I'm having serious doubts

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I don’t know how to put it… my faith has been weakened by attacks against the Bible.
These attacks concern the origin of the Jewish people and the Exodus. It seems like that all the historical evidence can’t support an exodus from Egypt and that the Jewish people were a result of a bottleneck effect, but rather, that the Jewish people actually shared their place with their Canaanite cousins and as such, they worshipped the same gods as them. tl;dr: the Pentateuch’s account of the origins of the Jewish people are as factual as Gesta Hungarorum.
Currently, my faith is hanging by a thread of miracles and memories. Even though, there could be some kind of physical explanation for them, even though Eucharistic miracles seem to have consistency.
I’m having doubts about whether there is a soul or there is only a life force that can be explained purely by physical means. I have also this feeling that (almost) every belief system is the same. What if the Natural Law as a byproduct of evolution is not the same for each organism?
I decided to attend university for the cause of helping others and end the attacks on the Eucharist and life itself. My original focus was celiac disease which later was expanded to serious conditions that are considered by the world as being life unworthy to live and eosinophilic diseases. But what if I enrolled in vain?
I want to have my faith alive, but how can I have it revived if Scripture crumbles?
Finally, I would like to share an experience:
When I was preparing for my First Communion, I had a weird dream. I was on my way to church with my mother when we noticed that the church I attended was being demolished. (The church is close to the restaurant my mother used to work in and a house next to the restaurant was demolished in the year I had that dream.) Having no choice, we visited the other church in the town, but when we entered, it didn’t look like it used to be. The baroque style remained, but the service was not a Christian one, with the congregation proclaiming “We are irreligious”. The communion portion of the service consisted of people going up to some kind of wooden newspaper booth and having something stamped on their foreheads.
Then, we visited a church that kinda looked like the one we attended, but it was weird. There were snacks in the church and I remember something about metal balls being shot out from the altarpiece (Around the time I started attending school, anime was everything. Lots of kids, including myself, had YGO cards and I used to watch the anime on Toonami. The B-Daman craze hit my school around when my preparation year started and survived into year 3 or 4 maybe).
When we went for mass the next time, everything was normal.
 
So, let me ask you this up front, because it is an important question.

Is your faith in the Bible as a book, or is your faith in Jesus Christ, the risen son of God?

I’m not discounting your concerns, we’ll get to those in a bit, but this is the most important question in this discussion.
 
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Pelly said:
I don’t know how to put it… my faith has been weakened by attacks against the Bible.
These attacks concern the origin of the Jewish people and the Exodus. It seems like that all the historical evidence can’t support an exodus from Egypt …
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Do not be surprised. An estimated 99% of the papyri produced in Egypt during the period of the Jews have been lost, and none survived from the eastern Nile delta region that the Torah gives that the Hebrew slaves resided.

However:
Pharaoh Merneptah (1206 BCE) victory inscription mentioning “Israel” exists.
Philistines, Moabites, Edomites, are in Egyptian sources (< 1200 BCE) agreeing with the book of Exodus.
 
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Scripture will NEVER crumble.

However, sometimes our individual interpretation of scripture is incorrect or lacking historical and/or cultural context.

Mose led the the Jews out of Egypt at the first Passover. That wasn’t made up.

However, our modern day interpretation of the number of Jews MAY be slightly off.

The ancient Jews had a tendency to exaggerate large numbers.

For example: today, when we English speakers exaggerate a large number, we often used the fake number “zillion.” There is no such number as “1 zillion,” but we use it express a large number that we don’t know.

The ancient Jews did the same thing, but they used large, real numbers because they didn’t have an equivalent of “one zillion.”

Actually kids still do this all the time, “Daddy, there were a hundred people at my birthday party,” when infact there were only 25.

It’s also quite possible/probable that the Jews were not the majority of Pharaoh’s slaves. The Pharaohs had slaves from all over, Persia, Arabia, North Africa, Nubia, etc.

Finally, they are saying the historical evidence doesn’t support the Exodus. Well, let’s use common sense for a moment. Does anyone actually think that any Pharaoh would want to record an incident where he was beaten by a bunch of slaves? The Pharaohs were VERY concerned with their histocial legacy, that’s one of the reasons they built the pyramids & other vast memorials. They wanted to be remembered forever. Hence, do you honestly think they would want to be remembered as the Pharaoh who lost to the Jewish God and allowed his former half brother to lead the Jewish slaves away?

Of course not! We need to remember that the Pharaohs controller Egyptian history. They would not want to record this, and to be honest, a slave revolt / exodus in Egypt would hardly be anything that other empires would be interested in. So it’s doubtful that the Persians, Greeks, etc would have even noticed … and if they did, they would hardly care.

I pray this helps a little
 
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Learn to doubt your doubts. How can we, living thousands of years later, really know for sure what happened then, when all we have to go on are scraps and bits of information? Doubting your doubts also means that you realize that too often, opinion and spin is subtly mixed into the historical facts we are presented. The culture we happen to be part of, colors our view of history. Hang onto the reality of a God who loves you so much he died so he could be with you forever. Being a Christian is more than intellectual ascent; it is also experiencing his presence and love. Press in to the God who is there with you, the God who has never taken his eye off you.
 
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This next thought comes from a different perspective, but even if Christianity is completely wrong and made up, the consequences of being wrong are relative light. In fact, when my years are up I will have deep satisfaction knowing that I have lived a wonderful fulfilling life for a purpose greater than myself, and I was constantly growing more like every highest ideal in life (like the God I thought existed). And I end up the same as everyone else - dead. But if Christianity is true and I reject it, the consequences are catastrophic and irreversible. It seems to me that no one should reject Christianity without a very thorough and vigorous consideration that it may be true.
 
My undergrad was in Archaeology. Me, I wanted to be an Egyptologist, but my university’s focus was more Biblical archaeology.

One of the things that really hit home was that scientific archaeology is a very young field. I knew that already, from what I knew about Belzoni (1778-1823) in contrast with Petrie (1853-1942), but it was kind of interesting to see that a lot of the big Victorian names (Petrie, Breasted [1865-1935]) are just as far removed from modern practices as they were from the destructive adventurer amateurs. (Heck, even how Carter handled Tutankhamun and the destruction that accompanied what should have been a mummy from the height of their art—!) Science and technology have really progressed leaps and bounds from the 70’s and 80’s, and again in the 90’s-current day.

Through all of this, scholars are spilling gallons and gallons of ink on the subject. We can’t even get the timelines of the pharaohs pinned down— just go ahead and compare/contrast a king list from Breasted around the turn of the century, with our current theories as to who ruled when, and you’ll see it’s off by a couple hundred years in places. If they’re in a situation where they can’t even pin down the right reign to the right century---- you can see how difficult it is for them to pin down embarrassing-things-that-happened. Because the Egyptians were’t very fond of depicting themselves in a poor light.

So, if you take something like the Exodus account, scholars have been arguing about that since the 19th century. You could say that Biblical archaeology began with St. Helena, and her desire to mark so many of the great holy sites of Christianity, because the underground Christians had preserved that tradition of this-thing-happened-here, even when it was a death sentence to be Christian. But in general, it’s only really been a thing for about 200 years… and there’s a whole lot of bumping around in the dark. Honestly, no one would care about an obscure tribe of ancient nomads, if it wasn’t for Jesus— and everyone brings their own personal thoughts and biases to the table, and tries to prove them with science and scholarship and lengthy articles. 😉
 
One of the most thought-provoking articles that I’ve enjoyed since graduating, though, was this one here— it’s the one I keep in the back of my head when the subject comes up. I think it hits a lot of the high points, and accounts for a number of troubles people have with making the Biblical account synch with the historical record.

For example, one high point that needs to be accounted for— the reigning pharaoh did not die with the Firstborns, but his son did. So the pharaoh of the Exodus couldn’t be a firstborn, and he had to be succeeded by not-a-firstborn. Pop quiz, how many pharaohs of the 18th dynasty match that profile?

Next pop quiz, you have the Memphis stele, the Elephantine stele, and the Amada stele. All describe the successful “first campaign” of Amenhotep II, yet they’re separated in time by about seven years. How do you reconcile that? Were there three Asiatic campaigns? Two Asiatic campaigns? An inaccurate restoration made by a later ruler? Two different pharaohs using the same name? How do you reconcile the shift from the unwavering aggressiveness towards the Mitanni under Thutmose III, when the Egyptian army was at the height of their power, to suddenly making treaties with them and talking about brotherhood? What happened to cripple them and suddenly make them friendly to people that under his father’s reign, they had entirely dominated?

If you’re able to have a scholarly conversation with someone about all of those points, and a dozen others, and know enough about it to have your own opinions, yeah, I can see your doubts. But right now, I would suspect that your grasp of “historical evidence” is pretty shallow, whether we’re talking about the Exodus account, or the Israelites-in-Canaan, or whatever.

Because, like was mentioned before— no one would really spend two seconds thinking about those guys, if it wasn’t for Christianity. And so people’s ideas about Christianity colors their approach to a very young science… for the good and for the bad.
 
Is there any archaeological proof on Jewish residence in Egypt? It can be hard to tell. Can it be possible that the remains of Jewish settlements just disappeared? Also, if I remember correctly, the story of Joseph mentions camels, which were started to be domesticated around the age of Exodus. (There is a chance that people attempted to train camels before, though).
How do I respond correctly to criticism when it comes to such fundamental matter? (for example, whatever Ze’ev Herzog says) I don’t consider Marcionism a viable alternative, but losing my faith would be becoming a shadow of myself since it played an important role in my life (if the local Catholic school wouldn’t have accepted me, I could have been ended up in spec ed, but my relationship began earlier. Christianity is so pervasive everywhere. A woman from my mother’s workplace made an effort to introduce me to the Catholic faith).
 
Okay, so what’s your perspective on the Hyksos vs the Hebrews?

What’s your opinion on Manetho?

If you don’t think the Hyksos and the Hebrews had anything to do with having a common lineage, do you think that a reigning “outsider” pharaoh would be more likely to be open to promoting a Hebrew to a position of power, than, perhaps, a home-grown “insider” pharaoh?
 
Pelly said:
Is there any archaeological proof on Jewish residence in Egypt?
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Just keep this in mind… A LOT of Egyptian history is still lost.

For example: there was NO archaeological evidence for the ancient city of Heracleion until archaeologists found it underwater in 2000. People thought the city was a myth for a long time.


So if entire cities can still remain lost with no archeological evidence, it’s not a stretch to say a relatively small (compared to a city) settlement of Jewish SLAVES could easily be lost to history.

Also, let’s remeber that a lot of the Jews in Egypt were adopting Egyptian practices… which is one of the reasons they started worshiping a statue of a cow when Moses was receiving the Word of God
 
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Israel could not be explained historically or theologically without an Exodus. Look up the Ipuwer Papyrus, it describes the plagues in a very similar way to the Bible account. And the Merneptah Stele is a stone tablet that describes Israel as foreigners in Egypt.
 
Pelly said:
I don’t know how to put it… my faith has been weakened by attacks against the Bible.
Click to expand...
The Bible gives us the answers to why we exist, thus it often uses figurative and allegorical language. The problem is that atheism is an active movement these days that seeks to dismantle the faith of people by trying to dismantle the Bible. But God is the Rational Source behind our rational universe.

Look around you. The three qualities of function, purpose and design are the hallmarks of a rational source. You need not see a shoe factory or the shoe-maker in order for reason to demand one. If you find something on a beach, how can you tell if it was rationally sourced? You don’t need to find a label that says “Made in China” in order to know that it is rationally made. Just look for the three hallmarks.

If you look closely, everywhere you look you can identify the three hallmarks of a rational source. In fact, you yourself are made up of functional systems that have specific purpose by design. For example. Your stomach is designed to process food, just as the small exit in your rear end is designed as a gutter hole which you use everyday.

The problem is that the word “God” creates a mental block for atheists, which then leads them to attempt to formulate an argument against a rational source, simply to counter the concept of “God”, instead of letting logic reach its rational conclusion. The consequence of arguing against the logic is a psychological complex that channels a subconscious frustration, being that fighting logic creates a mental tension that seeks an outlet. Thus a hatred of religion and anything “God” is a common reactionary symptom.

One needs to realize that “God” is simply the word to describe the Rational Source behind our rational cosmos. Thus the reason why every civilization since the dawn of humanity has reasoned a “Creator” and has had a name for Him—the “Him” alludes to that necessary rational source.

The key for letting the logic flow toward its rational conclusion is to be psychologically open to the reality of the rational source. When someone is not psychologically prepared, they try to force the mind against logic by claiming that the universe with all of its systems and laws simply “bubbled up” accidentally, even though such logic is an impossibility. Logic, like harmony, is not accidental. And to argue that it is simply begins to unmask the psychology of atheism, which is not grounded in reason, but in psychology and emotion. Thus the typical insults, anger and haughtiness and declarations of intellectual superiority coming from atheists are the predictable symptoms.

Man was made for eternal happiness and eternal life, and that source of happiness and life is God. This universe and your existence is much more incredible than you can possibly imagine. The Logos of the universe created you for a specific purpose, and to think otherwise is to miss the point of existence.
 
There is the oldest text, a scroll, that contains the 10 commandments and the Shewa, that we have found to date. This predates the dead sea scrolls and was owned by an Egyptian Jew. It was found in Egypt. It is thought to be the daily prayer scroll or book for the family or individual
 
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I suppose it is not dogma, but as Christians we should be guided by the New Testament. The Old Testament is interesting, but it is a Jewish work with all the “chosen people” undertones which is out of synch with today’s world- and with Christianity. Same thing goes for the Koran, for that matter.

If parts of the Old Testament are making you question your faith, then that is the answer. The Marcionists (sp?) were an early Christian group who did just that- largely discarded the Old Testament for the New.
 
I just was listening to a Great Courses class on the History of Egypt, taught by Bob Brier. It was a secular class, but he talked about the Biblical accounts of Joseph, Exodus, etc.

The big point is that, through all of Egyptian history, episode after episode, there were always events occurring that the Egyptians refused to record, or destroyed records about. Outside sources talk about Egyptian defeats, but pharaohs claim perpetual victories, closer and closer to their capitals. Egyptian kings and queens disappear. Everything embarrassing or different is erased from the walls. There are whole dynasties that they just don’t want to remember.

There are records and archaeology of things that are consonant with the Exodus account, and there are a good number of quirky details in Exodus that point not just to someone living in Egypt, but the Egypt of that specific time.

My faith does not rest on archaeology, but the Bible’s historical chronicles are generally supported by new archaeological discoveries. That is part of why I enjoy learning about the ancient Near East.

(If you are interested, your library may carry the Great Courses on Hoopla. But the specific lectures on Exodus and Joseph will make more sense if you “take the whole class.”)
 
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Re: discard the Old Testament?

Respectfully, that is a bunch of fewmets. You cannot understand the New Testament without understanding the Old Testament. God’s plan of salvation, and His love for us, is openly displayed in both the Old and New. Jesus is the Word. All the Word.

The Marcionites were a bunch of anti-Semitic, Gnostic, nasty pieces of work. If you want to call them Christians, you are stretching a point. They did not just discard the OT; they refused to accept any Gospel or NT book except Luke, and they cut out most of that for having Jewish references.
 
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A couple of things help to explain the Exodus difficulty:

First, it needs to be remembered that although one must firmly hold to the historical character of the Pentateuch, it is written according to norms of historical writings of its time, which means that it is not a strict, literal fact-narrative, but often has many symbolic, tropological, and theological embellishments, for lack of a better word. Numerical values in particular cannot be understood in their proper sense, but must be interpreted according to their symbolic value.

Second, although direct archaeological evidence for the Exodus is lacking, there is indeed some indirect evidence for it. There are two very good books I’d recommend for this here: On the Reliability of the Old Testament, by Kenneth Kitchen, and “Israel in Egypt”, by James Hoffmeier. Although both of these men are Protestant, these writings contain nothing against the Catholic faith and I urge you to read them.

Benedicat Deus,
Latinitas
 
I take the Bible as teaching truths. Not that the facts aren’t important, quite the opposite. But, losing faith in the Bible is entirely possible, no doubt. But, that kind of skepticism only perpetuates itself onward to anything else that bothers a person.

The words attributed to Mark Twain are . “I’m not bothered so much by the things I don’t understand in the Bible as I am bothered by the things in the Bible that I do understand.”

For someone perhaps like yourself who is having doubts about the Bible or what it says, I would strongly recommend the trilogy of books by Dr Marshall Taylor – The Crucified Rabbi, Catholic Perspectives on Paul, and The Eternal City. OK, they’re in the range of around 200 pages each, but I was very impressed how Marshall was explaining things so clearly and solidly. I think you need a good dose of “solid.” Well, he doesn’t ignore that others hold different opinions, but he makes a solid case for Catholicism.
 
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