Don't Read the Book, Ken

I did some more rainy day research today, and I've come to the conclusion that you don't need to read any part of the Bible to find out what it says. Wiki has concise summaries of all the major events, although not all in the same place. I didn't follow up all the links, but I'm pretty sure that it's all in there somewhere. Some of it isn't exactly the way I remember it, but a certain amount of memory loss is normal at my age.

Yesterday I tried to give you a brief summary of Apocalyptic theory, and I knew that I was over simplifying. Turns out that there is not a lot of consensus among theologians about the sequence of events, so pick any theory that sounds good to you. The book of Revelation is a surrealistic nightmare that will drive you nuts if you let it, which is probably why there is little agreement about what it means. Jesus spoke about the Resurrection a number of times, but He seemed to be answering questions from people who already knew something about it. From this I conclude that there was a cult or something that believed in it before Jesus came along. John the Baptist was baptizing people out ahead of Jesus, and even baptized Jesus Himself, so he couldn't have been baptizing them into Christianity. One thing I'm still pretty sure about is that nobody is going directly to Heaven or Hell immediately after they die. That idea might have come from the Greeks or the Persians, but it certainly didn't come from the Bible.

I had previously read that most of the Old Testament was probably written around the time of the Babylonian exile, but that doesn't mean it was a total fabrication. It's more likely that the authors were working from an oral tradition, and maybe some fragments of written material. What they did was pull it all together into a cohesive package. I never believed that the story of the Exodus was literally true in it's entirety, but to say that the Israelites never really were in Egypt seems like a bit of a stretch to me. One possible explanation might be that, since Canaan was under Egyptian control at the time, the Israelites could have been in Egypt without ever leaving home.

There is another theory that I have previously read about on Wiki that might also shed some light on the issue. Around the time of the Exodus, give or take a century or two, there was something called "The Bronze Age Collapse". It seems that all of the major civilizations of the era went into decline for awhile, possibly due, at least in part, by a climate change of some sort. By the time they pulled out of it, it wasn't the Bronze Age anymore, it was the Iron Age. If the Israelites were in Egypt, the Bronze Age Collapse would have given them the opportunity to fold their tents and silently steal away. If they were indeed back home in Canaan, the Canaanite city states, in their weakened condition, would have been vulnerable to a hostile takeover by a bunch of nomads who were looking for a chance to come in out of the desert. Of course it's just a theory, but so is everything else...... I got a theory, you got a theory, all God's chillin got a theory.

Your assertion that the Israelites never were in Egypt and that Moses was a totally fictional character was disturbing to me at first. It's like if I said that I doubted Davey Crockett really kilt him a bar when he was only three, but that he probably did go off the congress to serve a spell, and that he only metaphorically patched up the crack in the Liberty Bell. Then you come along and say that neither Davey Crockett, the U.S. Congress, or the Liberty Bell ever really existed. What does that do to the Battle of the Alamo? If Davey Crockett didn't die at the Alamo, does that mean  the Alamo is fictitious too? How then could the Texans launch a successful rebellion with the battle cry "Remember the Alamo!"? Without that flag for the Texans to rally around the Mexicans might have prevailed, and large areas of our country would be over run by Mexicans even unto this day.....Hmmm, maybe you were right about that after all.