Patterns Of Evidence: The Exodus

originally posted by: Utnapisjtim
a reply to: peter vlar

First let's see how many they were. The Hebrews lived in a small town in the delta of the Nile. There is no archaeological finds to support a city of millions of slaves and their masters, millions more-- in the area. Or in the world as a whole. We can assume they were at top 50-100,000 young and old, male, female, and with their effective slave-bred jungle telegraph they all agreed to leave Eastwards one Passover a few millennia ago and rendezvous at a given place, where Moses had arranged a trap that would give them a head start.

Because of the precession of the equinoxes Passover was mid-summer and monsoon season back in the time of the Exodus, where the Nile would flood because of the West-African Monsoon, and an elaborate system of sluices and floodgates, the annual flooding of the Nile was controlled (they used these dams and sluices for natural irrigation). Moses signalled with his staff to insiders at the floodgates, so they would close them and direct the flooding Nile elsewhere or as the Bible says: "...the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left." Thus the 'Sea of Reeds' became the 'Field of Reeds' or 'Paradise' to the Egyptians.

The Ankh was actually 'Key of the Nile' and it was a real key, used to open and close gates along the Nile and direct the water from pasture to pasture to exploit the life-giving source that made the whole of Egypt green, not just a thin line against the Nile, but the whole area was lush and green. In his prophecies Thoth says: "Egypt will be forsaken and desolate" -- In the latter days, Egypt will have become lifeless desert. As it is today.

Anyway, Moses et al crosses the field, signals again by raising his staff to his agents by the gates, and the gates open and the Egyptian soldiers are smashed to smithereens and are washed away.

And knowing their town was in the Nile delta, perhaps the dilligent optimist could envision a side effect of Moses' diverting the flooding raging Nile-- perhaps one could entertain the possibility of Gosen being completely washed to the sea and that's why their traces are so hard to follow beyond Babylon and onward?

Update from email.

The writing team is finishing the film’s companion book that will be released under the same title: Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus. Graphics, Illustrations and editing is underway and it will be available in both digital and printed form. Separate notice will be sent to you once the book is complete later this year.

Our plan calls for a film release in 2015. This will likely include a limited theatrical run in specific markets as well as digital distribution through online partners (e.g. Netflix, Amazon, etc.) and direct sales (DVD, etc.) through our website and others.

Following the theatrical release, our plan calls for expanding the scope to include television, web and multiple educational markets

So, 2015 it will be avilable. The book sounds cool, though I hope they do better than Ken Burns books, which mirror his docs, exactly, and are somewhat boring after watching the docs.

There's also a video, with the full link as I'm not sure the embed works. www.youtube.com...

a reply to: bjarneorn

You are excreting ignorant rants.

You do not know what you speak of.

Do you know what a Mezuzah is?

If you are going to criticize something, make sure you know it!

Here are the details:

Our film will be introduced via a spectacular, one-night Fathom Event in 600-700 theaters nationwide.

The date of this premier is JANUARY 19, 2015 at 7:00 pm nationwide This will be more than just a film premier. It will also include a panel discussion with scholars and theologians who will discuss the validity of the historical Exodus from Egypt. Gretchen Carlson, who is host of The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson on Fox News channel, will be your host. Panelists include Eric Metaxas , Dennis Prager, Father Jonathan Morris and others yet to be announced.

You can go Here for theaters and cities it will be playing at. There's a few places it's playing here and I might not have expected that many theaters here. Click on the more info button and you'll get all the info you'll need.

Finally it's here. Hope it was worth the wait.

Right! Last update for this, I think. The website where you can buy the movie as it's now available.

shop.patternsofevidence.com...

I've always thought this was as horrific story from the bible, so hope it never played out as told in that book. Just think about some poor what 15 year old peasant manages to survive the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth to actually have a live baby, and then somebody else god kills her child for decisions made by a ruler so far above her. When you think that a supposedly omnipotent god could have targeted specific people but blights innocent lives is pretty gory.

a reply to: WilsonWilson

Well, that's the Bile for ya. It's kinda gruesome. I've just waited so damned long to see this flick I'm really curious as to what their conclusions are. Not that I care one way or the other I just want to know.

Hopefully I can buy it sooner rather than later. I do say, they really hooked me with this one. I only found out about it something like seven years ago, accidentally, and I've actually kept up on it all these years.

LOL I just went to post this and noticed my typo(gotta proofread, ya know). I'm gonna leave it as it's funny in a very silly way.

I bought it. Not happy in some ways and a little disappointed.

Two things first. The dvd says there is a four dvd set. I couldn't buy it a week ago and still cannot buy it, per their website.

shop.patternsofevidence.com...

It's not there. I should have bought the blu-ray as it may have had more but I was stupid when I bought it. I haven't delved into what little was in the special features section, it's mostly junk, but I doubt there is another three dvd's worth of info there.

Secondly, the guy who made it. Do we really need to see a hundred shots of him nodding when someone says something? Completely idiotic and it makes it a little too much about him and not enough about the story, which seems to be all about him and a couple of cronies. David Rohl is one of the main guys in there and his stuff is all over the link I posted.

Basically, it comes down to this. They believe that archaeologists and historians have the timeline wrong and the exodus happened about 600 years before most think it did, give or take a few years. As I am a armchair historian, I think they may be on to something but I really and truly could not tell you if what they propose is bunk or not. It comes down to whether you believe the stuff they have, which seems reasonable, but I can't say yay or nay.

I'll take some notes next time I watch it which I hope to be soon but life may not make it that easy. Most of it was unfamiliar to me. Things I had never heard of so I have no reference point like ATS to decipher it and separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

I wish I could remember more but I'm in need of a nap. Just did two long posts after a long and grueling three hour shift(well, life is a bit hard at times) and I really will have to watch it again to get it all straight. In the meantime, you might look up David Rohl on Youtube, maybe some of his stuff there that would give hints as to what is in the doc.

Started watching this and had the inclination to stop and see what I could find on IMDB. It's mostly lunacy there but there's only two threads on this and one has this gem:

I saw it tonight as well, but I thought that the panel was awful; you had five religious/Christian conservative/Fox News-types basically just echoing each other. Where was an atheist? Whereas was an agnostic? Where was a historian or a religious scholar? You have to have some diversity to create an intellectual discussion; the panel constituted an infomercial.

As for the film itself, although I found it somewhat monotonous and repetitive, it indeed makes a very convincing case for the Exodus' historical existence. (As a side note, I also appreciated how the filmmaker, Timothy Mahoney, took care to show Egyptians as normal people, as opposed to some Jihadist stereotype.) But what renders the film fundamentally flawed is its assumption that just because the Exodus may indeed have constituted a historical event, that historicity proves the existence of God—that God was behind the Exodus and the various plagues, that he parted the Red Sea, that there was a burning bush that did not actually burn the bush, and so on and so forth. Proving the historical existence of the Exodus absolutely does not prove the existence of supernatural phenomena, which is the near-fatal assumption provided by this film. The documentary never tries to tackle or prove the assumption.

Thus the film ultimately constitutes a case of religion using history to suggest that what cannot be proved is literally true. History can only prove the existence of history; supernatural phenomena, conversely, cannot be proved (or disproved, really), and Patterns of Evidence does not want to offer that admission. Instead, it offers a convenient conflation, suggesting that evidence of a historical event is the same as evidence of supernatural phenomena and religious mythology, basically meaning that history and religious mythology are one in the same.

They are not necessarily the same, and they are not inherently connected. A very misleading intellectual conflation occurs here, whether Mahoney was aware of it or not.

For the record, I am agnostic and not a religious person. The film did convince me that the Exodus really happened and proves strong in terms of the actual historical exploration; the fallacy comes in the movie's assumption that proving the existence of a historical event described in the Bible also proves that supernatural powers were behind that historical event and that the "patterns of evidence" history automatically validates faith-based beliefs as literal truths. In that regard, the documentary failed completely and lacked the objectivity that it supposedly strove for.

So, I'll sit here and watch, take notes, until I get tired and go to sleep. Or not. Anyway, I'll have some dirt on their "evidence" to post so you all can make your own judgement.