Holding On the Scythian Scrap Heap

J.P. Holding Can Erase My Name From His Webpages, But He Can't Find the Hebrews of the Biblical Exodus

Brett Palmer, © 2009

 

Again, internet apologist James Patrick Holding of Tektonics Apologetic Ministries tries to defend his defenseless assertion that the ancient Scythians can serve as a historical model for the historically-absent Hebrews of the biblical exodus. And, again, he does not link back to the source of the criticism to which he is responding: my article, "Holding Holding to the Hot Seat." In fact, this latest of Mr. Holding's continuing addendums to his and Brent Hardaway's original article, spurned by my criticisms of their magical mathematical formulas to account for the nearly 3 million person population of the biblical exodus, does not even mention me by name, although Mr. Holding quotes directly from my last article. Mr. Holding has claimed he does not link back to sites he does not feel "deserve" his attention, but he nonetheless feels my criticisms of his failing attempt to rescue his arcane apologetic are worthy of quoting anonymously and responding to with ever-lessening confidence. As a matter of fact, Mr. Holding has scrubbed any mention of me from his and Mr. Hardaway's article, even though he did mention me in earlier editions. In the two older versions of his article he'd written,

and

He does not mention me by name at all in this latest incaration of his article and one can only speculate as to the reason why. In his discussion regarding the proper use and citation of sources with Pastor Craig Johnson (which I document elsewhere), Mr. Holding, a former librarian, commented that if an author uses no citations in his work then readers are right to be very suspicious about the value of the article or book under review. Mr. Holding noted that incomplete or no source citations or credit implies the author either wants to make it difficult for readers to find the source of the information, or wants to hide it from them entirely. Authors do this because, if the readers investigate, they are likely to find that these sources are not being used properly, or the author fears his readers will hear the alternate opinion and find it stronger and more convincing. This would also apply to online articles which fail to link back to any internet sources which were used. And this is the reason I suspect Mr. Holding has removed my name from his article discussing the Hebrew exodus population. He does not want his readers finding their way back to these series of articles to discover his absolute lack of ability to stand up to my criticisms.

In Mr. Holding's latest reply, he re-visits old criticisms of mine for which he presents the same, tired answers. For example, he nearly quotes me verbatim (without citation),

How could the Scythians, a nomadic people living thousands of years and thousands of miles from the enslaved Hebrews of Goshen, have something in common with the Israelite population? Were the Scythians held in bondage? Were they exiles in the Nile delta, captives of a foreign government that, from all accounts, detested them and sought to subjugate them?

To which his answer remains almost the same:

Being in bondage or living in the Nile does not in the least affect the critical and relevant issue of comparison for our subject matter, which is living nomadically and the effort of practical living while doing so.

To this I had originally replied:

I am literally astounded that Mr. Holding cannot see the relevance of my objection to his attempt to compare (superficially) the Scythians with the Hebrew slaves of Goshen. When were the Hebrews of Goshen "living nomadically" while under the brutal conditions of slavery? The relevance of my objection has obviously called into question the appropriateness of his "Scythia challenge" on the topic of the Exodus population figures and his only response is to merely assert that my objections don't matter and to mistakenly apply a nomadic people as a comparison for an enslaved people who likely rarely journeyed far from home, field or workplace.

Being in bondage as opposed to a free people indeed has relevance to the topic of the Exodus population. This is obviously a relevancy that Mr. Holding cannot see for he believes the Hebrews of Goshen lived a lifestyle similar to that of the nomadic Scythians. The Hebrews were not nomadic. They lived, apparently, in controlled camps overseen by taskmasters and were used as an oppressed labor force for building pharaonic cities (Ex. 1:11-14). They did not enjoy the luxury of touring where they wanted, holding vast amounts of territory for farming, hunting and gathering, trading with surrounding cultures and warring with neighbors. They were not following herds of animals for food, or having time to design elaborate battle gear adorned with gold or devise formidable weapons or fearsome battle tactics. In fact, the living conditions imposed upon slaves is described in my original article so I don't think I need to get into details again here. But let me drive the main point home again so that, perhaps, even Mr. Holding will understand. While we cannot know the exact conditions under which the Hebrew slaves of Goshen lived if we are to take the biblical tale of the exodus seriously even for argument's sake (due, of course to an absolute silence regarding them in the ancient record –both literary and material), we can reasonably speculate about their lives. We have no records of Hebrew slavery abolitionists, for example, detailing what deplorable conditions were like for the sons and daughters of Jacob, however the Bible does tell us enough from which we can infer what the conditions were like. The Bible tells us that taskmasters were set up over the Hebrews and that they were oppressed with forced labor (Ex. 1:11). Furthermore, the Bible says that the Egyptians "became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, and made their lives bitter" (Ex. 1:13-14). We also know that the Hebrew slaves were beaten, and not on rare occasion. The Bible tells us that Moses, on a random stroll one day, actually came across one of his countrymen being struck by an Egyptian taskmaster (Ex. 2:11). And, to make matters worse, the Egyptian pharaoh even more than once ordered the extermination of every newborn son of the Hebrews (Ex. 1:16, 22). Life, it can be argued, was horrible and harsh for the Hebrew slaves if we believe what the Bible tells us about their living conditions.

While we may not have detailed literature about the Hebrew's living conditions from outside sources, the Bible paints a bleak picture. We do, however, have details regarding the conditions of slavery in the old American South. And, comparisons between conditions suffered there and those imposed upon the ancient Hebrews in Goshen are far more appropriate than a comparison between the free and nomadic Scythians and these same Hebrew slaves. According to one easily accessible website,

…slaves suffered extremely high mortality. Half of all slave infants died during their first year of life, twice the rate of white babies. And while the death rate declined for those who survived their first year, it remained twice the white rate through age 14. As a result of this high infant and childhood death rate, the average life expectancy of a slave at birth was just 21 or 22 years, compared to 40 to 43 years for antebellum whites. Compared to whites, relatively few slaves lived into old age.

…slave mothers suffered high rates of spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and deaths shortly after birth. Half of all slave infants weighed less than 5.5 pounds at birth, or what we would today consider to be severely underweight.

Conditions like these, and many others imposed by life in the ancient world, are detailed in my original article. These conditions stunted any potential growth of the Hebrew slave population in Goshen. And that is my point which Mr. Holding continues to miss. Now, if Mr. Holding or Mr. Hardaway can find refuting evidence for conditions of the Hebrew slaves being far less grim than that faced by Africans in the American south, then let them bring it forward. It may be, of course, that Mr. Holding will feel such data is "off-topic", beyond their expertise and that my calling for it amounts to nothing more than whinging. If so, he will do nothing more than underscore his inability to locate such material to educate me and my fellow skeptics which, I believed, was the purpose of his apologetic site. Let me caution Mr. Holding or Mr. Hardaway should they endeavor to meet this challenge: Do not be fooled by data regarding native Egyptian slaves or indentured servants. The biblical text is clear: the Hebrews were feared by the Egyptians and were forced into slavery as a direct way to limit their numbers (Ex. 1:9-10). These were not conditions imposed on native Egyptian slaves and servants. Whatever Mr. Holding or Mr. Hardaway uncover regarding the ancient practice of slavery must align with the biblical tale if it's to have any relevancy. Softening that tale will not suffice.

Trying to dodge the devastating analysis I penned above, Mr. Holding wrote that,

...this stage of the argument is past the issue of whether or not the Israelite population reached into the 2-3 million range, so appeal to the above issues is irrelevant in context. The objection has confused Israel's earlier situation (being in bondage in Egypt) with their later one (living pastorally in the Sinai wilderness). Their lives in Goshen is NOT the subject here.

And, again, I'm not sure why Mr. Holding believes my criticisms are "past the issue of whether or not the Israelite population reached into the 2-3 million range". That is exactly the stage of the argument still under discussion. Does Mr. Holding believe he has received a free pass on his and Mr. Hardaway's conjured calculations which materialized the Hebrew population from the stifling conditions of the ancient world? I can understand his eagerness to move the discussion away from his fantastical figures, and maybe he can magically make disappear those mathematics the next time he "revamps" his website, but I personally have not moved one cubit away from the discussion of those population figures at any point during my examination of Mr. Holding's sorcerous sums. And all the quotations of my criticisms of his "Scythian challenge" deal directly with its relevancy to those arcane additions which Mr. Holding now apparently wishes to push off into the distance. So, since my criticism remains that of the relevancy of the Scythians to the Hebrew population in Goshen, perhaps Mr. Holding will finally get around to clarifying why, when I first criticized his and Mr. Hardaway's population figures (and only their population figures as they relate to the conditions restricting population growth in the past), he directed me to his "Scythian challenge" in the first place if he were not trying to defend those convoked computations.

He then "quotes" me again,

Your arguments are a non sequitur because it does not follow that if the Scythians were successful at something that the Hebrew slaves would have been successful at something similar too.

And replies with the same,

It is in fact not a "non sequitur" but a devastating [at least he fixed the spelling from this replies last incarnation!] rejoinder to those who claim that the Hebrews doing X activity was somehow impossible. In short, it puts the burden on the critic to explain why the Hebrews could not manage while the Scythians did.

I had noted in my original reply to this absurd grand-standing,

It is not up to the likes of me to demonstrate that the Hebrews could not do something that the Scythians did. It is up to the likes of Mr. Holding to demonstrate that the Hebrews did do something in parallel fashion with the Scythians if he is claiming "what's good for the Scythians is good for the Hebrews". In other words, the burden is not the skeptic's to research Scythian history and then uncritically allow the apologist to draw parallels between the Scythians and the ancient Hebrews of Goshen. Such a burden belongs to the apologist to not only tease out the details of Scythian history but then –if they'd offered such a claim—to demonstrate how the Scythians can be paralleled with the Hebrews toiling in bondage in Egypt as described in the Bible. Regardless, I think I pointed out quite clearly why the attempted parallel between the Hebrews and the Scythians is inappropriate. I noted that the Scythians were under vastly different living conditions than those imposed upon the Hebrews by the Egyptians according to the biblical account. Mr. Holding's only reply was to question my intelligence and try to sidestep the issue. He is yet to make any connection between the living conditions of the Scythians and the Hebrews so that we can know that the parallel is a valid one. So far, he has merely asserted that the parallel exists with no supporting evidence.

Mr. Holding's only follow-up reply is to continue his tap-dancing,

Remember, the critics claim that such activities are not possible. When shown that they are possible, it is a shifting of goalposts to then say, "How do you know it was possible in the case of Israel?"

Again, Mr. Holding is operating under the delusion that I am criticizing something other than his and Mr. Hardaway's magical mathematics which conjured up a Hebrew population of nearly 3 million persons in about 400 years. It has always been to this unsupported, unreasonable apologetic that I have directed my criticisms for the past four years! (My original article dealing with Mr. Holding and Mr. Hardaway's population calculations was published in 2005.) I feel particularly sorry for Mr. Holding if, after all this time, he still thinks I've taken this subject off-topic. He is working under a delusion, as he does with so many of the subjects he feels called upon to tackle.

Next, Mr. Holding paraphrases my observation,

How do we know anything about the nomadic Scythians who inhabited the Russian steppes of c. 1000 BCE? Through archaeology, of course. Look at the royal tombs of their kings we found.

He responds by objecting,

This is an irrelevant example, because the Hebrews had no such royalty. The issue here has been the life of the everyday Hebrew, and how allegedly impossible it was for them to live, and why we are not knee-deep in artifacts from the Exodus -- a common demand of critics. [See my Addendum below] By this argument, we ought to be chest-deep in artifacts from everyday Scythians; but specially-preserved items in tombs from persons who had no social parallel among the Hebrews is not an answer to this. Nor is it an answer to point to other differences in their cultures (e.g., they had horses, the Hebrews didn't).

As noted in my last reply to Mr. Holding's failing attempt to support his belief that a Hebrew population of 2-3 million blossoming in the Nile delta in the span of 400 years is "not unreasonable",

...it's the fact that the Scythians were able to have the luxury to construct such a tomb that seems lost on Mr. Holding. What does that tell us about Scythian society that we can infer from the biblical (and the non-existent archaeological) account of the exodus that the Hebrew slaves did not share? If the issue is the life of the EVERYDAY Hebrew, and this life is supposed to parallel that of the everyday Scythian, then I expect the everyday Scythian was held in oppressive bondage by a hostile, foreign government in a relatively small portion of the Scythian's territory and that this foreign authority actively worked to keep their population numbers down (along with all the other natural factors present in the ancient world that held population numbers in check generally). Is that what Mr. Holding is trying to argue? I think Mr. Holding has lost sight of my original argument. Remember, I'm not specifically arguing here about the lack of archaeological artifacts left behind by the Hebrews. I'm arguing the restrictions of the ancient world as revealed by archaeology that make impossible the fantastic number of the Hebrew population at the time of the exodus. Indeed, we ARE chest-deep in the archaeological artifacts that reveal these restrictions. These restrictions would have applied to the Scythians as well as to the ancient Hebrews, but the ancient Hebrews would have had additional restrictive conditions to the growth of their population if we are going to take the biblical tale with any amount of seriousness. These are restrictions Mr. Holding is yet to even acknowledge, much less deal with.

Mr. Holding's desperate desire to distance himself from those choking calculations regarding the preposterous population figures he and Mr. Hardaway float out in their absurd apologetic is laid bare when he writes,

The one and only issue here, in this section of the paper, is the one critics have appealed to: That 2-3 million everyday people left behind no remains to show that they had been there.

No, Mr. Holding. You can't pretend that this is "the one and only issue." Every criticism mentioned above is drawn directly from my own papers, even without your giving credit to me as their author, and I drenched my work with repeated appeals to the actual population figures themselves and your astounding arithmetic which tried to argue that "Skeptical objections to the growth of the Israelite population are simply unreasonable." It is wholly disrespectful to hide the source of the criticism directed at your magical mathematics, and dishonest to claim that the criticisms were directed at anything other than your and Mr. Hardaway's fantastical figures and how you ignored the archaeology to arrive at those sums.

Still operating under the delusion that my criticisms were leveled against the lack of Hebrew archaeological remains (remains, it should be noted, Mr. Holding cannot produce), Mr. Holding writes victoriously,

Indeed, other differences -- the fact that the Scythians had horses, and royal tombs, for example, only makes it more difficult to explain (by the logic of the critics) why the everyday Scythian people left no evidence behind, and therefore, makes it all the less strong to object that the Hebrews left no such evidence behind.

Is Mr. Holding, lecturer on the proper use of research material, unaware of the archaeological activities in Belsk, Nemirov, Kamenskoye etc.? Is he unaware that remains from these royal tombs indeed depict the life of the "everyday Scythian people"? But again, what relevancy does this have to Mr. Holding's claim that the growth of the Hebrew population from about 70 folks to nearly 3 million in 400 years is not unreasonable? Has he yet been able to show a parallel between the growth of the Scythian population and that of the Hebrews in bondage? I've been watching his replies for years now and I've yet to see him draw the connection.

I had noted, (as Mr. Holding paraphrases me),

The Scythians are attested to in the literature of other peoples. The Hebrews aren't.

To which Mr. Holding thinks it appropriate to reply,

This is an irrelevancy in context, since the issue is the remains left behind by everyday persons.

And, again, that is not the primary problem under consideration. The problem is with the number of Hebrews and how Mr. Holding and Mr. Hardaway's magical mathematics grew the Hebrew population in a relatively small north-eastern patch of the Nile delta centuries ago amid highly restrictive conditions on population growth in such a short time. The primary issue is not the fact that this horde didn't leave behind a single trace of their existence (although that is a very important observation to which I've repeatedly alluded). And, besides, the point is indeed relevant "in context" because the Scythians were mentioned in the literature of other peoples precisely because they had a population number and cultural habits which got them noticed by their neighbors. "Remains left behind" by a people are not limited to pottery sherds and military weaponry. Remains also include mention in extant literature, a critical piece of evidence the biblical Hebrews obviously lack since Mr. Holding can't call up a single example to buttress his claims. He resorts instead to labeling such a request "irrelevant" and tries to quickly step away from this "devastating rejoinder."

Mr. Holding goes on to mutter,

However, it may be noted that with the exception of Egypt, we have no reason to suppose that there is any document left to us from other civilizations in contact with the Exodus Hebrews would have left any record (e.g., Moabites, Midianites).

Of course, this is merely an assertion made by Mr. Holding to sweep this observation under the rug. Just why wouldn't we find mention of this massive horde of former Egyptian slaves in neighboring cultures' literature? As I noted in my original article, the sheer number of Hebrews said to have left Egypt was "between 60% and 100% of the [total] Egyptian population" of the time of the supposed exodus. Surely, someone would have noticed such a devastating decline in the region's population and envious neighbors would have swooped in to take advantage of the rare opportunity this vacuum created in the area. But the records are silent. This is a fact Mr. Holding does not wish to address and instead dodges behind his Scythians in hopes they will hide his failings.

Mr. Holding and Mr. Hardaway's fantasized figures leave Egypt without much of a remaining population after the swarm of slaves leave Goshen. And, yet, Mr. Holding maintains that those Egyptians left behind in the wake of this decimating exodus were too proud to mention it in any of their writings. He claims, 

In the case of Egypt, it is standard to point out that mention of the Hebrews would be refused because of the implied embarrassment to Egypt.

Perhaps, though, because so few Egyptians were left following the depopulation of the land, those that remained were simply illiterate and unable to write anything down! If we're just going to make things up, let's at least use what the fantasy offers. However, as a side note, many claim that Rameses II was the pharaoh of the exodus. Whether he was or not, we know historically that Rameses II led his army to combat the Hittites in a skirmish known as the Battle of Kadesh. Rameses lost. An Egyptian writing of the battle, however, spins the events so that Rameses comes out better than he actually faired. Yet, the so-called Poem of Pentaur describes Rameses bleakly calling to his god for aid during the darkest hour of the battle:

None of my princes are with me. Not one of my generals–not one of my captains of bowmen or chariots. My soldiers have abandoned me–my horsemen have fled–there are none to combat beside me! Where art thou, oh Amen, my father? Hath the father forgotten his son? Behold! have I done aught without thee? Have I not walked in thy ways, and waited on thy words? Have I not built thee temples of enduring stone? Have I not dedicated to thee sacrifices of tens of thousands of oxen, and of every rare and sweet-scented wood? Have I not given thee the whole world in tribute? I call upon thee, oh Amen, my father! I invoke thee! Behold, I am alone, and all the nations of the earth are leagued against me! My foot-soldiers and my chariot-men have abandoned me! I call, and none hear my voice!

Clearly the Egyptians were not above showing their despair. So, even in the wake of the Hebrew exodus, while the Egyptians may have spun the tale so that it looked as though they chased the ungrateful horde from the Two Lands, an event that size would still have likely been recorded.

Or, it is likely that a later Egyptian king would have looked back upon this disaster as indicative of the poor administration of his predecessor. Such a practice, particularly following a rather catastrophic time in Egyptian history, is well-attested in the ancient records. As Egyptologist Edmund S. Meltzer, PhD. noted to me in private correspondence,

Official texts could mention a disaster or calamity if it was in the past, had occurred under a king who (according to later Egyptians) wasn't doing his job to uphold Maat or the right order of the universe, or was contrasted with the accomplishment of the king writing in the inscription to correct whatever the situation was.  Thus Tutankhamun's Restoration Stela talks about how things were bad under Akhenaten (who isn't named of course) because he abandoned the gods, and Tut was now restoring things to the way they should be.  Hatshepsut in her Great Speos Artemidos Inscription talks about repairing things that were (supposedly) in ruins since the Hyksos occupation of northern Egypt.  This type of statement is also suspect because it has a strong element of propaganda to reflect well on the current king, so it might overdo the current king's great improvements or the extent of the earlier bad situation that the current king supposedly has to correct.

So, surely, the Hebrew decimation of the Egyptians as described in the Bible was every bit as disastrous as the reigns of Akhenaten or the Hyksos. Why do we not find later kings writing of how they brought Egypt back following such a calamity? And, we of course have evidence of that other "everyday" population in Nile delta: the native Egyptian population. So why not evidence of this overwhelming horde of Hebrews the Bible claims covered the land and stole most of its treasures in the exodus? Mr. Holding can't say. He merely wants to take the cheap, easy way out and refer to that which "is standard to point out" (in creationist circles) and move the conversation quickly along, hoping no one will notice his sloppy lack of critical thinking and research.

Finally, Mr. Holding paraphrases my criticism:

Your challenge is useless since the population parallel between the Scythians and the Hebrews simply doesn’t exist.

To which he answers,

In one sense that is right -- since it is likely that there were far MORE Scythians in their area over hundreds of years than there were Hebrews during the Exodus' 40-year period.

Mr. Holding completely ignores the point, spinning his answer to confuse his readers. Recall that this discussion has to do with the relevancy of the Scythians to the population figures of the biblical Hebrews of the exodus. The Hebrews are said to have numbered in the millions, at one time. At no time has Mr. Holding been able to parallel the Scythian population with a number that high. Besides, as noted in my previous article, a point Mr. Holding completely ignores, "the Scythians were nomads. Their territory stretched from the Danube, over the northern crest of the Black Sea, to the steppes of the Ukraine." The Hebrews were confined to a small swath of land in the north-eastern Nile delta. The Hebrews would have totally consumed the land they were on were they as numerous as the Bible, and Mr. Holding's calculations claim. So, once again, how can Mr. Holding be propping up the Scythians as an example against which we can compare the biblical Hebrews? Unless Mr. Holding can find evidence of a horde of nearly 3 million Scythians all confined to an equivalent camp in the northern steppes above the Black Sea to that area occupied by the biblical Hebrew horde, all together at the same time, he cannot use the Sycthians as a parallel to the ancient Hebrews of the exodus. 

He finishes by noting,

 The logic of the critics would demand that we be chest-deep in artifacts and bones from everyday Scythians (not just their specially-preserved rulers). This is something the critics cannot answer.

While we have an embarrassment of evidence for a native Egyptian population throughout the centuries of their presence along the Nile --including the "every day," common person--we haven't a shred of evidence regarding this massive, preternatural, suffocating horde of Hebrew slaves that Mr. Holding and Mr. Hardaway's conjured calculations say are possible despite skeptical objections to the contrary. And, remember, we do have archaeological evidence of the Scythians! Earlier, Mr. Holding mentioned shifting goalposts. "Moving the Goalposts is a type of informal logical fallacy in which the arguer, presented with evidence against one of his claims, redefines his claim without acknowledging the validity of the evidence and counterargument." Mr. Holding grabs hold of his post and hoists it high into the air, strolling with it down the field trying to divert attention away from the fact that he originally asked his critics for archaeological evidence for the Scythians generally. If critics could answer questions about "how the Scythians" did something then that would supply the answer for how the biblical Hebrews did the same. (His original wording was, "If you ask us, 'How did Israel do X?' -- I will ask you, 'How did the Scythians do X?'") But then, when presented with such evidence in the form of "royal" tombs, he says "not just" these archaeological remains but other ones that satisfy the new position of his criteria. Mr. Holding isn't serious about defending his and Mr. Hardaway's magical mathematical calculations for the Hebrew population of the exodus. Originally, I suspect, he thought he'd found some refuge in referring to the Scythians as stand-ins for the historically invisible Hebrew horde. As that began to fall apart, he shifted the discussion away from the numerical calculations and tried to focus merely on some perceived parallels he believed existed archaeologically between the Scythians and the biblical Hebrews (i.e. neither left behind physical remains). When that parallel was brought down as archaeological remains of the Scythians were brought forward in stark contrast to the absence of even one shred of archaeological evidence in favor of the biblical Hebrews, Mr. Holding removed all mention of me on his pages dealing with this discussion and then shifted the parallel between the invisible Hebrews and the well-attested Sycthians away from any archaeological remains only to those remains which Mr. Holding will --in some future defintion of his demands, in all likelihood--decide upon are relevant to his version of this discourse.

In the end, Mr. Holding cannot account for how the Hebrew population grew while subjected to the sort of suffocating bondage and ancient living conditions described in the Bible and evidenced through archaeology. The magical mathematical formula he and Mr. Hardaway drew up in defense of the biblical claims dissolved under my detailed critique of their methods in my original article of this series. Mr. Holding's attempt to hide behind the Scythians has been shown to not only be irrelevant, but not helpful to his case at all. The Scythians are a well-attested to population in ancient literature and archaeology. The same simply cannot be said of the historically-invisible Hebrew slaves of Goshen. And, while Mr. Holding may be able to make my name vanish from his website, he cannot so easily conjure up the Hebrew population by appealing to sanitary mathematical methods.

 

Addendum (11/27/09):

Regarding Mr. Holding's assertion that skeptics believe we should be "chest-deep in artifacts" from the biblical Hebrews:

No one, other than Mr. Holdings's fantasized hyper-skeptic, is asking that we be "chest-deep" in archaeological artifacts left by the biblical Hebrews of Goshen. But is it reasonable to possibly be ankle-deep? Why can't we at least dip a toe in some archaeological evidence for the biblical Hebrews of the exodus? Something? Anything?

We have the evidence from royal tombs which Mr. Holding acknowledges, but wants to discount. "The Hebrews had no such royalty," he says. "The issue here has been the life of the everyday Hebrew..." First of all, as I've previously noted, if Mr. Holding is going to start cherry-picking what can and what can't be used from the Scythians to compare against the biblical Hebrews, then that alone shows the weakness of his so-called "challenge." Secondly, just who does Mr. Holding believe built those royal Scythian tombs? The royalty buired within? Who manufactured the tombs' contents? Were the treasures popped into place by some magical being, as the biblical god popped into place all the earth's animals according to Genesis? Who are being depicted on Scythian pottery? Who made the pottery? The Scythians were horsemen. Who took care of the horses? Who made the saddles and harnesses? Were all these things done merely by the royalty whom we find laid to rest in the Scythian tombs? There is a Scythian carpet, a magnificent piece from the 5th century BCE. Calculations estimate that it took nearly two years to weave the intricate piece in various colors of thread. Who weaved this work? Every day Scythians. Who dyed the fibers? Every day Scythians. (See Rolle, The World of the Scythians. 1980. University of California Press)

Of course, it was the "everyday" Scythian who dug the tombs. The tombs are evidence not only of the royalty buried within but also of the "everyday" Scythians who dug them. The goldwork and jewelry are evidence not just of the royalty who could afford to possess and wear them but also of the "everyday" Scythian craftsmen who designed and made them. Royalty had to eat in order to live long enough to accumulate enough wealth and warrant the construction of a tomb. Who made the food they ate? "Everyday" Scythian farmers, that's who. Who built and inhabited the villages over which the Scythian royalty ruled? "Everyday" Scythians, I'd suspect. The warriors and other horsemen had "everyday" servants who took care of their animals, made the saddles and harnesses by which they rode their steeds.

Indeed, when you take more than a superficial glance at what the royal tombs tell us, they tell us more than just about the royalty whom we find buried within. They tell us of the "everyday" Scythian. This is a detail overlooked by zealous apologists without any depth of curiosity who merely want to make rhetorical points with their audience instead of using common sense and reason. Where is the equivalent evidence regarding the biblical Hebrews of the exodus? Certainly we have bountiful evidence of the native Egyptian population. We have evidence of the Israelites in Israel. But we have nothing "in-between," evidence of the biblical Hebrews either in Egypt in the suffocating quantity described in the Bible nor in the Sinai desert left behind during their 40-year trek. This is a fact apologists like Mr. Holding want to ignore and draw their readers' attentions away from by concocting irrelevant "challenges" for their skeptic opponents.

The tombs I mentioned earlier tell us a great deal about Scythian society. There is nothing --not one thing-- archaeologically to tell us anything about even the existence of the biblical Hebrews of the exodus. Mr. Holding's dishonest "Scythia Challenge" is merely a smokescreen to hide his lack of such evidence and to try to shift the burden to his opponents. As can be seen, we may not be "chest-deep," or "knee-deep" in artifacts left by the Scythians, but what we do have is a cup overflowing compared to that which the likes of Mr. Holding can produce for the biblical Hebrews of Goshen, his magical mathematics notwithstanding. 

 

 

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