Dateline: Sinai - The Books of Moses, Deuteronomy
I.
Egypt
The Book of Genesis ends with the Twelve Tribes living fairly well off in the Land of Goshen in Egypt, east of the Nile Delta, and with the death of Joseph. The Twelve Tribes keep pretty much to themselves and grow into a large subculture living in Egypt.
A pharaoh came to power “who knew Joseph not” (and whose name is not mentioned) and who worried that the Hebrews would betray Egypt to its enemies, so he enslaved them – forcing them to build the cities of Pithom and Raamses, among other things. They still did not assimilate and, concerned with their growing numbers, Pharaoh ordered all male Hebrew children drowned.
A child from the tribe of Levi was not drowned but set adrift on the Nile in a basket, which was found by Pharaoh’s daughter. The child was adopted, given the name Moses (from a Hebrew root meaning “to draw up” as in from the water), and raised in the royal court.
When he was an adult, Moses saw an Egyptian taskmaster flogging a Hebrew slave, which enraged him – he killed the Egyptian and buried the body in the sand. Word got out about his crime anyway and he fled to the wilderness, in the land of Midian {somewhere in Southern Sinai}.
Here he met a group of people living at the base of Mount Horeb and married the daughter of Jethro. While wandering with his flocks on the mountain, Moses encountered God in the form of a bush that burned but was not consumed. God revealed Himself to be the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and of their descendants – the enslaved Hebrews, and revealed his mystery name – YHVH, or “I am that/who I am.” Yahweh told Moses to go to Pharaoh and demand the release of his people. Moses and his brother Aaron (whom God has commanded find his brother in the desert) returned to Egypt to confront the Pharaoh.
Pharaoh refused and Yahweh inflicted terrible plagues upon Egypt. First the Nile turned to stinking blood. Then frogs erupted out of the Nile and the land. Then animals and people were attacked by lice. Then swarms of flies plagued the countryside. Then a disease afflicted the livestock. Then mysterious boils erupted on the surviving animals and the people. Then hail mixed with fire rained down and destroyed the crops. Then a plague of locusts finished off the remaining plant-life. Then a deep darkness “which could even be felt” descended over the land. But Pharaoh still would not relent.
Finally, a spirit of death was loosed upon Egypt to kill the first born of every household, man and animal alike. The Hebrews were instructed to smear their doorposts with blood so the angel would know them and pass them by [this is what the Jewish holiday of Passover (Pesah in Hebrew) celebrates]; they were also told to prepare unleavened bread in expectation of a sudden departure and journey.
Pharaoh granted the Hebrews’ release, and 600,000 men, women and children, plus their animals, set out on foot for the Promised Land, led by Moses and his brother Aaron. Yahweh wanted to spare his people the possibility of getting involved in a war, so he had them avoid the easier northern route through the land of the Philistines, and instead they were to go south along the west coast of the Gulf of Suez. Pharaoh reconsidered his decision and dispatched 600 chariots to bring the Hebrews back. Yahweh parted the waters of the Gulf of Suez, the Hebrews ran to the other side, and then the waters came crashing down on the Egyptian pursuers (an event celebrated in the Song of the Sea – Ex.15: 1-18).
{The parting of the Red Sea, and the drowning of the pursuing charioteers, is widely believed to have occurred at Hammam Far’aun – “The Pharaoh’s Bath” – on the Western Sinai coast.}
II.
Sinai
Moses leads his ragtag group around the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula, and finally takes them to Mount Horeb* to meet their God. He ascends the mountain to speak with Yahweh, and comes down with the laws his newly liberated people will live by – including the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20) as well as a complex series of worship, purity, and dietary laws (almost the entire remainder of the Books of Moses – Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers). The only thing marring the occasion is that Moses is gone so long that his people revert back to idol worship (the golden calf) (as they were to do so many more times in their history) and he, in anger, breaks one of the tablets. The Ark of the Covenant is constructed according to Yahweh’s instructions, the tablets of the Ten Commandments are placed inside, and Yahweh enters it to dwell within.
{*Mt. Horeb (which just means Mountain of God) is better known today as Mount Sinai (Gabal Mussa in Arabic – literally Mount Moses – though some refer to it as Gabal Iti – or (the) Mount of Losing (Yourself), a reference to the Hebrews losing themselves in worship of the golden calf while Moses was talking with God). Nearby is St. Catherine’s Monastery – considered the oldest example of unrestored Byzantine architecture in the world. Inside this complex there is an extensive library with 3,000 ancient documents, 5,000 books, and the oldest known translations of the Gospels (5th century); in the Church of the Transfiguration there is the Chapel of the Burning Bush – which is difficult to get permission to see but if you are lucky enough to, please remove your shoes, as the holy roots grow under the floor; there is also a mosque, an ossuary, and a gift shop. St Catherine’s futbol team is the champion of Egypt - they keep in shape by running up the 2285 meters to Mt. Sinai’s bleak summit twice a day.}
Yahweh continues with them on their journey, in the form of a cloud by day and lighting their way as a pillar of fire by night. After 40 years of wandering, they camp at Paran and send spies to gather intelligence about the Canaanites they will have to overcome. The spies return with information about great armies and huge fortifications – so formidable that the Hebrews become afraid and rebel against Moses, demanding to go back to Egypt where they were at least safe. Yahweh sees this and decides that the generation that has seen slavery in Egypt is unfit for the tasks ahead and will not enter the Promised Land – it will be their offspring that will fulfill the Hebrews’ destiny.
The Hebrews wander some more, through Kadesh-barnea {identified as Ein el-Qudeirat in Eastern Sinai near the Israeli border, probably named for the small spring nearby called Ein Qadis}, and across the lands of Edom and Moab (descendants of Lot, Abraham’s nephew), east of the Dead Sea. It is there on the plains of Moab that the now elderly Moses reveals the full terms of God’s Law, detailed in the Book of Deuteronomy (from the Greek word “deuteronomion,” meaning “second law”). Joshua, son on Nun, is appointed to lead the Israelites into Canaan, and Moses ascends to the summit of Mount Nebo**. There God shows him the land he has brought his people to but cannot himself enter (being part of the older generation). Moses sees it all in a vision, and then dies. The Israelites, now a nation, mourn for 30 days, and then cross the River Jordan, ready to claim the land promised them by their God.
{**Mt. Nebo is near Madaba in Western Jordan near the Israeli border. While the Bible claims that no one knows where Moses is buried, guides will tell you there are rumors of his grave being in a cave near Ain Musa. There is a Memorial to Moses on the higher Mt. Siyasha – the next peak over.}
III. (Interlude 1): A Boy and His God – The Law-Giver and the Genie
What of Moses himself – was there such a person? The religion today called Judaism is largely his creation, in much the same way that Christianity is the religion of St. Paul – Abraham and Jesus being the originators of the message, while Moses and Paul codified it and set down the tenants of a practical method of ritual, worship, and lifestyle. They both impressed these new religions with their own personalities. Judaism follows the laws of the god Yahweh, but just who or what was this Yahweh?
The Roman Catholic Douai Bible says that the name Moses does not mean “drawn up out of (water)” but actually just meant “born of”. It required another named prefixed to it, such as Ramesses (born of Ra) or Thothmoses (born of Thoth). Somehow the family name got dropped, much like taking the “Donald” from “MacDonald” and just leaving “Mac.” Some have suggested that, if this is true, his original name was Hapymoses, or Born of the Nile.
The idea that a pharaoh ordered all Hebrew children thrown into the Nile is impossible to believe as a historical event – first it would be totally against the Egyptian idea of Ma’at, or justice; second, it would be a very foolish idea to have thousands of tiny bloated corpses clogging up your people’s only water supply; third, there is no evidence of any such thing happening, either in records or from archaeological digs. So the story of Moses birth must have some meaning other than historical fact.
In fact, the birth story of Moses is almost identical to that of Sargon I, king of Babylon and Sumer several centuries before the reign of Ramesses II. Some scholars suggest that the story is an archetypal tale around the theme of creation from the waters – the kingdoms of Sumer and Babylon and, later, the Kingdom of Judah, as told through the story of Moses. It also conveniently explained how a Jewish child came to be raised as an Egyptian.
We are told that Moses is of the tribe of Levi, who were the priests and scribes of the Israelites. Most likely Moses was thought to have been a priest or scribe (thus the written Commandments, in a time when few people could write) and the authors of Exodus assumed he must be from the tribe of Levi (he had to become a Jewish hero, after all, since this is a Jewish tale.) Perhaps he was a Habiru (a derogatory term for the wandering nomads form the east, regardless of ethnic or cultural background - possibly where the word Hebrew comes from) or other Asiatic who was adopted by an Egyptian family (a not uncommon practice at the time), possibly he was a high-born Egyptian who found it necessary to change his identity, or possibly he was a Semite general in the army of the last Hyksos king and was expelled with the rest of the Hyksos by the Theban monarchy.
Whatever the case, he killed a man and had to run – so he hid out in the Sinai wilderness, finally marrying into the main family of a group of Semites living at the base of Mt. Horeb. These people worshipped a god of storm and war who lived on the mountain, and wore a symbol on their foreheads shaped like the Hebrew letter Tau (a stylized letter “T”). Interestingly, inscriptions from the 16th and 15th centuries BCE describe the work of Habiru slaves in turquoise mines – very dangerous work with no ventilation and flames burning up the available oxygen, and a high death rate among workers – not far from Mt. Horeb and some scholars have raised the intriguing possibility that this group of slaves may be the ones Moses freed and led into Canaan - which would explain how there could be people called “Israel” in Canaan before the Exodus; the story would have to be that this group of Habiru slaves, led by Moses, brought the god Yahweh to Canaan and mixed with the people there, who were already known as “Israel.”.
Since tracing back any definitive information of the racial background of the people we today call Jews is all but impossible, we must go to the other definition of a Jew – a person who follows the customs and laws of the god Yahweh. But who was this Yahweh?
Gods seldom spontaneously pop into existence, but come from other deities. The god living at the summit of Mt. Horeb probably came from Mesopotamia, undergoing various changes as time passed (thus the story of Abraham bring Yahweh to Canaan). At that time, it was believed that if you knew the name of a god you had power over it. Moses asks the god of the burning bush for his name, and the god sidesteps the question with the rather smart-assed reply “Ehyeh asher ehyeh”, or “I am what I am”, basically deflecting the question. YHVH then asserts his power by commanding that Moses remove his shoes and to keep back because the ground is holy. Moses complies, and their relationship begins.
Yahweh then makes Moses a deal – I will give you a people and laws to form a nation with, if you and they worship me. But what kind of god was Moses agreeing to serve?
A harsh one, by all accounts. First Yahweh inflicts awful plagues upon the Egyptians. Then, when Moses leads the freed slaves back to Mt. Herob and they start worshipping another god, Yahweh commands Moses to have as many of these sinners killed as possible. The Bible reports of three thousand being put to the sword. Then Yahweh leads His people into conquest after conquest, all of them bloody – with whole towns being killed and razed (see Deuteronomy 2, 3, etc.). Yahweh warns his people that they must obey him or perish (Deuteronomy 8:19-20). Yahweh even plots to kill Moses at one point for marrying an Ethiopian woman, but changes His mind and kills someone else. Moses constructs the Ark according to Yahweh’s instructions, out of fine metals and materials, and the god enters it to use as a home, much like a genie in a bottle. And so a small, localized being gets promotes Himself to full-fledged god status, living in style, and eventually becomes known as the only God – creator of the world – through a bargain struck with an Egyptian citizen on the lam for murder.
IV. (Interlude 2): The Hyksos
The Egyptian historian Manetho, writing in the third century BCE, describes a brutal invasion of Egypt from the east, and subsequent domination, by a group of chariot riding Semites he calls the Hyksos (a Greek translation of an Egyptian word that he thought meant “shepherd kings” but which actually meant “rulers of foreign lands”.) He went on to describe how a virtuous king drove them off, pursuing them north into Syria, and how the survivors went on to found the city of Jerusalem and build a great temple there.
The Hyksos were indeed of Western Semitic origin and ruled Egypt from their city of Avaris (today’s Tel ad-Daba) in the eastern Nile Delta. They are identified as the rulers of the 15th Dynasty (about 1650 to 1560 BCE – possibly as early as 1780 BCE). They had very distinctive trappings, such as the braided beard we commonly associate with the pharaohs today, and the chariot – a device not seen in Egypt before the Hyksos, and were hated by the Egyptians. They were finally driven off by one of the always-scheming princes of Thebes – Ahmose of the Eighteenth Dynasty, who sacked Avaris and chased the Hyksos to their main citadel at Sharuhen, in Southern Canaan near Gaza. He went on the found the Egyptian New Kingdom (1560 – 1075 BCE).
Excavations at Tel ad-Daba show a gradual increase in Canaanite occupation, with pottery, tombs, jewelry and the like showing Canaanite influence as early as 1800 BCE and by 1650 the city was overwhelmingly Canaanite. There is no evidence of an invasion - rather a gradual increase in Western Semitic influence and what was most likely a peaceful takeover of power. Tel ad-Daba was abandoned in the mid-16th century BCE.
Egyptologist Donald Redford argues that the memory of a time of ascendancy in Egypt and a sudden violent expulsion and return to Canaan echoed through the ages as a powerful cultural memory. This memory would greatly color the Exodus narratives, now believed to have been written in the 7th century BCE.
V. (Commentary): Did They Stay or Did They Go?
A note on the various archaeological ages: the generally accepted scheme is:
Early Bronze Age - 3500 - 2200 BCE
Intermediate Bronze Age - 2200 - 2000 BCE
Middle Bronze Age - 2000 - 1550 BCE
Late Bronze Age - 1550 - 1150 BCE
Iron Age I - 1150 – 900 BCE
Iron Age II - 900 – 586 BCE
Babylonian Period - 586 – 538 BCE
Persian Period - 538 – 333BCE
Historical writings from ancient times are notoriously unreliable. We saw that the various sources that make up the Book of Genesis were most likely complied in the 8th or 7th century BCE to further the idea of a unified nation under the auspices of the Kingdom of Judah. But what of the story of Moses and the Exodus? When did the Exodus take place, if at all?
The Book of Exodus describes the use of Hebrew slaves to build the cities of Raamses and Pithom (Ex. 1:11). The first Egyptian king with the name Ramesses took the throne in 1320 BCE, more than 100 years after the traditional dating of the Exodus. His son, Ramesses II (1279-1213 BCE) is known to have built the Pi-Ramesses, or House of Ramesses and to have used Semites in its construction; his capital was Pithom, which was greatly expanded during his reign.
The Merneptah stele (Merneptah was the son of Ramesses II) describes a campaign against a people in Canaan who were known as “Israel.” This is the first known written reference to a people called “Israel” and they were already in Canaan in the 12th century BCE.
Exodus also tells of the dangers of going to Canaan by the northern way, and Moses takes them south through the Sinai desert instead. The way along the north coast from the Nile Delta to Canaan and beyond was known as the Way of Horus and was dotted with forts a day’s ride apart. Any group of people escaping this way would surely have been caught, or at least their passage would have been recorded. There are no records of any group of freed Semitic slaves heading to Canaan this way, though there are records of people traveling between Egypt and Canaan (which was under Egyptian domination).
There is no evidence of a large group of people camping in the Sinai. Even if one assumes the figure of 600,000 in Exodus is exaggerated, there is no archeological evidence whatsoever of a sizeable group of people wandering about the Sinai at this time, nor do other sources from this time show such a thing as happening. It could be that the group of freed slaves was much much smaller, perhaps workers from the nearby turquoise mines.
Other locations mentioned in Exodus also exhibit dating problems. At the site of Kadesh, the remains of an Iron Age fort has been discovered, but nothing at all before that. There is a story of the king of Arad+ attacking the Israelites and taking some of them captive (Numbers 21:1-3) and while Arad was a large city in the Early Bronze Age, and an Iron Age fort has been uncovered there, there is absolutely nothing from the Late Bronze Age. In fact, the entire Beersheba Valley was all but deserted in the Late Bronze Age.
{+The town of Arad, 35 km east of Beersheba, was built in 1961, and is home of the Hebrew Music Festival each July. The site of the ancient Arad is at nearby Tel Arad. Arad was destroyed around 2700 BCE and never rebuilt, so it boasts the most complete Bronze Age city ruins anywhere today. The Early Bronze Age site is over 25 acres.}
In addition to no evidence for anything like the Exodus at any time, let alone during the reign of Ramesses II and after, there are a number of references in the Books of Moses that only make sense when seen from the perspective of the 7th century BCE.
The Pharaoh Psammetichus I (664-610 BCE) and his son Necho II (610-595 BCE) (their capital was at Sais in the western Nile Delta, and so “Saite” is an alternative name for the 26th Dynasty) both engaged in extensive building projects using large numbers of foreign builders - including immigrants from Judah, who had formed a rather large community in the eastern Delta by the early 6th century BCE (Jeremiah 44:1, 46:14). A site called Pithom is mentioned in the 13th century BCE, but the much larger and more important city of Pithom*** was not built until the late 7th century BCE. While the site was occupied in the Middle Bronze Age, it was not really settled until the 26th Dynasty. Migdol (Ex. 14:2) was a term for any of the many forts that lined the Way of Horus, but was also the name of a specific and very important site in the eastern Delta in the 7th century BCE.
{***Pithom is identified with Tell Maskhutba in the eastern Nile Delta, from Pr-Itm (House of the God Atum), which was in Succoth (the Hebrew name for Tjkw in the eastern delta.}
In the story of Joseph in Genesis four specific Egyptian names are mentioned that gained great popularity in the 7th & 6th centuries BCE (Zaphenath-paneah – Pharaoh’s grand vizier, Potiphar – the royal officer whose wife tries to seduce Joseph, Potiphara – a priest, and Asenath – Potiphar’s daughter). Joseph lives in Egypt during a time of paranoia of invasion from the East, and even accuses his brothers of being spies (Gen.42:9). Yet Egypt was never invaded from the east until the Assyrian invasions in the 7th century BCE.
Kadesh-barena, mentioned in Exodus, was never occupied until the 7th century BCE. Edom is mentioned as a kingdom, yet achieved statehood only under the Assyrians in the 7th century BCE, before that it was a strictly nomadic culture (Edom was destroyed by the Babylonians and not reoccupied until Hellenistic times.) Clearly, these references are from the 7th century BCE – the time Exodus was written.
VI.
Conclusion
The settings of the Exodus somewhat correspond with the reign of Ramesses II in the 13th century BCE, yet there are greater correspondences with the 26th Dynasty of Necho II. And let us not forget the Merneptah stele, which quite clearly mentions a people known as Israel living in Canaan in the 12th century BCE. Probably the story of the Exodus is a combination of both realities, much like how medieval European pictures of Jerusalem showed turrets and battlements that were familiar to the European eye, or how pictures of Moses holding the Ten Commandments with Hebrew characters on them (Moses would only have known how to write in Egyptian hieroglyphics, being raised from infancy in the Egyptian royal court. The Egyptian word for hieroglyphics, in fact, means “words (letters) of god,” a phrase repeated throughout the Bible.)
Donald Redford and other scholars have suggested that memories of the Hyksos occupation and subsequent expulsion from the Nile Delta, combined with legends and the realities of the Levant in the 7th century BCE, are what gave the Moses narratives their form. The 7th century BCE was a time of great revival in both Egypt and in the Kingdom of Judah - Egypt was recovering from the Assyrian assaults and Judah was not only the only Jewish kingdom left but was finally free of the Egyptian yoke. Judah’s King Josiah (639-609 BCE) was keen to expand into the territory formerly occupied by the Kingdom of Israel (destroyed in 720 BCE by the Assyrians) and to unite the people of both kingdoms into a single political entity, worshipping the same god in a single temple in his own capital of Jerusalem, ruled by a single king of the Davidic lineage. To this end he commissioned the writings we now know as the Pentateuch, written in Iron Age II about that time as well as earlier Bronze Age periods, to achieve a political purpose.
The story of the Exodus is neither fact nor fiction. It is, in the words of, authors Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, in the book, The Bible Unearthed:
“…a powerful expression of memory and hope in a world in the midst of change. The confrontation between Moses and pharaoh mirrored the momentous confrontation between the young king Josiah and the newly crowned Pharaoh Necho. To pin this biblical image to a single date is to betray the story’s deepest meaning. Passover proves not to be a single event but a continuing experience of national resistance against the powers that be.”
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