Is Genesis History?

I saw this while browsing Netflix but didn’t watch it. I heard it mentioned on here. Should I watch it or is it something trying to push Creationism?

Having watched bits and pieces of it I would say it pretty much pushes creationism.

Taking things out of context or lying to fit their agenda. I won’t watch it.

@Celticroots… it’s as smoothly produced as anything we might see from National Geographic or NOVA. It is stomach wrenching…in its prevarications…

Even worse. Lying to guillible people. When God says don’t lie.

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BioLogos covered the movie back in early March: A Geological Response to the Movie “Is Genesis History?” - Article - BioLogos

What @gbrooks9 said is pretty much on point.

It’s worth watching to see their perspective, but not much else. I saw it in the theatre with my bible study and my eyes nearly rolled out of my head.

Respectfully, why not spend an hour watching it? I’ve watched it 3 times and find much of it quite interesting, in particular the geology at the front end. Also very interesting on Netflix, is the movie, “Patterns of Evidence; the Exodus” which is most interesting indeed.

It may be interesting, but the geology is clearly wrong. Certain friends of mine post lots of links and videos about the miraculous benefits of essential oils and the dangers of vaccines that are also interesting, but full of unsubstantiated, unscientific claims that are misleading and often factually incorrect. I don’t generally waste my time with them because they aren’t trustworthy sources of information. If I look at them it is just out of curiosity to see what other people believe, not to learn anything. I would put Is Genesis History in the same category.

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I completely agree.

I imagine it goes something like this:
http://biblicalremains.com/another-broken-arrow-in-the-quiver-of-apologetics-a-review-of-the-film-patterns-of-evidence/

What is interesting is what they don’t tell you. They mention the marine fossils but fail to mention the layers that contain terrestrial fossils. So how did some of the layers get formed in the flood, the layers hardened and lifted above the ocean, animals returned and lived on the land, the land returned to under the sea and then the marine layers were formed on top? All in less than a year BTW.

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@senatorthomas,

Any attempt to place Exodus prior to 1130 BCE is a logical impossibility.

Prior to 1200 BCE there were no Philistines living on the south coast of the Levant… and even if they did, they certainly did not live there in enough strength to deny Egypt’s access to Canaan and points North of that.

This break in Egyptian hegemony has been shown to have started around 1130 BCE!

Well, hegemony might be too strong as the relative Egyptian strength and dominance seems to vary. See especially the Tell-el Armarna Tablets. The vassal king of Tyre, loyal to Egypt is apoplectic at the danger in the Levant relative to raids by the Habiru…about 1400 BC (Amenhotep III and his son). Good article on line in “Associates for Biblical Research” re; Tyre and the Tell-El Armarna Tablets.

@senatorthomas,

This is a very popular opinion, but it is pretty much without foundation, or a mis-reading of the context, even during the notorious Amarna period. Towns are being annually taxed. “Peace” hostages are being taken on a regular basis. And Egyptian emissaries and troops are running up and down throughout the Levant to support the Egyptian frontier in the north, in the midst of Syria. Even the Amarna texts demonstrate to us that the Egyptian “authority” extended right up into the Highlands, including Ur-Uslm (aka: Jerusalem).

Egypt considered Canaan to be a crucial part of its “rear area” and continued to react strongly whenever there was an outright rebellion. There might be a lag or a delay, but ever since the demise of the Hyksos, the Egyptians never failed to re-iterate their supremacy over the region - - the Egyptians had to, if they expected to hold the Syrian frontier against the Hittties!

That all ended when the Philistines appear to have reinforced their newly settled pentapolis on the southern Levantine coast with what looks like an even larger contingent from one of the islands or some other coast of Anatolia or Syria.

Archaeologists have carefully reviewed the pattern of Egyptian goods in and around the Philistine towns and are fairly confident that by 1130 BCE, the Egyptians were no longer on peaceful terms with the Philistines. This is ironic because most researchers believe the Egyptians intentionally settled the Philistines on the coast as part of a long-term peace process since the final victorious engagement with the Philistines and the rest of the Sea Peoples.

Egypt’s inability (or lack of will) to freely traverse the Sinai and the Levant is the only explanation for how Moses and company could spend 40 years in Kadesh Barnea, a virtually defenseless region - - as vulnerable to the newly arrived Philistines as to the Egyptians when they ran that part of the Sinai.

Any Exodus scenario that dates the Exodus before 1130 BCE (or much before 1130 BCE), is suggesting that a valuable community of slaves, with the loot of Egypt, could spend 40 years in the middle of the desert (not safely ensconced in Petra, or stubbornly lodged in a rocky hill top settlement) - - without being attacked by either the Philistines or by Egypt! That’s virtually impossible and quite unreasonable.

Egypt doesn’t attempt to re-assert its presence in Canaan, according to the Biblical Chronology, until the Pharaoh captures Gezer and gives it to Solomon as a wedding gift. This is variously dated by different scholars. But if we place Solomon’s first years to the construction of the Temple, or 430 years prior to the destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians (587 BCE - 430 years ) or 1017 BCE.

This leaves a gap of 1130 - 1017, or just 113 years between Moses and Solomon !!!

Well, the 40 years might not be literal, considering the many times that “40” crops up in contexts of temptation and judgment. But whatever the length of the sojourn in the desert, it’s not quite as unreasonable or impossible to conceive the Egyptians and Philistines not attacking Israel because they were scared by … something?

Other than that, I’ve done no real research in this area, so I probably don’t have much more to add than that.

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@Jay313,

Of course, the point is that whether they were there for 40 days or 40 years, the “Promised Land” was thoroughly in the hands of Egypt until the Philistines pried it loose !

Prior to the entrenchment of the Pentapolis, there was nothing from the coast to the Jerusalem Highlands that wasn’t completely under the scrutiny of the Egyptian pharaoh.

Generally speaking, it would seem that the mid-1400’s BCE time frame appears to be intentionally based on the chaos and legends surrounding the Hyksos period of Egypt.

If we look at Esther, we see that the Jewish scribes intentionally co-opted the story of the Magophonia (Slaughter of the Magi, per Herodotus) and made it there own. The original target of the slaughter was to be the Jews … and then, the historical slaughter ends up being the Magi!

So, based on what we read from Manetho, who treated the folklore and fable surrounding the Hyksos, it would not be surprising if the Jewish scribes decided to make the Hyksos “fuss” a story about the Hebrew “discomfitting” the Egyptians!

Those dang Jewish scribes seem almost as busy as AiG in your book!

@Jay313:

I use the Catholic monks as my model. Confronted by a hostile pagan world around them … they would take a popular story and “swallow it down” … and make a story that the next generation of Catholics would fall in love with!

Maybe I’m misunderstanding your conclusion; that the time between Moses and Solomon is a little over one hundred years. That couldn’t be correct as it leaves no time for the 300 years of Judges plus Saul plus David.

Your assumption that 40 years of wilderness could not be true because, you assert, Egypt or the Hittites would want to attack them out there in the wilderness, unprotected as you assume they were. But remember with that assumption, that the Egyptians had just learned a hard lesson with the Jews and did not want a repeat of what happened only a few years earlier. The Jewish reputation preceded them as evidenced by the terror held by the people in the Land when the spies visited Jericho. Also Egypt had been devastated by the plagues and likely could not adequately protect itself, much less launch an aggressive war. Egypt had to rebuild.

Am I assuming incorrectly that you are suggesting in your last paragraph that you think only a little over a hundred years lapsed between Moses and Solomon? Perhaps I’m just not understanding your view and do forgive me if I’m way off in what I’m thinking you are saying. Thanks for responding.