Is there any reason to believe there even was an exodus? This post hoc attempt to find some set of facts that could possibly be reconciled with the text is ridiculous.
I don't think it's ridiculous at all. The Bible very clearly records an Exodus story. What's so ridiculous about trying to find corroborative evidence, as long as evidence to the contrary is examined as well?
*Also, note that I'm not trying to reconcile facts with the text. I'm examining approaches to the text itself.
What's so ridiculous about trying to find corroborative evidence, as long as evidence to the contrary is examined as well?
This isn't trying to find corroborative evidence, it's attempting to reinterpret the story in a way that hasn't yet been disproven and may not even be possible to disprove.
If I argued that the entire Dallas Cowboys team stood on my kitchen table last night and someone else pointed out that the table surely could not support a whole team of football players, would you attempt to say that it was just Tony Romo I was talking about and that he represented the entire Dallas Cowboys team or would you think I was just making the whole thing up?
hey, what's your e-mail address? (it's your friend from the Southwest!)
Southwesterner, email me at safkanut@gmail.com
*Include something identifying so I know it's not JewishAtheist being an imposter 
JewishAtheist,
Err, I don't know... the people who are proposing alternate interpretations of the Exodus text are the same atheist reshoim archaeologists who completely reject TMS.
If I argued that the entire Dallas Cowboys team stood on my kitchen table last night and someone else pointed out that the table surely could not support a whole team of football players, would you attempt to say that it was just Tony Romo I was talking about and that he represented the entire Dallas Cowboys team or would you think I was just making the whole thing up?
Actually, it's plausible in an idiomatic sense. If Tony Romo, and let's say Flozell Adams and another couple Cowboys got on your table, and you recounted the story to your friends "and then the whole Dallas Cowboys roster jumped on my table", even though what you are reporting is not literally true, you are exaggerating for effect, your listeners/readers would understand the fact, and you would be idiomatically, if not literally, telling the truth. Everybody does that the whole time. Everybody but Dr Spock or the Golem would understand what you meant.
The question is whether the Humash meant such a thing when it reported the numbers. Given the specificity of the numbers, that seems unlikely, but who knows.
How about "Solomon sacrificed 22,000 cattle and 120,000 sheep as fellowship offerings to the LORD. So the king and all the people of Israel dedicated the LORD's temple." (1 Kings 8:63)
How about "Solomon sacrificed 22,000 cattle and 120,000 sheep as fellowship offerings to the LORD. So the king and all the people of Israel dedicated the LORD's temple." (1 Kings 8:63)
Yeah, my 12-year old and I were doing some quick calculations on Yom Tov. Figured out that the cattle alone would have to be slaughtered at the rate of about one every two seconds. The sheep at the rate of 3 per second. (Assumes a 12-hour day.)
I don't think so...
Not like I really care about defending Solomon, and either way 142,000 animals is infinitely beyond plausibility, v. 65 can be read as implying that the offerings were over the course of an extended period of time.
v. 65 can be read as implying that the offerings were over the course of an extended period of time.
Maybe, but "Bayom hahu" seems to me to be a continuation of the previous pasuk that mentions how many were sacrificed.
In any event, at least they were shlamim and people got to enjoy some barbeque.
Now here is something even more astounding: Judaica Press quotes two midrashic sources which claim that "among these 22,000 oxen were the 12 oxen the princes of the tribes donated for pulling the wagons containing parts of the Tabernacle. Because of their affiliation with the Sanctuary, they were granted miraculously longevity. They neither aged nore became blemished during the 480 years between the Exodus and the building of the Temple".
22,000 oxen? Do you think that they where all Glatt Kosher? How did they check so many lungs in such a short time?
While we are talking suspicious numbers, check out Divrei HaYamim, where it discusses battles between Malchus Yisroel and Malchus Yehuda and the number of troops and casualties are stupendous.
Do Over: fascinating, I’d never read this material before.
To my mind, 2 Divrei Hayamim ch. 17 is a perfect candidate for an alternate understanding of elef.
For a start, the numbers involved are so absolutely vast that it is difficult to believe that anyone could have read it as referring to thousands. 780,000 troops from Yehudah and another 380,000 from Binyamin, giving the southern kingdom a total of 1,160,000 troops. By comparison, the IDF currently has about 168,000 active duty troops – about a seventh that. The Roman Army, at its peak, had fewer than 400,000 men (perhaps as many as 700,000 if you include auxiliaries from all over the vast empire). It also is hard to reconcile with the numbers in the Bible. According to the census conducted by David (2 Shemuel ch. 24), the total military pool in Yehudah was 500,000. With ancient growth rates, it’s rather hard to believe that the numbers more than doubled in little over a century. So the numbers are implausible to say the least.
By contrast, if you read elef in ch. 17, not as thousand, but perhaps as a description of the unit – and therefore take off the thousand – it makes much more sense. This is supported by the reference to the officers as “sarei alafim” – perhaps it meant “head of a company” (think “mefaked plugah” in current IDF lingo). You would then read, for example, 17:15 (“וְעַל-יָדוֹ, יְהוֹחָנָן הַשָּׂר;וְעִמּוֹ, מָאתַיִם וּשְׁמוֹנִים אָלֶף.”) as “Yehohanan was the commander of a unit of 280”, not the traditional translation of “Jehohanan the captain, and with him two hundred and fourscore thousand.”
That way, you come out with numbers that make a lot more sense, i.e. Adnah was commander of a unit of 300, Yehohanan of 280, Amasiah of 200, Eliyada of 200, and Yehozabad of 104.
Moreover, this interpretation, unlike the desert census, doesn’t cause any conflicts with other enumerations.
ReshLakish:
Happy to have pointed this out. (I am no Tanach guru. Especially compared to others out here in blogsphere - so to actually point out something new to someone make me happy
But are you then using 'Eleph' consistently everywhere to mean 'unit' instead of 'thousand'? In (2 Shemuel ch. 24), is it 500 units or 500,000 in the military pool?
I would rather believe that they where simply exagerating. Maybe our friend Missippi Fred McDowel on the Main Line could weigh in?
Commenting by HaloScan
