Responding to Tim Zeak on Exodus, part I

Ibn Khaldun, a Neglected Source of Antichristianity or Attacks on the Bible · Responding to Tim Zeak on Exodus, part I · More on Exodus, not on Tim Zeak, for now · Some Have Claimed Ezra Wrote Moses · Israelites at the Exodus

One of the youtube atheists I like to follow and refute videos by linked to Recovering from Religion. On that, you find a blog, where one Tim Zeak attacked the historicity of the Exodus.

Ten Reasons Why the Bible’s Story of the Exodus is Not True
And why it really matters.
Tim Zeak, Oct 26 · 14 min read
https://medium.com/excommunications/ten-reasons-why-the-bibles-story-of-the-exodus-is-not-true-4144bc305665

The most urgent of these, if you will excuse the pun, is the toilet problem.

5. Unrealistic hygiene requirements: Deuteronomy 23:12–14 says, “You shall also have a place outside the camp and go out there, and you shall have a spade among your tools, and it shall be when you sit down outside, you shall dig with it and shall turn to cover up your excrement. Since the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp to deliver you and to defeat your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy; and He must not see anything indecent among you or He will turn away from you.”

For those living near the center of camp, it would probably require a couple of miles each way, given the estimate of the population, animals and bare-bone infrastructure. Below is a refugee camp with tents. To house the 2,500,000 people, they would have needed around 625,000 of them with no restroom facilities inside its perimeter.

Well, is that so ...

I will first of all assume tents were family tents and somewhat crowded : 2.5 m² per person.

Now, let's first assume, the camp was - as it was in fact not - one big square.

2 500 000 * 2.5 m² = 6 250 000 m².

If we assume the camp was one big square, we get a side of the square root of that surface : 2 500 m.

Let's again assume no one was leaving across the middle, so all took the shortest way, this was 1 250 m to go out, and - less enerous - same way back again.

But ... if we read Numbers, we see that the camp was a big cross.

Camp of the Levites in the middle. Judah and two more tribes in the East, Ruben and two more tribes in the South, Ephraim and two more tribes in the West, and Dan with two more tribes in the North. One can imagine squares of three tribes at a go, but it is more correct, I think, to imagine the first named tribes closest to the middle and and the other two in each direction sticking out from these four either serially or in a Y-shape.

This leaves biggest square - if such - sth like ...

Numbers 2:3 On the east Juda shall pitch his tents by the bands of his army: and the prince of his sons shall be Nahasson the son of Aminadab. [4] And the whole sum of the fighting men of his stock, were seventy-four thousand six hundred.

Now, 74 600 fighting men = how many persons overall?

For 2 500 000 persons, the Biblical figure of fighting men was ...

Numbers 2:[32] This is the number of the children of Israel, of their army divided according to the houses of their kindreds and their troops, six hundred and three thousand five hundred and fifty. [33] And the Levites were not numbered among the children of Israel: for so the Lord had commanded Moses. [34] And the children of Israel did according to all things that the Lord had commanded. They camped by their troops, and marched by the families and houses of their fathers.

2 500 000 / 603 550 = 4.142

74 600 * 4.142 = 309 005

309 005 * 2.5 m² = 772 512.5 m²

And the square root of that is : 878.9 m. The walk out, South or North, from the first square East of the Levites was then 439.5 m. I have for a few months been living as homeless in one porch of a school (a professional high school) not used during the first confinement, and the public toilet in use was about 500 meters away. For much of the time, I made it. Not always for peeing, but for the excrements.

Add into this, that the Israelites were not eating lots of croissants and pains au chocolat as like people offered such to me, their digestion was lighter. Add unto this, they could have taken to going out while collecting mannah, which was also around the camp.

A gomor is 2.3 litres. 309 005 * 2.3 l = 710 711.5 l. Or, on each side of the camp, 355 355.75 l. One l = 1 dm³. Let's assume the thickness was 0.5 cm or 0.05 dm. This means a surface of 355 355.75 dm³ / 0.05 dm = 7 107 115 dm². Divide this by the sidelength ... 7 107 115 dm² / 8 789 dm = 808.6 dm or 80 m thickness before you are outside the mannah field.

And, add into this that the camp of Judah need not have been a square, if it was a rectangle, the way out of the camp was arguably shorter still. Let's assume proportions were 1:2, this means 1.4 times as long, and 1.4 times less broad, and the thickness of the mannah fringe is also lessened. 368 meters before you can sit down.

In other words, the requirement is not beyond realisation. I'll be back on more.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Restitute of Carthage
Bishop and Martyr
9.XII.2020

Carthagine sancti Restituti, Episcopi et Martyris, in cujus solemnitate sanctus Augustinus de ipso ad populum sermonem habuit.