Latest / The Week in Bible Prophecy / Archaeology Is Uncovering the World of the Exodus | James Hoffmeier | The Week in Bible Prophecy

Transcript

Archaeology Is Uncovering the World of the Exodus | James Hoffmeier | The Week in Bible Prophecy · The Week in Bible Prophecy

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: The Week in Bible Prophecy, a Prophecy Watchers podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the program today.
• 0:11
  Speaker 3: Martin Gonzalez here in studio, and I have with me
• 0:13
  Speaker 3: a very special guest, Dr. James Hoffmeyer, who is a
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: biblical archaeologist as well as an Egyptologist, biblical scholar. And
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: I had the privilege of having him in seminary, and
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: it was great.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Learned a lot and.
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: Really shaped a lot of my thinking about the Bible
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: for sure. and theology in general, and most importantly, above
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: all those things, is that he loves Jesus and he's
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: a follower of the Lord and desires to see, again,
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: the gospel go out and certainly the church to be
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: encouraged and to grow and to be equipped.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: So welcome, Dr. Hoffmeyer.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Good to see you once again.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's good.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: And, you know, I had the privilege of going to
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Egypt with you for a couple weeks and certainly taking
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: most of my classes with you and learned a lot,
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: for sure. about the nature of archeology as well as Egyptology.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: So I feel very blessed by that. And you have
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: a brand new book out called Israel in and out
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: of Egypt, the archeological and historical background of the Exodus. And,
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: you know, before we kind of get into the book,
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: I think it's important to talk about.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Your background.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: Uh, maybe if you don't mind, share with the audience
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: a little bit about your background and, uh, Where have
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: you been since you were a young kid and how
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: you got to where.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: You are today?
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I was blessed to be born in Egypt
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: to parents of missionaries. And so I grew up in
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the land and my dad as a pastor, missionary, and
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: a teacher was keen to learn about Egypt, its history,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: its culture, its archaeology. And so We used to visit
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: archaeological sites, some of which were fairly close to our home,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: and have picnics overlooking certain antiquities and inscriptions. And yeah,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: and I got, as a kid, traveling through Europe, visiting
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: museums like the Louvre in Paris and the British Museum
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: in London and all those kind of things. So it
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: was a very natural thing for me to do when
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: it was time to go to college. to decide to
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: pursue archaeology. And the fact that you have these amazing
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: connections to scripture was just a plus. It was a bonus.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: And so my academic career, both the teaching side and
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: my writing, has tried to focus on the intersection between
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Egyptian history and culture and the Bible. And we always think,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: of course, of the Exodus and that connection. And that's
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: where I focused a lot of attention. But You know,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: you go all the way back to Abraham, visit to Egypt,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: and of course, Joseph and Jacob and the 12 tribes
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: developing as a nation in Egypt, the Exodus, of course,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: the giving of the Sinai covenant in Sinai, which is
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: part of Egypt today. And then throughout history after that,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: you remember Solomon married an Egyptian princess, and there was
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: a lot of connections there. mostly negative, but sometimes positive
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: between Egypt and Israel, especially in days when the Assyrians
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: were a threat. Then suddenly the Egyptians wanted to help
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: out with Israel because they knew if Israel and Judah
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: were toppled, then it'd be very easy for them as
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Assyrians to march into Egypt. So sometimes they're friends and
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: sometimes they're foes. And as friends, God reminds them that
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Egypt is an unreliable place ally. After all, you know,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: what were Pharaoh's horses and chariots when it came to
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: God delivering his people? So, yeah, so Egypt and the Bible,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: that's my heartbeat. And I continue to go to Egypt, well,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: for years excavating in northern Sinai. And then in my retirement,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: the last seven, eight years, I do annual trip or
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: two to Egypt where I host people going visiting Egypt
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: and talking about these connections between the Bible and Egyptian history.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to me, it's pretty phenomenal.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: And one of the other books that you had edited
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: and participated in, which was, again, very powerful to me,
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: it's on my shelf, one of my, you know, one
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: of my favorite books is, you know, do historical matters
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: matter to faith, you know, back, you know, you know,
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: 2012 or so. And you wrote an article in there,
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: which I think kind of sets the stage for I
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: would say the typical Christian is, okay, when I look
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: at biblical archaeology or look at the Exodus, you know,
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: obviously we take so much by faith, what the Bible says.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: But in that book, you mentioned, again, in the article
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: that you had written, you quoted 1 Corinthians 10-11, just
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: these things happened. And so, you know, as a backdrop here,
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: maybe at the beginning, does it matter whether... the stories
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: in the Bible are true. That was kind of the
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: philosophy behind the question of that book, which of course
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: has contributed.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: So if you don't mind, share a little bit about that.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Paul's point there in 1 Corinthians 10 is
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: that he's referring specifically to the Exodus and going through
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: the sea. And the main point there is that because
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: these things happen, there is theological significance to the Christians.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: And so these are not just nice stories about the past.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: They're far more in establishing theological pattern of God's salvation,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: of God's intervention. And, you know, simply put, if God
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: has not acted in the past on behalf of his people,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: then how can we expect him to act on our
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: behalf now? How can we expect him to act in
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: our lives now or in the future? He's not a
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: God who acts. He's not a God who does marvelous deeds,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: the things that the prophets talk about again and again.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: And these are the things that Israel in difficult times
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: would look back on and give them hope for the
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: future because God's had acted. And so if you remove
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: the events and say, well, we can have good moral lessons,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: that's all fine and good. But I don't like to
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: think that God is, just as he provided food for
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: the people in the wilderness, that he'll provide food for me. Well,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: if he didn't provide food, then I have no assurance
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: that he's going to provide, although Matthew 6 tells us
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: if we seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, he
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: will supply those fundamental needs we have.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think the other thing too is, you know,
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: when you think about us interacting again as Christians and
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: trying to share the gospel, the world that is lost,
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: you know, and the gospel is hope. There's the other
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: element there, at least from my angle, is in 1
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: Corinthians 10, is that it's also not only encourages us
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: to recognize that God acts, but also that God holds
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: people accountable, right?
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Yes, and we read in more than one place how
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: the people in the wilderness or the Jews in later
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: history forgot what the Lord had done, and so And
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: that forgetting of what God has done, I think, can
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: break down our trust in God. So we need to
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: remember those things, just as we do the cross and
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: the resurrection and our weekly worship. The fact that we
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: meet on Sundays as our primary day of worship is
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: because that's the day of the resurrection. And it's to
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: reinforce the historical truths that are foundation to our salvation.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's what I really appreciate about the other book, too,
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: is just the historical aspects of it. And, you know,
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: when you think about how often as, you know, as Christians,
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: we read, you know, in the old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, and,
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: and we, we see how often does God appeal the
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: God who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: you know? So it's like, well, the God who maybe
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: fabricated this story, a possibility of, you know, a myth,
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: you know, it's just a good moral lesson.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: You know, to me, God's appealing to that really brings more,
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: I think, it helps, to me, bring the value to
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: all the work that you have done over the years
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: to say, when God said that, he meant it.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yes, well, that, of course, is the point. God
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: who has acted in history is a God who is
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: going to act now. I like the point that has
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: been made that for some people, God is a God
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: who speaks, but If he hasn't acted in history, he's
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: a God who does nothing. And his, just like Jesus
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: would teach and his signs and wonders were to reinforce
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: what he was teaching. So the actions and the teaching
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: go together.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: And, you know, no doubt, I remember, you know, of course,
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: you know, being in your classes and learning lot you
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: know i had a very naive view of archaeology just
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: kind of more of a you know dreamy vision and
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: then you get in there and it's actually real work
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: and and understanding some of the conflict and so no
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: doubt as a christian you know we we again we
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: take by faith the scripture but yet if you don't
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: mind for the audience that doesn't really understand this talk
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: about even in your experience you know, as a Christian,
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: you're going into the academic world, which is, again, a
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: very interesting place. And, you know, I got introduced to
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: these these terms, the minimalist versus the maximalist and that
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: whole whole controversy. First of all, what is that? And secondly,
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: how did you navigate the waters even in your own faith?
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Right, right. Well, yes, I would say for the past,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: I hate to say it, 50 years, I remembered as
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: a young graduate student back in the early 70s, where
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: one of the main debates going on in the academic
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: world of biblical studies and history and archaeology was the
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: whole question of what we call historiography, that is history writing.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: And there was a big seminar at the University of
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Toronto where I was in grad school, and that was
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: the main focus. And out of that came about three
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: or four seminal books from Egyptian historiography, Old Testament, Hebrew historiography,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: and so on. And that became the big deal. The
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: issue really was, were they intentionally writing history? Or were
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: they just writing... stories and and are these all later
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: traditions that in other words if the events took place
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: like the exodus these were these were told orally over
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: centuries and centuries of time and it's like your your
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: your fish story you catch a fish that's this big
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: and every time you tell it it gets bigger and
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: bigger and bigger till you've caught a whale kind of
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: thing and so The historians were leaning towards this idea
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: of you can't really take the Bible literally. And of course,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: there are places the Bible is meant to be taken
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: literally and places it was not meant to be taken literally.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: And part of our task as those who handle Scripture
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: is to understand Scripture as the authorial intent, that is
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: the human author and the divine author, what was intended
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: for it. So that's a difficult task. But what I
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: began to realize is that the way archaeology works is
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: we're never going to find an inscription in Egypt that
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: says Moses slept here. We're never going to find a
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: building made out of bricks that says, you know, bricks
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: made by Hebrews. Those kind of things don't happen in
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: any field of biblical archaeology. We can, every now and then,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: find inscriptions that surprise and delight us. So, for instance, back, gosh,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: 50 years ago, working on an excavation at Karnak Temple
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: with my professor, Donald Redford, we found a brick, a
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: red brick, and it had a stamp of a pharaoh's
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: name on it. And Dr. Redford handed me the brick
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: and says, oh, you'll know this guy. And I looked
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: at it and I just vocalized the word Necho.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, Necho. Oh, Necho.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: He's the guy who killed King Josiah. And here's a
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: brick with his name on that we found. So every
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: now and then you might bump into the name of
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: a known biblical character. But more often than not, and
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: that's why my book is entitled The Archaeological and Historical Background.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Think of the Exodus story as an amazing drama. one
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: of the greatest stories ever told, if you will, from
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: the Old Testament perspective. And here you're watching a play,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: but you have no stage props. You're just telling a story. Well,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: what archaeology does, it provides the stage props. And the
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Bible tells us about some of those props, but they're words,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: not pictures. And so what we can do by going
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: to museums like the great new Museum in Cairo, the
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Grand Egyptian Museum, and you can see what Pharaoh's chariots
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: would have looked like. You can see musical instruments of
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: the sort that were played by the Hebrews, like Miriam
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: playing her timbrel as she sang. We have actual surviving instruments.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: You can actually see the things that the Bible's talking about,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: so you can begin to visualize. Archaeologists sometimes refer to
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: this as realia. It's the real stuff of life. And
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: and so one of the things I try to do
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: in my book is to show. Are the main points
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: of the story. Such as were there Semites like the
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Hebrews living in Egypt? Were there people forced into making
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: bricks for Pharaoh's building projects? You know, those kind of
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: those kind of questions. And point after point, we can say, yes,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: there is biblical backgrounds to those stories that Egyptology can
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: help flesh out. So we can actually see the scenes
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: painted on walls or carved into stone temples, which illustrate
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: these things. We can show you Egyptian priests carrying around
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: a physical shrine on poles, much like the Levites did
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: for the Ark of the Covenant. So for those who
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: try to say, you know, for instance, and some of
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: your readers will be familiar with the old JEDP hypothesis,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: that is the Wellhausen theory that goes back to the
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: 19th century, that the Old Testament law was written in
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: different times by different authors and then pulled together at
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: the end of Old Testament history, and thus we end
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: up with the five books of Moses. Woven together are
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: different strands of traditions and history, etc. Well, according to this,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: the priestly material, which talk about the Ark of the Covenant,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: is supposed to be from the latest period of Egyptian history,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: or Biblical history, from the Persian period, from the Exilic period.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: And yet, here you can see at Karnak Temple, priests
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: walking around carrying things, from the same general time period.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: And you're saying, well, heck, if they could do that
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: in Egypt during the period of Moses and the Exodus,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: why can't the Hebrews do it? Or one of the
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: sensational discoveries, Numbers 10 talks about God commands Moses to
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: make two silver trumpets. And these are to be, we
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: all think of the trumpets as the shofar, the horn,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: but Numbers 10 talks about silver trumpets. Again, the critic
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: will look at that and say, silver trumpets, you know, Hebrews,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: and so. Well, of course, in 1922-23, when the tomb
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: of King Tut was found and all the stuff was
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: taken out, lo and behold, there were a pair of trumpets,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: one made out of silver and one made out of copper.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: So I can actually show you in the Cairo, New
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Cairo Museum, a silver trumpet. So you can't say that
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: this sort of thing didn't happen. What the Bible is describing,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: there are authentic parallels to it. And so if you
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: want to start dismissing all this evidence, I would suggest
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: that those who do, do so for ideological reasons, not
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: for historical reasons or the fact that these things are authentic.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, to me, that's what I find amazing is where
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: you can just point. I actually was in Egypt last fall,
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: but I missed the opening of the new museum by
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: like two weeks ago.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: And I about cried. I'm like, you gotta be kidding me.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: It was awful.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: It's great. It even has a Starbucks. It's amazing.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: Oh man.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: Well, I do desire to go back because you know,
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: a billion dollar museum, it's, it's certainly going to be,
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: you got to spend a couple of weeks there.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: One of the.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: Benefits is especially for the new book, which I would
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: love for you to unpack a little bit is, you know,
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: this is, this is not really a second edition, but it's,
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: But you have yet another book, Israel and Egypt, where
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: you talked about similar things that was 30 years.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: Ago or whatever.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: Talk about how, because you just described your experience now
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: for 50 years, how has that grown from what you
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: wrote originally and now how you've watched.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: The whole field develop? And then, of course, how that
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: has shaped what you've put into this new book.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Sure. Good. Good question. Yeah. Well, the deal is that
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: in the 30 years since my book came out in 1997,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: 96 was the copyright date. In those intervening years, a
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: lot has happened, including my own work in North Sinai
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: excavations I did. And part of my team was a
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: geologist named Stephen Mosher from Wheaton College. And what we
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: did was to engage in a paleoenvironmental study of this region.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: In other words, this area through which we have good
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: reason to think that the Hebrews passed when they left Egypt,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: all this area, if you go today, looks just like desert.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: And yet, if you go back 3,000 and 4,000 years ago,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: it was a very different environment. There were lakes, there
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: were branches of the Nile, and in the last 3,000
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: years or been tremendous desiccation. And so what we're trying
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: to do is, well, what did this area look like?
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Where were their roads? Where were their forts? And I
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: had the good fortune, providentially, to excavate a fort that
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: was on the military road out of Egypt. Exodus 13,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: 17 says that God did not lead them by the
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: way of the land of the Philistines, the route that
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: led from the delta across North Sinai and ended up
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: in what is today Gaza. And God did not lead
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: them there lest they see war and turn back. Well,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: now we've actually found a number of these forts. Another
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: one was just discovered a year ago. And we're finding
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: more and more on the ground of things that we
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: knew about, we know only about from Egyptian texts. And
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: so now we're actually finding them on the ground. And
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: so we say, okay, now we understand the danger the
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Israelites would have faced had they traveled this way. You
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: have forts, you have Nile River. We know that at
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: one place, the Egyptians actually had a bridge, which is
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: depicted in two different scenes now. connecting two forts. And
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: if you wanted to go out of Egypt, you had
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: to pass by one fort, cross a bridge, and go
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: by the next fort. Well, they controlled that bridge. So
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: you wanted to avoid going that way because it was
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: a little difficult to cross a bridge with Egyptian army there.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: And so these discoveries have helped us realize the background
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: to the Exodus. And of course, the other thing that
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: has happened in the last 20, 30 years is is
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: that people have started, it used to be that archaeology
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: was used as a tool to support the Bible. What
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: has happened in the last 30 years or so has
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: been archaeology being used as a weapon against the Bible.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Some of your people may have heard of the works
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: of Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, which were very popular
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: books and influenced a lot of people in the, lay people,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: because they wrote books about that. And so here archaeology
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: is being used negatively towards the Bible. So number one,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: I needed to come back with critique of how the
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Bible was being, archaeology was being used negatively. Secondly, a
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: number of the key sites connected to the Exodus have
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: been are being or have been excavated in the last
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: 30 years. So sites like Tell el-Maskuta, Sukkoth of Exodus, Pithom,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Tell el-Rataba, these are being excavated. Other discoveries have been
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: made which have really revolutionized our knowledge of this area
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: and have absolutely refuted some of the negative claims. While
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: there's no evidence at this site, therefore the whole story
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: from Moses and and pithom, and it must be anachronistic.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: It doesn't fit. There's nothing here at this site tell
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Muscuta from the time of Moses and the Exodus. And
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: in 2010, lo and behold, this is one of the
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: things we have to understand about archaeology. Only very little
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: of what was has survived, and very little of what
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: survived has been excavated. So in a large site like
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Tell el-Maskuta, from the 1800s, people excavated there, all the
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: way down to one of my professors in the 1980s.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: And this professor's work was revered. I mean, he was
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: a great archaeologist from Harvard, a student of George Ernest Wright.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: And he said, well, the Bible's just anachronistic. It's not righted.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: on this point, we have nothing at this site from
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: the period of the New Kingdom, the general period of
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: the Exodus. Well, the problem was the site is much
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: bigger than he thought. And most of the site is
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: on the south side of a dual highway with a
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: major canal that runs down the middle. And Egyptian archaeologists
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: working on the other side of that canal found tombs.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: And these tombs date from the New Kingdom. And these
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: are high-ranking officials. And one of the inscriptions on one
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: of these tombs actually refers to Atum, the god of Sukkot, Cheku.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: And so we not only have the name of the site,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: but we also have something that dates to the period,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: the 13th century BC. So some new stuff has come
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: along that allows us to say, y'all were wrong. Here's
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: the new material. You're just outdated information. And and and
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: so yeah, the battles taken on a different form now
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: in that you have people using the Egypt illogical materials
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: in a negative way Trying to say okay. We see
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: this Egyptian influence here, but it's not from when you
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: think it is It comes from later periods of time Okay,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: let me give you one last example So the idea
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: that the Exodus story it comes from the Persian period
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: if you know your history The Persians were from modern-day Iran,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: and there are great Persian emperors, a number of whom
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: are mentioned in scripture, like Cyrus the Great. Xerxes, who married,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: or Heshawaris, as he's known in Hebrew, his name, who
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: married Esther. There's Artaxerxes that Nehemiah worked for. These are
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: all Persian emperors, but where did they rule from? They
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: ruled from Iran, from Persia. Persepolis, they weren't pharaohs in Egypt.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: So why would you have a story about pharaoh oppressing
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: the Hebrews at a time when there was no pharaoh
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: in Egypt? It's like, this doesn't even make sense. And
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: I've tried to point that out, that the Persian period
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: makes no sense. Furthermore, we know, thanks to careful study
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: by some linguists, there's not a single Persian word in
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: the Law of Moses. If the book came from that period,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: you'd expect some Persian words to sneak in. We got
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of Persian words in the book of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: because they come from the Persian period. Nobody doubts that.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: But nothing Persian is in the books of Moses. However,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: there are a good number of Egyptian words, the words
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: of Egyptian origin. And that seems to validate that these
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: stories were written in an Egyptian setting or in the aftermath.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: of being in Egypt, not a thousand years later, when
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: who cares if it has Egyptian verisimilitude, if it looks authentic.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: So these are the kind of things that I've been
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: doing in the new book.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Has there been a change?
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: Have you seen a change in the secular mindset when
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: some of these things come up? Have they, not that
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: they're going to say, well, I guess we were wrong.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: It's all true.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: But that's not what we maybe would hope for that.
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: But Has there been any change in the Finkelsteins of
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: the world or the other Egyptologists that have kind of
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: cast doubt on the historical reliability of the text and
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: the story of the Exodus?
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I think what has happened is that because
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: some have gone to such extreme lengths to debunk the Bible, again,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: the old idea that If it's written really, really late
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: in history, it can't have much authentic from 700, 800, 1,000
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: years earlier. They continue to beat on that, but they've
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: gone so far in that direction that even some scholars
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: who are not necessarily believers or conservatives say, well, that's
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: just crazy. It can't come from there. And so some
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: of them are beginning to doubt those extreme positions. They
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: may not jump into my camp, but I can tell
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: a story, the famous Professor William Deaver, who kind of
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: started the revolution of anti-biblical archaeology back in the 1970s
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: and 80s. And, you know, I don't blame him for
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: what he did because biblical archaeology was so much the
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: realm of amateurs, pastors, theologians. They had an agenda. We
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: want to prove the Bible. And they weren't very good archaeologists,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: not very good historians. They loved the Lord, and that's great,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: but you need more than that. And so he went
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: on this crusade against biblical archaeology. But again, I think
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: what happened is when things got even crazier than he
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: wanted them, then he started saying, well, wait a minute,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: maybe not so fast, guys. Let's try to pull this
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: horse back on the trail here. And so what's interesting
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: is many years ago now, when he wrote a book,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: What Did the Hebrews Know and When Did They Know It?
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: And he's basically, well, they have a pretty good memory
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: of ancient history, of what happened before. And when I
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: asked him to sign my book, he signed it, to Jim,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: with whom I have more in common than at first
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: I thought. And I said, well, Professor Deaver, it's not
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: me who's changed in the past 20 years. And so
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: in a sense, he had seen what he was advocating
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: go beyond to the point of the ridiculous. So suddenly
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: here's a guy who we conservatives jumped on and he's
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: the enemy. And now suddenly he's an ally. we have
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: much more in common because he's gained respect and realized
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: that he took the nation. I call him King Manasseh
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: of the Old Testament. Manasseh led the people astray, and
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: at the end of his life, he repents, and God
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: restored him to the kingdom. But the people continued to
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: pray at the high places, etc., etc. He led the
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: discipline astray. in a direction from which it never really
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: fully recovered, even though he's trying to say, slow down,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: slow down. So I would say there's been, I mean,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: that is an example of somebody who's probably moved not
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: to the point where he believes all these things, but
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: he came to visit our archaeological site during our excavations
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: in North Sinai, and he kind of leaned over to me.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: He says, do you think this is Migdal of Exodus 14?
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: And I said, no, I don't think so. He says, well,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: if you do, I'm prepared to support you. There is
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: truth in that Bible.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: What was his religious background? Did he have any?
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, he was, yeah, he was born into a very
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: fundamentalist Christian home. His family, his dad was a itinerant pastor, preacher,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: and the family was a musical singing group. They went around,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: and he went to college and chucked it all away.
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what's often the case, which is, you know, again, unfortunate. And,
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: you know, in the book, you discuss, of course, you know,
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: some of the major topics of, you know, Joseph and
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: Israel and Egypt and Moses even. What were some, I guess,
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: maybe some of your favorite research that you did in
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: any of those topics in the sense of understanding what
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: we know, what we don't know, what we can't know,
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: and what you found compelling?
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, for a long time, the Joseph story has
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: been the subject of Egyptological research. Egyptologists with an interest
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: in the Old Testament, in fact, my own professor, Donald Redford,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: he wrote a book, a monograph on the Joseph story.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: And He was right about some things and wrong about
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: other things, as most people are. But anyway, so Egypt
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: has long been interested because there's such authentic Egyptian setting
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: to the story. And what are the things that sort
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: of float to the surface?
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: One of the.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Things that I've become intrigued by is Joseph's, the interpretation
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: of the dreams to his two fellow prison mates, the
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: butler who is the manager of the wine cellar for
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: the king and the baker. And what's interesting is when
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: you read the story, you have these two guys come in,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: they have dreams and they're disturbed because they have no
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: one to interpret their dreams. Well, we know why they
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: were upset, because there were actually dream interpretation manuals needed.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: One has survived. It's in the British Museum.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Chester Beatty Papyrus IV, I think it is. And what
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: you have there are lists of dreams, and they're categorized
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: by good outcomes and bad outcomes. So if you dream this, good.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: If you dream this, good. If you dream this, good.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: And so when you dream something, what you do, you'd
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: go to the palace, sorry, to the temple, and you'd
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: try to consult a priest and pray for a fee.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: He'd whip out the book and say, okay, we have
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: something here like that. Yeah, that's a good, this is
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: what's going to happen. Or, oh, that's bad. You don't
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: want to do that. And of course, when Pharaoh's dreams
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: could not be interpreted, it's because there was no parallel
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: to that that they had recorded. And so that's why
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Joseph's special connection with God and God giving him wisdom
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: allowed him to interpret something that wasn't in their manuals.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: But in prison, these two officials did not have access
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: to this. They had access to Joseph. So what was
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: the outcome of the one? You know, the butler, you know,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: the outcome is good. He's going to be released. He's
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: going to be pardoned and returned to Pharaoh's service. The other, bad.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: What he dreamt signaled his death. And that's exactly the
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: way these dream interpretation manual work. If you see yourself
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: in a dream doing this, it's bad. It means you're
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: going to die. And there are different things that if
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: you dream them, that's the outcome. So the very fact
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: that this interpretation manual is organized by good outcomes and
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: bad outcomes is exactly what you see for these two officials,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: a good outcome and a bad outcome. So, yeah, there's
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: been more work done on these dream interpretation texts. and
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: how authentically Egyptian what's going on there is in the
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Joseph story.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and no doubt there's, when you think about, you know,
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: very few larger-than-life characters in the Bible, even in the
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, as Moses. And so I
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: imagine there's a lot of skepticism about this guy Moses
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: ever existing within, you know, the academic world. And you wrote,
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: you have a chapter. on that in the book. Maybe
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: give us some background on that.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Sure. Well, the most interesting thing is, is the whole
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: idea that Moses is the Prince of Egypt. And what
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: happens starting about the, and then the 15th century BC,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: the 1400s, the, as the Egyptians were trying to build
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: their empire out, One of the ways they wanted to
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: do that was to bring the sons of kings from
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: all over the place to Egypt to train them, to
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: educate them. This is exactly what the Babylonians were doing
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: with Daniel and his friends. These were promising young, bright men.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: They were taken to Babylon to be educated with the
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: intent of using them in the administration of Babylon. And
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: so the Egyptians started this practice in the 15th century B.C.,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: And what's amazing is now that we've identified the names
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: and even the tomb of foreigners, who we can tell
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: they're foreigners by their Semitic names, and that they claim
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: to be graduates of the royal nursery where they were
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: raised and were educated. So the idea that Moses received
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: this sort of treatment fits right into the historical period
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: when this practice was going on. And that practice included
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: foreign princes, not just Egyptian princes. Yes, it would have
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: included the sons of the kings, the sons and daughters,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: but then you had the sons and daughters of these
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: other people. So I think this is a good case
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: of where God put Moses right in the path of
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: the princess to use her influence to get him into
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: the school of, for, you know, when they were called the,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Wartman School of Business or something that brought him into
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: the limelight. So yes, I believe that Moses probably had
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: some Egyptian official administrative post, and that's why he was
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: out looking to see what's going on with the Hebrews.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: He was not just a curious Hebrew. I think he
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: had some sort of position in the administration for which
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: he had been trained.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: So yeah, so in that case, that makes great sense
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: that he.
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: He wouldn't have necessarily stood out as being some foreigner
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: in a school. He would have been right there along
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: with all the other ones and fit in very nicely
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: with the rest of them.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: That's one of.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: The ways that God prepared him to have these encounters
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: with Pharaoh, where he could speak to him in Egyptian.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Remember when his future wife met him and her sister,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: they thought he was an Egyptian.
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Maybe he walked like an Egyptian, but he certainly talked
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: like an Egyptian. Anyway, so yeah, he had been Egyptianized
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: as I think most of the Hebrews had been. They
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: were bicultural elements of Egyptian and Hebrew slash Canaanite culture.
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: You know, so as we kind of wrap up our time,
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: you know, again, Israel in and out of Egypt, the
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: archaeological and historical background to the Exodus, you know, what
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: do you What's your goal? Like as anything, you're an author. Obviously,
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: this is a very solid book. A lot of, you know,
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: I get a lot of footnotes. And so I guess
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: in one sense, who are you writing it for? Or
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: maybe is it broad?
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: Well, it's yes, it is more scholarly.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: True.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: And so what I've always tried my books to aim
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: high in terms of readership, because I think there is
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: a trickle down effect. If you can influence the influencers,
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: then you have a trickle-down effect. If I write something
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: just for laypeople, it's hard to trickle up into the academy.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: So my hope is that even though there are scholarly
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: linguistic arguments being made, that an interested serious lay person
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: could read it and say, okay, I can follow this.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: I may not be able to read the Hebrew words here,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: but he's transliterated, he's written them out in English. So
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: I know what he's talking about. So it's, it's not
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: meant to go over the head of anyone, but I do,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: I do want to, I know it's, for instance, I
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: know the book is going to be used in a,
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: in a Bible college this fall for freshmen for history
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: of Israel, for, in a Bible college in New York.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: So it's being used with college kids as, as well as, uh,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: more advanced readers as well. Yeah.
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: To me, I think for those that love apologetics and
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: looking at, you know, especially what we hear out in
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: the world is, well, there's no evidence anywhere.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: It's all a myth. You're like, well, this is the
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: book right here.
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, I mean, this, this is going to be the,
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: I think this is going to certainly be the classic
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: book for, understanding, as you said, the archaeological and historical
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: background to the Exodus.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, plain and simple.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So I think for the layperson, it will help
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: as they think in terms of apologetics, but it'll just say, yeah,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, I believe these things are true, and this
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: simply helps affirm what I already believe. I don't have
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: to have faith in faith, but I have faith in
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: Scripture and because there are some good reasons to believe it.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: It's not just, well, it makes me feel good to believe,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: but there are substantial reasons to believe. And so hopefully
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: the reader who's interested, everybody's interested in the Exodus. That's
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: why there are so many videos and movies and books
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: and not all of it good out there. And hopefully
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: this will be something that will endure. It won't be
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: stuff that in five years, it's like, oh, he's wrong
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: about that. Hopefully these are things that will stand up
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: over time.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: And so one last question, I imagine, which is always
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: the case, you know, somebody's got intrigued by, you know,
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: the title of this, you know, this podcast. And, you know,
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: what do you say to that person that might be
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: a skeptic? And how do you connect what you've written
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: here ultimately to the gospel?
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Well, again, we've already talked about 1 Corinthians 10. But again,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: Paul talks about Jesus as our Passover lamb. So the
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: connections between the gospel and God's salvation that the book
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: of Exodus is talking about, the shedding of blood, the atonement,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: the old covenant and the new covenant, there's so many connections.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: that what we're dealing with here are the foundations to
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: our faith. It's not something we can say, well, we
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: don't need it. All we have is Jesus, and that's
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: good enough. All the reasons why Jesus came and did
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: what he did are laid out in the history of
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: Scripture up to the point of the Gospels. Yeah, 100%.
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, God is a God of salvation and God
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: of history, and there's no doubt, as we see it
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: all unfold today, throughout all of history, arriving in the
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: person of what the Lord Jesus did.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: Well, Dr.
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: Hoffer, thank you again for your time today. I encourage
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: people to get the new book, Israel In and Out
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: of Egypt. Thanks, everybody, for watching today. And make sure
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: to keep listening because we have a lot going on.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: As always.
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: And I know many of you are so eager to
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: learn about, again, the archaeological past and what we know.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: And archaeology is fun. I mean, it's cool. It's fun.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: So thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time.