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Churches around the world who participate in the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual January Bible Study will be studying the book of Exodus in 2009.  Thanks to our tax dollars at work, those leading the studies are apt to have an added challenge. Why?  Because the taxpayer-funded Public Broadcasting System recently debuted a two-hour Nova special called The Bible’s Buried Secrets that, among other things, floated the ideas that: ·         The patriarchs of Israel may have never existed·         The so-called Israelites were really Canaanites·         The exodus as depicted in the Bible never happened·         Moses wasn’t a historical character·         The so-called “Books of Moses” were actually compiled many centuries after the supposed events they recount·         Exodus was written by multiple authors, none of them Moses (who didn’t exist)·         And all of the above is settled fact upon which all intelligent scholars agree[i] William Dever, one of the featured archaeologists on the program, said that the PBS Nova special was “designed for intelligent people . . . who want to read the Bible in a modern way.” [ii]  

One would hope that every pastor leading a Bible Study in his church would want to be intelligent about the matter and take into account any pertinent modern knowledge. 

Must such a pastor reject the main narrative in the book of Exodus, negating the heart of Old Testament history and the very event that brought about the birth of Israel? According to Dever, a self-proclaimed atheist, the answer to that question would be yes: “If we insist on reading the Bible literally, in 25 years nobody will read it any longer."[iii]  The truth, however, is just the opposite.  If the Bible is a work of fiction without historical credibility, we can find more enjoyable works by Tom Clancy or John Grisham.  As a matter of fact, the days when “nobody will read it” seem to have already come upon us; and the reason is clear:  it is because one-sided presentations like this PBS production have convinced the general public that all experts are in agreement that the Bible is full of myth, legend, and factual error. One expert not featured on the program is Dr. Paul Maier, Professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University.  In a privately-funded television special produced by Coral Ridge Ministries, Maier had this to say regarding the PBS assertions: "There is absolutely no evidence against the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob--not at all.  If there were positive evidence . . . the whole historicity of the Genesis account would be called into question, and it would be a fair subject for argumentation.  But there is nothing like that found at all."[iv] According to Maier, one might safely trust the Bible, but not this PBS special: "Clearly, the Nova special on PBS is one-sided.  It presents only the evidence which opposes the biblical record, which claims that Abraham never existed, his wife Sarah never existed, the patriarchs, Isaac, Jacob never existed.... and so on into the night.  This is, frankly, ridiculous in terms of the evidence."[v] And what is the evidence?  Perhaps it is best summarized in the following five-point bullet list:

What?  You don’t see anything in that list? 

Exactly!  And that’s the only kind of “evidence” that anyone can array to prove the non-existence of something. 

So when assertions are made that “there was no exodus out of Egypt” or “there was no Israelite leader named Moses,” what the bold declarer means is that, apart from the Bible, there are no known records of such an event or person. The obvious problem with such an argument is the fact—acknowledged even by scholars like Dever—that the Bible has proven itself to be a very credible historical witness in its own right.  Dever, known in the field of biblical archaeology as a maximalist (as opposed to a minimalist), credits the Bible with giving a generally reliable framework of the history of Israel.  So, if a generally dependable witness bears testimony to an event, how damaging is it that no other witnesses can be found 3500 years later?  Shall we impugn the one witness we have (a witness we have found to be trustworthy time and time again) simply because he is the only one telling us the story? There are plausible reasons not to expect extra-biblical accounts of the exodus.  Ancient Near Eastern records of such events were usually written to celebrate the victories of generals and kings.  The plagues on Egypt and the consequent exodus were components of a most humiliating defeat for Egypt.  That Israel, the victor nation, would keep a record is understandable; but why should Egyptians commemorate such a thing? Another observation worthy of consideration is the fact that when one speaks of “the biblical witness,” he is not speaking of just one person’s testimony.  The Bible is not just one book; it is a mini-library of books.  The exodus is mentioned multiple times in the Bible by a diverse group of authors, so a sweeping dismissal of the Bible’s testimony is an unqualified dismissal of a great group of evidence.[vi]  Of interest especially to those who claim to follow Jesus, is His apparent confidence in all of the Old Testament record and His institution of the Passover meal (from Exodus 12) as the new ordinance of remembrance we call the Lord’s Supper.  The motive for dismissing the biblical witness is not because the Bible has shown itself to be untrustworthy.  The problem is one of presuppositions.  The Bible is decidedly theistic.  Its authors assume the truth that there is a God; and if there is a God, splitting the Red Sea, calling water out of a rock, providing a nation with bread from Heaven, and any number of other miraculous things are—though very remarkable—quite plausible.   That, however, is not where the Bible’s critics stand.  Though they might use the Bible to locate geographical sites or gain light on social customs or political alliances, when their witness begins to speak of things that an anti-theistic worldview rules out, they suddenly quit trusting the document that has in every other way been helpful.  Though such critics seek to lay claim to scientific objectivity, such a claim is false.  It is their subjective bias that leads them to reject the Bible’s story. Here are some things to keep in mind when you or your parishioners are troubled by presentations like the PBS special: 

• Conclusions regarding the Bible are based on worldview presuppositions. The most pertinent worldviews are atheism and theism, and they lead to opposite conclusions.
• Theism is an internally consistent and philosophically viable worldview held by the majority of humanity and ably defended by many scholars.
• The documentary hypothesis that denies Mosaic authorship to the Pentateuch springs from an anti-supernatural bias and has been adequately refuted by world-class scholars like Robert Dick Wilson, O.T. Allis, Edward J. Young, Gleason Archer, and many others.[vii]
• Archeologists discover raw data; they invent explanations.  Multiple plausible interpretations can be given to any single find, and the one that is accepted is likely determined by one’s worldview.
• Whenever someone implies that all scholars agree on any interpretation of archaeological evidence, (or on almost anything else for that matter) that person is either ignorant of the world of scholarship or deliberately dishonest.
• The absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence—for a long time there was no extra-biblical evidence for the Hittite nation.  The “scholarly consensus” was that the nation was a biblical fairy tale—until archaeologists uncovered the ruins of the Hittite empire and found that it was one of the mightiest in the Ancient Near East.  History is replete with the embarrassed adjustments that had to be made in the “assured results of modern scholarship” as the archaeologist’s spade has run to catch up with the prophet’s pen![viii]
• The Bible itself is a historical document, often offering an eyewitness account of the events about which it tells.  The fact that it recounts supernatural acts does not disqualify its testimony unless one can prove that there is no God (a logically impossible task).
• Jesus, whose testimony is affirmed by the prophecies that foretold His coming, the miracles performed when He came, and the resurrection of His once dead body, believed the whole Old Testament and told His followers to do the same.

 Sadly, The Bible’s Buried Secrets will not be the last challenge mainstream media hands biblical orthodoxy.  Like clockwork every Christmas and Easter, and randomly throughout the year, TV specials, newsmagazine cover stories, and “mockumentary” movies will continue to assault the faith with one-sided propaganda and a “stacked deck” of “experts” giving the impression that their view of things is the only one accepted by those in the know.  But now you’re in the know, and you know better!    

Tags: bible critics, exodus, nova, pbs, tv

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1 Comment

Jim Kinnebrew (Author) said...

I have worked on the formatting of this post for hours, and can do no better than this. I'm sorry for the aesthetically displeasing condition, but hope you get something from the content. Don't know why the editor of this blog sometimes accepts my commands and sometimes thumbs its nose at me. Anyway, thanks for patiently reading. Blessings, Jim

Posted December 30, 2008 02:33 PM | Reply to this comment

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