How could Pharaoh's magician turn his staff into a snake?

[itullian]

always wondered about that and makes me lean toward exodus being a myth.

can you help with this?

 

[Havard]

always wondered about that and makes me lean toward exodus being a myth.

can you help with this?

I’m no magician, but it doesn’t sound that difficult a trick to pull off, when you think about some of the things David Copperfield does today. Granted, Copperfield has access to better lighting control, mirrors, etc.

 

[itullian]

but Moses did it first so the magician couldn’t have been prepared. beside the Bible seems to read like it was the real deal.

 

[LilyM]

It’s a snake charming trick - probably still done by snake charmers in India today. The snake would essentially be hypnotized and made to go rigid like a stick. Then at the appropriate time the magician would un-hypnotize it and it would go back to doing it’s normal snaky thing.

 

[Hokomai]

He couldn’t.

 

[Reepicheep]

One possibility is that Pharoh’s magicians were dealing with evil spirits - devils, who gave them minor abilities or resources with which to overawe those they dealt with.

Another is, as Havard and LilyM say, that they used mundane tricks, such as stage conjurers use today.

 

[meltzerboy]

always wondered about that and makes me lean toward exodus being a myth.

can you help with this?

I don’t know, but if it’s in “The Ten Commandments” film, it must be true! Seriously, don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Although some of the “magical” details in Exodus are difficult to explain and understand, the gist of the account may indeed be true according to recent historical evidence. For many Jews particularly, as well as Christians, the fact that the Book of Exodus is part of Torah makes it an inspired text which forms the Written Law received by Moses from G-d.

 

[Pfaffenhoffen]

always wondered about that and makes me lean toward exodus being a myth.

can you help with this?

not a myth.
A “midrash”. google it.
there was an exodus maybe but it is told in the epic style. Epic style is where the feats are over-exagerated and the faults minimized. For example, superman, batman, the cow-boys saga, the super-policeman, Tarzan, and so on.

 

[itullian]

I don’t know, but if it’s in “The Ten Commandments” film, it must be true! Seriously, don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Although some of the “magical” details in Exodus are difficult to explain and understand, the gist of the account may indeed be true according to recent historical evidence. For many Jews particularly, as well as Christians, the fact that the Book of Exodus is part of Torah makes it an inspired text which forms the Written Law received by Moses from G-d.

thanks m,

i have great respect for the Jewish people. Jews believe it really happened right?
what recent evidence? really interested…

 

[meltzerboy]

thanks m,

i have great respect for the Jewish people. Jews believe it really happened right?
what recent evidence? really interested…

There is the work of Carol Meyers, an archaeologist at Duke University, for example. Although the exodus was smaller, the date closer to 1200 BCE than 1400 BCE, and the path of the journey (including the river that was traversed) different, there seems to be archaeological evidence that a migration of the Hebrew people actually took place.

 

[itullian]

There is the work of Carol Meyers, an archaeologist at Duke University, for example. Although the exodus was smaller, the date closer to 1200 BCE than 1400 BCE, and the path of the journey (including the river that was traversed) different, there seems to be archaeological evidence that a migration of the Hebrew people actually took place.

so does this take out of the equation the parting of the Red Sea and the drowning of the persuing Egyptians?

 

[meltzerboy]

so does this take out of the equation the parting of the Red Sea and the drowning of the persuing Egyptians?

I recall seeing a program which discussed some historical evidence that there was a parting of a sea or river, but the exact details I don’t remember. As to the drowning of the Egyptians and the means used by Moses to part the sea, one can accept this only on the basis of faith, as is true of so many other events in the Bible.

 

[Nec5]

always wondered about that and makes me lean toward exodus being a myth.

But demons possessing people and giving them superhuman strength and knowledge of the unknown is believable because it’s in the New Testament? Why is it so hard to believe the miracles and events in the Old Testament as well? Both are true.

It is no more difficult for God to generate a pillar of fire to deter Pharaoh’s army than it was for Christ to raise the dead. Actually, the pillar of fire sounds a lot easier and more believable because our modern technology can create something like that. We can’t, however, bring the dead back to life with but a word or gesture. Yet, people somehow believe the one but not the other. That’s secularism and positivism for you.

 

[Marybeloved]

A myth?

Considering what Christ and Revelations tell us about what the anti-Christ will be able to do and the extraordinary feats he’ll be able to accomplish, is it really so difficult to believe that a pagan priest/magician was able to turn a stick into a snake? Have you read about what exorcists report about stuff that comes out of people they pray for who’ve been cursed/bewitched by a priest of Satan?

The OT is set in an age that’s very far back, so much archaeological evidence will be missing. But it’s far far easier for me to believe the History of the Hebrews as recorded in the OT than it is to believe that this tiny nomadic tribe just came up with this unique truths about God and a very unique morality in that time and age all on their own, without Divine intervention happening to them in ways that were absolutely convincing to them.

Consider what was going on around them everywhere they went. Why on Earth were they so different? So stubborn in their weird ways (per everyone else)?- What could possibly convince them to stick it out regardless of anything else everybody else believed, unless God had proven to them time and again that these laws and beliefs were really from him and not some Prophet? It was far easier for them to adopt the cultures and beliefs that dominated the area- It just makes no sense to me that they would insist on this unique, sole God and a very strict and specific morality in contradiction to everyone else around them.

For them to adopt this and stick to it through thick and thin against all odds, God must have shown them time and again that he was God- wasn’t joking around. So they knew that it was the truth and held on to it against the grain. That’s why I believe much of the Old Testament stories about the great feats of God and the Prophets among the Israelites- There’s just no other way the Hebrews could have accepted this strange religion and stuck to it against all odds otherwise .

Consider how even in the Old Testament, it’s told how they were constantly struggling to remain faithful to God and the Covenant in that world. Constantly adopting pagan ideas and practices- It was VERY hard to remain a child of the Covenant in that era. Yet, they kept coming back, sticking to it, against all odds and to me, beyond all reason, really.

For me, the religion itself and its setting in its origins and development, its survival, is proof enough for me, logically speaking, that this tiny group really did encounter and witness things that no one else in that world ever did.

 

[LilyM]

But demons possessing people and giving them superhuman strength and knowledge of the unknown is believable because it’s in the New Testament? Why is it so hard to believe the miracles and events in the Old Testament as well? Both are true.

It is no more difficult for God to generate a pillar of fire to deter Pharaoh’s army than it was for Christ to raise the dead. Actually, the pillar of fire sounds a lot easier and more believable because our modern technology can create something like that. We can’t, however, bring the dead back to life with but a word or gesture. Yet, people somehow believe the one but not the other. That’s secularism and positivism for you.

Sadly, I think you’ll find a lot of the same people who are dismissive of the Exodus are similarly dismissive of NT miracles - eg the feeding of the 5,000 is dismissed with ‘oh, He just inspired everyone to share the food they already had’ or shall ga of the blind, paralyzed and demon-possessed as ‘oh, their problems were all in their minds, He just had them comfort and reassurance and they were better’.

Some even doubt the reality of His resurrection, suggesting that this was a metaphor or symbol of something else rather than a historical event.

 

[chosen_people]

always wondered about that and makes me lean toward exodus being a myth.

can you help with this?

Aaron was to command “it will become a snake” so that Pharaoh could see that nature bows to God’s will.

Pharaoh’s magicians were ale to duplicate the wonders performed by Moses, thus supporting the King’s insistence that Moses was nothing more than a magician.

As to the question of whether Pharaoh’s sorcerers had any real power, Rambam feels that all such “magic” in the scriptures is nothing more than sleight of hand and only foolish and ignorant people believe in it.

However, other Jewish commentators hold that the Egyptian magicians and others whose feats are recorded in the scriptures and Talmud were able to override the laws of nature and perform miracles. They held that it was by this ability that false prophets were able to mislead people into believing in the power of idols.

The symbolism of Aaron’s staff swallowing all the other staffs (after all the staffs had turned back to staffs from being snakes) is that of the miracle of the Splitting of the Sea, when God would cause the sea to “swallow” Pharaoh and his hordes.

 

[Uriah_Betrayed]

Speaking about Exodus, I’ve been hearing a unanimous agreement around the History Professors that there is no evidence of the events of Exodus ever happening, that Jews in Egypt were not enslaved as a group to build monument, and that the stories of Exodus were written hundreds of years later by the Babylonian-Exiled Jews who wanted to alter their history to fit a more Deuteronomist idea of what the Jewish faith was.

 

[patrick457]

Speaking about Exodus, I’ve been hearing a unanimous agreement around the History Professors that there is no evidence of the events of Exodus ever happening, that Jews in Egypt were not enslaved as a group to build monument, and that the stories of Exodus were written hundreds of years later by the Babylonian-Exiled Jews who wanted to alter their history to fit a more Deuteronomist idea of what the Jewish faith was.

‘Unanimous’ is probably the wrong term to use here. True, it is kind of doubtful that the Exodus happened in the uber-gigantic scale of popular movies like Mr. DeMille’s: tens and thousands of Hebrews erecting humongous monuments while being perpetually whipped by taskmasters.

 

[itullian]

seems like i’m having less and less faith in the Bible

 

[nordskoven]

You’re joking. There was a Jewish worker/slave population centered around the building site of Rameses II, was there not? And he, of all others, being from a military regime, would not value the kindred of Joseph as lacking the lineage of former rulers. Ramses first born also disappears from the statuary record, as I recall. Angel of Death got him.

Velikovsky has some great, stimulating if embattled theories as regards a near pass-by of an astronomical body that let loose microparticulate iron, for example, to turn the waters blood red. This would have allowed waters to temporarily stand up in the wind if the gravitational pull was great enough, releasing upon the Egyptians as it passed by. And extra-biblical records show violent electrical events, one town noted as blasted to oblivion by lightning. The Ark of the Covenant was after all a condenser, covered inside with gold; then a layer of insulating wood again covered with gold and two angel figures providing a spark gap?!? Velikovsky also notes other cultures that spoke of manna precipitate. And a staff can be a snake paralyzed by a dislocated skull.

Bottom line, it’s not the means of an event that makes it a miracle, it’s the divine timing and effect! JIT. Just In Time. When God says, go; go. That’s the nature of being “meek” which is a word used to describe a powerful yet compliant chariot horse who will respond to every light touch of the driver. The modern assault on the veracity of the Bible has consistently been blasted with such archaeological finds as the fragment describing King David; and discovery of the family tomb of Caiphas, the high priest, and so forth. This is not a fruitful way to go skeptic, agnostic or atheist. Like the description of John’s that may be a helicopter, a loud locust with wild, whipping hair; or a nuclear blast with the sky rolling up like a scroll; the images are accurate but awkward for moderns. Thank God the Jewish labor force was unplugged from Egypt or they might have had the wherewithal to enslave the world. Instead, the Jews are the means of liberation for the world.

Here’s a website suggesting Thutmoses as the Exodus pharaoh. The Egyptians were rascals as regards erasing and obscuring royal rulership. Not the Jews. The Jews had scribal curses to nothing could be changed without such a curse paralleling the last parts of John’s Apocalypse that curses those who would change his words.

bible.ca/archeology/bible-archeology-exodus-date-1440bc.htm