What's WRONG with this Ten Plague description?

by Terry 49 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  White Dove

  So, the first time it happened, the plague got the un-sheltered animals. Then, the next time, it got all the rest?
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  PrimateDave

  Don't forget Pharoah's (never did get his name) horses. After being wiped out in the plagues, they got killed again in the Red Sea.
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  Terry

  Don't forget Pharoah's (never did get his name) horses. After being wiped out in the plagues, they got killed again in the Red Sea.

  Wow! I missed that one! Incredible how you suddenly get your sanity back and then the invisible dissonance becomes apparent!

  Thanks!
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  Mary

  Sorry Terry, I just re-read the verses you quoted and you're right.....how can all the animals in the field be destroyed if the 5th plague has already (supposedly) destroyed them already????
• 

  mindmelda

  Well, if I were a screen editor going over the Bible, I'd hand it back and tell the authors, "Man the plot and sequencing are so full of holes, you could drive a semi truck through it, I want re-writes, re-writes, and another re-write!"

  Actually, in my international writer's club, I do editing for other writers. The Bible would never make the first draft cuts.

  Cecil B. DeMille was right...you can take a sentence in the Bible and make a whole movie. More than that, you can take a sentence in the Bible and make a whole religion!
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  Terry

  Sorry Terry, I just re-read the verses you quoted and you're right.....how can all the animals in the field be destroyed if the 5th plague has already (supposedly) destroyed them already????

  Right Mary, we are SO ACCUSTOMED to reading it so that it makes sense it is typically impossible to read it any other way.

  But--once you DO it opens up like a really bad kindergarten play!
• 

  glenster

  I don't know what all the interpretations possible might be, but looking at it
  like a riddle in a Raymond Smullyan logic puzzle book, I see a few possible
  solutions that prevent it from being an irreconcilable contradiction:

  In the first example, “all the livestock” of the Egyptians that died could
  have just been those “in the field.” (Ex.9:3).

  Otherwise, the Israelites livestock didn't die and the livestock of surround-
  ing places didn't die. How much time went by until the second example--could it
  have been a few months?

  "How can all the animals in the field be destroyed if the 5th plague has
  already (supposedly) destroyed them already????"

  After the first example, the Egyptians can have used their livestock that
  hadn't been in the field for the field. If that isn't it, since they still
  needed livestock, they would likely replace it, getting another batch of live-
  stock from the livestock of the Israelites or anywhere else. That would work.

  Those left in the open would be killed for the second example.
  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%209&version=NASB
• 

  Leolaia

  I think it is worth pointing out the formulaic nature of these chapters and their use of hyperbole. Each plague narrative (whether from P or JE) is generally constructed of the following parts: (1) God giving a command to Moses or Moses and Aaron and delineating the results of the action, (2) Moses and Aaron carrying out the command, (3) the results of the their action, which optionally has two parts: (3a) "all" X of the Egyptians being adversely affected and (3b) "none" X of the Israelties being adversely affected, and (4) Pharaoh's response. The "all" rhetorically makes a sharp contrast between the "none", but we find in a few places that the "all" is actually qualified. So while "all the livestock" is related dying in part (3a) in 9:6, the part (1) announcement of the plague in 9:3 states only that the "livestock in the field" would die. The pedantic repeating of the qualification in part (3a) is precluded by the "all"/"none" formula. The use of hyperbole is clear in the narrative of the third plague. In this story, part (3a) states that "all the dust throughout the land of Egypt became gnats" (8:17). Not only does this seem excessive, but the very next sentence in v. 18 implies that there had to be dust available for the Egyptian magicians to attempt to replicate the plague. "All" conveys the magnitude of the event and it occurs formulaically throughout the plague narratives. So the plague of hail is described as "striking everything in the fields ... it beat down everything growing in the fields and stripped every tree" (9:25), and yet this too is probably a hyperbole because the locusts "devoured all that was left after the hail—everything growing in the fields and the fruit on the trees" (10:15). There is no qualification in 9:25, but again this is expected on account of the literary form.
• 

  peaches

  the bible was written by imperfect people...maybe just human error....
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  AK - Jeff

  The entire account is quite stupid when one takes a look at it without rose-colored religious glasses isn't it?

  Jeff