Quotes from Rabbis & Scholars on the Exodus, Abraham

(updated 9/12/2013) The quotes below serve as auxiliary material to that already cited on my Israel’s Origins page, and I recently found them collected in a new-to-me blog. The original author cites these quotations with additional discussion, and I suggest checking it out (Thanks John Zande). The original post can be found here: Well, this is a little embarrassing, isn’t it? Meanwhile, the meaty collection of quotations:

“Defending a rabbi in the 21st century for saying the Exodus story isn’t factual is like defending him for saying the Earth isn’t flat. It’s neither new nor shocking to most of us that the Earth is round or that the Torah isn’t a history book dictated to Moses by God on Mount Sinai.”

~ Rabbi Steven Leder of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

“The rejection of the Bible as literally true is more or less settled and understood among most Conservative rabbis.”

~ Rabbi David Wolpe of the Conservative Sinai Temple

[Read more…]

Quotes from Francis Collins

I selected a few salient quotes from Francis Collins‘ book on evolutionary development and faith, The Language of God, which I would recommend reading alongside the resources already suggested by Ayala, Venema, and Falk (though Falk is better). Collins is a Christian and was the leader of the legendary Human Genome Project. His book is an apologetic for both evolutionary development and the Christian faith.

On supposed micro/macro evolutionary distinctions:Language_of_god_francis_collins

The distinction between macroevolution and microevolution is therefore seen to be rather arbitrary; larger changes that result in new species are a result of a succession of smaller incremental steps.

On the connection between evolutionary theory and medicine:

Truly it can be said that not only biology but medicine would be impossible to understand without the theory of evolution.

[Read more…]

Quote from a Former Hero: Augustine

“There is another form of temptation even more fraught with danger… This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us on to try to discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing, and which men should not wish to learn.”

~ St. Augustine. Quoted by McGowan, Dale (2011-02-15).

Parenting Beyond Belief (pp. 201-202). Amacom

I cannot but reflect that such repressive attitudes would have kept us in darkness without daybreak. The medicine which saved my daughter would not have been developed without the sustained drive of many minds who divorced themselves from such shackled “thinking”.

Quotes from a Former Hero: Luther

Reason is the Devil’s greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil’s appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom … Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism… She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets.

~ Martin Luther, Erlangen Edition v. 16, pp. 142-148

There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason… Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed.

~ Martin Luther, quoted by Walter Kaufmann,

The Faith of a Heretic, (Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1963), p. 75

People gave ear to an upstart astrologer [Copernicus] who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.

~ Martin Luther, “Works,” Volume 22, c. 1543

We know, on the authority of Moses, that longer than six thousand years the world did not exist.

~ Martin Luther, “Lectures on Genesis”

These and further citations here.

Quote: Michael Shermer on Belief & Reversals

The Believing BrainOnce beliefs are formed, the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which adds an emotional boost of further confidence in the beliefs and thereby accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive feedback loop of belief confirmation.

As well, occasionally people form beliefs from a single revelatory experience largely unencumbered by their personal background or the culture at large.

Rarer still, there are those who, upon carefully weighing the evidence for and against a position they already hold, or one they have yet to form a belief about, compute the odds and make a steely-eyed emotionless decision and never look back… It happens, but it is as rare as a black swan.

~ Michael Shermer, The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths

Quote: Kitchen on Jericho

There has always been too much imagination about Jericho by moderns (never mind previous generations), and the basic factors have ironically been largely neglected. The town was always small, an appendage to its spring and oasis…

~ K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament

Quote: Kitchen Summarizing The Exodus

Cover of "On the Reliability of the Old T...

Cover of On the Reliability of the Old Testament

The Exodus and Sinai events are not hereby proven to have happened, or the tabernacle and covenant, etc., to have been made then. But their correspondence not just with attested realities but with known usage of the late second millennium B.C. and earlier does favor acceptance of their having had a definite historical basis.

~ K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament

Quote: Churchill on Perserverance

245px-Sir_Winston_S_ChurchillNever, never, never quit.

~ Winston Churchill

It is widely kn…

It is widely known that the book of Exodus and the conquest narratives in Joshua and Judges do not give us a journalistic recounting of freed slaves and the beginnings of an independent nation.

Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam (Ch. 4)

Three years ago…

Three years ago on Passover, I explained to my congregation that according to archeologists, there was no reliable evidence that the Exodus took place–and that it almost certainly did not take place the way the Bible recounts it. Finally, I emphasized: It didn’t matter.

~ Rabbi David Wolpe
http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Judaism/2004/12/Did-The-Exodus-Really-Happen.aspx

SoundEagle 🦅ೋღஜஇ

Where The Eagles Fly . . . . Art Science Poetry Music & Ideas

Michael Seidel, writer

Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not

cas d'intérêt

Reflections of a Francophile

Two Wheels Across Texas

My Quest to ride through all 254 Texas Counties

She Seeks Nonfiction

Social justice book reviews

Uncommon Sense

I don’t want to start a class war; it started a long time ago and, unfortunately, we lost.

Variant Readings

Thoughts on History, Religion, Archaeology, Papyrology, etc. by Brent Nongbri