KDude
New member
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2010
- Messages
- 8,243
To be honest, not much. But I was kinda forced to take catechism classes when I was a teenager, so I had to read a fairly ammount of pages. I agree that there may be some historical value if someone digs deep enough to separate the wheat from the cockle, but since it wasn't meant for informative purposes even this historical info is very suspect.
Suspect, yes, but not entirely useless. That's my standpoint at least. It's one source among others.
There's also some elements in these stories that aren't entirely miraculous. Take the Exodus story, for example. It's very possible that there was a slave revolt. For one, the Egyptians definitely owned slaves, and two, the Jews were among some of them. I don't see any reason to doubt that there was a core group - possibly family (Aaron, Moses, and Miriam) that instigated it either. This is plausible. The bible kind of seems credibile for the fact that it paints Moses as insecure, and just a spiritual leader. He stuttered, while his brother was better with people.. and his sister seemed headstrong. Most heroes are painted as shooting lightning bolts out of their asses, but Moses was a stuttering weirdo who said he had visions and such. Entirely plausible.
It's also plausible that the Egyptians gave chase and the Jews won. The Bible's story is definitely in the far fetched miraculous side of things.. what with the ocean swallowing up Pharoah and all that. But I could see it another way. Perhaps the Jews crossed a spot when there were low tides. By the time the Egyptians caught up, the high tide came, and they got stuck in the mire. And considering what Egypt looks like, I'd say it might have been more swamp like than an entire ocean. And perhaps the Jews either saw their chance to bolt or maybe they picked them off while the Egyptians were stuck. Egypt was heavily dependent on using chariots. This would have really screwed them up.
There's been a misinterpretation in some translations that say it was the "Red Sea" - but the Hebrew says the spot was called the "Sea of Reeds". This changes the story significantly to something that sounds more like mine, rather than the Charleton Heston version.