Freedway Thinker #19 - Who Wins - The Bible vs. Science?

In this episode I go on a little bit of a rant about when well meaning Christians say things like, "When the Bible and reason/science disagree... who wins!?" and intend you to feel bad if you side with science. This is a bad kind of argument for Christians to make and I hope my comments help show why.


Enjoy the show!



For more on Genesis 1 and a reading that doesnt pit the Bible vs Science, click HERE. 

Freedway Thinker #10 - Philosophy and the Bible

On Cherry Picking from the Bible

We Christians are often accused of "cherry picking" from the Bible by skeptics. We eat pork, we shave our sideburns, we dont go to church on Saturday, but we also think homosexual behavior is a sin and we affirm the 10 commandments. What gives? Are just cherry picking the parts we like and ignoring the rest or is something more theologically robust happening?

Enjoy the show!

Isn't the Bible Misogynistic?

In this episode we continue our series on the so-called "Bible Atrocities" and ask the question "Isn't the Bible Misogynistic?" This is Part 1 of a 3 part section seeking to answer that question. 

Enjoy the show!

Did God Really Command Genocide? with Matthew Flannagan

In this episode we continue our series looking at the so-called "atrocities" in the Bible by exploring the question of whether or not God commanded genocide in the Old Testament when he ordered the Israelites to drive the Canaanites out of the land. I'm joined for this discussion by Dr. Matthew Flannagan.

For more on Dr. Flannagan, you can follow his work at www.mandm.org.nz. You can also check out his book on this topic, co-authored with Dr. Paul Copan, entitled Did God Really Command Genocide? Coming to Terms with the Justice of God.

Enjoy the Show!

P.S. I tried a new platform for recording and it did not turn out the best. Sorry for the poor audio on my side of the discussion!

To stream direct you can visit the Freed Thinker Podcast podbean page or by visiting www.christusvictornetwork.com

Doctrines of Grace - Perseverance of the Saints

In this first episode of 2016 we look at the final Calvinistic doctrine known as the Perseverance of the Saints. It is the final layer of the Russian Nesting Doll and addresses the question of if a Christian can lose their salvation and fall away from the grace of God.

You can find this show and others on iTunes, Stitcher, on your favorite podcasting app or stream it live here.

Enjoy the show!

The Doctrines of Grace - The Atonement

In this episode we continue our series looking at the Reformed Doctrines of Grace otherwise known as the doctrines of Calvinism. Next time we will be looking at the doctrine known as Limited Atonement so for this episode we are looking at the intent of the atonement. I argue that we cannot understand the EXTENT of the atonement unless we understand the INTENT of the atonement.

You can download this episode and all past episodes by subscribing on iTunes or on the Stitcher app.








Enjoy the show!

For more resources I recommend:

Redemption Accomplished and Applied by John Murray

The Atonement by Leon Morris

From Heaven He Came and Sought Her ed. by Jonathan Gibson and J.I. Packer

https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/introduction-to-pastoral-theological/id378878956?mt=10

https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/introduction-to-pastoral-theological/id534630011

Violence Worthy of Worship: How Divine Wrath Prevents Personal Vengeance

ABSTRACT: In this paper I explore Psalm 137 (one of the so called Imprecatory Psalms) and how it is to be understood and applied within the Christian canon and applied to the Christian church despite its violent imagery.

   Violence Worthy of Worship: How Divine Wrath Prevents Personal Vengeance

Trial by Ordeal in Numbers 5:11-31

This is the research paper that I recently submitted for my RTS Master's course on Genesis Through Joshua. A very interesting passage in the book of Numbers to be sure. Enjoy!

   Final Paper - Trial by Ordeal

You can also find it here:

https://www.scribd.com/doc/251686352/Final-Paper-Trial-by-Ordeal

Exodus 21:20-21: A Manual For Beating Slaves?

I have written on this issue of this specific passage within the context of another post but for now I wanted to address this passage specifically as its own topic. I recently read on one of my “favorite” antitheistic fundamentalist’s facebook page this comment:

“Most Christians believe that Jesus IS God, that Jesus is the same jealous and angry God that abhorred homosexuals and condemned them as "an abomination." He is the same deity that gave instructions on how to beat slaves and the same divine Creator that suggested the stoning of non-believers and disobedient children. You have to accept the good along with the bad... after all, he came not to abolish the Hebrew laws, but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17).”

Now I’m not actually going to respond to the full comment. I want to select one of the  clauses to show that this kind of rhetoric is often so blinded by bias and so ignorant that it is surprising that anyone who claims to be a “critical thinker” or a “skeptic” buys into it. And yet this thread got all kinds of congratulatory back pattery and here-here’s (as well as a whole host of new bigoted comments to go along with it) that one would think this person had said something deeply profound or that he had stated some iron clad refutation of Christianity. In fact he may even be drawing this directly from RationalWiki which asserts basically the same thing, showing why RatiWiki is less helpful (and ironically less rational) than just plain ol' Wiki. To antitheistic fundamentalists like this their confirmation bias will also tell them that it is because of blind faith and the irrationalism of religious belief that will keep religious people from following such tight logic. The fact is that no religious person will be swayed by it because it is just nonsense.

So the clause that I want to look at as a prime example is the clause where this fundamentalist writes, “He is the same deity that gave instructions on how to beat slaves...” Let us look at Exodus 21:20-27 (in order to read the whole context) and see just why this antitheist won’t find anyone with even the most nominal of critical reading skills cheering him on when he makes statements like this. The passage reads:

²⁰ “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, ²¹ but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.

²² “If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely^[e] but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. ²³ But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, ²⁴ eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, ²⁵ burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

²⁶ “An owner who hits a male or female slave in the eye and destroys it must let the slave go free to compensate for the eye. ²⁷ And an owner who knocks out the tooth of a male or female slave must let the slave go free to compensate for the tooth.

I am not going to here go into all the detail on the historical or socio-economic background of debt or bond servitude in the Old Testament, but for those interested you can find my series on that beginning here with part one, part two and part three. In this article I just want to address what this law is and is not permitting or prohibiting, not whether or not is moral or immoral or if it should or should not be normative for Christians.

First we have to remember the genre of literature that we are reading. This portion of Exodus is a genre of literature known as a legal code. More specifically it is a casuistic law code. That means that these are case law from which general principles are derived. So it gives “for instance” kinds of laws that are not meant to exhaust all options but rather give illustrative or exemplars of the kind of things that are and are not permitted by the legal code.

Second let us break down what exactly each of these laws is saying:

Law 1 (vv20-21) – If someone has a servant and they beat their servant to death, then the family of the servant has the right to seek retributive capital justice – a life for a life. If the servant does not die, then the family cannot seek capital justice. The landowner cannot be put to death for it.

Law 2 (vv22-25) – If people are fighting and accidently cause a pregnant woman to go into labor but the child is fine, then there cannot be retributive capital judgment, but rather a fine as deemed proper by the courts. If there is serious injury (i.e. the child dies) then it is murder and it is life for life or, as the law explicitly states, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. That is, the second law does not limit the lex talionis (law of the tooth) to just eyes and teeth. It is that injury of any sort is in view. Eyes are teeth are given as exemplars – clear examples – but the law is not limited to eyes and teeth.

Law 3 (vv26-27) – If a landowner hits a servant (male or female) and they are injured in any way (see law 2 above) then the lex talionis applies to them. Not only is the landowner to let the servant go free and forgive all their debt (debt is what caused servitude in Israel) but is to also compensate them for any harm done. Think of this like the first workman’s comp law.

So what we see when we read the laws ALL together (as we should read ALL legal codes) is not a manual for how Jews were to beat a slave. Rather what we see are laws protecting servants from harsh landowners. They had a right to life and a right to not be beaten. If a landowner beat their slave to death then that landowner would be punished to death. However, if the landowner beat his servant but that servant didn’t die then that servant would still, under Law 3, be set free with his debt forgiven and compensation. To say that it is a manual for how to beat a slave is simply as wholly inaccurate of a reading as the person who reads Hamlet and comes away thinking that they have just read a comedy on the plight of 20th century hipsters.
 

Now, I readily admit that this does nothing like show that God exists or that the Bible is inspired but all too often self-professed “free/critical thinkers” and “skeptics” will buy anything that is said in a witty and inflammatory manner so long as it mocks religion and gives them a platform to join the club to make fun of us “god-tards.”[1] Yet just a rudimentary level reading comprehension would show that this atheistic fundamentalist is completely unable to be objective an unbiased. If that is the kind of “summary” of the law found in Ex 21:21 (which is a relatively simple and clear passage) which they find convincing, then why should anyone expect him to do any better on more complex texts requiring a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the historical, socio-economic, religious, literary or original language contexts? I would ask him to name any scholarly or academic commentary that would agree with his reading of the text as an instruction manual for how to beat a servant. I highly doubt this "skeptic" is very "skeptical" of his own statements or has done any research on these texts whatsoever. Likely he is just parroting the kind of bigotry that has become common place among the internet infidel types. And yet look how many “skeptics” just uncritically agree with him and use it as a launching pad to their own intolerant screeds.  

---

[1] This particular antitheistic fundamentalist is especially bothersome since he claims in his published work to be an “American scholar of religion” and so people think that his statements are researched when, as we have seen above, they are not only not researched but are just poor reading comprehension.

New Freed Thinker Podcast!!!

UPDATE!!!! The Freed Thinker Podcast is now available on Itunes!!! Just go to the Itunes store and search for Freed Thinker and BAM! There it is! Click it! Subscribe it! Love it!

Yes the time is finally here! After years of encouragement I have finally buckled to pressure and started The Freed Thinker Podcast!

The first series will be a me teaching through about a full semester's worth of material on Apologetics and the New Atheism and I am super excited to make this a VIDEO podcast with the slides and all. This does mean that I need to work a little harder on the production end of it but I hope that this will be rewarding to all of you who decide to follow it!

I have just finished the first episode and am working on how to get it up on to itunes but I will post that first video here:

I hope you enjoy!!!

Did Jesus Predict the Rapture within 40 Years of his Death? Part 3

The Problem of “γενεὰ αὕτη” (“this generation”) and

“πάντα ταῦτα” (“these things”) in Matthew 24

Part 1 - http://logical-theism.blogspot.com/2011/05/did-jesus-predict-rapture-within-40.html

Part 2 - http://logical-theism.blogspot.com/2011/05/did-jesus-predict-rapture-within-40_29.html

 

Part 3 – Examination of πάντα ταῦτα

For this third installment of the series, I would like to give some brief interpretive comments about Matthew 24 and some of the relevant parallel passages. While a complete commentary of the entire Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24-25; Mark 13; Luke 21) is far beyond the scope of this series, I think that we have reached a point that we can now examine the critical verses that are contained within and look at their theological, historical, and grammatical contexts to determine the best interpretation of Jesus’ comments.

As we discussed above there are several different interpretive possibilities of Matthew 24:34 and what is meant by Jesus’ statement “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” We noted that the first class of interpretations hinges on the clause “γενεὰ αὕτη” (“this generation”) and attempts to make it mean something other than the lifetime of those present with Jesus. I gave several different interpretations that expositors have used to formulate this view and also various reasons as to why I think that these main formulations fail to be convincing.

The second class of interpretations see “γενεὰ αὕτη” (“this generation”) as referring to the lifetime of those present with Jesus but interpret “πάντα ταῦτα” (“these things”) as pointing to something other than the last day of the earth at Jesus’ second coming. In the second part of this article I gave a brief summary of various hermeneutical themes such as sensus plenior that I think will be helpful for a full and adequate understanding of this passage. However it will not be until our concluding discussion in Part 4 that I will bring the interpretation of the passage in this section and the hermeneutics of Part 2 to a proper marriage. Here I will be giving a brief sketch of the interpretation of various relevant passages that I find most convincing and the various reasons for that conclusion. It is to that position that I will now turn my attention.

The follow comments will be listed under themes found in the Olivet Discourse and will be more staccato than continuous. The follow metaphors or themes that are expressed in the Olivet Discourse often have deep roots into the Old Testament that will be helpful in understanding how Jesus uses them in this famous sermon.

1.      Hyperbole is a kind a literary exaggeration used to illustrate severity or extreme degrees. It is used intentionally as a literary device. What we find in a vast majority of ancient, Biblical, and even modern texts, is a wide usages of hyperbole for rhetorical effect. Here we will show that not only was hyperbole common in the Old Testament, but it was also very frequent surrounding the theme of divine judgment. Here are a handful of examples that can be drawn primarily from the Old Testament, but also in some cases eluded  to elsewhere in the New Testament:

a.       Great Tribulation

                                                              i.      Exodus 11:6 – “There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again.”

                                                            ii.      Daniel 9:12 – “You have fulfilled the words spoken against us and against our rulers by bringing on us great disaster. Under the whole heaven nothing has ever been done like what has been done to Jerusalem.”

                                                          iii.      Daniel 12:1 – “At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered.”

                                                          iv.      Joel 2:2 – “a day of darkness and gloom,
   a day of clouds and blackness.
Like dawn spreading across the mountains
   a large and mighty army comes,
such as never was in ancient times
   nor ever will be in ages to come.”

                                                            v.      Ezekiel 5:9 – “Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again.”

a)      In this verse we have almost a direct corollary between Ezekiel’s pronouncement of  judgment on Jerusalem by Babylon in 586 BCE and Jesus’ pronouncement of judgment on Jerusalem in the Olivet Discourse.

b.      Sun, Moon, and Stars

                                                              i.      Isaiah 13:10 – judgment of Babylon (539 BCE) - The stars of heaven and their constellations will not show their light. The rising sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light.

                                                            ii.      Isaiah 34:4 – judgment of Edom (703 BCE) - All the stars in the sky will be dissolved
   and the heavens rolled up like a scroll; all the starry host will fall like withered leaves from the vine, like shriveled figs from the fig tree.

                                                          iii.      Ezekiel 32:7 – judgment of Egypt (568 BCE)- When I snuff you out, I will cover the heavens and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon will not give its light.

                                                          iv.      Joel 2:10 – judgment of Judah (586 BCE)- Before them the earth shakes,
   the heavens tremble, the sun and moon are darkened, and the stars no longer shine.

                                                            v.      Amos 8:9 – judgment of the northern kingdom (722 BCE)- “In that day,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “I will make the sun go down at noon  and darken the earth in broad daylight.

c.       Sign of the Son

                                                              i.      Daniel 7:13-14 - “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. ¹⁴ He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

                                                      ii.            Mathew 26:64 - “You have said so,” Jesus replied. “But I say to all of you: From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

a)      This one is particularly interesting because at Jesus’ ascension he now tells the apostles that from then on they will see him “coming on the clouds.” This was not to be a one-time future event but rather a perpetual state of authority that Christ would be seen in. What does this mean for our passage when we look back two chapters? We will find out.

d.      Gathering the Elect

                                                              i.      “Angels” can be “messengers”. In fact some have thought that rather than angelic intervention, that preaching may be what is in view.

                                                            ii.      “gather” (συνάγω) being used in a non-physical sense can be seen in John 11:51-52 rather than some kind of eschatological end time gathering. It can refer to a spiritual calling and gathering rather than a physical one.

2.      It is also helpful at this point to see v34-35 as a transitional statements: ^33”So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. ³⁴ Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. ³⁵ Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

a.       V34 is a conclusion statement. If Jesus was not changing subjects, the placement of this verse here would be unintelligible. There would be no reason to add a conclusion and transition statement at this point what Jesus was not changing the subject.

b.      Distinct move from “this generation” to “that day” between the two sections. One referring to events that will take place in the timeframe of an approximate generation, and the other using the standard Hebraic term for the final eschatological period, “that day.”

                                                              i.      Before v34 it speaks of “days” after v34 it speaks of “day” (a common Jesus term meaning the final judgment).

c.       Before v34 there are signs of what Jesus is addressing and it is possible for people to know what is coming (notice the warnings for people to take heed, abandon their possession, take for the hills, etc.) After v35 there are no signs and no one can know. One will be taken and one will be left. They will not know the time or hour. This ability to know is drastically different on either side of this transition statement.

                                                              i.      In addition to this, Jesus claims that he doesn’t know the time of his second coming (v36) but that he does know the time of the destruction of Jerusalem (24:6, 25, 29, 30, 34)

                                                            ii.      In fact, as a historical aside, what is interesting to note is that when the siege of Jerusalem took place, it was actually the Christians who survived largely because they believed it was the fulfillment of this very passage and fled for the hills. What no one seems to ever mention when discussing this passage is that if the early church thought that Jesus’ second coming was going to happen in that generation and that the fall of Jerusalem was the culmination of history, then what would have been the point to abandon their goods and seek refuge in the hills? If they were going to be “raptured” (a somewhat anachronistic usage I know) then what would be the point in warning them to flee the wrath on the city?

d.      Before v34 the time frame is a short 40 years, after v34 there is a long period 24:48, 25:5, 19)

e.       Notice that the summation statement of “these things” expressly EXCLUDES the second coming. When we see “these things” then we will know that Jesus is NEAR. The coming is not included in “these things” and thus when a generation will not pass before all of “these things” takes place, does NOT include the second coming. What follows after v35 then deals with the second coming AFTER the signs and shows that it will be unknown and will be preceded by a LONG period of expectation.

f.       Vv.25:31 begins final judgment descriptions. This is AFTER a period of LONG expectation.

We find a helpful summary statement from D.A. Carson in his commentary on Matthew in the Expositor’s Commentary Series. He states,

“If our interpretation of this chapter is right, all that v34 demands is that the distress of vv.4-28, including Jerusalem’s fall, happen within the life time of the generation then living. This does not mean that the distress must end within that time but only that ‘all these things’ must happen within it. Therefore v34 set a terminus a quo for the Parousia; it cannot happen till the events in vv4-28 take place, all within a generation of A.D. 30. But there is no terminus ad quem to this distress other than the Parousia itself, and ‘only the Father’ knows when it will happen” (p507).  

In our final section of this series we will make some final interpretive conclusions about the passage and address the question once and for all, Did Jesus err when he said “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place”?

Part 1 - http://logical-theism.blogspot.com/2011/05/did-jesus-predict-rapture-within-40.html

Part 2 - http://logical-theism.blogspot.com/2011/05/did-jesus-predict-rapture-within-40_29.html

Israel in Egypt – Historical Fact or Later Fiction? Part 2

Israel in Egypt – Historical Fact or Later Fiction?

Part 2

For Part 1 - http://freedthinkerpodcast.blogspot.com/2011/05/israel-in-egypt-historical-fact-or.html 

I will here be continuing the argumentation that Israel in Egypt and the Exodus cycle was not a late priestly invention but was a historical reality. You can find part 1 of this article in the link directly above. 

1.      The intentional lack of a proper name for the Pharaoh during the Moses cycle reveals an earlier Egyptian form of polemics, rather than a later Babylonian or Assyrian one.

a.       It has been long debated whether or not the omission of Pharaoh’s name in the Moses cycle was accidental (due to ignorance) or intentional. Considering the evidence listed above, IF the Moses cycle was a product of a returning scribe in the middle of the First Millennium he would have been unlike any writer before or after until the modern era in the light of his massive and complex knowledge of socio-rhetorical devices, linguistical structures, centuries past etymologies, and various historical and cultural nuances. Should we really expect that a writer literally 2000 years ahead of his time (who knew methods of historical analysis that we didn’t even invent until the 20^th century) would simply forget a main character’s name?

b.      In light of this, many scholars have come to think that the omission of the Pharaoh’s name in the exodus tradition to be an intentional polemical device. It is no accident that in the same narrative that the reader learns the personal name of the Hebrew God (YHWH) and how powerful he is, that his arch rival in the story is left anonymous and shown to be totally impotent in the events.

c.       This was a very common (almost universal) polemical device used during the New Kingdom and found in many inscriptions. (We find good examples of this in the annuls of Thutmose III, Amenhotep II, and Seti I during the Ramisside period).

                                                              i.      It was used to show the total domination of one’s enemies. They were shown to be dominated by being omitted by name from history (a funny modern illustration can be seen in Harry Potter’s “he who is not to be named”).

d.      If the narratives were written later during the First Millennium after Israel returned to the land and its scribes had all been educated in Babylonian or Assyrian courts, then we should expect the narrative to reflect their practice later titled by historians as “damnatio memoriae” – literally, damnation of memory. In this practice the conquered enemies names would be meticulously kept on record and would often be written on pots and dashed to the ground – symbolically demolishing them.

                                                              i.      This practice was almost universal in all Assyrian, Babylonian and Aramean texts and only developed very late in Egyptian history.

                                                            ii.      In fact we find in later Biblical traditions (such as Kings and Chronicles) that were written contemporaneous with Babylon and Assyria that we find the scrupulous record keeping of the defeated kings of Israel. So we find the two traditions (that of the exodus and that of the monarchy) actually using the polemical devices that were common during their time of composition.

2.      The details of the opposition of the Hebrews dovetails well with the traditional dating and of its political climate.

a.       We know that during early to middle Second Millennium (ca 2000-1400BCE), large numbers of Semites were present in Egypt not only due to famine and drought in the land but also as a result of military captivity. Egypt was literally teeming with Semitic immigrants. These conditions simply did not exist to such a degree after the expulsion of the Hyksos. For The children of Abraham to migrate to Egypt to escape famine in Canaan would have been common faire during that time period but would have been out of place during the later post-exile period.

b.      There is a strange comment in Exodus 12:38 that says a “mixed multitude” went up with Israel. This is most likely a reference to the large number of other Semites who joined with Israel and likely converted to Judaism in response to the mighty works of YHWH. This would also explain why Israel went from being quite small to a powerhouse so rapidly. We sometimes are fooled by the later legal pronouncements of God to not comingle with other Semitic tribes and assume that this was always the case. But we have to remember that the Exodus event and the giving of the law following WERE the nationalizing events and would have included this “mixed multitude” who came up out of Egypt with the children of Abraham. It may not be too far off to say that proto-Israel was actual a melting pot of many different Semitic people. (This may also explain the some of the obscure dietary and custom laws that would need to be put in place to conform outsiders to their new tribe.)

c.       Moses request for the Israelites to have time off to worship their God was actually common practice during this period. He was actually quite right to reasonably expect Pharaoh to give his people a furlough to go and worship. It would have been actually quite culturally shocking that the request was not initially granted.

d.      I do not identify the Hyksos with the Hebrews (nor the Apiru – lit. habiru) but we do know that after the Hyksos expulsion, Semites were commonly viewed as possible subversives. We now have evidence of massive building projects during the 18^th dynasty following the expulsion of the Hyksos in their previous territory of Avaris/Pi-Ramesses. It is unquestioned that Semites were the primary labor force for these building projects.

3.      Many words in Exodus cycle are clearly Egyptian in their etymology, something that we would not expect if the texts were written centuries later by authors trained in Babylonian and Assyrian culture.

English                                    Hebrew                                   Egyptian

a.       “Basket”                                  tebat                                        db3t

b.      “papyrus”                                gome’                                      km3

c.       “pitch”                                    zapet                                        dft/sft

d.      “reeds”                                   sup                                           twfy

e.       “river”                                     haye’or                                    itrw

                                                              i.      What is so interesting about this one is that the normal Hebrew word for river (nahar) is not used but rather haye’or is used which is a transliteration of the Egyptian word itrw. In fact the absence of the t from the Hebrew transliteration poses even further proof for an early composition because the omission of the t would match perfectly with the 18^th Dynasty vocalization that was no longer used in the middle of the First Millennium. So how would a post-exile Jewish scribe know how to transliterate into Hebrew a specific Egyptian vocalization from 1000 years before?

f.       River’s “brink”                        sapah                                       spt

                                                              i.      This one is also interesting because again the Hebrew is not one of the the normal words for a river bank or edge (yad, peh/panim, gadah or qaseh) but is a transliteration of one commonly used in Second Millennium Egyptian specifically for the edge of the Nile. (This same oddity also occurs in the Joseph cycle at Genesis 41:3 and 17)

There will be much more to follow.

Part 1 - http://freedthinkerpodcast.blogspot.com/2011/05/israel-in-egypt-historical-fact-or.html