Re the 2 Kings 22 objection, I am copying and pasting a response but pinning it here because it keeps coming up: In 2 Kings 22-23, it's obvious that not all Israelites were totally into idolatry or had forgotten their traditions. There are still mentions of important places and people like the "House of the Lord," "Huldah the Prophetess," who the royal officials go to for advice from the Lord, and the "altar of the Lord in Jerusalem." "The Lord" is actually the name used for the God of Israel. Plus, the Israelites knew about Deuteronomy, as you can see in parts like 2 Kings 14:6, 17:13, and 18:4, which tie back to Deuteronomy 24:16 and 18:21. It seems that while many Jews hadn’t entirely ditched their faith, some were mixing it up with other beliefs, like we see in 1 Kings 6:1, 11:5, and 18:21. During this time, a super old or important Torah scroll was found in the Temple, referenced in Deuteronomy 21:36. When the parts about banning idolatry were read to the king, he took it seriously and made sure everyone followed the rules strictly.

@UltriLeginaXI

27 күн бұрын

How do we combat the claim that Exodus didn't happen historically because there's no extra biblical evidence from Egypt?

@stephengray1344

27 күн бұрын

@@UltriLeginaXI Firstly we point out the archaeological evidence in support of an historical Exodus (the best overview of this is the Exodus Rediscovered series on Inspiring Philosophy). Secondly we point out that we have lost the overwhelming majority of ancient Egyptian texts. In lower (northern) Egypt where the Exodus account is set we have found a couple of dozen surviving papyrus texts from across the whole of Ancient Egyptian history. And much of what we do have is inscriptions on tombs and in temples - precisely the context you would be least likely to record a national humiliation. Thirdly we point out that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and that arguments from silence (like the one they are making) are almost always fallacious.

@stegokitty

27 күн бұрын

@@UltriLeginaXI Why would there be extrabiblical evidence from Egypt? Unlike the "warts and all" accounts in the Scriptures, Egypt isn't going to create a record saying "Hey, we got our butts kicked by a foreign god, so we let all of our slaves go free and gave them an insane amount of treasure for their trip away."

@logicianbones

27 күн бұрын

@@UltriLeginaXI Have you watched all of the Patterns of Evidence documentaries yet? (I'm not saying his arguments are all solid per se, but that was the initial focus of that series.)

@matthewnitz8367

27 күн бұрын

You can read it that way if you are going to assume the text is presenting the events and (a much bigger assumption) the thoughts and views of everyone in the past accurately. If we treat the text like any other though, where we analyze the intentions and mindset of the author of the text, it looks an awful lot like they are inserting their views of the non-Yahweh temple worshippers as the "bad people" and the temple Yahwists as the "good people" into the text as an explanation for why they believe the events they are describing happened. I don't think even conservative Christians would debate that 1st and 2nd Kings were written (or at least compiled and finalized) around or after the time of Josiah. Is it really that hard to believe that the final author/redactor could have inserted their thoughts in places like 2 Kings 14:6 and 17:3 about certain actions being "according to what is written in the book of the law of Moses" or asserting that "the Lord warned Israel and Judah" about those actions. Regardless of whether that king actually had any knowledge of such a law at the time, or the people had actually been told those SPECIFIC words by EVERY prophet and seer? Why would anyone in power even object if they all agreed those actions WERE in accordance with what they were saying was the law of Moses? Again, I don't think I can definitively prove that that IS the case here. I do think you are telling at least in some respects a somewhat plausible story too about how the texts came about, although I have my disagreements about where it falls short. But you are claiming that there is no plausible naturalistic alternative to how this could have occurred, when all the data seems to fit very well (and in my opinion better, but I'm not an expert on the subject, just citing the scholarly consensus) with this other explanation of how the text developed. And if that is the case, your case for these miracles is just wrong; we don't have sufficient evidence to demonstrate that those miracles actually happening is obviously the best explanation for the data.

I appreciate the fair shake you give to atheist arguments.

@jjh9060

27 күн бұрын

Im sure the atheists disagree

@paulallenscards

27 күн бұрын

Agreed. I liked this video a lot, though I have some concern with the assumption that a person who would mythologize history is a liar. We wouldn’t call Homer a liar for his account of how the Achaeans became the dominant power in the eastern Mediterranean, would we? And yet, his literary masterpiece also checks all four of these boxes quite well, despite the fact that we all recognize today that the gods of Olympus did not intervene in the affairs of men from ages past.

@Avinkwep

27 күн бұрын

@@paulallenscards I talk about history with my friends and I embellish little details all the time, I don’t think it’s “lying” per say

@IslandUsurper

27 күн бұрын

@@paulallenscardsa quick Wikipedia check says Homer lived in the 8th century B.C., and he wrote about the Trojan War which happened some 400-500 years before that. I would not say the Iliad and Odyssey check the “time” box. Not even sure there are ongoing traditions stemming from the events of the Trojan War (which is different from traditions stemming from Homer’s writing).

@paulallenscards

27 күн бұрын

@@IslandUsurper that’s definitely a fair critique about the time checkbox. The documentary hypothesis posits a similar span of time between the events of the Exodus and the Torah’s final compositional form, what do you make of that? I go back and forth on the arguments for and against it.

You've been doing wonderful work. Praise the Lord and continue to glorify Him.

Dude please never stop this

I really appreciate you talking about things like this, they help me in my faith.

Your videos on miracles recently are absolute fire. You are the freaking man Eric!

@TestifyApologetics

26 күн бұрын

Jesus is the man, and he's the God man. So if it's good it's him and if it's dumb it's me.

@valinorean4816

24 күн бұрын

@@TestifyApologetics If somebody eyewitnessed David Copperfield doing impossible miracles, does that imply there was actual magic involved?

Just to play Devil’s advocate, I think we do see examples of traditions changing and people accepting them without giving it much thought. Halloween, Christmas, valentines, and Easter all have modern traditions that people will erroneously claim go back to ancient pagan practices.

@jackricky5453

27 күн бұрын

Good point, but you have to consider that the ancient Israelites didn't have tiktok, and neither did most people throughout history. So, the traditions that exist today are only now being questioned by large groups of people. It would only really become a problem if the tradition had begun to break down much longer ago.

@dangerdelw

26 күн бұрын

@@jackricky5453 Supposed pagan origins of holidays were around a long time before tiktok. I have cousins and friends that couldn’t celebrate Halloween, put up Christmas trees, paint Easter’s eggs and that was clear back in the 80s.

@TestifyApologetics

26 күн бұрын

none of these pass *ALL FOUR marks* I'm not even sold on the argument for sure, but the fact that people keep ignoring this in the comments is bananas. It's not a matter of 1 or 2 or 3. He's saying the event needs to cover all four marks.

@jackricky5453

26 күн бұрын

@@dangerdelw Most of this has popped out of 20th and 21st century pop culture. The first instances of paganism being the root of Christians holidays, traces back Hitler's Germany where he sought to separate Jesus' Jewish heritage so that he can brainwash a Christian-dominated nation-state. The 1940s are relatively recent in comparison to how long these traditions have been around. Much of the pagan origins also trace back to pseudo-historical works in the 70s and 80s, and its only reached as wide of an audience as it has, because of social media. The kinds of numbers we see today are new. I have no doubt this was floating around in the 80s, but I suspect that it was nowhere near as popular as it is today.

@dangerdelw

26 күн бұрын

@@TestifyApologetics Sorry for not being clear. I’m not responding to the video as a whole but the idea that it would be a “long shot” or “practically impossible” for a liar to convince people that the traditions they already practice have new religious meaning. As an example, saying our modern holiday’s are pagan is giving them new religious meaning by way of saying “it’s always been that way but was lost over time.” It of course falls apart under scrutiny of the other 3 criteria, but people have very easily been duped and accept “fake history” as real, thus making it very possible, if not common.

I liked this video a lot. My biggest concern is with the assumption that person who would mythologize the past is a liar. We wouldn’t call Homer a liar for his account of how the Achaeans became the dominant power in the eastern Mediterranean, and yet his literary creation also checks all four of these boxes quite well, despite the fact that we all recognize today that the gods of Olympus did not intervene in the affairs of men from ages past.

@levongevorgyan6789

27 күн бұрын

Way I see it, it's totally plausible that the ancient Hittite city of Wilusia fought a war with the Myceneans, leading to the legend of the Illiad. It's likewise plausible that a group of semites fled Egypt because of persecution or natural disasters or something, migrated through the desert, and ended up in the area of Canaan and became part of the local levantine cultures that gave rise to the Israelites. But neither implies the existence of Zeus or God.

Thank you for all your videos again, One of the greatest apologetics channels on youtube. I love your work. I wish you all the best and i am waiting for next videos,

The 2nd argument that "you couldn't convince people a new law has always been there" doesn't seem very strong to me given how quick people are to assume things from the recent past "were always that way" although historians are certain they are novel (e.g. the "housewife & breadwinning man" model of society) It seems super implausible if assuming a single trickster would be to blame, but evidence shows that traditions do spring up out of nowhere, and when they endure they can get painted with special interpretations that have no basis in reality.

@fluffysheap

27 күн бұрын

The "housewife and breadwinner" is a relevant example , but not a good one. It happened to be the dominant (or at least idealized) system at the moment when television was invented. So the oldest things people can see look that way. The other problem is that you aren't trying to convince people 30 or 50 years later that things always used to be that way. You're trying to convince the people whose memory says that's not what was happening yesterday.

@davidstrelec2000

27 күн бұрын

How could tricksters convince an entire nation that their ancestors had been enslaved in Egypt and rescued from there? If it never happened there wouldn’t be any traditions of such an event and no one would have been familiar with it since they had not been taught by their ancestor of the exodus.

@MadManchou

27 күн бұрын

@@davidstrelec2000 I'm not commenting on the historicity of Exodus, but on the argument that people can't get convinced something new is an old tradition. People as a group have surprisingly short memories about what is and isn't traditional (I'd wager largely because most people don't bother to think about it), and there's plenty of evidence for that.

@Digganob590

27 күн бұрын

Perhaps I misunderstand your point about the traditional family model which has fallen off in recent times, but I would like to make a statement: The housewife and breadwinner husband model of the immemorial nuclear family is simply a refinement of a tradition which most families have fallen into during human history. I wouldn't call it "novel," like many modern societal phenomena are. Almost all families have involved the father doing specialized work with most of his time, while the mother handled the (might I add "strenuous," due to a lack of modern conveniences) housework, with only some of her time dedicated to any, for lack of a better word, "productive" work outside of the bounds of the household, when a family was poorer. The modern ideal family situation is, again, a refinement of that traditional model, with a strong focus on the luxuries of the time afforded by modern convenience, and for more men and women to take part in this model, given the relatively wealthy times of modernity. Basically, even if things weren't always like they were in the fifties as far as family models go, that was certainly the ideal. And the ideal of a society is, in a way, that society. People do not strive for the unfortunate practical necessities of their circumstances. No women of the middle ages hoped to wile away their days in drudgery, if they could instead spend that time in their homes. And no men of that time hoped they wouldn't have time to spend with their families at the end of the work day, or to give their children opportunities and time to get schooling, or learn a higher trade.

@davidstrelec2000

27 күн бұрын

@@MadManchou Any example? Such as?

I just want to say that I really enjoy the direction you went with your channel. These knowledge nuggets are inspiring and useful. Just the right size, too.

Very good analysis brother. I love your videos! ☺️

Nice explanation.

Nice work. Giving christians everywhere a good foundation

I know that Napoleon wouldn’t have passed any point

@ChristopherWentling

27 күн бұрын

Napoleon has tons of contemporaneous documentation.

@Yan_Alkovic

27 күн бұрын

@@ChristopherWentling It's a local joke that Napoleon was a myth, don't worry, I'm not actually crazy

6:14 Hold up, not so fast. God did not authorized to change the Sabbath into Sunday. The Catholic church have admitted this confession: "Q: Which is the Sabbath day? A: Saturday is the Sabbath day. Q: Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday? A: We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church, in the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 336), transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday. Q: Why did the Catholic Church substitute Sunday for Saturday? A: The Church substituted Sunday for Saturday, because Christ rose from the dead on a Sunday, and the Holy Ghost descended upon the Apostles on a Sunday. Q: By what authority did the Church substitute Sunday for Saturday? A: The Church substituted Sunday for Saturday by the plenitude of that divine power which Jesus Christ bestowed upon her." -Convert's Catechism of Catholic Doctrine, Page 50

@NinjaKooopa

24 күн бұрын

Sunday worship for Christians goes back further than that. That decree at the council of Laodicea was more about not falling back into adhering to the Mosaic law for salvation (think back to the council of Jerusalem and circumcision)

@freshbakedclips4659

24 күн бұрын

​ @NinjaKooopa Jesus, Paul, the Apostles, the women, etc. have obeyed the Sabbath, which is the Seventh day of the week. There is no mandate nor law in the New Testament that made the 10 commandments null and void. Nor there is a mandate or law that transferred the solemnity and sacredness of Seventh day Sabbath into the First day of the week. However, what we can see is that Laws, ceremonies, and rituals concerning the forgiveness of sins through animal sacrifices, etc, have been abolished because they were already fulfilled by Jesus Christ.

@NinjaKooopa

24 күн бұрын

@@freshbakedclips4659 I don't understand your point. I'd rather stick to what has been taught since early Christendom and not try to justify myself with the law.

This is great. Thanks!

I literally bought both of these books last night lol - so wild. I think this is one of the best ways to defend the Resurrection. Old apologetics rocks.

You know i was going to try and refute all of this with the "how do you explain miracles in other traditions" but im so glad you did cover it

To be fair to the naysayers, some evidence suggests a few-hundred-year gap between the Exodus and them first writing about it... And the Romans forgot their kings a hundred years after their deaths, unless Romulus and the others before Tarquinius the Elder really did live 60-70 years each.

@stephengray1344

27 күн бұрын

Which evidence are you thinking about? As far as I can tell, there seems to be a decent case that the Exodus account is at least making use of sources from that period (there are numerous details which seem to fit 19th Dynasty Egypt in particular, and the structure of the Mosaic Covenant in both Exodus and Deuteronomy uses a form of treaty which was only in use until around 1200 BC).

@auraguard0212

27 күн бұрын

@@stephengray1344 oh huh. I mostly went off Wikipedia.

@TestifyApologetics

26 күн бұрын

No way. Romulus fails 3 of the 4 marks.

I'd also like to point out to some that Exodus doesn't actually say the parting was instant like in films (The Ten Commandments, Prince of Egypt, etc) but took part over night. A channel called "The Bible Explained" has some good reviews of those films which I recommend.

Greetings, great video. Whats the name of Lesie's paper in which you got these criteria? I'm curious to read them myself as a college student for ministry.

@TestifyApologetics

27 күн бұрын

A Short and Easy Method With the Deists

@RuminantHairdo

27 күн бұрын

@@TestifyApologetics thanks, ill read the essay. Good reading

Heck yeah, St. Louis mentioned!

@TestifyApologetics

27 күн бұрын

I'm originally from there

When Ezra read the Torah of the first time, the people didn't know about living in booths.

@IslandUsurper

27 күн бұрын

But the returned exiles knew that it was an ancient book even if most of them didn’t pay attention to it. Same thing when the Torah was discovered in the temple in king Joash’s time (Josiah’s? I get them confused). The argument about the donut holiday is that absolutely no one has heard about the book before, which was never the case about the Torah in Israel.

@lukehamel3883

27 күн бұрын

@IslandUsurper good point. Also I believe it was Josiah (2 Kings 22)

@TestifyApologetics

27 күн бұрын

See the pinned comment

If somebody eyewitnessed David Copperfield doing impossible miracles, does that imply there was actual magic involved?

One of the problems of course is, that something like that happened to the Samaritans... they had a temple on Mount Gerizim and it was written in their Torah, in contrast to the Jewish Torah, that was otherwise pretty similar.

Bro, can you subtitle your videos into Portuguese? It's kind of hard to understand

@tonedcamp5314

27 күн бұрын

Usa o auto-tradutor, não é perfeito mas funciona

@Onlyafool172

26 күн бұрын

Relaxa irmão vai vendo vídeos em ingles que você aprende jaja, tenta ler e escrever esse canal é muito bom

Thank you!

One problem there are no ancient Egypt records (to my knowledge) of the Israelites ever being in slavery or leaving. There's not ever a record of the plagues.

3:00 This is basically the supplementary hypothesis. And I agree, it's garbage. 4:00 This actually happens a lot. Islam adopted Arabian pagan traditions wholesale and just said they were actually worshipping a different god and the old gods were actually djinni. Christianity did something different but with similar elements - Odin and Zeus were out, but fairies and yule stuck around.

@CCoburn3

27 күн бұрын

The Roman Church imported elements from other religions in an attempt to fool the pagans into becoming Christians (and to boost the collections). Eventually, they had imported so many pagan elements that they had fooled themselves into becoming Pagans. Roman Catholicism is paganism with a VERY thin veneer of Christianity. So you make a valid point. Papists will deny that they have ANY pagan elements when their churches ALL have an image of some god or goddess (who they call a "saint") before which they burn offerings. And the multitude of little godlings the pagans used to worship have just had their names changed and have become "saints." They think Christians have ALWAYS had these pagan elements.

I like this a lot it’s makes sense when something is the truth. Just compare it to all American traditions even some holidays came from Christian’s saints who were supposedly martyrs like St Valentine

Truly the Lord's work. Thank you.

Think this is a bit of a straw man here with regards to skeptics’ arguments on the Torah. I don’t think most would argue that someone invented the Torah and tried to pass it for fact, but rather that it was written down from long-standing (and therefore long developing and changing) oral tradition among the Hebrews/Israelites. (And maybe it is, I don’t think it being oral tradition first, instead of written by Moses in its entirety, makes it false or untrustworthy in and of itself.)

@Electricalpenguin

27 күн бұрын

Yeah…I’ve never heard anyone claim that the Torah is an elaborate fraud devised by some con man who successfully convinced the Israelites to adopt and follow it.

Church Tradition coming through with the clutch once again! Funny how the Anglican ends up defending it. Also weird wojacks in this one.

*The Most Miraculous Salvation of the Doughnutte* Now that's a book that I'm _starving_ to read 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Idk if you guys agree but i have my theory how the parting of the red sea happened. I think it was an earthquake then tsunami incident. As we all know water goes away for awhile when earthquakes happen under the seas and its a miracle that God led His people there at a certain time that allowed them to cross the sea by foot, and drowned the enemies in pursuit of them

@logicianbones

26 күн бұрын

The text describes it as wind setdown, unless the word for wind means God's Spirit (same word in Hebrew, but that it took all night implies setdown). This is why it's thought that either what we today know as the Red Sea was the yam suph and it extended further north at the time (as argued by Glenn Miller) or that yam suph could refer to any of the northern lakes and it may have been one of them (and vast arrays of arguments are made for and against all of them).

@logicianbones

26 күн бұрын

Alternatively, God could have used "shaped" wind or direct miracles slowly for whatever reason (perhaps to avoid CAUSING tsunamis and requiring even more intervention to counter) for a deep channel though the modern RS area.

@logicianbones

26 күн бұрын

But yes, what you're referring to, a "miracle of timing" as it's called (MOT), is an option, and seems most likely but about wind setdown rather than a quake. Also a tsunami would not likely hold back the water long enough, without direct-intervention miracles (or miracles of intervention; DIM / MOI) in addition.

@xangil21

26 күн бұрын

@@logicianbones i just think that God doesn't make his interventions too obvious and outlandish at the same time. I mean the sodom and Gomorrah part, He dropped rain of fires in the two cities if i remember correctly. And it was discovered that the cliff near the cities has sulfur reserves and when it quaked the sulfurs came rolling down towards the cities

@logicianbones

24 күн бұрын

​@@xangil21 I agree. Just saying the method seems less likely in this case to be about a quake. I forgot to mention also that argument from silence, while often fallacious, isn't necessarily always so, if elsewhere we have data that shows that if a thing happens it's usually mentioned, as we do for quakes. So it might be too implausible that there's no mention of a quake here.

Now I'm curious where/who fabricated other religions. Ex: greek gods, Indian gods, etc

This is quite fascinating. I would be interested to see if any claims from other religions actually pass this. Particularly more eastern religions, I know they hold to their beliefs in an interesting way. From what I hear its actually a lot more playful than sacred, in a sense. But they still legitimately hold to these views of yokai and such existing. Do their beliefs hold up to these tests or fail?

In Rev 1:10 you can see that John is still respecting the Saturday, almost 70 years after Jesus died, but I understand that the point of the video is to show that while changing Saturday to Sunday, is still evidence of Jesus resurrection

Matthew 28, 11:15, seems relevant to this discussion. This is an ancient tradition after all. This is a contemporary account.

incredibly made video.

Thank you

Except we do have evidence of people retconning existing traditions and adding a new spin on them. For instance when Muhammad took over Mecca and the Kabba he told his followers to keep the tradition of circumambulating it because that’s what Abraham did when he built the Kabba. He also kept the pagan tradition of kissing the black stone and walking between the two hills of Safa and Marwa. Each of these traditions had a new story attached to them involving biblical characters to explain their significance.

May I ask you a question? In the old testament, Moses went on to the mountain alone while leaving his people behind, claiming he has made a covenant with God. How should we think about this passage? Coz it seems like the miracle of God appearing to Moses didn't witness by any people rather than Moses himself.

@Jesusiscomingback-jc8nf

25 күн бұрын

But if God appeared to Israel and Moses many times before and after why wouldn’t we believe him then

The case of Sabatai zevi, the so-called messiah of 1666, is an interesting one for that subject, where there is claims that people saw him flying in the air and those stories were not only written after him and also when he was allegedly perfoming such things and he even gathered a large following, causing trouble, and of course, like the gospel and the torah, no outside sources witness such things, and if we label his case as just a myth, then it shows how a myth can be develloped even during the living era of the "divine" subject, no gap needed, and no actual miracle needed for people to believe it, and the cases of many modern sects shows how people can literally die or kill themselves for a bunch of lies that they believed and for a guru that actually believed in his own lies and even sacrificing himself for that lie he invented, i guess you know which case am talking about

@TestifyApologetics

27 күн бұрын

bro converted to Islam, that kinda weakens the whole thing

@fluffysheap

26 күн бұрын

​@@TestifyApologetics That was my first thought too, but that only ruins his messianic claim. If the obvious false guy's miracles pass the filter, that's a problem for the filter.

@amwalrus6505

26 күн бұрын

@@TestifyApologetics sure, but thats not the point, the point here is that people can actually believe fake miracles without proves from their contempary times and even have eye witnesses without any time gap needed for the myth to evolve, the only reason he converted is the social pressure put on him because the movement actually grew bigger than people thought, and the reality is that the movement never really died out and evolved into different branches and sects with him being it central figure, sound familiar ?

@TestifyApologetics

26 күн бұрын

do they pass all four marks? how? who is celebrating this guy in some unbroken line of tradition today?

@amwalrus6505

24 күн бұрын

First, i would like to appreciate your involvement in the comment section, which show your interest in your audience, second of all, i actually dont get it now, how having an unbroken line of tradition validate the myth justifying it? Because that apply to every myth that dominated at some point ancient cultures, plus it will be easier to convince futur adepts than contempary ones of the "divine" or "myth-maker" figure, since they couldnt fact check it, and third of all, sabbataism actually evolved into frankism and later also integrated the modern franc-masconery, and to this day a community of sabbatean live in turkiye who follow his doctrines, so in conclusion, my point is that those people and the people who followed him during his lifetime and spread have more proves of his miracles than the early documented christians could, yet we agree that it wasnt true

Why did the same god that protected Moses forsake Amakusa Shiro?

The Exodus itself happened. But there are details concerning the aftermath in the Bible that are just false -- on their face. For instance, we are told that the Israelites wandered around in the wilderness for 40 years. But we are also told about the grain offerings, drink offerings, oil offerings, and animal sacrifices they were required to make. HUGE amounts of grain, wine, olive oil, and animals were sacrificed on an ongoing basis. Well, where did it come from? Nomadic herdsmen MIGHT have had some of the animals, but they could not have supplied the grain, wine, and olive oil. Furthermore, if they had all of this stuff to sacrifice, why were they eating manna and quail? And the numbers we are given are just ridiculous. We're told that 600,000 left Egypt. After the building of the Tabernacle, these 600,000 people would have had to live within a Sabbath's walk of the Tabernacle. That population density would have meant that they were knee-deep in excrement. Even if God was feeding them and providing that much water for them to drink, he was NOT carrying away the waste. (Not to mention the fact that a water source of that magnitude would certainly have left some trace.) So while it is certainly believable that SOME Israelites participated in the Exodus, we have to take many of the details with a grain of salt bigger than Lot's wife. But that doesn't matter. The Bible is NOT about recording the minute details of the Israelites and their origins. It is about the relationship between God and man. The Exodus was no doubt based on fact. But over the centuries, the details got a bit exaggerated. These things happen -- especially in oral societies.

@Yopmemama

27 күн бұрын

The term for thousand in the 600,000 Israelites could instead refer to units. Like 600 families or even just 600 people. You are correct though, the Bible is not a history textbook and the inerrancy in it is not as important as some make it out to be.

@fluffysheap

27 күн бұрын

I don't think 600 people makes sense, but 600 families does. Really, nothing in Exodus or Numbers makes sense with that many people, but archaeology shows us that most of the Israelites were already in Israel. The actual historical Exodus was probably just the tribe of Levi.

@CCoburn3

27 күн бұрын

@@Yopmemama It is inerrant for what it teaches -- man's relationship with God. But people (too many of the Christian, alas) try to say it is inerrant for every detail. This leads people to error. Six hundred families sounds about right. Large enough to be of some significance to the Israelite people, but not so large that it makes the story unbelievable. Basically, a village. Important enough that someone would send troops, but not so large that they could not function in the wilderness. And over the years, more people joined them. Many of these people would have had to be farmers.

@pgpython

27 күн бұрын

The offering were given to when they entered the land. There is an awful lot of laws for when they enter the land and then there is a lot of provisions for when they break the laws given to them

@matthewnitz8367

27 күн бұрын

I think even inerrancy of the text in regards to man's relationship with God is more of faith belief, since the evidence seems to point to an evolving conception of that throughout the Biblical texts. You can of course say by faith that you believe the older texts should be reinterpreted and read through the lens imposed by the newer texts, and that you believe that is how God meant for them to be viewed after sending Jesus. But evidentially, that does not appear to be how the texts were understood or intended by the authors at the time they were written

The ancient Egyptians were aware of the divine name of God before the whole Aten experiment happened. They built a temple in modern day Sudan at Soleb that talks about a nomadic group that worshipped Yahweh, which would be not long after the events of the Exodus took place. Josephus gives a neutral view of the resurrection, not confirming or denying it but stating the disciples proclaimed that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them. The Thalmud contains a twisted oral tradition on the stolen body excuse the Jewish leaders are mentioned to have concocted in Matthew. In it, the disciples tried to steal the body, but a gardener move it before they could. It is obviously a twisted version of the original story that holds even less weight than the Jewish leaders’ original narrative.

@stephengray1344

27 күн бұрын

The translation of that inscription at Soleb is disputed. My understanding is that it's generally thought to read "the Shasu of Yahu" rather than "the Shasu of YHWH". And the strongest case for an historical Exodus is during the reign of Ramses II, rather than before the reign of Akhenaten.

@logicianbones

27 күн бұрын

@@stephengray1344 Yahu would be an acceptable shortened version of Yahweh often seen as part of names throughout the Bible.

@stephengray1344

27 күн бұрын

@@logicianbones It could be, but it could also be a lot of other things. It's far from clear that Yahu should be taken as the name of a god worshipped by Shasu rather than as a placename. so we should be very cautious about using this inscription as evidence of anybody knowing the divine name at this time.

@Republican_Banana

27 күн бұрын

I think there's a case for Ahemhotep III being the Pharaoh of Exodus. With possibly Thutmose I doing the mass killings of the babies. Ahemhotep's first son mysteriously died and his second being Akenhaten took the throne and changed Egypt to monotheism. Akenhaten was Pharaoh while a people called the Habiru (most likely Hebrews) were invading Canaan and conquering the nations there. These people were known as former slaves, the Jordan-crossers.

It’s absolutely sad that people think the historicity of a person verified by a written source can also be applied to a miracle in the past 🤦‍♀️

To offer a respectable counter argument, I would point out that exaggerated or blatantly mythical founding myths were quite common for the time period that exodus would’ve occurred in and which Israel itself first formed. It was a symbol of status and wealth I’d a king or city could hire a storyteller or scribe to develop an elaborate founding myth invoking real or fake conquests and religious iconography. The only “odd” part about the Israeli founding myth of exodus is that they don’t start as a conquering or glorious nation like say Assyria or Egypt would. Instead they start as slaves and are able to free themselves from that slavery before conquering Canaan later on. It’s also somewhat confident that this likely happened in the “dark” 12th century BCE, which is the century directly following the Bronze Age collapse where Egypt lost control over Judea due to political and economic instability and foreign invasions by the sea peoples. We don’t have many or really any records from this period because practically every civilization other than Egypt collapsed but its not entirely impossible that exodus happened in some capacity here. Was it the literal events as described by the Old Testament? Probably not considering that the plagues levied against egypt and the destruction of any entire army in the Red Sea would’ve been been crippling for a nation already in the gutter, but it likely did occur in some smaller form. A smaller migration of Semitic peoples from egypt to the levant is possible alongside the somewhat credible evidence that Israeli society was already present in the levant and expanded following Egyptian territorial contractions during the 12th century. Therefore, it’s entirely likely that the Israelis would’ve developed their founding mythos around their occupation and likely enslavement by the Egyptians, and when freed from that yoke created the story of exodus. It’s important to also note that this myth in no way has to be true. Embellishment was a tool used to exaggerate and prop up a ruler’s position at the time and the largely illiterate masses would’ve eaten up a story propagandizing their hated rivals defeat and their glorious conquest. Even nearly a 1,000 years later the roman poet Virgil outright made up the story of the Aeneid to explain how Rome formed as a Trojan refugee colony. People still believed it for quite some time, not because it was at all accurate, but because it told them a story that they liked and were to uneducated to realistically care about opposing. The same thing goes for the Odyssey, Iliad, etc.

Surely nobody would willingly eat matzah bread, unless they were convinced with 100% certainty that the tradition was mandated by God after actual events. I mean it doesn't even taste good with cheese... like eating cardboard and cheese.

@fluffysheap

26 күн бұрын

Ok, but macaroons are amazing

Great youTuber shoutout to him🙏🏽🎯

So I normally agree with and appreciate your videos, but I think this one is kind of weak at least on The Exodus side. The problem is we have few if any records from the actual time when the documentary hypothesis claims The Exodus was published to the people, so there's no record of debate. The earliest accounts we have are the Dead Sea scrolls, which would be hundreds of years after they were allegedly written, and over a thousand years after the event of The Exodus. Additionally, it is worth pointing out that for some cultures, history is a tool for justifying the present and it's changed to suit that, not a tool for discovering what took place in the past. Modern-day Russia is an example of a country or a culture where the purpose of history is to justify the present.

@davidjanbaz7728

27 күн бұрын

U really need to watch Dr.David Falk videos on the Exodus ( 1300 B.C. ) NOT the 1500 B.C. date that most scholarship is against.

@stegokitty

27 күн бұрын

Egypt isn't going to leave a record of getting their butts kicked by a foreign god, AND of giving away tons of treasure to the thousands of slaves they set free. Only the Scriptures give us the "warts and all" accounts of history.

@ahncaldazar

27 күн бұрын

@@davidjanbaz7728 I've seen videos with him in it. I'm not opposed to the traditional conservative view of the exodus, I'm just highlighting that I think the case Testify makes here comes from a Euro-centric framework of history that a knowledgeable skeptic could pick apart pretty easily. That's not to say I think he's wrong about the exodus, but I don't think this is a good argument for it.

As a Adventist, I found the "don't @ me adventists" pretty funny hahahaha It would be interesting a video on the change of Saturday to Sunday, tho

Hi Sir. Can you make movie about Deuteronomy 23:8 ? Very please. I will be so greatful. That was most difficult moment for my faith. I almost lost my faith months ago for this reason. If you can, please.

@lyongreene8241

26 күн бұрын

Deuteronomy 23:8 reads: “Children born to them in the third generation may enter the assembly of the Lord” Is this the verse that’s bothering you?

And you are right.

How would this apply to Constantine's vision before the battle of Milvian Bridge?

To be fair, I don’t think anyone would argue that someone just came along and started saying the Israelites had always followed the Torah and everybody just went along with it despite having never heard of it, that’s obviously silly. But it wouldn’t be silly to suggest that the Israelites adopted these religious customs and laws over time for various reasons, and that these were later connected with the story of the exodus (or at least some seed form of it), perhaps with some organic alterations being made to both the rituals and the story as they evolved together within that culture. It’s not that uncommon for a practice to be given some kind of post-hoc rationale by the society it emerges in. You seem to assume that the Torah was presented to Israel as a single unified literary work at some known point in history, but if the Documentary Hypothesis is correct, it is a series of different traditions that were edited, collected, and received over time, which fits well with what I said in the previous paragraph. You don’t have to agree with the DH of course, but given that it’s the dominant theory in biblical scholarship, I don’t think you can just assume that it’s wrong. I say all of this as a Christian who is convinced of the historicity of the Exodus, but I think any good argument in its favor must deal with evolutionary accounts of the origins of these traditions, since in most cases this is the actual alternative being offered.

We do know that Sukkot was not celebrated for generations from the book of Nehemia same as Pesah from the book of kings in regards to the days of Josia.

How about common everyday miracles in other religions? This is story my Mom related to me who is a Shiite Muslim from Iran. Her cousin was born with a congenital defect which the doctors said would make her wheel chair bound for the rest of her life. One night my Grandmother was sleeping when Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad who my Grandma was named after, appeared to her in a dream and told her to get up and take her niece out of her crib and tell her to walk. She woke up and did exactly that and the child started walking. I have no way of authenticating the report my Mom gave but she seemed sincere and I don’t think she’d make something like that up.

@BurnBird1

23 күн бұрын

Well, there we go, Christianity confirmed false!

@lyongreene8241

23 күн бұрын

@@BurnBird1 Well if miracles happen all the time it doesn’t mean Christianity is false. It just means reality is weirder than we know and that undermines the evidentiary role of miracles for the claims of Christianity

@BadKnightLv01

19 күн бұрын

Demons have power in this world, I tend to believe people and I 100% believe the Greeks and Egyptians saw their dieties. However it's interesting that their false gods are so limited in power. Odin needed ravens to keep him in the loop of what's happening in the world. But none of these supposed gods had the power of creation or power over death. These other beings are simply fallen angels, corrupted beings. They have power on this earth over people who believe in them, but the word of Jesus Christ overpowers and negates anything these corrupted beings can do. People can cast curses or prophesies and have power over beings who do not walk with God through Jesus Christ, but in the truth and light they are obliterated.

@rasleyforde2363

14 күн бұрын

I don't think this video helps to identify what miracles are false, but instead to identify those that are true. So in your case, we possibly just won't be able to prove true of false, just based on this. Anyway, in my opinion, testimony of people who saw your cousin not able to walk, and then, able to again, it's enough

@bluezero8557

7 күн бұрын

Demons can perform minor miracles. Allah and other pagan gods are devils.

These are the kind of videos that really make me think Testify doesn't understand the actual scholarly consensus on the development of these texts. There's a historical explanation for how the belief in the Torah developed, and he never mentions that actual reasonable explanation. Probably at least in part because he relies on a guy whose scholarship is three centuries out of date but whom he assumes was just way ahead of his time and knows better than everyone today that has access to drastically better textual and archeological evidence than Leslie ever had access to. The actual scholarly consensus: From what we can tell, it appears that Josiah instituted a religious reform to wipe out the worship of Baal and Asherah, among other deities, as well as any local religious worship of Yahweh/El, and elevate/centralize the worship of Yahweh in the temple above all other religious sects. It was indeed the case that the stories of the Exodus and the patriarchs existed in the cultural consciousness, just like oral traditions passed down in every other culture existed at the time. The part that Testify objects to though, trying to convince everyone they had ALWAYS followed these rules, is easily explained by what the Biblical story itself says happened. It doesn't say Josiah told everyone "Hey, we all were just doing this yesterday, keep up the good work following those laws like you and your parents and grandparents have always done!" No, the account says they discovered an old text with all these rules and the people were told "We USED to do things this way back in the good old days, when all those stories you know about happened. But now even though you were EXPLICITLY commanded to never forget those commands you have all been evil for generations and FORGOTTEN the laws of the REAL God. So you better get back to following his commands like everyone totally used to do, or else bad things will happen to you." And then they started a purge against all the "evil" people that didn't accept the new "old" laws and got rid of everyone they could find promoting a different religion. Doesn't really sound like a religious tradition everyone was on the same page with being historical and true. And even after that, there is plenty of extra-Biblical and Biblical evidence that many or even most people STILL didn't follow those laws for a very long time. It took many generations and the annihilation and/or removal of most of the people in Israel to another country to forge together a people that viewed these texts as authoritative and what they should follow to do the will of God and gain back their homeland. The Biblical texts of course explains this as everyone being super rebellious and stubborn against the true God and not wanting to turn back to him even though everyone knew the truth about his power and might and had personally agreed to the laws he had given. But to act like it is obviously ridiculous that instead it could have been that these WERE in fact new texts and laws that were developed by a specific religious sect and then imposed from the top down as the correct interpretation of the (at least somewhat) shared cultural oral tradition about Moses and the patriarchs, and then forged into unified agreement by initial intense religious persecution and then external disaster bringing everyone together in agreement as to how to regain the favor of God and so they could return to their homeland just seems blatantly close minded to me. And this shows the problem with these kind of simplistic criteria. They don't at all account for the wildly complex and often unpredictable development of human cultures and social beliefs. If Testify is going to criticize those that don't accept his literal history interpretation of the Torah, he could at least study the scholarship well enough to critique the ACTUAL current scholarly view of how the text developed and not centuries old ideas rejected by all scholars today. I get that he focuses more on the resurrection and Christian miracle claims. But if that doesn't leave him enough time to actually understand Old Testament scholarship, he shouldn't be speaking on the topic with such a lack of understanding. With regards to whether there are other claims that would pass Leslie's criteria, it depends on who you want to believe about what is actually demonstrated by the historical evidence. If you believe actual historical scholars, the Exodus story completely fails on the Time criteria, as it shows every sign of being developed and edited over hundreds of years before being put to paper and recorded somewhat in it's present form around the time of the exile. But if you decide current scholarship is just bunk and isn't even worth reading because they are all biased, and we should instead go with the traditional attribution and internal claims for the dates texts were written, then evaluating the Mahabharata based on these criteria results in: Sense: Krishna caused darkness to appear for hours during the day to help hunt down the opposing army and made a saree have unlimited layers such that the man trying to disrobe her eventually fell down exhausted, and there were flying chariots that people rode around in. Among many other miraculous events. Public: All these things were visibly happening during a massive war with millions of soldiers fighting and had many witnesses among those soldiers and officials. Ongoing tradition: These were ongoing Hindu traditions that everyone believed and said happened (I mean, "everyone" as much as is the case with the Torah anyway). And they all passed on and followed rituals and laws and philosophy based on these events and the accompanying moral/ethical directions given inside them. Time: The Mahabharata was written by Vyasa, who lived through the war and wrote down a record of the events afterwards. So, can we come up with an explanation of how these events recorded shortly after they happened by Vyasa, believed to be historical truth by the Hindus in their ongoing traditions, and seen and experienced publicly by many people in the text, could have POSSIBLY been believed by all those people if they didn't actually happen as recorded? If you can figure it out, then you should be able to figure it out for the Torah as well, as I described above.

@stephengray1344

27 күн бұрын

There are a variety of views among actual historical scholars about the Exodus. Many of them point out that the text contains numerous details that show a detailed knowledge of Egypt as it was in the 19th Dynasty. The structure of the Covenant in both Exodus and Deuteronomy is based on a treaty structure that fell out of use around 1200 BC. The geography of the Exodus route is very specific to this period (including the mention of cities that only existed for a couple of hundred years). Even the design of the Ark of the Covenant is very specific to this point in Egyptian history. Even the abnormally high number of Egyptian loan words in the text suggests that large parts of it are significantly older than the time of Josiah (at which point, the dominant foreign influence was Assyrian, rather than Egyptian).

@matthewnitz8367

27 күн бұрын

@@stephengray1344 Yes, everything you said is essentially true for the most part. The only important part you forgot to mention is that absolutely no serious scholars thinks that any of that means the Exodus as described in the Torah happened and the laws were given to the Israelites during that time period. I know of plenty of scholars that argue for an Exodus of a small group of people, or the Levites, or continuous travel between the two countries with the people leaving Egypt becoming part of the Israelite people group. And yes, all scholars agree that PARTS of the text are older than the Josiah and the exile. Hence my statement about the text was not that it was entirely invented whole cloth without any actual historical basis at the time of Josiah, but that "it shows every sign of being developed and edited over hundreds of years before being put to paper and recorded somewhat in it's present form around the time of the exile. Again, centuries of history, social development, textual compiling and editing, and refinement of religious thought is an extremely complex process, and it does not in any way boil down to a neat "this is a history of what happened because it has some accurate Egyptian words, Egyptian information, and cities in the area so ALL of it is true". Just like the fact that we have verified that the cities, kingdoms, rivers, and many other historical details found in the Mahabharata doesn't mean that it must an entirely true and accurate recounting of history. We know that accurate information about names, places, dynasties, kings, etc. are developed over time and oral tradition all the time into mythologies that still have those kernels of truth, but also many other extra details that make the story more meaningful and relatable to the people recounting the stories. The only way to deny this for the Exodus is to use special pleading and say "this one text isn't like any of the others, we know ALL of it is true because some parts of it can be verified and we can come up with possible explanations of how God can fix whatever other apparent problems there might be with taking this as literal history". None of your points at all disagree with the overall scholarly consensus of the development of the text.

@stephengray1344

27 күн бұрын

@@matthewnitz8367 You appear to be arguing that Kitchen, Hoffmeier, Hess, and Falk (to name the first four that come to mind) don't count as serious scholars. Isn't that invoking the No True Scotsman fallacy? There are good reasons to believe that the main narration, the overall structure of the covenant (which includes its law codes), and many of the individual laws genuinely do date back to the time of Moses. There are good reasons to believe that the Israelite population boom in the early Iron Age does have its origin in the migration of the population of Avaris to Canaan during the reigns of Ramses II and Merneptah and their adoption of the identity of Israelite during that migration. Obviously no scholar is saying that we can demonstrate that every single detail of the text is true, or that no part of the text was ever updated. What many of them are saying is that its narrative sections are based on real events, and that they seem to be relatively close to the events. Remember that the Exodus account includes things like the name and location of cities that had been abandoned by the time of King David, let alone by the time of King Josiah.

@TestifyApologetics

27 күн бұрын

I can't answer this all now but please see the pinned comment

@rafexrafexowski4754

27 күн бұрын

The scholarly consensus is reading WAY too much into the text. The accounts of king Josiah in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles do not say that Josiah made the feasts of the Book of Law return to Israel. Your quote is an absurd caricature of the two texts. Our two records only claim that Josiah purged false priests from outside the Temple, both of Yahweh and of pagan gods, nothing about new feasts and traditions or the Law being forgotten. We have texts like Hosea, Isaiah or Micah which clearly show that the intellectual elite knew the Law very well way before Josiah, it is just that many people, under foreign influence, worshipped idols along with Yahweh. The text in no way shows a religious reform, but something more like the carrying out of the anti-idolatry laws after Josiah was accidentally introduced to an important work, the Book of Law (which was never lost, as earlier prophets mention books containing the Law before even the destruction of Samaria and Hezekiah's reform, let alone Josiah; it is just that the original manuscript was lost). The idea that this reform was made using new texts is absurd. We have evidence of at least henotheism, and possibly monotheism, existing in Israel at least since the 12th century BC, with the Song of Deborah, which most scholars date to that time. It is clearly in favor of worship of only one God, Yahweh, destroying any idea that the monotheistic system of the post-exilic Israelites was Josiah's invention. This early origin of monotheism or at least henotheism in Israel shows that the religious elite of the people believed in one God, Yahweh, centuries before Josiah. Thus, no matter when the Torah was written, its Law dates back to the beginnings of Israel, and there has been an Israelite intellectual elite trying to impose it since the 12th century BC. This is exactly what the Bible describes. Now it's time to debunk the absurdities of the documentary hypothesis. The division of the text into four sources is completely artificial. The biggest sin of modern scholars of the Torah is the Redactor of the Gaps. The text is inherently incompatible with a four-source division, so hundreds of redactions have to be assumed solely in order to maintain the hypothesis. If the redactor changed the texts of the sources, why do we even assume that he preserved the name of God correctly, let alone the actual text. For example, Genesis 1-11 perfectly mirrors the structure of the Atrahasis, but if you break it up between J and P, both do not follow it in any way. In order to artificially fit the second creation narrative into J, the redactor must have changed out "LORD" to "LORD God" for no reason. E starts out abruptly with the sacrifice of Melchizedek, meaning that the redactor did not use the entirety of the supposed original, which destroys the point of the hypothesis. The taking of Sarah is Gerar requires that the reader first read of the taking of Sarai in Egypt, meaning that they come from the same source. The change of Abram's name only occurs in P, so the redactor must have switched out Abraham for Abram in J and E, which shows that he was aware of the name differences in the two texts, putting into question how he did not see the difference between the LORD and God as well as between the Ishmaelites and the Midianites. The story of Joseph cannot be broken up well, at all, and is one of the best parts to use when showing the flaws of modern scholarship. His selling, the principal part of his story, occurs only in J and E, not in P, which barely features Joseph, showing yet again that the author did not use the entirety of his sources. Even with that though, the text of the selling has to be absolutely decimated to fit into two sources, destroying multiple common textual structures and conventions found in the current text. Both J and E feature massive gaps in the narrative, with no climax in E and an abrupt jump from the low point to the climax in J. The plagues of the Exodus cannot be divided up well either. E features no plague narrative, again destroying the cohesive narrative of the sources. J and P meanwhile are meant to be divided using the hardening of Pharaoh's heart and of the Egyptian magicians, but the two do not exactly interlock with each other, so the Redactor of the Gaps steps in yet again for the documentary hypothesis to save the day by claiming that the redactor changed much of P to balance the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, thus both showing that he was aware of the differences between the texts and that he was willing to change the sources to not contradict each other, making us wonder why he left so many contradictions in anyway. The textual scholars obviously explain this by pointing out the incompetence of the redactor, an argument that they make for many Biblical passages that are too dangerous for their narrative (Daniel's seventy weeks, the Olivet Discourse, and the double meeting of David and Saul in 2 Samuel have all been similarly ridiculed). I could go on and on. The documentary hypothesis is absurd and always has been. I truly hope more scholars realize this instead of wasting more time making up documents and coloring verses of the Torah according to an imagined principle that is inherently unfalsifiable and breaks apart under the tiniest level of scrutiny.

Christians did not switch their day of worship to Sunday. Sunday's preference over Saturday came after the 12 Apostles.

@TestifyApologetics

27 күн бұрын

This is false and it would be weird that the tradition would be so quickly warped. isjesusalive.com/chick-fil-a-argument-for-the-resurrection/

@EJ_7715

27 күн бұрын

@@TestifyApologetics It's not false at all. I've done extensive research on this. Sunday was a convenient day to gather and fellowship and eat among believers but they still observed the Sabbath. There are many even relatively late Christian works that call for the observance of both days, like Apostolic Constitutions. Justin Martyr famously despised Sabbath keepers but acknowledged yes they did exist and they should be respected as brethren. The eastern churches kept Sabbath longer than the western, but again, there is absolutely no evidence the Apostles did not fully endorse the decalogue. James and John both confirm this law, and it makes sense when you realize the decalogue predated and is not part and parcel with the Law of Moses. Don't allow traditions to cloud the history OR especially the text of the Scriptures.

@graysonguinn1943

27 күн бұрын

@@EJ_7715 If it was simply both of them being observed then the point made in the video still stands, as an event lead to the day being observed alongside the Saturday sabbath

@EJ_7715

27 күн бұрын

@@graysonguinn1943 be that as it may, the statement should have been more precise. This issue is a weak point for atheists to pick at because church doctrinal issues prevent people from facing it

@EJ_7715

27 күн бұрын

@@TestifyApologetics also, as for the historical impetus to leave Saturday observance behind, Jews were persona non grata in the second century. Christians sought to distance themselves from the sabbath. Don't forget, other doctrine also devolved quickly after the Apostles. Like clergy started to become sexual deviants sharing wives, or remaining celibate from their own wives.

The switch to Sunday supposedly happened centuries later? People followed the historic Mormon founder too?

Actually, you can’t have a nation forget its history and laws if you hold them captive in all the ramifications that it entails

That's pretty awesome

Erik, your points on the exodus is baffling to me, especially if it was to be some sort of argument to trust the apparent historicity of such an event happening or even more so to trust the miraculous claims stringed to it. To begin, i noticed you kept using the word “forgery” or “forged” throughout your points on the exodus, (this is not a hard hitting point though so I’d thought I’d address it) your using the word as if the Pentateuch claims such authorship of Moses, and it evidently doesn’t (unless you could point me to where it does or indicates so). The Pentateuch doesn’t claim such authorship for itself, later works and traditions down the line seem and start to do so, if the Pentateuch did claim Mosaic authorship, then I wouldn’t really anything wrong with your usage of the word here. However it does not, the position and arguments that Moses was not the author of such texts is against the varies traditions, texts, and claims that he was, not against a claim that the Pentateuch makes of itself or contains. It evidently doesn’t. Some reasons against (that I know off though I’m sure there’s much more) is that Moses couldn’t of written about his own death which is what the end of Deuteronomy records, and another is that how could Moses of been able to read and write in adequate ancient Israelite Hebrew? According to the text of the exodus, he was raised in an Egyptian housed, so he would of been brought up to learn how to read and write in ancient Egyptian not adequate Israelite Hebrew. A second point you made is that 1. The text which we today call “exodus” detailed contains Jewish traditions and practices, that’s baffling to me since don’t abundant amounts of texts from the ancient world contain detailed customs and practices? Also within narratives and tellings that contain miraculous claims? For example, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians and so on. And 2. That these customs and practices described within the telling of the exodus fits within the context of the telling, well of course it would if the authors are putting down explanations for where there customs and practices came from, especially if your wanting to provide an explanation that would go back to a figure called Moses and his divine prophetic callings from YHWH. For example, if your writing a fictional telling of a tribesmen who lives in the jungle, and you want to put out an explanation for where say a holiday like Halloween came from. You could say that the holiday of halloween first started when a tribesmen named rocky started to set up and carve some vegetables and fruits with handmade torches inside, painted himself as a jungle monster, and then went around scaring his local village. Would that not fit to some degree or another? Do you see the point here? Of course it would fit, the author would be trying to provide an explanation for where certain practices and customs came from, you want to connect the origin to a prophet (why wouldn’t you?) you chose Moses and the telling of the exodus to fit it into. Another point you also made with the second point, was that it would “impossible” to convince people to ascribe new meaning to things such as practices and customs. However, if a certain group of people have needs and wants at certain times, like courage, hope, or joy (for example) because they in certain circumstances of situations, and a new meaning to something of there’s gets put out there to them and it fulfils and he role of giving them hope, courage and so on. Could they not then re-a-line there meanings on varies things? Another thing you said was “whole new set of traditions” what whole new set of traditions are you talking about exactly? The Pentateuch could of been pulling on already existing traditions while trying to explain there origins. The final points of the video on the report of the resurrection fitting all boxes, is 1. Senses. To which you go “the gospels tell us”, I’m sure your aware of Paulogia’s line that he uses for this. And yes I’m aware of your playlist and numerous amounts of videos that argue for a maximal approach, so I’m open to have a discussion on this matter. And the rest are “the gospels tell us” though for “time” granting the early dating of the gospels and Acts for the sake of the argument here, the span of 20-30 years of oral commutation and traditions would still remain before written. Is that considered short? (I’m leaving that open for now). On your point of the day of the sabbath being changed from Saturday to Sunday by early Christians, I don’t really see a good reason as to why you would bring it for anything in relation to “can be trust that a miracle occurred?”. They genuinely believed that Jesus had been raised from the dead, so they change a day to another to hold a celebration. Thoughts?

@ShinAk1raSama

27 күн бұрын

For the first part, Moses was raised by his birth parents. When the Pharoah's daughter found baby Moses, Miriam offered to have her mother (whom the daughter of Pharoah likely had no idea was Moses' biological mother) nurse baby Moses on behalf of the Pharoah's daughter. So, Moses was raised by his own biological parents for an unspecified amount of time but stayed with them long enough to understand that he's a Jew by birth and the promise of God to the Israelites. So, he was raised in a Jewish household and would know Hebrew and Egyptian-- the former due to who raised him and the latter due to the country he was raised in.

Dude why are these videos unlisted

@TestifyApologetics

Ай бұрын

because they're not public yet...

@legolav2

Ай бұрын

@@TestifyApologetics Are these supposed to only be available to channel members and patrons? Cus I just randomly stumbled upon them by checking out the playlist? Or is it just that you want to keep a stable upload schedule to please the algorithm?

@ItsJustAdrean

29 күн бұрын

​@@legolav2 I started getting them today after I sponsored. Pretty cool

@szilardfineascovasa6144

27 күн бұрын

@@legolav2I'm just subscribed for notidications, nothing more.

Instructions unclear I observed my left pinky finger and noticed a visible scar from a cut

Amen✝️🙏

I think the Mahabharata book of Hindus does pass this test. I'm not too sure, but based on what I've heard (as well as my lack of research), I think it does. Apparently scientists have discovered rocks that float on water in the Indian ocean, as described in the final event in the Mahabharata. Not sure if it's propoganda or facts though. You might want to look into it though

@TestifyApologetics

26 күн бұрын

it fails 1 and 4.

@justindesouza977

26 күн бұрын

@@TestifyApologetics fair enough

Please note that... 1. In the example of the invented Torah being presented as what the Israelites "had always" followed, that is pretty much what seems to have happened over the time that the Torah was put together. 2. The Resurrection does not pass Leslie's criteria. There are no eyewitness reports of any of the appearances of Jesus after his supposed death; none of these appearances was in public, they were always in front of select audiences of believers; none of the traditions around the resurrection of Jesus goes back on the actual events; they all go back on the stories about these events, and some are even a continuation of earlier Jewish traditions with just a new Christian flavor added; as Christianity is just an extension of the Jewish Jesus movement, you can't argue that the existence of the movement itself has anything to do with the resurrection, or can serve as evidence for the resurrection, if there is a causal relationship, it would be the other way around.

@TestifyApologetics

27 күн бұрын

wow thanks for all the contradictory assertions sans argument

@hansdemos6510

27 күн бұрын

@@TestifyApologetics You said: _"wow thanks for all the contradictory assertions sans argument"_ You're welcome. As for my point 1, I think the scholarly consensus is very much that the Torah evolved over time. As for point 2, perhaps you missed the second sentence. I address each of Leslie's four points regarding the resurrection.

@TestifyApologetics

26 күн бұрын

1. Muh consensus aka bandwagon 2. you just asserted a bunch of stuff that my channel directly argues against

@hansdemos6510

26 күн бұрын

@@TestifyApologetics You said: _" 1. Muh consensus aka bandwagon"_ I am happy you at least don't contest that the scholarly consensus goes against your opinion. Equating a reference to the scholarly consensus with a bandwagon fallacy is silly, and I think you know that. I don't know your personal background, but for laypeople like me, the scholarly consensus is the default position for things we are not experts in. As it is the business of scholars to be critical and rational, the scholarly consensus is by definition our current best supported view. You said: _"2. you just asserted a bunch of stuff that my channel directly argues against"_ I don't think I said anything controversial, and what you call assertions are mostly well supported arguments. 2.a. We don't have any eyewitness reports of any sightings of the risen Jesus. This is a simple fact, and it directly undermines the sensory perception you list as Leslie's #1 criterion. 2.b. All the stories about appearances of the risen Jesus are of his followers seeing him, none are of public appearances. This should make the reports suspect according to what you list as the second of Leslie's criteria. 2.c. The traditions we have around the resurrection are not directly linked to the resurrection itself and don't appear to have existed before or independent of the gospel accounts. For example, the switch to Sunday worship did not happen in the early Jerusalem church, nor even with Paul. Any "ongoing traditions" were continuations of Jewish practices, not specifically Christian ones. 2.d. As there is a clear gap between the "Old Boys" Jerusalem Christian sect and the Pauline gentile church that we now know as "the" Christian church, Leslie's time criterion also spoils your argument.

I don't need to be convinced anymore about Christianity lol but this is really interesting and honestly can help me with worldbuilding.

When marc speak, I have to slow the videos down

3:37 and chapters open chapters of genealogies

The gospel tradition fails in three out of the four: senses, public, and time. Senses: There are no contemporary eyewitness testimonies to the resurrection nor the miracles leading up to it. Public: The resurrection did not happen in public. Time: The gospels were written several decades later.

How many non Christian miracles do you accept as true?

@TestifyApologetics

27 күн бұрын

Give me some evidence for some and I'd love to investigate further

@Stinky97000

27 күн бұрын

@TestifyApologetics , we have better attestation to the miracles of Saytha sia baba than for those of Jesus We have better attestation to the Golden plates of Mormonism than for the resurrection

@TestifyApologetics

26 күн бұрын

Stinky...This is incredibly well...um. Stinky. See the previous video. You don't know what you're talking about.

There are some Greek and Roman gods who would have been public. Hercules and Romulus. For Odin, his founding of the Yngling dynasty would have been public. Note, I do not the least pretend these public lives prove their divinity any more than Monumentum Ancyranum proves Augustus was taken up to the gods.

@TestifyApologetics

26 күн бұрын

Romulus fails spectacularly on Leslie's criteria. This is befuddling.

@hglundahl

26 күн бұрын

@@TestifyApologetics I think Romulus not existing, when Rome exists is fairly equivalent to positing George Washington didn't exist, when the US does. Leslie accepted tradition as a clue to previous public fact.

Sir can you do a video on judas death , pls

@lyongreene8241

24 күн бұрын

He did

In this video you mentioned a couple of non-public events from the Islamic faith and Mormonism. Would it be fair to have the same level of skepticism for a non-public event in the Bible? (for instance, Exodus 3) For context I’m a Christian, and this question came to mind since I’ve been reading through Exodus in my quiet time recently. I’m curious what your thoughts on this are.

@user-kp5gx6pp2v

27 күн бұрын

if all you had was exodus 3 then yeah. we have the witness of Jesus though who was there. John 8:58

@MrMortal_Ra

27 күн бұрын

@@user-kp5gx6pp2v🎶”for one source tells me so”🎶 is baffling to me if your making such a claim.

@landalfthewhite

27 күн бұрын

@@user-kp5gx6pp2v that’s interesting, I’ll need to dive into that a little more but I think I see where you’re coming from. Thanks for responding!

@pablito-e

27 күн бұрын

The thing in belief in those comes along with being Christian and something like a private event in the Old Testament isn't there to convince outsiders but rather to teach those who are already in

@fluffysheap

27 күн бұрын

Maybe? Exodus 3 has a different character to it. Exodus 3 is the story of how Moses was called. It's not really a miracle claim. Moses doesn't come from the burning bush with a set of laws or commandments, just a mission. A New Testament parallel might be Satan tempting Jesus in the desert. The specifics are different but again Jesus doesn't use this event to issue any proclamations. It only tells us about the nature of Jesus.

This is apologetics for GenZ. awesome.

While I agree with this video, I think there is one argument skeptics can use to still claim that the stories of the Old Testament "developed": Let's say that the Torah was made as a popular work of fiction (similar to Greek mythology). Basically nobody believed it when it was written, but after 30 generations of kids hearing the stories and teaching them to their own kids, people began to actually believe it. Again, this appears to be the case with Greek myths: They started as fun stories, but centuries later some people actually believed them (source? Yeah I might be wrong; please tell me if so). This serves as a weak (but still valid) argument against the Old Testament. I'm curious how anyone else might suggest ways to refute it. It 100% doesn't apply to the New Testament, though.

I had some further thoughts on this I would like to share. I agree with criteria 1 and 2, but when we get to 3 and 4, this criteria seems a little arbitrary, and it seems designed just so he can dismiss miracles of other religion while keeping Christian miracles. A more normal criteria would be a regular time criteria: the records can be traced right after the event, not many decades after. That would make more sense since it would eliminate legendary development over time. That alone would be enough. But since Christian miracles have traditions around them, he is choosing to make that his criteria, instead of something else. Does a miracle need to create a tradition commemorating it? The answer is not necessarily. The fact that a miracle did not create any tradition does not mean it did not happen. Think of it this way. Joseph smith claims that his gold plates were seen by 11 witnesses. Imagine a Mormon apologist saying “my criteria is that the miracles needs to be confirmed by at least 10 witnesses”. Does this sound fair? No, it is clearly meant to filter out the miracles of different religions while keeping the Mormon miracle, and that is what Erik is doing here.

Thomas Paine wrote, “Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time”.

@nathanjohnson2066

27 күн бұрын

I've never seen a shooting star. Should I assume that it doesn't exist? It sounds awfully fantastical... would you say that it's more likely that people are making up stories of shooting stars or embellishing what they saw or maybe being deceived by tricks of their eyes? I've never seen the stars be anything but still. I have seen countless people (including myself) embellish stories. Therefore I should believe that shooting stars do not exist?

@TestifyApologetics

26 күн бұрын

Thomas Paine was a traitor and suffered from severe Dunning Kruger. He was corrected by Richard Watson in his own time.

@tomasrocha6139

25 күн бұрын

@@TestifyApologetics Do you think the other Founders were also traitors?

That doesn't really convince me. It looks more like some kind of intellectual funplay rather than serious theory or tool. There are more convincing things for Exodus. Like the fact Deuteronomy is constructed in the likeness of Ancient pacts which imples whoever wrote it was proficient in Egyptian diplomatic writing formats and/or worked in the Pharaoh's court. Or that the Tabernacle is almost 1:1 copy of Pharaoh's war tent. No matter who was literal author of those books, he spoke to people who were soaked in Egyptian culture, like after four centuries of living in Egypt. Even considering that there's zero material proof for Exodus (and quite the opposite, we know of many Israelite burial sites in Egypt even after Exodus) such small details make it more believable than this... thing.

The only reason Christians changed the Sabbath to Sunday is because of Constantine's obsession with his sun God. God's laws and His holy days should never be changed

There is a crucial flaw in your reasoning in this video . Most historical false miracle stories don't happen in a way akin to the "doughnut salvation" analogy you described, with a random guy inventing some story completely out of nowhere. Rather, what happens is that some major historical event happens, which the nation/tribe wants to remember. It then becomes primarily the role of the priest class to tell this story. The priest class, which boasts great trust and respect among the people, then gradually embelishes the story they tell, adding mystical elements and twisting the story ever so slightly into acting as a way to legitimize their standing in their society. All the while, the traditions from the event continue. This version then is what gets written down decades or centuries later, and what survives to the modern day. The core of the story remains a real historical account, but the telling is very strongly intertwined with the mystical elements added after the fact. This is somethijg you can track with really any ethnic religion across the world, where a certain god or pantheon is tied to a particular people. The mythology can usually be reconstructed into real events, but the story is... "spiced up" with obviously fantastical elements. For a people who had a very scarce understanding of the world - which everyone on earth did before at least the 17th century - these fantastical stories would be believable.

@rainbowcoloredsoapdispenser

27 күн бұрын

It depends on the story. Take the resurrection as an example. Now I'm not saying that the resurrection happened, but, given the fact that death was an almost daily occurrence, these people would've been surrounded by and inundated with people dying and then burying them and them staying dead. the idea that they would've believed a story like that, that goes against their overwhelming everyday knowledge because they didn't know alot about the world in the way that we do, i don't think works. They knew how death worked. They knew dead people stayed dead.

@rainbowcoloredsoapdispenser

27 күн бұрын

@Narko_Marko even though they bury hundreds upon hundreds of people every year from diseases, childbirth, wars, etc and that never happens? I think your soul example falls under my example of they wouldn't have believed that story because of their daily experience. You saying well they would've believed in a soul and so they would've believed a story like that. How do you know that? You can't just assign a belief to some people group you know nothing about and say that counters my example. I don't think that works.

@fluffysheap

27 күн бұрын

This certainly doesn't describe the New Testament, which describes events that had essentially zero political importance, and which both relevant priestly classes (the Jewish and the Roman) both despised. It doesn't really describe the Old Testament either. It's true that the Exodus was an important historical (well, sort of historical) event, as were the events of Samuel and Kings. But the books are pretty tough on the, well, priestly class. Moses commits a trivial sin and dies for it, Aaron commits a massive sin and gets away with it, poor priestmanship (that's a word, and if it's not, it is now) causes a civil war, and most of Israel's priests are denounced as apostates.

@MrMortal_Ra

27 күн бұрын

@@rainbowcoloredsoapdispenser I may be confused here, people can’t be of a prior belief system or viewpoint and then change there viewpoints, beliefs, positions or stances on this that or the other? He/she believed this prior to coming to believe this, therefore it’s somewhat unexplainable? Help out here

@rainbowcoloredsoapdispenser

27 күн бұрын

@@MrMortal_Ra I honestly don't know what you're asking.

It's actually not that hard to fake history. Bavarians today think Lederhosen (leather trousers) had been worn for centuries. Actually that piece of clothing was invented in the 1800s for royals to go hunting wearing 'peoples clothes' and when the war with France started in 1870, the king gave money to organizations to promote this bavarian clothing and people made fun of that. Only after WW1 began people began to wear them unironically and it took until the end of the century until Bavarians actually started to think of Lederhosen as truely Bavarian

That's not to understand ( deliberately? ) how these texts are constructed. There is no moment when these traditions are “atheistic” or non-existent and then, under the will of one, appear or become religious (which is ironically the discourse of the Bible: before revelation we didn't do it this way, now we do it this way. He mocks it with the example of the doughnut, but he mocks its own religion - Moses would have come down from Mount Sinai with the Tables and said “I have met God - do like this now” [note that according to tradition Moses is the author of the entire Pentateuch] and people would have believed him). On the contrary, it's the long evolution of already existing religious practices; there are no lies, at every stage the writers are convinced they're telling the truth. Moreover, this validates almost all religious beliefs. The Egyptians believe that Osiris died and rose again. But no one could convince the others of such a story, could they? So Osiris did rise. He tries to get away with saying that a very long time elapsed between the tradition and the supposed events. This is certainly true, but so are the Exodus and all the fables of the Old Testament - these stories are always written long after the fact. By the way, Muhammad's moon-splitting was supposedly witnessed by many, and he would have performed this miracle precisely to convince, so I don't see where it comes from that nobody witnessed it.

secular historians and academic researchers have generally all dismissed the moses story as folklore and legend at best. this is because outside of jewish writings recounting a "past event", there is absolutely no other similar source of information outside of that community. according to the numbers, about a third of the egyptian population would've suddenly left in the exodus; that type of traumatic event collapses civilizations and would've put society into absolute chaos. except there is no documentation in egyptian history recounting of a similar tale. never mind "miracles" like parting the red sea or getting manna from the sky. the lack of documentation recounting a group of people of that large in size of a population, and their subsequent leaving; is extremely questionable. the exodus was primarily oral tradition passed down from generation to generation to keep a history of a group of people's origin story and their culture that the people tried desperately to preserve. again, i will point out that once upon a time, this channel did decent analysis. nowadays, the channel is filled with cheap videos of poorly though out arguments. the channel has functionally sold out, and it's disappointing to see this

It’s interesting that when smartphones became ubiquitous, all of the Pentecostal and Charismatic miracles dried up.

@TestifyApologetics

27 күн бұрын

No they didn't

@bethyngalw

27 күн бұрын

I dunno my guy, maybe before saying something like that you should at least have looked on here for something like, heartwarming miracle caught on camera, or some such, just to make sure.

@Daniel-mw7pu

27 күн бұрын

@@TestifyApologetics got any on film? Considering how commonplace they supposedly are, it shouldn’t be hard.

@thiagoemanuel8607

27 күн бұрын

​@@TestifyApologetics Could you give me an example of the most credible, evident and/or recent pentecostal/charismatic mircle claim you know? I'm a christian, and I know God does miracles. Just interested about the characterization: Pentecostal/Charismatic. I'm not sure where I fit in the cessationist - charismatic thing, but my experience with some pentecostals lead me to believe it's more likely for a pentecostal to devalue the suficient and primary authority of the Bible. Anecdotal, i know, but that's why i'm curious about these things. If you have the time.

@TestifyApologetics

27 күн бұрын

​@@thiagoemanuel8607I'll have several in my next 2 videos

Aye come on now I know you didn’t include the Eastern Orthodox cross with other religions.😢

@TestifyApologetics

21 күн бұрын

EO are OG Christians not another religion. I was just saying different Christian groups claim miracles

"Don't @ me Adventists" 😂

@TestifyApologetics

25 күн бұрын

sadly they didn't listen

When it comes to Moses I could think of a way in which it could be a a later invention. If the Jews were mystics for a while then they could have written a few texts and interpreted a wild story out of nothing. It is enough if some thought leaders would belief that for a few generations. After all the Torah and prophets would only be transmitted through the thought leaders anyways. And we can even read in the Bible that sometimes the Bible got lost for a long while. 2. King 22:8 By the way I just invent a story here without any backing of historical knowledge. So this argument is not made in seriousness. My point is quite the opposite. While we can invent such a story in the case of the Passover, it is much more difficult in case of Jesus. After all we have a lot of additional texts and we can't just inject an age of mystics in between where we can reduce the numbers of people to a select few people. Christianity spreads out too far and we have too much textual support for such a group to be possible.

@stephengray1344

27 күн бұрын

If the Israelites invented a wild story out of nothing, how did they manage to get so many details of a long-gone era of Egyptian history correct?

@benrex7775

27 күн бұрын

@@stephengray1344 Some Atheist is probably willing to defend my argument.

There is so much evidence for that Jesus rose from the dead! There is none that point against.

Am i early?

Pretty good defeat of the argument you are presenting, too bad no one is saying that argument. Who says someone came in and made up a story like your donut metaphor? The working theory is that things evolved over time, you know, over hundreds, or even thousands of years of oral tradition. The fact that the events are written as if they just happened is not a proof that it really did. Or are you claiming that Moses literally wrote down how he parted the sea within days/weeks of it happening and we have a reliable written source that dates all the way to his personal writings?

4:55

There is some questions I might pose for the history section. I would say one of the strongest arguments against this video is ironically the stupid success of Jesus Mythicism. We are seeing thousands of years of tradition being changed in under 200 years time right before our eyes, and we can prove that the "Christmas is Pagan"/"Easter is Pagan"/"Jesus is a copycat God" rewriting of history is exactly that -a rewriting of history. Yet, still the majority of the populous believes it. The difference is, however, that two seconds in study can disprove the majority of the schemes of Jesus Mythicists. They are the laughing stock of the scholarly community. Even the atheists and agnostics disown Jesus Mythicism. So it is in an awkward position: on the one hand it shows these obscure rewritings of history can happen on a large scale, but on the other hand it is provably bunk. But back to the first hand, 95% of people don't know it's bunk, so it's successful. Perhaps, all of this shows that eventually rewritings of history always fail. And if rewritings of history always fails then the rewriting of the Torah would have failed too. Thus, since rewriting of history tends to fail and the Torah did not fail, it is logical to say the Torah is based off of historic events.

I think when it comes to the old testament history you almost have to be a little open to the idea some things may not be 100% true, at least to the point to give in to some skeptics. I mean, you used Joseph Smith as an example, but millions of people today believe his stories, when there is clear and convincing evidence to the contrary, there is not much evidence existing of many of the oldest accounts of the Hebrew texts. I do think it is much harder to refute the newer texts, and certainly takes a lot to refute the New Testament because of the amount of evidence there. Most the early bible was oral Tradition based on thousands of years of prehistory, and the Israelites were rebelling every 5 minutes worshiping other gods and what not, and had to be brought back to the faith. That sin could have incited a few untruths and gaps filled by created stories, meant to get the sinning people back into the faith, and not fully correct. I say this as a devout Christian with a strong enough faith to question the false parts of the Old Testament...many which we freely and totally except as false as Christ told us those rules were not for us...now some say it is because the times changed and the culture changed, but it is likely those were not true, and never meant to be true, and instead of Christ saying your bible is wrong here, he just said "I bring about a new covenant" where He introduced the corrections that were most needed to bring the faith to the truth.

Hezekia, when he introduced the “discovery” of Deuteronomy, introduced it as traditions that had been lost and that the country had to reestablish following the law. He got a good chunk of the country to go along with his reforms based on that story. To me such a finding of that book would seem very similar in detail to the “discovery” of the Book of Mormon.

@fluffysheap

27 күн бұрын

The thing about Deuteronomy is that it's practically identical to the existing content in the earlier books. It's more like an update or an application than a whole new tradition. Unless you buy the ridiculous supplementary hypothesis, in which the whole religion was made up out of whole cloth during or right before the Babylonian captivity (never mind the archaeology). Or the minimalists, who say the whole thing was made up in the middle of the second temple period (never mind the 🤯)

@Makaneek5060

27 күн бұрын

@@fluffysheap Note that there are different versions of the supplementary hypothesis, some being very conservative indeed.

@TestifyApologetics

27 күн бұрын

See my reply to @muskyoxes. This isn't true

@fluffysheap

27 күн бұрын

​@@Makaneek5060 AFAIK all versions of the supplementary hypothesis share the notion that Deuteronomy was written first, and it was written no earlier than the late 7th century. The variation is in the order and date the other texts were added.

@logicianbones

27 күн бұрын

See JP Holding on Deuteronomy. Fits the genre style for its time. This wouldn't make sense if it's really a late invention like that. So it wasn't "introduced" later.