I'm a newbie bible skeptic, but whenever I read the Exodus account, I always had trouble swallowing the idea that a family of 70 people could possibly mushroom into a population of anywhere between 2-3 Million in a matter of 215 years - (per the Watchtower's timeline). As I said before, math is not my strong suit, but here I will show my calculations regarding the possibility of this account, using the society's timeline. I will ignore the fact that the bible says the nation of Israel was in bondage in Egypt for 400 years, and will instead use the 215 year timeframe, also because this harmonizes with the four generations from Levi to Moses.
In my calculations, I've tried to be extremely generous in my assumptions, as I desire to give the biblical account every benefit of the doubt, owing to the fact that one "can never underestimate the power of the holy spirit". So..the following are my assumptions and methods of calculation:
- The first generation begins with 70 people
- To begin calculating numbers for the next generation, we must divide the number of the previous generation by 2, as it takes 2 people (1 male and 1 female) to make a baby
- I have assumed that with "God's blessing" each Israelite couple had an average of 10 children, ALL of whom lived to become parents to 10 children of their own
- I have assumed that each generation lasts 40 years, as the bible says. Also, because I figure that Israelite couples began reproducing, and did so viritually non-stop, between the ages of 20 and 40
- I have also generously disregarded the fact that these people were supposed to have been slaves, forced to work in horrible conditions doing "back-breaking" labor their whole lives. This would have imposed a reduction on their life-spans and probably their fertility rates. Likewise, as slaves they would have been very poor, and their economic situation would not have allowed for them to feed themselves and 10 children. But let's pretend these remarkably resiliant people managed to do it anyway.
- With each subsequent generation, I've subtracted the numbers from the previous ones to account for mortality. There were of course some "overlapping" generations, but nobody lived for the entire 215 year period, so one could only argue that at most, the second to last generation should be included in the final figure.
So here we go.
Generation 1: 70 people
Generation 2: 350 people (40 years)
Generation 3: 1,575 people (80 years)
Generation 4: 7,087 people (120 years)
Generation 5: 31,893 people (160 years)
Generation 6: 143,000 people (200 years)
Generation 7: 645,000 people (240 years) --- an extra 25 years or a quarter of a century thrown in there for good measure
(x/2) * 10 = Y
So there you have it. Even with the most liberal of estimates, and even after a series of generous allowances, the largest number I could come up with for the entire population, including men, women and children, was a whopping 645,000 people. Yet, the bible says that there were 600,000 MEN of military age alone! Surely there would have been a corresponding number of females in the population, unless the last generation consisted of only males which would have presented some serious problems. Add in the females between the ages of 20-50, and you have approximately an additional 600,000 people, which brings the total to 1.2 million. Then let's not forget all the children ages 0-20, and all the men and women ages 50-to geriatric range. We're looking at least another million people right there. So now, with a real lowball figure, we're at a total of 2.2 million people, along with a "vast mixed company" of people of other nationalities. This represents a population 4-5 times larger than it could have possibly been!
So this leads us to one of two conclusions:
A) - My methodology for the calculations is wrong. If someone could please point out any errors in my math or in my process of inference, in the spirit of cooperativeness, I will graciously examine your rebuttal.
B) The Israelites temporarily became a semi-reptilian species, and rather than giving birth to one child at a time in the typical mammalian fashion, the females instead laid eggs, and hundreds of Hebrew babies hatched at one time. Thus, the sons of Israel grew at a "very extraordinary rate" as the bible says.