Talk:The Exodus/Archive 15

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Sidebar on the Numbers Censuses

[quote from Korvex]Before addressing the consensus issue, I will respond to Haploid somehow claiming that this is view is some sort of attempt to make the biblical data line up with the evidence, if I understood him correctly -- this, if he indeed invokes it, is blatantly false. From what I have seen, the biblical data allows for no other interpretation -- the biblical data specifically only allows for a translation of family/troop. Deuteronomy 7:7 for example, tells us that the Israelite's were the fewest of all the peoples. It is impossible to support a 'thousand' translation in light of this text. [end quote from Korvex]

The main discussion on the censuses of Numbers is and should be about what can or cannot be found in reliable sources. I'm adding this sidebar because what I have to say is relevant to an argument raised by Korvex, but could derail the conversation above if I had placed it in that section. User:Korvex, in the discussion above, has raised the objection that the Bible cannot actually mean "thousand" by elef, for various reasons including Deuteronomy 7:7. The reference to Deuteronomy 7:7, which implies a people much smaller than two million in population, is irrelevant for three reasons.

First, Deuteronomy only tells us what the author of Deuteronomy believed about the Israelite population in the wilderness. It does not tell us what the author of Numbers believed. We should not assume that all the biblical authors represent a single, agreed-upon point of view.

Second, there is the problem of Numbers 1:46. It is possible to get a coherent reading out of the rest of numbers 1 if you substitute the word "troop" (or something) for "thousand" ever time you read it. So instead of Reuben having 46,500 soldiers, it has 46 troop units and 500 total men. Similarly for the other tribes. Here's the problem. If you total up all the troops and men for all twelve tribes on this theory, you get a total of 598 elephs and 5550 soldiers. And yet Numbers 1:46 tells us that the total is 603 elephs and 550 men. That is, somewhere when you come to Numbers 1:46, five additional elephs have appeared, not found in the individual tribal listings, and 5,000 (that is, approximately 90%) of the soldiers counted in the census have suddenly gone missing!

If eleph means "troop" or something, Numbers 1:46 is unintelligible, because it presents an impossible sum total for all the troops counted. On the other hand, if eleph is a thousand, then Numbers 1:46 makes perfect sense in its passage. The same issue, though with slightly different numbers, occurs at Numbers 26:51.

Third, this kind of thing is why we should stick to what is published in reliable sources, and not try to argue out on Wikipedia talk pages "what the Bible itself clearly means." My argument here is not a direct argument for including the "thousand" interpretation on the basis of Numbers 1:46 and 26:51. I'm simply demonstrating that direct appeals to the biblical text won't serve Korvex's goals as easily as he hopes, so that we should stick to the published sources instead. Alephb (talk) 02:16, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

In both cases, Numbers (where there are many Israelites) and Deuteronomy (where they are few), the authors are making a theological point, not attempting to write accurate history. Back in Genesis God tells Abraham that his progeny will be as numerous as the stars in the heavens; a little before that, God instructs Adam and Eve to go forth and multiply. So there's a theological bias towards multiplying and filling the earth, hence the increase from the 70 who go down with Jacob into Egypt and the 2 million or so who leave again with Moses. I terms of normal demographics this just doesn't work - you can't go from 70 people to 2 million in 400 years, or 320, let alone in three generations (read Exodus carefully and you'll discover there are only three generations between Levi and Moses - and it's the line of Levi that the author is concerned with, not the line of David). Then in Deuteronomy the Israelites are the smallest of nations - why? Probably because this is post-exilic and reflects a reality of the time, when the "Israelites", a pure people dedicated to God, were indeed very few - the "Canaanites," who were in fact simply those who refused to join "Israel," were the majority. Anyway, there are plenty of arguments about this, but all agree that it's a mistake to read the Pentateuch as history.PiCo (talk) 06:45, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you both for your calm, reasonable responses., which have certainly illuminated this area for me. Doug Weller talk 07:50, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

The backward and forward links in the Pentateuch (of which what I said above is an example) is one of the major problems in trying to decide its origins and compositions - there are many signs of multiple authorship over a considerable period, but these linkages look like the work of a single author. They all seem to be Priestly in intent (or content), hence the widespread belief that the final redactor was from the Priestly school. The author of Deuteronomy was an early post-exilic Deuteronomist, the author of Numbers a late post-exilic priest.

Regarding the numbers in the census, there's an interesting discussion in this recent book. PiCo (talk) 07:54, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Aleph, I agree we should stick to reliable sources -- but I only have one note, and that is that you more or less answered your own "problem" with the sum of the numbers, LOL. You point out that in the first "census", you have 598 elephs and 5550 troop men -- whereas in the other one, you have 603 elephs and 550 troop men. So, where do these 5 elephs come from? It comes from the 5550 troop men of the first count -- 5000 out of 5550 are counted as an extra 5 elephs, and if you take that in consideration, both censuses yield exactly 603 elephs and 550 troop men. A perfect fit! But, we should keep this discussion restricted indeed to reliable sources. I have more criticisms of your arguments, if you want to discuss those you should go to my talk page. PiCo himself has some overwhelming errors in his interpretation, but I will agree to only debate/discuss this text on my talk page. But let's restrict this discussion to reliable sources now.

Doug seemed to have two problems with the initial edit I put forth. They are 1. Use of Waite's paper and 2. My reference to eleph being meant as troop/family/tribe as a majority position. So what can we see about these points?

1. It seems to me that Doug defines "reliability" as in number of citations -- however, this view is highly questionable. The only thing that citations reflects is how much a paper is discussed, not it's reliability. Citations is only one way to affirm reliability -- I find that there are three different ways. 1) The publisher of the paper/book, 2) Citations and 3) Academic career of author. You'll notice, criteria 1 is the sole criterion in Wikipedia's official policies -- and so this is obviously the most important one. Lo' and behold, Waite's paper was published to Vetus Testamentum, removing all doubt regarding its reliability. However, for the purposes of discussion, I will not include this paper in the exodus edit so everyone can be happy.

2. Doug questions that eleph meaning troop/clan/tribe is still the majority position of today, but this is rather obvious when you take a look at the discussion. You'll remember Mendenhall's paper from the 1950's refers to this as a consensus -- taking a look at the current literature, can we assume that the consensus has either been broken, or that it is no longer even a majority? The answer is obviously no. What are our sources? Aside from Mendenhall's paper, it was Aleph himself (I think) who brought my attention to Humphrey's work on the census numbers -- the work of Humphreys fully supports the eleph-troop interpretation, and he has published 2-3 papers on this. For one of Humphrey's papers taking this interpretation, see The number of people in the Exodus from Egypt: Decoding mathematically the very large numbers in Numbers i and xxvi -- the paper has a good number of citations as well as has been published to Vetus Testamentum/Brill. A third recent paper on the subject by GA Rendsburg titled AN ADDITIONAL NOTE TO TWO RECENT ARTICLES ON THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT AND THE LARGE NUMBERS IN NUMBERS I AND XXVI also supports this view. Furthermore, a major 2006 Exodus commentary by D.K. Stuart also supports this interpretation (90 citations). This further includes Waite's own paper. All these sources are published into credible publishing sources and some of them have been largely influential, whereas I can only find two credible works since then that has actually rejected this interpretation, the first by paper by Rudiger Heinzerling -- and in fact, I actually included it in the bibliography in my initial edit! The second advocates for a thousand interpretation as well (35 citations). So taking a look at the papers that actually discuss this in the last two decades, you'll see they overwhelmingly support the eleph-troop/clan interpretation.

One more note -- as I was reading through recently published commentaries/papers as I was typing this comment, I accessed another reliable source supporting my position that have a rather large number of citations. It is titled Large Numbers in the Old Testament by J.W. Wenham, this paper considers elef/eleph to mean something like 'tribal chieftain' or something such as that with some 36 citations. This should help underline the majority position of what I'm putting forwards. I'm also not sure, but it seems that a major 1997 commentary of the Pentatuech by Everett Fox (page 321) also supports me here, and this one has 150+ citations. Every single work we've seen with over half a hundred citations supports the family/troop/tribe interpretation, whereas about 60-90% of papers with less than 50 citations support this -- an obvious majority by any interpretation. All these sources are reliable as well. Are there any remaining problems?Korvex (talk) 14:57, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Korvex, am I Doug this time? Any outside reader might have a hard time deciding. You need to read more about our policies and guidelines. Our guideline for reliable sources says " Reliable sources may be published materials with a reliable publication process, authors who are regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject, or both. These qualifications should be demonstrable to other people." It then goes into detail about various situations. This of course echoes our policy at WP:VERIFY, particularly WP:SOURCE. You're wrong to say the publisher is the sole criteria. Reliability isn't enough, even if we decided that Waite is a reliable source, there is still WP:UNDUE and that in particular is where citations come in. Then of course there's the fact that one person, ie you, can't decide definitively that a source is reliable. You need consensus on Waite. If you can't get it, you can try RSN.

Then of course there's your decision as to what is the majority position and what "most scholars" think. This is based on your own research, right? Which you can do here, but you can't add to the article. There we need sources, and probably attributed statements saying what is the majority decision. Maybe even quotes. And although I've used citation counts, they are very very tricky. Google Books and Google scholar happily include the most fringe stuff you could imagine - it's probably a breach of some trades description act for Google to use the word "scholar". We can't use counts to determine a majority. Doug Weller talk 15:36, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Most authors have abandoned reading the censuses of Numbers as reflecting a historical reality. The people still talking about the exact meaning of eleph in the scholarly world are the minority who are still trying to salvage some kind of history from the Exodus account. This is why "counting up recent papers" may not be a reliable guide to where mainstream scholarship is on the issue of "eleph" specifically. You'd make your case much stronger, Korvex, if you could find a recent scholar who thinks the "eleph = troop" interpretation is a majority position, but I don't think we've seen a citation of that sort yet. And as for the odd claim that "603 eleph" (Num 1:46) is actually Numbers' way of saying "598 little groups of 5 to 15 guys plus 5 big groups of 1000" guys, I'm not even going to try interacting with that kind of reasoning, on your talk page or anywhere else, especially when you introduce a weird claim like that by LOLing at me. Alephb (talk) 16:28, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Doug -- I have already stated, for purpose of discussion, that Waite's paper will be excluded (although bringing up WP:UNDUE is a good point). I will no longer try to add Waite's paper -- however, you seem to have no problem with the other sources I mentioned. You confuse me when speaking about citations, though. If Google Scholar telling you that a paper has been cited 5 times is not enough, what is? Your original criterion that you told me was for Wikipedia to reference a paper, it must have a good number of citations. If you actually take a look at the several hundred citations amassed in the 7 or 8 or so papers/books I referenced, you'd be hard-pressed to say that 3% of them are "fringe", especially when I referenced recent major commentaries such as D.K. Stuart's commentary on the Exodus or Everett Fox's commentary on the Pentatuech. So, although I will happily agree to excluding Waite's paper for this discussion, all my other sources qualify Wikipedia's policies with flying colors.

Next, Aleph claims that "most scholars have abandoned" the position I'm advocating -- that is not only conjecture, but utterly false. I would go into more detail, but the mere large amount of sources I gave in my previous response establish beyond a conceptual doubt that most scholars have NOT abandoned this. Where Aleph gets this idea, especially without providing any evidence at all, whatsoever, is rather confusing. Aleph claims scholars are trying to "salvage" historicity from Numbers, which is also fanciful at best. Aleph makes one third point, that my claims on the census's from Numbers 1 and 26 are "wrong", and he doesn't give explanation as to why. Although -- there is no point to even discuss or try to compare the census numbers between Numbers 1 and Numbers 26, because these are two different censuses. So why exactly should two different censuses conducted 25 chapters apart (probably spanning several yeard) yield the same results? They shouldn't. Aleph's response is simply a reflection of his opinions and he provides no evidence to back up his claims, regarding the opinion of scholars on the meaning of eleph or his interpretation. Aleph has said that we shouldn't "assume" Deuteronomy and Numbers have the same author, but even if that is granted, Numbers 3:43 says that the total population of men one month or older in all Israel was slightly over 22,000 people -- making a 603,000 interpretation of the censuses utterly impossible. Again, Deut. 7:7 says the Israelite's were the fewest of all the peoples and Exodus 23:30 says that the Israelite's were so few that they couldn't even inherit the entire promised land at once because they wouldn't be able to populate it. Doug's points are valid (and I have addressed them), but Aleph has offered nothing new.

So -- let's go back to my last response. I gave countless sources, and agreed that I will not use Waite's papers. All other papers/books I cited have an impressive number of citations, and some of the works I noted are quite grand in academia. So I don't think there's any question regarding their reliability. As far as the evidence has been shown on this Talk Page, I would contend that the evidence clearly shows a majority position -- however -- I do not even need to do this. Unless any other editors can show evidence that there are other prominent interpretations of the census lists, then we do not even need to include any reference to other interpretations. If someone is able to provide reliable sources for other interpretations, but not as much as the sources we have for the troop/family/tribe interpretation, then the coming Wikipedia edit should primarily speak about the family/tribe interpretation, and give a much smaller amount of discussion to other views. So far as it is, the current Wikipedia page gives far too much space and discussion to the eleph=1000 interpretation. So the question is for Doug and Aleph -- before I go forwards and make an edit -- do you have any of your own reliable sources regarding other interpretations of eleph that warrant discussion? If not, then naturally all discussion will be focused on eleph=family/troop/tribe.Korvex (talk) 00:54, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

The germane policy for establishing academic consensus/majority or minority positions is WP:RS/AC: a top scholar literally says that the consensus/majority position is ..., and we cite his statement. We don't crunch the number of citations in order to establish who's the majority. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:33, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Korvex, you've badly misread my comments about Numbers 1:46 and I'm not going to try to bother to correct your misunderstanding, because it would be pointless. We are reaching the point where were entering WP:FILIBUSTER territory. Since December 18th, the talk page for the Exodus has been one long disagreement between you and all other registered users. You've made no headway in convincing anyone to accept your viewpoint, and you continue writing long, angry essays in favor of your position. You're filibustering. It's become clear that your attempts at persuasion aren't working, but you just keep going. It's not productive. It's time to give this campaign up and move on to something else, because the other users have already demonstrated that the edits you've proposed aren't being accepted on this page. Alephb (talk) 08:35, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

• Korvex, do you remember the advice I gave you at Talk:Christ myth theory, which you very graciously accepted? I'm sorry to say that it applies here, too. It's time to accept one of two things: 1) You're wrong; or 2) You're right, but you're not going to get your way. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:19, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Tgeorg -- it looks like you are right, painting this view as a consensus seems to contradict Wikipedia's policy as such a thing requires a quote. Before I continue though, I must address Mjolnir -- Mjolnir, if you actually scroll and read through the discussion on Numbers 1, you'll find that everyone has already accepted that this is a prominent view of academia and that it should be allowed on the page. The only thing being discussed was whether or not this can be painted as a "majority" view, which, although it is, I concede will not be added to the Wiki page for Wiki's policies forbid adding such a thing unless a direct quotation explaining the majority view is given. I do have such a quotation, but it has been rejected because it was made in the 1950's.

Aleph points out that my edits have been "rejected" -- this is false, since my comments have in fact influenced the page in 2 minor ways or so. They also aren't "angry" essays, and one of them have been rejected for utterly no reason whatsoever. But aside from the eleph=troop/tribe not being a majority, it definitely warrants inclusion considering all the sources I noted.Korvex (talk) 22:52, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Mjolnir, if you actually scroll and read through the discussion on Numbers 1, you'll find that everyone has already accepted that this is a prominent view of academia and that it should be allowed on the page. I have read the discussion and I see no such consensus. I do see, however a fairly clear consensus that your arguments suffer from a large number of problems, not least of which is your propensity to make claims of fact that are easily refuted. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:45, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

More on Petrovich's theories: http://asorblog.org/2017/04/14/response-douglas-petrovichs-hebrew-language-behind-worlds-first-alphabet/ PiCo (talk) 07:07, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

So a scholar responded to Petrovich's book by pointing out (among other things) that Petrovich has fabricated quotes and doesn't understand the difference between a syllable and a letter... Jesus. I knew Petrovich was a fringe figure, but I thought he was the "scholarly minority" type of fringe. I didn't realize he's the "What do you mean I need to understand the subject to be an expert in it?" type of fringe.

This becomes extremely clear when one read's Petrovich's response to that review: A Reply to Alan Millard's Response to My "Hebrew as the Language behind the World's First Alphabet?" - Douglas Petrovich. Among the many gems in that are a persecution complex (academics said they "wanted nothing to do with" his book, therefore he was robbed of the chance for peer review), the casting of false aspersions on others (stating that Millard had read part of his book before coming to a conclusion on it, then later stating that that Millard "presupposed" the thesis to be false), hand-waving away his own fabricated quotes and offering a "correction" to something Millard asserted which actually paints Petrovich's logic in a much worse light. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:11, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

The Exodus vs Book of Exodus

I have recently made an edit on Exodus disambiguation page to clarify the difference between Biblical Book of Exodus which is religious and The Exodus which is not religious. my edit, under the Religion Heading "The Exodus is an article dealing with controversy of the Biblical story of The Book of Exodus - migration of the ancient Israelites from Egypt into Canaan." user older have reverted my edit without saying anything on the talk page. when i left him a message on the article page, he said my information is wrong! Igor Berger (talk) 17:00, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

i find it offensive how user older is addressing me, " barely intelligible rant above" Talk:Exodus#Article The Exodus is not Religion, but challenge to the Bible story! Igor Berger (talk) 17:10, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

What are you talking about? Why are you saying that the "Book of Exodus" is religious while "The Exodus" is not religious? What does that mean? For the record, it's not just older. I also find you "barely intelligible." My guess is that you're upset that the article The Exodus doesn't agree with the Bible, but I'm not quite sure what you're saying.Alephb (talk) 18:21, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

This editor was community banned and then unblocked under the condition that they edit only certain articles and not join any wikiprojects or related discussion. If they had not been unblocked they would still be blocked and have to appeal. I've asked the Admin involved with the unblock to comment. Doug Weller talk 19:05, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Exodus 2:2

In the section Dating the Exodus we read: "In Exodus 2:2 God had decreed that the start of the Israelite's calendar, and the beginning of their Exodus from Egypt, would come in the spring."

However, Exodus 2:2 says no such thing. It says "The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months."

Apparently the Bible reference is wrong. But what should it be?

--Oz1cz (talk) 08:07, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Template:Ping:Oz1cz Exodus 12:2. Alephb (talk) 08:53, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Founding of Jerusalem in Judaea

In David's time Jerusalem was an insignificant village of 3 to 4 hectares according to The Bible Unearthed documentary (Israel Finkelstein and Ronny Reich stating it), or less than 5 hectares according to God and Sex by Michael Coogan. So, there is no evidence of the Exodus having founded Jerusalem. Tgeorgescu (talk) 18:59, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Or, let me rephrase it: he/she who claims that the Exodus has founded Jerusalem has to cite evidence of that claim. Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:10, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

There's a little bit on this, plus some references, in the last section of the article where it talks about Manetho. I'm not sure whether the idea comes from Manetho or Hecataeus, but there was certainly a tradition that Moses founded Jerusalem. It might just have been Hecateus getting things garbled, but it might also have been an alternative narrative that later got lost. Certainly, though, the Masoretic version of Exodus wasn't the only one around in the last few centuries BC, it's just the one that survived. PiCo (talk) 13:14, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Another bit: Jewish tradition and the Bible text state that the area of Jerusalem was never conquered and King David had to buy this land from the Jebusites (see references to Jerusalem in the books of Joshua and Judges). So it couldn't have been taken over by Moses - especially since it states in the Bible text that Moses never crossed into the Promised Land. Ckruschke (talk) 17:48, 8 May 2017 (UTC)Ckruschke