Here's a great link to the PBS show: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bible/
While I liked it, it was just a good start toward educating people on the
origin of the Bible. It was careful not to be too offensive, so that some
faithful believers could still walk away from it saying that it proves the
Bible is accurate while some skeptics could say that it proves the Bible
is not accurate.
I took the statement near the end that a prayer in Exodus being found in
a tiny scroll from the time of King David with roots even further back to be
an attempt to ligitimize the Exodus, saying that it was recorded shortly
after it happened. This was odd after they showed there was no evidence
of it ever happening. You can tell me all day that "no evidence" doesn't
disprove it. Well, show me evidence that it did happen, or I can call the
Exodus a great fictional story.
That link provides some insight that I have to ponder. Some Canaanites
would have left Egypt. Perhaps their story was told and exaggerated. Moses
could have been a composite of many men. In the narrative in the link, the
Mayflower voyage to America is compared to the Exodus. The vast majority
of Americans do not have a relative who came over that way, but the vast majority
of Americans relate to the story as their own history. I suppose I could expand
on that and discuss the first Thanksgiving. We have the story of the struggling
Pilgrims and the oh-so-helpful Native Americans bringing turkey and a great feast
over to them. Our story is so wrong. These two groups did not go on to be
best pals and that first "thanksgiving" wasn't as the stories and cartoons go.
That's just a handful of centuries back, so I suppose the Exodus going back thousands
of years could be even more exaggerated. That's the new political way to say
"It never happened like that."
