Some other people claim that the mention of “tone” in Exodus is an anachronism. Here’s why they’re wrong.
I like biblical archaeology and archaeology that (very often) crosses and confirms the Bible in its discoveries. I’ll take a look at a little challenge that biblical skeptics and atheists have used to claim that the Book of Exodus is “anachronistic” and traditionally inaccurate.
Jonathan MS Pearce, an atheist, antitheist and active online, stated categorically in one of his blog posts that “the tone was not held in Egypt at the time of Moses. “In a previous article, Pearce stated much more:
“One of the reasons we know that appropriation goes from Sumerian to biblical, from Sargón to Moses, is the mention of pitch. Like camels, it is an anachronism in the exodus story. This source yields additional information:
“Did Moses temporarily transcribe the account of Sargón’s birth without being fully aware that bitumen exists in the Nile Delta?The Sumer Valley, now known as Kuwait, is filled with bitumen seeping into the soil of Kuwait’s giant oil fields. . . .
“Contrary to what Moses says, bitumen exists in the Nile or in the Nile Delta. In Moses’ rush to plagiarize the account of Sargon’s birth, he realized that the Nile and the Euphrates have another geology. An undeniable error, however, with massive ramifications (“Was the e-book of Genesis only a reasonable copy of the original Sumerian text?”).
“It is therefore very likely that the account of Moses was based on the earlier life of King Sargassum of Akkad. While this does not invalidate the Exodus as a total (rather, as the nativity accounts for Jesus do not necessarily invalidate Jesus’ life as a total), it adds fuel to the cumulative case that there is no ancient basis for exodus counts. “
Before responding to this statement, let’s take a look at the Bible passage (Exodus 2:2-3) and describe our terms.
“The woman conceived and had a son; and when he saw that he was a lovely child, he hid it for 3 months. And when he couldn’t hide it anymore, he took a basket of reeds for him and covered it with bitumen. and pitch; and she put the kid there and put him between the reeds across the river.
Bitumen and pitch are necessarily synonymous terms (tar and asphalt are also used in the same way). We see it in the Wikipedia article on “Pitch” (see also, Wikipedia: “Asphalt”).
The last article noted that “the use of herbal bitumen for waterproofing and as an adhesive dates back to at least the fifth millennium BCArray. . . “- that the ancient Egyptians used it to embalming mummies.
Now, I think the data that Pearce repeats, to mock the accuracy of the Bible, as he and other antitheist atheists regularly do, comes from ancient knowledge that more or less proves that the Egyptians did not use bitumen for mummification. 1000 BC, some three hundred years after Moses.
I discovered that this was shown in the clinical article, “The Importance of Oil Bitumen in the Mummies of Ancient Egypt,” through K. A. Clark and others. But the same article also specifies
“Until recently, it was thought that the direction of Egyptian industry towards the Dead Sea would only be in Ptolemaic and later times, however, archaeological discoveries and chemical analyses have revealed molecular evidence of the early Chalcolithic industry and the periods of the early Bronze Age (3900- 2200 BC. C. ) Therefore, it is transparent that the Egyptians had bitumen . . . »
A footnote refers the reader to this newspaper article, which definitely resolves the question of whether there was tar in Egypt at the time of Moses’ birth.
As for the date of the latter, the Encyclopedia Britannica (“Moses”) informs us that it “flourished in the fourteenth-thirteenth century BC. C. ” and that “the maximum date probably of the Exodus is around 1290 BC. C. “The birth of Moses was “probably Arrangement . . . at the end of the fourteenth century BCE”. The latter is inferred from the Bible (Exodus 7:7) that Moses was 80 years old in the year of the Exodus, which would make his date of birth around 1370 BC. C. and his death in 1250 BC. C.
The summary of the article concluded:
“Nine archaeological boeoons from excavations in Canaan, Sinaí and Egypt (Tel Irani, Ein Zik, Palmahim, Tel Arad, Jerusalem, Ein Besor-Site H, Sheikh Awad and Maadi), dated 3900-2200. C BC. And two grass asphalts of the Dead Sea were compared (floating blocks Ein Gedi and Nahal Heimar) . . .
“This is the first evidence of the industry and export of raw bitumen from the Dead Sea region to Canaan and to Egyptian grocery shopping malls in the continental direction to Egypt between 3900 and 2200 BC. C. , before the extensive use of bitumen for mummification in ancient Egypt. . “
Case closed! The big mistake made through Pearce and his resources was simply to analyze whether pitch was provided in Egypt as an herbal resource, but they have absolutely (and foolishly) overlooked industry and trade.
Christians and believers in the biblical inspiration, infallibility and prestige of the Bible as a revelation of God have nothing to worry about archaeology, nor about any clinical field, because fact is a fact, science discovers a lot in physical subjects and in immensely the global in doing so.
The Bible (God’s revelation) also teaches truth, received through other methods, but equally valid and precious. Confirmed and established science is still in accordance with the Bible, and the tar factor in Egypt at the time of Moses is one of countless examples of this concord and concord.
Dave Armstrong Dave Armstrong is a full-time Catholic and apologist, who has been actively proclaiming and defending Christianity since 1981. It was won at the Catholic Church on 1991. Su website/blog, Biblical Evidence for Catholicism, has been online since March . 1997. Il also maintains a popular Facebook page. Dave has been married to his wife Judy since October 1984, they have 3 sons and a daughter (all home-educated) and live in southeast Michigan.
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Some other people claim that the mention of “tone” in Exodus is an anachronism. Here’s why they’re wrong.
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