"Just the Facts, Sir"

That's what Sgt. Joe Friday in the old "Dragnet" TV show used to say when a witness he was interviewing started interjecting his personal opinions into his testimony.

I think that most secular historians view the Bible as a mixture of history, mythology, and creative story telling. In addition to reading the Bible, I have also read lots of stuff written about the Bible. Of course that's not 100% believable either, but I can usually tell if a source is biased pro or con, or if it's written from a neutral point of view. I don't have access to all the stuff I have read over the years, but I do have a book put out by Reader's Digest back in the 70s called "People of the Bible and How They Lived", and I can look some of this stuff up later if you want. There's no point, however, if you're just going to reject it out of hand because it's about the Bible. Wiki should have lots of stuff on the Bible too, and they have a reputation for writing from a neutral point of view, although some biased stuff does slip in from time to time. Before I go searching around, though, let me get this straight: Are you saying that Jesus never said, "Love your enemies." or are you saying that every other religion says that too?

I agree that Christians have historically spent more time fighting among themselves than they have fighting people of other religions, at least for the last thousand years or so. Before that there was a little skirmish called "The Crusades", but there was some intramural fighting involved in that to. More recently, the Germans and the Russians have been pretty hard on the Jews occasionally, but not in our lifetimes. This may be attributed to the fact that, until recently, Christians had a lot more contact with other Christians than they had with people of other faiths. I read somewhere that most murder victims are acquainted with their attacker. I suppose that a person is more likely to get mad at somebody he knows than somebody he doesn't know. Well, I get mad at TV people more often than I do at real people, but I never claimed to be normal. In ancient times it was different. Most nations and tribes had their own gods who led them into battle, and the losers of a war were strongly encouraged to transfer their allegiance to the winning god. Often some of the attributes of the losing god ended up becoming attributes of the winning god, which is why many religions have beliefs in common even unto this day.

The Hebrews were Canaanites? Where did that come from? I could tell you what the bible says about that, but you would just reject it out of hand because it's the Bible, so why don't you tell me where you got your information?

You're right that the Hebrews were not carried off to Egypt like they were later carried off to Babylonia. Secular sources have told me that it was common practice for nomadic herdsmen to seek refuge in Egypt during times of drought and famine. In those days Egypt was a shoestring empire that hugged the banks of the Nile, not the square country that it is today. The surrounding territory in Northern Africa, and much of the Middle East, was marginal pasture or outright desert. When times got tough out there, people would come to Egypt or the cities of Mesopotamia looking for greener pastures. The locals might drive them away or, if they were in a good mood, they might let the refugees camp out in the suburbs and hire them to do odd jobs. The Bible tells how the Hebrews evolved from refugees to slaves in Egypt, but you don't want to hear about that because it's the Bible.

Secular sources generally agree that the Hebrews migrated out of Egypt, across the Sinai desert, and on to Canaan, which they invaded and eventually conquered. Some or the miracles that happened along the way are not so universally believed, but there has been much speculation over the years how there might be a logical explanation for some of them. The Red Sea crossing, for instance, might have happened something like this: The place where the Hebrews are believed to have made their crossing is a relatively shallow and narrow part of the Red Sea called "The Sea of Reeds". Shallow waters like that are sometimes subject to tidal influences caused by wind and/or differentials in atmospheric pressure from one side to the other. Lake Erie is famous for stuff like that, and it has even happened in Chicago few times. The Biblical account mentions a "pillar of fire and a pillar of cloud being seen" in the vicinity. That sounds like two different pillars, but some translations read "a pillar of fire and cloud", like it was one pillar. Either way, it sounds like there was some kind of weather disturbance like a tornado going on, which could have caused the wind and/or the barometric pressure to do funny things. Of course, this is just speculation, but so is a lot of other stuff that passes or science or history these days.