I see your point now. I always view these things anthropologically. That’s why I’m interested to see if real events could have inspired the story.

You’re right. Many of the scholars depicted in these shows are theists with an agenda to prove the Bible’s “correctness”. You can’t do good science if you start out with a conclusion and try to fit the facts.

You can’t always know what someone’s motivations were. You can’t always know whether it was good science. That’s why there’s peer review. That’s also why I like to look at these claims and see if I can pick them apart.

If Kitchen, for example, comes up with his 10 explanations for the plagues because he wants to prove the Bible, why can’t we look at his claims anthropologically? His goals don’t have to be our goals. Separate the claims from the claimant. That’s why “intelligent design” creationism isn’t taught in the schools. Scientists looked at the claims and rejected them. They didn’t reject the claims because they were made by creationists.

If you read my earlier article, “Exodus Revealed, the Sequel”, you’ll see that I criticize Robert Cornuke for appearing to be exactly the type of scholar you describe. He’s so convinced that Exodus is the literal truth that he sees Egyptian chariots in every coral formation. That type of scholarship doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. (Interestingly, one of his friends left a comment on that article, claiming that it’s valid science. When I challenged him to back up his claims, he was strangely silent.)

I guess I just have too strong an interest in crackpots. I watch all of the strange and bizarre phenomenon documentaries on TV. It’s always through the lens of skepticism, but I find this part of the human brain to be immensely fascinating. I view the Bigfoot and Atlantis and Nostradamus shows as abnormal psychology. It gives us insight into the brain’s desire for self-deception. That’s why I write a blog about fundies. As dangerous as they are, they’re also fascinating research specimens. How anybody can be that jaw-droppingly stupid and still function in society blows my mind.

Speculating on what inspired the stories is what anthropologists do — nothing wrong with that and it’s important work. They are looking for what inspired a people to write a story, whether it be local myths, coopted religions, tragedies happening, etc.

Speculating on exactly ten scientific explanations for events that might be seen as divine plagues while not questioning the story’s factual account of history is just complete speculation.

I guess it’s a subtle difference, but it’s important. One is learning about a people and what would inspire them to make up, tell, and eventually write down those stories. The other is taking the tale’s historical events (enslavement, plagues, set my people free) at face value without questioning it and shoehorning scientific explanations for God working in mysterious ways onto it. It’s a small jump from this to Intelligent Design. This is what ID people do in the extreme. They take the book at face value, then find “science” to support the claim.

I think the speculation is warranted. Many of the fables in the Bible are based on something. For example, the flood myth is either a direct retelling of the flood story in Gilgamesh, or the two share a common ancestor. There were small, localized floods that nevertheless would have been devastating to the people directly affected. Those stories would have been retold and embellished until, voila!, you have yourself “an inerrant account of history”.

As far as speculating on the plagues without first proving the enslavement of the Israelites, I believe it is still justified. If there had already been an oral tradition of the ten plagues, it would have been very easy for the story to be co-opted by the Jews and tacked onto their legends. Stories were cut and pasted together long before the invention of the word processor.

To me, exploring how these myths could have been started gives valuable insight into how this absurd yet dangerous book ended up the way it did.

Makes me wonder if 4000 years from now, scholars will be debating where the actual location of Hogwartz is.

You’re right about there being no record of the ten plagues. The bit about the Egyptians not recording bad events might be no more than apologetics. Nevertheless, it is worth examining these claims to see how plausible they are.

In the absence of a documented phenomenon, any explanations are superfluous.