Eyewitness Testimony of Peter and John

Eyewitness Testimony

Some of the New Testament authors explicitly claimed to be eyewitnesses to Jesus' ministry. For example, it’s claimed in 2 Peter 1:16 that 'We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.' Similarly, 1 John 1:1,3 states that 'That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched ... we proclaim to you what we have seen and heard.'

This does not prove that they actually were eyewitnesses, only that they claimed it. The authors also claim they are telling the truth and not lying, eg.Rom. 9.1. We should be willing to investigate whether they were or not. In Luke's prologue (Luke 1:1-4) he makes note of the importance of speaking with eyewitnesses. Also, Peter's insistence on replacing Judas Iscariot with someone who had personally observed what had occurred (Acts 1:21-22) demonstrates the firsthand eyewitnesses. Ancient historians did not value recording the exact words spoken by an individual as highly as we value it today. Instead, ancient historians attempted to communicate a speaker’s intended meaning. Therefore, while different authors may record a speaker's words differently, their testimonies can still be reliable if they are in agreement. Additionally, if the stories in the Gospel were all related in exactly the same way, we might suspect the authors were merely copying (colluding with) each other. 'If the Gospels were too consistent,' notes Craig Blomberg, 'that itself would invalidate them as independent witnesses.'

...The New Testament includes certain incidental details that would be hard to comprehend unless they are the result of eyewitness testimony. One example is recorded in John 19:34. After Jesus dies on the cross, John notes that 'one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.' Death by crucifixion occurred due to two primary causes: hypovolemic shock and exhaustion asphyxia (asphyxiation). One consequence of the person going into hypovolemic shock and also being asphyxiated (unable to draw in breath) was that water would collect around the pericardium, the sac surrounding the heart. Thus when the Roman soldier stabbed Jesus’ side with the spear (which was not common procedure for crucifixions) the wall of the pericardium was pierced, resulting in a flow of both blood from the heart itself and water from the surrounding sac. Even though he would have no idea why he saw blood and water pour out, John’s description of the scene is entirely consistent with modern medical conclusions about what would have happened. John would have had none of this modern medical knowledge; he merely recorded what he saw. How could John have known that if a person who had just been crucified were stabbed in the chest that blood and water would run out unless he witnessed it?

John describes himself in the first person as "I" in John stating himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved most. Due to persecution he had to be careful not to state his authorship everywhere so he could finish all 5 books as evident by his imprisonment at Patmos. There are unique markers or phrases that run throughout John, 1,2,3 John and Revelation only used by John to know it is John. John who saw Jesus alive from the dead was one of the original eyewitness Apostles, including himself as he records the various accounts. Such attributes don't fit John the Evangelist as being the author. He records he is the only Apostle present at the crucifixion. He reports in 1 John he saw Jesus alive from the dead. In Revelation he testifies again he saw Jesus resurrected. He told Polycarp, a student of John still in the first century, these things. Such high standards of historical reporting, to not accept these facts is just being ignorant. Details of this sort strongly indicate that the New Testament is a result of eyewitness testimony regarding the events it describes. Until you are willing to apply a higher standard of critique on another ancient text that you accept as being true, you should accept all this verification if you were to be intellectually honest with yourself and hold no double standards between ancient texts.

Taken together, this evidence (as well as other lines of evidence) strongly suggests that Mark’s gospel and at least several of the other New Testament writings are based on eyewitness testimony.

http://biblocality.com/forums/showthread.php?3305-Eyewitness-Testimony-of-Mark-Peter-and-John 

How Much Luck Did Our Universe Need to Pop into Existence?

How Much Luck, Did Our Universe Need to Pop into Existence?

It is not uncommon for atheists to argue for the following claims:

The universe is all there is and it luckily popped into existence, out of nothing, uncaused. The universe’s fine- tuning, or ability to support life, is the result of luck and luck explains the origin of first life. Lucky positive mutations worked on by natural selection explain the complexity of life forms. It is more believable that the universe came about by luck than for God to exist because evidence for His existence is less obvious and more inaccessible.

These claims, at the very least, reveal the atheist’s overall attitude or an epistemic stance (i.e., how they approach what is knowable); not only about God’s existence, but also about the role of evidence and wishful thinking in one’s belief formation.

Consider Richard Dawkins’s admission in The Blind Watchmaker that “we can accept a certain amount of luck in our explanations, but not too much….We can allow ourselves the luxury of an extravagant theory [regarding the origin of life on our planet], provided that the odds of coincidence do not exceed 100 billion billion to one.” Dawkins goes on to say that “gradual evolution by small steps, each step being lucky but not too lucky, is the solution to the riddle” of how first life arose.?...

...The biblical description of creation fits the key concepts of the big bang model: beginning, stretching, cooling, and ending. Genesis 1 says, “In the beginning, God created …”. Several passages, including Psalms 104, declare that “He stretches out the heavens like a tent.” Jeremiah 33 refers to the “fixed laws of heaven and earth,” a condition that implies the universe will cool as it expands. Peter and John both refer to heaven and earth passing away to be replaced by a new creation.

 It demonstrates that science and Scripture are not in conflict, but in complete harmony. In the end, we can claim that the Bible said it first.

http://www.reasons.org/articles/thoughts-on-the-big-bang

Were There Any Innocent Canaanites?

Posted on March 16, 2015 by Clay Jones

In my last post I wrote that God ordered the capital punishment of the inhabitants of the land God had given Israel because they were guilty of depravity and violence. The Canaanites heard of the miraculous approach of the Israelites and knew that Israel’s God was helping them, but some chose to fight rather than flee. As the Canaanite prostitute, Rahab, told Israel’s spies who had entered Jericho:

I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have melted away before you. For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. When we heard it, our hearts melted and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you; for the LORD your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath” (Josh. 2:9-11).

Thus, those who were sensitive to the Lord’s warning had the opportunity to flee but many remained. Skeptics will object, however, that certainly there must have been some adult Canaanites who were innocent of those evils.

The answer to that is simple: there weren’t any innocent adult Canaanites!

That there were some innocent people living in that area is based on the presumption that surely not everyone would have done these deeds, but that is merely an assertion unsupported by any evidence whatsoever.

Abraham and Sodom and Gomorrah

God knows who will or will not repent and the Canaanite cities of Sodom and Gomorrah serve as an amazing illustration. The Lord tells Abraham that the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah “is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave.” After the Lord said this Abraham knew the Lord would destroy those cities, so Abraham asked:

Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?

Notice Abraham’s plea: “far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked!” In other words, Abraham is worried precisely about the issue of God’s fairness. Abraham is worried precisely over what the skeptics grouse about. How does the Lord respond? The Lord then agrees to spare both cities if there are fifty righteous people.

Abraham then asked the Lord to spare the cities for forty-five righteous people, and the Lord agrees. He then asked about forty, then thirty, then twenty, and finally he asked the Lord to spare both cities if there were only ten righteous people. I suspect that when Abraham said “ten” that he was all but certain that there were at least ten righteous people in those cities! After all, his nephew Lot and his wife and two daughters make four people. All they need to find is six others to spare both cities. And the Lord answers “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.” I cannot overstate the significance of this. Abraham asks exactly the same question that many ask: is it fair that God kill the innocent?

In Genesis 19 we learn that after Abraham’s conversation with the Lord, two angels arrive at Sodom and stay in Lot’s house but that evening, the men of the city, “both young and old,” surround the house and demand that Lot send the angels outside so they might have sex with them. Imagine the horror of that moment. The men want to rape Lot’s guests and when he refuses to send them out, they threaten to do worse to him. Even after the angels blind them, “they wore themselves out groping for the door” (v.11).

The next morning, even though the night before many of the people in that city had been blinded, Lot can find no one willing to leave. Also, even though the men of the city tried to rape his guests, Lot is reluctant to leave himself. But the Lord was merciful to Lot so the angels “seized” Lot, his wife, and his two daughters by the hand and brought them out of the city.

And what happens once Lot and his daughters get out of the city? Lot’s daughters get Lot drunk and have sex with him so that they can have children by their father! Even Richard Dawkins, in a surprising moment of moral clarity, writes, “If this dysfunctional family was the best Sodom had to offer by way of morals, some might begin to feel a certain sympathy with God and his judicial brimstone.”1 Frankly, I don’t know how God could make it clearer to us humans that he knows who would or would not repent and that they were all wicked. Really, that’s pretty clear, right? Do we need this passage to be in blinking red neon lights in our Bibles to get the significance of it?

The evil which seduced the people of Sodom and Gomorrah may have surprised Abraham and may surprise us, but it didn’t surprise God. Certainly we learn several things from this passage. One, Sodom and Gomorrah were completely depraved. Two, God knows hearts and therefore knows who will and who won’t repent. Three, God would allow entire cities to live if it meant that a handful of righteous wouldn’t die. Four, God was willing to give evidence of Sodom and Gomorrah’s wickedness so that He couldn’t be accused of killing the righteous with the wicked. And five, when God destroyed these cities, he only killed the wicked...

http://www.clayjones.net/2015/03/innocent-canaanites/?utm_content=buffer4da80&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Is Christianity Intolerant?

...How should we respond when people call us “intolerant” simply because we refuse to embrace a particular value or behavior?

FIRST: Help People Understand “Classic” ToleranceYourDictionary.com says that tolerance is “a tolerating or being tolerant, esp. of views, beliefs, practices, etc. of others that differ from one’s own”. And when asked what it is to tolerate something, the same source says that we ‘tolerate’ someone when we “recognize and respect (others’ beliefs, practices, etc.) without sharing them”. TheFreeDictionary.com says that ‘tolerating’ is “to put up with” or “endure” something.

Now did you notice something here? In order for ‘tolerance’ to exist and to be demonstrated, several things are required. Let’s take a look at the list of pre-requisites for ‘tolerance':

1. Two or more people must exist
2. These folks must hold divergent views, beliefs or practices. In other words, they must DISAGREE.
3. These same folks must endure one another. In other words, they cannot eliminate each other even though they don’t embrace each other’s beliefs, but must instead find a way to peacefully co-exist.

You see, ‘tolerance’, under this classic view, requires a disagreement. Without the disagreement, ‘tolerance’ is not even possible. Now let’s take a look at a new accepted view of tolerance that has emerged in our relativistic culture.

NEXT: Help People See How The Definition of Tolerance Has Been CorruptedWebsters-Online-Dictionary.com begins to hint at the subtle shift in definition when it describes ‘tolerance’ as “a disposition to allow freedom of choice and behavior.” In its ‘Declaration on the Principles of Tolerance’, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines ‘tolerance’ as “respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world’s cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human.”

Notice the shift? The concept (and the actual word) ‘acceptance’ has been added to the definition in a way that subtly transforms the classic definition. This view promotes not that we must ‘endure’ each other in the context of our disagreements, but that we must ‘accept’ and embrace each other’s worldview as equally valuable and equally true. This current definition of ‘tolerance’ could be stated in the following way:

Tolerance: “The act of recognizing and accepting the equal validity and value of all views, beliefs and actions.”

FINALLY: Help People See the Self-Defeating Nature of the New DefinitionThis new definition of ‘tolerance’ cannot live up to its own standard. What if I hold (and practice) the belief that ‘all views, beliefs and actions are NOT equally valid and valuable’? Could the new, corrupted definition of ‘tolerance’ tolerate my position? No, clearly my position would be the one position that would have to be abolished in order for the new, corrupted definition of ‘tolerance’ to be true. But rejecting my view entirely would simultaneously reject the new definition itself. You see, this corrupted view of tolerance simply cannot stand up under the weight of its own standard. The world presently embraces a view of ‘tolerance’ that is illogical, unsustainable and self-refuting.

It’s our job to help people think clearly about the issue of tolerance, even as we continue to love and tolerate their opposing views (I mean that in the ‘classic’ sense of tolerance!)

J. Warner Wallace is a Cold-Case Detective, a Christian Case Maker, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity

- See more at: http://coldcasechristianity.com/2015/is-christianity-intolerant/?utm_content=buffer1cacc&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#sthash.rpf4claL.dpuf

Could solar eclipses be evidence for God?

Could solar eclipses be evidence for God?

Thousands of Brits will be trying to catch a glimpse of the solar eclipse today (March 20, 2015). Science buff Jonathan McLatchie, explains why these unusual astronomic events give us a window into our privileged place in the solar system.

Today, the Arctic and Northern Europe, including the UK, will witness a total solar eclipse, representing the first total solar eclipse in Europe in more than a decade. An eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the sun and the earth. Since the sun is four hundred times bigger than the moon, but also coincidentally four hundred times further away, the sun and the moon appear to be the same size in the sky. Remarkably, of the many moons in our Solar System, our moon is the only one known to yield the most perfect solar eclipses when viewed from the surface of the earth.

It is enough to send a chill down one’s spine. Is it just down to happy coincidence that the one planet in the solar system that yields the most perfect solar eclipses just so happens to be the one planet that harbours conscious observers to appreciate them? Only one other moon in the solar system appears the same size when viewed from its host planet – a small moon of Saturn called Prometheus. But this moon moves so rapidly around Saturn that its solar eclipses endure for less than a single second.

"The one planet in the solar system that yields the most perfect solar eclipses just so happens to be the one planet that harbours conscious observers to appreciate them"

Solar eclipses are a spectacular sight to behold. But they have also contributed significantly to scientific discovery. The sun’s corona, the star’s outer atmosphere, becomes observable only during a solar eclipse. This has allowed scientists to conduct experiments during solar eclipses, and this has enabled researchers to use spectroscopes to discern the spectra of stars.

In 1919, a solar eclipse led to the confirmation of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity that he had proposed three years earlier. If Einstein's theory was right, starlight should bend as it passes the sun. Researchers, one group led by Arthur Eddington and Edwin Cottingham on Principle Island off the West African coast and another group in Brazil led by Andrew Cromellin and Charles Davidson, set out to determine the changes in the position of stars in the sky near the sun relative to their position before and after the eclipse. Their data ultimately confirmed Einstein’s theory of general relativity. These results have been borne out by subsequent experiments conducted during solar eclipses.

"Solar eclipses have played an important part in the scientific endeavour"

Examining ancient records of solar eclipses at known places and times has also enabled scientists to elucidate the Earth’s past rotation rate. This has even allowed historians to translate ancient calendar systems into a modern calendar system.

It is clear, then, that solar eclipses have played an important part in the scientific endeavour. Is it merely an uncanny fortuitous state of affairs that the one planet in our solar system on which there are observers also happens to be the one planet with perfect solar eclipses that appear to provide optimal conditions for scientific discovery?

In their book The Privileged Planet, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez and philosopher Jay W. Richards elaborate on this and many other uncanny coincidences that suggest that there is significant overlap between the conditions necessary for habitability and those that are conducive to measurability.

While this striking phenomenon does not by any means clinch the design hypothesis, it certainly adds to a growing cumulative body of data that suggests that our Universe was designed for intelligent life.

Something to think about as you watch (or attempt to watch) today’s solar eclipse.

Image: NASA Goddard Space flight centre, Flickr

Jesus Is Not Your Invisible Magic Friend

Jesus is not your invisible magic friend by Lydia McGrew
( click the above link for the whole article)

An atheist on the internet pointed out that I literally believed I had a magical invisible friend who could grant me wishes.

So what I ask of you is this: Try to rattle your own faith. Shake it up. Cause as much doubt as you can. Read what the best of the opposition has to say, and take it seriously. Describe your own faith in the most contentious terms possible (e.g., “an invisible friend who grants me wishes”) and recognize that this is, though not how you would put it, still literally true about what you believe.

... "grants me wishes" or "could grant me wishes." Again, here we see the interesting combination of mechanism and capriciousness that was evident in the rhetorical impact of the word "magical." A genie grants you wishes. You call up a genie out of a bottle, and he says, "Master, what do you wish?" Then he has to do what you tell him. Or perhaps the genie says, "You have three wishes," and then you have to choose your wishes carefully. The wishes can be whatever you select, and the genie is bound to honor your requests.

God is not like this, and even the addition of the word "could" to the phrase does not help. God's interaction with our requests is that of a wise and loving Father who decides what is best for us and who often refuses our requests. Most often, as far as we can tell, God does not perform any miracle to bring about that which we request, even when what we ask comes about by Providence and secondary causes. God is simply not in the business of "granting wishes." In fact, Christians are called upon to take up their crosses and follow Jesus. I don't know about you, but taking up a cross was never one of my wishes.

Again, here the saccharine version of Christianity... This is not to say that God could not intervene miraculously to bring about some state of affairs or that God never does (after all, the Bible is full of miracles). It is rather to say that God's actions should not be thought of as "granting wishes," as though our feelings were primary and as though God is like an indulgent or capricious grandfather (or a genie) who gives us what we want just because we want it.

...In general, I have found that deconversions are all too likely to happen when the inquiring Christian is unwilling to "graduate" from a simplistic or childish concept of God to a more complex, difficult, and deeper concept of God. It is rather like a person's deciding that all of science is bunk when he realizes, to his annoyance and dismay, that all physical phenomena cannot be accommodated by Newtonian physics.

I do not have any single antidote for such deconversions, but it would certainly help if we would challenge our young people to move beyond a shallow concept of friendship with Jesus and in particular not to be emotional dependent upon religious experience.

Tough-mindedness is indispensable for those who are going to encounter a ridiculing world.

Not A Blind Faith!

???

 Not a Blind Faith!

...While it is true that God is a Spirit and cannot be seen, it is not true that there is no evidence to support the existence of the unseen God. While we may not see anyone throw a rock in a pond, we may indeed see the ripples that the rock created on the surface of the water and come to the belief that someone threw a rock into the pond on the basis of this evidence. In a similar way, there are many good reasons to believe that God exists, and the Biblical model of true faith involves examining the evidence for God’s existence. Let’s examine the Biblical model of evidential faith: 

Christians Are Called to Use Their Minds
God tells us that we are to love Him with more than our heart. We are to have a relationship that is emotional and intellectual (Matthew 22:37-38).

Christians Are Called to Understand the Value of Evidence
God has given us a number of good evidential reasons to believe that He exists and that Jesus is who He says He is. We are not called to have blind faith, but to have a well reasoned, evidential faith (Acts 1:2-3, Acts 17:2-3, Acts 17:30-31).

Christians Are Called to Examine Their Beliefs
God wants us to know what we believe and why we believe it. We’re not called to numbly trust everything that might be taught in our world today, even if some Christian teacher is the source! We’re expected to be critical, skeptical and thoughtful (Acts 17:10-11, 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21, 1 John 4:1)

Christians Are Called to be Convinced of What They Believe
God wants us to be certain and base our certainty on evidence that can be articulated to others who may have doubts (Romans 14:5, 2 Timothy 1:8-12, 2 Timothy 3:14).

Christians Are Called to be “Case Makers”
Once we have examined the evidence and have come to the conclusion that Christianity is true, we are called to be ready to make a strong defense for what we believe (1 Peter 3:15).

The Christian life is a rational and reasonable life that is rooted and grounded in the evidence of the Resurrection and the truth of the Bible. Christians are saved by placing their trust in Jesus, but Christians become a powerful force in their world when they commit themselves to being “case makers” for what they believe. Christians can be “case makers” precisely because the Christian faith is an evidential faith. When we, as Christians, argue for the truth of the Christian Worldview, we are not sharing an opinion. There either is a God, or there is not. Jesus is that God, or He is not. Salvation comes through Christ alone (as Jesus Himself maintained), or it does not. This is not a matter of opinion, personal preference or wishful thinking. The Christian faith is grounded in evidence that can be assessed and evaluated. The Christian faith is an evidential faith.

J. Warner Wallace is a Cold-Case Detective, a Christian Case Maker, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity

- See more at: http://coldcasechristianity.com/2015/the-christian-faith-is-an-evidential-faith/?utm_content=buffer15364&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#sthash.553lF0nk.dpuf

New film: “Exodus: Patterns of Evidence”

Dear friends:

I am very excited to find a new film “Exodus: Patterns of Evidence” that documents many Archaeology discoveries.  We surely should ask the following question.( Keeping in mind "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" in Archaeology discoveries; there are still lots more to be dug out, and there are certainly lots of evidences long gone too.)

Does it matter whether or not the Exodus of Moses actually took place? 

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2015/february-web-only/why-it-matters-that-exodus-really-happened.html

,,,In a 2011 interview with Columbia Journalism Review, celebrated filmmaker Errol Morris (The Fog of War) says that the documentarian’s task is to help audiences “rediscover reality.” He observed:

Someone comes up to you and they say, “Well, I’m a postmodernist. I really don’t care about truth, truth is subjective, or there are all kinds of different versions of truth: your truth, my truth, someone else’s truth.” And then so you say to them, “Well, then it doesn’t matter to you who pulled the trigger? It doesn’t matter to you whether someone committed murder or not or someone in jail is innocent or not? That’s just a matter of personal opinion?”

Truth matters. People want to know the answers: the who, the what, the when, the how, and the why. And without providing those little truths, they may never learn of the ultimate Truth behind them. 

(Click the following link for more about this new film.)

https://www.facebook.com/PatternsofEvidence

You never know where a crisis of faith will lead you.

http://www.christiancinema.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=5424#

What is the validity of history found in the Bible? Is it fact or fiction? What does the hard evidence really have to say about the fundational story of the Old Testament: the Exodus out of Egypt? An in-depth investigation by documentary filmmaker Tim Mahoney searches for answers to these questions amid startling new finds that may change traditional views of history and the Bible.

For more than 50 years, the vast majority of the world’s most prominent archaeologists and historians have proclaimed that there is no hard evidence to support the Exodus story found in the Bible. In fact, they say that the archaeological record is completely opposed to the Bible’s account. This view of extreme skepticism has spread from academia to the world. The case against the Exodus appears to be so strong that even some religious leaders are labeling this ancient account as historical fiction.

Filmmaker Tim Mahoney begins with the question, “Is the Bible just a myth, or did the archaeologists get it wrong?” He decides to tackle this issue with a deliberate scientific approach. After examining the details in the biblical text, he journeys across the globe to search for patterns of evidence firsthand. The result is the most in-depth archaeological investigation into the Exodus from Egypt ever captured on film.

JANUARY 29, 2015, 12:19 PM EDT

Jews & Christians praise new Exodus movie as antidote to Biblical illiteracy

Filmmaker Tim Mahoney’s new documentary “Exodus: Patterns of Evidence” was shown Jan 29th in Manhattan, Queens and New Jersey.

Movie Review: Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus | Answers in Genesis

Archaeologists have for decades been looking for evidence of a Hebrew presence and escape from Egypt in the New Kingdom city of Ramses on the Nile delta. After all, Joseph’s family settled in the “land of Rameses” (Genesis 47:11), the slaves built the cities Pithom and Rameses (Exodus 1:11), and the children of Israel departed from Rameses” (Numbers 33:3). But the film points out, quite correctly, that this region was referred to as the “land of Rameses” in biblical texts like Genesis 47:11 that refer to events such as the arrival of Joseph’s family in Egypt long before the time of Ramses the Great no matter how the dates are calculated.11

The film suggests the biblical text included these geographical references so that readers would know the land of Goshen where the Hebrews lived was at the city of Avaris, which is near the city of Ramses. Because Ramses—meaning “the Egyptian god Ra gave birth to him”—was a very common name to honor pharaohs, it may have become associated with property in this region long before any of eleven pharaohs known as Ramses or the Ramses the Great became specifically associated with the land. In any case, when archaeologists look in the region of the New Kingdom city of Ramses in deeper layers associated with the older “Middle Kingdom,” they find a wealth of archaeological and textual support for the historicity of the Exodus just as the Bible records it.

This illustration from the book Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus is similar to those in the film. Here the upper wall of time shows the traditional view of Egyptian chronology and the “late Exodus” view, which places the Exodus at about 1250 BC, during the reign of Ramses the Great. (The reign of Ramses the Great, who built many monuments, is indicated in the 1200s BC by a graphic “monument city” on the wall.) The colored blocks indicate events such as the arrival of Joseph’s family in Egypt, their multiplication and enslavement, the events directly related to the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan. Archaeological evidence for these events is not found when the search is made for it in material related to that timeframe of history, but if the timeframe is shifted backward (white arrow) about two centuries toward Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, and the Exodus is placed around 1450 BC, archaeology tells another story. This is shown in the lower illustration. Image courtesy of Timothy Mahoney, Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus.

Timely Note

Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus uses an appropriately monumental display to visualize the timeline of Egyptian and biblical history—a wall stretching back through antiquity with pillars dividing it into thousand-year segments. The various positions—biblical and otherwise—on the timing of the Exodus are superimposed on this wall of time to illustrate the debate over whether it occurred in Egypt’s “New Kingdom” or “Middle Kingdom.”

The narrator describes this timeline as “a wall of time stretching back to the earliest moments of civilization.” We should note here that the visual timeline does appear to stretch back to an antiquity too old to be compatible with the chronology calculated from the Bible. From the Bible, we know Earth is only around 6,000 years old, and the global Flood of Noah would be dated in the 2300s BC.12 Therefore, the suggestion of dates prior to this time, such as the beginning of Egypt’s Old Kingdom in the mid-2600s BC, reflect secular assumptions and even some incorrect assumptions related to biblical history. You can read more about these assumptions and the jumbled mess of Egyptian chronology in “Doesn’t Egyptian Chronology Prove That the Bible Is Unreliable?” and Unwrapping the Pharaohs.