Having trouble accepting Biblical numbers

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leonie said:
BD!!! I took Algebra three times in high school and college and got a “c” every time!!

Oh well, I’ll apply my “c” level math brain and study these further.

Thanks!
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Hey! Here’s a kid who once got a zero in math. 😊
Very interesting. I’ve been listening to a series of lectures of Ancient Egyptian history and the Egyptologist professor said that during the period of the exodus, the population of Egypt as a whole was about a million. So, if it were a later period than he surmised, it’s possible that the Egypt was much bigger. Still a million would have been a tremendous part of their population. How long would it have taken to cross the sea of reeds?
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That is, if 'eleph does mean the numeric ‘thousand’ here, making the sons of Israel number a million or two. 😉
If we’re going to apply the interpretation I’ve talked about yesterday, Numbers 1 would look like:

Reuben: “Six and forty 'eleph and five hundred”
Simeon: “Nine and fifty 'eleph and three hundred”
Gad: “Five and forty 'eleph and six hundred and fifty”
Judah: “Four and seventy 'eleph and six hundred”
Issachar: “Four and fifty 'eleph and four hundred”
Zebulun: “Seven and fifty 'eleph and four hundred”
Ephraim: “Forty 'eleph and five hundred”
Manasseh: “Two and thirty 'eleph and two hundred”
Benjamin: “Five and thirty 'eleph and four hundred”
Dan: “Two and sixty 'eleph and seven hundred”
Asher: “One and forty 'eleph and five hundred”
Naphtali: “Three and fifty 'eleph and four hundred”
Levi: (unavailable)

One other interpretation posits for example that the number of ‘troops’ are given first, then the total number of men within those troops. Hence, in the case of the tribe of Reuben, there would have been 46 'eleph, composed of 500 fighting-age adult (i.e. over twenty years of age) men total, while Simeon has 49 'eleph filled with 300 men, and so on.

This brings us back to the number of men within a given 'eleph. If we suppose here that there are 500 able men within the tribe of Reuben, for example, it would give us a very low average (for modern standards) of ten men per troop! Even so, this seems to have been a pretty normal number in ancient times: I’ve heard tell that in one of the the Amarna letters Rib-Hadda, king of Byblos (mid-14th c. BC) - author of some sixty letters, many of which are complaints or pleas for action that annoyed even the recipient of the letter, Akhenaten - requested for a contingent of troops of twenty men each. In another letter meanwhile, he requested for a troop of ten men from Nubia.

And Exodus says of the Reed Sea that it was caused “to go on by a strong east wind all the night, and made the sea dry-ground, and the waters were cleaved.”
 
It is almost certainly true that the Israelites had come to outnumber the Egyptians - that would be why the Egyptians tried to keep them oppressed and to reduce their population by ordering the death of the male infants. Not unlike some places we can think of in more recent times, when a smaller privileged group attempts to hold a larger despised group in thrall - think South Africa, for example, or Iraq. . . .
 
NHInsider said:
It is almost certainly true that the Israelites had come to outnumber the Egyptians - that would be why the Egyptians tried to keep them oppressed and to reduce their population by ordering the death of the male infants. Not unlike some places we can think of in more recent times, when a smaller privileged group attempts to hold a larger despised group in thrall - think South Africa, for example, or Iraq. . . .
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It is also said, I believe by Dr. Tim Gray (EWTN’s study of Exodus), that the Hebrews were more fertile than the Egyptians. The Eyptians had a birthrate of 2 or so children and the Hebrews were much more numerous. This is one of the reasons the Egyptians wanted to throw the male babies into the Nile.
 
diggerdomer said:
Any objective (or, I guess, subjective, for that matter) references for this claim? Thanks.
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Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.
  • Exodus 1:8-14
 
patrick457 said:
Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.
  • Exodus 1:8-14
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Yes, of course, we know what Exodus says. But that doesn’t make specific numbers/facts etc. “almost certainly true” as you claim. If the Bible is our only claim for facts that may have other evidence, then we could claim with certainty, as Bishop Ussher did in the 17th century, that the earth was created on 23 Oct 4004 B.C., which follows from his exclusive use of the Bible for cosmological etc. information. I don’t think too many people would agree that it’s almost certainly true that’s when the earth was created. Though of course, it may be true.

I thought you had some source other than the Bible, as you said “almost certainly.” If the Bible is your only source for such a claim, why do you say “almost” certainly? Why not certainly?
 
diggerdomer said:
Yes, of course, we know what Exodus says. But that doesn’t make specific numbers/facts etc. “almost certainly true” as you claim. If the Bible is our only claim for facts that may have other evidence, then we could claim with certainty, as Bishop Ussher did in the 17th century, that the earth was created on 23 Oct 4004 B.C., which follows from his exclusive use of the Bible for cosmological etc. information. I don’t think too many people would agree that it’s almost certainly true that’s when the earth was created. Though of course, it may be true.

I thought you had some source other than the Bible, as you said “almost certainly.” If the Bible is your only source for such a claim, why do you say “almost” certainly? Why not certainly?
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I’m confused here. I’ve never used the words ‘almost’ and ‘certainly’ in conjunction with each other, at least on this thread…🤷
 
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