I’ve been listening to a podcast from Yale University discussing the Bible.  There are definite similarities between the Babylonian story of  Gilgamesh and the stories of Adam and Noah.  Some people, such as Bishop Rick, have said

I think it is accurate to state that the flood story in the bible is both myth and a forgery. It is obviously a myth for reasons too numerous to mention here, but it is also copied from other cultures/religions, thus making it a forgery.

It could very well be a myth.  While some scholars believe the story is a myth, National Geographic put together a documentary called “In Search for Noah’s Flood”.  They discuss various flood stories, and make the case that a large, localized flood must have influenced these various cultures to write of this flood.  While there is no proof of a flood, it seems like a plausible explanation.

Recently I discussed a couple of sites in the Dead Sea region that some people believe are the sites of Sodom and Gomorrah.  While some people love to claim the Bible is actually a collection of myths, Dr. Carole Fontaine of the Andover Newton Theological School said, “Archeologists often find themselves hooted and hollered out of town, when they first suggest things like, ‘I’ve found Troy, or look, we’ve found Sodom and Gomorrah.’  But history has shown that in fact, the more you dig, the more you find.  It’s amazing how accurate the Bible sometimes turns out to be.”

Speaking of hooting and hollering, John Hamer recently recorded a famous comment regarding Book of Mormon archaeology.  He said,

The scholarly consensus on the alleged antiquity of the Book of Mormon was expressed way back in 1973 in Dialogue by Michael D. Coe, among the foremost Mayanist scholars, who wrote: “As far as I know there is not one professionally trained archaeologist, who is not a Mormon, who sees any scientific justification for believing the historicity of The Book of Mormon, and I would like to state that there are quite a few Mormon archaeologists who join this group”

The best Book of mormon archaeological site seems to be Nahom.  I’ve previously blogged about Nahom, and Daniel C. Peterson called it a “bulls eye”.  In the video called Journey of Faith (distributed by FAIR), a few BYU scholars state,

Daniel C. Peterson, Professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic, BYU, “The finding of Nahom strikes me as just a tremendously significant discovery.”

Noel B Reynolds, director of FARMS, BYU, “The gazetteers of Joseph Smith’s day listed no such place.”

Peterson, “What it really is, is a kind of prediction by the Book of Mormon, or something that we ought to find.”

William J Hamblin, Professor of Middle Eastern History, BYU, “Now the chances of finding that exact name from the exact time, in that exact place, by random chance, are just astronomical.”

Peterson, “And to find it in the right location, at the right time, is a really striking bulls eye for the book and there are those who say the book has no archeological substantiation. That’s a spectacular substantiation right there, it seems to me.  Something that would have been unexpected. It’s so unlikely that Joseph Smith could have woven into his story on his own.”

Hamblin, “The Book of Mormon has text, has made a complex prediction and modern archeology actually confirms that prediction.”

Peterson, “It’s a direct bulls-eye, as precise as you could wish it to be.”

I don’t think non-Mormon scholars are as impressed with the site as Peterson, but non-Bible believing scholars aren’t impressed with Sodom and Gomorrah either.  So, must we always believe that lack of evidence argues against historicity of the Bible or Book or Mormon, or is there reason to believe that some of these stories that scholars call myths, forgeries, or pious frauds really might have some historical use?  Is it true that “the more you dig, the more you find?”

What I found interesting was the fact that there were many similarities.  The same experts and evidence often appeared in multiple videos, yet often different conclusions were provided.  It reminds me of the debate concerning Book of Mormon evidence.

During Passover celebrations in 2001, Rabbi David Wolpe created international headlines in Israel by proclaiming to his Jewish congregation in Los Angeles, “the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.”

For more than 1700 years, Christians have been looking for Mount Sinai, the place where Moses received the 10 Commandments.  Constantine’s mother, Helena was probably the first Christian in search of Christian artifacts in the 4^th century.  When Christians came across a strange-looking bush at the base of a mountain on the Sinai Peninsula, they erected a monastery claiming that they had found Mount Sinai.  The monastery still exists today, and you can walk the steps that these early Christians have claimed as the real Mount Sinai.

Prof Philip Davies, University of Sheffield, “When it comes to the Exodus, we have no evidence that it happened, and a good deal of evidence that it didn’t.  They made it up.”

Professor Eric Cline, George Washington University, “We do not have a single shred of evidence to date.  There is nothing archeologically to attest to anything from the biblical story: no plagues, no parting of the Red Sea, no manna from heaven, no wandering for 40 years.”

Dr. Kathlyn M. Cooney, Egyptologist, Stanford University,, “the most likely reason that we’re not finding any evidence for the Exodus in Egypt is that it didn’t happen the way that the Bible said it did, or that it didn’t happen at all.”

Since that famous (infamous) sermon in 2001, Wolpe has gone on to soften his words a bit.  In March 2010, he said it was possible that a small group of people left Egypt, came to Canaan, and influenced the native Canaanites.  Even skeptics admit there could be something to the story.

Cline, “I think there’s a very good chance that what actually took place was a series of migrations waves or migrations if you will, over three or 400 years of people leaving Egypt and making their way up to Egypt in ones, twos, threes, maybe even tens, hundreds at the most.”

So, let’s talk about some of the biggest questions concerning the Exodus.

The Burning Bush.

The Bible says that God spoke to Moses in the form of a burning bush that was not consumed.  As mentioned previously, a strange bush was found at the base of the traditional Mount Sinai.  Is there another explanation for this burning bush?  Colin Humphreys has an explanation for a burning bush, involving real fire.  As we all know, oil and natural gas are prevalent in the Middle East.  Humphreys believes the Acacia Bush is an ideal candidate for the Burning Bush.

“The most common bush in the desert is the acacia bush, and we know that if you burn an acacia bush you get charcoal.”

The Acacia Bush maintains it’s shape and turns to charcoal.  He gives a demonstration using a natural gas barbecue grill and an acacia bush.  The bush maintains it’s shape, even though flames shoot through the bush.

When did the Exodus Happen?

There are two main theories:  the Early Exodus Period, and the Late Exodus Period.  Supporters of the Early Period point to 1 Kings 6:1, ““Now it came about in the four hundred and eightieth year after the sons of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel…that he began to build the house of the Lord.”  Most historians put the Temple of Solomon at 965 BC.  This would put the Exodus at approximately 1445 BC.

Pharoah Thutmoses I reigned from 1525-1512 BC.  Scholars have speculated that his daughter Hatshepsut may have rescued Moses from the Nile.  She served as Pharoah from 1503-1482 BC, and battled with her stepson Thutmoses III (1504-1450 BC) for control of Egypt.  Thutmoses III eventually removed nearly all traces of Hatshepsut’s monuments.  Thutmoses III death in 1450 coincides well with the date of this Early Exodus time period.

Supporters of the late period refer to Exodus 1:11, “And they built for Pharoah store cities, Pithom and Ramses.”  Ramses II seems to be the most likely Pharaoh.  He lived 1290-1224 BC.  He moved the capital from Thebes to the Nile Delta, and built a new city called Pi-Ramses.  Some archaeologists have linked this city built on top of an ancient Israelite city.

Simcha Jacobovici believes the date of Exodus may be earlier.  He believes the eruption of the Santorini Volcano in 1500 BC may explain many of the Biblical plagues.  The Egyptian name Ahmose means “brother of Moses” in Hebrew—an interesting play on words.    At this time, Egypt was ruled by a Semitic people called the Hyksos, people who were hated by the Egyptians.  Since Joseph was of Semitic origins, this may have helped him join the ranks of the Hyksos ruling class.  The Bible refers to a pharaoh that “knew not Joseph.”

Egyptians have recorded and event called “the Hyksos Expulsion” around 1500 BC.  Could it be the Israelites were expelled, rather than left freely?  Perhaps it depends on who writes the history.

Is there an Israelite presence in Egypt?

In 1967 Professor Manfred Bietak, Chair of Egyptology at the University of Vienna, discovered the ancient Egyptian capital of Avaris.  It was the home to many ancient Egyptian pharaohs.  Some believe the architecture of this city bears resemblance to later Israelite/Canaanite architecture.

Jacobovici attributes Avaris to the Hyksos, while Dr Bryant Wood refers to the ruins as “Asiatic”, similar to later Canaanite   Let me quote from the Exodus Revealed video.

Dr Bryant G Wood, Director of the Associates for Biblical Research, “In this small village, there is stratum D2 dating to the time of Joseph.  All the remains are Asiatic in nature, material culture is Asiatic—there is nothing Egyptian.”

A map of the excavation site confirms its distinctive Israelite origins.  Archaeologists immediately recognized that the design of this horseshoe shaped dwelling was identical to structures built in Israel centuries later.  It was a prototype of Hebrew architecture constructed near the time Joseph was believed to have lived in Egypt.

…

There should be evidence of Israel’s arrival in Canaan, the Promised Land sometime between the 14^th and 12^th centuries BC.  Such evidence does exist.  More than 3200 years ago, the Pharaoh Mernepteh, ventured out of Egypt on a military campaign to the Land of Canaan.  Later, in a poem proclaiming his victory, he boasted that “…Israel is laid waste.”  This inscription dates from about 1210 BC, and establishes that the Israelites had arrived and settled in Canaan, well before the Mernepteh’s conquest at the end of the 13th century.

Additionally at Telamarna in Egypt, archaeologists have uncovered a series of letters on cuneiform plates.  Many were authored by Canaanite rulers early in the 14^th century BC.  These letters contain desperate pleas to the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten for military assistance to defend Canaan from nomadic invaders.  One of them warned that if pharaoh does not act, “…all Canaan will be lost.”  The invaders were identified by the term “apiru”.

Wood, “This is kind of a generic term for stateless individuals who weren’t connected with any particular urban center and so the Israelites undoubtedly would have been referred to as either Apiru, or Asiatics by the Egyptians.”

Dr Frank Moore Cross of Harvard University, “I do think that the term Apiru is the origin of the term Hebrew.”

If the name Apiru referred to the name of the Hebrew people, then the Telhermana inscriptions provide strong evidence for the presence of Israel in Canaan.  They also suggest Israel may have entered the country earlier than scholars had previously thought, at the beginning of the 14^th century BC.  Recent excavations of the Canaanite city of Hazor also support a 14^th century Israelite invasion.  Evidence has been uncovered that the city was destroyed at least twice during the period described in the biblical books of Joshua and Judges.

Scattered among the remains of a large palace were Egyptian and Canaanite idols—their heads and hands intentionally chiseled off.  Archaeologist Amnen ben Tour, has concluded by process of elimination that the invading Israelite army must have ravaged Hazor.  For neither the Egyptians, nor the indigenous Canaanite would have purposely destroyed their own gods.

How can we explain the Plagues?

I presented Jacobovici’s position on the plagues in my previous post.  National Geographic (NG) had similar explanations for plagues 2-6 dealing with insects and frogs.  NG even interviewed several entomologists and epidemiologists to further pin down the actual types of bugs most likely in these infestations.

The first plague, turning the Nile to blood has a few different explanations.  Jacobovici believes an underground natural gas into the Nile may have caused caused the waters to turn red and kill all the fish.  Two lakes in Cameroon turned blood red in 1984 and 1986.  Epidemiologist John Marr believes microscopic algae may have turned the Nile blood red.  In 1995, a coastal river in North Carolina turned bright red due to an algae bloom.

Marr, “Wisteria was labeled the cell from hell because it killed millions if not billions of fish.  If that occurred in North Carolina in the 1990’s, why couldn’t it have occurred in Egypt 3000 years ago?”

The last plague has some interesting interpretations too.  Moses prophesied that the firstborn of Egypt would all die, and the Israelites would be spared if they put lamb’s blood on their doorposts.  The Destroying Angel would “pass over” homes with lamb’s blood.  So, how can scientists explain such a selective mode of death?  Some believe the Firstborn is metaphorical.

Epidemiologist Martin Blaser of NYU, “There is no disease that we know of that just affects the firstborns, so I take that it’s a metaphor for a disease that kills one out of every 3 or 4 people.”

Blaser thinks bubonic plague may have been the culprit, because it affects both animals and humans.  Eric Cline of George Washington believes the plagues could refer to a “Sea People” that attacked Egypt.

Cline, “The attack of the Sea Peoples was probably the Egyptians worst nightmare.  They are the fiercest warriors that the Egyptians have faced, and the Egyptians tell us that everybody went down in the face of these sea peoples.  Only the Egyptians were able to stand, and even that was a Pyrrhic victory because the Egyptians were so weakened that they were never the same again.”

Although the Egyptians never mentioned the plagues, they did document these attacks in pictographs on the mortuary Temple of Ramses III.  Archaeological finds match these writings.

Cline, “I see no need to use divine intervention when human intervention can explain it just as well, if not better.”

Others believe the death of the firstborn may have been more literal.  Epidemiologist John Marr recently investigated the mysterious death of children that was due to a mold.  He postulated that following the plagues of locusts and hail, much of the grain in Egypt would have been moist and in short supply.

Rare molds can wreak havoc on human health, and can even cause internal hemorrhaging.  With little else to eat, the Egyptians may have resorted to moldy toxin laced grain.  Death would come suddenly, with no visible cause, as if the victims were touched by an angel of death.  Still, why the first born?  Marr found his answer, the final piece to the puzzle in an Egyptian tradition.

Marr, “During the times of famine, the eldest, the oldest Egyptian child would be given a double portion of food in order to stave off starvation.  Instead of saving them, it killed them.”

Jacobovici has another theory for the selective deaths during this final plague.

SJ, “The final plague took place at midnight, after Moses ordered the Israelites to sit down to what became known as the first Passover meal.  While the Israelites were involved in the Passover ritual, the Egyptians slept, and then it happened: every firstborn male Egyptian died.  Every house was affected.  No one has ever been able to offer up a plausible scientific explanation for the death of the firstborn until now.  According to our scenario, at this point in the sequence of events that began some 6 months earlier, the gas leaks that set the chain of plates in motion would have finally erupted.  Carbon dioxide would have seeped to the surface, and being heavier than air, would have killed animals and sleeping people before it dissipated harmlessly into the atmosphere.

In case you think all this is conjecture, consider this.  It happened in exactly the same way in 1986 at Lake Nyos, Cameroon.  On the fateful night of August 21, the villagers at Nyos went to sleep.  They couldn’t have known that the carbon dioxide gas which had turned the lake blood red, was now reaching a critical point.  As the people of Lake Nyos slept, the top of the lake was keeping the carbon down like a cap in a pop bottle.  But then the earth rumbled, and a landslide took place sending rock into the water, disturbing the surface pressure and releasing the gas.  The gas then rose to the surface, and like some alien monster, emerged from the water, droplets forming on it, turning the invisible gas into a visible fog.  The fog then rolled across the water, and across the land, suffocating everything in its path.  And as suddenly as it appeared, it disappeared, dissolving harmlessly into the atmosphere.

The next day those who had been sleeping on higher ground woke up to find some 1800 people dead, hundreds of cattle and small animals also dead, all around there was deadly silence.

SJ, “After the death of the First born, Pharaoh finally relented, letting Moses take his people out of Egypt.  According to the Bible, what made pharaoh give up was the selectivity of the deaths: the fact that it was only male, firstborn who died.  It was this selectivity that demonstrated to him that God himself was involved.  How can we account for this?

Well, Egyptian firstborn males had the privileged position.  They were the heirs to the throne, to property, title, and more.  They slept on Egyptian beds low to the ground, while their brothers and sisters slept on rooftops, sheds, and wagons.  The Israelites sitting up at their first Passover meal did not feel a thing, while the low traveling gas suffocated the privileged Egyptian males sleeping in their beds.

How many people participated in the Exodus?

The Bible says that 600,000 men left Egypt.  Adding women and children would have increased the total number to 2.5 million people, the size of modern-day Brooklyn, NY.  If the group were that large, there should be some evidence somewhere in the wilderness.

Cline, “if the Biblical numbers are correct, and you’ve got two and a half million people wandering around for 40 years, I would want to find entire landscapes denuded.  I’d want to find hundreds of sheep and goat carcasses, the bones.  Even if they didn’t ask for directions wandering for 40 years, there would be something.”

However, archaeologist Jim Hoffmeier of the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School says the number is probably far fewer, due to a mistranslation dating thousands of years.  The original Hebrew says there were 600 elith.

Hoffmeier, “The word elith can be translated 3 different ways:  it can be translated thousand.  Elith can also be translated to the clan.  The third option is that it’s a military unit, which I think is a more plausible scenario.”

According to Hoffmeier’s interpretation, instead of 600,000 men and their families, there were as few as 5000.

Hoffmeier, “we’re talking about a few tens of thousands, certainly not hundreds of thousands, adding women and children making it millions.”

How did the Red Sea part?  Where did the Israelites cross?

There are 3 main theories for the crossing of the Red Sea: a northern, central, and southern route.  Those supporting a northern route point to volcanic activity to explain the parting of the Red Sea.

Geo-archaeologist Floyd McCoy researches tsunamis at the University of Hawaii.  He says a tsunami might have created a land passage for the Israelites across a lagoon.  Although we think of a tsunami as a lot of water, what comes before is the disappearance of water.

Floyd, “Sometimes you get a warning that a tsunami is coming.  Sometimes that ocean disappears, and that’s called draw down.  Remember what a wave looks like; it’s sinusoidal:  bottom, top; trough, crest.  If the trough comes in first, that’s draw down; the ocean disappears.

The Israelites would have crossed on the northern edge of the Mediterranean ocean according to this theory.  However, several Egyptian military outposts have been found along a northern route into Israel dating to the Exodus period.  Many believe the Israelites would have avoided these military outposts when trying to leave Egypt.

In addition to the Biblical mistranslation of elith, Hoffmeier believes the Red Sea is a mistranslation, and the parting of the sea may have occurred closer to home.

Hoffmeier, “The Hebrew Yam Suf literally means sea of reeds.  When the Greek translators took the Hebrew Yam Suf and translated it into Greek, they translated it as Red Sea instead of Reed Sea.  So we’ve been stuck with a faulty translation for over 2000 years.”

Hoffmeier has been working with Prof Stephen O. Moshier, Geologist of Wheaton College.  Together they have pieces together satellite photos and ancient maps to identify a sea of reeds.  They’ve come up with Lake El Balah, on the eastern border of Egypt.  Jacobovici paints another picture of this scenario.

Hoffmeier, “It’s an ancient lake that survived until the 1850’s.  When the Suez Canal was put in, this ancient lake finally died.  Professor Manfred Biatek after conducting a thorough study of this area, proposed that this lake was known to the Egyptians as Ha Tufi, meaning the marshland, the marshy sea.  And the word tuf, the Egyptian word for reeds is the same word as suf in Hebrew.  So Yam Suf, he suggested, was a name derived from this body of water.  Now it is called the El Balah Lake.”  [In Hebrew it means the lake where God devoured.]

…

SJ, “Identifying the precise location of Yam Suf means that we can finally explain the miracle of the parting of the sea. This satellite photo clearly demonstrates that Lake El Balah is close to the edge of the Nile Delta, where soil accumulates and collapses from time to time.  As Pharaoh chased the Israelites to the shores Lake El Balah, the extreme seismic activity that caused the two plates and the Santorini eruption would have now caused the delta to start sliding into the eastern Mediterranean.  As this millions of tons of soil moved forward, the edge of the African plate, which had now released from its burden must have risen between one to one and a half meters.  In other words, the sea parted.

Water would have cascaded from higher ground to lower ground and drained from pools and sinkholes creating dry land for the Israelites to cross.  At this point, further seismic activity, or another collapse of the delta would have sent a major tsunami crashing against the coasts.

Pellegrino, “We get some glimpse of these tidal waves in Turkey where they carved out channel scablands 30 miles inland.  In order to do that at the shore, these waves would have had to have been more than half as high as the Empire State Building, and that’s exactly the description that we do have in the Bible.”

SJ, “If the tsunami went a mere 12 km inland, it would have reached Lake El Balah and engulfed the Egyptian army.  By this point, according to the Bible, the Israelites had advanced beyond the reach of the waves.

Those who support a central route believe Moses and his followers crossed an ancient frankincense trail across the central Sinai Peninsula.  In his younger days, Moses killed an Egyptian while defending a Hebrew slave.  The Bible says he fled to the land of Midian, in Modern Day Saudi Arabia.  It is likely that Moses would have followed the frankincense trail to Midian.  It is the shortest, most direct route to Midian.  If Moses had made the trek before, it is likely he would have followed it again.  Dr Lennart Moller of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden notes that the Bible says that

In the Book of First Kings, In approximately 950 BC, King Solomon’s is said to have built his navy at Ezion Geber near Elath, an ancient city on the northern coast of the Gulf of Aqaba.  According to the Hebrew text, this gulf where Solomon’s ships were said to harbor, was call yam suf.

He believes Newieva Beach is large enough to hold a large Israelite party, and it has some unusual features that make crossing there more likely than other places.

The geography of the Gulf of Aqaba also resembles descriptions of the Yam Suf God once parted for Israel.  Aqaba is extremely deep, plunging more than a mile in some spots.  It is adjacent to a dense wilderness of rugged mountains.  It is located clearly outside the borders of ancient Egypt, as recognized during the time of Moses.  These similarities to the scriptures have led Lennart Moller and others to theorize the Gulf of Aqaba is the Red Sea of the Exodus story.  If they are correct, then 2 distinct possibilities for a crossing point exist:  the first is located on the bottom of the Sinai Peninsula, on the Straits of Tyron.  This channel 5 miles across is one of the most popular recreation areas on earth, as spectacular reefs and marine life attract divers from throughout the world, but the topography of the sea floor here would have made crossing highly unlikely.

For less than a mile offshore, a subterranean canyon plunges nearly 1000 feet at a grade so steep, passage on foot through jagged coral beds would have been virtually impossible, even if the waters were miraculously removed.  70 miles north of the straits, near the center o the Aqaba coast, another potential crossing site extends into the sea.  It is called the Newieva Peninsula.

Moller was attracted to Newieva Beach because of some interesting coral formations.

Moller, “The first time I was diving there, of course we were then looking for possible artifacts, and I had seen some pictures of what we could look for.  I was skeptical and excited because if this is the place for the crossing, then of course, that’s a big thing, so I was excited about that.  But I was also skeptical because 3500 years—that’s a long time.  But if Newieva is the crossing site, then of course you would expect to find remains of the Egyptian army.”

Like others who had explored Newiva before him, Moller immediately recognized the difficulty of this search.

Moller, “If we assume a number of artifacts were spread out on the sea bed, sooner or later corals would start to grow on them, and of course if you have an array of some coral all growing on something, it’s very hard to distinguish the structure that was there in the very beginning.”

Though the coral complicates any search here, it may have been instrumental in preserving the shapes of artifacts, for coral is a living organism that will not begin to grow on a foundation of sand or silt.  Instead, it must first attach itself to a solid object where it will sometimes conform to the shape of its host.

Moller, “So for instance if it were to grow on a wooden artifact, the wood would normally disappear in the sea waters after a time.  But if you have corals growing on the wooden artifact, the corals could have the shape of the wooden artifact and then the coral would consume the wood and material over a periods of time, but still keep the shape of the wooden artifacts.”

During the course of his exploration, Moller observed the pattern of coral growth at Neweiva differed from other parts of the gulf.  Unlike the coral at the northern and southern ends of Aqaba which often forms large dense reefs, sometimes covering acres, the formations at Nuweiva beach are generally smaller, and scattered randomly across the bottom of the sea floor.  Divers familiar with the area have compared the distribution of coral here to a junkyard, and the aftermath of a disaster.  This description is fitting, and among the strange formations in these waters, many display features indicative of human engineering.

Moller, “When we dive, and when we film, at the Neweiva location, we look for certain structures, and you try to look for 90 degree angles, or circular objects, wheel like structures, so that is what you scan for when you dive.  There are situations where you see something that looks like an axle, a hub, some that looks like a wheel, and you say to yourself, this is a coral reef.  This coral grew on an artifact, and that is what’s different to me when I compare corals at other locations around the world.”

Since the earliest explorations at Newieva, one distinctive type of formation has often been identified on the sea floor, a slender table-like structure, sometimes standing on end with a coral encrusted base, a straight shaft, and a circular top.

Moller, “It’s a 90 degree angle, and right angle between something that looks like an axle and a wheel.  You can see this in different varieties, and it looks very different from normal coral.  It is like a man-made structure with a coral roof on it.

While most of the possible artifacts found on the coast of Newieva are covered with coral, one significant discovery was not.

Moller, “There is one find at the Neweiva location that is of great interest, and this is the gilded wheel.  It is a wooden basic structure of the wheel, and it is covered with gold or electrum, a mixture of silver gold, and corals have not been able to grow on it.  It’s been fairly well preserved, although it’s very fragile.  It seems the wooden content has been dissolved.  You could break it if you try to remove it.”

After its discovery, the fragile wheel-shaped veneer was photographed and left in place on the sea floor.

Later analysis revealed that its dimensions and design resembled four-spoked chariot wheels painted on a 18^th Dynasty tomb wall near the Biblical date of the Exodus.

Moller referenced a southern crossing point as well, but dismissed it because of the steep cliffs and jagged coral.  Proponents of a southern route believe a volcanic land bridge may have appeared at this area.

Stephen J. O’Meara, Volcanologist, Volcano Watch International flies over an active volcano.  “Imagine the Jews, reaching this massive land bridge, formed by lava.  Here we have earth being created before our eyes.  You can see the lava flow going into the ocean on a new bench of land.  This is a very highly unstable platform of land.  The bench will not last for long.  This whole area can fall in just a matter of minutes.  Massive collapses have occurred here in Hawaii almost in the blink of an eye.”

The Red Sea forms part of the Great African Rift System.  The entire region has an explosive volcanic history.

O’Meara, “Although we see a very small lava flow, you have to in your mind scale this up to a massive volcanic eruption 3200 years ago.  It enters the water, the water boils, it disappears.  It’s enough to choke valleys and cause land bridges.”

In O’Meara’s scenario, an underwater eruption could have created a temporary unstable lava bridge.  The surface layer of lava cools quickly when it hits the water.  The Israelites could have crossed over this new land.

O’Meara walking on lava, near bright red lava flow, “But what’s amazing about this lava, even though it’s so hot that I have to keep walking right at this moment, that if I had to, to save my life, I could wait, walk over this lava in 10 minutes.”

This new unsupported land could have quickly disintegrated.

O’Meera, “and then when the Egyptians were on their chariots, [hops around because of the heat] and they tried to cross this same bed, the lava gave way.”

The collapse of this land bridge would have plunged pharaoh’s army into the sea.

O’Meara, “It makes sense.  Volcanoes are the only thing that makes sense.  The Bible is just filled with volcanic references and especially in Exodus out from the plagues to the parting of the Red Sea, and seeing pillars of fire, and mountains quaking, and burning bushes, all of them just in Exodus.  You imagine, you come up here and see this and you are not a scientist.  There were no scientists back then.  Listen to it!  [lava crackling]  It’s talking to you!  It’s written in the Bible, God says, ‘I am the rock.’  There you are!”

Where is Mount Sinai?

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, there are several proposed locations for Mount Sinai.  The traditional location is at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula.  Tradition for this site goes back to the 4^th Century.  After Moses escaped to Midian, he found the Burning Bush.

Many scholars believe that Mount Sinai is in the Land of Midian in modern day Saudi Arabia.

Separated by the Red Sea and the Egyptian army in the Sinai Peninsula, Moses married a Midianite woman, tended the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, and lived in obscurity for years, until the day he wandered to the base of Mount Sinai.  There God spoke through a burning bush and revealed his plan to free Israel from bondage.  Given the Biblical record, some believe that Mount Sinai must be in Midian, but is there any other evidence to support this theory?

Several Jewish documents, some written several hundred years before Christian traditions, locate the mountain of God in Midianite territory.  In 250 BC, a council of 70 Hebrew scholars translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek for the first time.  Their translation of the Exodus account presupposed that Mount Sinai stood in the Arabian Peninsula.  Three centuries later, the Jewish philosopher Philo placed the mountain “east of the Sinai Peninsula” and south of Palestine.  At the same time, the apostle Paul, who was educated under the Rabbi Gamaliel, also located Mount Sinai in Arabia (Galatians 4:25).

Kerkeslager, “So Paul and Philo, when they used the word Arabia, they’re not thinking of the Sinai Peninsula.  Once again, I think that point needs to be emphasized very clearly.  In terminology, Arabia in the 1^st century, Greek geographers usually had in mind the Arabian Peninsula.  That’s how that term is used.”

Perhaps that most specific description of Mount Sinai’s location can be traced to the first century historian Josephus, who wrote “it was the highest of mountains…” near “…the city of Madian.”  Shortly after this account, Madian was identified in the Arabian Peninsula by the Greek geographer Ptolemy.  1900 years later, archaeologists excavated this city that according to ancient records had once stood near Mount Sinai.  The ruins of Madian lie just outside the modern day town of El-bod near Saudi Arabia’s northwest coast.

…

Viveka Ponten of Stockholm, Sweden said, “I have always been interested in archaeological finds that could confirm the truths of the Bible.  I have wanted come to Saudi Arabia to see for myself—I want to be able to say ‘I have seen this place’.”

In 1996, Vivika Ponten entered Saudi Arabia on a work permit.  During the following years, she made several trips to Jebel Elboz.

Ponten, “It was very difficult to find the mountain.  I think I had been there for 7 months before I came to the mountain the first time.  We went around looking for it in the desert.  I did 5 long day trips—5 different locations, just looking and looking for this place.”

Throughout her search, Ponten encountered a strong local tradition that Moses had once lived in Arabia.

Ponten, “It seems to be a tradition among the locals there that this mountain range is called Jebel-Musa.  They call it that, and many places have the name of Moses, like their wells, that they call Adien-Musa, or Bijan-Musa, which means ‘the well of Moses’.”

When Ponten finally reached Jebel Alboz, her attention was drawn to specific features of the mountain that resembled the Biblical description.  Most prominent was a jagged peak, more than 8000 feet in elevation, and blackened, as if scorched by fire.  [Deuteronomy 9:18, the Lord descended on it in fire.)

At its base, an enormous pile of boulders, at least 15 feet high and 60 feet across (Exodus 32:5, he built an altar in front of the calf.)  The flattened top of this structure had the appearance of being man-made, and etched into its rock faces were petro glyphs of bovine creatures, cattle and bulls.  The distinctive horns and some of the inscriptions resemble pictures of ancient Egyptian Apis bulls.  Could these stones be the remains of an Israelite altar, once built at the base of a holy mountain?  Conclusive investigation is not possible at this time, for Saudi law severely limits all foreign research.

Ponten, “They have put up archaeological signs that tell this is an archaeological area, and you’re not supposed to trespass here.  It’s evident that the Arabs themselves consider this to be some old site of archaeological interest.

Satellite photos of the area have revealed another geographical feature that parallels the Biblical account: a sprawling plain more than 10,000 acres.  Flat, surrounded by mountains, and adjacent to the dried bed of an ancient river, it could have provided an ideal place for the Israelite encampment 3500 years ago.

Just west of the mountain stands another link to the possible Exodus account: a towering rock, 60 feet high.  It is split from top to bottom, and evidence of water erosion is etched into its base.  Many features of Jebel Alboz reflect the Biblical account of Mount Sinai.  As the highest mountain of northwest Arabia, it matches ancient Jewish historical records.

Kerkeslager, “Based on the textual evidence, Jebel Alboz is as good of a guess as any; it might even be the best guess.  It’s definitely better than anything in the Sinai Peninsula, and probably better than any other guess that we have.  It would be nice to have some excavation, and that’s really [why] we need excavations.  We need somebody who is competent, trained archeologist to go in and record the material carefully, submit it for dispute and debate among other scholars, because there are too many gaps in our knowledge.”

The intriguing similarities between Jebel Alboz, and the Biblical record may indeed stimulate new investigation here. Yet whether or not future excavations confirm this site as the actual mountain of God, a considerable body of documentary evidence indicates that Mount Sinai is located somewhere in northwestern Arabia.

Others believe Mount Sinai is somewhere on the Sinai Peninsula.  Jacobovici discusses another possible location discovered by Prof Uzi Avner.

Holy mountains in the desert are marked by ancient, open-air, rock sanctuaries.  In this area there is only 1 mountain surrounded by sanctuaries.  Today that mountain is called Jebel-Hashem el-Tarif.

Although this entire are is in the middle of a military zone, we got to it.  This mountain perfectly fits all the criteria for Mount Sinai.  It is surrounded by a huge plateau that could have accommodated hundreds of thousands of Israelites.  It is easily accessible.  It literally sits on the main trans-Sinai highway, which follows the topography of the ancient route.

Prof. Uzi Avner, Arava Environmental Institute, Israel, “The Mountain is not very high, only about 200 meters above the plateau, but it is very conspicuous.  You can see it from a distance.  The unique point is that it is surrounded by actually the largest concentration of open air sanctuaries that we now today in the desert.”

Conclusions?

So, do we need to believe that any of these scenarios?  Both skeptics and believers seem to agree that faith and science are two different animals.

Hoffmeier, “For people that have religious convictions, they don’t need proof.”

Cornuke, “it all boils down to, this is a supernatural event, and you can’t explain it in any other way.”

Ultimately, the power of Exodus lies more in faith than in science.

Cooney, “There’s no real scientific proof that the Exodus took place, but as a Christian or as a Jew, you shouldn’t need scientific proof to be a person of faith.  Faith doesn’t need to be scientifically proven, nor should it be; it’s faith.”

Cameron, “It seems that the Bible, geology, and archaeology, are all telling the same story.  But skeptics, who would like to regard the Exodus as myth, might resist the idea that it actually happened, because this would imply that God does indeed exist.  Believers on the other hand may feel that a scientific explanation of the Biblical story takes God out of the equation. “

SJ, “But in the Book of Exodus, God does not suspend nature, he manipulates it.  In other words, according to the Bible, we should be able to understand the science behind the miracles.  The greatest miracle of them all was the parting of the sea.

Rabbi David Wolpe believes that the historicity of the events in the Bible should not matter; faith is not determined by the same criteria as empirical truth.

So, what do you think?  Does any of this convince you of the historicity of the Exodus?  Do you think the Exodus is myth?

Palm Sunday

It is always celebrated exactly one week prior to Easter.  The celebration refers to Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey.  It is one event captured in all 4 gospels, but only The Gospel of John talks about people waving Palm fronds in front of Jesus.  The palm branch was a symbol of triumph and of victory in Jewish tradition, and it is evident that many Jews believed Jesus was more of a political/military king than a spiritual king.  There’s some interesting information at this Wikipedia Entry.  MSNBC has a nice photo of Pope Benedict the 16th celebrating Palm Sunday Mass earlier today.

I have often wondered why Palm Sunday is completely ignored by Mormons.  Palm Sunday is the beginning of the last week in the life of Jesus, and I just can’t figure out why Mormons wouldn’t want to celebrate with the rest of Christendom.  Do you have any ideas?

Passover

I didn’t realize that Passover is an eight-day celebration.  I remember attending a Passover meal and celebration with a college friend–it was a lot of fun!  I must say that Jews really know how to celebrate, and I think Mormons could learn some celebration techniques from them.  Passover is one of the most important Jewish holidays, which is also known as Pesach,  Chag he-Aviv, Chag ha-Matzoth and Z’man Cherutenu.

As you’re probably aware, the Passover celebration commemorates Moses leading the Jewish liberation from Egyptian slavery approximately 1500 years ago.  ABC annually broadcasts Cecil B. DeMille’s film, The 10 Commandments on Easter Sunday.  Moses told the Egyptian pharaoh that if he did not let the Israelites go, God would issue 10 plagues to afflict Egypt.  The term ‘Passover’ specifically refers to the 10th plague.  Moses told pharaoh that God would kill all the firstborn sons of Egypt.  Moses instructed the Israelites to spread the blood of a lamb on their doorposts so the destroying angel would “pass-over” their homes, leaving the firstborn Israelite sons alive.  This last plague finally caused pharaoh to release the Israelites from slavery, and the Exodus story follows.  I plan another post specifically devoted to the Exodus theories, but I want to talk specifically about the Passover and these 10 plagues in this post.

A 2-time Emmy award winner for investigative journalism named Simcha Jacobicivi (pronounced Sim-ka Yah-cob-oh-vitch) teamed up with Titanic Director James Cameron to put together a documentary titled The Exodus Decoded.  It aired on the History Channel in 2006; you can rent it via Netflix.  Jacobovici is not a stranger to controversy.  You may be familiar with another documentary of his titled The Lost Tomb of Jesus in which he claims to have discovered the bones of Jesus and his family in Jerusalem.  He has another documentary titled Quest for the Lost Tribes in which he believes he has discovered the Lost tribes in areas such as Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, China, Burma, and Africa.  Here is a website questioning Jacobovici’s Exodus claims, and another website questioning the Lost Tomb of Jesus DVD.

Jacobovici makes a very interesting case for the 10 plagues of Egypt; he believes they were the result of the Santorini Volcano eruption of 1500 BC.  He notes similarities between the Passover narrative and a volcanic eruption in 1986 in Cameroon.  I must say that there are some startling similarities, and Jacobovici seems to have some very interesting parallels.  Let’s talk about the actual 10 plagues of Egypt.

1.  The Nile will be turned to blood. Jacobovici notes that in 1984 and 1986, separate volcanic eruptions turned Lake Monoun and Lake Nyos in Cameroon blood red.  Dr George King of the University of Michigan explained that both of these lakes contained high levels of iron.  An underwater natural gas leak created a disturbance, turning the lake red in color.  Jacobovici notes that the Nile is near a fault line.  An underground gas leak could have turned the river blood red as mentioned in the Bible.

2.  A frog infestation.  Jacobovici says that all living things in the Nile would have died due to lack of oxygen in the water resulting from the gas leak and subsequent iron stirred up in the water.  However, frogs would have been able hop out of the water, explaining the frog infestation.

3.  Lice.  With all the dead fish, lice would have been a problem.

4.  Flies.  Once again, dead fish would have attracted flies

5.  An epidemic.  Disease would have spread to everyone following the death of so many fish in the Nile.

6.  Boils.  Jacobovici notes that many people developed Boils following the 1986 eruption at Lake Nyos, Cameroon, and shows several photos of these awful boils.  Jocobovici explains that “It turns out that carbon dioxide mixed with air put people into a kind of coma, reducing circulation to the skin and causing the kind of boils described in the Bible as plague #6.”

7.  An Unusual Hail storm.  I’ll abbreviate Jacobovici as SJ in the quotes below; I want to quote directly from the DVD here.

Rabbi Chaim Sacknovitz, “The seventh plague was the plague of hail, but the Bible describes hail in a very unique manner.  The hail was together with ice with fire, the idea being that the fire and the ice mixed together, that they coexisted together.  The Bible then describes God as making a miracle within a miracle, taking opposites in nature, and having them coexist together.”

SJ, “Incredibly, there is an Egyptian papyrus that tells the exact same story.  It’s called the Ipuwer Papyrus and is dated by many scholars to the Hyksos period.  The Ipuwer Papyrus specifically states that Egypt was struck by a strange hail, made of ice and fire mingled together.  Another piece of the puzzle has fallen into place.  It now seems clear that the biblical and Egyptian texts are describing what scientists call ‘accretionary lapilli”, volcanic hail, and could have only come from earthquake induced Santorini volcano.

Dr. Catherine Hickson, Geological Survey of Canada, “When the ash cloud goes up into great distances in the stratosphere, essentially what happens is that you have moisture in the atmosphere, you also have a lot of water vapor in the cloud itself, so small fragments of ash and crystal actually form the nucleus, very similar to a hail stone.”

8.  Plague of Locusts. Jacobovici says the volcano causing weather changes, and this hail storm would have excited the locusts.  He says,

Cold weather produces a drop in their body temperature and makes them land en masse.  The Volcanic hail and weather disruptions caused by the Santorini eruption would have forced great clouds of locusts which are common in this part of the world to suddenly land in Egypt.  As the hail storm cleared, and the temperature rose, so did the locusts, exactly as the Biblical account describes.

9.  Darkness. Following the Mount Saint Helens eruption, ash blocked out the sun and made it appear very dark.  Jacobovici quotes scientists as saying the cloud of ash from the Santorini eruption could have been 40 km from top to bottom, 200 km across–that would be approximately 25 miles high, and 122 miles across.  He quotes Prof Jean-Daniel Stanley of the Smithsonian Institution saying that ash was found at the ancient Egyptian capital of Avaris:  “We had to look through 10 to 20,000 grains to find one ash grain.  So, we found a total of 40 ash grains.  Not all ash looks the same.  Ash has an imprint aspect.  The ash particles that we find in the northern and northeastern Nile Delta are individual grains that came in from Santorini.”

10.  The Firstborn of Egypt die, and Israelite children are spared.  Jacobovici has an explanation for this phenomenon as well.  Once again, he cites the Cameroon eruption at Lake Nyos in 1986.

SJ, “The final plague took place at midnight, after Moses ordered the Israelites to sit down to what became known as the first Passover meal.  While the Israelites were involved in the Passover ritual, the Egyptians slept, and then it happened: every firstborn male Egyptian died.  Every house was affected.  No one has ever been able to offer up a plausible scientific explanation for the death of the firstborn until now.  According to our scenario, at this point in the sequence of events that began some 6 months earlier, the gas leaks that set the chain of plates in motion would have finally erupted.  Carbon dioxide would have seeped to the surface, and being heavier than air, would have killed animals and sleeping people before it dissipated harmlessly into the atmosphere.

In case you think all this is conjecture, consider this.  It happened in exactly the same way in 1986 at Lake Nyos, Cameroon.  On the fateful night of August 21, the villagers at Nyos went to sleep.  They couldn’t have known that the carbon dioxide gas which had turned the lake blood red, was now reaching a critical point.  As the people of Lake Nyos slept, the top of the lake was keeping the carbon down like a cap in a pop bottle.  But then the earth rumbled, and a landslide took place sending rock into the water, disturbing the surface pressure and releasing the gas.  The gas then rose to the surface, and like some alien monster, emerged from the water, droplets forming on it, turning the invisible gas  into a visible fog.  The fog then rolled across the water, and across the land, suffocating everything in its path.  And as suddenly as it appeared, it disappeared, dissolving harmlessly into the atmosphere.

The next day those who had been sleeping on higher ground woke up to find some 1800 people dead, hundreds of cattle and small animals also dead, all around there was deadly silence.

Villager, “I was sleeping among the dead people, inside the house, some of them were outside.  Animals every where lying cows, dogs, everything.  All the family, we were 56 but 53 died.”

SJ, “After the death of the first born, Pharaoh finally relented, letting Moses take his people out of Egypt.  According to the Bible, what made pharaoh give up was the selectivity of the deaths: the fact that it was only male, firstborn who died.  It was this selectivity that demonstrated to him that God himself was involved.  How can we account for this?

Well, Egyptian firstborn males had the privileged position.  They were the heirs to the throne, to property, title, and more.  They slept on Egyptian beds low to the ground, while their brothers and sisters slept on rooftops, sheds, and wagons.  The Israelites sitting up at their first Passover meal did not feel a thing, while the low traveling gas suffocated the privileged Egyptian males sleeping in their beds.  This conclusion is backed by the archaeology.  At Avaris, Professor Manfred Biatek has found mass graves dating to before and during our date for the Exodus.  The earlier graves are classic examples of ancient epidemics and killed men, women, and children.  But at the time of the Exodus, the mass grave he found has only males in it.

Biatek, “Here you see bones of burials in the early 18^th Dynasty.  They are all male victims. By the size of the graves, and the number of individuals in the graves, we think people died in rapid succession and the individuals were just thrown into the pit, some of them lying on their stomach, some lying on their side.  Some of the people were just 20 cm deep and just some dust put on top of them.  The bible says that pharaoh’s son also died during the plagues of the firstborn.  Since we claim that Ahmose is the pharaoh of the Exodus, we should be able to prove that Ahmose son died young.

Searching the Cairo museum, we found Ahmose’ son, the prince had died young, he was only 12.  For the first time ever, we have a face and a name to a victim of the biblical plagues.

So, I found this to be a really interesting scientific explanation for the plagues.  What do you think?  I found James Cameron and Simcha’s final words regarding these plagues interesting.  They discuss how these explanations will bother both skeptics and believers.

Cameron, “It seems that the Bible, geology, and archaeology, are all telling the same story.  But skeptics, who would like to regard the Exodus as myth, might resist the idea that it actually happened, because this would imply that God does indeed exist.  Believers on the other hand may feel that a scientific explanation of the Biblical story takes God out of the equation.“

SJ, “But in the book of Exodus, God does not suspend nature, he manipulates it.  In other words, according to the Bible, we should be able to understand the science behind the miracles.

Easter

You’ll notice that date of Easter varies considerably from year to year.  The reason for this is because of it’s relationship to the Passover.  Christ died during the Passover festival, and rose on the first day of the week (Sunday.)  There’s a Jewish joke that goes like this.

“When is Chanukkah this year?”

The other man smiled slyly and replied, “Same as always: the 25th of Kislev.”

There is a really interesting article on the Jewish calendar at Judaism 101.  (It’s a fantastic website.)  The Jewish calendar tries to correlate

the rotation of the Earth about its axis (a day); the revolution of the moon about the Earth (a month); and the revolution of the Earth about the sun (a year).

…

Months are either 29 or 30 days, corresponding to the 29½-day lunar cycle. Years are either 12 or 13 months, corresponding to the 12.4 month solar cycle.The lunar month on the Jewish calendar begins when the first sliver of moon becomes visible after the dark of the moon. In ancient times, the new months used to be determined by observation. When people observed the new moon, they would notify the Sanhedrin. When the Sanhedrin heard testimony from two independent, reliable eyewitnesses that the new moon occurred on a certain date, they would declare the rosh chodesh (first of the month) and send out messengers to tell people when the month began.

So, you can see that a 12 or 13 month year (they have leap months instead of leap days) can wreak havoc on knowing when holidays will be as we try to correlate the Jewish calendar with our Gregorian Calendar.  As Christians were debating when to celebrate Easter, the consensus was to keep Easter near the Passover festival.  As a result, the date of Easter changes with the changes in celebration of the Passover Festival.  Another Jewish joke says that every Jewish holiday can be boiled down to “They tried to kill us.  Let’s eat.”

I wish Mormons celebrated, rather than simply observed, the Easter holiday.  It would be nice to have more of a celebration of Easter; I really like Easter gets the short shrift for celebrations, but I think that Christmas celebrations in our church are lacking as well.  Two years ago, I posted the question, Why don’t Mormons celebrate Easter? It is my #2 post over the past 2 years. I always receive a spike in hits for that post around Easter.  If you do a Google search asking “do Mormons celebrate Easter”, my post comes up on the #2 position.  I expect that as Easter approaches this week, my 2 year old post will get another spike in views, and will probably be #1 by the end of the month.

So to answer my own question is, yes, we observe Easter, but we don’t celebrate Easter.  Do you wish there was a greater emphasis on Easter?

This quote comes from an episode of History’s Mysteries: Sodom and Gomorrah.  It was originally aired in 2000 on the History Channel.  (If you have Netflix, you can download it to your computer or television free with your subscription.  Here is the link.)  I’ve really enjoyed learning about archaeology evidence concerning these two Biblical cities.  I’m going to reference 2 videos here, and I’ll color-code quotes from each.  In addition to History’s Mysteries (highlighted in red), I’m also going to reference the 2006 series called Digging for the Truth: The Real Sin City: Sodom and Gomorrah (highlighted in purple.)

The Bible mentions 5 cities of the plain:  Zoar, Sodom, Gomorrah, Adman, and Zeboiim.  These cities date from the Early Bronze Age, approximately 3300-2050 BC.  William F. Albright, the “Father of Modern Biblical Archaeology” (from Johns Hopkins University), led a a team of archaeologists in 1924 into Jordan along the eastern side of the Dead Sea specifically to find evidence of Sodom and Gomorrah.  During the expedition, they discovered massive amounts of pottery dating to the Bronze Age.  They started digging, and discovered a site which is known today as Bab Edh-dhra.

Following the discovery of the site, Albright wrote an editorial indicating this could be a possible site for one of the infamous Biblical cities.  Strangely, Dr Walter Rast of Valparaiso University (Indiana) says that Albright decided to walk away from the site.  According to Rast, Albright decided

“That it probably would have been best if these sites are never found because of the evil that is associated with these sites, in the Biblical tradition.  Don’t undo God’s work.  Let it be left under the earth.”

Due to political instability in Jordan, the site was not studied again until the 1960’s.  Paul Lapp, director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem began picked up where Albright left off, and soon found a massive cemetery.  At first it was believed that this massive cemetery might be the result of the massive destruction and loss of life associated with the Bible story.  However, carbon dating revealed that the cemetery held citizens over a 1300 year period from 3300 BC on down to 2000 BC, nullifying the idea that this large group of people died in a single catastrophe. Unfortunately, Lapp died in a swimming accident in 1970, and was not able to shed further light on the site.

In 1973, Walter Rast (of Valparaiso University) and Thomas Schaub, (a doctoral student at the Jerusalem University) discovered a second city just 8 miles from Bab Edh-dhra, which has been named Numeira.  Pottery remains were similar to Bab Edh-dhra, and this city had a more interesting demise.  There is evidence that the entire city was burned.  Was it arson from a conquering army, or fire and brimstone as it says in the Bible?  Archaeologists can’t tell, but it was definitely burned.  Quoting Schaub from the video,

“At Bab Edh-dhra, we have several things that indicate that the town had a violent interruption in its life.  There are walls severely tilted, almost to a 50 degree angle, walls that have collapsed and slid down.”

The scarred ruins discovered at Numeira, paint even a more shocking portrait of a fiery end.

Schaub, “We find the remains of that destruction right on the surface.  That’s the striking thing about this site of Numiera.  It’s so well-preserved.”

Rast, “When Schaub and I were walking around Numeira, we were able to see already evidence of a tremendous depth of destruction for this site.  Everywhere we have excavated, whether at the East end, or the West end, or the south side, we have found a deep level of destruction and debris.”

Schaub, “There is also along with fire, the collapse of a tower, and under that tower, we found skeletons of individuals—very dramatic exposure.”

Rast, “But they were not buried there, they were caught in some sort of destruction. They had a kind of character that was similar to what we have found much more extensively in Pompei.”

These 2 cities of the plains met their fates together, as in the fates of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Brimstone means literally “burning stone.”  In the Dead Sea region, highly flammable sulfur deposits are easily found in this region.  Josh Bernstein, host of Digging for the Truth, demonstrates how easy sulfur is to find and burn in the area.  If there was an earthquake releasing oil, natural gas, sulfur, and/or tar, it’s easy to imagine fire and brimstone raining down on Numeira.  There have been 17 earthquakes in the past 100 years—it is a well-known area of earthquakes.  National Geographic has a very dramatic simulation of what might have happened in this short 3 minute video.

But that’s not all.  Remember, there are 5 “cities of the plain” mentioned in the Bible, not just the infamous twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Greek Orthodox Church of St George in Madaba, Jordan dates from the 6^th century AD.  The church was restored in the 19^th century.  The stone floor inside the church has mosaic from the Byzantine era containing a map.  The map is not complete, but Zoar, one of the 5 cities of the plan, is shown on the map.  Zoar is significant in the Biblical story, because Lot passed nearby as he escaped from Sodom and Gomorrah.

The map had intrigued Konstantinos Politis, director of the British Museum for years.  When superimposed on a modern map of the area, it seems to be quite accurate.  Zoar is shown to be on the southeastern edge of the Dead Sea, along with the image of another church in the area.

Armed with this map, Politis began looking for Zoar.   In 1987, Politis discovered an ancient monastery in a mountainous region southeast of the Dead Sea.  At the monastery, Politis found a Greek inscription: “St Lot, please bless these servants, April 605 AD.”

Politis, “It’s not a small chapel, it’s quite a large church built in the slopes, so there was quite a lot of effort and money that went into the effort.  The people who built this church were people of the Byzantine period, roughly from the 5^th, 6^th, 7^th centuries AD.  These are the early Christians.”

While an impressive discovery in its own right, a chance accident brings it to the forefront of Biblical archaeology.

Politis, “On September 15, 1991, two workmen were digging in the mountainside on the site and they came across this hall and it turned out to be a cave, and almost immediately I thought of the Old Testament: Genesis.  This can’t possibly be Lot’s cave? [He chuckles]”

As Politis searched the cave, he discovered a discovered pottery dating from 2500-1700 BC.  Apparently the cave was occupied by someone dating to the Early Bronze Age.

According to the Bible, Lot and his 2 daughters flee Sodom in the wake of its destruction.  They pass through the city of Zoar on their way to a cave.  This passage provides a clue to Politis’ discovery.

Politis, “The site is located about 2 km away from ancient Zoar, where Lot escaped the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, which some people have associated with Bab Edh-dhra and Numeira.”

Here’s another archaeological site in the right place and from the right time.  Could this really be Lot’s cave, the place where Lot’s daughters seduce him in order to repopulate the world?”

Wolpe, “If you claim that you found a cave where somebody commit incest 2000 years ago, [this] is a claim which could not possibly by any stretch of the imagination be proved.  It makes no more sense than pointing to any other cave and saying that’s Lot’s Cave because there is no evidence remaining of what happened, or if it happened, or how it happened, or where it happened.”

Politis, “Archaeological, scientifically, I am quite convinced that we have the church and the cave which the early Christians believed was Lot’s cave.  Whether Lot himself lived there and stayed with his daughters, I don’t know.  But to actually prove that this was Lot himself is impossible.”

I have to say, I find it really odd that these early Christians would build a monument where incest occurred.  David Wolpe rabbi of Sinai Temple (Los Angeles, California) explained the mind-set of Lot’s daughters, and why they would try to get pregnant by their father.

Wolpe, “What seems to have happened after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is that Lot’s daughters believed they were the last human beings left on earth.”

Intent on preserving their own lineage and all of humanity, Lot’s daughters devise a plan.  They come to him with great quantities of wine.

Wolpe, “They got their father drunk and had incestuous relationships with him in order to repopulate the world.  It says something very human about the desire to see life proliferate, even after a terrible catastrophe.

This is such an odd idea to me.  I can’t imagine believing what it would be like to think you’re the only human beings left on the planet.  Does it really seem the situation is so desperate that they needed to have incestuous relations?  They really odd thing to me is the idea that the sin of Sodom was sexual relations.  Isn’t this a bit of irony?  Is there any evidence of Sodom’s sinful sexual nature from these sites?

Rast, “You do have a couple of cases of syphilis as evidence in the bone material, but that would be natural for a community back at this time.  Sexually transmitted diseases would have been the case everywhere as a possibility in ancient society.”

Schaub, “But it would take a real stretch of the imagination to relate what we find in the ground to the decadence that seems to be associated with the Biblical story.”

Fontaine, “We sometimes find when we look at Bible stories, that people think they know what they say, but when we look more closely, we sometimes find the text is ambivalent.”

After close study of the Sodom and Gomorrah story in Genesis, many scholars have come to doubt its true intent was to condemn sexual deviance.

Fontaine, “The sin of the Sodomites is one of the biggest mysteries about this whole story.  The Bible deliberately makes it ambiguous in the book of Genesis as to what that sin might be.”

Schaub, “It’s just the one incident where people come and demand that, say in the story about Sodom in chapter 19, that Lot gives these men out to them so that they may know them—a sexual term, or has sexual intercourse with them.  That one incident really has to be tied into the larger picture of the few chapters which is really about hospitality.

Fontaine, “In the Jewish legendary material, again and again when we hear stories of Sodom, it’s not about sexual deviance; it’s about the people’s unwillingness to give charity to their poor, and their wretched treatment of strangers.”

Given the seeming primitive beliefs concerning adultery, taking the name of God in vain, is the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah really the idea that they didn’t take care of strangers very well?

Let’s turn to Lot’s wife, and the story of her turning into a pillar of salt.  Josh Bernstein talked with Rami G Khouri, Author of a book titled, Antiquities of the Jordan Rift Valley.

Khouri, “It’s a message.  It’s a moral message which is personified in these physical remains.”

This 20 foot tall salt-encrusted pillar is known as Lot’s Wife.  Bernstein refers to this pillar as a “Biblical scarecrow.”

Bernstein, “So if we’re looking at this metaphorically, and not literally, what’s the message?”

Khouri, “I think the message from the Biblical text certainly—and it goes throughout the whole Old Testament—is that people should obey God—they should be faithful, and trust God.  If you don’t obey God, you get zapped.   [This is] throughout the Bible.

Bernstein, “So the people could use this as a bogeyman.  They could say ‘you better listen to God when he speaks, because otherwise you’re going to turn into that pillar.’”

Khouri, “That’s right.  I think that’s the aim of the story.  Of course many stories of the Bible are like this.“

Wolpe has another perspective on the story.

“His wife was told not to look back, which has been symbolically taken as the idea that in some ways, when people leave evil practices, they pine for them; they still wish they could do what they used to do.”

So, what are we to make of these archaeological finds?  Is there enough evidence and explanation of Sodom and Gomorrah for you?  On the one hand, Rami Khouri says,

“These stories, these narratives, are based on facts that we can prove in many cases: geological facts, geographical facts, chronological facts, and historical facts…I think there were cities that were destroyed.  You will certainly find sites where the archaeological evidence synchronizes rather compellingly with the Biblical evidence.”

David Wolpe, “It would be remarkable if certain things in the Bible were proved to be archaeologically true, but it wouldn’t prove faith, because faith is by definition that which cannot be proven by empirical evidence.  You don’t use scientific criteria to prove faith.  I’m not looking to prove God through rocks and stones and ancient remains.”

….

Wolpe, “It is impossible to know if these cities are Sodom and Gomorrah even if you find evidence of destruction, because we don’t have in the Bible sufficient description of exactly what was in the cities to correspond to actual archaeological findings.  So, I remain a skeptic.”

Schaub, “Is there any possibility that these 2 sites could be the Biblical sites of Sodom and Gomorrah?  I’d say, ‘yes’, there is probably a connection.”

Dr Walter Rast, Valparaiso University, “But beyond circumstantial evidence, we don’t have much more to go on than the circumstantial evidence.  It cannot really stand by itself as really final proof.  You can set it forth as theory, and I wouldn’t mind setting it forth as theory.”

What do you make of all this?  Are the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah simply fables, or could there be some evidence to indicate some of these events actually transpired?

Balaam has to be one of the most intriguing characters in the Bible.  He is one of only 7 gentile prophets mentioned in the Bible.  The others are Beor (Balaam’s father), Job and his 4 friends.  My favorite part of the story of Balaam is the talking donkey–it is the only place where an animal speaks (unless you count the serpent in the Garden of Eden.)   Ascertaining Balaam’s character can be a bit of a challenge.  On the one hand, the story of Balaam in Numbers 22-24  says the he not only talked with God, but a destroying angel appears to prevent him from cursing Israel.  On the other hand, he is referred to as “the wicked one” in Revelations.  So which is he?

Let’s get some background and a brief synopsis of the story of Balaam.

Wikipedia tells of some Talmudic and Midrashic thought on Balaam.  To quote,

In rabbinic literature Balaam is represented as one of seven gentile prophets; the other six being Beor (Balaam’s father), Job, and Job’s four friends (Talmud, B. B. 15b). In this literature, Balaam gradually acquired a position among the non-Jews, which was exalted as much as that of Moses among the Jews (Midrash Numbers Rabbah 20); at first being a mere interpreter of dreams, but later becoming a magician, until finally the spirit of prophecy descended upon him (ib. 7).

The Book of Numbers Chapter 21 details the wandering of Moses and the children of Israel after their escape from Egypt.  This is the chapter where God sends fiery serpents among the complaining Israelites.  Moses fashions a brass serpent and promises them they’ll be healed from the serpents simply by looking at the brass serpent.

As the chapter finishes, Moses and the children of Israel wipe out the Ammonites and the Amorites, taking several cities.  Numbers 21:24-25 says,

24 And Israel smote him with the edge of the sword, and possessed his land from Arnon unto Jabbok, even unto the children of Ammon: for the border of the children of Ammon [was] strong.

25 So they smote him, and his sons, and all his people, until there was none left him alive: and they possessed his land.

Chapter 22 begins with the story of Balaam.  As the chapter begins, the leaders of the cities of Moab and Midian are concerned about the Israelites.  Apparently Balaam has quite a reputation among non-Israelites.  Some Bible commenters have even compared Balaam to a gentile version of Moses.  The King of the Moabites (Balak) believes Balaam has a special gift of cursing.  He tries to strike up a deal with Balaam to get him to curse Israel in Numbers 22:6, “I wot [know] that he whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest is cursed. ”

Curiously, in verse 9, “And God came unto Balaam, and said, What men [are] these with thee?”  I say curiously, because Moses was the prophet of the God of Israel.  Why would he be speaking to Balaam–a non-Israelite–at this time, if the God of Israel is the only true god, Moses is the living prophet, and Balak and his friends wanted to offer sacrifice to other gods to defeat Moses and Israel?  For in verse 7, “the elders of Moab and the elders of Midian departed with the rewards of divination in their hand;”  Divination was a wicked practice according to the Law of Moses.

In verse 12, God tells Balaam not to go with Balak, and further instructions Balaam,

“thou shalt not curse the people: for they [are] blessed.”

This leads some to believe Balaam might be a true prophet, who believes in the true God.  So far, so good, right?  Well, let’s continue with the story.  Balak entreats Balaam to come again.  This time, Balaam gets a different answer.  God tells him to go.  Dutifully, Balaam obeys the Lord.

20 And God came unto Balaam at night, and said unto him, If the men come to call thee, rise up, and go with them; but yet the word which I shall say unto thee, that shalt thou do.

21 And Balaam rose up in the morning, and saddled his ass, and went with the princes of Moab.

But strangely, a destroying angel stops Balaam’s donkey, but Balaam can’t see the angel yet, and begins to beat his stubborn donkey.  The donkey begins to talk to Balaam, and asks why Balaam is beating him.  For me, this is the best part of the story,

Num 22:29 And Balaam said unto the ass, Because thou hast mocked me: I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee.

Num 22:30 And the ass said unto Balaam, [Am] not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since [I was] thine unto this day? was I ever wont to do so unto thee? And he said, Nay.

Num 22:31 Then the LORD opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand: and he bowed down his head, and fell flat on his face.

Num 22:32 And the angel of the LORD said unto him, Wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three times?  Behold, I went out to withstand thee, because [thy] way is perverse before me:

Num 22:33 And the ass saw me, and turned from me these three times: unless she had turned from me, surely now also I had slain thee, and saved her alive.

Num 22:34 And Balaam said unto the angel of the LORD, I have sinned; for I knew not that thou stoodest in the way against me: now therefore, if it displease thee, I will get me back again.

Num 22:35 And the angel of the LORD said unto Balaam, Go with the men: but only the word that I shall speak unto thee, that thou shalt speak. So Balaam went with the princes of Balak.

Ok, apparently Balaam is having a hard time understanding God.  Don’t go, go, Don’t go, go.  Frankly, I’d be confused too.  But God tells him to go, and speak his words.  But instead of offering sacrifice to Yahweh, the God of Moses and the children of Israel, Balaam and Balak offer sacrifice to Baal, the notorious idol god that Moses, Joshua, and other prophets tell the children of Israel to avoid.  They build alters to Baal, but God answers instead.

39 And Balaam went with Balak, and they came unto Kirjath-huzoth.

40 And Balak offered oxen and sheep, and sent to Balaam, and to the princes that were with him.

41 And it came to pass on the morrow, that Balak took Balaam, and brought him up into the high places of Baal, that thence he might see the utmost part of the people.

Num. 23

1 And Balaam said unto Balak, Build me here seven altars, and prepare me here seven oxen and seven rams.

2 And Balak did as Balaam had spoken; and Balak and Balaam offered on every altar a bullock and a ram.

3 And Balaam said unto Balak, Stand by thy burnt offering, and I will go: peradventure the Lord will come to meet me: and whatsoever he sheweth me I will tell thee. And he went to an high place.

4 And God met Balaam: and he said unto him, I have prepared seven altars, and I have offered upon every altar a bullock and a ram.

Balaam blessed Israel.  Balak is not pleased.

11 And Balak said unto Balaam, What hast thou done unto me? I took thee to curse mine enemies, and, behold, thou hast blessed them altogether.

The story continues, and Balaam blesses Israel two more times.  It is curious, because Balak clearly worships Baal, and they offer sacrifice to Baal, yet God answers.  Some might perceive that Balaam is like Rahab the prostitute who hides Joshua and Israeli spies who later tried to take Jericho.  However, Balaam is not spared, because curiously, he tells Balak how to defeat Israel:  get Israel to sin by introducing beautiful Midianites.  Now, why would a true prophet encourage sin?

Moses and his army did not spare Balaam.  In chapter 31 we learn,

Num. 31: 8, 16

8 And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.

16 Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord.

The ancient historian Josephus explains this “counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord “at this website.

I’ve changed formatting for readability, but according to Josephus, Balaam told Balak to send beautiful women and induce Israel to break the law of chastity.  Balaam said,

O Balak, and you Midianites that are here present, (for I am obliged even without the will of God to gratify you,) it is true no entire destruction can seize upon the nation of the Hebrews, neither by war, nor by plague, nor by scarcity of the fruits of the earth, nor can any other unexpected accident be their entire ruin; for the providence of God is concerned to preserve them from such a misfortune; nor will it permit any such calamity to come upon them whereby they may all perish;

but some small misfortunes, and those for a short time, whereby they may appear to be brought low, may still befall them; but after that they will flourish again, to the terror of those that brought those mischiefs upon them. So that if you have a mind to gain a victory over them for a short space of time, you will obtain it by following my directions: Do you therefore set out the handsomest of such of your daughters as are most eminent for beauty, (10) and proper to force and conquer the modesty of those that behold them, and these decked and trimmed to the highest degree able.

Then do you send them to be near camp, and give them in charge, that the young men of the Hebrews desire their allow it them; and when they see they are enamored of them, let them take leaves; and if they entreat them to stay, let give their consent till they have persuaded leave off their obedience to their own laws, the worship of that God who established them to worship the gods of the Midianites and for by this means God will be angry at them (11). Accordingly, when Balaam had suggested counsel to them, he went his way.

…

9. Now the young men were induced by the fondness they had for these women to think they spake very well; so they gave themselves up to what they persuaded them, and transgressed their own laws, and supposing there were many gods, and resolving that they would sacrifice to them according to the laws of that country which ordained them, they both were delighted with their strange food, and went on to do every thing that the women would have them do, though in contradiction to their own laws; so far indeed that this transgression was already gone through the whole army of the young men, and they fell into a sedition that was much worse than the former, and into danger of the entire abolition of their own institutions; for when once the youth had tasted of these strange customs, they went with insatiable inclinations into them; and even where some of the principal men were illustrious on account of the virtues of their fathers, they also were corrupted together with the rest.

The Bible continues to condemn Balaam.

• 2 Peter 2:15 “Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; “
• Jude 1:11 “they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.”
• Rev 2:14 “the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.

There is an interesting discovery which references Balaam.  More information can be found here.  It tells of a discovery in 1967 of an ancient text found at Deir Alla, Jordan, in 1967 tells about the activities of a prophet named Balaam.  The text references “Balaam son of Beor,” exactly as in the Bible.  The website says,

The remarkable text found at Deir Alla consists of 119 fragments of plaster inscribed with black and red ink. It was among the rubble of a building destroyed in an earthquake. It seems to have been one long column with at least 50 lines, displayed on a plastered wall. According to the excavators’ dating, the disaster was most likely the severe earthquake which occurred in the time of King Uzziah (Azariah) and the prophet Amos in about 760 BC (Amos 1:1; Zec 14:5). The lower part of the text shows signs of wear, indicating that it had been on the wall for some time prior to the earthquake.

Written in Aramaic, the text begins with the title “Warnings from the Book of Balaam the son of Beor. He was a seer of the gods.” It is in red ink, as are other portions of the text where emphasis is desired. The reference to the “Book of Balaam” indicates that the text was part of a pre-existing document and therefore the original date of the material is much earlier than the plaster text itself. Balaam goes on to relate a vision concerning impending judgment from the gods, and enters into a dispute with his listeners.

There are a number of similarities between the text and the account of Balaam in the book of Numbers. To begin with, the events described in Numbers 22-24 took place in the same general area where the text was found. At the time of the Numbers 22-24 incident, the Israelites were camped on the Plains of Moab, across the Jordan river from Jericho. Deir Alla is located about 25 miles north of this area, where the Jabbok river flows into the Jordan valley. Balaam was from Pethor, near “the river” (Num 22:5), in “Aram” (Num 23:7; Dt 23:4).

The reference to Aram has led most scholars to conclude that Balaam was from northern Syria, in the vicinity of the Euphrates river. That does not fit well with the Biblical account, however, since Balaam’s home seems to have been close to where the Israelites were camped (Num 22:1-22; 31:7-8).

In view of Balaam being revered at Deir Alla, one would expect that Deir Alla was his home. This is exactly what William Shea has proposed, based on his reading of the name Pethor in an inscribed clay tablet found at Deir Alla (1989:108-11). In this case, the river of Numbers 22:5 would be the Jabbok river and the naharaim (two rivers) of Deuteronomy 23:4 would be the Jabbok and Jordan rivers.

With regard to the references to Aram, Shea suggests that the original place name was Adam, with the “d” being miscopied as “r,” since the two letters are nearly identical in ancient Hebrew. Adam was a town about eight miles southwest of Deir Alla, on the east bank of the Jordan river, where the Jabbok meets the Jordan.

Here are some interesting websites you might like to reference.

• http://scriptures.lds.org/en/search?search=balaam&do=Search
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balaam
• http://www.christiananswers.net/q-abr/abr-a014.html
• http://www.lds.org/gospellibrary/materials/OT/Start_Here.pdf#search=%22gospel%20doctrine%22   page 73 lesson 16

With all this background, I don’t believe Balaam can ever be considered a legitimate prophet.  Respectful disagreement is welcome, and I ask what you think of Balaam and this unusual story?

8 We believe the ^aBible to be the ^bword of God as far as it is translated ^ccorrectly;

This has to be one of the most oft-quoted articles of faith by members of the LDS church.  In one of my previous posts on Scripture Literalism, the comments referred to Biblical inerrancy and literalism.  Some evangelicals believe that the Bible is both inerrant and literal, and take great issue with the Mormon stance on the Bible.  They don’t believe there are any mistranslations, and that every word in the Bible was spoken by God.  Many of these people discount any contradictions in the Bible.

The Documentary Hypothesis is a theory that seems to identify at least four different authors/editors of the first five books in the Bible (also called the Torah in Judaism, or the Pentateuch.)  I think many Mormons would find great agreement with the Documentary Hypothesis, though they might not agree with every part of the theory.

Tradition has it that Moses authored the first 5 books of the Bible.  This is somewhat problematic, because Deuteronomy records Moses death in Deuteronomy 34:5, so Moses certainly couldn’t have finished writing that book.  Obviously someone else recorded his death (though there is a Jewish tradition that Moses did actually write the words of his death, and cried while he did it.)

There is an old A&E series called Mysteries of the Bible, and one of their episodes is called “Who wrote the Bible?”  I’d like to quote some of the information referencing the Documentary Hypothesis.  I downloaded the episode from Amazon, but apparently it is no longer available for download.  The documentary starts by looking at some of the stories which are told twice in the Bible, with different (and sometimes contradictory) tellings of the story.

There are numerous examples of the same story told twice, sometimes with conflicting details.  Scholars have long referred to these as doublets.  There are two separate accounts of the creation of the world, two versions of the covenant made between God and the Patriarch Abraham, and even two distinct versions of Moses obtaining water from a rock at a place called Mirabar, during the Exodus.

In most instances of these so-called doublets, the two versions of the story each refer to God by a different name.  In the Hebrew text, sometimes the deity is referred to as Elohim, the usual Hebrew reference to God.  But in the alternative version, the term used is often used is Yahweh, or Lord.  For centuries, scholars have puzzled over the appearance of these distinct differences.

…

Richard Elliot Friedman, Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, University of California, San Diego.  “The key piece of evidence in this is that different kinds of Jews converged with each other.  So that you have doublets of stories-that proves nothing.  You have different names of God-that proves nothing.  But when all the doublets of stories line up into two groups, one of which uses one name of God, and the other uses the other name of God, consistently, then that’s strong evidence that something is going on.”

…

By the early half of the 19^th century, many scholars were convinced that the five books of Moses were written by three different authors.  The writer of the version which referred to Yahweh, was named “J” because early European translators were ignorant of the correct pronunciation of Hebrew names.  Many inadvertently referred to the name of God as Jehovah instead of Yahweh, and ironically, the name has stuck.

The author of those texts referring to God as Elohim was named “E.”  A third writer was identified as “P”.  This author was thought to be a priest, and wrote in a different style than J and E.  His passages seemed to be especially concerned with the establishment of the priesthood, after the people of Israel left Egypt.

Friedman, “All these texts are written in Hebrew, but in a different stage of Hebrew that we can identify.  Each has its own favorite terms, words that occur 50 times in P, but never occur in E or J, that sort of thing.  Each has its own style.”

The differences are immediately obvious in Hebrew, the language in which the text was originally written.  The disparities virtually disappear in the English translation.  But this example comes from the book of Exodus.  The text relates how God appeared in a burning bush.  The passage was written by J, who in Hebrew refers to God as Yahweh, or Lord.  Exodus 3:2, “And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked and, behold, the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed.”

When the E writer, discusses Moses and the burning bush, the name is now only Elohim, “God”.  Exodus 3:6, “Moreover, he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.  And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.”

Subtle, though the differences may be, the texts clearly seem to reflect a compilation of sources.  In 1807, the German theologian, Wilhelm DeWitt announced the discovery of a possible fourth author.  His examination of the text indicated that the language, tone, and content of the entire book of Deuteronomy were the work of a different person to J, E, or P.  Scholars have since come to this author as D, for Deuteronomist.  Over the years, the theory has come to be known as the Documentary Hypothesis.

Friedman, “Once you have identified a text and said, ‘I think this is J, I think this is E, I think this is P, I think this is D’, then you place it up against other texts in the Bible where we have some idea of the date, and see if there is any development in the language.  It’s not just that you can tell the difference between the way I speak and the way Shakespeare did.  It’s that if you heard someone who lived in the 18^th century, you could tell that that person was somewhere halfway between Shakespeare and me.  So you can see the stages of Biblical Hebrew in growth.”

In a stunning retraction of early church intolerance toward the hypothesis and the issue of biblical authorship in 1943, Pope Pius XII, surprises religious leaders and academics alike.  He issues an edict and encourages the scholars to fully investigate the question, ‘Who wrote the Bible?’  The directive was heralded as a magna carta for Biblical study, initiating unprecedented research into the origins into the holy book.  The quest would open up how the words of the divine have traversed the centuries.

The documentary goes back to the time of Moses, and states that there were no scriptures for the Hebrews at this time.

While the 10 commandments were always in the constant possession of the people, there may have been no other written words at the time, though the Bible indicates that the scrolls of Moses may have accompanied the Israelites.  Many scholars believe that the first 5 books of the Bible had not yet been written.

After the advent of the monarchy in about 1000 BCE,  King David eventually becomes ruler, and establishes his capital at Jerusalem.  It is then, that the matter of authorship enters the story.  The king breaks with tradition, by appointing two high priests, in charge of religious affairs, instead of one.

Friedman, “It’s not so strange to have two high priests; in Israel today, there are two chief rabbis.  The problem you have is that when you have two chief priests instead of one, each one spends more time of his day sitting there trying to get rid of the other one.  ”

Not only are there two high priests, but toward the end of his reign, two of King David’s sons are vying for the throne.  It is uncertain which of them will be appointed the royal successor.  A struggle for power ensues, and this embroils the high priests.  Each one supports a different royal candidate.  When David dies, it is Solomon who is chosen to wear the crown.

Now the question is, will Solomon retain the services of both priests, or return to the traditional practice of having only one man in charge of the religious affairs.  Not surprisingly, the priest who was loyal to Solomon and his candidacy was chosen.  At the same time, the second high priest is removed from power and banished from the kingdom.  “And unto Abiathar the priest said the king, Get thee to Anathoth, to thine own field, for thou art worthy of death.  So Solomon thrust out Abiathar from being priest unto the Lord.” 1 Kings 2:26

Thus the priest retained by Solomon retains an exclusive role.  He and his assistants would soon take on new responsibilities as the king begins constructing the first great temple in Jerusalem.  The deposed priest and his followers enviously watch from their place of banishment.  They are now cut off from any possible new duties in the temple.

Friedman, “They had no place in the royal kingdom in Jerusalem, and so a priest of that priestly house, initiated the rebellion that ultimately led to the formation of the kingdom of Israel in the north, and the Kingdom of Judah in the south.  They wanted their own place where they could get to be the priest as well.

Thus in 922 BCE, the ten northerly tribes sever their ties from Jerusalem, and succession splinters the nation in two: Israel in the north, and Judah in the south.  So two kingdoms born of a nation, oppose one another in an uneasy truce.

Friedman, “Each had its own king, each had its on traditions, its own places of worship.  At the same time, we’re talking about a region that’s the same size as a large American county, so people were close to each other, people had relatives north and south, they both spoke the same language, and they both had the same ancestors of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and events in Egypt, and events at Mount Sinai, and so it is thought that each kingdom produced its sacred text, or at least one person living in each kingdom produced his version of the sacred text.”

If this is so, is it possible that different versions of the Bible were taking place at the same time?

Friedman, “It’s as if in America during the Civil War, a historian in the north, and a historian in the south each wrote a history of North America.  They would cover a lot of the same events and some different events, and they would tell it from their own perspective.

Daniel Smith-Christopher, Professor of Hebrew Bible, Loyola Marymount University, “We think that the J material was first gathered together under King Solomon.  It represents Solomon’s attempt to gather up the stories of a people, to knit them together in a coherent narrative, to tell the story about how the people of Israel came to be a people.  So it became a kind of national epic.  Now here’s one of the interesting mysteries:  was it an official national epic?  Some scholars say, the majority I think, would say that Solomon commissioned this document to be written.”

In answer to Solomon and his history of the people of Judah, the people of the northern Kingdom of Israel, now begin to amass their own collection of historical stories.

Christopher, “What they want to do is they want to add to this material that is more northern in orientation.  So they add material, and we think that this material is what we call E, because they tend to use the word Elohim for God.  Now we have somewhat more sophisticated theological stories.  But interestingly enough, we also have stories that tend to emphasize the significance of the second son.  Many people who read Genesis ask, ‘how come it’s always the second son that comes out better?’  Isaac was after Ishmael, Jacob, Cain and Abel, I mean all of these stories seem to emphasize the second son as the important one, or the preferred son.  It very well could be that the northern kingdom, after their break, wanted to emphasize the second son because in a sense they were the second son.   They were the breakaway kingdom.  So, they wanted to portray themselves as the preferred of the two.

Unlike the Bible’s favored second son, however, the Kingdom of Israel slips into the grip of paganism.  As time passes, people begin to worship Canaanite gods.  They would suffer a long and difficult history under 19 kings, eight of whom would die violently.  Despite the warnings of prophets, moral decay and corruption continue to enslave the people.

Then seven and a half centuries before the birth of Christ, the prophecies come true.  An invading Assyrian army sweeps in from the north and conquers Israel.  Forever scattering the 10 tribes to the winds, never to be seen or heard from again.

….

But an unremitting spiritual downfall has now gripped Judah too.  Without any consolidated religious precepts, no laws, no sacred texts, Paganism becomes rife throughout the land, until King Josiah takes the throne.  He tries to usher in change, by outlawing idol worship, and by a return to the holy covenant made with God at Mount Sinai.

Christopher, “Josiah was the young king who, as soon as he comes to the throne, decides that he wants to reform the religion of the people towards a more spiritual attachment to Yahweh, the national god.  So Josiah starts this campaign:  he even cleans up the temple, he wants to re-employ the people in reconstructing the temple and making it more glorious, and making it more spiritual.  Well, along the way, they discover a book.”

While cleaning out the buildings, the king’s high priests find a temple scroll deep within the temple vaults.  “And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan, the scribe, I have found a book of the Law, in the house of the Lord.  And Hilkiah gave the book to the scribe, and he read it” 2 Kings 22:8

Friedman, “The document that Hilkiah is understood to have read to Josiah on that date is thought by many of us to be the laws of Deuteronomy.  They are laws that say that you should worship God in only one place.  So Josiah destroys all the other places.  These are laws that say that you should not have pagan worship, so he destroys idols, and removes pagan worship from his country.  He is the king that follows that law code, it’s an extraordinary group of laws from ritual matters down to sacrifice to moral matters of how you should treat one another, that you should be just, that you shouldn’t oppress a widow, or an orphan.  They should take care of the poor-it’s an extraordinary body of laws.

Some contemporary Biblical scholars regard the supposed discovery of the Book of Deutoronomy with skepticism.

Christopher, “Was Josiah genuinely shocked at finding the Book of Deutronomy in the temple or was this perhaps the first Academy Award performance recorded in history?  Did Josiah in fact know that that book was in the temple, and that if he assigned his people to begin cleaning it up, that they would find it.  Many scholars suggest that Josiah was in on planting the book in the first place.  What better way to push forward his reform campaign, than to plant a book that suggests that his campaign is based on the very laws of Moses themselves?”

The laws reveal that the people had deviated from their faith.  The author of the book was clearly writing from that perspective, and was concerned with where society may be heading.

Friedman, “He writes in a very definite, observable, style that you can see in Deuteronomy, and see in 2 Kings, and you see it in one other place in the Bible, it’s in the prose of the prophet Jeremiah.  So, I have suggested the likelihood that the same person is the author of the prose parts of the Book of Jeremiah and the history that runs from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings. ”

The Bible tells us that the person responsible for writing much of Jeremiah’s work was his trusty scribe, Baruch.  “Then took Jeremiah another scroll, and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Naraiah.” Jeremiah 36:32

Could Baruch, the son of Nariah, have been more than a mere scribe?  Could he also have written the Book of Deuteronomy?  His work probably speaks for itself.  Many passages of text he wrote for Jeremiah are strikingly similar to words used in Deuteronomy.  Perhaps the same author may have had a hand in the writing of both books.

Deut. 10:16 “And it will be, if you really listen to Yahweh’s voice…”	Jer. 17:24 “And it will be, if you really listen to me says Yahweh…”
Deut. 4:19, 17:3 “…to all the host of the heavens…”	Jer. 8:2, 19:13 “…to all the host of the heavens…”
Deut. 4:20 “…and he brought you ought of the iron furnace, from Egypt…”	Jer 11:4 “…in the day I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace…”

If so, archaeology has uncovered an artifact that has finally brought us into direct contact with one of the earliest authors of the Bible.

Friedman, “We in recent years, recovered a clay seal that is now in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem which is stamped in a script that we do identify as seventh century Hebrew script, late 7^th, early 6^th century Hebrew script, and the name on that seal is Baruch, son of Nariah, the scribe.  If it’s true that Baruch is our Deuteronomistic historian, what that means is when you look at that seal, you are looking at nothing less than the autograph of one of the authors of the Bible.

Could this tiny, clay seal be the personal signature of the writer of the Book of Deuteronomy?  If it is, it is a unique object that reaches out to us beyond 26 centuries of history, the only link ever found connected to an actual author of the Bible.

…

Act V

The tangled web of history surrounding the writing of the five books of Moses may one day be completely untwined.  But a loose thread remains:  who was it who gathered the original manuscripts together?  In the course of writing a book, any book, a lengthy process of editing, and alteration is involved.  In our search, it may not be a question of who wrote the Bible, but of who re-wrote it?

Friedman, “People usually talk simply about this as if there’s four sources and as if there were only four writers and that’s misleading because even if we count those as only four writers, there’s still key editors in the stages of this.  Editors are as important as authors in the process.”

If there was an editor, who was he?  To pick up the strands we must return to the Kingdom of Judah, to the days when under a new king, Jehoiakim, the people had retrogressed once again to worshipping idols.  A prophet by the name of Jeremiah has now become one of the most outspoken critics of the weakening moral fiber of the people and he foretells their fate.  “Ye have done worse than your fathers.  Behold, ye walk everyone after the imagination of his evil heart.  Wherefore I will cast you out of this land, into a land that ye know not, neither ye, nor your fathers.” Jeremiah 16:11.

A daunting prophecy, in 586 BCE it comes true.  From Babylon, King Nebudchadnezzer’s army surged down into Judah, and lay siege to Jerusalem.  So begins more than a century of bitter exile for the people of Israel in Babylon.  But eventually, even mighty Babylon falls to a mightier power, the powerful armies of Cyrus the Great absorbed Babylon into the Persian Empire.  But Cyrus is conciliatory towards the exiled Jews.  He issues his now legendary edict of restoration, allowing the people of Israel to return to Jerusalem, and restore their temple, and their faith.

This stone cylinder, dating back to the event five and a half centuries before Christ, bears the text of Cyrus’ edict.  “The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, King of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and put it also in writing, saying, ‘Thus saith Cyrus, King of Persia, the Lord God of Heaven, hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he hath charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.” Ezra 1:1

It is a derelict homeland to which the people return.  Much of their religious tradition has been eroded during the long years of exile.  Their faith is it a threateningly low ebb.  According to some scholars, it is time for the great redactor, the final editor of the books of Moses to enter the scene, and leave his mark.

…

In Jerusalem, a party of exiled Jews returns under the leadership of a man called Ezra, a scribe.  He sees the spiritual weakness of the people, and he resolves to reintroduce them to the ancient religion of Moses.  They have not been exposed to the Hebrew laws for almost a century.  So Ezra calls for a mass public gathering in the city.  “And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation, and he read therein from the morning until mid-day before the men and the women, and those who could understand.  And the ears of all people were attentive to all the words of the law.” Nehemiah 8:2

Was Ezra history’s elusive editor?  Perhaps under his guidance, various religious texts were combined and read together for the first time, forevermore to be consolidated as the five books of Moses.

Friedman, “These were laws that had not been publicly read in any way like this before.  The laws of Deuteronomy had been publicly read at least from Josiah’s time, but now we’re talking about the full five books of Moses.  We’re not talking about P or J or E.  We’re talking about the five books of Moses as people read it today.

The compilation of the texts more than 2,500 years ago was one of the most significant events in a long history of persecution and conflict for the Jews.  In the ensuing centuries, they would suffer occupation, defeat, and destruction on an unprecedented scale.  But, the essence of their religious identity would forever be enshrined in the anthology enshrined, known as the Torah, the five books of Moses.  We may never know all the mysteries of the earliest writings of the Bible, but the study of the texts, the so-called Documentary Hypothesis has provided some insights into its origins.  However, the matter is far from resolved.

The hypothesis is only one possible answer.  It is merely a concept.  There is as yet no consensus on the theory.

Christopher, “At this point, I would say that the Documentary Hypothesis is the best explanation for many of the difficulties that are presented to us by the first five books of Bible as we now have them.”

Lawrence Schiffman, Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University, “In my mind, the Documentary Hypothesis does not really solve the problem that it sets out to solve, in which case we simply get left with the question of faith.  One who wants to believe that the Torah is a divine document and given by God, can do so; one who wants to believe that it’s a human document subjected to documentary or other types of similar analysis can do so.  I think it’s a question, a mystery, to which we’ll never really know the answer.”

As Orthodox tradition has it, the five books of Moses contain the divine words of God, though were written in the hand of man.  The books that follow differ fundamentally from them.  The rest of the Hebrew Bible is generally perceived to be a series of historical documents, a chronology of people written by many authors.  So our search for authorship must now come from another perspective, posing a different set of questions.

At this point, I want to stop.  I’ll probably post again on authorship of other books of the Bible.  So what do you think of the Documentary Hypothesis?  Does it agree with the 8th Article of Faith?

So, this post is to serve two purposes: (1) to show some different perceptions about the sacrifice of Isaac, (as well as some other strange stories of Abraham), and (2) to introduce some new information from Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and archaeological scholars. I’ve had fun learning about it, and hope you do to. While I believe Abraham is a prophet, I find some things that Abraham did as troubling, and I’ll point them out below.

Abraham was born in southern Iraq, and traditional lived somewhere between 2000 and 1500 BC in the city-state of Ur. Ur (located near the border of Kuwait) was surrounded by city walls. A Ziggarat (stepped pyramid) has been discovered there, and some scholars believe it may be the basis for the Tower of Babel story found in the Bible.

Abraham is a well traveled person. Born in Ur, he and his wife Sarah, left with his father Terah’s family (including nephew Lot), for the land of Haran (which is now Turkey), a journey of about 1000 miles. Abraham lived there until he was 75. Apparently, there was some sort of mass migration from Ur to Turkey, as it seems many others traveled from Ur to Haran. Abraham left Turkey for the Land of Canaan (now Israel), due to a revelation from God. But due to a famine, Abraham leaves Canaan to go to Egypt. After the famine ends, he returns to Canaan. Muslim scholars believe that after Sarah’s death, he traveled to Mecca (Saudi Arabia) to live with his son Ishmael.

One story not found in the Bible, is the story of Abraham destroying his father’s idols. Mormons are familiar with the story from the Book of Abraham, but similar stories are also found in the Jewish Midrash, and Muslim Koran. The Midrash is a book composed by ancient Jewish rabbi’s to explain passages of scripture. Not only does the Midrash explain interpretations of scripture, but often further explains stories, or introduces new parts of a story. The Koran also tells of this story of Abraham destroying his father’s idols. Previously, I speculated that Joseph could have found a Muslim text in translating the Book of Abraham, but it easily could also have been a Jewish fragment of the Midrash as well.

Abraham is credited for being the “founder of monotheism,” as well as the founder of the 3 great western religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There is an old cable series (1994) from the network A&E called Mysteries of the Bible which has a show about Abraham. William Dever, Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology, at the University of Arizona, states that monotheism was a unique religious idea in 2000 BC. (Note these quotes are taken scattered throughout the video. I have tried to put similar quotes together for clarity in this post.)

“There is nothing like the ethical monotheism of the Hebrew prophets anywhere in the ancient world. If you want to believe in the uniqueness of the Bible, this is a good point to begin with, it is a fact. There is nothing like this anywhere else.”

Walter Zanger, a Jewish scholar concurs with this opinion. “Every other country in the world, every other civilization had gods whom you had to feed, to sacrifice to them. Abraham had a god who gave him law and behavior. The introduction of a single moral law for king, for commoner, and even for God is a milestone in the history of the world.”

Dr Nahum M. Sarna, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies, Brandies University. “How did one man, stand up against all cultural and religious notions and accepted views of the time. That’s a question that there just is no answer. You can ask the same question about every innovator every founder of a new religion, every revolutionary. We just have no answers. These are abiding mysteries.”

While the Bible seems to indicate that Adam down to Abraham were all monotheists, some scholars disagree. Jewish scholar Walter Zanger makes a case that Abraham was not a true monotheist. He says,

“It’s hard to talk about Abraham as a monotheist. Abraham had an agreement, a covenant with his one god, who is the Lord. Abraham didn’t say, or believe as far as we know, that there weren’t other gods. All the evidence is that there were other gods for other people. And Abraham’s god never insisted on exclusivity.”

The narrator, Richard Kiley continues, “While experts disagree over whether Abraham was a true monotheist, the Bible does not indicate if he worshipped other gods. It only tells us that led by his fervent faith in his one god, that Abraham informs his family that they will be leaving their secure, familiar world behind.”

The Law of Circumcision

Circumcision is not unique to Abraham, and in fact the practice dates before this story in the Bible.  Scholars say that the difference in the Abrahamic story is that it attains some sort of spiritual blessing.  I’m not trying to be sacrilegious here, but I have to tell you that this idea has to be one of the strangest spiritual blessings that man has ever known.

Why couldn’t God have pierced the ear, asked for a tattoo, or some other sign? I just don’t understand why God or any man thinks it’s a good idea to put anything sharp near a person’s genitals. Before I get into the scriptural account, I want to talk about a few things regarding circumcision.

Most of us are appalled by female circumcision, which usually involves removal of the clitoris (which gives pleasure to women during intercourse.) Not all Muslims support the practice, but it is quite common among African Muslims. The practice of female circumcision pre-dates Christ and Islam, and seems to have originated in Egypt. Its main purpose is to keep women virtuous by making sex not enjoyable. It seems completely barbaric and incomprehensible to me.

Male circumcision is being discouraged in western countries because it seemingly has no medical benefit.  However, medical opinion is changing.  There are several studies showing that AIDS infections have been decreased by 60% in Africa due to a new campaign to promote male circumcision, as seen in this NY Times article. Another study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that male circumcision has the benefit of reducing herpes infections, as well as human papillomavirus (which causes genital warts).

The Biblical account makes no reference to medical benefits, but says the Law of Circumcision is part of the spiritual covenant where God covenants with Abraham to make him a leader of many nations. The DVD talks about the ancient practice of male circumcision, making it clear that it was a practice common to Middle Eastern people prior to Abraham.

Circumcision was already widely practiced in the Middle East at Abraham’s time as a ritual of passage to adulthood, or a premarital rite. But when Abraham circumcised himself at the age of 99, the ritual acquired a new spiritual meaning.

Dr. Mark Brettler, Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Brandies University, “What is unique in terms of the Bible is not so much the physical circumcision itself, but rather that circumcision was considered to be a central part of the covenant.”

This is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you, and your descendants after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised. It shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He that is 8 days old among you shall be circumcised.” Genesis 17:12.

Rabbi David Wolpe, lecturer at the University of Judaism. “One of the reasons that circumcision is a mark on the generative organ is, that God says to Abraham, ‘you’re going to be the head of a great nation, and I want you to always remember that it comes from you and your loins, and I want a mark of your commitment at the very place where this great nation will spring from.’”

Some time after Abraham’s circumcision, Sarah became pregnant, giving birth to Isaac. I suppose it could be argued that in Abraham’s case, it may have helped Sarah get pregnant. However, Abraham had previously fathered Ishmael through his slave-servant Hagar. While I have plenty of problems with polygamy, and slavery, I’m going to ignore these issues for the purposes of this post. (FYI, I don’t believe God was happy with either polygamy or slavery.) Regardless of whether people support my position on slavery and polygamy, I’ll assume that both were culturally innocuous for this post.

The Mistreatment of Hagar

Throughout history, jealousy between polygamist wives has always been a problem. In the Bible, there are several instances of jealousy, such as David, Solomon, and Israel’s (Jacob’s) wives. Sarah was greatly jealous of Hagar after Hagar conceived Ishmael, and ordered Abraham to send Hagar away (to die) on 2 occasions. What is most ironic is that Sarah asked Abraham to take Hagar as a wife, and then blamed Abraham. The following account is from an NIV bible, Genesis 16:1-11.

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said.

So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.

Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.”

Your servant is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her. The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur.

And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.”

The angel of the Lord also said to her: “You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery.

This angelic appearance to Hagar receives far too little notice in Judaism and Christianity. What is so amazing to me is that Hagar received the vision, not Abraham. Hagar chose the name (via the angel), not Abraham. The Hebrew version of the name is Yishma’el, meaning “God has hearkened”. In Arabic, his name is Ismael. Isma in Arabic means ‘to listen’ i.e answer prayer, and ell is derived from the Hebrew word el, meaning God.

Who is the righteous one in this story? To me the answer is Hagar. Hagar returns to Abraham, and the Bible story says that 13 years after Ishmael’s birth, Sarah becomes pregnant with Isaac. (The Koran seems to put the births of Isaac and Ishmael closer together—more on that in a bit.) At any rate, Sarah once again casts out Hagar and Ishmael, this time for good, referring to Hagar with the derisive term of slavewoman, rather than maidservant as in chapter 16. The DVD narrates this incident.

“So she said to Abraham, ‘Cast out this slavewoman and her son. For the son of this slavewoman shall not be heir with my son, Isaac. [Gen. 21:10]

Walter Zanger, “Sarah is very strong in the house. When she herself had a son, she was strong enough, and smart enough to know that the firstborn son, Ishmael, would naturally take the birthright. But she also knew that God had promised it to her son, and therefore she was strong enough to ensure that the woman got thrown out, with her son.”

“And the thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, ‘Be not displeased because of the lad, because of your slavewoman. Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you. For through Isaac, will your descendants be named.” [Genesis 22:11-12]

The heart-rending moment, when Abraham sends the Egyptian slave Hagar, and their son Ishmael into exile will sow the seeds of conflict between Jew and Muslim, which on occasion will bear bitter fruit in centuries to come.

It is hard for me to reconcile that God would go along with sending a mother and child into the desert. But just as Joseph thrived in Egypt, it seems to me that Ishmael had a few miracles ahead of him in Saudi Arabia. The more I learn about this story, the more I am amazed at God graciousness in protecting Ishmael and Hagar. We Christians and Jews fail to recognize God’s hand in dealing with the Arab nations.

I’d like to emphasize another scripture about Ishmael that is ignored by Christians. In Genesis 21:12-13, “But God said to [Abraham], “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your maidservant. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. I will make the son of the maidservant into a nation also, because he is your offspring.”

Did you get that? God said, “I will make the son of the maidservant into a nation also.” The Arab nations claim their father is Ishmael. Ishmael had 12 sons—the 12 tribes of Ishmael, who became the great nations of the Arabs. God’s promises to Ishmael are in the Bible, yet I have never seen anyone emphasize this. The Koran has a similar, but more miraculous version of this event, and I was a little astonished to see that it is also in the Bible. First, let’s go over the biblical account in Genesis 21:14-20,

Early the next morning Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her off with the boy. She went on her way and wandered in the desert of Beersheba.

When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. Then she went off and sat down nearby, about a bowshot away, for she thought, “I cannot watch the boy die.” And as she sat there nearby, she began to sob.

God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”

Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer.

Are Arabs God’s chosen people, as well as the Jews? Genesis seems to support that idea. The Islamic version of this story is even more amazing. First of all, I did not realize that the pilgrimage to Mecca was so tied to Ishmael and Abraham. As I was transcribing some of these quotes from the DVD, one of the Islamic scholars had a thick accent, and I couldn’t understand what she was saying, so I asked my friend Ann, who I mentioned in a previous post about Arabs and Persians, what the name of the temple was in Mecca. She then told me the story of Ishmael and Hagar, and how it relates to the pilgrimage. I was even more astonished to discover that this well mentioned in Genesis is the well in Mecca.

Each year during the Hajj (the ritual pilgrimage) to Mecca, pilgrims re-enact Hagar’s (or Hajar, in Arabic) desperate search for water for her infant son, running seven times between two hills and drawing water from the well of Zam Zam. Ann told me that the Islamic version of the story holds that Ishmael was a baby, rather than a teenager in the Genesis account. During this desperate search for water, the baby Ishmael just kicked his feet on the ground (as toddlers would do), and a spring of water came forth. To me, it sounded almost like the story of Moses getting water from the rock. The full story is mentioned in Sahih Bukhari. The well Zam Zam is still there today, and it is illegal to sell the water outside of Saudi Arabia, as it is considered so sacred.

The name of the well comes from the phrase Zomë Zomë, meaning ‘stop flowing’, a command repeated by Hagar during her attempt to contain the spring water.

According to Islamic tradition, Abraham rebuilt the Bait-ul-Allah (House of Allah) at the site of the well, a building which had been originally constructed by Adam, and today is called the Kaaba, a building towards which all Muslims around the world face in prayer, five times each day. The Zamzam well is located approximately 20 meters east of the Ka’aba.

I love these quotes from the DVD.

Dr. Wadad Kadi, professor of Islamic Thought, University of Chicago, “Abraham’s message is the same as Muhammad, articulated at a different time to a different nation, and a different language.”

Abraham’s spiritual odyssey inspired both Judaism and Christianity. Abraham is also a founder of Islam. According to Muslim belief, Abraham and Ishmael helped build the Ka’aba, the holy shrine at the center of the great mosque in Mecca. They believe that Abraham literally laid the foundation for what in Islam is the most sacred spot on earth.

Kadi, “Abraham developed the true faith, and it is the true faith that Muhammad eventually preached, as part of the message that he received from God. So Abraham’s role is absolutely one of the cornerstones of Islamic tradition.”

Perhaps the fact that all 3 of the west’s great religions draw upon the story of one man for inspiration holds out a promise that the 3 faiths will someday live in harmony together as God promised to Abraham in the Bible.

“By your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves because you have obeyed my voice.” Genesis 22:18.

Human Sacrifice

Abraham is set up as a model of righteousness for attempting to follow a command of unimaginable horror—taking the life of his own son. It is terrible to think about. I have found some alternate interpretations, and I want to share some of them below. I’m not so sure I believe that God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac or Ishmael (apparently there is a disagreement among the religions). However, I do accept that God saved Abraham from making a terrible mistake. To me the most important idea is that God saved Abraham’s son, but I don’t believe God would command anyone to kill their own child. From the DVD,

The words will haunt us today, as they have haunted the human imagination for thousands of years. “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I shall tell you.” Genesis 22:1

Rabbi David Wolpe, “the binding of Isaac, though it is only some 20, or 22 verses, is in the Jewish tradition, the most commented incident in the entire Bible.

Walter Zanger, “It is impossible for modern man to explain that story. It is impossible to deal with. I can see this historically, but I can’t feel it personally. It’s too horrible.”

Wolpe, “One of the strange things is that although Isaac is the one who is going to be sacrificed, the focus is really on Abraham, because the truth is, that we really feel it is harder in this case to be the sacrificer than to be the victim. Isaac is a figure of simple, almost pathetic trust, and Abraham is a father that is torn between his love to a son, and his duty to a god who has given him a terrible command.”

Isaac carries the wood to a place of sacrifice, while Abraham carries the fire, and the knife. Isaac then asks his father one of the most heart-rending things in the entire bible. “He said behold the fire and the wood, but where is the Lamb for a burnt offering. And Abraham said, ‘God will provide the lamb’ for a burnt offering, my son.’ So they went both of them together. [Gen 22:8]

Abraham builds an altar, and places his son Isaac on top of it. Then Abraham took forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But an angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham.’ And he said, ‘Here am I.’ He said, “do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. [Gen 22:12]

We will never know what happened after that terrifying moment. Did Abraham and Isaac weep? Did father and son embrace through their tears. We know only that Isaac was spared.

“And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns, and Abraham took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.” [Gen 22:13]

Perhaps no story in the Bible has inspired as great an outpouring of speculation as the binding of Isaac, of ancient times to our own.

Wolpe, “The protestant theologian Kierkegard at the beginning of his book, “Fear and Trembling”, imagines a scene in which Abraham takes Isaac, and binds him on the altar and says to him, ‘I hate you–I’ve always hated you. I can’t stand you, and now is my chance to kill you! And now I’m going to do it. And he starts to kill him, and God stops him just as he does in the Bible. And then, Abraham unties Isaac and holds him and crying, says to him, ‘I thought it was better that you should hate me, than that you should hate God.’”

But what is the meaning of the Biblical story of the binding of Isaac? Some scholars believe that it was a statement by the editors of the Bible 1000 years after Abraham against a gruesome practice of their own time.

William Dever, Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology, University of Arizona, “Child sacrifice was fairly common throughout the ancient near east. And in fact at Carthage in North Africa, a Jewish cemetery has been found with small urns containing the burned bones of infants and the inscriptions accompanying these burials make it clear that parents had sacrificed a child to one or another of the gods to bring them good fortune.”

Scholars have sought to probe the seemingly baffling mystery of how any parent could sacrifice his own child?

Brettler, “As horrific as this might be to us, we can really see this as a very significant religious notion, where a person is coming and is saying to God, ‘God you have given me that which is most valuable, namely a child. I am going to return it to you.’”

Dever, “I think the editors wanted for us to believe that child sacrifice was never practiced. And yet the very critique of the prophets against it is proof of the fact that the practice was common. You don’t complain about something unless there was a real problem.”

Whatever the motive of the editors to set down the story of the binding of Isaac, its impact on all 3 great western religions is immeasurable. Today a mosque known as The Dome of the Rock, built in the 7th century in Jerusalem, enshrines the site on the mountaintop where the life and death drama is said to have taken place. However, according to the Islamic holy scripture, the Koran, it is Abraham’s other son, Ishmael, who was bound and almost sacrificed on this very rock.

Dr. Wadad Kadi, professor of Islamic Thought, University of Chicago, “In the Koranic version, there’s a general tendency to accept that Ishmael to have been that son, rather than Isaac. Isaac is accepted as a prophet, but the binding itself seems to have been Ishmael.”

Christians believe that Mount Moriah was the site of Calvary, while the Jews consider this the location of their holiest shrine, Solomon’s temple. All three religions have found profound importance in Abraham’s profound ordeal.

Wolpe, “After the binding of Isaac is over, God and Abraham in the Bible never speak again. Perhaps after this, Abraham and God have nothing to say again. ‘I did what you wanted, I fulfilled the mission, but now what else is there to say.’ But one commentator notes that after this story, Abraham and Isaac never speak again. After this, no matter how much Isaac understood that Abraham needed to do it, there was a sense that they could never be as close again.

According to one old rabbinic tale, when the aged Sarah hears that her beloved son Isaac was almost sacrificed by Abraham, the shock and horror of it are too much for her. In the Bible, we know only that soon after the binding of Isaac, Sarah finally dies.

In today’s world, anytime someone claims that God commands them to kill someone, we immediately assume they are mentally ill. Yet if the story is in the scriptures, we call them a prophet, and glory in their amazing obedience. I just don’t get it. My personal opinion is that Abraham was misled, and I want to point out some other opinions on the subject.

• Protestant theologian Kierkegaard said, “Though Abraham arouses my admiration, he at the same time appalls me.”
• Rabbi Yosef Ibn Caspi (Spain, early 14th century) wrote that Abraham’s “imagination” led him astray, making him believe that he had been commanded to sacrifice his son. Ibn Caspi writes “How could God command such a revolting thing?”
• According to Rabbi J. H. Hertz (Chief Rabbi of the British Empire), child sacrifice was actually “rife among the Semitic peoples,” and suggests that “in that age, it was astounding that Abraham’s God should have interposed to prevent the sacrifice, not that He should have asked for it.” Hertz interprets the Akedah as demonstrating to the Jews that human sacrifice is abhorrent. “Unlike the cruel heathen deities, it was the spiritual surrender alone that God required.”
• The early rabbinic Midrash Genesis Rabbah imagines God as saying “I never considered telling Abraham to slaughter Isaac (using the Hebrew root letters for “slaughter”, not “sacrifice”)”.
• Rabbi Yona Ibn Janach (Spain, 11th century) wrote that God demanded only a symbolic sacrifice.
• In Jeremiah 32:35, God states that the later Israelite practice of child sacrifice to the deity Molech “had [never] entered My mind that they should do this abomination.”
• In some later Jewish writings, most notably those of the Hasidic masters, the theology of a “divine test” is rejected, and the sacrifice of Isaac is interpreted as a “punishment” for Abraham’s earlier “mistreatment” of Ishmael, his elder son, whom he expelled from his household at the request of his wife, Sarah. According to this view, Abraham failed to show compassion for his son, so God punished him by ostensibly failing to show compassion for Abraham’s son. This is a somewhat flawed theory, however, since the Bible says that God agreed with Sarah, and it was only at His insistence that Abraham actually had Ishmael leave.
• In The Last Trial, Shalom Spiegel argues that these commentators were interpreting the Biblical narration as an implicit rebuke against Christianity’s claim that God would sacrifice His own son.
• In The Binding of Isaac, Religious Murders & Kabbalah, Lippman Bodoff argues that Abraham never intended to actually sacrifice his son, and that he had faith that God had no intention that he do so.

Finally, I want to add one last piece of information regarding Abraham. After the death of Sarah, he bought some land located in Hebron, which is part of the Gaza Strip in Israel. The Bible records that Sarah is buried there. According to Islamic tradition, Abraham left Israel and helped build a temple in Mecca, along with his son Ishmael. Abraham was later buried near his wife Sarah, in Hebron (in the Gaza Strip) according to Genesis 25:9. Ishmael’s death (at the age of 137) is also recorded in the Bible in Genesis 25:17-18.

So, what do you think of Abraham and how he relates to circumcision, Hagar, and human sacrifice?

Well, for those of you who desire to join in an online Sunday School class, a friend of mine started a website a few years ago called LDS Sunday School.  He was good at updating it a few years ago, but has been having a hard time updating it.  It is a wiki, similar to a Wikipedia, so anybody can edit so long as they register at the site.

As some of you know, I had been grousing last year about how bored I was in Sunday School.  So, I am going to register and start trying to submit helpful information.  This year’s study is the Doctrine and Covenants.  If only I could get internet access at church….

I will also add that there is a Virtual Priesthood/RS lesson at Mormon Matters.  The website also allows for these lessons, so if you want to add to this website or contribute to Mormon Matters, there are some online options as well.

Today happens to be the first day of Hanukkah.  It is a celebration of the freedom of the Jews from the Greeks, which happened in 165 BC.  The story is told in the Book of 1 and 2 Maccabees, which is in the Catholic Bible.  Jews and Protestants do not consider Maccabees as scripture.

After the exile of the Jews in the days of Jeremiah (around 600 BC), the Jews were dominated by the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Greeks.  During the reign of Nehemiah, the temple was rebuilt.  It was during the time of Alexander the Great that the land of Israel was conquered by the Greeks. In 175 BCE Antiochus IV Epiphanes was the successor, and he upset the Jews greatly when he attempted to put a statue of Zues there and offer pig sacrifices, among other things.

The Jews revolted under the leadership of Mattathias, and his son Judas Maccabeus, finally being successful in 165 BC.  The Jews enjoyed independence for about 100 years, until King Herod led a Roman contingent to conquer Israel again.  This is the same Herod who was alive at Jesus birth.

The temple was rededicated, but they only had one days’ worth of oil for the celebration.  Miraculously, the lamp stayed lit for 8 days, which was long enough for them to get some more oil.  This is why the Menorah has 8 outer candles, and a raised one in the center.  The Hanukkah celebration also lasts 8 days.

The re-dedication took place around December, which is why it is so often associated with Christmas.  The Jews have a different calendar, based on the Lunar year, and having 12 or 13 months, depending on the calculations.  That is why Hanukkah can occur as early as November.  All other holidays can similarly change months due to this strange calculation.  In essence, the Jews have a leap month every 3, 7, and 10 years to make up for their calendar.

More info can be found at Jewfaq.org or on Wikipedia.  Has anyone celebrated Hanukkah?  Happy Hanukkah!

December 25 became Christmas Day because it descended from a Roman festival of the winter solstice.  Our current calendar incorrectly identifies the year of Jesus birth.  Our current calendar comes from a monk named Dennis the Little about 500 years after Christ’s birth.  Astronomer Michael Molnar said, “Even his fellow scholars argued with him, that he missed a few years.  But no one could agree on just how many he missed.”

In the Bible we learn that Christ was born during the time of Herod the Great.  Herod died about 4 BC.  As we know from the Bible, Jesus was born prior to the death of Herod, which would mean that Christ was born before 4 BC.  We are all familiar with Herod’s decree to kill all jewish boys under the age of 2, on account of the Wise Men’s visit.  So, this would mean Christ must have been born around 6 BC.

The Book of Matthew refers not to kings, but “wise men”.  This term Magi comes from Greek: μάγοι, magoi, which is the Mages.  Biblical writers preferred the term “wise men” over the term “sorcerors”, which has a more negative connotation.  Note Magi is the source to the word “magician.”  The ancient historian Herodotus referred to Magi, as a mysterious religious community in Northern Iran (known as Persia).  Ancient artwork shows the wise men as ancient Persian priests, and many scholars believe the Magi came from Babylon.  Because they were highly regarded priests, they may have been mistaken for kings.

The religion they practiced was called Zoroastrianism, which is still in existence today.  It is the largest minority religion in Iran.  According to my friend from Iran, the country is approximately 90% Muslim, so all other religions are much smaller.  Of the smaller religions, Zoroastrianism is definitely the largest among the few Jews, Hindus, and Christians who do live there.  (When I told her that the wise men may have come from Iran, she was quite surprised to hear this.)

Zoroaster was founding prophet of Zoroastrianism, a religion that has been around longer than Christianity, and is about as old as Judaism.  It is a monotheistic religion.  Prophecy and miracles were a big emphasis.  Fire, representing light is a big part of their religious ceremonies.  They also believed in a Messiah, just as the jews.  Persians also spoke Aramaic, just as the Jews did.

There is an ancient writing called the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy.  In this gospel, Zoroaster predicts the birth of Jesus, and the Magi’s journey to Jerusalem.  The sign of Zoroaster is predicted by a star.  The Magi were great astrologers.  Modern astrology is descended from the Magi.  In Babylon, stars were magical things.  The signs of the Zodiac are the same today as they were in Babylon.

So, the question arises as to what star might have appeared around 6 BC.  A clay tablet from Babylon (the Almanac of Sippa) in the British Museum tells of a great astronomical event.  Jupiter and Saturn aligned in 7 BC.  Astronomer Michael Molnar tells us that these planets were known to play the central role in kingship, or emporership.  Jupiter tells of the coming of a new king.  Saturn tells of the old ruler.  When these 2 planets aligned closely in the sky, it meant the change of one ruler to another.  Traditionally, the constellation of Pisces was the sign of Israel.  These 3 objects aligned 3 times in the year 7 BC.  This happens every 820 years, so it is a very unusual event.  Jupiter also was eclipsed by the moon, and occurred in the East, which would be April 17, 6 BC.  Molnar believes this is the date of the birth of Christ.  It is an extremely unusual event, and would have been greatly noticed by the Magi.

Herod was a vicious ruler, and was very paranoid.  He killed anyone who was a threat to his throne, killing 3 of his own sons, a brother, and had his brother-in-law who was high priest of the temple drowned.  These are a few of several examples where he had his rivals killed.  It makes sense that he would be quite threatened to learn of the Wise Men’s interpretation.

The Book of Matthew tells of 3 gifts the Wise Men gave:  gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  Prof Deirdre Good of the General Theological Seminary in New York tells us the meaning of these particular gifts.  “The gift of gold is for royalty.  The gift of frankincense is for divinity.  The gift of myrrh is for death.”

Gold is a gift for an earthly king, and holds obvious symbolic significance.  Frankincense is used in incense, for many religious observances.  Frankincense was used by Jews in the temple, as well as a great number of other religions of the day.  It is made from the resin of rare trees.  It was so precious that it was literally worth its weight in gold.  Myrrh also comes from a rare plant (in Arabia) and is worth 7 times more than frankincense.  It’s use was for annointing the dead, as well as for healing properties.  In modern day use, it has anti-fungal properties, and there is some anti-cancer research regarding myrrh as well.  It would have been a gift for a physician.  Obviously, Jesus was a master physician with all the healings he performed.

Astronomer David Hughes tells us “Myrrh is used to anoint the dead.  You get this Christian attitude that even as Jesus was born, they knew he was going to die on the cross.”  While none of us would have any idea what to do with frankincense and myrrh, when we uncover how the ancient people felt, it helps us realize how valuable these gifts were.

Matthew and Luke seem to have some differing accounts of Jesus birth.  In Luke, the wise men visit a manger.  In Matthew, they visit a house.   One tradition has it that the Wise Men visited 12 days after Jesus birth, but it could also be that Jesus may have been as old as 2, since Herod ordered all male boys killed under the age of 2.

The gifts may have been a test for Jesus.  There is evidence that the Jews expected as many as 3 different Messiahs:  a spiritual one, a great warrior, and a healer.  When presented with the gifts, the idea was that if Jesus chose gold, he would have been an earthly ruler.  If he had chosen frankincense, he would have been a spiritual leader.  If he had chosen myrrh, he would have been a healer and miracle worker.  Legend has it that he chose all three, showing that he was all of the above.

Of course, the magi sneaked out of Judea due to the dream not to return to Herod.  Joseph was also warned in a dream to leave for Egypt.  These gifts would have been very helpful for their flight into Egypt.

I’ll continue with part 2 a little later.  At this point, I want to stop, and ask a question.  Does it bother you that the Wise Men may have been astrologers?