Of equal importance are the laughable attempts by atheists, agnostics and liberal theologians to undermine every factual piece of evidence that lends credence to the Biblical record. For example, the German liberal theologians assertion that the Gospel of John was written several hundreds of years after the life of Christ. It was supposedly a false gospel, quoting Jesus making claims He had never made in life. It was all bogus. A record written much later to bolster the claims that Jesus claimed He was God. Oh how many papers and books and articles were written, the preponderance of evidence of which was considered “overwhelming”. Because of this, there was a time when the majority view was, John indeed was written much later and could not be counted upon. Christian apologists actually avoided using John when defending Christ’s deity, to keep from being dismissed out-of-hand – in fact that (unfortunately) continues today because of the whole Q, M-Source, and L source, et. al. arguments.

Then, oops, P52 was found. The Rylands Library Papyrus P52 – a tiny fragment of John, which purportedly was originally found in an Egyptian garbage dump, ironically relegated all those papers, books and articles that had so ASSUREDLY placed the authorship of John in the third for fourth century to… the garbage dump. The most accepted date of the fragment is between 117 AD and 138 AD. Some like to date the fragment later, even as late as 170 AD, but no matter. The point is, here we have a fragment of the Gospel of John found in EGYPT dated to (at the latest) the second half of the second century. Because the original isn’t going to be found in an Egyptian location, this must therefore be a copy (of possibly many generations) of the original (or some variation thereof). This copy made it’s way all the way to Egypt, which means the original was written much, much sooner. This places the time of authorship in the first century, when John lived, and all those papers, books and articles which assert that the beliefs that Jesus was God and eternal with God didn’t come about until the third or fourth century, also ended up on the *garbage heap*. One tiny fragment was the undoing of the so-called “preponderance of evidence” and ironically it came from a Muslim land (though not when it was finally discovered and exposed). Had this fragment been in Muslim hands when it was ultimately discovered, would it have been presented to the world? Evidence that Jesus did assert Himself to be God, and people believing that in the first century, when Muslim assert that Jesus never made such claims? Unlikely.

Why did I write all that? To make two points; first, all it takes is one *tiny* bit of papyrus to topple the supposedly ironclad preponderance of evidence. One moment everyone is soooo sure something is true, then a little flake of paper appears and… what do you know? Suddenly those beliefs that just couldn’t be true, are now grounded in fact and the Bible is (once again) supported with factual evidence. Secondly, only fools believe that conclusions made from archeological “evidence” are without partisan religious politics or uncolored by national pride. The Egyptian nationals want us to believe that the pharaohs were friendly and fair fellows who never had SLAVES! Goodness forbid! They’ll read any archeological evidence as supporting that fact. They find some quarters where people lived, drank beer and had furniture, and suddenly this was the lot of ALL of the workers. Of course, an equally accurate reading is that these quarters were for those men who were bosses, designers, paid workers, while the majority of those that worked on the pyramids didn’t have permanent quarters, nor were they paid. They lived in tents and were slaves. The archeological evidence – from the Egyptian (Muslim) point of view is that, no Jews ever built the pyramids, whereas plenty of Jewish scholars read the same evidence and come up with far different conclusions. Also, the Egyptian (and so-called “skeptics” here) seem to gloss over the fact that many Jewish scholars don’t try to assert that Jews built the pyramids, but rather they build two cities, Pithom and Raamses. So the skeptics charge in boldly and arrogantly armed with their archeological evidence that Jews didn’t build the pyramids, and they assert that NO Jewish slaves ever existed, while they completely miss the fact that just because Jewish slaves didn’t build the pyramids, doesn’t mean they didn’t EXIST building other things. Conclusions, the skeptics here have their own axe to grind (as do the Egyptians and Muslims have a different axe to grind), but the skeptics here grind away without one scintilla of archeological education to keep them from making Archeology 101 mistakes. Actually, they’re even more fundamental than that, they are Logic 101 mistakes. Biased Sample, anyone? How about a helping of Hasty Generalization for good measure? Oh, why not toss in a wagonload of Misleading Vividness, for extra laughs?

Oh and, TexasOdysseyCoach… tell us exactly how your ancestors came to the U.S. to escape, “Judaism, Calvinism and the Lutherans”? Came to escape all three, huh? Please regale us with that tale, it should be fun to hear.

Perhaps also the Hyksos were present in Egypt even before they are recognised in history, let’s say in the days of the old kingdom pyramid building era. They were unlikely to have been slaves at that time however as they subsequently became the Pharaohs of the 15th dynasty.

I think there’s a lot of mythology in the Old Testament, but it’s good to keep an open mind on all possibilities. When we look so far back in history it’s all pretty cloudy and it often depends on who is telling the story. The victors in any conflict usually write the history from their viewpoint that puts them in a good light.

Hebrews obviously didn’t build the pyramids since the pyramids are freakin’ old. There weren’t even slaves building the pyramids. And what Herodotus had to say about who built the pyramids… its like if someone from the year 4000 took what we said about the the year 1 AD as accurate since we are so close to that time. Why even respond to this guy?

Did I mention, the pyramids are really old? The Hebrews, not so much, at least not on the scale of middle eastern civilization. If I was Egyptian I would be offended to have Hebrews being given credit for it. Of course it diminishes the accomplishments of the Egyptian people, but really because it makes the pyramids more then a thousand years younger which IMO lowers some of their wonder.

However at about the time the Hebrews were around, there was a lot of big monument building being done by slaves. There’s even written evidence of a group with a name vaguely close to Hebrew being enslaved. The basic outlines of a group of enslaved people who then went and founded Israel (whether by fighting or by just leaving… ancient slavery wasn’t much like modern slavery) is overall not an unlikely story. A group of people moving around the middle east wasn’t uncommon. It would be an exodus, though perhaps not Exodus.

Every group has its founding story. Do you think Australia would’ve chosen their story to be “founded by a penal colony” if they had the choice? Why be ex-slave? Moses is an Egyptian name (and the Bible even says otherwise!). Overall as far as events in the old testament goes, the Hebrews being a group of ex-slaves from Egypt doesn’t seem so odd.

So I disagree that the lack of archaeological evidence for the Exodus means much. What if they just took a road and walked to their destination. Or maybe they did wander around various areas. Okay so it doesn’t match up with Biblical Exodus, but um, does that really need debunking? We can put parting the water in the same column as talking snakes.

A small criticism regarding your post here: In my opinion it is very well possible to miss the archeological evidence for a large number of people running around the desert. The desert in this area can be pretty big, and not much of it has been thoroughly searched. In addition, your “short of a tectonic subduction” hints at how easy it can be to lose whole cities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleion
Of course, that is no argument at all for any possible truth in Exodus.

Anyway, I’d be happy to listen to more episodes like that one.