Q&A 34: Historicity of the accounts from Genesis 12 through Joshua - Part III

We're in part three here looking at is there any evidence backing up the accounts from Genesis 12 on through the book of Joshua. And as I was looking through this, what we're doing is we're taking whole lifetimes and careers and trying to pack it into less than an hour. So there's a lot of material and a lot of it you just have to set aside. So what we'll do is go through some selected material, and with the idea that there's more that you can look at, I'll give you some resources. So, I want to go back just a little bit to what we covered last week and touch on one other item, and then we'll go from the Exodus on into the conquest of the land of Canaan.

One of the items that supports the biblical account is the price that was paid for Joseph, because the price of a slave changed over time. And one of the things that Genesis 37 points out here, 37.28 points out, is that 20 shekels was the price paid for Joseph. And you say, OK, big deal. Well, a goodly number of people who don't trust the Bible as an historical record will place the date of the writing of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus numbers down in here. And the only problem is, by that point in time, a slave was 50 shekels or towards the very end, 90 to 120 shekels. And so just even the price that was paid for Joseph fits the time that Joseph would claim to be, but it doesn't fit the later time that people who are skeptical of the historical truth of the Bible who would claim the Bible was written, the earlier part of the Old Testament was written in. So that's just one little indication that the Old Testament is reliable. Okay. Now, remember the account of Moses. How was Moses brought into this world? Where was he brought into this world? In the water, right? And what happened is for the first few months Moses' mother kept him quiet and whatnot, but there was an order out from the Pharaoh that he wanted all the Hebrew males to be killed. And of course Moses' mother did not want this to happen.

So what she did is she went over nearby where the pharaoh's daughter was located, put a floating basket. There was a basket with some pitch on the underside in the river. And Moses' sister stood at a distance just to kind of watch and see what would happen and see if that was a way to preserve the baby. So the daughter of Pharaoh came down and the daughter of Pharaoh saw the baby and insisted that this baby be taken care of rather than have the baby killed. And she did recognize it as a Hebrew child, but kept it nonetheless. And so this is an artist's rendering of what that might have been.

And the way this would work out is this young gal would be Pharaoh's daughter. And looking at the chronology of the Bible, her name would have been Hatshepsut. And so anyway, then Moses would have been taken in in seeking a nurse for Moses, they sought out a Hebrew mother, which turned out to be Moses' mother. So one of the questions is, would they give, if you were in the royal court of Egypt, would they give a baby a name like Moses? And so here's an interesting thing. The timing, if you look at the history, is the 18th dynasty. And so here is the list of pharaohs. during that time, and we mentioned Hatshepsut actually would later on be a female ruler of Egypt.

And I think Marilyn, you were the one that asked the question, why is she shown with a beard? Not because she had one, but just simply to show her position of power, right? But one of the things you'll note as you look at this is The first of the pharaohs up here was Ammos and sometimes pronounced or spelled out Ammosus, right? And as you go through that line of pharaohs, what do you see?

Thutmose, Thutmose, Thutmose at one through four. And so in that particular dynasty, and even at the particular time, the name of Moses would have been quite appropriate. The name Moses in the Egyptian would mean child, and so here's this child, right, found in the reeds in this basket. The name in Hebrew would be to be drawn out of the water.

So very interesting. It fits both ways. And it fits in with the names that were given for the dynasty. Very interesting. It was not true before that and was not true after that. But it fits with the time and fits with the dynasty. Yes. Yes. No, it's just, it's sounds that are similar even though they mean different things. And we have that happen in different languages even now.

See, at one point in time Nancy and I went to a bank where there were, this was back in the Bay Area, it was like a Japanese bank, and you know how they greet one another? I think they say Ohio. What? We use the word sin when we're talking about, we use the word sin in a biblical context. And sin, you know, just means without in Spanish. So you can have words that cross over and don't mean the same thing. But the pronouncement of the name happens to be a word that doesn't mean the same thing, but is similar in two different languages, the Hebrew and the Egyptian.

Calling the child Moses would be, in Hebrew, one who was drawn out of the water, right? And that's how Moses was taken up to be into Pharaoh's household. And then child, which would fit the pattern of the dynasty, would be the meaning in Egyptian. So the time of Israel's presence in Egypt was 430 years, all of them departing from there when Moses was 80 years old.

So here's the account as we get it in Exodus 7. This is a list of the ten plagues. What's interesting is the Bible specifically, Exodus 12.12 and Numbers 33.4, specifically says that the plagues were directed against the gods of Egypt to undermine confidence in the gods of Egypt. And so as you look, here is the primary Egyptian god who was defeated or affronted or confronted by each of the plagues in order. And preserving the life of the firstborn would be the responsibility of all the gods. The Egyptians had 700 gods.

And so what you find is that there's a match for every single one of them. It fits the context. One of the points we've made is archaeology and history, historical documentation, does not prove the Bible But what we find is that probably a better word is confirms. It fits. It is able to be harmonized realistically. OK.

Now, so when they went from the land of Goshen, which is there on the eastern part of the Nile Delta, They went across, some have them going across the Red Sea. I think more likely looking at it, it's this Reed Sea, these bitter lakes in here, and what is now cut through with the Suez Canal, right? The traditional route has been to come down here and then head up and then go into what is now Jordan and then cross over into the land of Canaan. We'll talk in a little bit about some other proposals that have been made. James Hoffmeier has gone through and basically he's been an archaeologist, has worked in this area. He's walked the ground and looked at here's what the Bible describes and here's what you find. Now, let's ask a question.

Would you expect to find with a bunch of nomadic people basically living in tents and only taking what they could carry, would you expect to find anything archaeologically after over 3,000 years? Not likely, right? When you go camping, do you leave lots of stuff? Do you leave enough stuff around that people would recognize that you camped there 3,000 years later? Probably not, right? Hopefully not. So there's almost nothing to look at in the way of archaeological objects that you can look at, because anything of lasting significance, they would keep with them, right?

So that would make it difficult. But you can go through the geography and look at what the Bible describes and see what fits. So here would be the crossing of the Bitter Lakes. This would be the parting of the sea there up at the north end of the route.

And then coming down here, this is the traditional site for Sinai. While the geographical description makes sense, it's not something you're going to be able to prove simply because there's nothing remaining there to look at and say, all right, Look, that says Moses was here. Moses didn't make some inscription that said Moses was here, right?

And then, this has been one that's been proposed recently, Gebel el-Lawz. I would have to say I don't place much confidence in it, and neither do most archaeologists, but it's been one that's been proposed and you may hear about it. this Mount Sinai proposed, one of the proposals is this place right here.

Well, that's a good question. And part of the difficulty is that some of the evidences that have been shown to support that have been shown to be fraudulent. So that kind of makes it a little hard to believe. So anyway, the route went like this, and then up like that. It shouldn't take 40 years, however, unless you've got spiritual problems, right? Which is exactly what happened.

After 40 years in the desert east of Canaan, east of the Jordan, Israel invaded Canaan under the leadership of Joshua. Just one little sidelight in there. Balaam, son of Baor, was one major event recorded in the Book of Numbers. There is archaeological evidence in Jordan at a site called Deir Allah. And there's a temple there with a document on the wall that has Balaam son of Baor, exact same name and even son of three times in the document and talks about him being this great prophet. So that fits archaeologically.

One of the questions that comes up is why did God have the Jews go in to this land of Canaan and in some cases told them just kill everybody? Doesn't that sound like it's outrageously cruel? And it might even be a reasonable question. Go on, just kill everybody? Man, woman, and child? I mean, that's just... And he didn't always tell them to do that, but he did sometimes. Why? And how could that be possibly justified?

One of the things, the Canaanites were spiritually and morally corrupt in the extreme. These kinds of spiritually corrupt practices are targeted in the rest of Numbers 33-52. What I have here is basically, you shall drive out the inhabitants. You shall not carry out their practices. Okay? And so what are these?

Here's Deuteronomy 12, 31, You shall not behave thus toward the Lord your God for every abominable act which the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. What they would do, they would have this god Molech, and it would basically be a big fireplace with hands out front. And you would take your firstborn son or daughter and put them in these fiery hot hands and burn their firstborn child. The parents would take and burn their firstborn child.

Right there. Terrible cruelty. Awful. The Canaanites' religious rituals included child sacrifice, some in fire. Not all of it was in fire, but some of it in fire. Incest, bestiality, We have record that one Canaanite businessman interrupted a business meeting so he could go have relations with his bull. I mean, they were gross. Homosexuality and male and female cultic prostitution.

There was bestiality, sexual interaction with animals, both among Canaanite males and females. A great deal of the Mosaic law forbids the socially and morally destructive practices that were ingrained in the Canaanite culture. The historical books of the Old Testament record the assaults against and the seductions of the Canaanite religion to the extent that Israel failed to drive out the Canaanites.

So the thing is, driving out the Canaanites, it was because their Their culture was immoral in the extreme, was gross, and profoundly cruel. The burning of babies was just one example of the kind of thing that they carried on. The rest of the pagan cultures, the rest of the pagan cultures around them thought they were gross. So here you have all these pagan cultures that have their own problems, but they all thought the Canaanites were gross. So when you look at, you know, drive these guys out, it's a matter of they were a really awful, corrupt culture. And so that's why the Lord said, you know, you have to drive them out. You can't adopt what they're doing. Repeated warnings in the books of Moses. Don't adopt what they're doing. Do not do this. This is abominable. The Lord hates it. Don't burn your children.

I've got a question. You know, I think of Jonah who went to warn the people. Why didn't God warn these people? The Canaanites? Yeah, they just couldn't be fixed, I guess. You know, what's interesting is one of the reasons why the Jews were held in Egypt for as long as they were Because the wickedness of these, as the Bible puts it, was not yet full. It seemed, while we don't have record of instances like Jonah, it seemed that the Lord was holding off. And so you say, well, why on earth were the Jews in Egypt for centuries under the slavery? Well, one reason is simply because The Lord wanted to show patience with these people. There may have been appeals to them that we don't know about, but the idea still comes across that the Lord held off on this exodus and the conquest of the land in order to give these people time to repent. exactly how he went about offering them repentance or asking them to repent, we don't know. Is there an indication that there was a message to them? I'm not aware of any. I'm not aware of any. It may be that there was, but I'm not aware of any. But it is clear that the Lord was waiting for them to turn around.

One of the questions we asked, and it's going to be an important one as we look at this, how can you tell what's inside a tell? We mentioned that these tells are often these fairly large mounds, sometimes hundreds of feet high, not always, sometimes quite a bit elevated, and there are layers, not always uniform, but layers. inside these tells and frequently it costs so much time and frankly money to go through all the material that frequently the archaeologists will stop at some point or they'll cut in a trench and not do the whole tell. Just because it requires quite a bit.

Here is the site of Old Testament Jericho. This is the oblique aerial view looking south. And by the way, the modern name is Tell Es-Sultan. It is without question Jericho. Archaeologists of every belief and stripe say this is Jericho. There isn't any question about it. No disputing it. This is the view looking south. One of the things you'll notice is places where there have been excavations previously. And so you see some of that. Now what that also tells you is how much of this has not been excavated. A lot, right? A lot.

Here is the site of Old Testament Jericho looking to the east. And you can see a fairly extensive mound. And as a matter of fact, getting it in the picture, it cut off the ends in order to fit it on the screen. Here is a site map. It's kind of a long city. And this is excavation showing a portion of the city destroyed by Israel's invasion. And that's interpretive. We'll talk about the disputes that are going on with that.

A time about a century ago, a German archaeologist went in there. Since 1907 and 1909, I'll add to that, they also went back in in 1911 and excavated, particularly a couple of guys, Sellen and Watzinger, went in there. And the areas that you see here in blue are areas that they particularly excavated. And one of the things you'll notice is they went around the perimeter And that's significant, as we'll see in a minute here.

Next, there was John Garstang, 1930-36. He was one who looked at it and said, basically, this looks like what the Bible describes. He used pottery for dating and essentially arrived at the biblical account, appears to be the correct account. Kathleen Kenyon during the 1950s, 52 through 58, went into the site. She basically described, as we'll see shortly, she described the event as, this looks like what the Bible describes, but her conclusions on dating were that Jericho was not occupied during the time when the Israelites were supposed to have come in. So then she said, well, the biblical account is not correct. Not because of what the Bible describes and what she found, but because she concluded that the dating didn't match up, that Jericho stopped being occupied 150 years, she said, about 150 years before the time when the Israelites would have come in.

This is Dr. Bryant Wood, who spoke here in this very room, 2002. Here he is at the Jericho excavation. You're going to see a few more shots of him. He has come and taken a look at all the earlier reports and looked at the site. He has particular weight, in his opinion, since his doctoral dissertation was on the pottery of this particular time. location. So he has his doctorate in that field.

This is the lower retaining wall at Jericho with a mud brick wall removed. There's Dr. Wood up at the top. So here's the lower retaining wall. My reason for pointing that out is when the Germans went through, notice the stuff in blue here, here around the perimeter, that's the lower retaining wall. When the Germans went through, they went and kind of peeled away the material from that retaining wall. And so we'll see a few more shots of it. So here's the retaining wall. That's Dr. Wood up at the top. Here's another shot of the retaining wall. Here's Dr. Wood up here. Sorry, it's a little bit sideways, so you'll have to lean over and take a look.

But that's the retaining wall. Now, so my reason for showing that is imagine you're just a foot soldier in the Israelite army, and all you've got is fairly, you know, primitive weapons. This was bronze, you know, Bronze Age weaponry at best. And here's this retaining wall, and we'll see what's next here. Here's another shot of the retaining wall. Now, what had been there originally, was this lower retaining wall, and you saw how high that was. And while it's not straight up and down, it's pretty steep, and it wouldn't be that easy to climb it, especially if you've got arrows raining down on you, right? So here's this retaining wall.

There was a mud brick wall built on top of that, and then an earthen embankment up there. And so for the Israelite soldiers to go up that and then up the mud brick wall to attack would have been rather difficult. As a matter of fact, that was one of the reasons why the Lord had to do something rather miraculous, as we'll soon see. Here's a computer model of Jericho at the time, kind of looking at it at an angle. Here is the retaining wall at the base and then the mud brick wall here. Then there would be a row of houses and then another mud brick wall So, there was two layers of defense to go through. So, it would have been rather difficult to attack. Next, here's a computer model kind of looking at it from the side.

Here's this retaining wall that you saw, and here's the mud brick wall that they built up, and then another mud brick wall on top of that. So, you can imagine, here's the Israelites, all they've got is just foot soldiers and swords and how we're going to take this, right? So here's this mud brick wall we showed before. And so what happened?

Joshua 6.20-21 says this, So the people shouted, and the priests blew the trumpets. And when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell down flat. So that the people went up into the city, every man straight ahead, and they took the city. They utterly destroyed everything in the city.

You got that? Both men and women, young and old, ox and sheep, and donkey with the edge of the sword. Everything. Okay, there was an exception. Do you remember the exception? Pardon? Rahab. Rahab and Rahab's family were preserved because she had actually given aid to the spies who came in there first. Okay. So that's the description and here we have a kind of artist's rendering.

What they found, the archaeologists found, is the mud brick wall fell out. Just like the Bible says, and what does that do about the accessibility of the city? Not only is the mud brick wall out of the way, but the mud brick wall fell down to make a ramp for the soldiers to go straight up.

What did we see in the every man straight ahead? And they took the city. That's exactly what happened. It fell down, it made a ramp so that the soldiers could go straight up into the city, and now this thing that had been an obstacle was now an aid in their attack. And that's what the archaeologists found all the way around. All of them found that. The wall fell down flat so that people went up into the city, every man straight ahead, and they took the city. Here they are circling Jericho, right?

The walls all around fall out flat, make a ramp, and they all go up into it. What was a formidable defense, all of a sudden turned into a great advantage. Yeah, well see, if they keep their distance, then they're outside of, you know, range of projectiles. So they just could keep their distance, go around the outside, and when the walls fell out, it's ready-made. They're ready to go. So did both walls fall? I guess like the walls, plural? Yes, yes. It all fell down like this. Okay, then.

Here's the other interesting thing, Joshua 3.15, for the Jordan overflows all its banks all the days of the harvest. It was harvest time.

So when the archaeologists went in to Jericho, and remember Jericho had been burned, right? What did they find? Jars and jars and jars and jars. Every single excavator found jars and jars and jars full of burnt grain. Full of burnt grain. It had been around harvest time. That's when the Israelites came in. The jars, the harvest had all been brought in, and all the houses were full of jars of grain. The Jews burned everything like they were told. And so what did the archaeologists find?

Burnt grain, burnt grain, burnt grain, and more burnt grain. So there's one picture of it. Here's another. Here is a layer of white ash material and right below it the dark material where it had been burned. The city was burned, the grain was burned, everything was burnt. They burned the city with fire and all that was in it and that's what it looks like in the archaeological record. Jars and jars and jars and jars full of burnt grain. and layers of ash all over the city. Here is more burnt grain. Here's Dr. Bryant Wood at the Jericho excavation in front of the pottery from the time of the destruction.

What he says that Kathleen Kenyon did was misdate the pottery. That's why she said everything is just like the Bible describes but the date's wrong. And he said that it's because she misdated the pottery. The kind of pottery that that's his doctoral dissertation. He said, no, correctly, the pottery should date about 1400 BC.

Amazing. Now, that does not mean that everybody now believes that Dr. Wood is right. And why not? Remember what we talked about? Unverifiable presuppositions. The presuppositions won't allow them to say, well, the biblical account can't be right. Reason? Oh, no, it just can't be. It's the only ancient city that has had the mud brick walls fall out. But that's exactly what the Bible describes. And it's in harvest season. with all the burnt grain and that's what the Bible describes.

He's dated the pottery and it's 1400 BC and that's his area of expertise. So this pottery dating system is something that's pretty refined. Pottery, how do they date with pottery? Well, if you have somebody that really knew their cars, could they go out and date the cars out in the parking lot? Yeah. Pottery changed styles. just like cars do.

Something else, and that is in the tombs around Jericho, these seals were found with the kings, or the pharaohs, basically of the Exodus period and before. Right there. Right in the area around Jericho. Very interesting. So Jericho was the first city that was taken. And by the way, it was the first city that was taken, but also the only city that had a matter of complete destruction and ruin. The others that were taken, they did not have that same kind of thing happen. What they would do is, in most cases, drive off the inhabitants of the cities and then just move in.

Right? Now, if you drive off the inhabitants and move in, is there anything archaeologically to tell us different? Not so much, right? So in great part, you would not expect, aside from places like Jericho, you would not expect to find a great deal of destruction in the military attack, because their attack was not one of coming in and destroying everything.

It was a matter of coming in, driving off the inhabitants, and taking over the houses, and the pottery, and the vineyards, and the orchards, and the crops, and everything. Take it all. Drive them off. They weren't supposed to do that. Pardon? They weren't supposed to do that. To do what? To let the people live.

Actually, in most of those places, the order was to just drive them off. So basically, they just got to move somewhere else. But they would take over the houses and everything that was in them. And their order was to just drive them off. So it wasn't a matter of killing all of them off. That was unique to Jericho. Yeah.

When they got their weaponry to attack, is this something they just picked up along the way? It's not like they could go out and forge swords, right? I mean, where'd they get these swords if they're out in the desert? Yeah, real interesting. For a lot of it, they didn't have very sophisticated weaponry until they defeated some of these other groups. They basically overwhelmed them, but not with superior weaponry. I imagine they would save this stuff up for the next battle. Yes. Okay, now we've defeated these people, let's take their weaponry. But they did not have superior weaponry.

So they came in, and you notice as you look at the biblical description, the Lord said, don't worry, I'll fight for you. The Lord will deal with this thing. They'll run away from you. They'll be afraid of you. They'll drop their weapons and run. They'll leave them behind.

So the Lord, when they would obey, would work miraculously and drive the people off. But when they would disobey, it would work in the reverse for them. But they didn't start off with superior weaponry. That's one of the reasons why when they came to Jericho, the Lord basically had to perform a miracle, because they weren't going to win on weaponry. And then as far as the excavation goes, when I'm pulling dirt out, I've got to put it somewhere. So they try to figure out somewhere that they're not going to want to dig later. So they push it to the outside.

Yes. Yeah. When they do a tell, a lot of times they'll, if they're doing the top, they'll just dump it off to the sides. But in Jericho here, they particularly were interested in the sides. So they had to just peel it back and push it out of the way. They just push it out. Put it out farther, yeah, and out into what ends up being fields and things of that sort. But yeah, it becomes, yeah, where are we going to put this stuff?

It becomes a big issue because they have to go through it with brushes and they use screens to find little tiny things. Now Jericho, this area was too early for coins. Too early for coins. They didn't have coins. But find small pieces of metal, even little seals and things of that sort. Small objects, they want to find those. Who pays for all those? Governments? You know, it's different ones.

A lot of times they'll get maybe a grant from a foundation. Some of the work, like I put here, Dr. Bryant Wood, he's with Associates for Biblical Research, and I'll give you the website on that. And in this case, it's various people contributing funds to Associates for Biblical Research. And so they've been doing Tel-Mecator, which is, their thinking is biblical AI. And they've been doing that for years.

Other times it'll be funded by governments, but the governments usually don't have that much money to put into it. And it'll be universities and they'll look for foundations to contribute funds for doing the excavation. So yeah, the funding source is diverse and the governments can't pick up the whole tab. And then the other thing is, do you ever see an advertisement for dig volunteers?

Sometimes they'll have people because a lot of us just, you know, you need to sit there with a screen, you know. We need somebody to sit there with a screen. All right, we've screened all this material. We need somebody to take a wheelbarrow and haul it over there.

So, you know, volunteers are another way that they get things done. Here is Hazor up to the north, and there's a tell. Here he is here. And Hazor is an archaeological park, that is, you can see off the main road, there's a road that goes up there, they have a building up in this end. over here. They keep things in such a way that you can walk around and see things and things are marked and they have a park, you know, kind of a park ranger who's sitting there watching it and giving tours and making sure nobody disturbs or takes anything. But then every season, and they've been excavating Tel Hazor for, oh it's probably been 20 years, Every season they'll go in and then do a little bit more and then leave that and then come back and do a little bit more, right? But it's a long-standing biblical city.

Jericho, by the way, you'll find Jericho shows up in the New Testament, but it's not this tell, it's the surrounding area here. And by the way, that's one of the places where Herod had one of his palaces. So you'll have these tells. Now, the red shading here on this map, it shows the area that was conquered in the time of Joshua.

So they initially went north and south there from their place of entry there at Jericho. And so they went both directions with armies. Those, by the way, who had land in here, We're told, you need to come with us and help conquer, and then you can go back to your land. Instead of, now that you're here, you stay there, right? Because they needed all the help they could get.

They needed to be able to overwhelm the other armies. So then in the green area was the larger area that they were supposed to have conquered, but only did partially. They had trouble with the Philistines for centuries. They had trouble with some of the other places for centuries.

Then the Egyptian King Merneptah, this is a couple centuries after the time of Joshua. And of course the inclination was to brag and overstate. And so what did the Egyptian King Merneptah say? He said, and this is called the Merneptah Stele, it's basically a kind of a declaration stone.

He said, Israel is laid waste, its seed is no more. Well, he obviously didn't wipe them out, but that's their typical exaggeration. Nonetheless, it confirms that by that time Israel was there, right? Israel was already in place and established themselves and worthy of enough note to put in the Egyptian record there, even if it's a little distorted and exaggerated.

Now, some resources to take a look at here. There's 100 Reasons to Trust the Old Testament History by Murray Hebert. And just a paperback. And so that's easily recommendable. Pretty well done. He doesn't overstate anything, but lays it out. So that's a good one. He also has another one, The Historical Conquest, where he goes into the details that we've just hit the high spots on, the details of the conquest.

And so those are both easily recommendable. He's written both books. And I believe those are both available at Amazon.com. You can also go to the website I have up here, Bipolarcheology.org, and order them there. And so anyway, he's got enough detail on there and some footnotes that you've got some technical detail. It's not so sophisticated in its writing that you'll get lost. So it's readable. that biblearcheology.org website, one that I can easily recommend, and they have a number of articles on the Exodus, on the patriarchs, on the conquest, and basically since the mid-70s they have had a publication, Bible and Spade, and they've got a number of articles from Bible and Spade over that period of time on the website there. And you can click on different topics, Exodus, Conquest, things like that, on into the New Testament era.

So anyway, resources easily enough available. Questions? Comments? How do they fund that? It's all contributions. Bible and Spade, of course you pay a subscription fee. As many people as subscribe to that, that helps. I've subscribed to it since about the mid-1970s, so I suppose you could say I fund it.

Yeah? I was wondering, I thought about Beryl's daughter that took Moses. Yes. At some point, Moses, with God's help, killed Beryl's firstborn son. Is there any way to tell how she was replaced? She helped Moses. Yeah, what you have there is the identity of Pharaoh's daughters is, it seems, best fit, and this is not with certainty, but the best fit seems to be that name Hatshepsut that I mentioned before. There are a few different Pharaohs that are possibilities for the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

But assuming that you pick one or the other, in other words, you can put together the family tree, which, by the way, is a little bit convoluted because it was real popular to marry sisters and half-sisters and things of that sort. So the family tree is a little ingrown. But the family tree is basically known. the difficulty is pinning down, this is the Pharaoh of the Exodus. That by itself would perhaps be a little tougher. But yeah, you can put the whole family tree together. Because like I showed earlier, I had a list of here's the dynasty, that entire dynasty, we know who's related to who. And the whole family tree, even though it's a little ingrown, It's all known.

A few details here and there may be subject to question, but in general the family tree is all known. Yeah, yeah, here's this guy Moses raised by Hatshepsut and Hatshepsut basically gave him a royal raising there in kind of the household of Pharaoh. And yet he ended up turning around and being the one to pronounce the judgment and the plagues.

Yeah, it is kind of amazing, isn't it? Now, next week I'm not going to be here, but I think we'll still meet. I'm going to try this. I wasn't able to find someone who was willing to substitute for me. I'm not sure why that is, but anyway. As a matter of fact, some of the people, when I approached them about what I was thinking about doing, they said, I'm not doing that, right? But here's what we're going to try. I'm going to record the lesson, and so they'll play the recording. There will be a handout.

And so we'll be addressing the question of the early books in the Bible, particularly, making statements that sound like God is limited. It seems more to fit, if we take those literally, more to fit the picture of open theism. By open theism, I mean a God who is limited, a God who does not know the future. A God who is not all-powerful and omnipresent. Some of those would be statements like, let us go down and see this or that. God saying those kinds of things. Or, God remembered Noah. It's like, oh man, I forgot Noah. So statements like that.

So we'll be taking a look at that, and we will have a handout. We'll have a recording, assuming everything comes together okay. No, what I'll do is I will randomly say, any questions? Yeah, yeah, Wayne? Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'll do things like that just so, you know, keep it on your toes. So, yeah.

So, yeah, we'll include that. And so if you have any questions, you can pretend like I'm answering them. So anyway, we'll give that a try. What we'll do is we'll have a recording in here. It'll play over the loudspeaker system and all that and operate off of this here. I won't have slides for next week, but there will be a handout they'll be working from. And we'll do it that way. OK? Sound OK? Well, it's an experiment. So that way I can be here but not be here. What's that? There we go, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I'd be over in Carson City watching our grandkids and seeing our newest grandchild. Let's see. We helped my mom and dad and my brother's family move from Anderson Valley in Northern California, one valley inland to Redwood Valley, so they're moved. My dad had his 84th birthday in May. My mom sent an email over that he'd done some carpentry work around, looked really nice.

Anyway, they're continuing along. We went over there in the end of March to move them, so haven't seen them since then, but talked to them from time to time and did emails and things of that sort. But this trip, we're just going to Carson City. Yeah, we're just going to Carson City. Nancy and I, we seem to have granddaughters and granddaughters and granddaughters. One grandson and then keep having granddaughters. One grandson and six granddaughters. Alright. Other questions? Exasperations? Alright, let's pray. Lord, we do Thank you.

We just look at these things and we thank you for the confirmation that your word is indeed true, that these are things that happened. And we can understand why the world would not readily embrace the things that are miraculous. And yet, as we look at these accounts, as we look at the information on the ground, as we look at the historical documents, we see A dovetailing, we'll see harmony. And we just thank you for that confirmation. We continue to entrust our hearts and lives into your hands. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.