Patterns of Evidence: Exodus
My wife and I watched Patterns of Evidence[1] with “skeptical interest.” The subject was of interest to me but, not knowing the source of the documentary, I had no idea if the program would conclude that the exodus of Israel from Egypt was a myth, or if it would make fantastic claims with no support or if it would be supportive of the Biblical narrative. We were quite pleased with what we saw. Some observations:
The program demonstrated the sort of worldly blindness that is manifested in almost every academic field.
So-called experts were interviewed who absolutely denied that there was any evidence of Semitic inhabitation of Egypt, let alone of any other portion of the exodus account.
The pattern was manifest quite early in the program. “Experts” have created a historical timeline for Egypt. Though the evidence for their timeline is based on “rags and tatters” it is the accepted narrative of Egyptologists. To depart from the accepted timeline is to lose all credibility in the world of historians. This timeline presumes a small window in which Semitic people could have lived in and then left Egypt.
Evidence of the presence of Semitic peoples in Egypt during that period of time is not found. They, therefore, claim there is no evidence of Semitic people living in Egypt, ever. The same historians, when confronted, will admit that Semitic people living in Egypt some 100-200 years previous to the window they have “written in” the possibility of Israel living in Egypt. But since they were not there in the only window of time they allow Israel to be there, they could not have been the children of God.
These so-called experts categorically deny the account of the plagues against Egypt.
There is, they admit, real-time, documented evidence of a series of disasters upon Egypt. The real-time descriptions of those disasters sound remarkably like the plaques on Egypt described in the Bible. But since the described disasters happened hundreds of years previous to the only window of time they will allow that the exodus of Israel from Egypt could have happened, then they claim that means they are not an extrinsic validation of the Biblical account.
Likewise, so-called experts can find evidence of the destruction of Jericho (and other cities in Canaan)
That archeological digs provide a picture of the walls of Jericho falling, followed by an intense fire upon the rubble. There is even verifiable archeological evidence of a section of the wall that did not fall (as described in the Bible where Rahab’s dwelling was). However, those archeological “experts” have dated that event as a century or more previous to the window their Egyptian timeline allows, and therefore, they deny it is possible that this catastrophic event in Jericho could have been what the Bible describes.
The timeline is a fabrication made from bits and pieces of real evidence and then constructed on supposition and educated guesswork. Even then, they have not been able to fill on all of the holes in their imagined timeline. One such hole is filled by simply sliding their imagined timeline back a couple of hundred years. When that is done, the Biblical of Israel in Egypt lines up with the archeological evidence, the disasters in Egypt line up with the Biblical account of the plaque in Egypt lines up with the extrinsic documentation, and the Biblical account of the defeat of Jericho lines up with what archeologists know happened at the city.
In other words, when the Bible is used as the standard, history lines up with the evidence.
I can only think of two reasons why the experts cannot admit this obvious hole in their academics: First, they are blinded by their arrogance. Second, they must at all costs find proof the Bible is wrong, or else they become accountable to the God who gave us His Word.
Marvin McKenzie
In the Fields
