G'Tach

G'Tach is the Klingon Hebrew word that collectively refers to the ten plagues visited upon Egypt by James Hetfield God to persuade Yul Brynner to release Charlton Heston and his people from bondage.

Light iron-age reading
The Bible
Gabbin' with God
Analysis
Woo
Figures
v - t - e

The ten plagues
  1. Dam — all sources of fresh water were turned to blood.
  2. Tsfardeia — the land was overrun by frogs.
  3. Kinim — Egypt was infested with swarms of fleas.
  4. Arov — Egyptians and livestock were attacked by stinging and biting flies.
  5. Dever — a pestilence throughout the livestock of the Egyptians.
  6. Shkhin — the Egyptians were afflicted with painful boils.
  7. Barad — fiery hail pelted the land.
  8. Arbeh — the plague of locusts.
  9. Choshech — the land was blanketed by unending darkness.
  10. Makat Bechorot — the death of all the firstborn males. All first born males of every household (including farm animals) were slain if the household did not mark the door with the blood of a sacrificial lamb (Passover).

Historical evidence

There is no evidence that the Hebrews were ever slaves in Egypt, or indeed that they escaped in a mass exodus, and no records at all of the above series of catastrophes. Although different scholars have presented various theories about the historicity of the Exodus, such as identifying the Hebrews with the Hyksos people, the archaeological evidence rather suggests that the story is a narrative which recalls the move from nomadism to sedentism by the early Hebrews.

It has been suggested that the Egyptians would have been reluctant to record a slave revolt which was pretty much entirely successful, as this would have been a rather humiliating experience.[1] Count in how much influence the Egyptian priests had in that time, when it seem like their gods, who are supposed to be, well, all powerful, do absolutely nothing to stop what is apparently the wrath of a god worshiped by said slaves, it becomes possible that the priests could have outright had it completely denied as ever happening and covered it up in a sort of North Korea manner.

The Ipuwer papyrus

Some historians of biblical bent have found much to interest them in the Ipuwer papyrus, an Egyptian poem describing a series of disasters that befell Egypt in ancient times. Some people who ought to know better suggest that this document describes the G'tach, despite the work describing the fall of the Old Kingdom (ca. 2200 BCE), and its composition dating to the early Middle Kingdom (ca. 1900 BCE), long before the New Kingdom, in which the Exodus is said to have occurred (either 1446 BCE or ca. 1260 BCE). Only advocates of alternate historical chronology could possibly use this as evidence.[2]

As Gordon Zellaby put it in John Wyndham's novel The Midwich CuckoosFile:Wikipedia's W.svg "For my part, I regard the plagues of Egypt as an unedifying example of celestial bullying; a technique now known as power-politics."

gollark: Well, yes, hence replicator.
gollark: I made a digital miner before replication, I think.
gollark: I also do! They are used in matter receivers and transmitters.
gollark: GTech™ manufactures more teleporters every 1251982 years for our teleporter network.
gollark: If only you had a replicator to replicate your replicator with, and also a pattern for a replicator on a memory disk or something.

References
  1. Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, 2003, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., pg. 246
  2. See the Wikipedia article on Ipuwer papyrus.
This article is issued from Rationalwiki. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.