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The Ancient Inscription That Mirrors the Plagues — Transcript

by Stephen Meyer · 2,581 words · 394 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00And and so you you went to this place
0:02and you got video
0:04evidence of this.
0:05>> I went to this place because there was
0:07no picture of this thing.
0:09>> It just this record in this obscure
0:11theological journal.
0:12>> Yeah, it it's mentioned a few times.
0:14It's it's also mentioned in a sort of
0:16popular Egyptological book written by
0:19Donald Redford and and some other a few
0:21other places, but it was not widely
0:23known, but there was no no
0:24documentation. You couldn't find a
0:26photograph of this thing and it it was
0:28in danger of being destroyed possibly,
0:31too. A lot of monuments
0:32>> video evidence of this as well. And and
0:36the the inscription describes the
0:38movement of these people through through
0:40a particular region.
0:41>> them approximately in
0:43the area of Edom, Moab, Transjordan. So,
0:47this is in between, you know, it's east
0:48of Egypt. It's essentially in between
0:51Egypt and Canaan, the so-called promised
0:53land.
0:54>> Okay, so wait well, let's just stop
0:55there because that's super significant,
0:57right? Because the biblical account says
0:59they're in Egypt and then they get into
1:00Canaan, but they go through Moab and
1:03Edom and then cross over east of the
1:05Jordan. I mean, those are the lands east
1:07of the Jordan River that they would have
1:08had to pass through uh during the period
1:11of the or near the end of the wandering
1:13period before entering into Canaan.
1:16So, what you've got then is not only
1:18documentation of the
1:20Israelites at point A time one and the
1:22entrance into Canaan, that's Egypt uh
1:25before 1446, but entrance into Canaan at
1:28point B time two, that's entrance into
1:31Canaan after 1410 or 1400 is you've even
1:34got a contemporaneous mention of the
1:37Israelites during the wandering period
1:40on their way from point A to point B.
1:43>> Right. And why why can we identify those
1:45with the Israelites and cuz that's
1:47obviously going to be a question. It
1:49says Yahweh, it doesn't say Israelites,
1:51but we can because there was no other
1:53group of people in ancient history ever
1:55anywhere that ever worshipped Yahweh.
1:58He's only identified with the
2:00Israelites.
2:01And so, it's a pretty easy match. And if
2:05we were to analyze the other
2:06inscriptions that circle this pillar, we
2:10would see that they're also deities
2:12mentioned in some of the the other
2:14cartouches. So, it seems to be
2:16groups of nomads that are associated
2:18with their patron god. And again, this
2:21is the Israelites, their association
2:23with Yahweh. It's a test it on an
2:25Egyptian inscription of the pharaoh. So,
2:28it tells us the Egyptians were familiar
2:29with Yahweh. That connects to what we
2:32read in Exodus. And the Israelites are
2:35indeed described in the biblical text as
2:38the people of Yahweh and as nomads,
2:39also.
2:41>> I I remember, Titus, when you first told
2:42me about this, I thought that that that
2:44was compelling for all those reasons.
2:46And it also seemed to be a very
2:49definitive refutation of the biblical
2:50minimalists. If the Israelites did not
2:53exist as a people group until
2:56900 BC or 1,000 BC, and they only
3:00congealed out of the central
3:02Canaanite hill country, and never were
3:05in Egypt, then why is the earliest
3:07mention of the Hebrew god on an Egyptian
3:09monument dating from 400 years before?
3:12And why does that inscription place the
3:14Israelites right where they should be
3:16according to the biblical account,
3:17halfway between Egypt and Canaan?
3:20>> Absolutely. I think the only mention is
3:22because the Israelites were actually
3:24there at
3:26>> right? Yeah. I mean, I said folks, I I
3:28this is a very simple case, but but we
3:31submit it's it's it's very compelling.
3:34Now, there's another facet of this that
3:35I'd like to explore with Titus because
3:37he's completely changed my mind about
3:39this. I used to be an advocate in my I
3:41this is a purely amateur opinion that I
3:43developed of of the theory that the
3:46pharaoh of the Exodus was someone called
3:48Tutmoses the III. And And a walk from
3:50our office in Redmond to Jamba Juice one
3:52day, that is about 5 minutes, Ti- Titus
3:55completely disabused me of this of this
3:57theory and explained that there was a
3:59much better candidate for the Pharaoh of
4:00the Exodus, which actually reinforces
4:03this case that that we've been making.
4:05And that's Amenhotep II. Tell us about
4:07him and what the archaeological evidence
4:10is as to why he is the Pharaoh of the
4:12Exodus. We've seen We've been talking
4:13about Amenhotep III, talking about the
4:16period of the wandering and the entrance
4:17into Canaan in the He's mentioned in the
4:19Amarna letters and in the on that Tasha
4:21Yahweh inscription. But what's the the
4:23guy Amenhotep II? He caught your
4:25attention. Why is he so important?
4:27>> So he is the son of Thutmose III
4:30>> Okay.
4:31So So I was close at least.
4:33>> why that was popular is because we're
4:35looking at the biblical date for the
4:36Exodus and and these two kings are right
4:39around that time. So he comes into power
4:42soon before the Exodus. But there are a
4:45number of we might call them
4:47circumstantial pieces of evidence that
4:49connect to Amenhotep II and the Exodus.
4:52The first is just the chronological
4:55placement. All right, but we're not
4:56going to base everything on that, of
4:57course. We can be off on these
4:59chronologies a bit, for sure. But the
5:02second thing is there's a qualification
5:04within the biblical text, actually two
5:06qualifications, relating to his his rise
5:10to the throne.
5:11And the first is that Moses, he kills
5:15the Egyptian, he flees into the
5:16wilderness, he's there for 40 years, and
5:18then he's told that the Pharaoh has
5:21died. And he goes to the burning bush,
5:23and then again it's affirmed the men who
5:24are seeking your life are dead. So the
5:27Pharaoh that was in power when he
5:29murdered the Egyptian, he he was in
5:32power for those 40 years. So he had a
5:35reign length of at least 40 years. Then
5:37he dies, then Moses returned soon after.
5:40So there's two things, this long reign
5:42and then the new Pharaoh's fairly soon
5:44installed. Fairly recently installed.
5:47Well, Thutmose the Third, he reigned for
5:4954 years. He's one of the few pharaohs
5:51who has a reign of over 40 years. Uh
5:54Ramses the Second is another one, but
5:56there are not very many. And there
5:57there's none around this other time.
5:59>> So, that guy's got to die before the
6:01Exodus can take place. So, it's got to
6:02be somebody after a pharaoh who's had a
6:04very long reign. Is that Okay.
6:06>> So, he So, Amenhotep the Second comes
6:08into power soon after. So, we've got
6:10some interesting matches there.
6:12Uh Amenhotep the Second was also,
6:14though, extremely arrogant and also
6:16seemed to be compensating for something.
6:19You could look through his texts, he's
6:20always claiming these superhuman feats.
6:24Now, it is true that a lot of ancient
6:27kings were very boastful, but this guy
6:29goes above and beyond. And of course, he
6:32may have wanted to to be as as great as
6:35his father, who was one of the the great
6:37generals of Egypt, but something he
6:40seems to be compensating for. It just
6:42fits the general profile of the Exodus
6:45pharaoh. But again, we're not going to
6:46base it all on that.
6:48There's a military decline that occurs
6:50during his reign. Early Early in the
6:52reign of Amenhotep the Second, he does
6:54actually go out and campaign as
6:56traditionally the Egyptian pharaoh did.
6:59But then, his last campaign is actually
7:01not even really a military campaign.
7:04It's a slave raid. And we'll look at
7:06that in a second, but
7:08this this cessation of military
7:11campaigns for about a hundred years is
7:14very, very odd. And something's going on
7:16there. Either there's a complete shift
7:19in the ideology of Egypt throughout this
7:21time, or something's happened where they
7:24don't have the military capacity
7:26anymore. And of course, if he is the
7:28pharaoh of the Exodus, and all these men
7:30and chariots are destroyed in the Reed
7:33Sea, that would be an explanation. We
7:35talked about the Amarna letters before.
7:37The Egyptians never send help to the
7:39Canaanites. They seem incapable of doing
7:42it still at that point.
7:43>> when does the slave ready to go out and
7:45get a but 100,000 slaves?
7:47>> Just just after the Exodus, maybe a year
7:49after. It's It's very very very soon
7:52after.
7:53>> And we have an Egyptian record of the
7:55>> He He had two stelae erected that talk
7:57about it, and and his claim for how many
8:00slaves he went and got back.
8:03Fact, we'll we'll jump to that, but the
8:06other interesting another interesting
8:07thing is that the the palace of the
8:10pharaoh was located on the Nile River at
8:12this time.
8:13It at the site of Tell el-Daba, or
8:16specifically Ezbet Helmi.
8:18And it was used by a lot of these 18th
8:21Dynasty kings, including his father,
8:22Thutmose the Third, but then it's
8:24abandoned during the reign of Amenhotep
8:26the Second. The excavators
8:28don't see archaeologically exactly why
8:30that happened. They just They made a
8:32guess that maybe it was some kind of
8:33plague that caused people to abandon,
8:36but something happens to where they
8:38leave this palace. And this palace it's
8:40not like a little building where they
8:41decided, uh it's getting old and run
8:43down, let's go build a new one in a
8:45different city. This is a palace complex
8:47that is equivalent to the size of many
8:50of the towns in Canaan at that time. So,
8:52it's massive. Something drastic happens.
8:56The slave raid, though, he's he claims
8:58that he carried off 101,128
9:02prisoners, and then over a thousand
9:04chariots and all these weapons. So, it
9:07seems like he's restocking the slave
9:10population, and he's getting back the
9:12military hardware that they need.
9:15Or he's claiming to do so, to save face.
9:18>> That's fascinating. That's It's a fit of
9:20circumstance, a pattern of
9:22circumstantial evidence that fits.
9:24Well, of course, the hardest thing to
9:25believe about the the Exodus is the the
9:27miraculous element of it. We had a
9:29little bit of a discussion that about
9:30that last night,
9:32uh about whether miracles are possible.
9:33And of course, I've maintained for as
9:35just as a matter of the philosophy of
9:37science that um miracles are
9:41acts of a an agent, in this case
9:44a divine agent. I personally don't think
9:46that miracles are violation of the laws
9:47of nature.
9:49Um if uh I'm playing pool, if somebody's
9:52playing pool and you have a pool cue
9:55about to hit a ball, and you know the
9:56law of momentum exchange, you can
9:58calculate where you would expect the
10:00second ball to go.
10:01But if someone shakes the table in the
10:03middle of the shot, all bets are off.
10:05That That means the balls are going to
10:07go someplace completely unexpected. That
10:09doesn't mean that the law of momentum
10:10exchange has been violated. It just
10:14means that a new a new event has been
10:16introduced into the matrix of natural
10:18law producing an unexpected outcome.
10:21Now, if we as agents can do that, then
10:22certainly God, the divine agent, can do
10:25that. I don't think that miracles are a
10:26violation of the laws of nature. They're
10:28an instance of agent causation. Um
10:32but the question is is there I mean, one
10:35of the great miracles of the Exodus is
10:37obviously the the plagues.
10:39Uh and um I didn't mention that we would
10:43talk about this, but there's been there
10:45is actually an interesting document that
10:48seems to from the an Egyptian point of
10:50view describe some of those plagues. Can
10:52you tell us about that?
10:53>> Yeah, it's often called the Admonitions
10:56of Ipuwer.
10:57Sometimes people just call it the Ipuwer
10:59Papyrus. That's because this guy's name,
11:01Ipuwer, appears in it. He's seems to be
11:03the author. Uh from what we can tell
11:06based on other evidence that's been
11:08recovered from Egypt, Ipuwer was what we
11:11might call a bard. So, he writes this
11:13poem. This document is a poem. It was
11:16probably sung.
11:17And as such, it's it's written as
11:21poetry. It's not written as historical
11:23narrative. And so, we can't directly
11:27correlate it to the Exodus historical
11:29narrative. It's not written in the same
11:31genre. However, that doesn't mean that
11:32it doesn't have valuable historical
11:34contribution. So,
11:36the first thing that people would notice
11:38about this Ipuwer Papyrus is that he
11:41mentions that the Nile River is turned
11:43to blood and blood is everywhere
11:44throughout the land of Egypt. So, that
11:47is such an odd
11:49and so unique phenomena, people, if they
11:53know the Exodus story at all, they
11:55immediately associate it with Well, that
11:57sounds a whole like a lot like Moses
12:00turning the Nile River to blood. But, if
12:03that were the only thing, we might just
12:05say that's coincidence. Maybe it was
12:07some unknown literary device.
12:09>> Hyperbole or something.
12:11>> Right. You know, even though it's very
12:12strange that he would choose that. But,
12:14there are a number of other things that
12:15are found
12:17in this poem that correlate to the time
12:19of the plagues. There's talk about
12:22people having their hair fall out and
12:24being in such pain that they wish they
12:26would die, which sounds a lot like, you
12:28know, maybe the boils or something.
12:30There's plants being destroyed and the
12:32food being destroyed. The the cattle,
12:35the animals are are weeping. They can be
12:37in pain. All these things are going on.
12:40The the food system is destroyed. Maybe
12:43as a result of the locusts. There's fire
12:45that's talked about. Of course, there's
12:47the the plague that involves
12:49fire. And then,
12:52we jump ahead to something like
12:54the the day does not dawn on the land of
12:57Egypt. So, is this talking about the the
12:59day of darkness? And and Ra is not seen.
13:02The power of Ra is not seen. He's the
13:04sun god. In fact, I think that plague
13:07was specifically targeting the chief god
13:09of Egypt there, Ra, the sun god.
13:11The palace is overthrown, you know, the
13:13pharaoh. There's children dying. And
13:15then, there's talk of the the slaves
13:19get the the gold and the silver and the
13:20precious stones. And that's the same
13:22thing that happens right at the end of
13:24that narrative in Exodus.
13:26>> The the get them. Yeah.
13:28>> So, there are a number of correlations
13:30here that it just seems beyond
13:32coincidence that
13:35that it couldn't be talking about the
13:37Exodus. And
13:38and the these coincidences or these
13:40correlations are recognized by many
13:43people. In fact, who's probably the
13:45foremost scholar in the world on this
13:46papyrus, he wrote his dissertation on it
13:48in a monograph,
13:50he recognizes that he recognizes the
13:52connections, but he says that it can't
13:55be talking about the Exodus because both
13:58Ipuwer and the Exodus are not historical
14:01texts. So, that that's one way to
14:04explain away the correlation. It's
14:06there, but it's not historical
14:08correlation because neither text is
14:09history.
14:11>> Which begs the question of our whole
14:13discussion, I suppose. Yeah. Well,
14:15listen, there's there's if anything more
14:18as a to explore in all this, Titus is
14:20writing wonderful books about uh
14:22archaeology and the Bible. And uh we're
14:25just very grateful for your attention
14:27today.

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