(LifeSiteNews) — On this week’s episode of The Van Maren Show, Jonathon is joined by Tim Mahoney, the documentarian behind the Patterns of Evidence films that show the archaeological evidence for biblical events.
“A Pattern of Evidence approach is to look for a pattern,” said Mahoney. “And a pattern means there’s more than one thing. And not only that, but you’re looking for it in the right sequence.”
“In some ways, I’m just an independent filmmaker that’s asking questions,” Mahoney said later in the episode. “I come from a Christian background. I’m wanting to find out, is this true?”
Mahoney describes what he does as an “investigation” rather than a “documentary,” however, telling Jonathon “the process of listening or gathering multiple points of view, I think was critical to the to the type of film that Patterns of Evidence films would become.”
“And so … today, there are a number of films that are called documentaries, but they’re actually not really a documentary because they’re more of a propaganda film. They look like they’re documenting things, but they’re really not telling the whole story. … I had to go and talk with people who said there was no evidence,” he said.
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Mahoney first began investigating the historicity of biblical events in 2002 after hearing that what looked like chariots were discovered on the bottom of the Red Sea, and that the historic location of Mount Sinai was in Saudi Arabia.
Describing what was found at a tomb by Austrian Egyptologist Dr. Manfred Bietak at the ancient city of Avaris, in a region of Egypt identified with the biblical Goshen, Mahoney said: “So there was a statue, and then the person would have been buried … deeper. And this statue had … reddish hair, and it had more like an Asiatic complexion on the skin. And it had a coat that was a multicolored coat. Wasn’t just like one color or anything.”
“And … it’s not a warrior,” Mahoney continued. “He’s got like a throw stick, a stick of authority. … And there are other tombs, principal tombs also in this graveyard, 11, by the way. And so the fact that there are 12 tombs and one of them is an Egyptian tomb to a non-Egyptian. But then the very interesting other connection to this is that the tomb was broken into twice. And what ended up happening was that the Bible tells us that Joseph knew about the promise to Abraham, that … Abraham’s descendants … would return someday to the Promised Land.”
“And Joseph held that promise, and he said to his brothers, ‘When you go back to the land that was promised to Abraham, and our families go back there, you have to take my bones with you and bury me there.’ And they agreed. So when Manfred Bietak dug up this area and this tomb he found that had been broken into twice and that there were no bones. And that also matched what was in the biblical text.”
Mahoney also described the work of English Egyptologist David Rohl, who proposed in the late 20th century that the traditional chronology dealing with ancient Egypt was incorrect and attempted to fix it after reading about Bietak’s work.
“And this Egyptologist, David Rohl, was looking at [Bietak’s] reports, and he is an agnostic, so he’s not a person trying to prove the Bible … and he goes, ‘Wait a minute, … it looks like Manfred Bietak is uncovering the Israelites,” said Mahoney.
Discussing Rohl’s chronology and Bietak’s findings, Mahoney noted that the archaeology at Avaris suggests that the Israelites may have settled there and grew in number, “and then they become enslaved, or something happens to them because they become impoverished. And then we start seeing these slave names, and we start seeing indications of them as there’s these slaves, Semitic slaves, in this area.”
“So the case was building for the narrative of the Bible … but the problem why people didn’t connect it is because it was earlier in Egypt’s time period [than traditionally thought]. But the sequence was there,” he said. “And eventually we see the exodus out of Egypt and then we see … this exodus in multiple places of these slaves. And Avaris is abandoned.”
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Later in the episode, Mahoney discusses the latest installments of the Patterns of Evidence films, set to release May 15 and 17, dealing with the historic Mount Sinai.
Discussing a possibility that Jebel-el Lawz in Saudi Arabia could be the historic Mount Sinai, Mahoney said: “There’s water just pouring out, sort of dribbling out of this mountain. And the fact that there … looks like there are these, I think now but I’ve seen five of them, five of these circular stoned areas, along what could be a reservoir or a small lake, that this possibly was how the Israelites were able to maintain themselves with water, because the Bible says they were told to wash their clothes. Well, they’re in the desert. How in the world are they going to wash their clothes to prepare for God? There had to be a flow of water coming out.”
He continued:
And the fact that 3500 years ago at one of these mountains … That to me, especially at the scale of this particular water area, that’s one thing. The other one was a massive graveyard in the middle of what I would call nowhere, because … there’s no evidence of a large settlement, but there’s evidence of a massive graveyard. And so what does this gravel yard connect to?
Well, the Bible says that when Moses was up on the mountain … [the Israelites] get nervous and they decide to build their own God. And now [Moses] looks down and he sees thousands of people worshiping a golden calf. Just the very thing that God had told them not to do … and he throws the commandment[s] … and then he tells the Levites … to take a sword and kill anyone who is doing this. And that day, it says 3000 people were killed. Well, guess what? There is [an about] 14 to 15 football fields area of graves, of these stones that have been put up. And so people say, ‘Well, where did these people come from and why are they right near this mountain where all this stuff happened?’
And so the issue of the of this massive graveyard, the large possibility of a water reservoir and wells along with the other things that I’ve been interested in. That to me, I think then kind of pulls the pattern together. And that’s what this movie is trying to do.
Listen to this week’s episode of The Van Maren Show with Tim Mahoney below:
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