A lack of Egyptian records

[promethius]

First of all, you seem to think “archaeological” is some kind of merit badge. It just means “a physical artifact that has been determined to date from a certain past era.” Books can be archaeological artifacts: the Dead Sea Scrolls are an obvious example. For that matter, a medieval Torah Scroll constitutes archeological evidence. But of what? Of the fact that medieval Jews knew the Torah and valued it enough to create an elaborate, expensive scroll for ritual use. It doesn’t constitute archeological evidence for the historicity of the Exodus: nor do the Dead Sea Scrolls.

I actually was using definition 2 from dictionary.reference.com:
**
www.dictionary.reference.com:

ar·chae·ol·o·gy]

/ˌɑrhttp://sp.dictionary.com/dictstatic/dictionary/graphics/luna/thinsp.pngkiˈɒlhttp://sp.dictionary.com/dictstatic/dictionary/graphics/luna/thinsp.pngəhttp://sp.dictionary.com/dictstatic/dictionary/graphics/luna/thinsp.pngdʒi/ sp.dictionary.com/dictstatic/g/d/dictionary_questionbutton_default.gif Show Spelled[ahr-kee-ol-uh-jee] sp.dictionary.com/dictstatic/g/d/dictionary_questionbutton_default.gif Show IPA
noun 1. the scientific study of historic or prehistoric peoples and their cultures by analysis of their artifacts, inscriptions, monuments, and other such remains, especially those that have been excavated.

1. Rare . ancient history; the study of antiquity. **

Which may not have been the best choice… but mea culpa.

So basically, sorry about the confusion and I absolutely agree with the rest of your post!

 

[promethius]

So, the Scriptures are accurate only if they are plausible? Its implausible for 600,000 Israelies to wander the desert even if its under the guiding hand of God, so the Scriptures aren’t accurate in this matter.

I’m sorry, but I don’t get it.

I’m wasn’t going to repost the point that someone else already made on this matter, since it perfectly captured what I was getting at. It is not the scripture itself I’m questioning, but the translation, since the word for thousand in Hebrew is not exactly distinct from several other meanings. If you’d like, I can go back and repost someone else’s work about translational issues, but I figured you’d read the thread and didn’t need me to go back and clarify.

 

[promethius]

What “historians” do this? I don’t find this “pagan Easter” thing to be a particular obsession of historians. Historians are the ones pointing out that the evidence is relatively slim.

Good historians, yes. One of my college professors, however, a supposed historian (I would guess by having a doctorate) made the claim the Christianity stole Easter from Pagan worship of a Goddess by that name. I wasn’t really up on apologetics enough at the time to press the point and get more specifics.

I’m not sure what you mean by a “sect of paganism” anyway. If you’re talking about generic Anglo-Saxon paganism, it had not died out two centuries before Bede, as Bede’s history itself makes clear. It had mostly died out by Bede’s time–there were no pagan kingdoms in England in his lifetime, which is by no means the same thing as saying that there were no pagans.

Since no other pagan documents (or any primary source documents for that matter) discuss the existance of a teutonic sun goddess named Estre, we have to assume that Bede was referring to what was, essentially a deity whose worship was only orally referenced. Sorry, i inferred from that that the people who failed to write it down probably existed prior to Bede’s time and died out prior to their education in writing forms, hence Bede’s presumed reliance on an oral source.

The Torah, on the other hand, is thought by most historians to have been written many centuries after the events it describes. Bede’s relationship to the pagan practices he’s describing is much closer to that of the Gospel writers (or, at most, the earliest post-apostolic writers) to the events they are describing. A completely different picture.

True, but there is much more evidence of a strong oral tradition in the case of Passover than the case of Bede. In terms of timeline, yes. In terms of reliability of source, Bede goes on… nothing?

I won’t dispute that there’s some tendency among secular/liberal Biblical scholars to be more skeptical than their equivalents who study other things. But it’s not the glaring discrepancy that many conservative Christians claim. There’s a pretty consistent set of criteria that scholars use to evaluate reliability. (John Meier’s famous list of criteria for the “historical Jesus” would more or less be accepted by scholars across various historical periods–at least the same principles would be applied.) Obviously this isn’t a hard-and-fast objective issue, and so you can find a lot of variation and bias.

Agreed. But the OP here is asserting that just because one biased source didn’t record something that it didn’t happen. The only thing I’m pointing out is that even if we consider Jewish oral and written tradition to be biased, we still have one source which DOES say it happened and that there’s not NECESSARILY a reason to consider Egyptian historical writings as greater than Jewish ones (though perhaps there is on a case by case basis).

 

[melbanglican]

A little more information:

bibleandscience.com/archaeology/exodus.htm

Peace,
Ed

Unfortunately, the moment you quote a source in which the name of Herschel Shanks or his BAR or it’s journal appears prominently, professional archaeologists will stop listening in droves!

Peace.

 

[NotWorthy]

I’m wasn’t going to repost the point that someone else already made on this matter, since it perfectly captured what I was getting at. It is not the scripture itself I’m questioning, but the translation, since the word for thousand in Hebrew is not exactly distinct from several other meanings. If you’d like, I can go back and repost someone else’s work about translational issues, but I figured you’d read the thread and didn’t need me to go back and clarify.

But which is considered “inspired”? I was assuming you were referring to the guys that compiled the Torah around the time of Ezra (a theory I don’t buy, but that’s irrelevant). If these guys are the divinely inspired authors of the Torah, then I wouldn’t think they would mis-translate.

If its a later translation error, then this time it my time a mea culpa.

 

[melbanglican]

First of all, you seem to think “archaeological” is some kind of merit badge. It just means “a physical artifact that has been determined to date from a certain past era.” Books can be archaeological artifacts: the Dead Sea Scrolls are an obvious example. For that matter, a medieval Torah Scroll constitutes archeological evidence. But of what? Of the fact that medieval Jews knew the Torah and valued it enough to create an elaborate, expensive scroll for ritual use. It doesn’t constitute archeological evidence for the historicity of the Exodus: nor do the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So when people say “the Merneptah Stele is archeological evidence and the Torah isn’t,” they’re simply saying that we can be pretty sure the Merneptah Stele dates from the 13th century B.C. On the other hand, the earliest real archeological evidence for the Torah that I’m aware of is from the Hellenistic period (there are earlier finds that include phrases that are similar to those found in the Torah, but of course these blessings or legal principles or whatever could have been passed down independently for some time). Everyone agrees that the Torah was in existence by the 2nd century B.C. Before that we are working on more indirect evidence. That’s not some kind of ideological bias or value judgment. That’s just the state of the evidence.

So the question is: how much do we trust a literary text of whose exact date we can’t be sure, when we can’t find archeological evidence to back it up?

I think that many historians are too suspicious of literary evidence, and that secular historians of the Biblical era tend to be particularly egregious offenders in this regard. Conservatives like to point out that there have been a number of Biblical claims (like the existence of a group called the “Hittites,” or the name “Belshazzar” for the person in charge of Babylon when Cyrus captured it) that were widely disbelieved and turned out to be accurate. The people who simply dismiss the historicity of the Bible are guilty of serious prejudice, in my opinion.

But it remains true that an obelisk set up by a Pharaoh in 1200 B.C. gives us much more reliable information about what happened in 1200 B.C. than a text that could was very likely written hundreds (conceivably close to a thousand) years later. That doesn’t mean that we take the obelisk at face value. Of course it’s royal propaganda. When Merneptah says, “Israel has been defeated” we can’t be sure that the Egyptians really defeated the Israelites. We can’t even be 100% sure that they fought the Israelites, though that seems likely. But we can be sure that there were Israelites around by 1200 B.C. (Or actually not quite, since there’s always the question of how to transliterate Egyptian writing–some claim that the hieroglyph is referring to “Jezreel,” or that it’s a completely different word referring to Libyans. So archeology certainly has its own uncertainties. However, assuming that we’ve determined provenance and transliterated the word correctly, the bias of the stele doesn’t prevent it telling us something.)

But on the other hand, when the Bible says that there were Philistines around in the time of Abraham, it is quite possible that the Biblical authors said this because they knew about Philistines living in that area much later, and either used the term loosely for “the people living on the southern part of the Mediterranean coastline” or anachronistically assumed that the same people must have lived their earlier. So the reference doesn’t give us evidence as to when the people we know as Philistines moved into the area.

Historians tend to be very suspicious of anything that the source is clearly trying to make us believe. One of the major historical criteria could be called “the lady doth protest too much.” If your source goes on and on about how important it is to do something, chances are it’s because not many people were doing it. If it gives you a very long story to explain why a certain person’s actions were honorable and above-board (David’s involvement or non-involvement with the killing of Abner, for instance), you figure that there must have been a pretty strong belief that the person in question was actually guilty, and you wonder if maybe they were guilty and the author is giving you propaganda. And so on. Historians prefer to look for the things that are assumed or conceded, or even the things that the author seems to be trying to hide. Yes, this can be a tricky business. But it’s not simply a matter of anti-Biblical bias. It’s a matter of basic historical methodology.

The problem quite nicely put!

This whole discussion has prompted me to rediscover the basics of a discipline to which I devoted almost twenty years, but eventually abandoned because the study of my principal subject was no longer viable after we moved to Australia, and because it was beginning to bore me. Moreover, because the study of a historical subject in any depth requires time and money, of which I now have an abundance of the former and only a little of the latter, I can only play the role of interested spectator in such fascinating subjects as Biblical history.

It is in this capacity that I have enjoyed this debate so much! Thank you, Contarini, for pointing out to the other participants in the debate the problems necessarily attendant on the study of the Bible as a historical source. We are all better off for being reminded of these things!

 

[starsmurf]

Why do you need to write a book to explain the ten plagues?
Chapter 1 - There were 10 plagues.
Chapter 2 - They were caused by God to convince the Egyptians to release the Jews.
Chapter 3 - Conclusion - God is Great!

The book is about reconciling science and the Bible.

 

[NotWorthy]

The book is about reconciling science and the Bible.

I’m just confused on how you reconcile science with the miracles that only God can do. 3 days of darkness? Please don’t tell me it was a sandstorm.

 

[patrick457]

So, the Scriptures are accurate only if they are plausible? Its implausible for 600,000 Israelies to wander the desert even if its under the guiding hand of God, so the Scriptures aren’t accurate in this matter.

I’m sorry, but I don’t get it.

Or six hundred 'eleph (units, clans, families, military units, whatever you want to call 'em) of Israelites.

 

[Contarini]

So, the Scriptures are accurate only if they are plausible?

No, but history is the study of the plausible. Historical methods don’t give us absolute certainty; they give us varying degrees of probability.

Believers shouldn’t let historical arguments directly and absolutely dictate what we can and can’t believe. But we should be influenced by them. When historians say, “based on the evidence such-and-such seems very unlikely,” we then need to ask:

Are our reasons for believing that God did this the kinds of reasons that would account for God doing this in ways that historians might not be able to trace? I recognize that if you believe in a strict version of inerrancy, then the mere fact that the Bible says something (if it seems that the human author intended the statement to be a statement of fact) constitutes evidence that it happened. The number and relative triviality of the miracles in which one is forced to believe if one goes this route results, in my opinion, in a faith that is so divorced from history as to be incredible except on purely fideistic grounds. (In other words, if I accepted this approach to Biblical authority, I’d have a faith that had no connection to reason at all–the kind of faith that Pope Benedict rejected in his Regensburg speech.) One of the reasons to believe in Christianity is that Christianity offers us a faith rooted in history. Therefore, if you take an approach to Biblical authority that requires you to defy historical plausibility over and over again, when dealing with events that you would normally expect to be subject to historical investigation (like who reigned at certain times or who invaded whom and how big the army was, etc.), you wind up cutting the rational basis out from under the Christian faith.

There is no inconsistency, then, between accepting historical results with regards to the general historical claims made by the Bible while being willing to defy historical probability when an explicitly miraculous event of key importance in salvation history is in question. The primary example for me of such an event would be the Virgin Birth, which on strictly historical grounds looks like a pious legend, but which my faith requires me to believe actually happened. The Resurrection is relatively plausible on historical terms, if one brackets out its miraculous nature (By that I mean that historians reasonably tend to see miracle as itself implausible, but if you don’t do that the Resurrection accounts are fairly convincing.) This point is itself one of the major reasons for believing in the truth of Christianity.

With regard to the 600,000, there is no indication whatever that the Scriptures see this number as miraculous. Providing food for so many people is presented as a problem solved miraculously, but even then only because they were in a desert. There’s no indication that the Biblical authors had any awareness of the implications of the numbers they were citing. That is actually a point that could be used by a moderate inerrantist to claim that the number either has been transmitted inaccurately by scribes, or refers to 600 small clans/military units, or was never intended to be taken literally (all of these would allow one to believe in the classic “Old Princeton” version of inerrancy, which refers only to the “original autographs” and allows for figures of speech such as hyperbolic language).

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Good historians, yes. One of my college professors, however, a supposed historian (I would guess by having a doctorate) made the claim the Christianity stole Easter from Pagan worship of a Goddess by that name.

Well, that’s silly. Professors do say silly things. Bear in mind that most of us spend much of our time teaching areas that aren’t our primary specialization. I think that’s a good thing, because the hyper-specialization of grad school is unhealthy in many ways. But it does mean that sometimes we fall into errors of the kind we’d be relatively unlikely to commit when speaking about our primary area of expertise.

Since no other pagan documents (or any primary source documents for that matter) discuss the existance of a teutonic sun goddess named Estre, we have to assume that Bede was referring to what was, essentially a deity whose worship was only orally referenced. Sorry, i inferred from that that the people who failed to write it down probably existed prior to Bede’s time and died out prior to their education in writing forms, hence Bede’s presumed reliance on an oral source.

Sure, but how much prior? Indeed, if anything a critical reading of the Bede passage might lead us to suggest that perhaps the pagan practice hadn’t been as thoroughly replaced as Bede implies. What he says is that the English used to worship this goddess, but now celebrate Pascha. As you can see from his own historical account of the Christianization of England, there were still pagan rebellions and reactions going on shortly before Bede’s birth, and almost certainly there still would have been some pagans around (or at least people who remembered and had some affection for paganism) in Bede’s adulthood. Given the highly fragmentary nature of our knowledge of pre-Christian Germanic religion, it isn’t that implausible to think that there might have been a goddess whose worship survives only in this one reference, and Bede isn’t that far removed chronologically from the practices he claims to describe.

It’s certainly also possible that Bede was giving an inaccurate, speculative account. There’s plenty of that sort of thing in early medieval scholarship. I’m not an expert in the question, but I’d say off-hand that the main problem faced by the skeptics here (skeptics about the accuracy of Bede’s reference) would be to explain the term “Easter” and its German equivalent. Maybe it had to do with the connection between Christ’s rising and the East. Another question is the apparent Easter/Astarte link. The names do seem similar, but that might be just coincidence. Or Bede may have jumped to the “pagan goddess” theory because of his awareness of the ancient Near Eastern goddess, so the connection may be due to him.

All things considered, it seems likely to me that there really was such a goddess, but I agree it’s far from certain. (And I fail to see why people make a big deal of it, given that Easter/Passover obviously long predated the Christianization of the Saxons.)

True, but there is much more evidence of a strong oral tradition in the case of Passover than the case of Bede.

Not quite sure what you mean by that. What is this evidence? What constitutes evidence of an oral tradition? Are you talking about evidence outside the Biblical text itself? There may be pre-exilic non-Biblical evidence of a pre-exilic Passover celebration, but I’m not aware of it. If you mean that the Torah presents the Passover celebration as revealed to Moses (which if we don’t believe in Mosaic authorship of the Torah would mean that it was handed down in some way before being codified in the Torah as we know it), and that it records various Passover celebrations, then sure. But those of us who take a relatively conservative view of the Exodus traditions are typically reduced to arguments like “it seems implausible that this event would be so central in Israelite memory if something like it didn’t actually happen, and it seems implausible that the Torah, even if composed in present form after the exile, would make the Exodus so central if there wasn’t a long tradition of it having happened.” There’s also the literary consideration that some of the poems referring to Moses and the Exodus, like Exod. 15 and Deut. 32 and 33, are written in an archaic style that seems to predate the prose narratives in which they’re embedded. So yes, there is evidence for an oral tradition and for older written sources to set against the huge gap between the events described and the earliest date at which we know for sure that there was a written Torah (the 2nd cent. B.C.). But a skeptic might argue: sure, there was an oral tradition and old poems, but maybe even they go back only to an earlier point in the first millennium B.C.

Bede, on the other hand, is describing practices that supposedly happened about a generation earlier.

In terms of timeline, yes. In terms of reliability of source, Bede goes on… nothing?

I don’t see the difference you’re claiming here. In both cases the evidence for an oral tradition is found in the literary source itself, not externally. Of course there are differences–the differences you’d expect to find between a claim made about a popular practice of the previous generation and claims about events that took place many centuries earlier and had been enshrined in generations of legend and poetry.

I have no need to decide which of the two traditions is more likely to be true. Obviously I have a much bigger stake in trusting the Exodus traditions. It seems to me a priori unlikely that both traditions are unlikely to have been simply fabricated. I would say that fabrication is somewhat more likely in Bede’s case, but on the other hand the gap between what he says and the probable historical reality is (using purely historical methods) likely to be much smaller if fabrication is ruled out.

 

[Contarini]

Agreed. But the OP here is asserting that just because one biased source didn’t record something that it didn’t happen.

No, that’s not true. I wouldn’t call “Egyptian evidence” just “one source.” There are all kinds of Egyptian evidence we might have. We might for instance have a stele claiming that a rebellion of foreign laborers had been crushed and the foreigners had been massacred while trying to flee across the sea. Or we might have archeological evidence from the relevant period showing Semitic laborers working on relevant cities. Or we might find, as some have rather unconvincingly claimed to find, bits of armor or chariot wheels under the water. Or we might find evidence of the Israelite camp at some point along the route. There are all kinds of evidence one could imagine, some of which folks have claimed to find but none of which has added up in the estimation of most scholars.

The only thing I’m pointing out is that even if we consider Jewish oral and written tradition to be biased, we still have one source which DOES say it happened and that there’s not NECESSARILY a reason to consider Egyptian historical writings as greater than Jewish ones (though perhaps there is on a case by case basis).

Absolutely. If we had the kind of stele I described above, referring to something that sounded recognizably like the Exodus but claiming an Egyptian victory, then indeed we wouldn’t necessarily trust the Egyptian account. In fact we’d have an excellent reason not to (the later existence of the Hebrew people!), although of course it would be possible that the two accounts both gave one side of the story (maybe the Egyptians did slaughter some of them but others escaped across the sea and made it across the desert, etc.)

This isn’t a matter of lining up two different accounts and deciding which to trust. It’s a matter of accounting for why the event hasn’t left any one of a number of different kinds of archeological traces that one might suppose it would have left. I don’t consider this to be a decisive consideration, though I think it does indicate that probably the Exodus wasn’t as big a deal for the Egyptians as the Biblical account makes it sound. I believe that some of the ancestors of the Hebrews were foreign laborers in Egypt and escaped under circumstances (including the frustration of Egyptian attempts to prevent their flight) which they (rightly) attributed to divine intervention. I even believe that they had a leader named Moses who somehow bridged Hebrew and Egyptian culture. I say this on historical grounds, though no doubt my Christian faith influences me. I’m willing to believe that more than this in the Biblical event is accurate, but at that point I have to say that I’m resting much more on religious faith than on historical probability. I do not think that my faith requires me to believe that the events happened exactly as described–I think that much of the detail is probably legendary.

I think that folks who deny any Egyptian origin for any Hebrews are going too far in their skepticism. They seem to me to be at least as influenced by a secularist bias as I am (in my relatively more conservative position) by a Christian bias.

Edwin

 

[Spirithound]

Why would this number be considered “high”.

Can’t God take care of 600,000 men (and families) at His leisure?

The Scripture says 600,000 men, besides women and children (I think some translations specify they were men of fighting age). I have heard that the actual total would then be over 2 million.

 

[patrick457]

The Scripture says 600,000 men, besides women and children (I think some translations specify they were men of fighting age). I have heard that the actual total would then be over 2 million.

If we take 'eleph as literally meaning ‘one thousand’ at this point, then yes, the actual total would be close to around one or two million, taking into account 600,000 (Numbers 1:46 gives the more precise number of 603,550) men, their wives, children, the elderly, and people of non-Israelite ancestry. You also have to consider the number of livestock that a single family might have owned.

 

[MorningSong51]

I work as a professional historian. The problem with studying Egyptian records is that for propaganda purposes, pharaohs only ever recorded victories. To record a defeat or a failure would be unworthy of a god-king. This is most noticeable when discussing the Second Intermediate Period, when a group called the Hyksos invaded Egypt. This was one of the most important and defining events in 3,000 years of Egyptian history, and yet the records are virtually silent on it. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that the final victory against them was so great, that it had to be written down, we wouldn’t have even known that this invasion occurred. Even then, they only tell of the victory. No mention is made of who the Hyksos were, where they came from, or how they happened to be in Egypt. This was only discerned through archaeology and a few scant Mesopotamian references. To make a long story short, the lack of any information on Moses and the Hebrews in Egypt is precisely what historians would expect to find. If there really was a Moses that humiliated the pharaoh and led a successful rebellion to free the Hebrews, there is no way on earth they would have let any record of it survive. The fact that we find virtually no record of the Hyksos invasion, a FAR greater event from the Egyptian point of view, tends to back this up. So, sadly, the absence of record neither proves nor disproves anything about Moses and the Hebrews in Egypt.

---

In the same vein or thought how could one record the resurrection of Christ - what record other than the bible saw him - what other people wrote about this other than the Apostle? The catalyst is the resurrection and raising of Christ that began the Christian faith- and in the same thought the Passover meal is the same catalyst for the redemption process to begin to liberate the Jewish people, what evidence is there? - look around us, we are that evidence, our faith is that evidence and our belief (Luke 24:13-27 “27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”, the apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 “The Resurrection of the Dead”

12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith."

There will be evidence (findings) that will confuse many of us about the historical ‘truth’ about events that have taken place - why? You know when Christ was on the cross, many by standers hurled insults his way, even though they saw for themselves the miracles - of healing people, and have heard his sermons, not only that, it was by prophecy that Christ was born - these people are one in same that always doubt God - read all of Exodus. When Moses came to the people to tell them that God had sent him, what was their reply? When Moses spoke with God and said "What if they don’t believe me - then what? How was Moses to prove it? and God replied "14God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ This was a very scary and doubtful moment in Moses life - because he was about to release the Israelites from a very powerful nation - Egypt. I think to myself, who is the scariest person in my life - who I’m threaten by and I need to stand up to them, so now we can imagine Moses position. Even I would say “send someone else” - Exodus 4:13 But Moses said, “O Lord, please send someone else to do it.”

Remember this passage from the New Testament: "The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 16 for,

“Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?”

1. Then the Lord said, “If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first miraculous sign, they may believe the second. 9But if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground.”

 

[MorningSong51]

Do you realize how much is destroyed during an invasion. Do you realize how catastrophic the destruction of the Library of Alexander was? All that information!!!

Some last thoughts:

The fact that Jesus was sent before the great Sanhedrin ( the trial- 72 in counsel (?)) and within that time (or hour) and before Passover, it was that Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him three times - before the cock crows ( see John 13:38) this was evident of the night (not the day - as Psalms even tells about the changing of the time at midnight- see Psalm 119:62, in David’s prayer) that the Jews where commencing to leave Egypt and eat the Passover meal** after** midnight. At (exactly) midnight the LORD killed all the firstborn males of those who did not put the blood of the lamb upon their doorposts. The commentaries listed below indicate the time, my thought is on the fact that if the event had never taken place, which some say because of the records not being availabe- then the details would be enough to let people know that it did. The whole point is “not” on records - although it would be great, but on the fact that the Jewish people celebrate their liberation - and in that case, so do we - because Christ set us free, as we (also) celebrate our liberation as well.

---

"In Hebrew, the word “Sechvee” means both “rooster” and “heart”. Learning that the word is spelt alittle different (see torah.org LINK) MB 4: [Sechvi] - the heart is referred to as ‘sechvi’ in biblical language as it says in the verse ‘or who gave the ‘sechvi’ the ability to distinguish,’ and the heart distinguishes and it is through the heart that a person differentiates between day and night. Because the cock also appreciates this (day & night), and through hearing him a person derives benefit in that he now knows that daytime is approaching, and in Arabic a cock is called ‘sechvi,’ they instituted this blessing on hearing the sound of the cock. See later in section 48.

Now another website list: Hence, a cock’s crow (change of properties) is heard exactly at midnight (the time when states change). The second half, of perfect good.

**side note: "When one hears the sound of the rooster one says the bracha of hanosein
lasechvi vina. In scripture the heart is called sechvi as it is written (Job 38) ‘who gave the heart understanding’. The heart understands, and with this understanding, one distinguishes between day and night. **

The terminology:

The second half -

**Bina: **Binary means composed of two pieces or two parts/The word binah comes from the Hebrew word for “between” (beyn), and implies the ability to distinguish the real from the unreal, the true from the false. Proper understanding, then, comes from “rightly dividing the word of truth” (see Genesis 15:17 - Covenant of Pieces, When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. Wasn’t this midnight)

In this case, to the above remark, it means that the change (or the state of change) is at its height at midnight - Did Israel [already] leave Egypt that he should mention the exodus from Egypt? Beit Hillel said to them: Even if you wait until the cock’s crowing, they would still not have reached half of the redemption. How then do we mention the redemption, when they were not yet redeemed? Surely they only left in the middle of the day, as it is stated: “And it came to pass on that selfsame day, etc.” Rather, since he started the mitzva, we say to him, “Finish.”

So if I were to understand this last commentary, the way I think it was, then the Passover would have been the process of the beginning - or the starting point of, after midnight. The trial - would have start the process of the redemption, as the remark was said “Even if you wait until the cock’s crowing, they would still not have reached half of the redemption”

There are some more thoughts on this

Mary

P.S. According to a translation provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the August 9, 2003, edition of the Egyptian weekly al-Ahram al-Arabi includes an interview with Dr. Nabil Hilmi, the Dean of the Law Faculty at al-Zaqaziq University. Dr. Hilmi claims that he and a group of Switzerland-based Egyptian ex-patriates, the weekly reports, are preparing a suit to be filed against “all the Jews” for property taken from the Egyptians at the time of the Biblical Exodus from Pharaonic Egypt. He estimates the value of the suit to be “very large”, at least 1.125 trillion tons of gold (based on a low 5% annual interest rate).

thenationalunion.com/Arti…tzlavKatz.html

***I guess this would be the proof *****

 

[MorningSong51]

The website will not bring up the article, sorry - so don’t log into it, I found another one:

A lawsuit is being filed against the Jewish people for recovery of property stolen during their exodus from Egypt. The Talmud tells of precisely such a claim lodged over 2000 years ago.

aish.com/jw/s/48891502.html

and also, one other source:

1. King David at Night (3b-4a) - torah.org/learning/midrash/brachos1part3-4.html