Who wrote the Bible?

Introduction

History* (footnotes under each section) is the study of footprints. It is the study that says that if there are footprints in the snow, something must have walked there. History determines, or tries to determine when those footprints were made - from the last snow fall to the moment of observation - and what or who made them. From the size we can assume a man or a woman or perhaps a child, or a child in his father’s shoes if the prints are big but close together; or, if it’s in Vermont and the footprints are big but close together, a man running to his outhouse; or a man carrying a dead body if the prints are deeper than normal (or Rush Limbeaueaueaughoghagogh); we can recognize a dog, a cat or a deer. If the footprints lead to a building and no other footprints are seen, and we walk to the building ourselves (creating our own footprints) and enter it and we find nothing in the building but a ladder and something black hanging from the ceiling, we can identify the footprints as coming from a Belgian electrician. I am digressing.

History is basically detective work. Historians are the forensic Abbies and McGees that try and sometimes succeed in linking certain DNA to a murder.** They often disagree with each other, but they also agree about a lot of things. They agree for instance that a particular set of footprints we see today cannot be made two weeks ago when last week had temperatures of 60º and up. The whole town may say that they are Edwin Moses’ footprints*** from three Sundays ago when Moses was in town motivating the kinds in the sports department of junior high, but we know that these footprints were made this week, when Eddie was back in Frisco ringing doorbells near the Golden Gate Bridge, which was not gold but red last time I checked. Someone made those footprints this week and it couldn’t have been Moses.

This article will discuss the footprints we have about the Bible, and when it was written, and by whom. The footprints show that it couldn’t have been Moses, because the particular snow in which we find them had not fallen yet in Moses’ time. We also find more than one set of prints. Some are older than others, and partly stepped over. Some are heavier, some lighter, some more straightforward, others more playful, swerving, running around a bit. The reconstruction - the footprints analogy may show that at least some reconstruction can be made at al times - of who made those footprints, who wrote the Bible, is called the Documentary Hypothesis, and will be discussed in some detail further along in this article. You will learn a little about who these authors were, what their agenda was, and how they can be recognized even in translation, even in English ... You will find two versions of the flood, extracted from the final version in Genesis, each version a full story of its own, with its particular features, moods, and agenda. This will be a historical approach to Genesis, the forensic work at this particular crime scene. Its wisdom, the true treasure of philosophical, human, and spiritual dimensions the Torah has to offer, will be discussed in a forthcoming series of articles called Genesis.

This website uses Latin phrases to fill up unused space, to show where text can be printed, which I thought looked good - so I left it in its original form.

Ceterum censeo pinnula breves angustaque esse delendam. Fac, ut ardeat cor meum Clorindae Musae meae in saeculum saeculorum amen.

Footnotes:

* History is the science that determines that a certain heap of Cleveland Brown found along a forest path near a meadow with a farmer milking a cow cannot have been dumped by a Lady, for the following reasons: 1. wet spots are found on top of an around the heap: a man’s moisture would fall in front of the dump; 2. the tip of the heap is intact: if a woman had laid it, her skirt would have taken the very tip away upon the woman’s leaving. 3: the man milking the cow does not seem to have to go to the bathroom. The last argument is ex nihilo, which is dangerous, but under certain conditions, like in this case the man’s confession that he dumped it himself 10 minutes ago, it can have scientific value.

** Like the time a woman found a human corpse in the marshes of a forest in northern Germany. She immediately called the police, who came, and inspected the body. “Yes,” the detective said, “the man has been murdered. But I see no point in opening an investigation.” - Why not? — “There is no way we will ever find the perpetrator.” —- How can you be so sure? —- “At this point, it’s the proverbial needle in a haystack. Besides, even if we do find the murderer, we will never be able to bring him to justice.” —- Why is that? —- “It’s our job to know.” —— So no investigation? —— “Let me just give you the contacts of another department where they will probably be much more excited in investigating this case: the Department of Ancient History.” —— The body was over 2000 years old …

*** Edwin Moses (b. 1955) was perhaps the world’s greatest 400-m.-hurdlist ever, having won 107 consecutive finals and set the world record four times. I think I say victory no. 95, among others.

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NOT MOSES

The moment I learned from the archeologists that the vast majority of the Five Books of Moses were actually written or at least completed during the Exile or even slightly after, I ran out of my house with my bandana screaming for Berry’s cherryberry/banana ice-cream. Everything had fallen into place. Genesis has a refinement that I have never seen approached in anything written prior to the collapse of 1200 BC. Nothing I have seen from the Bronze age palace cultures compares to the fine brush strokes in the character depiction of the four Patriarchs, the distance of the narrator, creating a 3-dimensional space where every single patriarch stands out as a true individual: Abraham the draufgänger, the Alpha Male, Isaac the Victim, Jacob the Trickster, who therefore finds himself forced to wrestle to God (Israel = wrestles with God); and Joseph, the gifted man who has God’s blessing in everything he does and who therefore gets the envy of everybody. Such refinement in description reminds of Homer, who did live in that period. The wisdom found in the creation stories and Genesis 3 also fits better in the Iron Age. Pushing the Torah forward to the 7th to the 5th century places it in Jasper’s Axial Age of Buddha (563 - 483 BC), Confucius (551 - 479 BC), Lao Tse (6th century BC?) Zoroaster (7th - 6th century BC?), Homer (8th century BC), Thales (624 - 548 BC), Anaximander (610 - 546 BC) and Aeschylus (526 - 457 BC). Moses’ authorship of the Five Books always seemed unlikely to me. When I was reading Exodus for the first time, outside of high school, unlike most Christians not indoctrinated by the idea of Mosaic authorship, I never even thought of the possibility. Nowhere does the Torah claim Moses was its author. All passages that say that Moses wrote down God’s Law seem to mean what they say: that Moses wrote down God’s Law, somewhere. That Moses had written the whole body itself was furthest from my mind. The problem seems to be that a rabbinic fancy from Hellenistic times about Mosaic authorship made its way into the New Testament, kind of like how the Catholic Church suggested that Mary Magdalene was the Adulterous Woman, or secularists insist she was His wife - and now Christians all over the world have to believe it. Even there, in the NT, the name Moses seems to be used as mere identification. “The law of Moses.” But that doesn’t mean Moses wrote the books in which the story is told of how Moses wrote the law.

FIRST A LITTLE HISTORY

Let me first give a condensed bird eye view of the history of the dreidel of civilization, the so called Fertile Crescent, and Egypt, so everything gets placed into context. Context is everything. Elsewhere I give the example of a red table in Vermont, which, when seen in moonlight, turns grey, and Bertrand Russell … but about that another time. Truth is always imbedded in context. So let me give you a little context in which, a background against which Moses and ‘his’ Five Books were placed. And yeah, of course, there is a map …

The Ancient Near East. The red marks the Fertile Crescent. The David star, premature, shows Canaan, later the area of Israel and Judah. Ur and Haran, Abraham’s alleged heimat, are encircled. Apologies for the few inaccuracies by my secretary, Miss Spellings, which did not get detected till after the proofs went to the Assessment, Redaction and Spellyng Sensorshippe (ARSS).

The burial mounts near Goirle, Netherlands, where I used to walk to to hear and talk to God too

The first thing that fascinates about the cradle of our civilization, Sumer and Egypt, is how old they are. When walking in the heather fields near my former home in Holland, revisiting (restored) tomb mounts from before the Common Era, I realized that in Holland, I lived in a (Christian) culture of 1500 years old of which the last 500 years were perhaps to be considered a new, “modern” era, but which started on the ruins of the Roman Empire. That Empire formed the end of an earlier cultural stratum that started 1500 years earlier in Greece. That stratum was founded on the ruins of yet an older stratum containing the Trojan War at its end and the gorgeous Minoan civilization before that, and including the Egyptian New (!!!) Kingdom; a stratum that began with entering Indo-Europeans and the first Babylonian Empire about 4000 years ago. That layer was founded on the ruins of the earliest civilizations Sumer and Egypt’s Old and Middle Kingdom, the pyramids, the semi-historical Gilgamesh, and the first writing systems. More time lapsed from those pyramids to Cleopatra than from Cleopatra to whatever pyramid your kids may build today from lego blocks. The Sumerian city states near the Persian Gulf had arisen by mastering the skill of irrigating the desert. We think they had been forced to that technology when climate change caused without any doubt by the CO2 emission of solid wheeled chariots had dried up the once fertile Mesopotamian lands.* They had been at war with each other since time immemorial. Until 2300 BC, that is, for 1500 years preceding that remote date, they ruled the area somewhat like Garrison Keillor’s idea of Ohio State’s football team taking over Minnesota, ordering the vanquished Minnesotans around and eating their lunch, but leaving them to their Scandinavian inflections.

Sumerian cities after 2000 BC. Sargon’s Akkad, destroyed c. 2150, has never been found, though Akkadian remained the cultural language for another whole millennium. I added Eridu even though it was no longer much occupied after 2000 BC. Es-dur Kurigalzu is usually spelled Dur-Kurigalzu, the key signature was universally known at the time.

Each of these cities had their own god or goddess, Eanna, Enki, Inanna, Ninhursag, Fiatalság, Bolondság**. Two of these cities, Uruk (Erech) and Kish, form the name of a Cleveland radio host (WCLV), a third, Ur, is known from Abraham’s story. Ethnically, these people are ancient as well. Sumerian (spoken by the “black haired people,” as they called themselves) is a language-isolate, Egyptian belongs to the Asi-African supergroup, close to but still not not part of the Semitic and Berber group. The name Babylon (originally Babilim) is thought to be even older than Sumerian.

Around 2300 BC, Semites and Indo-Europeans began to sweep the civilized world with their devastating horse-chariots, the tanks of ancient warfare, starting with the famous Sargon of Akkad, whom I mention because the name rolls off the tongue so smoothly. Empires were built, tribes and nations subjected to the winners’ will. The (also semitic) Old Babylonian Empire under Hammurabi (r. 1792-50 BC) was famous for its law code, precursor of the Torah. The new Semitic rulers largely adopted the Sumerian culture like later the Romans were to absorb the Greek. Gods were molded to their own, the love goddess Inanna for instance became Ishtar (Astoreth or Astarte in Canaan, Ashta-r-bulah elsewhere***); Babylon’s own Marduk became the upper god. Old Sumerian myths were adopted and extended, with elements that closely resemble the Bible stories, for instance the snake in the tree, a fertility archetype that reached all the way from Sumer to the Norse holy ash tree Iggdrasil (Campbell); and the flood story with Utánapisiltem or whatever his name, in the role of Noha, correction, Noah. These stories survive in fragments from different versions composed in different time periods, in Sumerian, and Akkadian, all preceding the Bible by a millennium or more. From the 6th dynasty (2345–2181 BC) we have evidence, in Egypt, of circumcision.**** Would circumcision be an Egyptian addition to the Israelite culture, brought perhaps by someone called Moses, also an Egyptian name?*****

“Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat”, 1900 BC, Egyptian tomb (=> List Illustrations at end)

Shortly after Hammurabi’s time (1640 BC), the Egyptian Middle Kingdom was invaded by the Hyksos, semitic troops from Asia who may have introduced the horse at that time. I mention them because they form a candidate for the Exodus, when they were expelled a century later (1550 BC). They were mostly an Asian elite that ruled Northern Egypt from their new capital Avaris while in the South the Egyptians continued their rule under the 16th and 17th dynasties in Thebes. The Hyksos were kicked out by Ahmose I, founder of the 18th dynasty. The Exodus could be a perfect literary deposit of an event that happened the exact opposite way, with the Jews being kicked out instead of fleeing, like Garrison Keillor’s ‘tomato butt story’ also happened in the reverse of how he told it* *. Even though modern scholars have now largely abandoned that identification, they may have too narrow a view on how the distant past lives on in stories. The Exodus may well contain layers of narrative material that stretch over many centuries, and may have come from strands of tradition that have disappeared from recorded history. On the other hand, the identification would be quite “convenient”.

La Parisienne. fresco at Knossos’ Palace, c. 1350 BC

Also at that period, arguably the most beautiful culture of all the ancient abounded on Crete, the Minoan civilization. It is not known what language those people spoke, only that it was not Greek, and probably not Semitic or Indo-European. Foundations of enormous palaces have been excavated since Sir Arthur Evans began to dig at Knossos in 1900. We have all seen the gorgeous frescos as the Prince with the Lilies and La Parisienne (on the left), and the bull-leaping sports. The palaces had no city walls. Trade was of obviously what made them rich. Were they superior in naval battles, or did they have no enemies? The civilization collapsed when a volcanic eruption took half of the island Thera down to the bottom of the Mediterranean, leaving what’s now Santorini, and causing a tsunami of 200 ft. tall waves to destroy most of the crops of a humungous area around it, including the lands around Knossos (salt water is deadly for agriculture, as I was told in Wageningen). Crete lost its edge, the warring Mycenaeans, Homer’s Achaeans, Archives or Danaans, began to dominate in the Aegean, with Mycenae on the Peloponnesos as center, as duly reflected in Homer’s Iliad. * ** —— Relevance to the Bible? The Philistines, the Bible attributes a Cretan origin (Deut. 2:23, Amos 9:7)* ***, came from the sea in the Bronze Age Collapse of 1200 BC. Among the “Sherden (Sardinians?)”, “Tjekker” (Teucrians?), “Teresh” (Tyrrhaeneans?) “Denyen (Danaoi?)”, “Lukka” (Lycians?), “Ekwesh” (Archives?), “Weshesh” (Achaians?) “Teremp” (“People of the Tower”) named by Egypt and “identified (?)” by scholars, they were almost certainly the “Peleset”. The preponderance of the letter [e] in these names is due to historians filling in for omitted unknown vowels, ‘semewhet leke my edmessyen here thet “Teremp” end the “Peeple ef the Tewer” E mede ep meself. Lukka cemes frem e Hettete serce, ef whech we DO heve vewels).

Philistine pottery was very close to that of the the Helladic Bronze Age. Un Egoiste est qu’elqu’un qui ne pense pas a moi.

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Footnotes:

* The irony is intentional. Climatology is such a new science, that my first reaction to all the doom day scenarios I hear around me is utter skepticism. I highly respect science. But I fully distrust the media and today’s intellectual climate, pun unintended. The certainty with which I hear all doom almost unanimously announced everywhere is in complete disagreement with my experience of science and scholarship. The willingness in intellectual people to attribute anything to anything whatsoever I have always found astounding.

** Eanna was the temple god of Uruk. Enki (Ea) originally belonged to Eridu, before his cult spread out over all the fertile crescent. Inanna was ubiquitous as goddess of love and power since Sargon of Akkad. Ninhursag was a mountain goddess, also with Eridu as her first seat. Fiatalság and Bolondság were the gods of Zsazsa and Eva, two Sumerian cities recently discovered (pending international confirmation) by baldheaded lutenist, beer brewer and amateur archeologist Chuck Magyar.

*** This etymology of Ashtabula is from Steffens. Most other researches have it derived from ashtepihəle, which means 'always enough fish to be shared around' in the Lenape language.

**** Neither did the Japanese. Moshimoshi, the Jewish samurai, went auditioning for the Shogun. After having seen other samurai cleaving flies in two with their Hattori Hanzo swords, it was his turn. He hews, the fly accelerates, panicks, but flies on. “Other samurai … killing flies!!!!” the Shogun says, grumbly. “Oy, killing, schmilling …” Moshimoshi grumbles, then placing the tip of his right hand index finger to the tip of his thumb: “c i r c u m c i s i o n …!!!!!”

***** The Bible explanation that Moshe מֹשֶׁה comes from Hebrew משה, is universally considered a folk etymology after the fact. The Egyptian word Moses, as in Tuthmoses, Ahmoses, Ramesses, means child.

* * Garrison Keillor in one of the Lake Wobegon stories tells how as a little boy he was tomato picking and found a big rotten, juicy one, which almost splashes in your hand; then he say his sister bent over to pick one: what a target! He later ‘admitted’ that it took him 25 years for that tomato to get to fly in the exact opposite direction from its historical trajectory.

* ** Bummer. I now learn that the Thera eruption has been radio-carbon dated to around 1620 BC, what’s too early to have caused the Mycenaean takeover between 1450 and 1400 BC. Perhaps the general tendency of warring Indo-Europeans subduing more peaceful autochthones may have been the case. This may give a good window on the study of history and its attempts to link factors together.

* *** “Caphtor: the original seat of the Philistines (Deut. 2:23; Jer. 47:4; Amos 9:7). The name is found written in hieroglyphics in the temple of Kom Ombos in Upper Egypt. But the exact situation of Caphtor is unknown - it is believed to be Crete, since the Philistines seem to be meant by the "Cherethites" in 1 Sam. 30:14 (see also 2 Sam. 8:18). It may, however, have been a part of Egypt, the Caphtur in the north Delta, since the Caphtorim were of the same race as the Mizraite people (Gen. 10:14; 1 Chr. 1:12).” Bible Gateway, Easton’s Encyclopedia (the identification of the Peleset in the Egyptian chronicles is of course the only contemporary mention here Ns).

In ‘Moses’ time’, (14th century BC) several empires ruled over the area or parts thereof after the Old Babylonian Empire had collapsed. We find the Hittites in Anatolia (Turkey), whose language was Indo-European. Egypt’s New Kingdom , founded after the expulsion of the Hyksos, burst out of its “Monrosis doctrine” and expanded into into Asia where the Hittites became their strongest rival. Egypt’s expansion into Asia is relevant for us. From Akhenaten’s Amarna archives we learn a lot about the situation in 14th century Canaan, the time Moses was supposed to have pulled Israel out of Egypt. We find the region divided in areas ruled by well-fortified city states, each imploring the help of the Pharaoh against its rivals. Egypt’s presence in and grip on Canaan, though completely “passed over” in Exodus, was thorough: at least one of the Canaanite ‘kings’ who had been too aggressive to his neighbors got executed after an Egyptian intervention campaign. From the Amarna Letters we also learn that those Canaanite rulers had west-Semitic names, little different from the later Jews. The reason why the Bible is so obsessed by the Jews being different from the Canaanites may well be the need to set themselves apart from a nation in which they had their own roots.

The Bronze Age Collapse of 1200 - 1100 BC brings waves of Sea Peoples (those “[e] people” named above) flushing over the Eastern Mediterranean world (shown on the Egyptian reliefs here), ending the Mycenaean fortified palace culture, ending the Hittite Empire, almost destroying Egypt, wreaking havoc even as far inland as Babylon. It is not known what caused this upheaval, historians think of a combination of factors, famine, earthquakes, rank and file rising up against the establishment, aliens, racists, socialists? Were the Sea Peoples that destroyed the Hittite Empire perhaps Hittites themselves? Where they Homer’s “Achaeans” who, after having first destroyed Mycenae, may have gotten identified with the Mycenaeans afterward? Was the Canaan Conquest perhaps a residue of some invasion somewhere? A major cultural collapse occurred, a great loss of wealth everywhere, of technologies, knowhow, just like at the end of the Roman Empire. Pottery, architecture regresses into more primitive stages. Ugarit was destroyed after a heartbreaking plea to the Hittites for reinforcements. Egypt loses control over Asia, withdrawing to its tradional region around the Nile. The book of Judges, where “there was no king in Israel, everyone did as they pleased”, with no trace of Egypt in the region, no trace of an Israelite state either, seems to depict the period following the Collapse accurately. In one of the inexplicable miracles of history, right out of these dark ages, a world literature emerged in the 8th century in Greece, a region that hadn’t left us anything other than inventories up till tat time. The people of Israel are now thought to have emerged gradually around 1000 BC, from the high countries in Canaan. Pork bones disappear from excavation sites in this period. The state buildings archeologists dug up in the past are now attributed to the 9th century and later. Not one, but two states emerged in the 800s: Israel, north of Jerusalem, with Samaria as capital; and, substantially smaller, poorer less populated, more insignificant therefore, Judah, in the south. From the 9th century, we find the Israelite Omrid dynasty finally corroborated in extra-biblical sources (Moab), right at the time when the Bible moves from legendary tales (Queen of Sheba) to chronicle style historiography, with names and dates. It is now believed that the United Monarchy of David and Schlomo never existed. They are believed to have been primitive chieftains of an emerging culture, somewhat like the early American colonists. Further evidence against a well-developed Israelite identity pre-1000, are the mentions of Hebrews (Habiru) in the Amarna letters, used by the petty Canaanite kings as a pejorative for “rabble”, and Israel in the Merneptah stele (1207), where it is classified also as a loose collection of marginals rather than a clearly defined nation with its country. There are many indicators for Israel having risen ‘grassroots style’ from the bottom up. You might be a redneck if you go to schul every Sabbath …

In 722, the Neo-Assyrians, grabbing their turn in history, swept the world and destroyed the northern Jewish state, Israel. Many Israelites fled to tiny Judah, where a major population increase has been established for that time. For a century and a half, Israelites and Judahites lived together in Jerusalem, navigating between the different super powers Assyria, Egypt and a reemerging Babylonia under the Chaldeans (!) - This amalgamation of the populations of two separate but related populations in one country, is how the Torah began to be compiled out of northern (Israel) and southern (Judah) traditions. A united history was “inventorified” from two traditions: in a legendary past, a prior “United Monarchy” was “reconstructed” incorporating Saul, who was from Israel, and David, who was from Judah (the “Court historian”, possibly J, from Judah didn’t like Saul, but couldn’t ignore him). Only when we arrive at Jeroboam and Rehoboam do we find the story turning into “real”, chronicled history.

“Death of Murzawazawizawa” (my title) in the battle of Qadesh, 1274 BC, by a modern artist.

In 587 BC, the newly emerged Babylonians destroyed Judah, took Jerusalem. The last thing the king saw was the execution of his children, before they blinded him. The (now amalgamated) Jews were deported to Babylon. There, the Torah, and the whole Bible, was developed further. In 539, Cyrus of the Great ended the Neo Babylonian Empire (of the “Chaldeans”), and allowed the Jews to return. The temple was rebuilt, the Jews settled in Israel again, now with an ideology: Jahweh the only God, Who demands, not just sacrifices, but goodness from His Chosen People. A pre-exilic, pre-Omrid United Kingdom was mythologized, and the recent Jewish catastrophes were attributed to bad behavior, an idea that may have persisted until this day in the guilt-ridden mentality of Judaism and all Christian denominations. Perhaps a last remnant of the gloomy, bleak Mesopotamian view of the afterlife. Why actually are we doomed unless

So the Jews settled in Israel again, leaving the descendants of those that were deported into Palestine in 722, the Samaritans, alone. After 332, when the Macedonian Alexander pulverized the Persian Empire, the Greeks (Seleucids) took possession of the area; a short period of Jewish independence was reached by the Maccabees from 167 - 63 BC, until the Romans swept over the whole civilized world. From then until 1948 AD, Israel would not have an independent country.

Assuming that the United Kingdom was legendary (perhaps the greatest recent innovation of Bible history), we find Israel throughout its history being a small country trying to keep afloat in a world of powerful aliens.

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NOT MOSES 2

All historians except biblical literalists - which in itself is already a tell-tale sign - have increasingly adopted a multiple author hypothesis of how the Torah was created allegedly in different stages of the Iron Age, c. 1000 - 500 BC or even later. Here are some of the reasons why a Mosaic authorship is now universally rejected among all scholars who are not biblical fundamentalists.

Abraham and Melchizedek, Bouts, Dirck (c.1415-75) / St. Pieters, Leuven (Louvain). Steffens sees a Medieval Flemish setting of Abraham who was later transported into the Bible with a time machine.

1. The geography matches the time of the 7th and the 6th, not the 14th century. Important towns we know from Moses’ time are never mentioned, while towns that do get mentioned existed later but not in Moses’ time. “Only at the end of Iron II, but not Iron I or or early Iron II) were most of the sites that can be identified actually occupied” (Grabbe 2017, p.96: Iron II = 920 - 587). I have no idea how archeologists match a pile or rubble with the cities Ai or Jericho, but there seems to be consensus among them that these cities where actually not inhabited when Joshua was reported to have razed them to the ground (easy task!). Ai is a good example: the book of Josh says that the Jews destroyed the city to such an extent that it was never inhabited any more till this day. Archeologists claim that Ai was not inhabited in Joshua’s day, but it got resettled when we think the Torah was written - “proving the Bible wrong” on both counts.

2. Also, there are the anachronisms. Philistines are mentioned in the story of Abraham, who must have lived early in the 2nd millennium. Having read the short history above, you now know that the Philistines came from the sea, possibly Crete or Greece in the Great Collapse, after 1200 BC. Moses didn’t know them any more than he knew Canadians or Belgians. Similar anachronisms we find in premature references of the Arameans (11th c.) and the Arabs (9th c.). The term Ur of the Chaldeans would probably not have entered the mind of a scribe before 626 BC, when these Chaldeans first took hold of Babylon. It is like those medieval paintings showing the story of Christ with the city of Ghent. Ur seems to have been an interpolation in any case: all the references to Abraham’s and Jacob’s origin point at the Haran חָרָן region (now in east Turkey), where wives are sought “among their people” for both Isaac and Jacob; some of Abraham’s ancestors match geographical names from that region, including, perhaps,  הָרָן‎‎, Haran, Abram’s brother and Lot’s father. Can you spot the difference in the Hebrew letters?* Camels (駱駝) didn’t seem to have been used in Israel till in the Iron Age, though they were used much earlier elsewhere, like in Bactria. All the excavations of camel bones (駱駝骨) in Palestine though are from 900 BC and after. I like Chinese letters. —— those anachronisms may have been revisions of older texts, even last retouches; but they show that at least revision took place at that time.

3. Then there is the total absence of any evidence for a nation of 2 million people trekking through the desert sand for 40 years. Israel and the entire Sinai have been archeological surface-searched in the late 20th century, and such a huge emigration, they say, should have been noticed. “According to Numbers (10:11, 12:16, 13:26, 20:1, 22, 33:36) much of the 40 years of ‘wandering’ was spent near Qadesh-Barnea. This and related sites in Sinai and southern Palestine should yield ample evidence of a large population in this region. Yet, we find nothing (Finkelstein & Silbermann 2001:62-4). Qadesh (Tell el-Qudeirat) has been extensively excavated but shows no habitation between the Middle Bronze Age (2200 - 1550 BC) and the tenth century BC (Cohen 1981, 1997: Dever 2003a: 19-20) or even later (Usshishkin 1995a).” So far Grabbe, who in his Ancient Israel (2007/2017) has catalogued all the relevant evidence we have about the Bible times. Admittedly, Friedman stresses the limitations of those surveys in mentioning the equipment with which those have been done: 6 jeeps …

4. Also, not a word about the Exodus in any Egyptian archive anywhere. If the Pharaoh had died in such a disaster, if some many people had suddenly left, shouldn’t that have been recorded somewhere? Joseph, Moses, 10 plagues, not a trace, no inscription, document, nothing, only wild claims by questionable “researchers”. The countless of attempts to track down the 10 plagues have all failed to convince. And then, the Pharaoh is never named in the story. Why didn’t Pharaoh have a name?* The simplest answer would be because the author had no idea who it was, so long ago. What was again the name of the particular Caesar in “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar”? … exactly my point … ;-)**

5. The Amarna archives from the time of the above-mentioned Akhenaton show a situation in Canaan completely different from what we see in Joshua and Judges. Every little king or artist formerly known as … of a city applied for the Egyptian Pharaoh and his governor for help against his rivals. In Joshua and Judges, Egypt is a non-entity, reflecting the situation after 1100 BC, when the upheaval of 1200 had almost destroyed Egypt, restricting it to its own borders. I said this already. I know. Lord I apologize ….

Grabbe, whose name is ananagram of Dutch Gabber, “fellow”, sums it up: “None of the alleged customs demonstrating an early-second-millennium background for the patriarchal stories seems to have stood up” (p.60).

The situation has a nice analogy in the playing style of 19th century cellist David Popper (1843-1913). We have a painting of a young Popper playing without the endpin, which was customary in the 1860s. Popper became known as playing without. Then a picture turns up with someone looking like Popper playing chamber music with an endpin. But we don’t know for certain, the picture has no known provenance. Then we find that Deák, Popper’s biographer, who studied with the master during his last two years on the planet (1911-13), never mentions the lack of endpin in his biography, which at that time would have been extremely conspicuous: he was even allowed to play Popper’s Amati in lessons, something that would be impossible or at least pointless if the cello were endpinless. Also, none of the many reviews mentions endpinless playing, which, again, in the first years of the 20th century would have stood out as the first thing to be noticed. So we have to adjust our earlier assessment to the conlusion that Popper started our endpinless, but at some point added the endpin to his instrument, like most cellists did between 1870 and 1900.

Archeologists had originally found buildings which they dated to David’s and Schlomo’s time. When more buildings are dug up with more evidence; those earlier buildings had to be redated to later times.

Today’s archeologists are increasingly leaning toward a gradual emergence of Israel from the high countries within Canaan. While there is plenty of evidence for upheaval in the 12th century, with burnt cities, there is no evidence at all for a Jewish conquest. The great stories of Exodus and Josh must have been formed later, from other legendary material, perhaps material that people brought from Egypt, perhaps someone called Moses. By the way, what the %#$$ does Aaron do in the Exodus? Doesn’t he look exactly like a person added to the story? See below.***

In this context I would like to point at Sigmund Freud’s 1939 book Moses and Monotheism, which has not been taken seriously so far by biblical history, probably because as psycho-analyst he was not considered an insider. I’ll quote Wiki here, because I read the book a long time ago and don’t have it here.

In Freud's retelling of the events, Moses, an Egyptian priest of the monotheist Aton religion, had to flee Egypt some time after Eknaton’s death (1336 BC), when the usual Amon religion was reestablished by Horemreb, “leading his close followers into freedom (I would say safety). Freud alleges that they subsequently killed the Egyptian Moses in rebellion, and still later joined with another monotheistic tribe in Midian who worshipped a volcano god called Yahweh. Freud supposed that the monotheistic solar god of the Egyptian Moses was fused with Yahweh (the Midianite volcano god), and that the deeds of Moses were ascribed to a Midianite priest who also came to be called Moses. Moses, in other words, is a composite figure, from whose biography the uprising and murder of the original Egyptian Amarna-cult priest has been excised.

I mention this interpretation because it gives a really good view of the formation of myths and legends. Freud only had access to part of the information we have today, so I don’t know how his story holds up; but I can imagine that it doesn’t really violate modern research other than in its total lack of proof in a time when the scholarship is more scrupulous. His view of myth forming may actually be more accurate than most modern historians I have read.****

Footnotes:

* Even in Luke the Emperor Augustus is named. To me, it is inconceivable that Moses would have written the Bible and not named the Pharaoh he saw being drowned by the gushing waters with his own eyes.

** That Caesar was Tiberius, unless Christ answered this line to the Pharisees when he was 14 years old or younger, which, like three Trombonists walking past a bar, can happen …

*** E or J however already writes about Aaron, so his presence doesn’t just come from the Priestly Author. I have not yet studied this issue sufficiently, so take my conjecture as such that Moses is a mythical figure who joined the Israelite group from a foreign, obviously Egyptian source, which also added circumcision and the anti-porcine kashrut laws. The relation of Moses and Aaron looks like the cousin from Australia whom everyone had forgotten about in a story by Agatha Christie.

**** R. Elliott Friedman, in Exodus, has come forward with a hypothesis that the Levites made their exodus from Egypt, thus bringing circumcision, kosher laws and some form monotheism to the emerging Hebrews; which comes very close to Freud’s idea.

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THE DOCUMENTARY HYPOTHESIS

The Documentary hypothesis or EJPD (for the East Joplin Police Department see the Welcome Center at I 44 N) has a long history. In the 11th century, a Jewish scholar named Isaac Ibn Yashush realized that in Gen. 36, Edomite kings are named that lived long after Moses had passed. (Gen: 36:31 “These were the kings who reigned in Edom before any Israelite king reigned” - how would Moses have known there would be kings in Israel?* Somewhat later, another Spanish Rabbi, Ibn Ezr, found passages where terms were used Moses couldn’t have known, descriptions of places Moses had never been. Certain passages mention geography viewed from a location within Israel, not Transjordan: Deuteronomy begins with These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan in the woilderness (NRSV) —-  בְּעֵ֖בֶר הַיַּרְדֵּ֑ן means across the Jordan, but in English translations this בְּעֵ֖בֶר has often been obfuscated or even “corrected”**. Moses never entered Israel. Then there is “And Moses died”, which would be pointless unless something happened like what the Rabbi wished his eulogy would be: The body is moving! Quite interesting is that our Jewish scholar in Islamitic Spain of the 12th century seems to have written in the margin of his Bible: who understands keeps silent. Political Correctness GESTAPOs are not just now, but also back then, are everywhere.

In the 18th century, scholars began to observe stylistic differences between passages in the Torah where God was called יהוה (Yahweh, in most Bibles translated the LORD) and those that called God  אֱלֹהִים (Elohi’m, translated as God). This led Johann Eichorn (“John Squirrel”) in 1780 to formulate the “Older Documentary Hypothesis”, based on the dichotomy between these two authors J (Yahwist) and E (Elohist). In the 19th century, the book of Deuteronomy (which repeats a lot of what has already been said in the first four Books of Moses) was decided to be a separate book; and Priestly Author P  was identified as an offshoot of E, so they ended up with four books. Later again, a Redactor R was identified as putting it all together during the Exile (or after). In 2020, another R used the Holmes translation as a coaster for his coffee. Julius Wellhausen gave dates to all five authors, dating J the oldest at the court of David (this was when David was still thought to have a court); E was in the 9th century in the Northern Kingdom; D was from the time of Josiah (ca. 620 BC), and P wrote during the temple oriented world of the 6th. Now we date J later than E; while P must be pre-exilic, because he elaborates on the tabernacle, the Urim and Thummim, and other paraphernalia that didn’t exist any more after the exile. Therefore: E, J, => P => D, exile, R.

Footnotes:

* It should be clear how any variant of the platitude for God everything is possible inhibits free inquiry, surrendering one’s mind to propaganda of any kind whatsoever.

** King James: on this side of the Jordan in the wilderness; NIV: East of the Jordan—that is, in the Arabah … Good News:  in the wilderness east of the Jordan River. NIV and GN specifies the place, King James and Geneva1599 “correct” the Hebrew, because they “know better”: “Moses couldn’t have said “beyond the Jordan”, because he never was there”. The unquestioned assumption is of course that Moses wrote this text. —- Douay/American (1899), Holman and Modern English translate it correctly with “across” or “on the other side” of the Jordan”.

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What’s so fascinating about this is that you can see the division of labor in almost every story in the Torah. Throughout the work we are flooded (pun enjoyed but not intended) with doubles.

1. There are two Creation stories.

2. Noah takes one pair of animals according to one source, but 7 pairs of clean animals in another; he lets out a raven, later a dove, twice.

3. The wife/sister swop story occurs on three occasions, twice in Abraham’s once in Isaac’s story;

4. Abraham has two sons, first Ishmael is set up as his heir, than Isaac is born to usurp the former’s place;

5. Jacob steals Esau’s firstborn position twice (the second time it is called “blessing”, big deal…);

6. Jacob has two heavenly experiences, the Ladder and the Wrestling;

7. Joseph is basically sold twice, first to the Midianites, and then to the Ishmaelites. Twice does a brother plead for Joseph’s life, once Reuben, later Judah.

8. Moses goes up to the mountain twice and receives the Fifteen, CRASH!!! ... eh, ... the Ten Commandments twice; he hits the mountain twice in order to get water (the second time turns out disastrously for him).

9. The Bible has two main versions of the Ten Commandments, one in Exodus and one in Deuteronomy.

10. Finally, that is, to end this abriated* account, we have two almost identical genealogies from Adam to Noah, one via McCain, there’s that autocorrect device again, Cain, and one via Seth.

11. Okay, one more, the Shechem stories. Shechem becomes the property of Jacob’s family, in Gen. 34 by a scandalous massacre,** elsewhere by purchase.

What’s even more fascinating in about all this is that many stories in the Torah can be divided up according to textual, geographical and other criteria, and each part tells a complete story. As an example of how that works we can take the Flood story, which allegedly is a mosaic of input mainly from J and P. When you disentangle the different parts belonging to each author, you get two complete stories. You can see the versions by J and P here below.

J’s version:

• Gen 6:5 “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

• Gen. 7:1 The Lord then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. 2 Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. 4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.” 5 And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him. 7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. 10 And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. 16b Then the Lord shut him in. 17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits -a. 22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

• Gen. 8: 1 And the rain had stopped falling from the sky. 3 The water receded steadily from the earth.  6 After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him. 13 Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. 20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though[a] every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. 22. “As long as the earth endures / seedtime and harvest / cold and heat / summer and winter / day and night / will never cease.” (NIV)

P’s version:

• Gen. 6:9 This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. 10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. 11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. 16 Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. 17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. 19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.” 22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

• Gen. 7:6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. 8 Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, 9 male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 13 On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. 14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. 15 Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. 16a The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. 21 Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. 24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

• Gen. 8:1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. 2a Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed. 3b At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, 4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible. 7 and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 13a By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. 14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry. 15 Then God said to Noah, 16 “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.” 18 So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. 19 All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on land—came out of the ark, one kind after another. 

R.E. Friedman: “The very fact that it is possible to separate out two continuous stories like this is remarkable in itself, and is a strong evidence for the hypothesis. One need only to try the same thing with any other book to see how impressive this phenomenon is.”

What makes the hypothesis even more powerful is that each author comes with his own language: In the flood story, P uses God (Elohi’m), J the LORD (Yahweh). P says male and female, J says man and his woman as well; P says expired  וַיִּגְוַ֨ע , J says died וַיָּ֧מָת. “But wait, there is more!” The details of the story are different. P has a pair of each animal (originally including the unicorns), J has seven pairs of clean animals and one for the unclean ones (“clean” = fit for sacrifice, => sheep are clean, Michael Moore is unclean). P has the flood be 370 days (schtümmt), J only 40 days and nights. P has Noah send out a raven, J a dove. P is always interested in ages, dates, measurements; J. pictures God pretty anthropomorphic as a “man” who regrets His actions (Gen 6:6-7), who changes his mind again and promises never to destroy humans any more (8:21/22), who closes the Ark Himself - who wanders around in the Garden of Eden - and smells Noha - Lord I apologize, I meant smells Noah’s sacrifice. P’s God is a transsexual, Lord I apologize, it’s that autocorrect device again - a transcendental, unapproachable farce Lord I apologize, Force controlling the Universe. These differences are consistently worked through the other stories in the Torah. Just an example: The first creation story in Gen. 1 is by P. The second one, Gen: (2:5 ff) is by J, as are its sequels Gen. 3 and 4. More about that in my forthcoming blog post Genesis.

I always wondered about the fish. Did God destroy the sea animals? H&!! no he didn’t, or they would not exist now. As “natural history”, the story of the Ark is so absurd as that I really don’t understand how millions of people can still take all this literally. So literally that every generation there are still people looking for the Ark. One way in which this rigid, restrictive interpretation engenders ignorance is that it keeps from really learning to understand the metaphoric and symbolic nature of old texts. Hebräische Frauen kochen mit Bach.

Footnotes:

* abriated = abbreviation of abbreviated

** I use Gen. 34 as test for Bible commentaries. If they blame Dinah for any part of the tragedy described, I know they are an uptight bunch of rule-followers and I walk away.

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Another fascinating story is the flight through the Red Sea, or the Reed Sea, though Friedman claims it is the Red Sea after all (Batto, Propp, Huddleston). Here as well do the J-E combination separate from the Priestly Author. Here is the older J & E version first, E being underlined. I have to say that I don’t even come close to knowing the subtleties between E and J when God’s name is not mentioned and the perspective is not clearly northern (E) or southern (J), or when sex is not described.

J & E

• 13:17 And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt: 18 But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red sea: and the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt. 19 And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him: for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you. 21 And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night: 22 He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.

• 14:5 And it was told the king of Egypt that the people fled: and the heart of Pharaoh and of his servants was turned against the people, and they said, Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us? 6 And he made ready his chariot, and took his people with him: 7 And he took six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them. 9a But the Egyptians pursued after them, all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh, and his horsemen, and his army, 10b and, behold, the Egyptians marched after them; and they were sore afraid: 11 And they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? 12 Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness. 13 And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will shew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever. 14 The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace. 19a And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; 19b; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them: 20a And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; 20b and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night. 21b and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land 24 And it came to pass, that in the morning watch the Lord looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians, 25a And took off their chariot wheels, that they drave them heavily: so that the Egyptians said, Let us flee from the face of Israel; for the Lord fighteth for them against the Egyptians. 27b and the Egyptians fled against it; and the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. 30 Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea shore. 31 And Israel saw that great work which the Lord did upon the Egyptians: and the people feared the Lord, and believed the Lord, and his servant Moses.

The Song of the Sea: independent source, used by J (Friedman). 

• 15:1  Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord, and spake, saying: I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. 2 The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father's God, and I will exalt him. 3 The Lord is a man of war: the Lord is his name. 4 Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea: his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red sea. 5 The depths have covered them: they sank into the bottom as a stone. 6 Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy. 7 And in the greatness of thine excellency thou hast overthrown them that rose up against thee: thou sentest forth thy wrath, which consumed them as stubble. 8 And with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together, the floods stood upright as an heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea. 9 The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them. 10 Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters. 11 Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? 12 Thou stretchedst out thy right hand, the earth swallowed them. 13 Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation. 14 The people shall hear, and be afraid: sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestina*. 15 Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed; the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them; all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away. 16 Fear and dread shall fall upon them; by the greatness of thine arm they shall be as still as a stone; till thy people pass over, O Lord, till the people pass over, which thou hast purchased. 17 Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the Sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established. 18 The Lord shall reign for ever and ever.

• 20 And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. 21 And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.

And here is P, with some minuscule additions from R.

P & R

• 13:20 And they took their journey from Succoth, and encamped in Etham, in the edge of the wilderness. 14:1. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 2 Speak unto the children of Israel, that they turn and encamp before Pihahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over against Baalzephon: before it shall ye encamp by the sea. 3 For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in. 4 And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, that he shall follow after them; and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host; that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord. And they did so. 8 And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued after the children of Israel: and the children of Israel went out with an high hand. 9 and overtook them encamping by the sea, beside Pihahiroth, before Baalzephon. 10a/c And when Pharaoh drew nigh, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and, behold, the Egyptians marched after them; and the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord. 15 And the Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward: 16 But lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea. 17 And I, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall follow them: and I will get me honour upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen. 18 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gotten me honour upon Pharaoh, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen. 21a/c And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the waters were divided. 22 And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left. 23 And the Egyptians pursued, and went in after them to the midst of the sea, even all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. 26 And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand over the sea, that the waters may come again upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen. 27a And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to his strength 28 And the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them; there remained not so much as one of them. 29 But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea; and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.

• 15: 19 For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the Lord brought again the waters of the sea upon them; but the children of Israel went on dry land in the midst of the sea.

It appears that the image of the splitting sea and the walls of water on both sides of the path is from the Priestly Author. It seems the expression ‘hardened his heart” also comes from P. The pillars of fire and smoke are by J and E. Now the Song of the Sea, found under J (Ex. 15:1-18), is generally considered one of the oldest parts of the entire Bible (though I believe some contest this, with or without an agenda, and I don’t just mean Steffens**). The language is more archaic than virtually anything else in the Bible. The song has no numbers, dates, pillars, or the wall of water. Something else is missing too. The name Israel. On the other hand, In Judges 5 we find another such song that is considered a remnant from older times: the Song of Deborah. That song doesn’t name the tribe(s) of (Shimeon,) Levi (and Judah). Also, in Moses’ Blessing of Deut. 33, David Noel Freedman points out that Levi gets the only oracle with an explicit and necessary association with the Wilderness wanderings. Freedman (not to be confused with Richard Elliott Friedman, whose who Wrote the Bible, though from 1987, is worth reading for us amateurs) lays great weight on these circumstances.

Steffens, according to Steffens

Perhaps I will expand on this some day, but a hypothesis `à la Freud that the Levi tribe joined the rest of Israel from Egypt, bringing Jahweh, is attractive: it would explain the Exodus with the dearth of footprints, as a moderate size tribe would probably have left no traces that in the 3000 years going by wouldn’t have vanished; as well as circumcision, the ban on pork, and most importantly: No god but God. Archeologists may find that Israel emerged out of the population of the Canaanite hill country; but these things have got to have come from outside. It also shows how great ideas originate in the overlapping of habitats. Perhaps Greece experienced a similar influence from outside, now invisible. More about this soon.

Footnotes:

* In King Jame’s time, Palestina did not mean what it means now - I would translate Philistia, which the NIV does, amongst others. That name in itself is an anachronism. The Philistines didn’t arrive in Canaan till after 1200 BC. The name would date date this part of the narrative to the 12th century at the earliest, if I’m not missing something.

** In Holland, Steffens is the one proverbial expert who always disagrees. Godfried Bomans mentions “him” in Pieter Bas, and I make use of this character all the time (though we may be the only ones). The origin of this character may be Henrik Steffens (2 May 1773 – 13 February 1845), Danish/German philosopher, scientist, and poet, or, well actually, no, just him.

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To close this chapter, here is the story of the uprising in Numbers 16. I have left this story in one piece, marking the two authors, J and P again, in regular vs. bold faced, as above. This time I chose the King James, this somewhat less accurate but extremely beautiful old translation in English.

• 16:1 Now Korah, the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, and On, the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men: 2: rose up before Moses, with certain of the children of Israel, two hundred and fifty princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation, men of renown: 3 And they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them: wherefore then lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the Lord? 4 And when Moses heard it, he fell upon his face: 5 And he spake unto Korah and unto all his company, saying, Even to morrow the Lord will shew who are his, and who is holy; and will cause him to come near unto him: even him whom he hath chosen will he cause to come near unto him. 6 This do; Take you censers, Korah, and all his company; 7 And put fire therein, and put incense in them before the Lord to morrow: and it shall be that the man whom the Lord doth choose, he shall be holy: ye take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi. 8 And Moses said unto Korah, Hear, I pray you, ye sons of Levi: 9 Seemeth it but a small thing unto you, that the God of Israel hath separated you from the congregation of Israel, to bring you near to himself to do the service of the tabernacle of the Lord, and to stand before the congregation to minister unto them? 10 And he hath brought thee near to him, and all thy brethren the sons of Levi with thee: and seek ye the priesthood also? 11 For which cause both thou and all thy company are gathered together against the Lord: and what is Aaron, that ye murmur against him?

• 12 And Moses sent to call Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab: which said, We will not come up: 13 Is it a small thing that thou hast brought us up out of a land that floweth with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness, except thou make thyself altogether a prince over us? 14 Moreover thou hast not brought us into a land that floweth with milk and honey, or given us inheritance of fields and vineyards: wilt thou put out the eyes of these men? we will not come up. 15 And Moses was very wroth, and said unto the Lord, Respect not thou their offering: I have not taken one ass from them, neither have I hurt one of them.

• 16 And Moses said unto Korah, Be thou and all thy company before the Lord, thou, and they, and Aaron, to morrow: 17 And take every man his censer, and put incense in them, and bring ye before the Lord every man his censer, two hundred and fifty censers; thou also, and Aaron, each of you his censer. 18 And they took every man his censer, and put fire in them, and laid incense thereon, and stood in the door of the tabernacle of the congregation with Moses and Aaron. 19 And Korah gathered all the congregation against them unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation: and the glory of the Lord appeared unto all the congregation. 20 And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, 21 Separate yourselves from among this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment. 22 And they fell upon their faces, and said, O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin, and wilt thou be wroth with all the congregation? 23 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 24 Speak unto the congregation, saying, Get you up from about the tabernacle of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.

• 25 And Moses rose up and went unto Dathan and Abiram; and the elders of Israel followed him.

• 26 And he spake unto the congregation, saying, Depart, I pray you, from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of their's, lest ye be consumed in all their sins.27 So they gat up from the tabernacle of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, on every side:

• and Dathan and Abiram came out, and stood in the door of their tents, and their wives, and their sons, and their little children. 28 And Moses said, Hereby ye shall know that the Lord hath sent me to do all these works; for I have not done them of mine own mind. 29 If these men die the common death of all men, or if they be visited after the visitation of all men; then the Lord hath not sent me. 30 But if the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up, with all that appertain unto them, and they go down quick into the pit; then ye shall understand that these men have provoked the Lord. 31 And it came to pass, as he had made an end of speaking all these words, that the ground clave asunder that was under them: 32 And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up,

• and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods.

• 33 They, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them: and they perished from among the congregation. 34 And all Israel that were round about them fled at the cry of them: for they said, Lest the earth swallow us up also.

• 35 And there came out a fire from the Lord, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense.

J’s story is about ingratitude, the scandalously evil accusations we see too often when plaintiffs actually claim the exact opposite of what actually happened (milk and honey in Egypt?) - kind of like how in Fahrenheit 911, Saddam’s pre-war Iraq was portrayed as idyllic. In P’s story, which adds a character to the scene, Korah, however, the complaint seems to be about the exclusive prietly rights of the Aaronites, a completely different claim. J’s story, which doesn’t even mention Aaron, justifies Mozes; P’s story justifies Aaron, and with him the exclusive of the Aaronites to scarifice (new word for sacrifice?) in the Temple of Jerusalem.

——————

OVERVIEW OF THE FOUR AGENTS IN THE EJPD

Here is a list of the distinct styles in language, topic, geography, political viewpoint, pertaining to each different “author”. I have copied Friedman’s book extensively in order to show how overwhelming the sheer amount of evidence is, not just for the multiple author, but also the multiple tradition hypothesis is. 

Linguistics: J and E seem an earlier Hebrew than P, while D is still later. P seems to be before Ezekiel (exile). All of these are before the later Hebrew of the Persian time. Other authors claim that it is impossible to date Hebrew from linguistic standards. 

Terminological: Moses’ mountain is called Sinai in J and P, Horeb in E and D. The terms gathered to his people, be fruitful and multiply, he fell on his face, JHVH’s glory, plague, (ngf, ngfh), possession (achuzzah), chieftain (nasi) and to expire (gv’) only occur all or nearly all in P. —— Lengthen your days in the land, with all your heart and all your soul, listen to the voice of JHVH are all in D; to lie with and to know as (both terms in the sexual meaning) are predominantly or only in J. 

The verb “to pee” is never in P (I made that up, but I’m sure it’s true). PJs 70% off this week at Amazon.

Consistent content: God’s name: According to J, God’s name was revealed from the beginning fo time. E and P have JHVW be revealed for the first time to Moses in Exodus. J never uses Elohi’m in the narrative, only in direct quotes. Friedman: “The names JHVH and El and the word Elohi’m occur more than 2000 times, and the number of exceptions to this picture is three. Despite this phenomenal fact, we still find writers on this subject asserting that “the names of God do not prove anything”. 

Sacred Objects: the Tabernacle, 100+ times, only in P except 3 times in E; The Ark is never mentioned in E. Cherubs are in J and P, never in E or D; Urim & Tummim are all in P, never elsewhere. In Exodus, the miracles happen with Moses’ staff in E, with Aaron’s staff in P. 

Priestly Leadership: In P, only Aaronid priests: in D, all Levites. P never has dreams. J never has prophets, and P only once, for Aaron. Mercy, grace, repentance and kindness never occur in P, who only accepts atonement through sacrifice by Aaronid priests. P never describes God in physical terms.

All number related things, dates, measurements, almost only occur in P.

I before E except after C.

In 90% of the cases where complete stories are combined by multiple authors, each author's contribution can be read on its own. 

Connections with other parts of the Old Testament through common idiom:

D and Jeremiah; P and Ezekiel; J and E with Hosea; and J with the Court History. 

Relationships Sources to each other and to history: 

J & Judah. J has Abraham live in Mamre, Judah’s capital; J has Moses’ scouts only see Hebron and other places in Judah —- In J and only in J, Judah is prominent; Judah is blessed, Judah has a story (Tamar), Judah saves Joseph, Judah guarantees Benjamin’s safety to his father, Judah defends his brothers to Joseph —- the Shechem massacre and Reuben’s incest with his father’s concubine are J stories, blemishing some of the Israelite tribes (but Judah’s escapade with Tamar seems to be by J as well). —-Edom is talked about by J. It was close to Judah. —- J lays weight on the ark, E never mentions it. —-Judah had cherubs, Israel calves to mark God’s presence. 

E and Israel: Joshua is mentioned 7 times in E, never in J. —- E is preoccupied with the Levites of the priesthood of Shiloh. E has Shechem purchased rather than taken in a massacre. —- Ephraim is favored, Jeroboam’s tribe. —- P’nuel was reportedly founded by Jeroboam: E has it be the place of Jacob’s wrestle with God. —- E has Reuben save Joseph and assure Jacob that Benjamin is all right. —- J never mentions Joshua from the tribe of Ephraim! —- E contains a corpus of law (Covenant Code, Ex 21-23), which suggests that E comes from priests too - (though, I’m talking here about the Bible, yet I’m not a priest, thanks be to God!) —- E favors Moses (Aaron was of course P’s guy).

P and the period following the Fall of Israel:  P connects with Hezekiah, king of Judah. —- P is about the Aaronite priests. —- P is about centralization of worship. —- P is about the Tabernacle, making that the central worship place before the temple, showing that worship was supposed to be centralized. This seems to date P before the Exile, because it says all sacrifices will be performed here forever. After the Exile, the tabernacle, just like ark, tablets, cherubs and Urim, also prominent in P, no longer existed. 

D and Josiah: D is part of 7 books, the Deuterenomic history: Deut, Josh, Judg, Samuel and Kings —- Terminological correlations between Josiah and Moses are probably in place to glorify Josiah as the culmination of Moses’ plan, therefore the language is imitating the language Moses was clad in —- Discovery of the Scroll (Deut. 31:11), which was probably Deutoronomy. “Found by Hilkiah (2K 22:8)”. First “scripture forgery” …

P follows J and E: P can be read fluently in its version of the J and E narratives, is therefore not just a commentary. —- When P deviates, it is on doctrinal grounds: No sacrifices before the Tabernacle, therefore no Cain/Abel story, no sacrifice after flood, no version of Gen 22; Also no channels to God outside priesthood, = no angels, dreams, talking animals, or Morgan Freeman, => no Garden of Eden, no Balaam, no 3 angelic visitors to Abrahahahahah (Marie tickling me, apologies), no Jacob wrestling with God, no dreams of Joseph! No Golden Calf or Moses’ Kushite wife, both of which distract from Aaron, P’s ancestor of the priesthood (???) —- Does have the story of the purchase of Machpelach (J and E do not), to legalize Hebron as central city. 

Convergence: all arguments work together.

The fact that the author who consistently calls God Jahweh and uses several unique phrases and words like “lie with” and “know” in the biblical meaning and uses the oldest form of Hebrew, is also the one who mentions Judah, narrates the history of the Southern Kingdom and is most familiar with Southern geography, has God walk around and tells about dreams, and mentions sacrifices at high places; while the author who calls God Elohim before Exodus, writes in a newer form of Hebrew, mentions numbers and years, strongly favors Aaronid priests, is the only one who mentions the tabernacle, and only allows centralized worship in the Temple. The convergence of evidence makes the different authors stick out as such, rather than being the product of intellectual creativity of modern day scholars. 

“The most compelling argument for the hypothesis is that this hypothesis best accounts for the fact that all the evidence of so many kinds comes together so consistently. To this day, no one known to me who challenged the hypothesis has ever addressed this fact.” (Friedman, Bible, p. 28). 

Next time you hear a refutation of the documentary hypothesis by advocates of Mosaic authorship, see how many if any of these arguments are addressed.

Footnote

*** I use Gen. 34 as test for Bible commentaries. If they blame Dinah for any of the tragedy described, I know they are an uptight bunch of rule-followers and I walk away.

A late 19th century view by Sir Edward Poynter (1836 - 1919) of a quite legendary Queen of Sheba visiting an equally mythical King Solomon, who in reality might just have been little more than a tribal chief like Tecumseh, Sitting Bull or Al Capone.

NOW WHAT??

Where does that leave us? Where does that leave scripture? A horse made by a committee is an elephant. But this elephant is rather impressive. Dennis Prager, in his religious lectures, points out that we need both pictures of God, the transcendental Elohi’m and the personal Jahweh. Perhaps the Bible became so powerful because of the collaboration through the centuries of the different authors and the schools they represented. And God? The great innovation of the Hebrew Bible is the notion that God works in history. The Sumerians believed that everything was random, as today’s new Sumerians believe again. The Jews were the first to see a spiritual Design in all this, but every explanation in human terms of how that happens is flawed. I see God in the foundation of the state of Israel 3 years after the holocaust ended. Did He intentionally make 6 million Jews perish? I’m sure He didn’t. I believe He works in our spirits, in our will to manifest ourselves on this planet. Israel was founded by very inspired people. I have also played with very inspired Palestinians who suffered from Israel’s soldiers. I don’t know how to knit those two together, but God does. God is like a polyphonic church composer who writes a mass and we all sing our parts which He weaves together.

Once, a good Lutheran woman said Well, God is kinda dogmatic. God bless her, but I disagree. God is Truth. Dogma is the man-made attempt to comprehend God’s Truth that is revealed in every breath breathed by every living being. In fact, Beethoven showed me what dogma is better than any clergy ever could. Not in his words; I don’t think as a man, Beethoven was anything that special; but in his music he became a prophet. In the Ode to Joy, the Seit Umschlungen, Millionen (“be embraced, ye millions, this kiss of the whole world”) is sung by tenors and basses accompanied by cellos and basses only - and trombones - when they are not in a bar - austere, emphatic, kinda dogmatic, obnoxious. A cherished friend once told me that every time she hears that passage, she winces. Perhaps should listen deeper. The theme is the dogma of God enveloping us in His existence, as the text says - then, the same theme occurs again, but now sung by angels (sopranos and altos singing in thirds or sixths always sounds angelic) with the most gorgeous string and winds accompaniment pulling everything in the fullness of a 3-dimensional world, forest garden teeming with colors, sounds, smells. That is the God’s reality behind the dogma. Beethoven does it again with over the band of starts must live a sweet father. We know that God is not our father. He didn’t beget us, He created us. We know that he doesn’t live ‘over a non-existing band of stars’ - He is probably rather everywhere at the same time. Christian fundamentalists use this language on a daily basis - yet still insist that י֥וֹם yom in Hebrew must mean a period of 24 hours, even before the Bible itself says there were any time indicators. If you draw a picture of God resembling a 12-year old playing in the sun with a magnifying glass deciding which ant lives and which dies, and when that picture gets challenged, then you come with the God is Great platitude, you have lost me. Whatever your religion, it has to stand the test of the footprints. Whatever your explanation of God’s mystery, if it prompts you to look for false arguments to refute a sound interpretation of the footprints, you are doing your religion a disservice.

<== Seit Umschlungen in the Ode to Joy: first the dogma, in black - then the rich reality it covers, in colors.

To end this article I’d like to quote Nahum Sarna about the authors of the Torah:

“Biblical man (…) had not yet discovered the methods of disciplined inquiry, critical observation or analytical experimentation. Rather, his thinking was imaginative, and his expressions of thought were concrete, pictorial, emotions, poetic. Hence, it is a naive and futile exercise to to attempt to reconcile the biblical accounts of creation with the findings of modern science (…) Even more serious than the inherent fundamental misconception of the psychology of biblical man is the unwholesome effect upon the understanding of the Bible itself. (…) The literalistic approach to serves to direct attention to those aspects of the narrative that reflect time and place of its composition, while it tends to obscure the elements that are meaningful and enduring, thus distorting the biblical message and destroying its relevancy.” - Sarna, Understanding Genesis, p. 2/3)

About those elements more meaningful and enduring, I will attempt to write in my next article, Astérix and the Bhagavad Gita, - kidding - Genesis, just Genesis.

——————

Footnotes: to be discarded

Introduction

* I am reminded of a Hungarian story in which a young married couple is walking through meadows and fields. At a certain moment, they walk past a pile of, how to say it nicely, a pile of “Cleveland Brown”, homine non bestiá factus est. The couple start discussing if the creation was done by a man or a woman. On second thought, that doesn’t fit the stereotype, such a discussion seems more for two male friends … though I am not familiar with the gay scene. Maybe two lesbian girls … and this is how one talks oneself right into the … Let’s say two Cleveland Browns fans are discussing what gender the creator of the dump belongs to. They decide to ask a farmer whom they see fixing his fence nearby. The farmer takes a break from his construction work, comes with the two Cleveland Browns fans, and takes a good look at the pile of “Cleveland Brown.” After some pondering, the farmer delivers the following speech: “This @#%$# couldn’t have been dumped by a lassie just because in the first place, as y’all see, the accompanying fluids is situated in front of the @#%$#, while if a lassie had laid it, the said fluids would have went right on top of the @#%$#. Also, this @#%$# couldn’t have been dumped by a lassie just because in the second place, as y’all see, the tip of the @#%$# is intact, while if a lassie had dumped it, the hem of her skirt would have just taken the tip off, leaving a more flattened type of dump. Also, this @#%$# couldn’t have been dumped by a lassie just because in the third place, five minutes ago I’ve dumped it myself. This story I deemed less suitable as a metaphor for this article than the footprints, but I could not keep this from you. What else are footnotes for?

** This time I’m reminded of the man or woman who found a human corpse in the marshes of a forest in northern Germany. He or she immediately called the police, who came, and inspected the body. Yes, the detective said, the man has been murdered. But I see no point in opening an investigation. - Why not? - There is no way we will ever find the perpetrator. How can you be so sure? And even if we find the murderer, we cannot bring him to justice. Why is that? How do you know? It’s our job to know. Let me just say, another department might be more interested in investigating this case. I’ll give you the phone number of the Department of Archeology. The body was over 2000 years old …

*** Edwin Moses (b. 1955) was perhaps the world’s greatest 400-m.-hurdlist ever, having won 107 consecutive finals and set the world record four times.

First a little history:

* … and his slightly older brother, Pidikyubah (1805-1742)

** Neither did the Japanese. Moshikoka, the Jewish samurai, went auditioning for the Shogun. After having seen other samurai cleaving flies in two with their Hattori Hanzo swords, it was his turn. He hews, the fly accelerates, panicks, but flies on. “Other samurai … killing flies!!!!” the Shogun says, grumbly. “Oy, killing, schmilling …” Moshikoka sighs: “c i r c u m c i s i o n …!!!!!”

*** The Bible explanation that Moshe מֹשֶׁה comes from Hebrew משה, is universally considered a folk etymology after the fact. The Egyptian word Moses, as in Tuthmoses, Ahmoses, Ramesses, means child.

**** Garrison Keillor in one of the Lake Wobegon stories tells how as a little boy he was tomato picking and found a big rotten, juicy one, which almost splashes in your hand; then he say his sister bent over to pick one: what a target! He later ‘admitted’ that it took him 25 years for that tomato to get to fly in the exact opposite direction from its historical trajectory.

***** Bummer. I now learn that the Thera eruption has been radio-carbon dated to around 1620 BC, what’s too early to have caused the Mycenaean takeover between 1450 and 1400 BC. Perhaps the general tendency of warring Indo-Europeans subduing more peaceful autochthones may have been the case

* * “Caphtor: the original seat of the Philistines (Deut. 2:23; Jer. 47:4; Amos 9:7). The name is found written in hieroglyphics in the temple of Kom Ombos in Upper Egypt. But the exact situation of Caphtor is unknown, though it is supposed to be Crete, since the Philistines seem to be meant by the "Cherethites" in 1 Sam. 30:14 (see also 2 Sam. 8:18). It may, however, have been a part of Egypt, the Caphtur in the north Delta, since the Caphtorim were of the same race as the Mizraite people (Gen. 10:14; 1 Chr. 1:12).” Bible Gateway, Easton’s Encyclopedia. The identification of the Peleset in the Egyptian chronicles is of course the only contemporary mention here Ns.

Not Moses:

* My Apollo jet ticks claim names as an argument for a 2nd millennium authorship, but, as Grabbe points out, “the patriarchal names can all be found in a telephone book of every western city today”. Thompson shows that they are all Western Semitic, which is another argument that Ur is interpolated.

** Even in Luke the Emperor Augustus is named. To me, it is inconceivable that Moses would have written the Bible and not named the Pharaoh he saw being drowned by the gushing waters with his own eyes. Oh, and that Caesar was Tiberius, unless Christ answered this line to the Pharisees when he was 14 years old or younger, which, like three Trombonists walking past a bar, can happen …

Documentary Hypothesis:

** King James: on this side of the Jordan in the wilderness; NIV east of the Jordan—that is, in the Arabah - RSV and NRSV beyond the Jordan in the wilderness translate it right. Károli (1529-91): Ezek az igék, a melyeket szólott Mózes az egész Izráelnek, a Jordánon túl a pusztában has the word puszta, I love that word, it also appears in “void without form” of Gen. 1: “The earth was void, without form, just grasslands, a wooden well here and there, perhaps a man in Hungarian folk costume with a dog and some sheep, playing the bagpipes …” —- The protestant pastor Gáspár Károli wrote the Hungarian “King James” version, but since at that time the Turk had just come into Hungary, it should have been called the “Sultan Suleyman Translation”, which is of course impossible - so that’s why it’s called the Károli.

*** I use Gen. 34 as test for Bible commentaries. If they blame Dinah for any part of the tragedy described, I know they are an uptight bunch of rule-followers and I walk away.

—————-

Illustrations:

1. Moses having a temper tantrum (1659, my title). Rembrandt, Berlin.

2. Map of Mesopotamia, Sumer, Harran, Jerusalem and Ashtabulah, 1500 BC. From Dee Yinannnet.

3. Burial Mounds (restored) near Goirle, Netherlands, from the Ballfret culture (unconfirmed). Dutch Wiki situates them in the Middle Bronze Age (1700 - 700 BC), but I remember reading a later date on the bronze plaque at the restored site, of only a couple of hundred years BC. Wiki’s date would have impressed the $#$-%$# out of me.

4. “Abisha the Hyksos”, 1900 BC painting on tomb of Khnumhotep II. “Joseph’s technicolor dreamcoat” is from the LWPD (Lloyd-Webber Psychodelic) translation. KJV translates ornate robe, while NIV gives coat of many colors

5. La Parisienne, woman or goddess from the Camp-Stool fresco, c.1350 B.C.E., western wing of the palace at Knossos, buon fresco, 20 cm high (Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, where I have been, but a long, lòòòòòòng time ago)

6. Impression of the Minoan Palace at Knossos, modern artist, with my guess of where Waldo is.

7 & 8. Sea Peoples fighting Ramesses III in the sea battle at the Nile Delta, c. 1175 BC. Relief from Medinet Háboru (or Habu). Note the typical Sea People’s head dress.

9. Murzawazawizawa’s Death - my title. modern depiction of the Battle of Kadesh or Qadesh, 1274 BC. The poor sucker who experiences his last moments on this earth is a Hittite warrior. I sometimes call it Josia’s Death, though this King of Judah was killed about 850 years after that particular battle.

9. Abraham and Melchizedek, from the Altarpiece of the Last Supper, 1464-68 (oil on panel), Bouts, Dirck (c.1415-75) / St. Pieters, Leuven (Louvain), Belgium

10. Far side cartoon, Larry Garson or whatever his name.

11. Rabbi scholar in his study, Julius Fehr, 1860-1900. This is disputed amongst others by Steffens, who thinks it’s Steffens.

11. Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, 1890, by Sir Edward Poynter (1836 - 1919), N.S.Wales, Sidney. This shows about the opposite of how Solomon’s “palace” must have looked like. The biblical description claims a wealth that was probably not possible in Solomon’s time, when Jerusalem was probably inhabited by the next generation following a rag-tag of vagabonds.

11. Mary Magdalene as Melancholia, Artemisia, 1622/5, Mexico (Soumaya). There is absolutely no reason why she is here, except that the image is beautiful beyond beautiful. I so love Artemisia…

12. Christ Pantocrator, St. Catherine’s Monastery at Sinai, 6th century AD. This is fantastic art. The exquisite Roman portrait skill had not yet been lost at that time and place. The two halves of the face seem to express the Christ’s Double nature, the Divine and Human. As my friend Art Brooks would say: fun stuff!

Bibliography:

Arnold, Bill T., Genesis, 2009, New Cambridge B. Comm., yellow with violet top and bottom.

Campbell, Joseph, Oriental Mythology,1962 —— Occidental Mythology (1964)

Deák, Stephen, Popper. Delightful book about David Popper (1843 - 1913), see My Pedigree 1, 11, and 111. Not much to do with this article

Dally, Stephanie “Dilly”, Myths from Mesopotamia,1989

Freud, Sigmund, Moses und die Monotheistische Religion, 1939. I was once asked which translation I read of Thomas Mann’s books. I said: Thomas Mann. I live for these moments. Once, in the train from Munich to Cologne, I got into a conversation with a young German intellectual. After an hour, I asked him where he was from. From a leetle town in Bavvhariah. What’s the name? Kemnat. That’s like a shot on an empty goal. Groß or Klein Kemnat? BANG!!!!! There are jokes about that. Incidentally, if you ever want to read Mann in translation, do not read Lowe-Porter from the 1940s. The 1990s translation, I think of John E Woods, is incomparably better. Mann’s I crowned as the most beautiful language I read in any language, with Shakespeare. Woods gives a great equivalent, making the English float. Porter with her 1930s American drills it into the ground. This based on comparing a few paragraphs.

Friedman, R. E, Who wrote the Bible? 1987. In the margin of my copy it is written: Yeah = agreement —— yeah yeah = disagreement. Yeah yeah yeah = no disagreement, but annoyance at an overstated sentence.

Goscinny & Uderzo, Astérix et les Jeux Olympiques. Delightful comic book, one of the best from the unforgettable Asterix series, reasonably well translated into English. Great way of learning French street language.

Grabbe, Leicester L., Ancient Israel 2007/rev. 2017)

Graves, Robert, Hebrew Myths, 1963/4/83

Soden, von Soden, Wolfram von Soden, The Ancient Orient (1985)

the completion of this list forthcoming. It would mean I have to get up and get the d$%$ books from the shelf