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From: mat@hou5d.UUCP (M Terribile)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: re: Herodotus and the Jews
Message-ID: <771@hou5d.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 7-Jan-84 18:49:31 EST
Article-I.D.: hou5d.771
Posted: Sat Jan  7 18:49:31 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Jan-84 04:38:54 EST
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As far as the Red Sea episode:  I seem to recall reading that from time
to time water level and wind conditions combine to leave vast areas of
the Sea's floor exposed, usually in a couple of well-know places.  I
do not recall where I read it, so I must be taken with all the authority
of Heroditus!

To a small tribe, a couple companies of soldiers would look like an army
and their fall to a vagary of nature that preserved the tribe would indeed
be a miracle.  If freak conditions were familiar, the loss of the soldiers
might not have caused too big a stir.

I don't have the text of the incident before me, but as I have read it in
the Revised Standard Edition, I am not convinced that Pharoah attributed the
plagues to the Jews.  He may have just counted them as one more trouble.  But
then I am going by memory again.

Statement intended to light flames:
All in all, until the Christian Era, Jews played a relatively small part in
world affairs.  It was only after hristianity took root that large--scale
attention was, for better or for worse, paid to them.

I have read historians who believe that the Jewish understanding of
G-d the One (and Only) was shaped/influenced by contact with the Zoroastrians/
Zarathustrians/Parsi/whatever-you-are-calling-them-today, who prevailed
in Persia.  Does anyone proprely versed in Jewish history and tradition have
anything to say on that point (even to deny it)?

						Mark Terribile
						Duke Of deNet