The Ten Plagues of Egypt

by LtCmd.Lore 41 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  LtCmd.Lore

  Edited to remove My Book of BS quote. Because it was long and unnecessary.

  Here's the biblical account instead: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%207:1-14:31;&version=31 ;

  Here are the ten plagues:

  1: Water turned to blood. All fish in the Nile die.

  2: Frogs.

  3: Lice or Gnats or Flees.

  4:Gadflies.

  5: Egyptian livestock is killed.

  6: Boils.

  7: Hail, kills the livestock again, and the plants and some people.

  8: Locusts eat all ramaining plants.

  9: Darkness. (boring)

  10: All firstborns killed, including the livestock again. (Not to mention all the livestock that were killed for the blood on the door.)

  And to top it off, Pharaoh takes his ENTIRE depressed and hungry army, along with his zombie-cavalry into the Red Sea. They all die: (Exodus 14:28) . . .Not so much as one among them was let remain. . .

  ---

  Okay, so the effects:

  There are NO plants at all remaining in Egypt. (Exodus 10:15)

  The livestock are almost all completely dead, after taking a hit in plague numbers 4, 7, and 10 and the Red Sea incident.

  There are no fish to catch due to plague one. (Exodus 7:21)

  The Egyptian workforce has left. (Exodus 14:5)

  The entire Egyptian army was destroyed. (Exodus 14:9)
  

  And the pharaoh died. Along with his oldest/most-prepared-to-rule heir.

  Add to this, the fact that the Egyptians gave the Hebrews lots of money and animals for their trip. I quote: "They stripped the Egyptians" (Exodus 12:36)

  They have no food, no army, no leadership, no workforce to speak of, and no morale, and a greatly decreased population.

  Also, the land was scorched from the hail, so it would be extremely difficult to grow anything, even if they had the seeds.

  How long do you think it would have taken them to recover? Would they have EVER recovered, or would that have been the end of the Egyptian empire?

  Why is there no record of any of this, outside of the Bible?

  According to the WTS, this was supposed to have taken place in 1513 B.C. (Insight book, under Exodus)

  According to historians, 1513 BC was near the begining of the 18th dinasty, and I quote wikipedia about the 18 dynasty:
  

  "This was a time of great wealth and power for Egypt"

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ancient_Egypt#Eighteenth_Dynasty

  The only thing I could find, in the entire WT library to explain this blaring lack of evidence is this:

  ***

  it-1pp.777-778Exodus***
  

  Authenticity

  oftheExodusAccount. An objection against the Exodus account has been that the Pharaohs of Egypt did not make any record of the Exodus. However, this is not unusual, for kings of more modern times have recorded only their victories and not their defeats and have often tried to erase anything historical that is contrary to their personal or nationalistic image or to the ideology they are trying to inculcate in their people. Even in recent times rulers have tried to obliterate the works and reputations of their predecessors. Anything regarded as embarrassing or distasteful was left out of Egyptian inscriptions or effaced as soon as possible. An example is the chiseling away by her successor, Thutmose III, of the name and representation of Queen Hatshepsut on a stone monumental record uncovered at Deir al-Bahri in Egypt.—See ArchaeologyandBibleHistory, by J. P. Free, 1964, p. 98 and photograph opposite p. 94.
  

  Manetho, an Egyptian priest who evidently hated the Jews, wrote in the Greek language about 280 B.C.E. The Jewish historian Josephus quotes Manetho as saying that the ancestors of the Jews "entered Egypt in their myriads and subdued the inhabitants," and then Josephus says that Manetho "goes on to admit that they were afterwards driven out of the country, occupied what is now Judaea, founded Jerusalem, and built the temple."—AgainstApion, I, 228 (26).

  While Manetho’s account is in general very unhistorical, the significant fact is that he mentions the Jews as being in Egypt and as going out, and in further writings, according to Josephus, he identifies Moses with Osarsiph, an Egyptian priest, indicating that, even though Egyptian monuments do not record the fact, the Jews were in Egypt and Moses was their leader. Josephus speaks of another Egyptian historian, Chaeremon, who says that Joseph and Moses were driven out of Egypt at the same time; also Josephus mentions a Lysimachus who tells a similar story.—AgainstApion, I, 228, 238 (26); 288, 290 (32); 299 (33); 304-311 (34).

  And that's all they have to say about THAT.

  I ask you, how could the Egyptians hide this?

  Even if they managed to re-write their own history, there would still be evidence of a huge drop in population. All the surrounding nations would have written about it, or more likely, conquered them in their weakened state. It's not like they didn't know about it. After all, the whole point was to prove Jehovah's power: (Exodus 14:18)

  And apparently this was a big story among nations back then:

  Rahab speaking:

  (Joshua 2:9-10) . . ."I do know that Jehovah will certainly give YOU the land, and that the fright of YOU has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have become disheartened because of YOU. 10 For we have heard how Jehovah dried up the waters of the Red Sea from before YOU when YOU came out of Egypt,. . .

  

  This has been a Lore production. - W.W.S.D?
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  Hortensia

  well, obviously it is all cow pucky - total fiction. After all, the WT argument could go the other way, too. Lots of governments have lied through their teeth about their accomplishments, why couldn't the Jews be lying and embroidering and fantasizing all these stories.
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  Mulan

  I recently read a book called The Memoirs of Cleopatra. In it they described the effects of the Nile flooding, which they depend on it to do every year, to nourish the soil for their crops. If it doesn't flood, and recedes too much, the water turns a brownish red, they get frogs all over the land, flies, gnats, locusts etc.

  There isn't enough food for the humans, and the animals are dying all over the place. It made me wonder about those plagues.

  And then there were the eclipses.............that would explain the darkness.

  Just my musings as I read it.
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  LtCmd.Lore

  I recently read a book called The Memoirs of Cleopatra. In it they described the effects of the Nile flooding, which they depend on it to do every year, to nourish the soil for their crops. If it doesn't flood, and recedes too much, the water turns a brownish red, they get frogs all over the land, flies, gnats, locusts etc.

  There isn't enough food for the humans, and the animals are dying all over the place. It made me wonder about those plagues.

  And then there were the eclipses.............that would explain the darkness.

  That would be pretty reasonable, and it sounds cool. Do you have a link?

  But there is no evidence for the ten plagues at all, so there's really no nead to explain it.
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  jayhawk1

  If all their livestock was killed by the plagues, what did they have left to give the Hebrews?

  And again, if their livestock was dead or taken by the Hebrews, what did the Egyptian Army use to draw their chariots?

  Oh wait, this guy probably still had his donkey...
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  Ancient One

  I was interested in this subject for quite some time, there are some interesting physical evidences though I doubt as do most scholars they were related to Biblical plagues, but hey, possibly aliens :D just kidding.

  This is from wikipedia.

  There is archaeological material that archaeologists, such as William F. Albright, have considered historical evidence of the Ten Plagues; for example, an ancient water-trough found in El Arish bears hieroglyphic markings detailing a period of darkness.

  The Egyptian Ipuwer papyrus describes a series of calamities befalling Egypt, including a river turned to blood, men behaving as wild ibises, and the land generally turned upside down. However, this is usually thought to describe a general and long term ecological disaster lasting for a period of decades, such as that which destroyed the Old Kingdom. The document is usually dated to the end of the Middle Kingdom, or more rarely, to its beginning, fitting the Old Kingdom destruction, possibly the same time as the Exodus.

  Immanuel Velikovsky decided that the Egyptian papyrus did, in fact, describe the events of Exodus, along with the major natural catastrophes that he thought preceded it; in his opinion, backed up by many scholars, it was the conventional chronologies of Egypt that were wrong by several hundred years.[1]
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  5go

  Immanuel Velikovsky (June 10, 1895 (NS) – November 17, 1979) is best known as the author of a number of controversial books reinterpreting the events of ancient history, in particular the US bestseller Worlds in Collision, published in 1950. Earlier, he played a role in the founding of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and was a respected psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

  His books use comparative mythology and ancient literary sources (including the Bible) to argue that Earth has suffered catastrophic close-contacts with other planets (principally Venus and Mars) in ancient times. Velikovsky argued that electromagnetic effects play an important role in celestial mechanics. He also proposed a revised chronology for ancient Egypt, Greece, Israel and other cultures of the ancient Near East. The revised chronology aimed at explaining the so-called "dark age" of the eastern Mediterranean (ca. 1100-750 BCE) and reconciling biblical history with mainstream archeology and Egyptian chronology.

  In general, Velikovsky's theories have been vigorously rejected or ignored by the academic community. [1] Nonetheless, his books often sold well and gained an enthusiastic support in lay circles, often fuelled by claims of unfair treatment for Velikovsky by orthodox academia. [2] [3] [4] [5] The controversy surrounding his work and its reception is often referred to as "the Velikovsky affair". [6] [7]
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  5go

  Some of Velikovsky's specific postulated catastrophes included:

  • A tentative suggestion that Earth had once been a satellite of a "proto-Saturn" body, before its current solar orbit.
  • That the Deluge (Noah's Flood) had been caused by proto-Saturn entering a nova state, and ejecting much of its mass into space.
  • A suggestion that the planet Mercury was involved in the Tower of Babel catastrophe.
  • Jupiter had been the culprit for the catastrophe which saw the destruction of the "Cities of the Plain" (Sodom and Gomorrah)
  • Periodic close contacts with a cometaryVenus (which had been ejected from Jupiter) had caused the Exodus events (c.1500 BCE) and Joshua's subsequent "sun standing still" incident.
  • Periodic close contacts with Mars had caused havoc in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE.
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  startingover

  Thanks for the excellent post Lt. I've felt for a long time most of the stuff in the bible was either made up or greatly exagerated. This info confirms my feelings.
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  BurnTheShips

  Why is there no record of any of this, outside of the Bible?

  There are records that are very suggesitve.

  The the Egyptian Ipuwer Papyrus:

  "Nay, but the heart is violent. Plague stalks through the land and blood is everywhere . . . Nay, but the river is blood. Does a man drink from it? As a human he rejects it. He thirsts for water . . . Nay, but gates, columns and walls are consumed with fire . . . Nay but men are few. He that lays his brother in the ground is everywhere . . . Nay but the son of the high-born man is no longer to be recognised . . . The stranger people from outside are come into Egypt . . . Nay, but corn has perished everywhere. People are stripped of clothing, perfume and oil. Everyone says 'there is no more'. The storehouse is bare . . . It has come to this. The king has been taken away by poor men."

  The eruption of Thera as a connection to the Exodus account.

  The Hyksos emigration is dated about 1570 BC, very close to the dating for the Exodus account.

  In other words, there is remarkably similar information outside the Biblical text! The account did not develop in a vacuum.

  Burn