Exodus And The Story

In response to my blog post on a Facebook-Atheist’s rather flimsy objections to Christianity, a friend forwards me this question (from a reader whom I don’t suppose read my reply):

 Intellectual question. I imagine most of us know that there’s no evidence for the idea that Egypt actually kept a slave state for 600 years. Or that the Israelites were “let go”, etc.

So…where did the story come from? Was it a whole-cloth invention by the writer of Genesis? 

And, if so……at what point does the fictional story of the Exodus evolve into a factual story of the Israelites hacking their way through the MIddle East and committing acts of genocide and rape against the cities of Jericho, Ai, etc. 

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Untangling Cliché: "God's Justice," Part II

"Such readers are probably right to accept all this justice-talk 'blindly' (because I think it really is blind): their religion begins (? and ends) with the Bible, which by the way is not biblical. But they should understand that they're using language in a way that the rest of us have no access to. Justice no longer means what we recognize as just, it just means what the most powerful person on the block (their god) is capable of doing. Might makes right, whatever he does is okay.

"So back to your question..."

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