What's WRONG with this Ten Plague description? (page 4)

PSacramento

As some of you may know,I am not a fan of the OT.

I have had some discussion about the OT with a few Jewish friends of mine, one of them is a reasearcher at the Center for Jewish research here in Toronto.

I asked about the issues with the plagues and while they were not THESE issues ( they were in regards to God hardening the heart of the Pharoah and why the death of the innocent children), thier response MAY be used to "explain" these issues too, but I think Leo made a good case alread:

They said, basically, that the writer(s) of Exodus out into words what they observed, what they saw first hand and such.

They knew that God had sent Moses and Moses has the power of God behind him so, anythign that happened MUST have been God's will to happen that way ( free will didn't really count for much in the OT it seems, with their view that God manipulated Pharaoh), in regards to the death of the 1st born of Egypt, what MAy have happened was that a virus killed many of the children of Egypt ( the hebrews being secluded weren't ALL effected but some probably were) and of course,under the circumstances, God must have sent it.

Terry

When I lived in Los Angeles I'd often go to the courthouse and watch court cases unfold. (Some of them famous.)

It was fascinating to sit in the audience in the courtroom and watch good, bad, and indifferent lawyers ply their skills.

One thing I soon noticed.

There are cases which appear only before the Judge and no jury at all is involved.

The lawyers who plead these cases did something completely different from the lawyers that spoke before jurors.

It took me a while to figure out what the big difference was.

But, I did. Once I saw it---it opened up a new way of thinking about such matters as persuasion and the framing of an issue.

Basically, the difference is this.

A Judge is well-informed about the law. The Judge has no vested interest in the outcome. The Judge is only interested in facts.

A Jury is not informed about the law. A jury sees what it wants to see and hears what it wants to hear. A jury is emotional and not necessarily logical. In short, the jury wants a story. They want a beginning, middle and end. They want to be persuaded by the skill of the lawyer.

What is wrong with this picture, I often wondered.

A jury is susceptible to influences both emotional and rhetorical.

A Judge is not.

I've seen Judges time after time cut lawyers off and demand they stick to the law and the facts. Flourishes are time wasters.

How does the above relate to the "explanation" about inconsistency in the Old Testament?

This is how I see it.

The Bible either contains facts or it doesn't. The way it reads is more often a presentation of flourishes for dramatic effect with little thought given to FACT, LOGIC or harmony.

Commentators with great skill, like lawyers, can come in and dazzle the jury by creating plausible scenarios.

The Jury---if emotionally invested in the outcome--wants to believe the Lawyer for the defense. They want just enough shadow of doubt to acquit the Bibe of perjury.

A Judge would convict where a jury would acquit.

It is our role to be the judge and not the jury. Stick to facts as presented. Let the chips fall.

PSacramento

The Bible either contains facts or it doesn't.

The bible contains people's views of Historical "facts" and even then, at times, these are NOT facts as we know them because we can't verify them ever happening.

It is not a black and white issue, as much as we all would like it to be.

Did those plagues happen? were they viewed as plagues by the egyptians or just "typical crap that happens every so often"?, were there 100's of 1000's of Hebrew slaves in Egypt? did the leave and was there an exodus? were the egyptians the type to write about getting their butt kicked? were they the type to allow slaves to go free? or were they going through a bad time and the slaves ran away?

I mean, we can debate and debate these thinsg over and over from the view of the hebrews, the view of the egyptians and the view from the outsiders and even if NONE of them match up perfectly, that stil doesn't mean it never happened, it may will jsut mean that it didn't happen in THAT way.

We have 4 different accounts of Caeser crossing the Rubicon, does it matter which is right or that he crossed it?

mindmelda

Yes, because people are always factual. ROFLMAO! You really believe that? I have this bridge I'd like to sell you!

Seriously, though, there's a story in Genesis about how one of the patiarchs (Lot, I think) put spotted sticks over the troughs of pregnant sheep so they'd have colored wool rather than white, and he thought it worked. He also thought by other "magic sticks" he was increasing his herds.

You know what that's called? Sympathetic magic! So, if you believe that God wrote this down for us as FACT, is he telling us that sympathetic magic works?

Well, let me get my wizarding robes from Hogwarts and my wand, because I'm going to start learning magic.

Terry

The bible contains people's views of Historical "facts" and even then, at times, these are NOT facts as we know them because we can't verify them ever happening.

It is not a black and white issue, as much as we all would like it to be.

In practical terms, yes.

But, the Bible is never presented as a PRACTICAL book. It is presented as a SUPERNATURAL book.

It is THE book of books.

It is the best of all possible books! It is the communication from the highest conscious mind in the Universe----and yet----it is a muddle, a mess, a meandering meaningless miasma of myopic mumbo-jumbo!

So, it IS a Black and White issue in terms of the Context of what the Bible is supposed to be.

PSacramento

So, it IS a Black and White issue in terms of the Context of what the Bible is supposed to be.

Well, yes, IF the bible was supposed to be error free and infalliable and all the is writtne in it is direct transmision from God with NO variance whatsoever.

Big "IF" though, but I agree that for those believing this to be the case that the burden of proof is on them.

Heaven

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

The only sane answer is... the animals were resurrected... um... uh... so they could die ... again. Sheesh!

mindmelda

When you read the Bible, without any WTS Dark side of the Force mind tricks, you start wondering, or at least, I did, "Why did God make people write such an incomprehensible and hard to understand book if we need to read it to be saved?"

Some possibilities come to mind:

1. God is a mean jerk who likes to make us jump through flaming hoops of illogic to save ourselves...

2. People wrote it, and people are mean jerks who like to see you jump through flaming hoops of illogic for their amusement

3. It's just a collection of Bronze Age folktales and those are all incomprehensible mishmashes of old stories and full of weird unscientific ideas.

4. God doesn't need a big Book of God for us to know him, because some people had a God very like the Biblical God and/or the whole idea of gods before, during and while there was a Bible...honest, they did.

I'm sure there's dozens of others you can think of, but taking the Bible literally is the last thing I'd want to do. Or else I'd be selling my oldest daughter into slavery to pay my debts and wearing all linen clothes at the moment, and worrying about dragons and wild beasts and hellfire.

Mall Cop

The heroic figure of Moses confronting the tyrannical pharaoh, the ten plagues, and the massive Israelite Exodus from Egypt has endured over the centuries as the central, unforgettable images of biblical history.

But is it history? Did it really happen? You tell me what you think.

Blueblades

Terry

Remember the Roman legal principle?

falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus "false in one thing, false in everything"

The bible has among its false things other things indistinguishable from the false. So, making devotion to it

the center of one's life and devotion borders on the lunatic.

Confirmation Bias and Cognitive Dissonance permeate the believer's consciousness and render them daffy as that famous duck.

What's WRONG with this Ten Plague description?

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