Expressing bad attitudes to historians and critical scholarship without realizing it

[knor (Kai)]

@adamjedgar

@Paraleptopecten

600 אֶלֶף men. Which might be “thousand” or “group [unspecified size]”

1. I think the text answers that question internally
2. If it means group, the the text reads as…the total “group” is 600 “group”…which is linguistic nonsense!

The ‘group’ was a military unit, comparable to a squad. It is not linguistic nonsense to speak of 600 military units, like 600 divisions, 600 brigades or 600 squads.

[St.Roymond]

@adamjedgar

So let me get this straight…you claim that 273 individuals…400 years later only bred into a total of 5,000? You see the gross error there right?

For that level of medical technology that’s a pretty darned good rate of population increase, it’s better than 15% every ten years.

@adamjedgar

1 million or more individuals in the exodus is not only mathematically credible…its actually a conservative number!

No, it’s a ridiculous number, a growth rate of over 2% per year. At that rate, Egypt would have had a population over 8 billion by the time of the Exodus if the Egyptians were equally prolific. Population growth didn’t reach 2% per year until the first antibiotics were developed.

@adamjedgar

You need to actually do the math in your head

No, you need to pull out a calculator and do the real math, not arbitrary comparisons to some modern family.

@adamjedgar

speculation they couldn’t breed into a million people in 400 years is unintelligent, insulting and utter nonsense.

No, it’s based on known historical population growth rates and algebra.

@adamjedgar

You are ignoring what the bible actually states.

No, he’s looking at the actual text and comparing it to reality. If your claims are right, where did Egypt keep its eight billion people by the end of that 400 years? That’s patently ridiculous, so the question is whether we’ve been translating the text correctly – and it’s translating correctly that gives us “what the bible actually states”.

Like this:

@Paraleptopecten

@adamjedgar

Where do you get 5,000 men from?

Adding up the values after the “# 'elep”. The issue here is that the word (אֶלֶף 'elep) translated as “thousand” has another possible meaning: “group [size unspecified]”

@Paraleptopecten

the issues associated with having a few million people leave Egypt

Let alone the impossibility of that many people living in Goshen at that level of technology!

@adamjedgar

@Paraleptopecten

600 אֶלֶף men. Which might be “thousand” or “group [unspecified size]”

1. I think the text answers that question internally
2. If it means group, the the text reads as…the total “group” is 600 “group”…which is linguistic nonsense!

Huh? Now you’re just making stuff up – there is no double use of “group”; אֶ֧לֶף appears only once in the passage.

@adamjedgar

For point 1 above, read Numbers 3

That doesn’t change anything – the same word in question is used there ( אֶ֧לֶף ).

[St.Roymond]

@knor

What is noteworthy is that the article starts by accepting Numbers (the ancient Hebrew version) as a valid document. The mathematical analyses use just the information told by the scripture + some linguistic knowledge about the meaning of an ancient Hebrew word. In that sense, it could be called faithful to the scripture.

Yes: asking “What does this word mean in this verse?” isn’t being unfaithful to the scripture, it’s humbly seeking to understand it!

@knor

The translations about the text we use are mainly based on the Masoretic version of the Hebrew Bible. That version is considered largely reliable

Reliable . . . except that we keep finding more places where the Masoretes plainly changed the text for various reasons.

@knor

Other parts of the Torah seems to give some relevant information:
Exodus 23:29-30 state that initially there were too few Israelites to occupy the promised land.
Deut. 7:7 state that they were “the fewest of all peoples".

Definitely worth noting.

@knor

The total population of Palestine before the Jewish immigration has been about one million. It is likely that the promised land did not harbour much more people at the time of Exodus.

Less is most likely; the number I recall is 400k. Egypt, with its organized agriculture and fertile lands, held maybe two million; Canaan/Palestine would have been doing extremely well to have had half a million, especially considering how frequently armies marched through.

@knor

That does not fit well to the verses that tell about a small group that could not occupy the whole promised land when they arrived from Exodus.

Exactly – the numbers as traditionally translated do not fit the rest of scripture.

[rsewell (RON SEWELL)]

@adamjedgar

Multiple 400 x 270 early Israelites = a breading potential over 400 years in Egypt, using only an average of 3, is 100,000 people.

Given early israelites often had much larger families than 3 children amd the more wealthy had more than one wife…1 million or more individuals in the exodus is not only mathematically credible…its actually a conservative number!

Applying the same rate of increase to the Egyptians themselves, given an initial population of 1.5 million for the first dynastic period, growing over the same 400 years, would conservatively work out to a population of some 5.5 billion. That is the global population at about 1990.