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[Reelya]

If we're talking bible inerrancy here then it must be actual blood or the bible is wrong.

EDIT: as to the claim that JHVH was a tribal god, that's not making anything up

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+6&version=NLV

After this, Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “The Lord, the God of Israel
... The God of the Hebrews has met with us.
... Then I will take you for My people, and I will be your God.

This is just before God murders all first-born children of the Egyptians. He clearly states he's the god of only this one tribe, and he does ruthlessly exterminate anyone who opposes that tribe.

[wierd]

As an agnostic, I do not hold such a view.  Only that the people recording such events THOUGHT that it was genuine blood, and wrote accordingly.


Belief is a strange beast.  To a believer, things a skeptic dismisses (rightly) can be seen as evidence of the supernatural. In a culture that embraces, instead of critiques, displays of the supernatural, "magic" would be a common occurrence.  This seems to be the case with Egypt.

It is also the case in contemporary society, where true believers are quick to latch on to every little thing as a sign of the divine agency in action. For them, such things really are such spectacles and wonders.

Likewise, the ancients would have had similar views of their own "wonders."


The Greeks REALLY put this on display, with their "Temple wonders".  (Somebody wrote a thesis on this it seems)  To us, they are just primitive robots.  But to the Greeks? Magic.

[wierd]

Re: Mass edits


Rather than look at it in terms of "See, we can undo your god's powers, neener neener.", it should be seen as

"Your god is just conventional sorcery-- see, look-- we can do that too. Why worship something so ordinary?"


It was not "OH NOES, MUCH FROG! SUCH CROAK!!"  It was actually a battle of ideology, and interpretation of supernatural occurrences.  It was a criticism of their understanding and magic, so naturally, they reproduced the effects to show that the hebrew god was not singularly powerful in this capacity.

But you are right, Pharaoh should have been like "Seriously? Can't you fuckwits go curse the desert or something?"

[Reelya]

Yep, there is that aspect. However the plot hole does seem to be that they turned a blood river into a blood river, which is harder to reconcile.

[Frumple]

I mean, double blood just means more blood, right? It just thickened a lot, or maybe promptly flooded the (blood) banks or whatever.

Alternatively, to a different color or type of blood. Changing a river of AB+ into O- would actually be a pretty damn good hat trick. So would making a river of horseshoe crab blood or somethin'.

[scriver]

Or, you know, a river moves. You can, in fact, have "another river". You, in fact, can't have the same river. Only a river in the same place.

Turn river to blood. Water washes it downstream. You can turn the new river water to blood again.

I mean, I'm all for nit-picking the Bible. But this argument is weaksauce.

[Reelya]

I don't think that explanation really works given the passage. All the water in Egypt was turned to blood, so that would have to be to the second cataract or so. It would take weeks for the water from Kush to flow through and flush that out.

And say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you, saying, “Let My people go, so they may worship Me in the desert. But see, you have not yet listened.” 17 So the Lord says, “By this you will know that I am the Lord. I will hit the water of the Nile with the special stick that is in my hand. And the water will be changed to blood. 18 The fish that are in the Nile will die. And the Nile will have a bad smell. The Egyptians will not be able to drink water from the Nile.”’” 19 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Take your special stick and put your hand out over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, their pools, and all their man-made lakes of water, so they will become blood. There will be blood through all the land of Egypt, even in pots of wood and pots of stone.’”

20 Moses and Aaron did what the Lord had told them. Aaron raised the special stick and hit the water of the Nile in front of Pharaoh and his servants. And all the water in the Nile was turned into blood. 21 The fish that were in the Nile died. And the Nile had a bad smell. So the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile. The blood was through all the land of Egypt. 22 But the wonder-workers of Egypt did the same thing using their secret ways. And Pharaoh’s heart was hard. He did not listen to them, just as the Lord had said. 23 Then Pharaoh turned and went into his house, without even thinking what had happened. 24 And all the Egyptians dug around the Nile for water to drink. For they could not drink the water of the Nile. 25 Seven days passed after the Lord had hit the Nile.

This is the point. So, the Pharaoh was supposedly standing there while the river turned into blood, then waited for it to turn back into water (which I might add is something you're completely making up that's not even hinted at in the text) then it gets turned into blood again, and only then the Pharaoh goes back into his house.

The point is, the text says the Nile (well, all the water in the nation) got turned into blood, twice. And that just makes no sense given the rest of it, even assuming it was possible, especially given the point that they state that seven days passed between the blood thing and the frog thing. it makes even less sense that a long time passed between the two "water to blood" tricks to allow the nile to be water again when the wizards replicated the trick.

[wierd]

This sounds more like dinoflagellates (red tide) to me...

It would explain why all the water already collected in pots ALSO turned into "blood".  (Had the little beasties in it already, and they multiplied into a bloom in the pots just like everywhere else.) It would also explain the bad smell, and the dead fish.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinoflagellate

Note, they can live in fresh water as well as the ocean.

The question, is how fast after hitting the water with his special stick did the water turn red like that...  Red tide would take time for the beasties to multiply.

[scriver]

It also doesn't mention when the mystics did it  - it might just be referencing that the Moses' god's power is not mightier than theirs because they've done the same before.

[Arx]

Pharoah must have been so done with their nonsense, then.

[Reelya]

It also doesn't mention when the mystics did it  - it might just be referencing that the Moses' god's power is not mightier than theirs because they've done the same before.

Well that's grasping at straws. It makes even less sense to interpret that as they randomly decided to turn the Nile into blood at some unspecified previous date. I'm all for objections, if the objections at least make a modicum of sense.

EDIT: that really is an extra-dumb argument. The entire set of passages is a pattern of "X did it, then the wizard try and copy it". To turn around and say that out of the 4-5 times they tried to replicate the feat, that the Nile one is suddenly references some time in the past that they turned their own river into blood, just because "whatever" isn't a strong argument, especially since you just made it up to explain away the textual inconsistency.

[scriver]

It also doesn't mention when the mystics did it  - it might just be referencing that the Moses' god's power is not mightier than theirs because they've done the same before.

Well that's grasping at straws.

Well, your entire argument is picking apart a translation of a translation of a translation of a oral tradition. It's hard for me to not grasp at straws when you've nit-picked the hat into pieces already

EDIT: that really is an extra-dumb argument. The entire set of passages is a pattern of "X did it, then the wizard try and copy it". To turn around and say that out of the 4-5 times they tried to replicate the feat, that the Nile one is suddenly references some time in the past that they turned their own river into blood is disingenuous. It breaks the repeated pattern of the narrative, so you actually need evidence that the pattern can be broken in that way. Otherwise, it's just post-hoc and inconsistent reasoning.

Unless the entire narrative is that they've already accomplished all those things already, not that they're doing it right there

The point is then that, as somebody said above, these were all things that the Egyptians were known to be able magick up too, so the Pharao isn't impressed with Moses for repeating them. Then Moses proves deital supremacy by murdering every one of Egypt's first born sons and the rest, as they say, is historymythology

[Reelya]

You're right in that the bible as written may not be exactly what the original tradition was, but that's besides the point. People claim the current bible, exactly as written, is the inerrant word of God. Critiquing it as written is therefore valid.

Maybe in some previous incarnation it actually made sense, but the modern version being bandied around as the basis for a religion does not make sense.

[Teneb]

You're right in that the bible as written may not be exactly what the original tradition was, but that's besides the point. People claim the current bible, exactly as written, is the inerrant word of God. Critiquing it as written is therefore valid.

Let's keep in mind that Bible literalism is a thing that a bunch of USA pastors came up with in 1910 because of the spreading belief that sicence and religion were opposites. Then the rest of Christianity proceeded to imitate them.

[Mephisto]

Hello, I'm new to this particular WTF.

Browsing GD, I spy a post by a username. Said username is black and not a link. And apparently that user who got deleted or banned or some other badverb is the reason that quoting is broken.

WTF, forums. Forum software has been around for multiple actual decades. This isn't a solved problem?