Part 7: The Ten Plagues

Having established the sheer impossibility of ANYTHING so far discussed in the Exodus story being true let’s move on to the final ten nails in the coffin of this utter fantasy: The Ten Plagues of Egypt.

The Ten Plagues:

First: River of Blood

Exodus 7:20

“And Moses and Aaron did so, as the LORD commanded; and he lifted up the rod, and smote the waters that were in the river, in the sight of Pharaoh, and in the sight of his servants; and all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood.”

An “red tide” algae bloom is the most likely and only reasonable explanation for this plague. Otherwise, the only explanation is magic. Which phenomenon not one person has ever been able to conclusively demonstrate the existence or practice of although there have been literally thousands of documented attempts. So, cool trick Moses, but not very impressive. And the probability of this natural event occurring in any sequence with the other nine plagues is so minuscule as to be functionally impossible. Let’s move on.

Second: Frogs

Exodus 8:6

“And Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt; and the frogs came up, and covered the land of Egypt.”

That’s a lot of frogs. The size of the Egyptian Empire during the New Kingdom Period was 386,102 square miles (more than 1 million square kilometers). The only species of toad (or frog) native to Egypt is the Nile Delta Toad which is 1.5 inches long. Which means that it would require 64 of these toads to cover 1 square foot. There are 27,878,400 square feet in 1 square mile. That requires 1.784 BILLION Nile Delta Toads per square mile of Egypt. Multiply this number by the total area of Egypt at the time and we arrive at the number of 688,889,983,795,200,000 (that is 689 QUADRILLION frogs/toads required for this plague to happen which also happens to be more than the total of all frogs and toad population on Earth incidentally). The absolutely highest estimate for the total number of ants on earth is in the 100 trillion range…meaning that for this biblical statement to be factual frogs would outnumber ants by a ratio of almost 7 to 1. Which is completely impossible. AND the author of Exodus claims that there was that many frogs available in just Egypt alone, when it is physically impossible for the entire population of frogs on earth to be anywhere even remotely sort of in the same universe as that number. I call bullshit on that biblical claim. Even assuming hyperbole on the part of the story’s author we can safely assume no such thing ever happened. Oh and supposedly they covered the land with frogs twice…once by Moses and Aaron and once by Pharaohs court magicians. So the author can ONLY be writing figuratively and hyperbolizing here. And if they are playing that fast and loose with the facts how can we believe that anything else they write or claim is remotely factual? Let’s continue.

Third: Lice

Exodus 8:16-17

“And the LORD said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod, and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt. And they did so; for Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice in man, and in beast; all the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of Egypt.”

Where shall we start? The impossibility of turning grains of sand and soil into living, breathing, skin-devouring, WINGLESS insects. The sheer impossibility of turning ALL the dust of the land into lice EVEN IF they could work magic, makes this claim utterly ridiculous. The sheer number of lice would have killed every living human and animal by literally devouring their hosts’ skin completely. I again call bullshit on this plague. Not even hyperbole and exaggeration can excuse this flat out bullshit assertion.

Fourth: Flies

Exodus 8:21

“Else, if thou wilt not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies upon thee, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thy houses: and the houses of the Egyptians shall be full of swarms of flies, and also the ground whereon they are.”

Exodus 8:31

“And the LORD did according to the word of Moses; and he removed the swarms of flies from Pharaoh, from his servants, and from his people; there remained not one.”

Seriously?! More insects? This Israelite god is obsessed with insects. This one isn’t so much numerically impossible as it is feasibly impossible. How do you get flies to gather in one place and completely ignore another place? Further, how do you get flies to disappear and have none remain? Magic. That’s how. More bullshit magic from the god of bullshit magic.

Fifth: Disease and Death of Cattle

Exodus 9:3

“Behold, the hand of the LORD is upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep: there shall be a very grievous murrain.”

Murrain literally means death. And was used colloquially as a reference to infectious disease resulting in death. So the Israelite god is not only a genocidal maniac when it comes to humans but also frogs, lice, flies, cows, sheep, goats, and camels too. Unless of course you happen to be a member of the very, very, very small slice of the human population (that god supposedly created) that happen to be his chosen pets. Then your cattle won’t die. Because that’s how infectious disease work, dontchaknow. How does this happen? MORE MAGIC! That’s how AKA more bullshit.

Sixth: Boils (Blains)

Exodus 9:8-9

“And the LORD said unto Moses and unto Aaron, Take to you handfuls of ashes of the furnace, and let Moses sprinkle it toward the heaven in the sight of Pharaoh. And it shall become small dust in all the land of Egypt, and shall be a boil breaking forth with blains upon man, and upon beast, throughout all the land of Egypt.”

Do we need to discuss how infections and diseases work or are we going to take superstitious morons at their superstitious word about how skin lesions and other skin issues work? Do we really need to talk about people who thought gods, demons, and spirits were the cause of common infections and diseases? Do we really need to talk about how idiotic it is to believe that a guy throwing a couple hands full of ash into the air can cause an outbreak of skin disease in an entire population covering 386,000 square miles (roughly the size of Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and Kansas, combined? Seriously?! A couple hands full of ash.

The technology and understanding of the ancient world leads us to a possible conclusion that Moses and Aaron could have been using quicklime as a kind of primitive chemical warfare agent, but even dousing one small city in the stuff would have required hundreds of pounds of it…not just a couple hands full of it. Not to mention the handlers (ash throwers) would have been just as exposed and susceptible to the effects as the target population. More bullshit that is un-explainable without more bullshit magic from the reigning champion of bullshit magic. Are you grasping the trend here yet?

Seventh: Thunder and Hail

Exodus 9:18-20

“Behold, to morrow about this time I will cause it to rain a very grievous hail, such as hath not been in Egypt since the foundation thereof even until now. Send therefore now, and gather thy cattle, and all that thou hast in the field; for upon every man and beast which shall be found in the field, and shall not be brought home, the hail shall come down upon them, and they shall die. He that feared the word of the LORD among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his cattle flee into the houses:”

WAIT! WTF. Didn’t we just kill of all the cattle of Egypt a mere two plagues previous to this one? Internal inconsistency much? Where did these new cattle come from? Were they imported from the Egyptians neighbors (who incidentally are also enemies). That seems unlikely in the highest degree. The most likely explanation is that the ten plagues are all bullshit and made up by the author for the purpose of the story. OR I guess we could fall back on the religious imbeciles’ favorite excuse: MAGIC! God is MAGIC!

MAGIC MAGIC MAGIC! Everything in the bible is MAGIC!

LALALALALALALALALALALA. I’m not listening. Stop criticizing the pure, unadulterated, divine, flawless word of God! I can’t hear you! LALALALALALALALALALA. MAGIC!

………

Sorry about that. I got a little sidetracked. Where were we? Oh yes.

Eighth: Locusts

Exodus 10:4-6

“Else, if thou refuse to let my people go, behold, to morrow will I bring the locusts into thy coast: And they shall cover the face of the earth, that one cannot be able to see the earth: and they shall eat the residue of that which is escaped, which remaineth unto you from the hail, and shall eat every tree which groweth for you out of the field: And they shall fill thy houses, and the houses of all thy servants, and the houses of all the Egyptians; which neither thy fathers, nor thy fathers’ fathers have seen, since the day that they were upon the earth unto this day. And he turned himself, and went out from Pharaoh.”

Seriously this god is OBSESSED with insects. What is his fetish? Killing almost everything he looks at AND an obsession with insects. This god belongs in an asylum, in a padded room, in a jacket that prevents him from hurting anything including himself. He’s nuttier than a Pecan orchard.

The math from the frogs and ants and lice plague debunkings all apply here. Physically impossible. Although locust swarms are actually the nearest thing to the description here the author still exaggerates ENORMOUSLY in his description. Further, a swarm of locusts of this magnitude would have been recorded by numerous persons in numerous places including foreign kingdoms/empires since the starving Egyptians would have been ripe for conquest had a plague of locusts on this scale ACTUALLY happened. AND the starving Egyptians so dependent on wheat and other crops that locusts would devour entirely would have died off in literal droves…to the tune of probably at least 1/3 of their population that’s approximately 2 million people dead BTW). The reality is that nothing of the sort is recorded anywhere. Not even in Egypt. So much for this plague.

Ninth: Darkness

Exodus 10:21-22

“Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand toward the sky, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even a darkness which may be felt.’ So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days.”

So, if we exclude MAGIC! from our list of possible causes the ONLY reasonable conclusions for possibilities are a solar eclipse or a volcanic explosion.

Let’s discuss solar eclipses first. Solar eclipses have had a powerful effect on superstitious and uneducated people since time immemorial. This makes eclipses a reasonable candidate for the desired effect by Moses and Aaron in intimidating Pharaoh into letting the Israelites go free. In the 240 year period of time for the possible Exodus occurrence (about 976 BCE-671 BCE), there were a lot of solar eclipses, hundreds in fact. However, none of them lasted longer than 10 minutes, (the longest was just over 7 minutes) much less the three days of darkness mentioned in the account. Further, the darkness was described as being able to be “felt” by the people.

A better candidate, therefore, would be a volcanic eruption. The darkness would definitely be able to last for three days and further would also probably be “felt” in the sense of a abnormally heavy concentration of non-typical gases in the air and also possibly ash and even perhaps heat from the eruption.

So, were there any volcanic eruptions in the region that could possibly have been the cause? The closest in both timeline and physical distance is the Minoan Eruption of Thera (the current Island of Santorini) in the Aegean Sea. This eruption occurred in the 100 year window between 1642-1540 BCE. If we remember that we have established that Thutmose III was the most likely possible pharaoh of the Exodus, we can then see by the dates of his reign (1479–1425 BCE) that there is no correlation between the eruption and the Exodus timeline. The eruption happened between 102-217 years too soon.

Read More About the Minoan Eruption of Thera Here

 So, that kind of rules that option out…unless the Israelite god used magic to somehow move the timeline around or magically made the darkness just happen. More bullshit magic from the king of bullshit magic.

Tenth: Death of the Firstborn

Exodus 11:5

“And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all the firstborn of beasts.”

This last plague is the biggest and most problematic of all of the ten plagues of Egypt as recorded in the Bible.

Let’s start with the most obvious problem. This genocidal maniac of a magic god has already killed all the animals of Egypt TWICE in just a couple weeks. Now he does it yet again with all the firstborn animals. How do we count this? If those firstborn were already slaughtered by Egyptians for food does this curse devolve to the second-born? Or are they exempt since they aren’t technically the firstborn? Oh and how did this genocidal maniac of a deity resurrect all the animals twice before just to kill a full 50% of them a third time? The sheer level of stupidity and suspension of logic and reason it takes to swallow this load of utter bullshit is staggering. Unless we use more bullshit magic. Now that we have dealt with the animals lets address the humans affected by this supposed plague. 

The estimated population of Egypt at this time was about 6 million persons. If we assume that their population was roughly corresponding to all the other populations of the earth its fairly safe to assume that that the Egyptians were roughly equally split between firstborn males and firstborn females and that women eventually outnumber men by a small percentage due to war and more dangerous/strenuous work leading to a higher death rate for men and younger ages (even accounting for female deaths due to childbirth). This usually results in a slightly higher percentage of women to men totaling between 1-5% of the entire population. Now we have to take into account the average size of a typical Egyptian family. They usually had between 4-6 kids for an average of 5. BUT, many children in non-industrialized modern medicine countries die before their first birthday. Additionally historic mortality rates in pre-industrialized nations easily and often reached as high as 40% dying before reaching adulthood. So if 40% of children in ancient Egypt die before becoming adults we have to again ask the question: Does the curse devolve from the first-born to the oldest-living child? AND another question: Do we account for those children who didn’t die before or at birth but sometime between birth and adulthood in our family size metric?

Let’s say they don’t count and the curse doesn’t devolve to the oldest living child rather than the actual first-born. An average family size of 7 persons in a population of 6 million people gives us a number of just under 857,143 families. Out of these families 20-40% of the first born children are already dead (due to childhood mortality rates) so we have 60% of that number of people (or 496,286 persons) who die as a result of this plague AT A MINIMUM, since we are not counting the parents in this metric as “children.” BUT, in a society where 5 kids is the norm for each generation that means at least another 20% of that number is the first born of their generation (the previous one) that gives us a total of 685,715 persons (at a minimum) who must die for this plague to happen. in a population of 6 million that is more than 11% of the entire population (actually right at 11.43%). By way of contrast the Black Death in Europe killed between 30-50% in the four years between 1347-1351 CE. So this death rate is approximately 1/3 to 1/5 of the catastrophic nature of the Black Death. NOTHING on ANYWHERE NEAR this scale is recorded EVER in the ENTIRE history of ancient Egypt.

Now let’s zoom out from the narrow field of focus on this one plague and let’s look at the effects of all ten plagues cumulatively. Several of the previous plagues would have had serious effects on the Egyptian population, the lice would have likely killed them all in a matter of days or weeks (from the diseases and infections caused by a lice infestation on this scale) with the claimed numbers, assuming no hyperbole on the part of the authors.

The disease and death of all the livestock and the swarm of locusts eating all the crops, would have caused a nationwide famine of epic proportions that would have killed between 15-33% of the population from starvation or diseases made more deadly by the malnutrition of the people due to starvation conditions. This number would be between 900,000-1,980,000 persons. If you add these numbers to the first born deaths we get an upper range of around 2,665,715 persons in a population of 6 million. That is just under 45% of the entire population.

The ten plagues of Egypt together are thus much more deadly than the WORST episode of plague in medieval Europe. The plague in Europe collapsed the entire regional political and social structure where it struck. Economies tanked, agriculture became non-existent for several years, trade nearly ceased, political structures collapsed, governments ceased to operate, and due to all of these things, armies and navies ceased to exist in the affected areas. If one country had been affected and its neighbors unaffected you can guarantee those neighbors would be chomping at the bit for a bit of conquest for the newly de-populated and undefended chunk of neighboring land.

In the case of Egypt it was the breadbasket of the ancient Mediterranean. There is literally no possible way that the plagues could have happened and Egypt’s neighbors NOT take advantage of it and immediately conquer it completely and for the neighbors to have consequently been also affected by the food supply shortage. The plagues as described in the Old Testament would have wiped out Egypt’s Army and Naval forces nearly completely due to direct deaths of the first-born and also from the crippling of the food supply chain necessary to support military forces and the attendant collapse of the governmental infrastructure.

It takes approximately 145 pounds of grain to feed 1 person for a year. This would require the Egyptians to have 435,000 TONS of grain (or 72,500,000 bushels) in storage to feed their entire population in the event of the kind of catastrophic event such as the biblical ten plagues would have been. Yearly production of grain in ancient Egypt was around 1.5-2.5 million tons. So about 1/3 of their yearly harvest would be required to weather such a catastrophe without starvation. This would reduce the death toll to just the people killed by the lice (literally everyone, 6 million persons) or the people killed by the tenth plague (685,715 persons). So this scenario is feasible and even possible. If the Egyptians had stored 1/3 of the previous year’s harvest as a food supply (rather than as seed) AND if the locusts didn’t get to it they could have easily weathered all of the plagues except the last.

HOWEVER,

Many famines and large scale disasters are recorded in Egypt’s long history. None of them occurred anywhere near the reign of Thutmose III and none of them were as devastating as the ten plagues of the Bible would have to have been.

In fact, under Thutmose III Egypt was an expansionist empire and saw large technological advancements and widespread economic success. Thutmose is considered to have been a military genius and raided extensively he campaigned against the Mitanni and during one campaign he crossed the Euphrates River in modern day North-Eastern Syria. Thutmose fought the largest and greatest battle of his reign against the combined armies of the King of Kadesh, the Mitanni, the Canaanites and the local forces of the king at the site of Megiddo (in northern modern day Israel).  These were vassal rulers of the Egyptians who rose up in open revolt. Thutmose defeated their combined armies during this battle. This battlefield is the same one that the final battle discussed in the Bible will supposedly be fought on…its name is Armageddon, and you can see the origin of the name in the name Megiddo (Greek: Mageddon, Hebrew: Har Megiddo, which means Mount of Megiddo).

Read More About the Battle of Megiddo Here

Having established Thutmose III as the only possible pharaoh of the Exodus according to the Bible’s own timeline and story, we can now see how archaeologically and historically problematic and internally inconsistent the biblical story is. The Israelites supposedly got god to horribly plague the Egyptians when the archaeological and historical record show no economic, military, or societal problems of any sort happening. The area the Israelites supposedly fled to, wandered in, and then settled in was Egyptian owned and dominated territory the entire time they supposedly were wandering and settling in it.

Additionally, any population the size of the claimed Israelite escapees moving through a region for 40 years, then entering and conquering another region would have left HUGE amounts of evidence for their existence and the conquest would be definitively visible in the archaeology of the region. It would literally be impossible to not do so. The western pioneers in America left HUGE amounts of evidence of their passing through the Great Plains. And there was only around 100,000 of them total over 100 years. The Israelites were supposedly 30 times that number and their journey was supposedly only 40% of the same time frame.

No such thing has ever been found. This, in one of the most heavily excavated, studied, and explored regions of the entire world. On top of that, the reality of the situation being that IF there actually were 600,000 adult male Israelites as the Bible claims,  AND IF EVEN 25% of those men were of military age and capability, this would be the largest army ever gathered in the history of the world up to the end of the bronze age. The largest the Egyptian Army EVER got in this period was around 100,000 men. And Egypt was THE superpower of the region AND the world at that time. Alexander the Great conquered the entire region of Greece, Macedonia, the Middle East, Egypt, Persia, and most of India with less than 60,000 men, not counting ships or sailors. The Israelites supposedly had ten times that number of men. Why did they only conquer less than 10,000 square miles? Alexander conquered over 2 million square miles with barely 1/30 of the men the Israelites supposedly had. AND he did it in less than 13 years, while it took the Israelites 7 years to conquer less than 10,000 square miles with 30 times the manpower. They must be the shittiest soldiers in the history of the world with that kind of a record. Why didn’t they just conquer Egypt and take over the largest agricultural and military superpower of their time with that size of a population? They could have “Chinese-Human-Waved” the Egyptians into submission without using a single weapon.

Read More About Alexander the Great’s Army Here

The western world would not actually see an army the size of the claimed Israelite manpower until the very height of the Roman Empire more than 1000 years later. The Chinese Empire just after the Late Bronze Age Collapse (LBAC around 632 BCE) could field around 52,000 men and 700 chariots. I call bullshit on the 600,000 Israelite male claim. More bullshit from the largest source of bullshit in the history of the world.

Further, EVEN IF the army of pharaoh HAD survived the plagues intact enough to pursue the Israelites to the Red Sea the Egyptians would have been just as vulnerable, if not even more so, to outside invasion and conquest as the previous plagues would have left them. And again, that invasion and conquest never happened. Ergo none of those other things could have happened either.

One final point on the population statistic: If the Israelites DID have around 3 million persons that left at the time of the Exodus, that number represents a full 50% of the pre-Exodus population of Egypt. If NONE of the ten plagues happened, AND half the population of Egypt left all of a sudden ALL THE SAME RESULTS WOULD HAPPEN. The economy would tank, agriculture would cease for years, the military would be completely incapacitated, and the government would collapse. ESPECIALLY if the economy were driven entirely by slave labor as a 50% slave population would indicate AND require.

Compare that to post Civil War era Confederate America during the Reconstruction Era. It took more than 12 years just to rebuild the infrastructure, redesign, and reset the agricultural and industrial capabilities of HALF a country with both halves working to do so. Egypt is bigger than Texas, Florida, and Georgia combined so this comparison is almost directly correlated by size. AND the northern half of the US was the largest and most capable industrial superpower of its time. Egypt was the largest and most capable agricultural and military superpower of its time, but its industrial capability (as good as it was) is just not in the same class as the northern half of the US in 1865. Japan was completely decimated at the end of WWII, and Germany was in a similar situation. Their industry and agriculture were completely obliterated. Their militaries were nearly completely wiped out. The reconstruction of Japan and Germany after WWII took seven years with the US doing the majority of the financing and rebuilding work in both countries.

Its just not possible for a pre-industrial nation to do the same thing in any kind of similar time frame. The FACT that Egypt has ZERO of these effects indicated in the archaeological or historical record indicates conclusively that the entire Exodus story is just that…a fantasy concocted by morons who were unaware or unconcerned with facts and reality.

The more fantastical portions of the Exodus are even less compelling. The parting of the Red Sea, the magical-water-from-a-stone spring, the manna from heaven, the pillar of fire, the burning bush, the ten commandments written in stone by the finger of god, marching around Jericho seven times carrying the Ark of the Covenant blowing rams’ horns, its all bullshit that requires more bullshit magic. None of those are even worth me wasting more words and research and effort on. They all make for a great, fun, bullshit fantasy story though.