Pages 7-11: spring 1990

A reply to "Holes...."



PLUGGING "HOLES" IN THE TWO-AMRAMS THEORY

                          Jerry Moffitt

     Any success, benefits, or accomplishments in any task are directly 
related to Him in whom we have complete dependence.  We have prayed for 
His providence and guidance as we approach this opportunity to serve Him. 
I said earlier that Mr. Till's first article was held together with bubble gum 
and kite string.  In his second article I do not see how any skeptic could 
have done a better job with the available evidence than Mr. Till has done. 
He has marshalled his evidence with precision from the least persuasive 
toward the most persuasive.  Yet his second article in one way is worse than 
the first.  It seems to me to be held together with not much more than a 
strained look and static electricity.  For example, when he sent his article, 
he said it was composed of 3,650 words. He said I could use an equal amount 
in reviewing it.  Out of his 3,650 words, I want you to inspect 78 of the key 
ones.  Notice these pivotal words by which the article is sewed together:

     "If we assume... and I guess I can assume this... we could 
     reasonably assume that... would have surely... one wonders 
     why... doesn't necessarily follow... many of them could have 
     been... we could even imagine... this theory would certainly 
     fit... it might well be... and maybe... and makes it quite possi-
     ble... I would find it much easier to swallow... believe that the 
     writer of this passage... if that is so... is it reasonable to be-
     lieve... if so... possibly realizing...."

Now does that sound as if someone is actually proving anything?  Does it 
have the flavor of logic and the scientific method? It's a pretty "iffy" docu-
ment for one who claims the Bible is a "veritable maze of irreconcilable con-
tradictions." Surely when it comes to proof, facts,  truth and error, "as-
sumption don't feed the bulldog."

     Let me just go through Mr. Till's article point by  point, treating 
quibbles or major points as they arise.  Remember, I showed that Mr. Till's 
position required Moses to have 2,150 brothers. Mr. Till mumbled something 
about the "outrageous exaggeration" of census figures in the books of Num-
bers and Exodus. Then he said he couldn't believe two or three million people 
wandered about for 40 years in the Sinai peninsula.  Why didn't a few of 
them stumble accidentally into the promised land, given the small size of the 
peninsula, he wonders.  Now isn't that foolish?  Sinai is over 20,000 square 
miles and easily double the size of the promised land.  It is about the size of 
West Virginia, twice the size of Maryland, four times the size of Connecticut, 
and half the size of Ohio.  New York City alone, in 1989, had more than 
twice the population of the whole nation Moses brought out.  The Israelites 
were organized into a close mass and miraculously sustained with manna, 
flesh, and water.

     Using a little "outrageous exaggeration" of his own, he says I would be 
hard pressed to find one reputable Bible scholar who says the figures in 
Exodus and Numbers are close to being  realistically accurate.  Unless the 
definition of "reputable Bible scholar" is "one who agrees with Farrell Till's 
assertions," I find many, and that fact doesn't help Mr. Till's credibility.  

Edersheim says the population was upwards of two million (Old Testament 
Bible History, Alfred Edersheim, II, 45).  Further, The International Stand-


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ard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE) defends both 600,000 for warriors and 2.5 
million for the whole congregation.  It successfully argues that seventy souls 
could multiply into 2.5 million in 215 years, much less 430 years (IV, 2166). 
Next, Halley's Bible Handbook, so popular that it has gone through 61 print-
ings, puts the figure at 3,000,000 (pp. 146-147). Then The  Bible Commen-
tary,  editor F. C. Cook,  takes  the numbers as authentic.  It points out 
that the camp was arranged with a military precision and would cover an area 
of around three square miles (I, 660).  Also, Commentary on the Old Testa-
ment in Ten Volumes by C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch says, "Modern critics 
have taken offense at these numbers, though without sufficient reasons," 
(III, 5).  We could go on, but that's enough.

     Mr. Till says if I could establish the reliability of the figures in 
Numbers 3:27-28 he would agree there were two Amrams as per Archer's 
Book.  Oh?  Numbers 3: 27-28 says the Kohathites in Moses' day numbered 
8,600.  Is 8,600 reliable?  Could they have gotten to be that number in nine 
or ten generations.  Let's see.  Let's say Kohath had only three sons instead 
of four, and each of those sons had only three sons.  A geometric sequence 
or progression of only eight generations would be 30 + 31 + 32 + 33 + 34 + 35 
+ 36 + 37 + 38 = 9,841.  This number is more than enough and consistent 
with I Chronicles, where I showed several individuals contemporary with 
Moses were in the ninth or tenth generation from those who entered Egypt. 
And, fatal to Mr. Till, it is consistent with what we have been arguing for 
Exodus 6. So the figures are very reliable, even if one counts only the last 
two or three generations.  But we will not demand that Mr. Till accept 
Archer's "Two-Amrams Theory" unless he wants to. Let's move on.  Alas, 
things get even worse.

     Remember, if Amram were responsible for one fourth of the 8,600 
Kohathites and that same Amram was the father of Moses and Aaron, then 
Moses and Aaron would have had around 2,150 brothers, according to Mr. 
Till's position.  But Mr. Till responded, saying that maybe they were sons 
and grandsons of Aaron and Moses, and through their sister Miriam they 
could have been nephews and great-nephews.  Let's say the 8,600 is com-
posed also of sons and grandsons.  Let's help him by supposing that Amram 
and each of his three brothers had four sons (which they didn't; I'm being 
generous to Mr. Till's theory) and each of those four had four sons and so 
on. How many males would we arrive at by the time of the grandsons?  There 
would be the  generations of Kohath,  Amram, Aaron, Eleazar, and Phinehas. 
Notice: 40 + 41 + 42 + 43 + 44 = 341.  That's 8,259 short, a far cry from 
8,600!

     Well, what about the nephews and great-nephews?  First, if Miriam 
married a descendant of Kohath, the children would already have been count-
ed as one of the sons descended from Kohath.  Second, if she married out-
side of Kohath, Merari for example, her children would not have been Koha-
thites.  Mr. Till is just not thinking.

     But all this led Mr. Till to believe that maybe there are missing links in 
the genealogy.  He is forced to think this way because of the problem of 
2,150 brothers of Moses.  So he says maybe the writer skipped some genera-
tions between Aaron and Eleazer and between Eleazar and Phinehas.  Could 
he be right that the skips are between Aaron and Eleazar and between Elea-
zar and Phinehas?  Notice Numbers 25:11: "Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the 
son of Aaron the priest...."  This clearly says Phinehas was the son of 

Eleazar and Eleazar was the son of Aaron.  See also Ex. 28:1; Num. 3:4; 
Lev. 10:16; Num. 4:16; Num. 20:26; Jud. 20:28; Josh. 24:33; and Num. 
25:11.  But Mr. Till will probably point out that "son" or "daughter" can 
mean "descendant," and he would be right.  But in this case he would be 
wrong.  Notice two passages:



                           2

          And Aaron took him Elisheba, the daughter of Amminadab, 
     the sister of Nashon, to wife; and she bare him Nadab and 
     Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, (Ex. 6:23).

          And Eleazar Aaron's son took him one of the daughters of 
     Putiel to wife; and she bare him Phinehas, (Ex. 6:25).

It is hard to figure out how Eleazar could have been  born to the wife of 
Aaron and yet be Aaron's grandson.  Similarly, it is painful for even a 
dedicated enemy of the Bible to swallow that Phinehas was born to the wife of 
Eleazar but then was Eleazar's grandson.  These are the kinds of things that 
give skeptics brief moments of religion that they have to bravely fight down.

     But now, let's locate the missing links somewhere else.  Let's put them 
between Kohath and the four: Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel.  But again, 
Exodus 6:18 calls them all sons of Kohath. True, but we have said "son" or 
"daughter" can be used in the sense of "descendant."  Notice: "of the sons 
of Kohath, Uriel the chief, and brethren a hundred and twenty," (I Chron. 
15:5).  Uriel was not the literal son of Kohath.  (See also verses 6, 7, 9, 
10; I Chron. 23:20; 24:24.)  Too, Shubael is called a son of Amram, although 
Shubael lived in David's day, (I Chron. 24:20). Similarly, Shebuel is called 
"the son of Gershom, the son of Moses," (I Chron. 26:24).  That was way up 
in David's time. "Sons" is copiously used in the sense of "descendant" 
throughout. See I Chronicles 23:43; II Chronicles 29:14 and I Chronicles 
2:42-43.

     We can see how a man's four literal sons could, because of their rela-
tionship with Moses and Aaron, have divided all Kohath descendants among 
them.  Yet, Uzziel, Amram, Izhar, and Hebron did not have to be literal 
brothers but only descendants of Kohath and near kinsmen to each other. 
This is a more normal division.  But isn't Uzziel called the uncle of Aaron? 
Yes.  Would not that make him the literal brother of Amram?  No!  The word 
in Hebrew for "uncle" is doud.  It is used, according to Theological Wordbook 
of the Old Testament, around 58 times.  In the King James version, it is 
translated 38 times as "beloved," eight times "love," and 17 times "uncle," (I, 
184).  Too, The New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew and English 
Lexicon says it can mean "beloved one," "friend," or "kinsman," (p. 187). 
In Amos 6:10, the ASV gives a footnote for it as "kinsman."  So Mr. Till's 
line of argumentation is becoming dreadfully becalmed.  Let's continue on. 
Let's easily handle his Genesis argument.

     God said, "Know of a surety that thy seed shall be sojourners in a land 
that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four 
hundred years; and also that nation whom they shall serve, will I judge; and 
afterward shall they come out with great substance....  And in the fourth 
generation they shall come hither again...."  Mr. Till points out that they 
were to come out of bondage in the fourth generation, not the eighth, ninth, 
or tenth.  Mr. Till underlined "and in the fourth generation." I underlined 
"four hundred years."  When you put them together, you can see that in an 
age when men lived well over one hundred years, God was using "generation" 
as equivalent to "century."  Four generations are four centuries.  The con

text clearly argues "generations" were not numbered by counting the number 
of people in a lineage line but by counting centuries.  Notice what the Theo-
logical Wordbook of the Old Testament says generation can mean: "The circle 
of a man's lifetime, from birth to death.  This is the apparent meaning at 
Genesis 15:16 where four generations cover an epoch of 400 years (cf. Gen. 
15:13)," (III, 186).  This reference quotes Keil in his commentary, "In the 
times of the patriarchs it was reckoned at a hundred years," (216).  It adds, 
"So among the Romans the word seculum originally signified an age or genera-
tion of men and was later transferred to denote a century."  That was the 
way God was using it, as a century, as the context proves.  Mr. Till claims 


                           3

they were not in Egypt 400 years, but he didn't discuss the "four hundred 
years" of Genesis 15:13, if he noticed them, although he quoted the passage. 
Regardless, his Genesis argument just went belly up.

     Then Mr. Till admitted that there are skipped generations in the Bible, 
but he said that there has to be a Bible passage that says they were 
skipped.  Well, if by God's grace I enter heaven, I will ask Moses if Moses 
was aware of Mr. Till's new rule of Hermeneutics.  In the meantime, I should 
point out that Genesis 15:13-16 (400 years) and the genealogies of I Chroni-
cles, which show 8 to 10 generations, and Numbers 3:27-28 (Moses having to 
have 2,150 brothers if there are no skipped generations) all clearly show that 
some generations were elided in Exodus 6 for the sake of brevity.  Such 
eliding in genealogy is biblically common.

     Next, Mr. Till sees something astounding in the text.  There seems to 
be a hidden agenda.  Everything focuses on Levi and his sons. The writer is 
trying to make a point.  What could it be?  Why, he is trying to prove that 
Aaron is a direct descendant of Levi!  Mr. Till seems to think there was a 
continuing struggle between the Aaronic  branch of Levi and other branches, 
yet Korah's  rebellion did not have a thing to do with whether or not Aaron 
descended from Levi but whether all the people could be priests or just 
Aaron's family.  Members of the tribe of Reuben were even involved, (Num. 
16:1). But Mr. Till and his scholars seem to insist Moses didn't write Exodus 
6.  Too, they seem, in a kind of hysterical way, to know all kinds of things 
about this fairy scribe who supposedly did write this portion.  It is a shame 
to spoil a really good cock-and-bull story; however, notice a few things they 
don't know.  They don't know of a scripture or any ancient document that 
says this man even existed.  Do they know he was a priest?  No.  Do they 
know where he lived?  No.  Do they know his family?  No. Do they know 
when he wrote?  No.  Could he be imaginary?  Yes!  This sly priest, like 
Melchizedek, had neither father nor mother, beginning of days or end of life, 
(Heb. 7:3).  One of the main differences between the two is that Melchizedek 
had a name while this other mysterious priest did not.  It seems a disgrace 
that Mr. Till should cruelly force him to parade before us without even a 
name, so I think we should give him one.  From now on I'll just call him 
Skeeter.

     Further, Mr. Till says that Moses shifted from one Amram to another 
with very poor transition.  Mr. Till claims it is a "serious compositional 
error." Let's have a little Christian charity, Mr. Till.  It was difficult for 
Moses to get it right.  After all, he lived over 3,000 years before Mr. Till's 
English Grammar was published.  Second, we have shown that there was one 
Amram.  But Mr. Till says this Amram took a wife, Jochebed, his father's 
sister, Levi's daughter (Ex. 2:1-10; Num. 26:59).  Like the demon who was 
afraid he might be tormented before his time (Matt. 8:29), Mr. Till said, "Mr. 
Moffitt will argue that she was a daughter of Levi only in the sense that she 
was a descendant of Levi, and he could probably get away with this were it 

not for Numbers 26:57: 'And the name of Amram's wife was Jochebed, the 
daughter of Levi, who was born to Levi in Egypt....'"  He claims the New 
International Version tampered with the text, rendering it: "The name of 
Amram's wifewas Jochebed, a descendant  of Levi, who was born  to the 
Levites in Egypt."   Mr. Till was slanderously wrong, although I'm sure he 
did not intend to be, when he said that the  NIV tampered with the Hebrew 
text.  The text wasn't changed; it was only rendered into English.  The ren-
dering was interpretative, true, but in this case it is correct. Take the word 
beget (Hebrew, yalad).  Even if Jochebed were a descendant of Levi nine 
times removed, Levi could still be said to have begotten her.  According to 
the Hebrew way of thinking, she would have been his daughter.  Notice what 
Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament says on "bear, beget, bring forth, 
travail": "The word [yalad] does not necessarily point to the generation 
immediately following. In Hebrew thought, an individual by the act of giving 


                           4

birth to a child becomes a parent or ancestor of all who will be descended 
from this child.  Just as Christ is called a son of David and a son of Abra-
ham, yalad may show the beginning of an individual's relationship to any 
descendant," (I, 379).

     Yes, Jochebed was born to Levi, but only in the Hebrew sense.  In 
that sense Jacob told Joseph that Joseph's two sons were his [Jacob's] (Gen. 
48:5).  Ruth had a child and the people said, "There is a son born to 
Naomi," (Ruth 4:17). Can one, in Hebrew thought, be born to a person in 
the sense of tribe, family, or house?  Notice: "And he cried against the altar 
by the word of Jehovah, and said, O altar, altar, thus saith Jehovah: Be-
hold, a son shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name," (I Kings 
13:2).  In Numbers 1:18, yalad was used in the sense of declaring tribal 
pedigrees. In Numbers 11:12, Moses even used yalad of himself, as if he 
could have been thought of as having given  birth to Israel.  So as a de-
scendant, Jochebed was born unto Levi, just as Israelites could even bare 
children unto God, (Ezek. 23:37).  

     But Mr. Till wonders why it states that she was born in Egypt.  The 
simple answer is obvious; she was born in Egypt.  There is no great mystery 
behind such an expression.  One may as well make wild speculation and weave 
mysterious theories out of the fact that it says the same thing about Ephraim 
and Manasseh. It says, "and the sons of Joseph, who were born to him in 
Egypt," (Gen. 46:27).  It is silly to postulate and conjecture fanciful stories 
that assume some enigmatic Ephramite wanted to prove Ephraim descended 
from Joseph and  that this statement is part of a mysterious XYZ document 
secretly redacted by this undivulged Ephramite later in the land of Israel. 
We can all see that Mr. Till is a gifted hypothesizer and that he deeply en-
joys his notions.  Yet, if we want fiction, let's turn to Hollywood and not to 
the Bible.

     So we showed that once again there are some elided generations in a 
genealogy. It was common.  We have answered every objection Mr. Till could 
come up with against this position.  There is no intertextual contradiction, so 
Mr. Till's final statement that when I win I lose is about as likely as walking 
down the street today and seeing a nun with a harpoon.

     Finally, I covered everything Mr. Till brought up.  If I missed any-
thing it was an oversight.  The Bible as originally written is inerrant. We 
wish it were possible to reply to every article written in The Skeptical Re-
view.  This article demonstrates we do have replies if we are given the 
opportunity.  But we appreciate what we can get.  As Jesus said, "The 
scripture cannot be broken," (Jn. 10:35).  Believing that with all our heart, 

we stand ready to refute, by God's help, any article discrediting  the Bible 
that will be published in The Skeptical Review.

     (Jerry Moffitt's address is P. O. Box 1275, Portland, TX 78374-1275.)


EDITOR'S NOTE: Mr. Moffitt called our attention to certain "pivotal words" 
that make Till's article "a pretty 'iffy' document."   Turn about is fair play, 
so we suggest that Mr. Moffitt take another look at his own articles for 
expressions like the following, which are just as iffy as anything he quoted 
from Till's article: "The originals may just happen to be inerrant....  God 
may have wanted perfect standards....  If Amram claimed one fourth.... 
Let's say (in other words, let's assume) Kohath had only three sons....  If 
Amram were responsible for one fourth of the 8,600 Kohathites....  Let's 
help  him  by  supposing....   Let's locate the missing links  somewhere 
else.  Let's put  them between Kohath and the four.... Even if Jochebed 
were a descendant of Levi nine times removed, Levi could still be said to 
have begotten her...."  This all sounds very speculative to us, so if Till's 


                           5

articles lacked "the flavor of logic and the scientific method," as Mr. Moffitt 
charged, the same would have to be true of his.  So what has he proven?

     We commend Mr. Moffitt for effectively showing that the Exodus-6 text 
required Eleazar to be the literal son of Aaron and Phinehas the literal son of 
Eleazar, (p. 8).  In so doing, he only confirmed what we have been arguing: 
this genealogy was intended to be a complete, generation-by-generation family 
tree.  All that Mr. Moffitt said in making his point could be used to show 
that Aaron and Moses were also the literal sons of Amram, so if this much of 
the passage was literal, what is Moffitt's reason for interpreting "sons" to 
mean "descendants" in verse 18?  If the expression "Aaron's son," as applied 
to Eleazar (v:25), was literal and if "sons of Izhar" was literal in verse 21 
(compare with Num. 16:1), by what interpretation principle does Moffitt make 
"sons of Kohath" (v:18) mean "descendants"?  The answer is simple: unless 
he distorts the obvious meaning to suit his needs, he is left with a glaring 
contradiction in the Bible text, and he must avoid that at all costs.  

     For the same reason, he must make dod in Lev. 10:4 not mean "uncle" 
but "kinsman."  We have checked nine translations, and all of them refer to 
Uzziel as "the uncle of Aaron," but Mr. Moffitt can't accept this.  If he does, 
his two-Amrams theory will suddenly evaporate.

     Or does he in fact believe in the two-Amrams theory?  On page ten, he 
said, "... we have shown that there was one Amram."  We freely admit to 
being confused, because we thought he was arguing that there were two 
Amrams.  Perhaps he can clarify this for us in a later issue.

     There is much more that we could say about Mr. Moffitt's failure to 
sustain his position, but we must get to other matters in future issues. The 
last word, however, has not been said on this point. It will be brought up 
again in the Till-Moffitt debate scheduled to begin August 13.

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