I received an e-mail recently asking what I thought of a new documentary called Patterns of Evidence: Exodus produced by Timothy Mahoney in 2015 (See film trailer). I had not seen it, and I was curious to learn if apologists actually had something new to say.
I ended up suffering through about two hours of repackaged arguments, many of which I thoroughly considered and rejected decades ago.
The documentary is largely based on the book, Exodus: Myth or History? (St. Louis Park, MN: Thinking Men Media, 2015) by David Rohl, whose book cover describes him as an “Egyptologist, historian and archaeologist specializing in the historical relationship between Pharaonic Egypt and the Bible.”
Otherwise, Rohl is known for espousing other theories that are not widely accepted by most scholars.
Ron Wyatt’s The Exodus (1998) and Simcha Jacobovici’s The Exodus Decoded (2006)—see Dr. Chris Heard’s excellent critique here )— are also part of this genre.
GENERAL STRUCTURE OF THE DOCUMENTARY
Patterns has this general structure found in other apologetic documentaries:
A. A documentary filmmaker professes to seek the “truth” in a fair-minded and “scientific” way.
B. Skeptics of biblical historicity are interviewed.
C. Advocates of biblical historicity are interviewed.
D. The conclusion claims that the evidence favors C.
This is a fairly routine approach found in the written works of Lee Strobel (e.g. The Case for Christ [1998]) among others.
We can trace this style of apologetics at least as far back as Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853), the Harvard Law professor who put the Bible on trial, and called witnesses in his The Testimony of the Evangelists, Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice (1846). The verdict was predictable: The Bible is historically reliable.
The problem is that most of these documentary filmmakers often don’t have enough expertise to know which expert is offering good information. Mahoney cannot read any ancient languages that are crucial to evaluating some of the claims made, nor does he have the mastery of archaeology and Near Eastern literature necessary to detect the nonsense that Rohl offers him.
In reality, Mahoney did not evaluate carefully even the very archaeological artifacts and reports that he displays for the camera. He omits a lot of countervailing material (e.g., the Amarna letters, as I will explain).
To his credit, Mahoney admits that he is not an expert. I also will credit him for at least admitting that the majority position among scholars is the one his documentary opposes. But this will not save his documentary from some of the fatal flaws that were obvious to me upon first viewing.
