This blew me away"The distant between Egypt and the promise land"

by jam 56 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  undercover

  The OP has a good point. The distance wasn't all that great. Look it up on a scaled map.

  Also - before they wandered around for 40 years, they had already made it to the 'promised land' in a relatively short time but because of some of the people's reluctance to invade, they were denied entrance by God, thus setting up the wandering.

  Questions that come to mind...

  If the Israelites wandered the desert between Egypt and Canaan for 40 years, don't you think Pharaoh would have had time to re-build his army and go kick some Jewish ass and either wipe em out or bring em back? Sure, God could've saved em again, but if I were Pharaoh and my scouts told me that they were just wandering out there year after year, I think after a couple of decades I'd just have to go out there and exact some revenge.

  If the Israelites were wandering around the desert for 40 years, how come they never were set upon by any other national group that didn't much care for em squatting on their land? If they were afraid to invade Canaan, then you gotta think that they'd be an easy target for any marauding army that came across their path somewhere along the 40 year meandering.

  Going back to their being denied entrance to the promised land. During the 40 years, everyone from the original refugees except for Joshua and someone else who I can't remember their name died off. Out of a couple of million people, no one was as faithful as these two to gain entrance to the promised land? Maybe they were better off in Egypt, after all. Thanks God... you gave me hope of freedom and a promise of a land of milk and honey but instead because some pussy soldiers were afraid you made me wander around for 40 years and then die. Thanks for nothing.

  Which reminds me of JWs today. They're the modern day Israelites.... wandering around in a desert waiting for the promised land...except they never get there. They'll die never having received entry.
• 

  james_woods

  3,000,000 still sounds like an awful lot of Israelites to me in that day and age - especially wandering around that long without a trace of confirming archeology or historical reference...
• 

  bohm

  Things not found newsworthy in ancient egypt:

  • 50%+ of the population pack up their shit and leave.
  • all first-born males die. 6 other plagues.
  • depopulated for 40 years. then repopulated.
  • living under the sea for a year.

  "you got any idea what those stones cost Rah? you think those things grow on TREES?"
• 

  jam

  Canaan had A population of 30000-40000 people at the time. One day you look

  up and A million or more people are moving in, and taking over. Can

  you picture the American Indian looking out one day and thousands of

  ships off shore. Canaan was centrally located in A good trading location.

  So the Israelities told the peoplel of Canaan, we do not care how

  long you have live here, our God has told us this is our land now,

  So you can drop dead. Such A loving God.
• 

  sir82

  There seems to be an awful lot of numerical exaggeration in the Hebrew scriptures.

  600,000 Israelite men, 2-3 million total trekking thru the desert...

  1,000,000 strong Ethiopian army marching hundreds of miles...

  580,000 Israelites fighting against those Ethiopians...

  185,000 Assyrian soldiers marching against Jerusalem...

  I'm no expert, but I'm thinking an army of 10 or 20,000 was about the largest it would have been possible to muster and move any great distance in Biblical times.

  What would 1,000,000 Ethipian soldiers eat in the months it would take to advance from Ethiopia to Israel?
• 

  jam

  sir82; That make sense, A small force. That was one of the down fall

  of the Hitler,s army in ww2, over stretch supply line. All the jews

  did not leave Egypt, some remain. My guess A small number

  left, and it took 40days to reach the promise land. Forty days

  is mention several times in the Bible for other occurrences.
• 

  sabastious

  3,000,000 still sounds like an awful lot of Israelites to me in that day and age - especially wandering around that long without a trace of confirming archeology or historical reference...

  It's a setup, and God is watching as we helplessly fall for the snares of the Advasary's devious schemes!

  Of course, if you devote your life to God's Spirit Directed Organization you will be shown how to survive this Satanic Mine Field of a planet.

  -Sab
• 

  Band on the Run

  Forty seems to be used frequently in the Bible. Maybe they weren't referring to literal years but a while. No scholars believe the Biblical acct but point out an alternate route through a sea of reeds as a possibility. I was at Woodstock. There was junk all the way back down to Manhattan. I wonder if the alternate route has been excavated. They must excavate everything there.

  My mom always disbelieved the account of the Passover and Exodus. God visits all those plagues for you. The First born of every Egyptian is slaughtered. Blood God. then a few days later you revert to pagan gods. It sounds as tho very few Jews were Jehovists at that point in time.

  I focus more on the NT accounts.

  Time for Obama's State of the Union.
• 

  Galileo

  3,000,000 still sounds like an awful lot of Israelites to me in that day and age - especially wandering around that long without a trace of confirming archeology or historical reference...

  Yes it would have been. More people, in fact, than the entire population of Egypt. Egypt at it's peak never had more than 800,000 residents. Scholars say the land couldn't have supported any more than that. It was while listening to a college course on ancient Egypt that my doubts about the bible finally reached the tipping point. A few other problems with the Jewish Exodus that I remember:

  1. Not only is there no written record of any of the events in Exodus in Egypt, there is no written record of any Jewish slave ever having set foot in Egypt, ever. This from a culture that has left us one of, if not the most extensive written records of any culture. We have recipes, childrens' diaries, letters, political documents, almost anything you can imagine. Yet No Egyptian ever once mentioned his Israelite slave. Ever. This seems very unusual considering that, if the bible's three million number were accurate, Jewish slaves would have been about eighty percent of the population. Which brings me to the second point:

  2. The Isralites left no evidence behind in Egypt. No broken pottery, no written records of their own, no mezuzas on door frames. Nothing. Not a scrap. When they packed up to leave, they must have been very thorough.

  3. Not only was the distance they were traveling relatively short, it was full of Egyptian outposts. The soldiers stationed there kept records of the merchants and other travelers that past. Can you imagine the conversation that happened every time three million Jews passed by?

  "Excuse me officer. Not sure if you remember me. My name's Moses. I led my people by here about 6 months ago..."

  "Nope. Sorry. Doesn't ring a bell".

  "Really? It seems like the type of thing you'd remember. We're the largest pilgrimage in the history of mankind after all. It's not like six months ago was the first time we came by. We've been walking by here for twenty years now..."

  "Sorry Mo. Just isn't clicking."
  
  "Pillar of fire lighting up the sky at night? Nothing?"

  "Nope".

  "Well maybe this time you should write it down!"

  "Nah. I'll remember. Can I help you with something?"

  "Yes. I'm pretty sure these directions you gave me are wrong..."

  There is a lot more wrong with the account, but like I told the Elder's that tried to help me with my "doubts", if you can't explain those problems, why bother going into the rest?
• 

  grewupjw1969

  Ok this may be a silly question, but am I to assume that most of you believe that the Exodus never occured? Can someone give me some information to read on this. I never considered this.

  Grewup