Remember Pharaoh was considered Horus incarnate. He's considered a deity figure.
And Pharaoh is going to go out to war to get those nasty Israelites at the Red Sea.
Not really.
Here's another one. Again, this is something that's not in Unseen Realm.
We didn't even get into this on the podcast. But it's just fascinating.
The tabernacle precession, scholars have noticed, is actually sort of laid out,
even the tabernacle itself, and the way it moves, and so on and so forth.
It's laid out in the formation of a war camp. And of course, God is the warrior here.
Remember, Exodus 15:3, "the Lord is a man of war."
The angel is leading the procession to Canaan.
It seems very logical that the whole complex would be laid out like a war camp.
And scholars have noticed this. And they've also noticed that,
the tabernacle actually has some differences with the temple in the way it's laid out.
Now, those two observations taken together, I want to show you some things.
Here's the tabernacle. And it's a very familiar picture,
If you're a Bible student you know the basic outline structure of the tabernacle;
you see the holy place with the two compartments, the one in the back is the Holy of Holies,
where the Ark of the Covenant is.
That's way back to the left here, upper left-hand corner of your screen, Holy of Holies.
And then you have the rest of the holy place. And you've got a few objects,
in the front, you've got the brazen altar, so on and so forth,
slaughtering tables and whatnot, you got this big court.
Now, if you look at the temple, next to it, yeah, it's got the holy place.
And that has two compartments, Ark of the Covenant and all that.
But the front here doesn't have a lot of this stuff in it.
And, of course, when you get to the temple,
you don't have camped around the temple, the tribes of Israel.
So there are some visual sort of layout differences between the two.
They're both the dwelling place of God. And they're both decorated like Eden.
And they both refer to Mount Zion, the cosmic mountain, Mount Sinai,
where the tabernacle sits for a while, where it gets constructed for the first time,
so on and so forth. So there's a lot of similarities, obviously, but there are some differences.
And scholars have noted the differences and said,
you know, if you look at the tabernacle, especially when the people are camped around it,
it's kind of like a war camp.
And that would make sense because Yahweh is the divine warrior.
Well, other scholars have noticed, you know, that war camp is laid out
pretty much exactly like the war camp of Ramesses II.
Now, I don't want to get into necessarily the date of the Exodus.
But this is really interesting. The war camp of Ramesses II is known
more predominantly because there's so many depictions of it, and of Ramesses.
So other Pharaohs could have laid out their war camp the same way.
But Ramesses II is just the best, and, you know, convenient example,
and he happens to be one of the pharaoh candidates
for one view of when the Exodus happened.
So regardless of whether you like that chronology or a different one,
don't worry about it. Just think about the camp, think about Pharaoh's war camp.
Here's the tabernacle. Here's a schematic, a little drawing here.
You'll notice here at the top Ramesses II war camp, and I'm going to show you
actual pictures of this in a moment, you know, paint paintings of it.
You've got this outer perimeter. You've got an entryway, a long entryway
and like a hallway, just a long entryway here in a courtyard.
And you've got a reception tent where you got royal officials,
people who are intermediaries between visitors and Pharaoh,
then you have Pharaoh's chamber.
Look at the tabernacle; you got the entrance, you walk straight forward here,
you get the Holy Tent, the Holy Place, the Holy of Holies is right here.
And even in the temple, you've got some sense of this, at least sort of this linear structure.
Here's a painting of Ramesses' war camp.
You'll notice again, you've got this entryway right here, there's an opening,
you go down the corridor, and you hit where he has his attendance.
And then in the inner sanctum is where the pharaoh is
or a symbol of the Pharaoh, or the Pharaoh's deity, or whatever it is.
You know, it would depend on the occasion really. But isn't that interesting?
You know, what's more than it just being sort of an oddity interesting is;
which warrior wins? Which one wins?
It's just another way where the Exodus' narrative, and the whole deliverance from Egypt
is designed to establish the superiority of Yahweh over the Gods of Egypt.
Remember Pharaoh was considered Horus incarnate. He's considered a deity figure.
And Pharaoh is going to go out to war to get those nasty Israelites at the Red Sea.
Not really. Okay, we know who wins the conflict.
And again, to sort of just dig or to reinforce the concept.
When the tabernacle is constructed,
and God instructs the people how to camp around it.
It tells everyone, including the nations around Israel, that know what's going on here
that this people is migrating from Egypt to somewhere,
and ultimately, they figure it out to Canaan.
Their divine warrior really is. He really is one. He's defeated the Gods of Egypt and Pharaoh
So it's just more theological messaging.
As a highlight, if it does, regardless of whether it's Ramesses or not,
but this is a good argument for the historicity of the tabernacle.
Because it correlates very nicely with historical material that nobody's going to dispute.