posting such shallow readings of the scriptures are using the same principle of exegesis that is used by YECists: taking it literally. The only difference is that one is willing to fudge on consistency in order to rescue the text from contradictions.

Which one? There are four answers given, and there should be another, one that (as someone commented) explains that four and ten, and thus forty and four hundred, are used symbolically all over the Hebrew scriptures.

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My issue is not an issue of shallow reading. My issue is one showing that itā€™s not necessary to take it literal.

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It baffles me that while literalists grudgingly concede that numbers are sometimes used symbolically they consider it an ā€œerrorā€ to do so when on appears in an account they have arbitrarily declared to be ā€œhistoryā€.

The travesty of that position is that it fails to even wonder in the least way what those to whom the text was originally addressed would have thought of as being ā€œerrorā€. They, as well as the final editors of the text, would have looked at someone espousing the YEC definition with pity, the mental equivalent of someone with no legs plus a heavy weight strapped to their back.
I will admit that trying to think like an ancient Israelite can result in an aching brain, but that is no excuse for not honoring the writer, the original audience, and the Holy Spirit by refusing to even make the attempt.

And this makes the same mistake (error?) of measuring ancient thought by modern standards.

An example used by one of my professors came from Akkadian literature: one writer set down that there were seventy elders present at one instance while another wrote that there were seventy-two (this should echo with similar instances in the Hebrew scriptures!) ā€“ and if (assuming you could master ancient Akkadian) you st the two side by side and said there was an error, the ancient scribe whose copies you were looking at wouldnā€™t have any concept of what you were talking about. Tough if the texts were legal documents specifying how many omers of grain were due in taxes they would take you seriously, if those same numbers were given as quantities of grain in two stories about the same event they would be baffled why you would call it an error.

Jump some generations ahead and tell the same to a Judean rabbi/Torahist and they would shake their head at you obtuseness while their eyes would sparkle as they explained, ā€œIt isnā€™t an error, itā€™s a lesson! ā€“ El Elyon wants us to think!ā€

Yes but no. There are things that people pounce on as errors when there is a simple explanation that doesnā€™t require mental gymnastics, and there are other such things that can only be reconciled if you can think like an ancient Israelite, especially like a rabbi for whom there are no errors, there are only invitations to think (my favorite example being the instruction for making no images, then God turns around and both commands images for the Tabernacle and later the Temple and blesses images He had not commanded).
Itā€™s really a clash of worldviews: one demands compliance with scientific materialism and thus will not abide discrepancies or ā€œerrorsā€, and one that insists that whatever is in the text is there for our edification.

None of the original readers would have expected it to be! The common practice in bios/biography was to set down summary speeches that were often worded more eloquently than the originaal speaker could have managed ā€“ and that was approved because the idea was not to report the speakerā€™s every word but to convey his meaning.

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This drifts into bibliolatry, and is the very reasoning that drive Bart Ehrman and many, many others to abandon the faith.
We donā€™t trust Jesus because of the Bible, we trust Him because of the Resurrection ā€“ and then we trust the Bible because of Him. But we must not trust it to fit our modern conceptions of truth or error or even reality, we have to trust it for what it is.

Only in flawed thinking that results from forcing a modern worldview onto scripture. Sadly, there are so many unthinking Christians who do that without questioning that anti-Christians reasonably assume that it is the correct way to read the inspired text.

I read through them all and thought, these people have no clue that the Bible wasnā€™t written by a friendā€™s grandfather as a journal of things he witnessed ā€“ if thy would just work at thinking like an ancient Israelite nearly the entire list would fade into mist.

Thatā€™s no surprise; the climate there could easily have wiped out all evidence of two million. The problem is that it would be unavoidable for there to have been a million people living in Goshen without leaving evidence! That many people would be evidenced in so many ways they couldnā€™t be missed: settlements would be more numerous, docks would be larger, public buildings such as granaries would be more common, etc., all the things that mark the presence of a million vs. a few tens of thousands. None of that is there, and it should be.

And thatā€™s beside the fact that if Israel had had a few hundred thousand fighting men, they wouldnā€™t have had to ask Pharaoh to be able to leave, they would have just told him, ā€œWeā€™re outā€™o here, live with itā€, and on arrival at the east side of the Jordan they could have just sent messages, ā€œGet out, or dieā€.

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Why would the environment there have wiped out evidence of 2,000,000 people leaving behind pottery and metal and so on?

So I would say the point of the link is again, not shallow reading. Itā€™s highlighting things that contradict one another and many of those things do. Does not matter if you take it literally or not.

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if one is to introduce symbolism, the one would need to show the appropriate introductory language that tells us what is being said is symbolic.
Do you have evidence of that?

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im wonderingā€¦should i answer your response literally, or ignore it? Given the model setout here, who can tell if you even exist?
We take normal language of the Bible literally because that is exactly the same method you use when writing here!

For some reason individuals are convinced that Christ (the son of God) is dummer than you or I.

So when Christ is recorded as saying in Matthew and Lukeā€¦

26Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man: 27People were eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.

28It was the same in the days of Lot: People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. 29But on the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.

30It will be just like that on the day the Son of Man is revealed

It is blatantly obvious that Christ is using to real world events of history that those around him were very familiar with in order to explain the Second Coming. There is no confusion there or room for twisting scripture or inserting your own interpretation into the mix. There is a very specific reason why Christs statement is not figurative!

He is describing to his followers exactly how they may avoid being conned/tricked with a real historical event in the past that they can relate to becaues they know of its history.

Contrary to your statement there, it is absolutely necessary to take Christs words literallyā€¦thats the whole point of his ā€œwarningā€! If the flood was a myth, Christ could have used any number of other events (such as military raids by other nations that came without warning, or an earthquake, or a storm) but he didnt. I think your statement is falsified by the very fact that Christ didnt choose other more recent events outside of Moses writings such as an earthquake and that is significant for the Jews of the day. They had intimate knowledge of Moses writings because they are historical. BTW, jewish religious belief should form some part of the evidence in this discussion.

The bible is a religious textā€¦its history is recorded in its pages. Its pointless to pretend its not there given an entire nation exists very obviously because of Abraham. I doubt any serious practising Jew would deny that Abraham is the father of their nation. So if Abraham is real, its pretty hard to make some kind of literary claim that Joseph and then Moses are fictionary characters is some kind of religious spiritual enlightenment novel.

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why would the environment have not done this? Are you relying on the claim that the ā€œsands of timeā€ do not change what we find on the surface of the ground? Whilst we do have evidence for the Israelites in Egypt:

We dont know exactly which mountain Mt Sinai is.

We do not know exactly where the Israelites crossed the read sea.

We do not know exactly where Goshen is. It is thought to be in Lower Egypt near the seat of power of the Hyksos rulers at the time but who can say for sure?

We do not know exactly which Pharoah was in power at Moses birth or the Exodus

The ancient Egyptian language found all over the pyramid burial chambers for instanceā€¦was entirely lost to history. How is it that an entire cultures own ancient language is forgotten such that no one could even read the hieroglyphs until the Rosetta Stone was found and then fully translated in the 1800ā€™s? How is that even possible given the Egyptian civilisation did not dissapear to history? Thereā€™s is a continuing cultural history throughout the ages without any extinction gap if you like.

The last hieroglyph is in the Philae temple dated AD 394! How could we not be able to translate such a recent historical writing until after the Rosetta Stone find in the 1700ā€™s?

We do not know many things about the Israelite time in the desert during those 40 years, however, we are beginning to find more evidence of the conquest of Canaan and that evidence is supportive of the Exodus story in the Bible. So using your own scientific methods, yes we can conclude through an ever increasing treasure trove of indirect evidence that the Exodus really did happen.

Encyclopedia Brittanica has some information on this

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I am pretty sure Iā€™ve answered this same basic question like 50 times to just you alone in the last year or so. You probably remember something along this lines.

Someone mentioning a myth, as part of their lesson, does not make that myth literal history. Take someone saying ā€œ heā€™s as strong as Herculesā€ does not make him a real person. Mentioning red or blue pills and reality does not make the matrix real. Jesus mentions Jonah, and he would have been aware the story of Jonah was satire. Jesus mentioned a myth as part of his storytelling process. Apostles did it. We still do it. People after us will.

You like to phrase questions likeā€¦. People must think Jesus is stupider than youā€¦ I mean I am probably smarter than Jesus on a vast number of subjects. I probably know way more about natural history than Jesus did when on this earth. But thatā€™s besides the point. Itā€™s not about how smart Jesus is but how intelligent is the reader at picking up on literary cues.

Yeah, Iā€™m saying since there is no evidence of anyone lost for 40 years out there, then there most likely was not. It was fiction. Not even a handful of pieces to support the millions there is a red flag.

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For me, the scripture telling a story. The story of God and his covenant relationship with his chosen people. When I read the scripture in that light the detailed minutiae become irrelevant in the grand theme of the story.

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No it doesnā€™t. When I say there are errors in the Bible I speak as a modern person who knows what an error is in my world and reads these accounts using the terminology and definitions a modern person would.

Author 1: Jesus wore a blue shirt all day.
Author 2: Jesus wore a red shirt all day.

Apologist 1 : Author 2 purposefully changed the color of Jesusā€™s shirt to red, fully in line with conventions at the time-- to emphasize the salvific work of Christ.

Apologist 2: If the shirt color of an individual in antiquity was unknown, it was acceptable to just imagine one that was appropriate.

Apologit 3: Claim the author never meant to actually tell us what Jesus was wearing but used the colors to express his Divinity.

Apologist 4: Jesus must have been wearing two shirts and even though one was on the outside, on author wanted to stress one color and the the other wanted to stress the other.

Whatever the conventions were back then, they are errors today as we understand the words in reporting a story. Today the convention is to move goalposts and I reject that. Also, if some ancient goat-herders thought it was okay to falsely write in someone elseā€™s name 100 years after they died, that is on them. I am under no obligation to accept their conventions or think ā€œerrors were okay back then so they are not errors.ā€ Many Christians in their desire for safety, comfort and certainty, just cannot admit the Bible does anything wrong. That sort of bibliolatry does not appeal to me.

I understand the point of reading scripture in context and taking its literary genres and the conventions at the time into consideration. But what we end up with is apologists hiding behind ā€œconventions of the timeā€ or making everything troubling in the Bible ā€œan acceptable convention at the timeā€ as if ancients were completely oblivious to truth and falsehood.

Vinnie

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Iā€™m not sure they had much metal, and if they did it was carefully kept since there was no chance of replacement. The same goes for pottery.

In a way the people best qualified to grasp this are long-distance hikers, e.g. folks who hike for weeks on end without resupply. A lesson quickly learned is to do inventory every time you pack up to move on, making sure you have all your gear and it is all in the proper place ā€“ thatā€™s the mindset of nomads. When itā€™s your lifestyle that becomes more important because there is no way to replace much of anything. Even broken pottery wasnā€™t just thrown away, something that held true even into the divided kingdom period; broken pottery was repurposed for writing messages and memos along with an occasional religious ā€˜verseā€™, for scrapers and makeshift knives, and for other useful purposes.

I didnā€™t make it through the entire list because most of them just display ignorance and even deception (e.g. the one about dancing) and I tire of ignorance pretty easily. Most just melt away if you bother to understand that the Bible is literature, specifically ancient literature. In the first half of the list the only possible viable one was the question about how many days to eat unleavened bread in the Passover week, and itā€™s only very weak. The list is based on binary thinking; the writers were clearly playing ā€œGotcha!ā€ rather than asking just what it was they were reading.

Of course it does; genre is foundational to how to read anything, and if you read contrary to the genre you get foolishness. When you recognize that the Hebrew scriptures were given their final form by people who used contradiction as a teaching tool the list becomes embarrassingly shallow. Just picking one at random, " Where did Moses receive the Ten Commandments?", I see ignorance and deception at work, with no evidence of any attempt to read the text for what it is ā€“ it would have taken less than two minutes to find online that the scholarly consensus is that Horeb and Sinai are the same mountain. Itā€™s actually fairly common for there to be more than one name for a place, often depending on who is talking; we have an example of this where I live where a certain highway has three different names ā€“ the original that the settlers who hacked the route out of the wilderness used, one bestowed by mapmakers at some point, and one set down by the department of transportation. If youā€™re talking to someone who uses that original name you can be nearly certain that youā€™re talking to a member of a family thatā€™s been here for generations; if you talk to someone who uses the second name itā€™s probably a relative newcomer who gets their information from older maps, and if you talk to someone who uses the newest label itā€™s quite likely a government official or employee.

So, no ā€“ most are not contradictions, and the list does show shallow reading ā€“ but more than just shallow reading, it shows intent to deceive.

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I do long distance hiking. Iā€™ve also camped for several weeks at a time. Definitely unrelated to the issue of a million people living out in the wilderness for 4 decades. Iā€™m not even thinking about metal.
Iā€™m thinking strictly about clay pottery.

I donā€™t know why yall struggle so much with this.

So again, and for the last time.

The original post was about exodus being literal, factual history or is it mythicized history.

So is there evidence of millions of Jews being slaves in Egypt? No.
Is there evidence that a pharaoh and a large portion of his army died by a river crashing in on them? No.
Is there evidence of all the first born in Egypt suddenly dying over night? No.
Is there evidence of the plagues happening in Egypt? No.
Is there science of a million+ Jews hiking in the wilderness for a few decades? No.
Can anyone turn sticks into snakes? No.
Is there evidence of the mass exodus in writings form anyone else? No.

Is there literary devices and techniques used in the story of exodus that suggests its myths?

  1. In a book that names the name of almost everyone, why is a famous pharaoh not given a name? Did they forget it? Or was it because the name was not needed for a fictional character?

  2. There is narrative coherence issues that is highlighted by the documentary source hypothesis.

Just tons of issues with taking it literally.