The Bible's Most Dangerous Stories

[unapologetic]

How come Pharoah wasn't one of the first-born killed during the Tenth Plague? Wasn't he a first-born?

Pharoah was allowed to survive as a set-up. Gawd "hardened Pharoah's heart" 7 times. Made him refuse Noah's requests, 7 times.
Gawd has Munchausen's syndrome. Made Pharoah the fall guy so gawd and Noah could act like heroes.

​

 

[DBT]

So how would it work, God kills the children, then brings them to heaven for compensation? "Hey, killing you was nothing personal, we can still be friends..."

 

[Tigers!]

How come Pharoah wasn't one of the first-born killed during the Tenth Plague? Wasn't he a first-born?

Obviously not. Since he survived he was not the first born of his father.
Not all Pharoahs were the first born of their fathers.

 

[bilby]

How come Pharoah wasn't one of the first-born killed during the Tenth Plague? Wasn't he a first-born?

Obviously not. Since he survived he was not the first born of his father.
Not all Pharoahs were the first born of their fathers.

Nothing about the Pharoah in the Bible is obvious, because the Bible notably fails to name which Pharoah it is talking about.

One scholarly guess at the timing of the plagues would put them during the reign of Ramesses II, whose older brother, Seti I was his predecessor. Both were sons of Ramesses I.

Oddly, the Egyptians, who wrote down a huge amount of stuff, including lots of bureaucratic minutiae about crop yields and irrigation, not only failed to record any of the plagues*, but also failed to leave any gaps in their record keeping - so if the plagues did occur, their record keepers showed astonishing fortitude in working through a series of calamities.








* With the possible exception of the Ipuwer Papyrus saying "the river is blood", which doesn't match well with Exodus either in timing or scope, and is generally interpreted as metaphorical rather than literal by Egyptologists. A single vague mention seems rather underwhelming for a supposed run of ten serious disasters.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Oddly, the Egyptians, who wrote down a huge amount of stuff, including lots of bureaucratic minutiae about crop yields and irrigation, not only failed to record any of the plagues*,

But remember, their writing system lacked a glyph for 'WTF', which would have meant that it was near impossible to leave a journal for Exodus 7:20, Ex. 8:3, Ex. 9:6, or Ex. 9:20. The glyph lexicon was simply too formulaic and limited. They would have had no way to express these crazy, one-time phenomena:
(Ex. 7:20) -- "Looked out at river from E. Mummy Ave this a.m. and -- WTF!! -- river is now deep red from Dumbfuck, Egypt all the way to Wiseguy, Egypt. WTF!! I aint eatin no catfish outta THAT mess."
(Ex. 8:3) -- "Frogs got in bed with us. WTF!! Fatateefa very upset at first, screamed, told me to get up and do something. But more frogs kept coming, and they seemed to want to be in bed with us. Fatateefa said she was going to stay with her goddamn mother, but we could hear her mother screaming about frogs from over on W. Mummy, so that was fucked. Then -- sweet Moses -- she decided the frogs were cool anyway because they were getting all kinky with her. She goes, Look here, this one has more spunk than I've seen out of you in two harvest seasons. WTF!!!"
(Ex. 9:6) -- "Cattle dead. WTF!! And I mean, all of 'em dead in the field. Went out to check the damage with Imho-Jeff, and we found exactly one bull alive at the back of the field, and it was wearing a yarmulke. W -- T -- F!!!"
(Ex. 9:20) "Remember what I wrote on Wednesday? Well, Imho-Jeff wakes me up this a.m., and all the cattle are alive again. WTF!! We were about to do a victory dance, with our hands held flat at shoulder level, when a goddamn hailstone as big as a crocodile turd hits my head. Big goddamn hailstorm. And all the cattle that were alive again? DEAD. WTF. I MEAN, WTF!!!!!!!!"

Bible: still true, unless you can show me a WTF glyph on the Rosetta Stone.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

How come Pharoah wasn't one of the first-born killed during the Tenth Plague? Wasn't he a first-born?

Obviously not. Since he survived he was not the first born of his father.
Not all Pharoahs were the first born of their fathers.

Nothing about the Pharoah in the Bible is obvious, because the Bible notably fails to name which Pharoah it is talking about.

It is something. The Tanakh goes through arduous efforts to reference kings we can't even unearth in Genesis. But Pharaoh (as an aside Pharaoh is on my bucket list of words to spell right the first time... that bleedin' a!), in two narratives! (Joseph and Moses), goes unnamed. It is remarkably peculiar that such historic characters go unnamed. Babylonian and Persian leaders are referenced by name.

We have Moses, *flashing lights* Aaron the Levite *flashing lights*, and Pharaoh, as of yet, unnamed.

Oddly, the Egyptians, who wrote down a huge amount of stuff, including lots of bureaucratic minutiae about crop yields and irrigation, not only failed to record any of the plagues*, but also failed to leave any gaps in their record keeping - so if the plagues did occur, their record keepers showed astonishing fortitude in working through a series of calamities.

With the possible exception of the Ipuwer Papyrus saying "the river is blood", which doesn't match well with Exodus either in timing or scope, and is generally interpreted as metaphorical rather than literal by Egyptologists. A single vague mention seems rather underwhelming for a supposed run of ten serious disasters.

Also kind of neglected to mention everything else too. Like their entire labor force walking out. And according to Exodus, it wasn't a small labor force. The Hebrews well outnumbered the Egyptians. That is why they had the first born killed. Because... wait... why would it matter what order they were born in? If they are culling the population, why would they give a damn about that? In fact, it'd actually make the culling harder.

*Guards get all Hebrews to get form together*
Egyptian Guard: We are here to fulfill our Pharaoh's command and kill the first born of every family. Will the first born please step up.

*no one moves forward*
Egyptian Guard: Oh come on now. Some of you must of been born first.

 

[TomC]

How come Pharoah wasn't one of the first-born killed during the Tenth Plague? Wasn't he a first-born?

Obviously not. Since he survived he was not the first born of his father.
Not all Pharoahs were the first born of their fathers.

Know what I think is the most likely explanation for that bit of Exodus?

Moses, a wanted murderer, came up with a plan for his followers to steal from their Egyptian neighbors.
"Go ask to borrow something valuable. While they are out of the room, feed their baby this slow acting poison. We'll leave during the night. In the morning they'll be too upset over their dead children to come after us right away. We'll be across the tidal flats on the shoreline before they catch us."
Tom

 

[ideologyhunter]

That assumes that a) Moses is a provably real human of the past and b) there was ever a large Hebrew slave population in Egypt.

 

[TomC]

That assumes that a) Moses is a provably real human of the past and b) there was ever a large Hebrew slave population in Egypt.

No it doesn't.
"Most likely" and "provably" aren't the same things. Nor does it mean that Moses's followers were large, Hebrew, or slaves.

I tend to assume that there's a kernel of truth at the center of most such ancient stories. But I am not making any truth claims.
Tom

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

That assumes that a) Moses is a provably real human of the past and b) there was ever a large Hebrew slave population in Egypt.

No it doesn't.
"Most likely" and "provably" aren't the same things. Nor does it mean that Moses's followers were large, Hebrew, or slaves.

It is hard to justify that Moses was ever real. The story goes into details about him and his origin, of which no one would have been around to know of. Yet, they just bring up *Neon Lights* Aaron the Levite *Neon Lights* as if everyone knew who he was. He appeared to be the historical figure, Moses the mythical.

I tend to assume that there's a kernel of truth at the center of most such ancient stories. But I am not making any truth claims.

Moses is kind of like the Second Story Creation. We already had the first one and for some reason we are doing this. Abraham was provided all the land, his descendants would number as the stars. And the Hebrews were stuck in captivity because they kept going down to Egypt because of the repeated blights in the promised land... of which they were going to needlessly return to... because if Yahweh was that powerful to force Egypt to let them go... why not take over Egypt and its fertile as fuck land? Oh no... back to the blight. Hooray.

 

[TomC]

It is hard to justify that Moses was ever real.

"Real" is strong word for the context. It implies a greater degree of truthiness than I mean. "An Egyptian criminal gathers a band. They commit some more crimes and then take off up north."
Then, after many generations of oral retelling, the legend grows to mythical proportions. Then someone writes it down.

What's implausible about that?
Tom

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

My bad, it was all the male babies not first born.

 

[unapologetic]

why would it matter what order they were born in?

It was not about culling. In some ancient cultures the firstborn male has more rights. Inheritance, land, titles, etc. Killing the firstborn male doesn't just reduce the population, it fucks with their whole legicy/culture.

Back when folks had only one name, you might introduce yourself as '...from the house of Whosit.' (the family patriarch). The lineage, the 'house' follows the firstborn male. Kill him (the heir of the name) and the house/lineage ends.

​

 

[bilby]

why would it matter what order they were born in?

It was not about culling. In some ancient cultures the firstborn male has more rights. Inheritance, land, titles, etc. Killing the firstborn male doesn't just reduce the population, it fucks with their whole legicy/culture.

Back when folks had only one name, you might introduce yourself as '...from the house of Whosit.' (the family patriarch). The lineage, the 'house' follows the firstborn male. Kill him (the heir of the name) and the house/lineage ends.

​

...or (as in the case of Pharaoh Seti I, son of Ramesses I and elder brother of Ramesses II), just passes to his younger brother. Or his nephew, cousin, uncle, etc., etc.

Deaths of children were far too common in pre-Industrial societies for any society that depends upon the survival of a first born son to have persisted for more than a handful of generations.

All hereditary positions had detailed rules for finding the next suitable heir, and only rarely was it difficult to determine who that was (although when it was difficult, war often ensued between competing claimants).

 

[steve_bank]

Lot having his wife turned to salt as he wretched must have been pretty traumatic.

 

[Swammerdami]

We are given old myths, often based to some extent on fact but now overwhelmed with fictions. It can be an interesting exercise to attempt to guess what, if any, are the historical parts of the myth.

The earliest historic "hebrew" whose name is known is Terru of Urkesh.

I was astounded to learn of a possible connection between Terah of Ur of the Chaldees (alleged father of the Patriarch Abraham) and the historic Terru of Urkesh, born before 1700 BC. Recently a physical 3700 year-old document has been discovered in which Terru writes to his King [Zimri-Lim of Mari]: "I am always praying to my lord. I have just now left the comfort of my home and gone out to Sinah to live as a hebrew."

We can infer that Terru was a leader of the very early Hebrews and guess that he was somehow incorporated into their Abraham myth. The Bible connects Terah to Haran, a town "beyond the Euphrates" near Mari. Amazing!

If the 18th-century Terah did have some historic basis -- and the onomastic evidence seems strong -- then perhaps the much-later myths of Moses connected to a real human. After all, many scholars agree that the name "Moses" was of Egyptian origin.

Please Note that "has some historical basis" does NOT translate to "is 100% correct without exception." If a man led even a small group from northern Egypt to the desert of Edom he might have been remembered without doing anything special, especially if his people were desperate for a mythic hero.

Seeking the basis of a myth does NOT mean proving that the most obviously fictional parts of the myth are ... obviously fictional.

Let us admit at the outset that the failure to name the Pharaoh of Exodus may be a strong clue. The composers of the Exodus myth may have understood that naming a specific Pharaoh would make their myth too easy to debunk. This would apply if the "big" Exodus story was derived by conflating some number of smaller exoduses. There certainly were several different periods of Hebrew enslavement in Egypt -- See below.

But even the failure to name the Pharaoh of Exodus might be explained benignly. Between 1335 BC and 1318 BC there were no less than SIX Pharaohs ( Eighteenth_Dynasty_of_Egypt); and this is the period most commonly associated with the myths of Moses. Each of those six Pharaohs had multiple long names; I might conflate them all into a single "the Pharaoh" if I were writing a narrative!

And foreigners often gave Pharaohs different names: the Greeks used "Ozymandias" as their name for Ramesses the Great of 19th Dynasty. Anyway, it was normal to refer to "Pharaoh" without a given name; here is a typical salutation to Pharaoh from the Amarna Letters (the Lady of Gubla was the chief goddess of the Phoenicians):

Rib-Hadda writes to his lord, Great King, King of Battle: May the Lady of Gubla grant power to the king, my lord. I fall at the feet of my lord, my Sun, 7 times and 7 times.

In a previous post I mentioned some of the Hebrew enslavements that Egypt itself documented. I hope we've moved past any complaint that "Hebrew" and "Habiru" might not be the same word.

As seen in the chronology [below], enslavement of Canaanites (or Habiru specifically) was common off-and-on during the New Kingdom. The small Canaanite city-states were treated as vassals of Egypt throughout this period and were treated as vassals by Egypt even during the alleged kingship of King David and his successors.

• 1479 - 1425 BC - Tuthmosis III, 6th P of 18th D. He wins Battle of Megiddo, enslaving at least 3600 Habiru. The first reference to Aten the Sun God occurs during this reign. (He was co-regent with Hatshepsut his mother until 1458 BC.)
• 1388 - 1351 BC - Amenhotep III, 9th P of 18th D. Slaves at Avaris revolted during his reign. This King claims to have subdued "Yahweh (Yahu) in the land of the Shasu." (Shasu is apparently Edom, a region centered on what is now the Rock City of Petra.)
• 1351 - 1334 BC - Akhenaten, 10th P of 18th D. Imposed Atenism. Tomb of Aper-El demonstrates closeness of Atenism and Hebrew religion.
• 1279 - 1213 BC - Ramesses II the Great, 3rd P of 19th D. In 1270 he used Hapiru for hard labor
• 1213 - 1203 BC - Merenptah, 4th P of 19th D. He mentions "shasu-tribes of Edom"; and mentions "Israel is laid waste"
• circa 1180 - more Hapiru are enslaved

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

While the Pharaoh going unnamed is indeed odd... even odder would appear to be the whole Midian angle. God is found in Midian... on a sacred... yet for some reason unnamed mountain, on the far side of the Sinai Peninsula. So sacred mountain, Yahweh is there for some reason. Oh and the Midians, who aren't exactly the lovey dovey folks with those up north. In fact, Moses is ordered to kill them during the bloody years.

Almost like a splinter Midian cult broke off.

 

[Swammerdami]

While the Pharaoh going unnamed is indeed odd... even odder would appear to be the whole Midian angle. God is found in Midian... on a sacred... yet for some reason unnamed mountain, on the far side of the Sinai Peninsula. So sacred mountain, Yahweh is there for some reason. Oh and the Midians, who aren't exactly the lovey dovey folks with those up north. In fact, Moses is ordered to kill them during the bloody years.

Almost like a splinter Midian cult broke off.

The Israelites had little love for non-Israelites; and conversion to Judaism was not an option. For example, on God's orders Kings Saul and David destroyed the Amalekites despite that Amalek himself was allegedly the grandson of Jacob's defrauded brother Esau. There was even much friction between the two Jewish Kingdoms, Israel and Judea (with Israel rejecting the Temple in Jerusalem), although that friction is de-emphasized in the Bible.

I think the exact territory of the (semi-nomadic?) Midianites is controversial, but many sources center it on the east bank of the Gulf of Aqaba, perhaps extending to the north of Aqaba. From Aqaba it's only about 100 km to Jebel Harun which is often identified as Mount Hor and the location of Aaron's tomb, for example by Flavius Josephus:

Now when this purification, which their leader made upon the mourning for his sister, as it has been now described, was over, he caused the army to remove and to march through the wilderness and through Arabia; and when he came to a place which the Arabians esteem their metropolis, which was formerly called Arce, but has now the name of Petra, at this place, which was encompassed with high mountains, Aaron went up one of them in the sight of the whole army, Moses having before told him that he was to die, for this place was over against them. He put off his pontifical garments, and delivered them to Eleazar his son, to whom the high priesthood belonged, because he was the elder brother; and died while the multitude looked upon him.

ETA: In this post I appear to be conflating Mount Hor (Aaron's tomb) with Mount Sinai. However some scholars locate these two "sacred" mountains near to each other and BOTH in the vicinity of Petra:

Based on a number of local names and features, in 1927 Ditlef Nielsen identified the Jebel al-Madhbah (meaning mountain of the Altar) at Petra as being identical to the biblical Mount Sinai;[86] since then other scholars[who?] have also made the identification.

 

[Learner]

Abe's loyalty is Soo... inspiring.
I wish god would ask me to kill MY son.

Perhaps it's a "Jewish practice' since a lot of atheists funny enough have often argued that Christians have nothing really to do with the OT.

Estimating that there is 2.5 billion Christians in the world today, I don't think they actually sacrifice their children, unless....

...it's "done in secret" (by the billions) whereby such a large number of Christians would be hearing voices from God 'in their minds', that by doing what the voices are tell them to do, they are uncannily defying Jesus? One must be thinking - who's preaching to these people to defy Jesus? Tis worrying, I know.

But then ...perhaps many Christians in the world 'know this' through Jesus and are actually not sacrificing their children by the billions.

Yes of course there is the "excuse' that Christians use regarding Abraham and his son in that "sacrifice" scenario..i.e. it has never been a commandment for Christians or Jews to do. And so?