Never mind that slowly we are able to define miracles in scientific terms. Does the knowledge of how a baby is formed make the actual delivery of a living breathing moving human (or animal) any less miraculous? I don’t think so. Here are some of the things that I am questioning about Simcha Jacobovici’s conclusions that Chris Heard didn’t touch on.
Plague 1 – Water to Blood. Simcha uses Lake Nyos, Cameroon as his example of this. “geophysicist George Kling explains the Cameroon phenomenon as high concentrations of iron in the deep waters at the bottom of the Lake Nyos bubbling up to the surface and reacting with oxygen in the air to form iron hydroxide. To put it crudely, the waters of Lake Nyos ‘rusted.'” Ok. Here’s my main problem with this… the movement of the water. Rivers flow, lakes eddy. I’m not geophysicist or a enviromentalist or any such person that studies water and it movement. But to my untrained brain it just doesn’t fly. Wouldn’t the ENTIRE Nile have to pass gas in order for it to turn “rust” long enough for the 2nd plague to happen? Wouldn’t the flow of the river take the containated water away? In order for this to happen, wouldn’t the gas release have to be like a very large oil spill contaminating 100’s and 100’s of miles of river? We’re not talking about a little body of water here. It just doesn’t make that much sence to me.
Ok. Someone goes over this point in the comments. And I am following the same logic. Ok. that was the only thing Chris missed that I saw as important. He covered everything else. I found his critiques helpful in forming complete conclusions. Or as complete as possible. Simcha would present a point, gloss over the supporting evidence, call it fact and use this conclusion to support the next point. Chris took these point by point, looked at the supporting evidence, when he could find it, did his own research as necessary and gave the bits that Simcha glossed over or completely ignored because they didn’t support his conclusions.
I’m not one to mind the refudiation of traditional scientific theories. I think new ideas are good. But if you present new ideas as fact, as Simcha does, with flimsy and cobbled together “evidence” I do have a problem.
Initially watching ED I was ready to believe. I was thrilled that maybe there was a link between Thera and the Biblical Plagues. But then “evidence started dropping into place to quickly and too neatly. And I was disappointed to find that Simcha’s own expert could only find 40 grains of ash in his much larger sample – thus nullifing Simcha’s argument that Thera was the cause of the darkness plague. Simcha’s own expert refudiated one of Simcha’s claims. I will admit disappointment. I really wanted Thera to be the root if the 10 plagues.
One of my main concerns, which Dr. Heard does not address, probably because Simcha doesn’t as well, are the 2 cities mentioned in Exodus 1:11 (my verse may be off just slightly). They are Pithom and Ramses. Why does Simcha ignore these 2 very obvious clues? Because, if my history is correct, these 2 cities date to the wrong Pharoh. They date to the generally accepted Exodus Pharoh … d’uh, it’s pretty obvious … Rameses. Thus blowing Simcha assertion that the time line needs to be revamped. I found that if the given clues or facts didn’t fit with his theory, Simcha glossed over them, ignored them, or took snippets from them to support his conclusions.
Take the time to read Chris Heard’s blog. Take the time to read TheExodusDecoded.com – if you can get it to come up (I’ve been trying for 2 days and I keeping getting the same error). Make your own conclusions. But make sure your conclusions are based on the facts available (the Bible, the historical evidence, and the archeological evidence) not just the hype of a good story and a slick (and very well done) presentation.
Also one other thing that I have to say something about, even though Chris does a great job of debunking the theory. It’s Joseph’s seal. There is no way on God’s green earth (be it Pharoh’s gods or Joseph’s (and my) God) Pharoh would allow Joseph to use his father’s name as Pharoh’s seal of authority. It would be Pharoh’s name or symbol. And maybe, and this is a long shot, it would have been Joseph’s name or symbol. I work for a local government, and I know how “weird” our officials can get about signatures and the seal. It’s all about the power these thing represent, and this is a democracy. I can only image what Pharoh would have been like, when his ability to control the power was all that kept him in “office” a times. Total control – which leads back to Joseph and the seal. There is no was it could have been anything other than Pharoh’s name or symbol.
Let me repeat. Watch with a skeptical eye, read with a skeptical eye, and most of all learn as much as possible from the experts and the ameutur’s. Learn, learn, learn. Use you brain. If something seems too good to be true, maybe it is.