Comments on: Exodus 1-6 - The Bible lied; God played along

By: Flak

Flak — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 01:55:08 +0000

Ah, I guess I missed the bits about Pharaoh, since he’d previously allowed Joseph to “rule” everything but him. He seemed like little more than a ceremonial figurehead. Joseph should have been giving him an allowance ;)

And yeah, we watched that. I liked the “our timeline works, if you accept our timeline” bit, and also the bit where they find the writing in the mine. “This is clearly the first written record of God’s name, created by an Israelite slave…” And this after the guy declared that the Israelites did not use hieroglyphs but a prototype alphabet. I don’t know what he was looking at, but I looked on the wall where he pointed, and I saw iconographs.

By: Karamazov

Karamazov — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:46:32 +0000

Genesis 47:14 “…and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s house.”
47:20 “So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for the Pharaoh… The land became Pharaoh’s and as for the people, he made slaves of them”
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Joseph then continues to tell the serfs in detail how they should pay tribute ‘to Pharaoh’, and they agree to be slaves ‘to Pharaoh’. I’ll grant that he might have kept the cattle for himself, but in general Joseph seems either to selfless to ensure that his people stay in power, or just not interested in the fate of the people who sold him into slavery in the first place. I’m thinking the former, since Joseph has always been extremely naive. In any case, the tribute definitely went to the Pharaoh, not to Joseph, and certainly not to any other Hebrews.
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By the way, did your class watch that hilarious documentary on Exodus? “Using evidence from the Bible, we will prove… the Bible!” An amazing piece of archaeological research if there ever was one.

By: Flak

Flak — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:11:58 +0000

I don’t know, why did you?

By: KingCrazyGenius

KingCrazyGenius — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:51:08 +0000

Seeing how other people think is strange and terrifying. Why did I read this?

By: Flak

Flak — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 12:07:30 +0000

>>I"m not sure where you got the idea that Joseph did anything but demonstrate his extreme incompetence at setting up his kid"s college fund.

The Joseph arc of Genesis had some pretty explicit descriptions of how Joseph sold Egyptians food in return for money, then livestock, then land, then themselves. It doesn’t say anything about him doing this on behalf of the government.

By: Karamazov

Karamazov — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 05:17:55 +0000

I need to get to my own bible blogging, but I couldn’t help see your Exodus 4 comments. Yes. Most ridiculous chapter ye. Most self-centered God yet. You would enjoy the hand-waving explanation the Oxford scholars who annotated my Bible had to concoct to explain why God attacked Moses.

By: Karamazov

Karamazov — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 05:12:18 +0000

Hm, I don’t know, I read some of your comments on Exodus 1, but…

-my bible has ‘[a king who] didn’t know Joseph’, which I took to mean personally

-I wouldn’t say the pharaoh cared about his playmates leaving, it seems sensible to keep them there and get a supply of slaves rather than let good workers go to waste/Israel

-Joseph didn’t own Egypt, he was a high-up in a previous Pharaoh’s court. His system had the Egyptian serfs giving themselves and their land to that Pharaoh, not to Joseph. Joseph had his family settle in the northern delta, in Lower Egypt, so they were far from the capital and had little connection with, and no influence on, the far-away government in southern Upper Egypt. They were brought back into the government’s attention when the capital moved up north in a later dynasty. I’m not sure where you got the idea that Joseph did anything but demonstrate his extreme incompetence at setting up his kid’s college fund.

I’m all for critiquing and criticising the Bible, but you’re finding fault where there isn’t any.

(As for the midwives, well, who can argue with that? Methinks this Pharaoh was a bit inbred.)