It therefore has nothing to do with the Exodus narratives. The pharaoh who is denounced is not named, but may have been one of the last rulers of the Sixth Dynasty or one of the kings of the weak dynasties following. The language and orthography are “Middle Egyptian.” The situation described conforms to that which followed the breakdown of the central government at the end of the Old Kingdom. It was written hundreds and hundreds of years before any date for the Exodus:Īlthough our manuscript was written in the Nineteenth or Twentieth Dynasty (1350–1100 B.C.), the original belonged to an earlier time, perhaps to the period between the Old and Middle Kingdoms (2300–2050 B.C.). So, it wasn’t written when Jacobovici needs it to have been written. The “Admonitions” was composed during the First Intermediate period (c.a. Was it written during the Hyksos period (1650-1550 BCE 1)? That’s a pretty fringe view. The Ipuwer papyrus specifically states that Egypt was struck by a strange hail made up of ice and fire mingled together.įirst, the dating. It’s called the Ipuwer papyrus, and it’s dated by many scholars to the Hyksos period. Incredibly, there is an Egyptian papyrus that tells the exact same story. The Ipuwer papyrus contains a text known as “The Admonitions of Ipuwer”, an Egyptian sage.
In other words, Egypt experienced fire and ice raining from above, just as the Bible describes.īefore we get to our usual biblical and scientific objections, let’s start with Jacobovici’s reference to the Ipuwer Papyrus. so the small fragments of ash and crystals actually form a nucleus, something very similar to a hailstorm.”Īnd there we go. “when the ash cloud goes up to great distances in the stratosphere essentially what happens is you have moisture in the atmosphere, you also have a lot of water vapour in the cloud itself. To explain what accretionary lapilli are another expert is trotted out this time Dr Catherine Hickson of the Geological Survey of Canada who explains, What scientists call “accretionary lapilli” volcanic hail that could only have come from the earthquake-induced Santorini volcano. That is enough for Jacobovici to conclude that the “comprehensive scientific explanation” for this seventh plague is, Specifically states that Egypt was struck by a strange hail made up of ice and fire mingled together. To provide historical evidence for this Jacobovici then briefly mentions the Ipuwer Papyrus, which, in his words, the Bible then describes God as making a miracle within a miracle, taking opposites in nature, and having them coexist together. the hail was together with esh, with fire the idea being that the fire and the ice commingled together, they coexisted together. Seventh plague was the plague of hail, but the Bible describes hail in a very unique manner. Naturally, Jacobovici goes with the more exciting interpretation.Īfter explaining that “rabbis teach that the biblical description is no metaphor,” the viewer is then given a clip of an interview with Rabbi Chaim Sacknovitz who explains that, But, taking the translation at face value you could also imagine it describing balls of hail with fire flashing inside them. Is this describing lightning falling in a hail storm? FWIW that’s how I read it. It’s not hard to come to the conclusion that the hail was unusual a plain reading of the text leaves us with a few questions:Įx 9:24 …there was hail with fire flashing continually in the midst of it… And it was a very unusual hail, involving ice and fire mixed together. Jacobovici leads with the oddest feature of the text:Įgypt was now struck by plague number seven: hail. The result was destruction on a massive scale – the hail killed any humans or animals out in the fields, it shattered every tree, and flattened the barley that was soon to have been harvested. Still in the presence of Pharaoh, Moses stretched out his staff, and God responded with “thunder and hail, and fire came down on the earth.” Apart from in the land of Goshen which was spared it, an extremely heavy hail came down too.
Everything that wasn’t brought to a shelter – humans or animals – would die. God told Moses to visit Pharaoh “early in the morning” and told him that because he refused to let the Israelites go, God would send the heaviest hail that Egypt had ever seen. What has Jacobovici got in store for us now? Plague 7 – Hail Series: A critical assessment of the scientific explanation for the Ten Plagues in "The Exodus Decoded".
A critical assessment of the scientific explanation for the Ten Plagues in “The Exodus Decoded” – Plague 7: Hail
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