 start with introductions of what you're trying to accomplish on your channel, what you're up to. And then we'll start with Jim and CJ. And if that's after that, we'll get with the format of the debate. Ready, Jim? You could just, if you want, if you want to bypass that as well, it's up to you, buddy. OK. So CJ, do you want to give your introduction or? Yeah, sure. So I'm sorry, I didn't know you know me. So go ahead, CJ. We're totally good. Just going to say, yeah, obviously, I'm a CJ Cox. I have the channel here, the Cinecog here on YouTube, where I discuss Christian apologetics as well as global politics, although I'll probably be splitting those two things into two separate channels and just have the Cinecog strictly for apologetics here soon. But nonetheless, that's sort of my whole shtick is trying to defend the Bible from a fundamentalist literalist perspective, trying to own that term. And you'd make it not as much of a bad word as it is anymore. And yeah, that's my whole thing. I'm happy to be here. Happy for the hosting and all that. And go ahead and get the show on the road. Yeah, awesome. Obviously. Yep, we're looking forward to it. Jim, do you want to plug in your channel, what you're doing real quick? I just want to head on to the format. Yeah, my YouTube channel is YouTube.com slash Jim Majors. Check it out. Awesome, thank you guys. So just to let you know tonight's format, we have 10 minute openings. We'll have the affirmative side go first and the anti-affirmative go next. Then we'll have about a one hour open, moderate discussion. If need be, then we'll have a 30 minute Q&A session. To everyone in the audience know, we are a neutral platform that hosts debates on science, politics, and religion. If you like reminders of our other controversial debates we have coming up, hit that subscribe button. We want you to feel welcome here no matter what your views are. So let's kick it over to the CJ and let him go with his 10 minute opening. Briefly, we'll give a little leeway or also Jim as well. So whenever you're ready, the floor is yours CJ. Alrighty, I appreciate that. Just one moment. So I just want to say first off of course, and I'm starting now by the way, Shalom and blessings to you all in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to whom I give all the glory. I'd like to of course thank James for allowing us to actually use this platform for this conversation especially on such short notice as well as praise for hosting Jim for opposing me here today and of course the audience for being here. Obviously this is a pretty cool thing here and of course to all who love good discussion and dialogue please do subscribe to this channel because this is something that is of course very frequent and that's my own personal endorsement for this channel at least if it counts for anything or I think this is a pretty awesome channel. So would recommend that. The thesis before us today is obviously a pretty interesting one. It's a vital one to the faith I think of any Christian or Jew. It's obviously a vital one to the question of Israelite history and how well we know it and whether or not the Bible can be trusted. And interestingly enough even though it's one of the older mythicism questions having its origin all the way back in the late 17th early 18th centuries it's actually not one that is as commonly debated as say whether or not Jesus or Muhammad or even King Arthur existed. The position which I of course seek to defend in bringing this up again is that Moses did in fact exist and that he did at least relatively the same things as what he did in the Bible. I believe the Bible literally but I just want to point out for the sake of argument I am willing to grant that it's possible that for example numbers can be exaggerated for the 600,000 or something like that. I would say basically that that does not indicate that Moses is non-existence anymore than the fact that none of us believe that a million Persians showed up at Thermopylai indicates that Leonidas or Xerxes didn't exist or that the battle of Thermopylai didn't happen. So even though I do believe those numbers and also believe the writing of the Pentateuch was done by Moses I'm not actually here to defend those per se because I don't think that those things actually indicate if they're not true a lack of Moses's existence. So I'd like to go ahead and jump right into the points that I have today. The first piece of evidence that I would like to put forward is actually the Bible itself. The fact that the Bible says Moses existed is of course evidence that he did exist. Now I want to be clear, this is not one of those the Bible said it there for kind of arguments that you might hear from like a preacher or something along those lines. Rather my point is to say that the Bible is an incredibly old collection of texts. Many of those texts at least present themselves as the history of the Israelite people and all of these texts seem to indicate whenever something like Moses's or whenever the era of Moses is brought up that there was indeed a Moses there that he led an exodus that the exodus came out of Egypt so on and so forth, right? And in the self-same way that the Sumerian Kings list or looking at the inscription of Amenhotep or something like that the same way that those would count as evidence for such and such a person's existence even if we don't necessarily believe everything in them. Likewise, I would say that the Bible certainly does indicate very strongly of course that Moses did indeed exist as a historical figure. It's worthy to point out at this point in time that the Bible story as a source from Moses or the Bible as rather a source from Moses without the word story there does actually meet all of the various criterion of authenticity by which scholars used to deduce which things in history and legend are true and which things are not true. For example, he meets the criterion of excuse me, multiple attestation in the fact that not only is he mentioned all throughout the Torah which although in my view that would be one source in the majority of scholars views that's certainly multiple sources but he has also mentioned in the book of Samuel in the book of Kings, in the book of Isaiah he's alluded to in the book of Amos and in the book of Hosea so on and so forth. We see multiple witnesses multiple or not witnesses excuse me but multiple textual witnesses to a tradition that indicates that the Israelites at least believed that Moses was a historical figure. He also meets the criterion of embarrassment being showed on some instances to even be kind of cowardly to be rebellious and to not want to actually follow God's commands outright telling God no having a speech impediment striking a rock and therefore not being allowed in the promised land so on and so forth. We see it meets the criterion of coherence namely it has the self same story every time that it's told there might be minor differences and those differences are certainly things that people can discuss but it's never going to be something along the lines of like for example, Hercules where in Greek legends you don't even really know what era Hercules is supposed to live in let alone what he did. Is there a core story somewhere? Probably, but we don't really know what that core story is although a lot of people think that it is probably the 12 labors but he shows up in the Trojan War he shows up in this that and the other kind of myth you look at Moses though consistently the story is coherent consistent and it's the self same details and the self same order. All of these things are indications that Moses of course does exist. It's also important to note that as far back as you can push Israelite history Moses and the Exodus are there. What I mean here is that the oldest surviving Israelite writings which are of course found in the Bible if you take the traditional view that would be either the Torah or Job if you take modern scholarly consensus that's probably Amos, Hosea or Isaiah. Doesn't really matter because all of them indicate that Moses is somebody who is accepted as a historical figure at that point in time. The oldest manuscript we have of any Hebrew writing whatsoever is a scroll found in an amulet from around 650 BC. The scroll not only is a quotation of a book believed to be penned by Moses numbers specifically number six 24 through 26 but it's actually a direct quotation of a blessing that Moses passes on to Aaron. You've all read it before or at least heard it before it's the Lord bless you and keep you the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. If like I said, a lot of modern scholars suggest that Amos, Isaiah and Hosea are probably the oldest surviving biblical texts. Amos and Hosea explicitly alluded to being pulled out of Egypt and Isaiah outright uses the name Moses on top of the fact that it alludes to the Israelites coming out of Egypt. So as far back as you can push Israelite history there appears to be a acceptance of Moses and of Moses's existence. More so than that though you actually have even better examples of at least in my opinion of evidence that Moses did exist. For example, even if you assume that Moses did not write the Torah in its totality as we see it today, you still have certain things within the Torah that are claiming to be written by Moses and that indeed are claiming probably to be pre-existing the Torah in its final form. For example, Exodus 15, the song of the sea is a song that is believed to be penned by Moses. So where did that come from if the person who is explicitly credited to doesn't exist? You could say the same thing for Psalm 90 and there's a couple other good examples as well. The law itself, the common, what do you call that? Documentary hypothesis today. Usually it suggests that there is a Yahweh source and Elohim source, a priestly source and a Deuteronous source, right? And that these four sources are what make up what we now know today as the Torah. Now, ignoring the fact that we don't have any evidence whatsoever that any of these four sources actually exist, no manuscripts, no schools of thought, nothing like that, at least two of those sources sounds suspiciously like the story of Moses, namely, law givers, which you would expect from a Deuteronous source and those who worship the God Yehovah. That's the second instance that actually would be something that I think would, or the third rather, because we're on the law now, that would be something that I think would indicate the proof of Moses' existence is worship of Yehovah. Where did this God come from? This God is not anywhere in any culture outside of the Bible and the Israelite tradition. It is the claim of the Israelite people that the person who actually set up Yehovah worship in Israel is Moses. If Moses doesn't exist, then where did this God come from? Why did he come from? Who set up this worship? Why did people accept it so on and so forth? You could ask questions such as, where do the priests get their legitimacy from? Where does this Tabernacle information from? The Tabernacle was a fairly interesting one because if Moses did not exist, and indeed the time period which he's believed to have existed in did not happen, then all of the painstaking detail about how you set up the Tabernacle and how you build it and how it is to be set up in camp and so on and so forth was set up for no reason at all other than to be there. Entire sections of Leviticus' numbers Deuteronomy made pure fiction, mind you, made simply to exist, having no purpose whatsoever and recording no actual historical facts. That is absurd in my view. You have things like the origin of Passover itself. Passover is a very interesting thing because first off, it is not only the origin of the holiday itself is grounded in Moses and his existence, but also the celebration, the tradition of celebrating it is also founded in Moses. To give you an example, the origin of Christmas can mean two different things depending on what exactly you're asking, right? It can mean why do we celebrate Christmas which is the birth of Jesus, whether or not that's accurate, of course, not the point, but that's why you celebrate it, right? It can also mean who started celebrating Christmas and those are two different questions and in the case of Christmas, they are indeed two different events. In the case of Passover though, the reason you celebrate comes from Moses and the person who instituted it is also Moses. And this is made doubly problematic by the fact that Passover is not really a celebratory holiday. It's actually quite somber. One could accurately describe it as a holiday that kind of sucks. You have to eat bitter food. You have to eat it in haste. You have to, of course, remember a atrocious situation that happened in the past. The term Passover comes from the death angel passing over the homes of the Israelites while it took the lives of firstborn children, right? It's a very brutal story, a very somber story. It's not a story necessarily of celebration but of memorial and remembrance. And yet, here we have this holiday which, by the way, goes as far back in Israelite history as we can possibly push, being celebrated and accepted by a mass of people. Why and where did it come from and who instituted the celebration of it? And there's numerous other things that you can go into as well that seemingly indicate that Moses existed. For example, even though we don't have direct archeological evidence of Moses himself, by which I mean we don't have the name Moses, the event the Exodus or the wandering found in our current archeological record, we do know for a definitive fact that there was large groups of Canaanite and Leventine Western Semitic peoples who were found in the Goshen area in Egypt. We also know that these people attained high positions of power, like we expect from Joseph, that they were there with the Pharaoh's blessing and that eventually they became impoverished and enslaved. And we also know that these people disappeared seemingly out of nowhere. We also have record of a conquest, an intensely brutal conquest which seemingly has a religious vendetta, which happens in the land of Israel roughly 50 to 100 years depending on the archeology and what it says, I would obviously argue it's probably closer to 50 because it's the Bible story, but nonetheless after these events are seemingly taken place. And destructions in cities that we actually do expect, cities like Laquiche, cities like Hutsor, cities like Jericho. And I would simply ask the audience, if you have point number one and you have point number three, is it not logical to assume that point number two does in fact exist? I'm sure we're gonna see challenges to whether or not we have those archeological evidences, but they are certainly there and I certainly hope to get to those challenges today. There's other things that you can point out as well. There's rather Egyptian sounding names in Exodus, including but not limited to Moses's own name, for example, Thutmose, Ramesses, Achmose, Doudemose, right? Seems like that Moses might actually have origin. 20 seconds. Okay. It seems like Moses might actually have the name, right? Might actually have an origin, at least in some way in Egyptian language, or at least that it might be related to an Egyptian word. You have also Phineas is another example of that. Phineas, another Levite who seemingly has an Egyptian, at least sounding name. And there's other things that we could go into as well, but I'm sure we're gonna have plenty of time to do that in the back and forth. I'm gonna go ahead and concede the rest of my time since it looks like we're about out and thank you guys for allowing me to of course be here. Awesome CJ, I think for your opening, it was about 12 minutes-ish. And then Jim, you have the exact same amount of time if you need and the floor is yours when you're ready. So since ancient times, multiple cultures have coexisted. They've existed alongside of each other, whether peaceful or not. And since ancient times, people have used stories to explain their origins. Since ancient times, people have told stories to try to establish a provenance for their historicity. It's something that validates their religion in spite of other religions existing and other cultures existing claiming to have ancient origins. And to do this, we often see texts that attempt to establish their early origins by creating a history to fit their narrative. For example, we have the Moses story, which seems to have possibly been a direct retelling of an older Mesopotamian story. For example, the story of Sargon of Akkad, an old Akkadian story. We have extremely old tablets, Kanaeform tablets, which talk about how he's put into a basket made of reeds, placed in the Euphrates, and is later rescued and brought out of the water. We have stories about who Moses married in the Bible in Numbers chapter 12. It's a Kushite woman, and we don't know much about her according to the Bible, but we can read people like Josephus, who writes in The Antiquity of the Jews, and talks about this woman that he married. It's not Zipporah, it's not this daughter of a Midianite priest that we read about in the Bible, but instead it's this other woman who is the son of a king of Ethiopia. Totally different name, calls her a Kushite, and nobody can agree on what year this was supposed to happen. Is it anywhere between 1500 to 1200 BCE? There's just a huge span. Archaeology does not reflect any of the claims made in the Bible about Moses. According to the Bible, between a million and a half to two million, possibly even more, Israelites were supposed to have crossed the Red Sea. So they were supposed to have been chased by an Egyptian army, and that sea was supposed to close up on the Egyptian army and kill them all, and we're talking chariots, horses, soldiers, armor, weapons. After more than a century of archeologists looking specifically for this in these locations that they believe are told about in the Bible, never do they find it. In the over 100 years of searching, have come up with not a chariot will, not a spearhead. In fact, the people who do hold to Moses' authenticity, they cannot only not decide what era Moses lived in, but they can't decide on which Moses it was. Is it the Moses who led an army of enslaved lepers to defeat Pharaoh? Is it just the tribal Levites who came from Egypt? There are so many different theories that literally you cannot put two people in a room together who believe it in and get them to agree on it, unless of course they both get their information from patterns of evidence. I mean, the Bible cannot be used as a source of evidence. There are many modern day Jewish rabbis who agree. There are many modern day Christians who agree. They don't agree that there was a historical Abraham or a historical Adam or a historical Moses even, historical Noah, they explain these away as something that they know They can look at these stories and they can see the purposes behind these. We see these literary tropes that are written about all over the place. You know, this hero coming from nothing, this rags for riches story, being placed in a basket to be preserved, a princess or a prince, a royalty becoming familiar with the struggles of the common people, the crossing of a body of water in order to have a new origin suffering in the wilderness. None of this is new. It's all just a reworking. I mean, and we see other religions doing this too, other cultures that do this. The Trojan War and the stories of ancient Greece. I mean, this is not history. It's not, if you can't accept the numbers, if you can't accept the differences in early rabbinical literature, I mean, then, I don't know. You just can't rely on this as a source of history. I don't, I guess that's really all I have to say. Awesome. So you were about five and a half minutes, so you have about seven minutes to spare there. That's fine, I'll just get into it. Yeah, we'll just leave it for the questions in early super chats. But now we'll go into the open dialogue. This will be about an hour, maybe more. And you guys just wanna hit it off and we'll see where it goes. Sure, absolutely. So there's a couple of things I just wanna point out right out the gate because I don't mean to be too abrasive, but I already see some examples of relatively faulty reasoning, I think here. So first off, you say, if the numbers can't be trusted, how do we know that the source can be trusted? But I assume that you don't believe one million Persians showed up at Thermopylae, is that correct? No. Right, exactly, because nobody does, right? Virtually no historian on this entire planet believes that a million Persians showed up at Thermopylae. But we know the Battle of Thermopylae occurred, right? We're not debating whether or not the Battle of Thermopylae occurred, just because the numbers are wrong, Herodotus exaggerated that maybe even by a factor of 10, that doesn't actually mean anything about the story itself, the story actually. Right, but what about the characters? Does it mean that the characters that you attest to are historical? Like Leonidas and Xerxes, yeah, we actually do believe them to be historical today. I don't know if we have extra sources for Leonidas, but I know we do confirm him as somebody who is historical. We certainly believe that. Even though we recognize that the story of one million is exaggerated. Now, I even personally believe the 600,000 being a literalist, but even if I'm wrong about that, that doesn't mean Moses didn't exist. It simply means that it was exaggerated over time, and we know that that happened frequently throughout history. Right, so we know that there was a population, some submitted groups that were in Egypt this time. We know that, we do have evidence for that, but we don't have evidence for an exodus of these people. We don't have evidence of this event happening. I'm not saying that there weren't Israelites in Egypt. I'm saying that we don't have evidence of this event. Well, right, but as I said, I will fully grant that the particular event itself, at least thus far, has not been documented archeologically. That's perfectly fine. But real quick, before I get to a response to that, I just wanna point out though, you say like, when you mentioned like, well, some of these numbers and stuff like that can't be true. I would just like to point out that is, that's fine from a historical perspective. You even would agree, right? Because we all agree the Sumerian kings didn't live 9,000 years, and there wasn't a one million Persians at Thermopylae, and so on. So the numbers are kind of irrelevant, right? Okay, let's talk about what is relevant though. What else do we know about Moses? Do you believe that he was really placed in a basket and rescued by Pharaoh's daughter? I do believe that that's accurate, yes. I think it was probably a little bit more planned than like the Prince of Egypt scene, for example. I can't imagine that his mom actually thought, hey, you know, just dropping him in the river is gonna be a wise idea. Is this the same thing happened to Sargon of a Cod? I might have, honestly. But to be fair, a lot of similarities happen to a lot of people's different stories. For example, a rabbi or a rich detour itself. Do you know what the Hebrew word that they use for the basket is? I know it's a basket of reeds, yeah. What they use is Teva. Teva is used one other time in the Bible, and it's used to refer to Noah's Ark. It, the, whenever Moses is crossing the Israelites, they refer to the red sea, or the reed sea as yam suf, suf meaning reeds. And whereas his basket placed in his verse story, it's placed in the suf, sufim. So what would that, I don't understand though, why would that be an argument that Moses doesn't exist? So this is a, it's a, it's a literary device, right? It's showing this theme that it's almost foreshadowing his crossing of the reed sea. Well, see, I mean, I, You know, it's symbolic for preservation of life. I mean, you can certainly, I guess like claim that, right? But it doesn't seem to be like, most people aren't coming to that conclusion when they're reading it, right? There's a lot of people, I'm sure, who are esoterically kind of reading into stuff. But when we're reading the narrative, right? We're all obviously just taking this at its face value for the most part. That this is what it is. Right, it's because you're reading it in English. Well, no, even with reading it in Hebrew though, I mean, obviously like, just look at the fact that, I mean, look at the different movie examples as just an example, right? Nobody's like reading into it in the movie example, they just portray it as the Bible puts out because that's what we've all accepted. But Jews accepted it. Right, but Christians, right? They're calling the basket an arc. Well, I don't understand how that's a problem though, I guess, like it's not a relevant point to me, you know what I mean? Like, so they called it an arc, so what? They're just saying that that's something that he was kept safe in. There might be a similarity to a story from Sargon. I don't actually, I don't have any problem with that. The fact is there's similarity in a lot of people's stories from all across the world. There's an awful lot of similarity in people in our own country. Abraham Lincoln and George Washington's stories are rather similar being self-educated and so on and so forth. Right, but they're not the exact same. The Sargon story is certainly not the exact same as Moses though. That would be a way stretching of the truth. I mean, Sargon is a conqueror. Sargon is a military leader. Sargon is an emperor, you know what I mean? Sargon's not the presenter of a law and the spokesperson of Jehovah and the free year of a bunch of slaves, right? He has a rags the richest story that happens to include being put in a basket. But I mean, to say that this is exactly the same, I mean, that is a way stretching the truth. Okay, but when it talks about being conceived and being born in secret, being placed in a reed basket and being covered in bitumen, being put, being placed in the river, being brought out of the water, which is what the Bible claims Moses means, even though that sort of Hebrew is first millennium Hebrew, not second millennium. So we know that the name Moses itself isn't, it's not even as old as Moses claims to be. But which, by the way, is it 1200 or 1500 BC? When do you think he lived? I mean, the Bible's pretty clear about this. It's about 1450 BC. People who do take the Bible as seriously have always come to that conclusion. For the most part, it's Hollywood and secular historians who have claimed some time around the time. Are you aware that even the people who, even Christians like the people who seriously claim that Moses existed and try to put forward an argument, they have a completely abandoned the 15th century argument completely? That's not accurate at all. I literally watched them daily, actually. In fact, as a matter of fact, you can go to the biblical research right here on YouTube right now and you will find them defending a 1450 date. You can, of course, go do patterns of evidence. You already referenced that. They defend a 1450 date. That is a chronology that nobody agrees with. That's fine. I'm not bothered by that, frankly. The fact that people might disagree with something at some point in time doesn't really mean anything. Actually argue against it and then we'll start talking, you know what I mean? But just saying, well, I don't agree with that and scholars don't agree with that. So scholars didn't agree that germs cause disease at one point in time, it does. Scholars do put forward arguments. I'm not an Egyptologist, but I do know that no Egyptologist, no ancient historian that has studied this has come away with the conclusion that there's a different chronology other than these two patterns of evidence, fellas, can't remember their name, but they've gotten so much criticism from the scholarly community, from even other fellow believers. I had, they, I mean. It's interesting because I read these criticisms quite frequently and they can realize the way that you do. And in fact, they point out quite frequently that David Roll is not a fringe theorist. David Roll is not a flat earther. He's a brilliant Egyptologist with mastery of the field and his objections, though they disagree with them do need to be taken seriously. That's a universe. That's what Kenneth Kitchen has said. That's what William Devere has said. That's what Israel Finkelstein has said. That's what Bryant Wood has said, you know what I mean? So like, they're certainly not treating it the way that you are treating it. That's the first thing I'd like to point out. The second thing I'd like to point out is even if that wasn't the case, that still would not prove by any stretch that in fact, some of the people I just mentioned, Kenneth Kitchen and Bryant Wood, except a 1450 date. The people who I, like I was just talking about the Institute for Biblical Research or our archeological something for Biblical Research. I can't remember exactly what they're called, but nonetheless, they also accept the roughly 1450 date. It's just simply inaccurate to say that people have abandoned the 1450 date. In fact, the exact opposite is true. The 1250 date shows up literally nowhere but Hollywood and atheists trying to talk about the Bible. It's not in Christian circles. And I know because I frequent them constantly. I mean, that's just not true. It's like explicitly true. Okay, when did these people supposedly go into Egypt? It would probably be, I don't know if you can get me to speak. Sorry. Oh, sorry. I'm not 100% sure I guess as to exactly when. It's easier to count from Abraham to Joseph than it is to count from Moses to Joseph. I would assume probably sometime around the 171650s, 1700, 1650s BC, roughly around the same time as the 12th or 13th dynasties which seemed to be made up of a lot of different Semitic peoples from various different Canaanite and Leuvenine origins, not actually just explicitly, you know, what we would probably consider to be an Israelite or anything like that, but just generally all of them. And I think that would be consistent with what the Bible says. I know a lot of people say that Joseph probably died like 215 years before Moses. I don't know that the Bible ever explicitly says that but it's probably starting to slide. You worry that the archeological evidence doesn't match that, like even the archeological evidence that they argued doesn't date back to that time. Well, I know that that's the case in the patterns of evidence, right? That they are saying that the archeology is indicating that these events took place and that you need to actually push it forward to make sense of the timeline. Not that the events took place but that there was an occupation there. Now, actually the claim is pretty specific that the, and in fact, it's one of the things that makes David Roll's arguments the most convincing. If you actually look at this time period in the exact same time period and in sequence with each other, you have a submitted group of people showing up, the submitted group of people becoming powerful in the land of Goshen with the blessing of native-born Egyptian pharaohs eventually becoming enslaved in the population. No, no, no, not native-born, Hicksos. No, not Hicksos. This is before the Hicksos. In fact, these people's departure seemingly coincides with the Hicksos showing up. Historical evidence do we have for it being a native-born Egyptian? No, I'm not saying that there were native-born Egyptians who were there amongst the Canaanites. I'm saying that the native-born Egyptians were still ruling at that time. This is during the 12th and 13th dynasties. Say that again? In Canaan. No, not in Canaan. They were ruling in Egypt. Why would the native-born Egyptians be ruling in Canaan? I mean, they might have an empire in Canaan. That's not what I mean, but like why would they rule in Canaan? It just was in Canaan at that time. That's, I don't understand how that's relevant to my point though. The point is that in the 12th and 13th dynasties, there are- There's going back to Egypt's rule. Right? No, that's not, you're not dealing with the point though. These people are exactly where we need them to be, and they are getting power from native-born Egyptians who are ruling at that time with their blessing in Goshen, just like they're supposed to be. And all of a sudden came the pharaoh that they didn't know, or that didn't know Jacob. Right, and this is shown in the archeological record. You see them, whoever these people are, these West Semites, right? They come here, they live in Goshen, they have the pharaoh's blessing, they eventually become impoverished and enslaved, and then all of a sudden they disappear. That is, that's a documented fact in the historical record. It does happen to be that that fact happens too early, but that is- Sure, but it doesn't- There's no documentation that it was the Israelites, that it was even one group of people, just that they were these Semitic people. There's no documentation that the Igbo people were like, that we had individual Igbo people when we enslaved West Africans. That doesn't mean Igbo's weren't enslaved, right? The fact is the slave driver doesn't really care where these people came from. They're just, they're foreigners, and that's as far as that goes. So the fact that we don't have these people saying, these are explicitly this, that, and the other thing is irrelevant. What we do have though, is slave lists that include Hebrew names, names found explicitly- Sure. In the Bible. Sure, I mean, prisoners of war, for sure. Okay, but so don't you see though, now like what you're kind of seemingly doing, like you've had to retreat, if I may be so blunt into a pretty small position now, because we've now seen- No, no, no, no, no, we're talking about the historical Moses. We're talking about Moses himself, not whether or not this event that he supposedly did, happened exactly or at all, but we're talking about this character who's being spoken of. I mean- Right, I understand that, but as I said in my opening, if you have point number one, which is all the people showing up here and getting their power and all that, and then you have point number three- That's not point one. It's reasonable to assume point number two exists, because you have to keep- That's not point one though, because you are being extremely vague and ambiguous with it in order to make it fit. Now, if you wanna talk about the story, then you have to say that he is the grandson of this person who came with 75 other people and they populated to over one and a half million within just few generations. And then he parted the sea and was chased down by Pharaoh's army and the army was all killed and all the rest of it, everything that happened after the exit. So you have to take all that into account. Right, I'm not taking any of that into account though. I mean, first off, I have made clear that the population is of no concern to me. Again, if numbers get exaggerated throughout time, that's fine, that happens all of the time. Anthromophilia is a perfect example of that. The Sumerian Kings List is another perfect example of that. Documents which do describe people who are historical events which are historical but which have exaggerated numbers. I'm perfectly fine with just conceding that for the point of argument. Like, do you believe Hercules existed? Well, hang on, because let me actually make the point here, right, but with that being said, right, the numbers don't indicate the person's nonexistence. If we have this point where we have all these semites and these semites are in Egypt and these semites are getting power as described and then they're enslaved as described and then they disappear as described and then there's a brutal conquest in Canaan as described. There is a question that I think is obvious. It literally begs the question. Who led them from point one to point three? And I think it's obvious we have the record from the Israelites that it was Moses. And I again point out, as far back as you can push Israelite record, they say it was Moses. We may not have records from 1000 BC yet, but when we find them, I'm fully confident they'll say it's Moses. And when we go back- We don't have any attestation of his name by anything outside of the Bible until, gosh, according to your number, it'd be over a thousand years. Well, so that's not actually a hundred, I guess outside of the Bible, yes, but I would point out you'd want to be, as a historian, you'd want to go outside of the Torah really because- Right, but when you call multiple attestations aren't multiple attestations because one, everybody claims that Moses supposedly wrote the Pentateuch so you can't claim any of those as another source. And then you have all the other mentions in the Bible who are by people who are not witnesses. They're witnesses of the story. So that can be used as a multiple attestation. Well, I mean, actually, first off, that kind of depends. I mean, number one, if you're taking my view of it, which is traditional, there is still at least two attestations, namely Moses and then Joshua right after. There is also the fact that this would be a historical tradition that would go all the way down to 1400 and we would see record of it in 1000 with Samuel and in 700 with Isaiah and in 800 with Amos and so on and so forth, right? But if we're taking your opinions on it, this actually gets even worse because Amos and these other older texts are already having and Isaiah and so on, right? Are mentioning Moses as a historically existing figure before the Torah actually exists according to your view which means they're not actually quoting the Torah, right? So they, and yet they do have this record, Moses existed. He led us out of Egypt at some point in time. And as I said, there is pretty solid evidence to indicate that, for example, what do you make of the Psalm 90 or Exodus 15? Things that within the text itself. Those are old texts. I'm not saying that those aren't old texts. You said that this before the Torah but the texts within the Torah are older than Torah. So your arguments are relevant. Well, hang on. You literally just actually made my point. If there's texts within the Torah older than the Torah, one of those is accepted by scholars to be Exodus 15, right? Exodus 15 is a song from Moses. It's called the Psalm. No, it's not a song from Moses. Right, okay. So now you have to provide us, you're gonna say it's not Moses. All of the evidence suggests that it is. So tell us why it's not. Because Moses is not a historical figure. He's not historically existing. You're assuming the question though. Give us an act because if I show you a picture, if you say Suzanne Collins didn't exist and I show you the Hunger Games and Suzanne Collins name is on it, that is evidence that she existed. So now you have to provide me an argument after I've showed you that the Suzanne Collins did not write this book. The same applies to this Exodus 15 and Psalm 90 as well. Okay, show me a video of Moses. Okay, that's obviously ridiculous. I can't show you a video of George Washington. You don't disbelieve him. So let's actually deal with it. Okay, so I can show you a piece of paper that says William Shakespeare on it but I can't prove to you that William Shakespeare wrote it. The overwhelming majority of people would accept that he does though. We're obviously not arguing from absurds. I know some people don't believe it. Then I have an original work of Shakespeare that I'd like to sell you. I mean, if you had an original work of Shakespeare we'd be able to probably verify it just for the record. But you're not actually dealing with any of the arguments. You're actually kind of dancing around them, right? No, I'm not at all. I'm directly addressing it. How would you verify whether or not this original manuscript of the Shakespeare play that I have right here is really written by Shakespeare? Well, the way you would verify that you'd have to kind of go by process of elimination. But for example, if you don't have this story existing before a time that this person is supposed to have existed or in a different place from where this person should have information. If you don't have any other attestations to another person from somebody else, if consistently and throughout time this person is always attached to the person. This is a really, really old manuscript. One more time, sorry. This is extremely rare. This is one of a kind work of Shakespeare. I mean, why does there have to be multiple attestations? Well, again, you're not actually dealing with the point. So let's take Romeo and Juliet, for example, okay? So how do we know that Romeo and Juliet was written by William Shakespeare? So first off, it carries his name. It says this is written by William Shakespeare. That's a solid argument, right? Okay, so do this. They seem to account the fact that there's also no other sources claiming that somebody else wrote this, right? So- Okay, there are other sources that claim that somebody else wrote this. Okay, that's not dealing with the argument. You're basically saying, see, I got this, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, right? You're like, you're not actually making a scholarly argument to what I'm saying, right? There are actually points that indicate that Shakespeare wrote this, right? And likewise, these same points can be used for Exodus 15 and Psalm 90. So what argument do you have to provide that says that Exodus 15, even if Moses did not write Exodus, that Exodus 15 is not a poem that survives from Moses' time as it is claimed? What evidence do you have to suggest that? Because it is combined with a bunch of other texts that claim to be written of Moses, and we know are not. So therefore- Actually, Exodus doesn't claim to be written by Moses. That's a tradition that rabbis had later on. To what? Exodus doesn't claim that Moses wrote, I believe Moses wrote it, but you can't actually find that within the book of Exodus. That is a tradition that is adapted later on. The tradition is that Moses wrote the penitentiary, because he wrote the entire Torah himself. Right, exactly. And so my point is, though, that the story of Exodus itself, for example, because this is where Exodus 15 is, obviously, right? It's an Exodus. It doesn't actually claim Moses wrote everything that we're telling you, right? That's not what it said. But Exodus 15 specifically claims to be within the text, claims to be a song of Moses, as does Psalm 90. So what evidence do- I feel like I'm not actually getting an answer to these questions. We have things that bear his signant, if you will, right? Claims within the text to say that this person wrote this. The tradition indicates that he wrote it. There's no other claimants to these. We don't have a manuscript that has like an anonymous writing of this, or this was written by some dude named Joseph or something like that, right? So what actual argument do you have that indicates that these texts don't actually derive from Moses? Because these texts do not date back to the time that Moses is said to have lived, for one. For two, we don't have any historical evidence that Moses existed. This, again, this itself is a piece of evidence. So I end because of that. No, it's not because it doesn't date back to the time. Just like you would- Okay, so let's deal with that then. Hang on, hang on. Just like you would invalidate my copy here of the Shakespeare original, is the same way that you would dismiss the claim that this is written by Moses. Okay, so let's address that claim then. So what argument do you actually have that suggests that this was not written at the time? Because it doesn't date back to the 1500s. How do you know, though? What's the argument that you just make and claim? For one, the Hebrew, and it does not date back to that point in time. That's actually not true. That's one of the better arguments for this being old is that the Hebrew is found as far back as the 13th century, and we don't have Hebrew farther back than that. So that's just flat out not accurate. So- No, no, you have, within the Song of Moses, it refers to the Assyrians, right? Which puts it in the seventh century. You're on the wrong thing. I'm talking about the Song of the Sea from Exodus 15. Oh, the Song of the Sea. I thought we were talking about the Song of Moses. It's, but the Song of the Sea is referred to as the Song of Moses in the Book of Revelation and elsewhere. So there's actually multiple songs. But I have referred to it before. No, no, no, the Song of Moses is the one that Moses sings right before he dies. The Song of the Sea is one that Miriam and the women sing whenever they're marching through crossing the Red Sea. That's not accurate. I have it right in front of me. The then Moses and the Israelites saying the song to the Lord, and then it goes on and continues. Right, and where are they drawing? The Song of Moses is in Deuteronomy 31. That is a different song, right? What I'm talking about is the Song of the Sea in Exodus 15, Exodus 15, I'm quoting you Exodus 15 one, then Moses and the Israelites, excuse me, sang this song to the Lord, right? Hey, you need to be more specific about what you're talking about. And it's not the Song of the Sea like the four or five times. I don't mean to be rude, but I have been very clear. And I've been like now Exodus 15, Exodus 15, right? I'm not trying to be rude here, but I have been very clear about this being Exodus 15 and the Song of the Sea. And song of Moses, which is a totally different thing. Okay, again, you're not actually dealing with the point. I have been very clear that this is Exodus 15. So can we just please get to the point instead of acting like children? I don't understand what the point of this is. I've been very clear. We're talking about Exodus 15, the Song of the Sea. Okay, yes. Some people were made to about the 13th century. That's about as far back as it goes. Okay, so we don't have Hebrew farther back than that. So there's no way we could date it farther than that, right? However, 13th century means that we can get this as far back as we actually have the Hebrew language existing, right? So you can't say that it doesn't fit from a linguistic perspective because that isn't true. This is as archaic as Hebrew gets. So what other argument do we have that this wasn't actually written by Moses? Sure, so while we don't have any more archaic Hebrew, we do have Proto-Hebrew. We do have Proto-Canaanite texts. We do have older scripts that we know were the prior development to this more archaic style. I mean, we do have from like 1800 BC, but not from 1400 BC. We have proto-Sinatic that is way far back, but we don't have it from like the time of Moses. Right, most people whenever they date this text in Exodus, like I said, most date them later than the 10th century. There are very few that it's older than that, but of the ones who do, they only date it back to about the 13th century. Right, but again, as I pointed out, that's because you can't actually, we don't have a reference of 15th century. Are you saying that we can't date it from the 15th century? Say that again? Are you saying that it's impossible to date something to the 15th century? No, I'm saying that from a linguistic perspective, you couldn't confirm that this was 15th century Hebrew because you don't have 15th century Hebrew to compare it to, right? So what they're saying is it can go as far back as the Hebrew which we confirm exists, right? So which is an important point to make here because it's basically saying this is as old as any Hebrew we know of. So what you're saying is that for hundreds of years that Hebrew didn't change, and then all of a sudden it started changing every couple of hundred years. Well, to be fair, I think Hebrew doesn't really change as much as you're indicating. And in fact, I'm taking Hebrew now. It's quite a bit. It's changed quite a bit in a sense. It changed sort of, right? Again, I am actually taking Hebrew at this moment. I'm not an expert, don't get me wrong. I'm not, I mean. But I can read right now, right? As a Hebrew learner, text in Hebrew that were written over 2,500 years ago. Well, probably not over, but about 2,200 years ago, right? Although it would be a struggle for me because I usually read using Tiberian vowels. The point is that if it was really about 3,500 years, I would not be able to do that. Oh, okay. You couldn't do that, right? Yeah, if they were changing a bunch, I would not be able to do that. Okay, but we just have to just say that you're only reading 2,000-year-old Hebrew. We're talking about ancient Hebrew. Okay, but you can't just say, though, we have, in other words, we haven't read it. If you haven't read it, it's hard to tell you that it hasn't changed. I'm not saying that it hasn't changed at all. I'm sure it's changed a little bit for sure. In fact, one of the examples is just the alphanage. It's changed so much that it's categorized. It has changed so much that people devote their entire education towards one specific period of development. Well, here, let me give you a specific quote from one of those people who actually does that. His name's Dr. Michael Karasek, and he has said, biblical Hebrew is to English what Shakespearean English is. That's the difference, right? And that's according to one of these guys who you're now saying, right? These people, they dedicate their entire life for it. So there are words that mean different things that we can tell whether something was written in Shakespearean English versus our English. We can date something to 2020, or closer to 2020, versus Shakespearean based on how it's written. Right, I'm not saying that that's not the case though. That's what I'm telling you is that you can visibly tell that there is a development. So the point I'm making is that this language we can tell whether something is Shakespearean or English. But what you're trying to say is that, oh well, the earliest English that we have is Shakespearean. Therefore, before that, we can just say that it was always Shakespearean. No, that's not what I'm saying at all. That's not a good argument to make because it is, we do have periods of development that are very clear. And what you're saying is that there would have been essentially zero development from the earliest attested to Hebrew script. Okay, that's not what I'm saying at all though. What I am saying is that the level of development you see from 1600s English to 2000s English is the level of development you see from 2,500 years ago. Yes. Right, which means, well, hang on, let me actually finish my point, which means this language because of the liturgical nature by which the Hebrews reverence it is not progressing at the rate that other languages would. So when you say something like, for example, we don't have Hebrew dating to the 15th century, we can only go as far back as the 13th century, right? You're not expecting a huge gap between those because you never have a huge gap. The biggest gap you might be able to find is potentially when the Babylonians show up and you get a bunch of Aramaisms that are gonna be added. But even then, it's still relatively similar. Bar and Ben are pretty similar sounding words. You know what I mean? Yeah, so we can tell the difference is my point. Right, I understand that, but again, that's a huge event. When you're talking about the language. If it's a text from 300 years before, 200, 300 years before, then we would see a difference. We would see a development in the text. So if that's true, why is it that there's a 400 year error on dating the Dead Sea Scrolls? People will date them all the way to 300 B.C., they'll date them all the way to 150 AD. Why does that discrepancy exist if it's that easy? Why is what? Why does that discrepancy exist if it's that easy to tell? If it's that easy to tell, for example, in this case, second century AD Hebrew from fourth century BC Hebrew, then why don't they do it? Why aren't the experts actually doing it successfully? Well, that's because it was, I mean, there's a long period of time where Hebrew was a dead language, where it was only used in a liturgical setting. But this isn't that time. This is a time that people would absolutely be speaking the Hebrew language. No, no, I mean, what you're talking about is it would have been actually the destruction of the temple. That's, well, it could have been. It could have been. That'd be 150 AD potentially is as late as I've ever seen the Dead Sea Scrolls. And that could be about 80-ish years after the destruction of the temple. But some people date them as early as 300 B.C., which is nearly three centuries before the destruction, four centuries, excuse me, before the destruction of the temple. But the majority of people I see is centered usually around 100 to 150 B.C., which is still pre-destruction. But regardless, all the evidence that we have of the Hebrew language, the people who study it show it as emerging only around 1,000 B.C. Just emerging. See, I don't know. We know, though, that that can't possibly be the case. First off, we've been already talking in this conversation about how we have examples of Hebrew from older than that. In fact, we can date reliably almost as far as to the 13th century with this Exodus 15. But on top of that, Proto-Sinatic, which we've also already mentioned. Which is not Hebrew. It is close enough to Hebrew that modern Hebrew speakers have been able to read it. It's not Hebrew. It is what people are claiming, but I personally don't believe that. I think that it is absolutely an example of a proto-Hebrew language. People don't want to admit that. But again, there are modern Hebrew speakers who can read it. How is that possible? Even the people who study it don't want to know that. I mean, certain people who've been studying it are saying that it is actually an earlier form of Hebrew though. I'm not the one who made, I didn't make this up, right? This isn't Jason. I mean, it is a part of the same Semitic family, yeah, of language. But that's like saying that Aramaic and Hebrew are the same thing. It's not. No, it would be much more similar to saying that Old English and English are the same thing. Meaning that they are the same tradition of language. No, Archaic Hebrew is not the same thing as Proto-Sinaitic. Again, I know that that's your claim, but I flattered through that. OK, but what you're talking about is that it's only changed as much as, when they say it's only changed as much as Shakespearean to modern-day English, they're talking about Archaic Hebrew to modern-day Hebrew. They're not including Proto-Sinaitic, the Proto-Canaanite. I understand that fully. I understand that fully. But I also understand that Hebrew speakers have gone to mines in Egypt, where they have seen this Proto-Sinaitic writing, which dates to sometime between 16 and 1800 BC, and they can read it. Like they know what it says. How is that possible if this is not at least a source of the Hebrew language? Which of course, if the Hebrew language didn't exist in 1400, as we know it today, but Moses wrote in whatever the source was, that's perfectly fine by me. But nonetheless, the point still being, how is it that these people are actually capable of understanding these words if this is some other language? I can't tell you if they studied or not. I mean, you would have to have to show me who these people are and have to know how they did it. I can't tell you how. I don't even know if the claim is true. You're just making a claim. I mean, that's fair enough, but I mean, at best that just means, and I won't hold it against you because you don't have the information handy, that's fine, but at best, that does mean you have no answer for it, right? We do have to admit that. It is known for sure, because I don't know that it happened. That's fine. Like I said, I'm not gonna hold it against you, but it's still, it's not a contradiction, at least it's a non-answer, right? And that's kind of consistently what we've had here, and I don't wanna kind of center back to the point, which is Exodus 15, right? We have a- What I'm saying is, I don't know how they would be able to do it because it's not even the same script as Hebrew. So I don't know how a lot of people can read it. It is a completely different language. So I can't tell you how they were able to do it. Well, I think that you're definitely over-exaggerating when you say a difference. So like it is a different script, right? It is. But you have to realize that like, so for example, the Aramaic script, the Hebrew script and the proto- not proto-synaptic, sorry, the Proto-Hebrew script, right? Paleo-Hebrew script. You do realize that it's the same letters, right? Meaning that it's the same actual sounds and in the self-same order. You just literally, all you have to do is remember the symbol itself, but it's still olive, bet, yimmel, doll, and so on and so forth. Okay, that doesn't mean that somebody can look at it and read it and tell you what it is. We don't have anything that's this song of Moses that you, as you call it, with proto-synaptic script. We only have it in Hebrew. I mean, that's of no concern to me. I'm not even sure that they would be speaking of proto-synaptic script in the 1400s because, again, we have 400 years past that. According to you, it's the same thing. Well, again, I was actually about to say, but it is very clear in my opinion that they are absolutely in the same linguistic tradition and then once you get the symbols down. Okay. I think that really takes only a day. I mean, it's a very simple process to actually get symbols down if there's not very many of them. I know this because I've done it, right? Again, I'm taking a Hebrew class. Okay, right, right. So if this script goes up to sometime around just a little bit after 1000 BCE, about 1100 BCE, it was about the latest that this proto-synaptic language was used and the earliest that we have biblical Hebrew being used is around 1000 BCE kind of stands to reason that maybe one's the development of the other. So we should have an earlier attestation of this song of Moses, right? Well, I'm not saying that it's impossible for us to find one, absolutely. I mean, we don't have the archeological finding of it at this moment, but I'm sure it exists. Frankly. Okay, so if it can't be dated back to the time of Moses, then how can you say that Moses wrote it? Well, so let me ask you a question then. We have copies of the Republic of Plato, right? None of them come from Plato's time. Some of them aren't even in Plato's language. In fact, I would say a lot of them aren't in Plato's language. Right, but the writings don't claim to be Plato writing then. They clearly show that they're not Plato, but that these were Plato's writings. Well, so, I mean, I guess I, let me back up a little bit. We do, obviously, I don't think that Plato's Republic claims that he wrote, that he writes it from the perspective of Socrates, right? So that is a accurate statement, but the point being that we have this tradition that goes back that says that this was applied to Plato. And we have no other sources that have applied this text. We know it's an old text. We know that it's around the time that Plato would have lived, right? And we don't have anonymous sources of this text, or versions of this text, rather. We don't have misplaced versions of this text. We don't have people debating over the authorship of this text. So we can assume reasonably that Plato penned this text and that he was claiming to be Socrates, right? So we have those self-same things here with Exodus 15 and Saul 90, though. We have a tradition that goes back with no other claimants and no times where people were debating the claimants or where this was said to be anonymous, right? Right, but you said that Moses wrote this. Say it again? But you said that Moses wrote this. Right, that's my point, though, is I'm saying that what we have in this text, Exodus 15 and Saul 90, is the self-same thing that we have when we're looking at Plato. And in fact, even better, because we don't have anybody claiming that we have texts that are within 200 years of Plato. Although I'm not sure what the whole text is. This is claiming to be a reference back to what Moses wrote. You're claiming that Moses wrote this. No, this isn't claiming actually to be a reference back. This is claiming specifically to quote Moses. And Saul 90 is even worse. Saul 90 actually would claims as far as to be penned by Moses. So Moses didn't write this. He either, it would be a quotation from him or direct writing, but that he would be the source is the point. The source is obviously not a direct writing. Hey guys, I want to interrupt really quick. Well, I just want to give you a 10 minute count, like a 10 minute conclusion for you guys to conclude your discussion that we're going to go into super chat. So go ahead. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. So in the case of Exodus 15, I would claim certainly that Exodus 15 is written by Moses. But if you read Exodus 15, technically it's saying, then saying Moses and the children of Israel this song. So the writer in theory could be somebody else quoting Moses, but the origin of the song would be direct quotation of Moses. And so it's not Moses writing. Potentially, again, right? Potentially. But you have to deal with the argument that is the text itself. Cause you agree that there are texts within the Torah, which are older than the Torah, which by the way, even traditional- Yes, of course, but none that date back to the time of Moses. Well, again, we've already seen this can be dated back reliably, at least to potentially as far back. Some people say earlier, don't get me wrong, but potentially as far back as 1300 BC. And I would argue that you could probably Yeah, at most. But most people haven't had it later than the 10th century. I understand that there's scholars who claim that, but what evidence have they provided us? Again, show us some evidence that there's actually, cause so far what we've heard as far as evidence that this was not penned by Moses or that it does not have its source in Moses was that, well, the Hebrew is not old enough. And I think we've laid out pretty clearly that not only can the Hebrew absolutely be, can you make an argument that the Hebrew is old enough? But on top of that, we have a language and a script that exists before biblical Hebrew that is absolutely a source for Hebrew. And very easily could have been the one that Moses was deciding to use. People translate stuff all the time. That's perfectly fine. We do know that- Any evidence of any of this being used? Say that again? We don't have evidence of any Proto-Kanai or Proto-Sinaitic language being used to, for these biblical texts. I mean, we don't have direct evidence for that. I'll grant you that. But again, people who speak modern day Hebrew can read it. So I think that's pretty solid indication that it's- No, no, they can't. The alphabet is completely different. Yes, they literally can though. And again, that's- Maybe be learning something similar. And I tell you how long it takes to learn symbols. And again, I know this from personal experience. The amount of time it takes you to actually learn symbols in another language is about one hour. I'm not kidding. I've done it personally. I know other people who have done it personally. It's really not that difficult. As soon as you know, this symbol makes a bus sound and this symbol makes a tusk sound and this symbol makes a husk sound. It's really easy to put those together. And maybe you have to go back to your notes once or twice. But literally, it's one hour. In fact, the class itself is 30 minutes and then you move on. You know what I mean? So like this, it's a different script thing. It's irrelevant. If it has the same scriptural tradition, not scriptural as in scripture, but scriptural as in the script itself, then that is something that can be learned very, very easily and in a very small amount of time. Right. So like, if you know like Greek, then you might know like Hebrew, right? It's definitely, you can move from the Greek alphabet to the Hebrew really easily. Yeah. It's actually, it's the self-same sounds almost entirely with some very minor exceptions and almost in the self-same order. But obviously it's not quite as similar as like Hebrew to proto-Sinatic or even Hebrew to paleo-Hebrew or something like that. But it would be easier to go from the Greek alphabet to the Hebrew alphabet than say from the English alphabet to the Hebrew alphabet. Where for example, they don't have a j sound. So that's just an entirely missing. Okay, my last question. Who was Moses's wife? He probably had two, honestly. I think the text would probably indicate, now some people have indicated that Zipporah might be the Kushite. I don't think that's accurate because Zipporah pretty clearly is listed as a Midianite, it seems to me. And I don't think Midianites and Kushites are related. So he probably had two wives. He probably had a Kushite wife as well as Zipporah, his Midianite wife. But he married his other wife first whenever he led Egypt against the Ethiopians. I don't actually know if there's a moment where he did. I know Josephus claims that. And it's possible for sure. Josephus could be right. I'm not saying he's wrong. I mean, you're writing the antiquity of the Jews. No, I know. I'm just saying that, I don't know necessarily what Josephus is. Josephus seems to rely, for example, like on Manetho and Manetho almost seems to be writing polemics against Moses. So I don't know if that's necessarily the greatest of sources, although it could be, who knows. I'm just saying that what Josephus says I take with a little bit of a grain of salt. He could have been a military leader in Egypt. I don't necessarily know. But it's possible. Like I won't deny it. It's nothing that's, I guess, important to me. You know what I mean? Okay. And I guess, yeah, we could probably be good to jump into some of the Q and A phrase if you're ready. There's other stuff I wanted to talk about, but obviously we've been going for quite a while. So, and I appreciate you doing this, by the way, Jim. Yeah, absolutely, man. You guys have a few minutes to spare if you guys want to do a concluding remark. Do you guys want to give a conclusion or something like that? I would just simply say that I think that the evidence indicates more so that Moses exists than not. I understand some people's concerns, for example, population and things like that. I think that those concerns can be dismissed much the same way that they're dismissed in other examples. Like for example, I brought up the Persian invasion of Greece. We dismissed the numbers, but we agreed that the invasion happened and that the characters in the story truly existed and truly did what they did. I do think that this topic might be better fleshed out if talked about more consistently. So I hope to see atheists and Christians being more willing to have this conversation. And also potentially more formally. I know that in-person, formal college-style debates have kind of died ever since COVID happened, but I'd like to hopefully see that return. And also see this topic return to that. Cause I think it's a good topic to talk about. And it's equally as important, in my opinion, as the question of whether or not Jesus existed, but it doesn't get nearly the time. Great point. And thank you for your concluding remark there, CJ. Jim, do you want to give a conclusion or a concluding remark? Yeah, sure. I'll just point out again that these ancient people have always used stories to try to explain their, and improve their priority over these other competing ideals. This isn't something new that we see, a recreation of other older stories used to tie to. We see that with the epic of, Bible use of the epic of Gilgamesh with their use of this Akkadian king. I mean, we can just see them trying to establish their early origins by recreating these histories to fit their narrative. So was there a group of Semites in Egypt? Yes, we do have evidence of that. Do we have evidence of a crossing of the Red Sea? No. Do we have evidence of an entire Pharaoh's army being depleted? No. Do we have evidence of this figure named Moses performing these plagues? No. What about the firstborn of all non-Israelites being killed? Do we have evidence of that? No. We have zero attestations of anything that Moses is claimed to have done, and yet we're expected to still believe that Moses existed. I think that there's plenty of evidence out there. I mean, if you believe that Moses existed, I challenge you to go out there and try to falsify your belief. However, you come up with your beliefs, so whatever sources you normally research, use those same sources and try to falsify your beliefs, whether you use Christian sources, Jewish sources, scholarly sources, archeological sources. However, you research it, you will come to the conclusion that at minimum, if he existed, it's unable to pinpoint where in history he did exist. Most people come to the conclusion that, well, it's most likely that he didn't exist at all. And thanks again for hosting this praise and CJ's nice talking to you, and thanks everybody for watching. Thank you for that, Jim. And you guys had an enthralling discussion there, and I think that the audience kind of reflects that. They were really into it as well. Great stuff, and maybe people can reflect and go back and listen to it later and learn something. I learned a lot, so I appreciate the discussion if you guys both adding your input into this. But now we're gonna jump into the super chats. And usually I think you guys know how it works. Whoever it's addressed to, they can finish it, it'll end with them. So I think you guys probably already know that. So we'll start with Josh Wainer for $5. Thank you for your super chat, and he's addressed to you, CJ, he's coming after ya. CJ, using your logic, Yule is a Norse celebration from before Christianity. That must mean your God Thor is real? Question mark? Well, I don't know what the traditions necessarily of Yule are, so I couldn't comment too specifically. But what I would say is this. The practice of a holiday going back to memorialize a certain event in history is obviously common throughout cultures and it is typically memorializing an actual event. If Yule is in fact claiming to memorialize an event in time past, even if highly mythologized, I do think it is possible at least that the event did occur. Now, I don't know enough about Yule to know anything about that, maybe it's like a creation myth story or something like that. But the point being that like for example, when the Japanese celebrate the birth of their nation as a united nation, when all the tribes and shoguns and stuff like that united some thousands of years ago, I thought that event probably occurred even if it might be mythologized, right? And so that's kind of how I would answer that question. Great, thank you. If you wanna have a response to that too, Jim, you can. No, that's all right, I'm sure there's a lot of questions. So this is from Good Day to You, Sir, for $5. And he says, coming at you, CJ, again, the story of Moses being set adrift in a basket is remarkably similar to the Babylonian myth about King Sargon, also found in a basket in a river. Okay, Jim, yeah. Yeah, and that could certainly be, I've heard them both and I certainly do understand that they definitely had, they both are some poor person who is seemingly having some secrecy around their birth being placed in a reed basket. And that certainly is some points of similarity. What I would point out though is that there are very often points of similarity in many people's stories who we do know existed. I'm sure we could find numerous points of similarity, for example, in Ramses II and Alexander the Great. Those are just two people who throughout my personal studies of history, I've always marveled at how similar they actually were. And there's numerous examples. I pointed out different presidents earlier in the stream. It's just a common thing, I think. And I think the reason is that, there's a finite number of things that can happen, really. Like if something happened to you, chances are it's probably happened to somebody else at some point in time too. And if two people who have the same event happen to them both happen to get famous or popular for some reason, then you might hear the story twice. I mean, it's certainly within the realm of possibility. Awesome, gotcha. Here's another one from Good Day to You, Sir for Five Dollars. So he's another question. Oops, I guess that was a, well, I guess no, it's a different one. Okay, so Moses led two million Hebrews out of Egypt and they lived for 40 years in Sinai, yet a century of archeology has turned up no evidence? Also, great question actually. So a couple of things that need to be pointed out. The first thing is, as I said, I'm not super committed to the numbers. I believe the Bible because I believe the Bible, but I also don't think that that has any sort of bearing on the stories happening or on Moses' existence necessarily. And again, I mentioned the Sumerian King's List and other like examples. But I want to point out really quick, because it's important. The Sinai Peninsula is not where Moses was. This is something that virtually everybody knew up until the second century when some Byzantine monks decided that they thought they had found Moses' Mount Sinai. If you actually look at not only extra biblical sources such as Philo and the Arabs who had studied Torah and Josephus and so on and so forth, but also just the Bible itself, talking about Midian and Acts saying that it was in Arabia and so on and so forth. And by the way, Galatians pointing out for us what Paul means by Arabia, because Paul goes to Damascus and also goes to Arabia, meaning Damascus is in Arabia, meaning that Jordan and what would be called modern Saudi Arabia, the Northern region, is what he means by Arabia, not Sinai. The point being that in either Northern Saudi Arabia or Southern Jordan is what the Bible would mean by Sinai, not the Sinai Peninsula. And by the way, the easiest way to prove this is just simply by pointing out the fact, not only that it says it explicitly when Paul says he was in Arabia, but Moses was with Midianites. Just go to Wikipedia, where did the Midianites live? Obviously, if you don't trust Wikipedia and want to get something deeper, you can go deeper. But the point is it doesn't take that hard to, it's not that hard to actually figure it out. All you got to do is look it up online. Tons of different sources, tons of different websites. The Midianites lived in what we would now consider to be Saudi Arabia. Very simple search, and I think that it kind of shows us pretty definitively that Sinai has never been the Sinai Peninsula. That's a misnomer attributed to Byzantine monks. Great, thank you. And if you wanna respond to that, Jim, you can. I mean, yeah, I mean, you use sources like Josephus and say, well, if it says this, it must be true. And you say that, because he had this other woman, Tharbis, that he married, that, well, it must be historical. But then you look at who her dad was, King Merobs. He was supposed to have been married to some ocean nymph and had a stepson from Helios. I mean, you know, it's mostly attested to, it's in these same sources that you use, but I don't think that you would think that these were historical. Great, thank you. So we got a five-dollar super chat from Huckleberry Sin, for five dollars. That's pretty good. Why did God interfere with Pharaoh's free will repeatedly hearted his heart every time he attempted to free the Hebrew slaves? I guess that's directed to UCJ. Yeah, actually he didn't. Pharaoh had already hardened his heart personally a couple of times before God actually intervenes and does it himself. What it appears to be, at least to me, is that for a moment, Pharaoh is operating in his own free will and then once Pharaoh has decided that he wants to be this arrogant man, God decides, fine, I will make an example out of you. Oh, well, I just wanna butt in and say that that's not true. From the beginning in Exodus 4, in Exodus 4, verse 21, he says, when you go back to Egypt, see that you performed before Pharaoh all the wonders that I've put in your power, but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. So this is before he even sets out. And then in Exodus 9, again, the boils are afflicting the magicians. And it says, but the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh and he would not listen to them just as the Lord had spoken to Moses. It does begin in Exodus 10. He says, I have hardened his heart and the heart of his officials so that I may show these signs of mine among them, blah, blah, blah, make fools of the Egyptians and what signs I've done among them and then in Exodus 11, the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh will not listen to you in order that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt. It says that Moses and Aaron performed these wonders before Pharaoh, but the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land. So from the very beginning, this was God's plan. Well, so you absolutely do see, I just wanna respond to that really quickly, you absolutely do see Pharaoh absolutely saying, all right, excuse me, God absolutely telling Moses, number one, what will happen in the future and number two, that he will actively harden Pharaoh's heart and you see the fruition of that in the passages that you just read. But of course, Exodus eight comes before Exodus nine and if we go to Exodus eight and go down to, I believe it's gonna be verse number 13 but I can actually read it because I have it pulled up here. Let's see. 15, sorry, but when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he hardened his heart and hearkened not under them as the Lord has said and you can go back further to just look at the other instances where this occurs. The first couple of times that happened. That's at the end. No, this is actually in Exodus eight before Exodus nine that you would just read. Go to Exodus four. No, I understand that, but like I said, Exodus four is met, it has its fruition in Exodus nine and 10 and elsewhere where we do see God hardening his heart but when we actually see the first couple of instances where Pharaoh is actually being commanded to do such and such a thing by Moses, it's not telling us that God hardens his heart, it's telling us the Pharaoh hardened his own heart and then we see what God always planned to do in the first place. And this is easily explainable by God's omniscience. He knew that Pharaoh was going to be arrogant. He knew that Pharaoh was going to be rebellious and so he always knew that he was going to get to a point in time where he would make an example out of Pharaoh. But if you just read the text at face value, it is very clearly in the first instance is saying the Pharaoh hardens his own heart and then later on you see fruition of what God has already declared would come to pass. Well, we know from at least the sixth plague that if you wanna say that four isn't talking about it but I mean, I don't see why there isn't, why you have any reason to say that because the rest of it reads as a chronological narrative. That's not what I said. What I said is that in four, God is telling Moses what he's going to do, right? Then Moses goes to Pharaoh and says, let my people go, da da da, the whole thing, right? And when we see the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, Pharaoh is doing it himself later on. But where in four does it say that I will harden his heart halfway through? It says, when you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put in your power but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. So I understand that. Again, I just read in Exodus 815 where it says very clear, right? Pharaoh's hardening his own heart, right? It says, and he hardened his heart, meaning Pharaoh, right? All right, guys, we've got to wrap this, so we've got to get to the next one. So, Finnett, let's wrap it up, make it nice and quick, Pissy, go ahead. Yeah, and so what you see here is in Exodus 4, God is telling Moses what he's going to do. In the first plagues that are showing up, we see the Bible saying, and Pharaoh hardens his heart, and Pharaoh hardens his heart, and Pharaoh's hardening his own heart, and then eventually we see God actually making good on the promise that he told Moses, which is that he personally would be hardening Pharaoh's heart. But he allows Pharaoh to do it himself before he actually puts any judgments on him. Very good, thank you. In regards, a $2 sticker from Jesus is a myth and God does not exist. We got Stephen Steen for $1.99, prove it. I guess that's could be rhetorical in some fashion. What's up, Stephen? I was just joking, I was just joking. Oh, okay, yes, okay. Amy Newman for $5, she says, after post-debate on my channel, question for CJ. Do you believe Moses sent 10 deity-inspired plagues upon Egypt, including the death of children? Yes, actually, I do think that they were specifically geared towards deities of the Egyptian religion and that it was God's way of essentially one-by-one kind of taking out the Egyptian gods. Oh, you worship the Pharaoh, let me hit him. You worship the Nile, let me hit him. You worship the frogs, let me hit them. So on and so forth. Completely unattested to. Well, again, I know that there would be the claim of that. I know we don't have specific evidence of the event that is the Exodus outside of the Bible, but we do have things that are interesting that certainly sound a lot like it. Like, for example, the Akhmosi Steli. There's a lot of questions to that, and I think there's a good conversation around those questions, but I don't think it would be fair to say they're completely unattested to, although, again, I do recognize some of the issues with some of the attestations. Thank you, and I just wanna say there is an aftershow in my channel as well, wink, wink. We'll go to the next question, cold loyalty for $10. According to various Egyptianologists, including Donald Redford, Penn State, and Canaanite origin story of the Exodus was birthed by Pharaoh Amos. I expelling the Hiskos from Egypt via war. Any thoughts? Yeah, that's one theory people like to throw around. Yeah, and I don't believe it personally, but I guess that's not the worst theory I've ever heard, to be fair. Like, I don't have vendettas against it. I have a lot better arguments for that one, for like a 12th century date than 15th century, or 13th century, sorry. Well, and I actually appreciate that, because that gives me a little insight as to what you think about the topic even more so than we've already had, so that's cool. But at any rate though, me personally, I just, I guess I think the Hiskos don't really sound like Hebrews. The Hebrews don't appear to be conquerors to me. That's who, what was his name? Manetho, what Manetho was talking about. He talks about Osars, the priest, that naturally defeats Pharaoh, then the Pharaoh and the Hiskos get exiled and he changed his name to Moses. I can't remember the exact circumstances under which he got exiled, but Manetho says that he changed his name to Moses. Well, and at least through that particular tradition, it does at least sound like the Hiskos become more Hebrew-like. But it does appear, like I said, at least to me, that they don't, in the archeological record, they appear to be more warmongery. And they also appear to be, either one of the bigger ones is they appear to be chased out. The Hebrews, if the story is accurate, are of course a slave group who escapes. The Hiskos are a conquering group who everybody wants to get the hell out. You know what I mean? And so, I don't know, it's not impossible for sure. I'm skeptical of it, but I'm also skeptical of the Hebrew Shasu connection and of the Hebrew Apiru connection. So I'm kind of skeptical all over the board. Right, so I mean, in that period that, I mean, all those that you talked about, those cover 300 plus year periods. So I mean, that's a big scale there. Awesome, guys. Yeah, I didn't want to forget about it for sure. We'll get to the next one. So Cystic too strong for $5. Thank you for your super chat. For both, do you believe Moses wrote all of part, or all of or partially part of the Torah? Why or why not? Thank you. See, none of them. Well, and so I believe that he did write the Torah, although I do believe that there is probably a edit that happened at some point in time, which is why, for example, P Ramses is seemingly mentioned in Exodus, rather than its ancient name, which would be Avaris and things like that. But I do think the original nucleus was probably penned by Moses. But even if not, I would say at least that it appears to me that certain portions of it, specifically the law and the Exodus 15 portion and stuff like that, those certainly would come from Moses. But again, I think he wrote all of it and that it was probably edited at some point in time to, I guess, modernize the same way we translate versions of the Bible. It's either that or the the acronyms are just because it's authored at a later date altogether. Well, and I would point out real quickly, although that is, of course, a different debate than did Moses exist. I don't think that it would be necessarily a big deal if Moses did not write the Torah. So I grant that your explanation of that is certainly not absurd for sure. I don't believe it personally, but I think that, of course, that'd be a deeper thing we could probably get into at another point in time. Very good. We got White Girl with Instagram black screen for $5. Coming at you, CJ, what's the best piece of non-biblical evidence that you can argue for the historicity of Moses and the Exodus? Non-biblical. Well, let me say two things. The first one, I'll be very brief, but I do think it is not wise to completely discount the Bible as evidence. It does operate as a history book. We take tons of historical records seriously, even though they mention gods and deities and things that we don't believe. The ancients pretty much already collected their stories in ways that we don't always 100% buy. In fact, go look at Herodotus and anybody who reads Herodotus will quickly note that once every couple of pages, there's something that you do not actually think happened that Herodotus is saying, definitely did. Like Dragon, for example. But besides that, I would say Passover itself is not an explicitly biblical argument because the tradition obviously exists outside of the Bible. And so I think Passover is a really solid argument. Where did this holiday come from? Where does it's origin? Why do people celebrate such a somber day? Real quick, do you know what the oldest attested celebration of Passover is? I actually do not. You'd be teaching me something. It's about the fifth century, CE. Interesting. Well, that can't be though, because we know the New Testament. Oh, sorry, sorry. BCE, sorry. Okay, okay, for sure. That makes more sense, for sure. Sorry. No, you're totally good. You're totally good after I've misspoken before. That's actually, that is pretty interesting. I'll have to look more into that. I had not actually heard that. You would think that that might be something that I decided to pick up, but I guess I did not actually know about that in particular. That said, one thing I would want to say about it is that I think that it is a solid argument that does, like I said, exist outside of the biblical tradition. I think that it's interesting that it does seem to go back not quite as far as we can push it, meaning that we do have instances of talking about Hebrew culture and stuff like that, that appear to be older than 500 BC, that's for sure. Although I didn't even know when I would originally have answered this that that was 500 BC, but like Job, for example, doesn't have a mention of the Passover. It's probably older than 500 BC. But it is interesting. It's a very old tradition that seemingly is, like I said, it's somber. It has its origin and its memorial, both in Moses himself. But outside of that, let me be pithy, I'm going kind of on tangent here. I would also say that some of the archeological evidence that has been provided by men like Bryant Wood and David Roll and so on, I think it does make a lot of sense. There's certainly questions, archeological questions, chronological questions, but there does appear to be a solid pattern of semites powerful, semites enslaved, semites disappear, semites conquer this area, all of a sudden Israel exists. And that obviously fits with the biblical narrative. Very good. So now we're done with the super chats. We're going to give a few general questions and then we'll all shut her down. So Estee Tominson. So what's Jim's alternative theory? Why are multiple ancient authors claiming Moses existed and Jim claims he didn't? The same reason that they claim that Adam and Eve existed. It serves a purpose. It gives them an origin that validates their religion and not somebody else's. Very good. Do you want to start on that really quickly? Make a pithy. CJ, we'll get to the next question when we're up or up here. Yeah, I would say that I don't think that that is an unreasonable answer by any stretch, but that I do believe, and of course I have listed some of the reasons in this debate that it does appear that there are so many different things that end up being attributed to Moses and pretty solidly, that it appears you'd almost have to make him up if he didn't exist, which is a quote that I did not come up with, by the way. That's a quote originally, I believe from William Devere. But nonetheless, but that's kind of what I would respond to. But not to say though that there's anything absurd about what Jim answered there. I think it's not a terrible answer by any stretch. All right, they're coming at you, Jim. Big time here. Better be ready. So this is from Lord Bryant. Tell Jim I said hi and loving the debate. Yeah, well, I said yeah for that one. Debate me, bro. Well, let's see here. That's what I can, I guess that concludes it. If anyone else has a question, please put it in the chat before we go and or else we're gonna probably shut her down. Real quick, I do want to say because Jim had asked it earlier and I do think it's an interesting question. He asked me about Heracles and whether or not I thought Heracles existed. So these are actually two different things which I happen to believe because obviously I'm a Christian so I believe in biblical inerrancy. But I do have a belief when it comes to the history of myth that even if mythologized to the point of where we can't actually find the answer, I do think it's more likely that a lot of these figures existed than that they didn't. I don't think I could ever find the historical Heracles. I think that's been so mythologized now that if he existed, it's not possible. But I don't think there's anything on Herodotus and Antisthenes and Aristotle and so on. They certainly thought Heracles existed. I don't think it's unreasonable that perhaps this great king existed that slaughtered a beast that eventually just turns into a slayer of hydras and stuff like that. We have a super chat, we are two super chats. So let's see this one. It says, I feel this debate needs to be talked about more than why Jesus is historical. Why do you think this is not discussed as much? Because the argument for the historicity of Jesus is a better argument. And I would say from my perspective, I think that it has a lot to do with Christian disownership of the Old Testament. I think a lot of times Christians don't even care half the time that the Old Testament is being attacked. I mean, you have guys like Andy Stanley who literally detached from it. Oh, Andy Stanley is a cute guy. But the point I guess being that, I just think that that's really what it is. I think a lot of Christians don't seem to care. And I do think that I don't agree with what Jim just said, but I think a lot of Christians do. I think a lot of Christians put Moses more in the category of King Arthur or even worse Heracles than they do like Jesus or Socrates. And I think that's unfortunate. Thank you for your response. We got one from Siji, Sir Rabia for $5. Add Jim, if Abraham Lincoln came back as a zombie to hunt vampires, how would you explain he is a historical figure in comparison to Moses? I don't get it, honestly. Yeah, I'll read it again. If Abraham Lincoln came back as a zombie to hunt vampires, how would he explain him to be a historical figure in comparison to Moses? Okay, sorry. I don't know how to say we would have the historical evidence of vampires. Maybe it would talk about it in his journals, in his wife's writings. I don't know, I feel like we would have some historical evidence of both happening, possibly even archeological, being as we have archeological evidence of Abraham Lincoln. Very good. You wanna respond to that real quick, CJ, because we're gonna wrap her up here. Yeah, I guess I would just say if I could steal man the question, it almost sounds like maybe what he's asking. If he's not just trolling, he might just be trolling. But maybe what he's asking is, do we have Abraham Lincoln versus vampire hunter? Like if that was what you found, how would you prove that Abraham Lincoln was a real person? If that was the only evidence you found, I guess you probably couldn't, honestly. Or maybe you could, maybe you could. Hey, we found the statue in Washington, D.C. That seemingly indicates he existed and all that. But I don't know, maybe if that was your only evidence, maybe you couldn't actually verify that he was a historical character. If that's what the questioner means, that would be an interesting question. If that's not what he means, and this is just a troll that I read too much into, well then, you know, I guess that happened. I just wanna say all of my friends in the South be careful with all the tornadoes and everything that's going on. So I just wanted to say that I was thinking about you guys. I've got some family in Alabama and Florida and South Carolina, North Carolina. Yeah, yeah, watch out for those storms. This is the tornado, yeah. This is from Jamie Russell. Yeah, man, we got to get acclaimed with your news and make sure you're ahead of the game there when storms coming up here. So Jamie Russell for $5, if Moses doesn't exist, who split the rocket horrib from Jamie Russell? What's up? Yeah, I don't know. And I think that's a good question. If the rocket horrib is really the rock as described in the Bible, I think that's a pretty interesting example. I don't know too much about that particular monument itself other than I know it's in Saudi Arabia and it looks really impressive, but good question, I guess. I think that concludes tonight's debate. I think if there's any lingering questions, can you, I think we ever, I think that's about, I think we're near the conclusion mark here. So I appreciate our interlocutors having given their time to give a debate tonight. It was very cordial, very respectful. And that's what I hope they can be, I hope they, hopefully that'll be like all our debates here. So we thank them for giving their time, but also the chat for their super chats. And make sure you smash that like button and subscribe because we got some great debates coming up here. So with that, we're gonna say, keep sifting the unri... I like to think about that one again. Keep sifting the, I totally forgot.