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Some Thoughts and Notes on the Early History and Origin of Judaism
Historical Overview
The Hebrews first appeared as a group of nomadic tribes that infiltrated Canaan and conquered part of the Canaanite territory in the centuries just prior to 1000 BCE when the New Kingdom of Egypt was in a state of severe decline. The Hebrews supposedly came from Egypt where they had been slaves working for the Pharaohs. This is plausible as the Hebrews may have been a Canaanite people that entered Egypt when Egypt was conquered by the Hyksos and were later enslaved when the Egyptians reconquered lower Egypt under the leadership of the pharaoh Ahmose I, around 1567 BCE. The New Kingdom of Egypt lasted until 1085 BCE. The word "Hebrew" may come from the Egyptian word "apiru" which designated a hired servant class.
The Hebrews had two periods of political greatness (i.e. independent rule) that corresponded to eras between the decline of the old great powers in the Middle East and the Mediterranean regions and the rise of the next great powers. The first period was around the year 1000 BCE and succeeding centuries and occurred due to the decline of the Egyptian New Kingdom, the Hittite Kingdom located in Asia Minor, the Mycanean states of the Aegean and the Babylonians in Mesopotamia. For a few centuries small independent kingdoms existed in Palestine. That period ended with the rise of Assyria and the formation of the new Assyrian Empire after roughly 800 BCE. Then the fate of Palestine was in the hands of the Assyrians and their successors the Babylonians, the Persians and the Greeks for roughly five centuries. The next period of independent rule occurred during the decline of the Hellenistic Greek kingdoms and before the rise of Roman power in the area. After Rome conquered Palestine, independent rule came to an end, never to return until the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 ACE.
1. In the first period, the Hebrew kingdom of David (who reigned circa 1000 - 970 BC) and Solomon (reigned circa 970-930 BC) flourished for two generations. It was during the reign of Solomon that the great temple in Jerusalem was built that became the center point of the Hebrew religion for many centuries. The Kingdom of David and Solomon quickly lost great power status after Solomon as the peoples conquered by David rebelled against the weakened kingdom and the kingdom itself split into a northern portion (Israel) and a southern portion (Judah). These two kingdoms existed side by side for awhile, sometimes in alliance and sometimes hostile to each other. The northern kingdom was swallowed up by the Neo-Assyrian empire under the rule of Sargon II in 722 BCE while the southern kingdom continued to exist as an Assyrian vassal state. The Assyrians shipped much of the population of Israel to Mesopotamia where they became integrated into the local population and disappeared from history. That population forms the famous "ten lost tribes of Israel". The southern kingdom managed to survive intact for more that a century and was even able to defeat an outright conquest by the Assyrian king Sennacherib, the successor to Sargon II. Judah outlasted the Assyrian Empire but was destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar II of the New-Babylonian Empire in 597 BCE. Nebuchadnezzar II had the temple of Solomon and the walls of Jerusalem torn down. He exported a large percentage of the Jewish population to Babylon where they lived in exile for 70 years.
The Babylonians had revolted against Assyrian rule and formed an alliance with the Medes. Their combined armies overthrew the Assyrians and in 612 BC they captured and destroyed the Assyrian capital Nineveh. The Median and Babylonian Empires in turn fell to the Persians after 550 BCE. The Persian king Cyrus the Great allowed the Jewish exiles to return to Palestine where they constructed a new temple and rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem. A little over a century after the fall of Nineveh, the Greeks were struggling for their existence against the Persians and defeated the Persian great king Darius at the battle of Marathon in 490 BCE. While the Greeks were rising to greatness, the Jews essentially disappeared from history and little is heard from them over the next several centuries.
2. The second period of independent Jewish rule saw the formation of the kingdom of the Maccabees that rose during the final years of Hellenistic power in the Middle East and before Roman power fully extended into the eastern Mediterranean. The Maccabean kingdom lasted for about a century from about 165 BCE to 63 BCE and is described in the first and second books of the Maccabees in the Catholic Bible. Independent rule ended when Palestine was conquered by the Roman general Pompey in 63 BCE. Palestine became a vassal kingdom of Rome and later a Roman province.
While under the rule of Rome, Jewish hopes for a renewal of the Kingdom of David and Solomon or the kingdom of the Maccabees led to a lot of Jewish nationalistic agitation that was especially associated with those Jews called zealots. There was a general hope that one day there would appear a "Messiah", a special and anointed leader that would free the Jews in a manner similar to David or Judas Maccabee. The longing for independence resulted in two rebellions against Rome, in 66-70 ACE and a second one in 132-135 ACE. After the first rebellion, Rome destroyed the one and only Jewish temple in Jerusalem. The temple was the center of the Jewish religion and the place where heaven was connected to Earth through the mediation of the Jewish priesthood. Thus ended any hope for a new Jewish kingdom.
The nationalistic agitation was fueled by the previously successful revolt against the Hellenistic rulers of Israel but was very deluded because the Hellenistic rulers at the time of the Maccabee's were far weaker than Rome. The ruling Seleucid state was near its last days, whereas Rome was at the height of its power. These deluded hopes led to the two disastrous rebellions. The Jewish religion was revised after the crushing defeat suffered in the first rebellion and changed from a form based on a centralized hierarchy in a fixed location to one based on local Rabbis distributed amongst the Jewish population scattered about in various places in the Roman Empire and beyond. In this form it has survived down to the present day.
The dream of a Zionist state was revived in the 19th and 20th centuries as the Ottoman Empire was in severe decline. After the experience of the Jewish holocaust in WWII, the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine was seriously acted upon by the British and the Jews themselves and resulted in the founding of the new state of Israel in 1948.
Moses, the Exodus and the establishment of Judaism
The Hebrew religion is traditionally assumed to have been established by Moses late in the second millennium before the common era. The story of Moses is well known to most people and we summarize that story below. But that traditional version has many oddities when examined closely. We will look at those oddities and then consider a different interpretation of the events that may have led to the founding of the Hebrew religion which explains many of those oddities and points to an origin that leads back to the heretical Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten. An origin based on Akhenaten is not a new idea in general, since it is mentioned by ancient Greek and Egyptian writers in Ptolemaic Egypt and several Roman writers as well (see http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/moses.htm). Even Sigmund Freud's last book , Moses and Monotheism is on this topic, but here we present several specific points that don't seem to have been considered by earlier scholars.
In the traditional story, Moses was the possibly mythical leader that led the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt into the Sinai desert and eventually to Canaan where the freed Hebrews began their conquest of that land. Moses is described in the Biblical book of Exodus as a Hebrew slave who was adopted as a baby by an Egyptian princess and raised as an Egyptian prince. But as a young man, he abandoned his Egyptian heritage after killing an Egyptian man and fled to safety in the wilderness of the Sinai desert where he lived in exile. He became a member of a local tribe and got married. While there he had spiritual encounters with God or some higher being who told him to go back to Egypt and lead the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt. After some hesitation about how one man could accomplish such a task when confronted with the power of Egypt, he was told to trust in the power of God. He confronted the Pharaoh with the demand that he free the Hebrew slaves. The Pharaoh finally capitulated after many demonstrations that the powers of the God of Moses were greater than those of the Pharaoh and his sorcerers and after much suffering was inflicted on Egypt via those powers. Then Moses, in league with a powerful spiritual being that manifested itself directly to the people and is generally assumed to be God, led the Hebrews out of Egypt. There they wandered about in the Sinai desert for 40 years before beginning the conquest of Canaan under the command of Moses's general Joshua. Moses himself died before the conquest actually began in earnest.
In the desert wandering, God, in the form of a pillar of fire at night or a whirlwind by day, led the Hebrews from place to place. God fed the Hebrews by sending food from Heaven in the form of a bread that appeared on the ground every day except on the Sabbath. Moses had multiple encounters with God on Mount Sinai where he received the Ten Commandments and other aspects of Jewish law.
Moses, following God's detailed instructions, had the Hebrews construct a mobile tent temple. That temple held the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark was a special gold plated chest with a pair of angel figurines on the lid that was specially constructed to hold the stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were engraved. The Ark of the Covenant could only be viewed by a select few and had the special purpose of acting as a kind of direct communication device with God. The mobile tent temple containing the Ark formed the center place of the Hebrew camp. In later centuries, when the Jewish kingdom was established with its capital in Jerusalem, a great temple was built under the rule of King Solomon wherein was placed the Ark of the Covenant. The temple of Solomon became the center place of the Jewish religion until it was destroyed by Nebuchanezzar in 587 BCE. The Ark of the Covenant was lost and no one knows to this day what happened to it.
This is a summary of the traditional story told in the Bible. The story probably contains a grain of historical truth but more than likely has many distortions, alterations and purely mythic elaborations that were added to satisfy the political and cultural agendas of various authors or editors in later centuries. These have been much discussed by scholars in the last few centuries.
Now how do we interpret the story of Moses as told in the book of Exodus? It could simply be myth or could be based upon some underlying historical facts. From a realist perspective, Moses sounds like a political-religious leader who established his own power rather ruthlessly over his people by direct force and legitimized it with the claim that he was directed by God. This is a very typical pattern in human history.
God was portrayed as the cause of all the evil the Hebrews suffered in the form of diseases, military defeats and political suppression, which was visited upon them for their own good and to keep them in line because they did not follow God's ways. The God of the books of Moses was a jealous God and sounds a lot like a ruthless military dictator who demands absolute loyalty from his "chosen" people. Any misbehavior was punished with death. Sound familiar? How many dictators and kings are known throughout history who demanded absolute loyalty from their subjects and claimed to be descended from God or a God or who represented God or the Gods on Earth? Certainly one has to look no farther than the Egyptians to see this political-religious model. The claim that one's God was superior to those of the Gods of surrounding people was also a standard claim and was reinforced if one could defeat competing peoples who followed other Gods in battle. If one was oneself defeated and subjugated then the idea was that the people had not faithfully served their God well enough and he had decided to punish them or simply to withdraw his/her favor.
The standard picture (the one portrayed in the Bible) is that the Hebrew slaves are already followers of one God when Moses leads them out of Egypt, so the idea of monotheism should not have been any surprise to them. The "One God" displays miraculous powers, which should impress anyone, but the Hebrew slaves are surprisingly reluctant to accept the God of Moses. They have to be repeatedly punished and brought back into line by both God and Moses. So rebellious are they, that Moses supposedly has to argue with God to save the Hebrews from extermination after God had decided that they were not good enough for his purposes during the incident of the Golden Calf (Exodus, chapter 32). Moses had been up on Mount Sinai for weeks and the people had begun to feel he was lost so they constructed a golden idol through which they could worship the more traditional Canaanite gods. This situation was observed by God and Moses up on Mount Sinai. God contemplates the option of wiping out these faithless Hebrew slaves and finding another group to be his "chosen people". Moses has to remind God of the promises he made to Abraham and how bad the situation would look to the Egyptians if this God brought his chosen people out into the desert and then wiped them out. Certainly that would not be good for God's credibility and public image amongst the Egyptians! Through the intermediation of Moses, the Hebrews are saved from total destruction by God's wrath. So the Hebrews owe Moses one. But then Moses, on his return, goes on a rampage in the Hebrew camp and restores order by a ruthless display of military power, slaughtering over 3,000 people, while of course, carrying the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments, that declare, among other things, that thou shalt not kill.
Were the Ten Commandments inscribed in Egyptian hieroglyphics? God (or Moses) would have had to pick some written language and that would most likely have been hieroglyphics. Thus the Ten Commandments would have served as a reminder of the Egyptian origin of the original Hebrew tribes and their Exodus from Egypt by anyone privileged enough to examine the tablets in their resting place in the Ark of the Covenant. In Canaan, the Hebrews must have picked up writing from the Phoenicians and adopted their system since Hebrew writing is based in Phoenician. Thus the Ten Commandments would have become unreadable to the Hebrew scribes in time unless a special effort was made to include hieroglyphics in their training, which would have been practical since Egypt was so nearby and important. But what if someone back then discovered that the Ten Commandments were actually written in Phoenician? It would not have been too hard to realize that either the original plates had been lost or that the story of their origin in the Exodus was fake. The book of Deuteronomy, after all, was written long after the time of Moses and was then attributed to him by the rather cheesy ruse of having some priests suddenly stumble upon a lost scroll that supposedly had been hidden for generations. Conveniently, the lost scroll contained statements that supported the priests in their current political designs. These intrigues are actually described in the Bible itself in 2 Kings 22.
Troubling incidents continue to occur during the 40 years of wandering in the Sinai desert before the Hebrew tribes have been whipped into a good enough shape to begin the conquest of Canaan. It seems very odd when reading the Exodus account that a people who were already followers of the one true God , so we are told, are so very often ungrateful and argumentative with Moses and God, even though God provides sustenance for them and offers numerous displays of spiritual power. And in spite of their presumed historical following of God and his recent and frequent manifest displays of power, the Hebrews are so easily attracted to the polytheistic religions of the peoples surrounding them, that there must be continual purges and punishments of both errant Hebrews and interfering foreigners and even the complete genocidal extermination of competing polytheistic tribes! Is there an underlying reason for this odd behavior?
When did the Exodus occur?
Early Egyptian history is divided into a predynastic period, the early dynastic period, the Old Kingdom, the first Intermediate Period, the Middle Kingdom, the 2nd Intermediate Period, and then the New Kingdom. This long period of time spans the years from before 3000 BCE to 1000 BCE. See http://www.touregypt.net/ehistory.htm for details.
The Hyksos ('shepard kings') invaded Egypt and caused the collapse of the Middle Kingdom. This was the first time Egypt had been conquered by outsiders. The Hyksos ruled from 1759-1539 BCE and this time is known as the 2nd intermediate period. The Hyksos ruled northern Egypt (but not southern) from their capital city of Avaris (near Tanis) in the Nile delta. They were probably of Canaanite origin or at least from Asia. The Hebrews presumably came into Egypt at this time and Joseph became vizier to a Hyksos king. The native Egyptians reconquered Egypt under the leadership of the pharaoh Ahmose, who started the 18th dynasty. This began the New Kingdom period. The native Egyptian Pharaohs are the Pharaohs who "knew not Joseph", as the Bible relates, presumably because Joseph had been a vizier of the hated Hyksos.
As a side note, there is a bit of indirect evidence that Joseph served under a Hyksos king rather than a native Egyptian. The well known story of Joseph is related in the book of Genesis. Joseph, the son of the Hebrew patriarch Jacob, is sold into Egyptian slavery by his jealous brothers. Joseph rises to power when he interprets the Pharaoh's dream about the seven fat cows and the seven lean cows as seven years of great plenty coming for Egypt that are to be followed by seven years of severe famine. So the Pharaoh wisely puts Joseph in charge of saving up extra grain in the seven plentiful years that will be used in the seven lean years. These changes in climate do come to pass as predicted, and being properly prepared, everything is okay in Egypt. Joseph is now a great hero in the eyes of the Pharaoh and the people of Egypt. Now one would think that the native Egyptians, after two thousand years of successful living along the Nile, would be aware of the fluctuations in their river and would be familiar with its long term behavior patterns. After all, the Nile was of the utmost importance to the Egyptians and knowing its behavior was critical to their well-being. The Pharaoh should thus not need a dream to institute a major change in policy nor should such a change in policy have been needed in the first place. However, if the Hyksos were in charge, they would not have any long term experience with the Nile's changing behavior. Nor were the native Egyptians likely to give a Hyksos pharaoh any good advice. Thus the need for a prophetic dream and a Hebrew dream prophet to figure out that there would be a coming crisis.
There is also an interesting Egyptian tale that is the converse to the story of Joseph, the tale of Sinuhe. Sinuhe is a minor Egyptian official who flees Egypt after the Pharaoh dies because he apparently fears he won't be in good graces with the new Pharaoh. Sinuhe takes up residence in exile in Canaan where he rises to fame and fortune among the local tribes and even wins a fight against a native champion like David later does with Goliath. Ultimately he returns to Egypt in his old age where he is happily received and gets a proper Egyptian burial.
But getting back to the main subject, the 18th dynasty was the most militarily active dynasty in Egyptian history and raised Egyptian power to its peak, conquering all of the Eastern Mediterranean coastal area, including Palestine, and going deep into Nubia. The Egyptian empire was well established and very wealthy by the time the heretical pharaoh Akhenaten came to the throne. He ruled from about 1351-1334 BCE.
The Hebrews most likely left Egypt during the reign of the famous 19th dynasty pharaoh Ramses II, who ruled from 1279-1213 BCE. Ramses II ruled for over 66 years, one of the longest reigns in history! The Bible mentions that the Hebrews were working on building the cities of Raamses and Pithom in the Nile delta. Ramses II did indeed build new treasure cities in the Nile delta next to the old Hyksos capital of Avaris, which was called by the Egyptians Pi-Raamses, so that is very consistent with the idea that he would have used Hyksos slaves (including the Hebrews) for laborers. They were a nearby labor pool and the site was probably chosen, in part, to exact a form of humiliation and revenge on the Hyksos for their earlier conquest of Egypt. This timing for the Exodus event is also supported by the first known Egyptian references to Israel. The son of Ramses II, the pharaoh Merneptah, erected a stone stele describing his military victory over the invading "Sea Peoples" who came from Libya. The stele also mentions that he invaded Palestine and:
The princes are prostrate, saying: "Mercy!"
Not one raises his head among the Nine Bows [5].
Desolation is for Tehenu [1]; Hatti [2] is pacified;
Plundered is the Canaan with every evil;
Carried off is Ashkelon; seized upon is Gezer;
Yanoam is made as that which does not exist;
Isiral [3] is laid waste, his seed is not;
Hurru [4] is become a widow for Egypt!
All lands together, they are pacified;
Source: Pritchard, James B. Ancient Near Eastern Texts. Princeton, 1969., pp. 376-378.
This is the first mention of Israel by the Egyptians, so the Hebrews must have been established in Canaan by this time. Merneptah ruled Egypt from about 1213-1203 BCE. The Hatti refers to the Hittite kingdom of Asia Minor, while Ashkelon and Gezer are cities of the Philistines established on the coast of Canaan in what is today known as the Gaza strip. The Philistines are apparently one of the "sea peoples" that invaded Canaan and tried to conquer Egypt as well but were unsuccessful. The Philistines appear to be a people of Aegean origin who used iron weapons, which gave them a big advantage in battle. However the invasion of the Egyptian New Kingdom by the "sea peoples" may have so weakened it that it collapsed as a great power as it soon did. The temporary chaos induced in the wake of the "sea peoples" invasion may been the real cause that allowed the Hebrew slaves the opportunity to escape from Egypt. The Hittite Kingdom was also attacked by the "sea peoples" at this time and was destroyed as a political entity. So the invasion of Canaan by the Hebrew tribes quickly followed on the heels of the invasions by the "sea peoples" or may have been contemporary with them.
Moses - A Follower of Pharaoh Akhenaten's Monotheistic Sun God Religion?
Before all these events occurred, Egypt underwent a religious convulsion due to the radical religious reforms of the pharaoh Akhenaten who ruled Egypt for about 17 years from about 1351-1334 BCE (or 1364-1347 BCE). Akhenaten attempted to impose a monotheistic religion on Egypt that was based purely on worship of the Aten or solar disk. The traditional Gods of Egypt were eliminated in this new form of worship. The Hebrews left Egypt around 1270-1240 BCE (or earlier) if one assumes that they wandered in the desert for 40 years. So less than a 100 year time span separates Akhenaten's reign from the Exodus. Quite a coincidence that the first two monotheistic religions known in world history had their start so close together in time and space! Is this really a coincidence or is there a causal connection between the Aten of Akhenaten and the Yahweh of the Hebrews?
Here is an excellent site on ancient Egypt and Akhenaten if you want more information:
http://touregypt.net/featurestories/aten.htm
An intriguing possibility and one that seems to make a lot of sense, is the idea that Moses was an Egyptian follower of the monotheistic Sun God religion promulgated by the pharaoh Akhenaten. Akhenaten started his reign as Amenhotep IV, son of Amenhotep III, but after four years he changed his name to Akhenaten to honor the sole god Aten, the god of the featureless solar disk. The Aten was not personified into an anthropomorphic image as the early Egyptians Gods were but was much more abstract. Akhenaten promoted his new religion by building temples in the capital Thebes and elsewhere and then by the more radical act of building a new capital city called Akhetaten (modern Tel El Amarna), located midway on the Nile between Memphis and Thebes. There many temples to the Aten were built, a new more realistic art form was created and new religious rituals were adopted. Akhenaten promoted his wife Nefertiti to equal status with him as coruler. The depictions of both him and his wife are much more domestic and family oriented than the typical depictions of an all conquering pharaoh subduing his enemies. He is portrayed as a real person with a real family and this was radically new in Egypt where the Pharaoh had almost always been portrayed as a distant, powerful, divine and almost mythical, figure. This may be the very first recorded instance in history in which reason, direct observation and social liberalism begin to exert a real cultural challenge to traditional superstitions, myth-making and entrenched class privileges.
The religion of the Aten had only one supreme God and the Pharaoh was his direct representative on Earth. This undercut the priest class that was primarily devoted to the previously dominant god Amun-Re and centered in Thebes. Akhenaten did not just promote the new religion of the Aten, he used the Egyptian military to shut down all other temples dedicated to other gods in Egypt, thus sending large numbers of priests into unemployment. He had armies of workers go about Egypt erasing inscriptions and other displays to the more traditional gods of Egypt. The creation of a new religion and a new capital city may have been in part due to true inspiration, as Akhenaten describes himself, but another relevant factor that was probably more important was that this was a struggle for power between the pharaoh and the entrenched priest class, which was then very strong and had been so for many centuries.
An example of Akhenaten's inspiration and his conception of the Aten as the sole benevolent God can be found in the beautiful hymn to the Aten, which he probably composed himself.
The Great Hymn to the Aten
Praise of Re Har-akhti, Rejoicing on the Horizon, in His Name as Shu Who Is in the aten-disc, living forever and ever; the living great Aten who is in jubilee, lord of all that the Aten encircles, lord of heaven, lord of earth, lord of the House of Aten in Akhet-aten; (and praise of) the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, who lives on truth, the Lord of the Two Lands: Nefer-kheperu-Re Wa-en-Re; the Son of Re, who lives on truth, the Lord of Diadems: Akh-en-aten, long in his lifetime; (and praise of) the Chief Wife of the King, his beloved, the Lady of the Two Lands: Nefer-neferu-Aten-Nefert-iti, living, healthy, and youthful forever and ever; (by) the Fan-Bearer on the Right Hand of the King ... Eye.
He says:
Thou appearest beautifully on the horizon of heaven,
Thou living Aten, the beginning of life!
When thou art risen on the eastern horizon,
Thou hast filled every land with thy beauty.
Thou art gracious, great, glistening, and high over every land;
Thy rays encompass the lands to the limit of all that thou hast made:
As thou art Re, thou reachest to the end of them;
(Thou) subduest them (for) thy beloved son.
Though thou art far away, thy rays are on earth;
Though thou art in their faces, no one knows thy going.
When thou settest in the western horizon,
The land is in darkness, in the manner of death.
They sleep in a room, with heads wrapped up,
Nor sees one eye the other.
All their goods which are under their heads might be stolen,
(But) they would not perceive (it).
Every lion is come forth from his den;
All creeping things, they sting.
Darkness is a shroud, and the earth is in stillness,
For he who made them rests in his horizon.
At daybreak, when thou arisest on the horizon,
When thou shinest as the Aten by day,
Thou drivest away the darkness and givest thy rays.
The Two Lands are in festivity every day,
Awake and standing upon (their) feet,
For thou hast raised them up.
Washing their bodies, taking (their) clothing,
Their arms are (raised) in praise at thy appearance.
All the world, they do their work.
All beasts are content with their pasturage;
Trees and plants are flourishing.
The birds which fly from their nests,
Their wings are (stretched out) in praise to thy ka.
All beasts spring upon (their) feet.
Whatever flies and alights,
They live when thou hast risen (for) them.
The ships are sailing north and south as well,
For every way is open at thy appearance.
The fish in the river dart before thy face;
Thy rays are in the midst of the great green sea.
Creator of seed in women,
Thou who makest fluid into man,
Who maintainest the son in the womb of his mother,
Who soothest him with that which stills his weeping,
Thou nurse (even) in the womb,
Who givest breath to sustain all that he has made!
When he descends from the womb to breathe
On the day when he is born,
Thou openest his mouth completely,
Thou suppliest his necessities.
When the chick in the egg speaks within the shell,
Thou givest him breath within it to maintain him.
When thou hast made him his fulfillment within the egg, to break it,
He comes forth from the egg to speak at his completed (time);
He walks upon his legs when he comes forth from it.
How manifold it is, what thou hast made!
They are hidden from the face (of man).
O sole god, like whom there is no other!
Thou didst create the world according to thy desire,
Whilst thou wert alone: All men, cattle, and wild beasts,
Whatever is on earth, going upon (its) feet,
And what is on high, flying with its wings.
The countries of Syria and Nubia, the land of Egypt,
Thou settest every man in his place,
Thou suppliest their necessities:
Everyone has his food, and his time of life is reckoned.
Their tongues are separate in speech,
And their natures as well;
Their skins are distinguished,
As thou distinguishest the foreign peoples.
Thou makest a Nile in the underworld,
Thou bringest forth as thou desirest
To maintain the people (of Egypt)
According as thou madest them for thyself,
The lord of all of them, wearying (himself) with them,
The lord of every land, rising for them,
The Aten of the day, great of majesty.
All distant foreign countries, thou makest their life (also),
For thou hast set a Nile in heaven,
That it may descend for them and make waves upon the mountains,
Like the great green sea,
To water their fields in their towns.
How effective they are, thy plans, O lord of eternity!
The Nile in heaven, it is for the foreign peoples
And for the beasts of every desert that go upon (their) feet;
(While the true) Nile comes from the underworld for Egypt.
Thy rays suckle every meadow.
When thou risest, they live, they grow for thee.
Thou makest the seasons in order to rear all that thou hast made,
The winter to cool them,
And the heat that they may taste thee.
Thou hast made the distant sky in order to rise therein,
In order to see all that thou dost make.
Whilst thou wert alone,
Rising in thy form as the living Aten,
Appearing, shining, withdrawing or aproaching,
Thou madest millions of forms of thyself alone.
Cities, towns, fields, road, and river --
Every eye beholds thee over against them,
For thou art the Aten of the day over the earth....
Thou are in my heart,
And there is no other that knows thee
Save thy son Nefer-kheperu-Re Wa-en-Re,
For thou hast made him well-versed in thy plans and in thy strength.
The world came into being by thy hand,
According as thou hast made them.
When thou hast risen they live,
When thou settest they die.
Thou art lifetime thy own self,
For one lives (only) through thee.
Eyes are (fixed) on beauty until thou settest.
All work is laid aside when thou settest in the west.
(But) when (thou) risest (again),
[Everything is] made to flourish for the king,...
Since thou didst found the earth
And raise them up for thy son,
Who came forth from thy body: the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, ... Ak-en-aten, ... and the Chief Wife of the King ... Nefert-iti, living and youthful forever and ever.
Source: Pritchard, James B., ed., The Ancient Near East - Volume 1: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1958, pp. 227-230.
Clearly Akhenaten conceived of his God as the sole creator and ruler of the cosmos who looked down
on his creation with a benevolent and loving eye, concerned even with chicks in their shells! It is interesting to see the Egyptian conception of rainfall as being a "Nile in heaven" that waters surrounding lands. For the Egyptians rainfall was an exotic and unfamiliar phenomenon that they would have to leave their homeland to experience.
In contrast to Akhenaten's hymn to the Sun, read Lord Byron's poem, Darkness, written over 3000 years later.
The Great Hymn to the Aten is often compared to Psalm 104 in the Bible, which it may have directly influenced. The following is from New International Version translation of the Bible. The similarity is striking and Psalm 104 could easily be a rewritten version of the Great Hymn from a Canaanite Hebrew perspective. If so, then the religion of Akhenaten must have had a direct influence on very early Judaism that was preserved after having been communicated at some point early on by loyal followers of Akhenaten. In the generations following Akhenaten's reign there was a systematic movement to erase the influence of Atenism from Egyptian culture and by the time the Psalms were written (circa 1000 BCE and later), Atenism must have been mostly forgotten in Egypt and so could exert little direct influence through trade or tourism.
Psalm 104
1 Praise the LORD , O my soul.
O LORD my God, you are very great;
you are clothed with splendor and majesty.
2 He wraps himself in light as with a garment;
he stretches out the heavens like a tent
3 and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters.
He makes the clouds his chariot
and rides on the wings of the wind.
4 He makes winds his messengers, [1]
flames of fire his servants.
5 He set the earth on its foundations;
it can never be moved.
6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment;
the waters stood above the mountains.
7 But at your rebuke the waters fled,
at the sound of your thunder they took to flight;
8 they flowed over the mountains,
they went down into the valleys,
to the place you assigned for them.
9 You set a boundary they cannot cross;
never again will they cover the earth.
10 He makes springs pour water into the ravines;
it flows between the mountains.
11 They give water to all the beasts of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
12 The birds of the air nest by the waters;
they sing among the branches.
13 He waters the mountains from his upper chambers;
the earth is satisfied by the fruit of his work.
14 He makes grass grow for the cattle,
and plants for man to cultivate-
bringing forth food from the earth:
15 wine that gladdens the heart of man,
oil to make his face shine,
and bread that sustains his heart.
16 The trees of the LORD are well watered,
the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
17 There the birds make their nests;
the stork has its home in the pine trees.
18 The high mountains belong to the wild goats;
the crags are a refuge for the coneys. [2]
19 The moon marks off the seasons,
and the sun knows when to go down.
20 You bring darkness, it becomes night,
and all the beasts of the forest prowl.
21 The lions roar for their prey
and seek their food from God.
22 The sun rises, and they steal away;
they return and lie down in their dens.
23 Then man goes out to his work,
to his labor until evening.
24 How many are your works, O LORD !
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
25 There is the sea, vast and spacious,
teeming with creatures beyond number-
living things both large and small.
26 There the ships go to and fro,
and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.
27 These all look to you
to give them their food at the proper time.
28 When you give it to them,
they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
they are satisfied with good things.
29 When you hide your face,
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.
30 When you send your Spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth.
31 May the glory of the LORD endure forever;
may the LORD rejoice in his works-
32 he who looks at the earth, and it trembles,
who touches the mountains, and they smoke.
33 I will sing to the LORD all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
34 May my meditation be pleasing to him,
as I rejoice in the LORD.
35 But may sinners vanish from the earth
and the wicked be no more.
Praise the LORD , O my soul.
Praise the LORD . [3]
Footnotes
1. 104:4 Or angels
2. 104:18 That is, the hyrax or rock badger
3. 104:35 Hebrew Hallelu Yah ; in the Septuagint this line stands at the beginning of Psalm 105.
The Pharaoh Akhenaten initiated a great religious and political struggle with the Egyptian priest class by his introduction of the new monotheistic solar religion. The power of the entrenched priest class would not be easily yielded, as it never is in any society. Since the monotheistic religion was introduced from the top, it did not start as a grass roots movement, apparently, unless it predated Akhenaten and he picked up the idea from other people. There is evidence that his father and grandfather were already trying to promote the Aten as the supreme god over that of Amun-Re, but they did not directly challenge the entrenched priesthood nor make the radical break that Akhenaten did. But in any case, this religious, social and political struggle would have created a deep imprint on any loyal followers of Akhenaten in subsequent generations and could be responsible for initiating the great concern for monotheistic purity shown by the later Hebrews after adopting their own version of Akhenaten's monotheism. We explore this idea in more depth below. The concern for a pure monotheism was a central and defining characteristic of both Akhenaten's struggle with the Egyptian priest class and the later struggle of Judaism with native polytheistic religions. This is understandable because a pure monotheism can easily be converted into a standard polytheistic religion by simply making the One God into the head god of a hierarchy of gods, as was standard practice in those days. But doing so would rob the monotheistic religion of its purity and power and reason for being, so this was a trend that had to be struggled against repeatedly and at all costs.
Since the solar monotheistic religion founded by Akhenaten was in direct conflict with the traditional polytheistic religion of Egypt, it was heavily suppressed by the Egyptian priesthood after Akhenaten's death. However, it is quite plausible that Akhenaten started a religious movement in Egypt that had a loyal following that, most likely, would have had to go underground to survive. The religion of the Aten started at the top of the social order and was probably influential mainly in the Egyptian upper classes. The traditional religious artifacts found among the quarters of the workers who built the city of Akhetaten show that Atenism had made little influence on their beliefs. Many artifacts devoted to the traditional gods were found, but only one pottery shard with symbols of the Aten.
Moses, who was presumably raised in the Egyptian upper classes, thus could have become a follower of the Aten cult. He may have tried to proselytize the marginalized Hebrew slave class since the Egyptian people were probably too resistant to accept the Aten cult. Moses may have struck a bargain with the Hebrew slaves in which he promised to lead them out of Egypt if they agreed to follow him and become followers and converts of Akhenaten's monotheistic religion. Since Rameses II, the best candidate for the Exodus pharaoh, ruled Egypt around 1279-1213 BC, the timing of things appears to work out well.
When compared to the standard picture, several aspects of the Exodus account and the rise of the Hebrew religion make much more sense when Moses is seen to be a follower of Akhenaten's radical monotheistic religion. The monotheistic Hebrew religion seems to appear out of nowhere and was very different from any of the traditional polytheistic religions existing in most other cultures at the time. Yet the monotheistic religion of Akhenaten was already in Egypt and hence could have given birth to or been adopted by the marginalized Hebrew slave class. The conflict between the polytheistic religion of Egypt and Akhenaten's solar monotheism must have produced a bitter religious rivalry that created a strong psychological need to emphasize the supremacy of the one God of Akhenaten over all other god's, Egyptian or otherwise, by Akhenaten's minority group. A similar need, or perhaps the same, need is enshrined in the Ten Commandments as the very first commandment and is embedded in the Hebrew culture as the major precept of their religion. Moses, in order to assure the survival and propagation of the novel monotheistic religion in the face of certain opposition, chose the Hebrew tribes as the vehicle for this task and thus emphasized that they were a "chosen people", a people chosen to be the new priest class of Akhenaten's monotheistic religion. Now the Hebrews themselves probably did not, at first, see themselves in this role, since this was really an agenda that Moses (and any of his close monotheistic followers and supporters) pushed upon them. The Hebrew slaves probably just wanted to get out of Egypt and achieve a better life and so agreed to accept the help of Moses and go along with him if Moses really did help them.
The tension between the agenda of Moses and that of the ordinary Hebrew is clearly portrayed in the early books of the Bible. Most of the Hebrews may have just considered Moses to be a wacky Egyptian religious fanatic, but one whose help they were willing to accept for the time being. That would explain why Moses had to resort to such ruthless means to subject the Hebrews to his will and to impress upon them how serious he was about their adoption of the new monotheism, as the Golden Calf incident illustrates. This would also explain why the God of Moses is consistently portrayed as a jealous God who has to punish the Hebrews repeatedly for their straying ways in spite of his frequent displays of miracles and raw power.
Presumably the One God shifted in form from an abstract God of the pure solar disk to an even more mysterious, abstract and omnipotent God that would be less associated with any Egyptian influence and hence would be more resistant to simply being relabeled the top God in a polytheistic hierarchy. The story of Moses seems to show that this shift had already began. Perhaps the followers of Akhenaten elevated the Aten above all rival Egyptian Sun Gods by making their God the nameless omnipotent One God. And that would have the added benefit that they would not have to say they were followers of the Aten if questioned and tried by the Egyptian authorities. The Hebrews would also clearly want to continue the trend of disassociating themselves from Egyptian influence. Further continuation of this trend would have involved rewriting history so that Moses was actually a Hebrew slave who became an Egyptian prince via a fortuitous adoption by a childless Egyptian princess, rather than being an actual Egyptian prince. Ramses II, by the way, was very prolific and had close to 50 sons, so there were a lot of princes running around with little chance to achieve any form of greatness of their own in the shadow of their great father.
Now it may be possible, if the Biblical accounts are to be believed, that a sort of monotheism already existed among the Hebrew slaves in Egypt and so they would be a group more predisposed to accepting the solar monotheism of Akhenaten's followers. Thus this may have been a relatively natural alliance. But in any case, the earlier and probably very bitter struggle between Akhenaten and his followers and the Egyptian priest class would have set in motion a deep movement that gave rise to the strange exclusive monotheistic religion and society of the Hebrews and that, in turn, later led to monotheistic Christianity and Islam. Now we live in a world in which almost all classical versions of polytheistic religion have vanished, with the possible exception of some aspects of the Hindu religion.
An examination of the well-known Ten Commandments is useful in illustrating the primary concern for monotheism that was to be impressed on the Hebrew people by Moses. The Ten Commandments were purportedly given directly to Moses by God and hence were of great importance. So great was their importance, that the stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed were kept in a special vessel, the Ark of the Convenant, mentioned earlier. The Ark was kept in the center of the mobile tent temple constructed according to God's plan and later in the Temple in Jerusalem constructed by Solomon. Hence they were at the center of the holies of holies. Now the last six commandments deal with civil issues such as lying and murder that have been the common law in almost all societies the world has ever known. It would be a sad case if these laws were a novelty to the Hebrews and they had to learn about these very basic laws of human conduct from an all powerful deity. So basically the civil laws were there to emphasize the importance of the first four commandments, all of which deal with maintaining and supporting the monotheistic tradition. The second law is especially important because it forbids the construction of the idols that are so important in representing the various gods in a polytheistic tradition. God promises to punish people unto the third or fourth generation if they disobey this particular commandment (and the others as well) and bless people unto the thousandth generation for honoring it. No other commandment is given such importance and no other commandment is as important in maintaining the monotheistic tradition in a polytheistic world. The Ten Commandments are then immediately followed by another injunction against the construction of idols. So the Ten Commandments encapsulate the central importance of following a pure monotheism that would be expected to be emphasized by a people who have already been engaged in a long and bitter struggle against a polytheistic majority.
One fact often remarked upon in the discussions of the Biblical Exodus is that there are no Egyptian records whatsoever that mention this event. A large slave revolt led by a charismatic Egyptian prince may or may not be something that the Egyptians would mention, but it would probably be an event that would have affected their policies as the revolt of Spartacus did that of Rome. But if this was part of the conflict between the Egyptian priest class and the remaining followers of Akhenaten's heretical movement then one would expect that the priest class would make every effort to erase any records of these events, especially if they had been embarrassed by Moses in a contest of spiritual power in front of the Pharaoh. In fact, the exodus of the Hebrew slaves may have "killed two birds with one stone" for the priest class and the Pharaoh. First, Egypt was rid of an excessive slave population that could rise in revolt if it got too large (the very motivation mentioned in the Bible for the killing of the Hebrew slave children by the Pharaoh in the opening section of the book of Exodus) and secondly the priest class was rid of troublesome heretical religious fanatics that opposed the traditional religious and social order, and hence their authority. So it should not be very surprising that no record of the Exodus event can be found in Egyptian records, especially since the Egyptians only liked to record their own successes and, for the most part, remained silent on any failures or defeats.
The Name of Moses
Moses was probably of royal blood and perhaps a direct descendant of Akhenaten himself. "Moses" is part of an Egyptian name that means "son of" as in Ra-moses (Ramses) - the son of Ra or Thuthmoses - the son of Thoth. Perhaps when Moses went into exile in the Sinai, and before coming back to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt, he stripped his name of any association with Ra or any other Egyptian Gods in protest and simply became Moses. That would also be in accord with the move toward treating the One God in a more abstract fashion as simply "I am That I AM" rather than identifying it openly with the solar disk of the Aten that was so hated by the Egyptian powers that be. In addition, it would have made his name more acceptable to the Hebrew slaves who undoubtedly had no great love for their Egyptian masters. Of course, Akhenaten himself early in his reign changed his name from Amenhotep ( 'Amen is satisfied') and Moses may have been following suit.
A deeper interpretation of the Moses name is also possible. Akhenaten refers to himself as the son of the one God Aten in his hymn to Aten:
Thou are in my heart,
And there is no other that knows thee
Save thy son Nefer-kheperu-Re Wa-en-Re,
For thou hast made him well-versed in thy plans and in thy strength.
The God of Moses was a more abstract God than the visible solar disk. He was "I am THAT I AM", a god who became nameless to the later Hebrews. If Moses was his son or representative on Earth, as Akhenaten had been earlier, then in keeping with the Egyptian tradition and to honor that nameless God, he would simply be called "-moses", "-the son of", with the name of the unnameable One God left implicit.
The Story of the Birth of Moses
Was Moses really born a Hebrew slave and then raised by an Egyptian princess? His birth and adoption are described in the 2nd chapter of Exodus.
Exodus 2 - New International Version
1 Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
5 Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the river bank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it. 6 She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. "This is one of the Hebrew babies," she said.
7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?"
8 "Yes, go," she answered. And the girl went and got the baby's mother. 9 Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you." So the woman took the baby and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, [1] saying, "I drew him out of the water."
This sounds like an unlikely story but it would make sense that later Hebrew writers would concoct such a story in order to make Moses a Hebrew. Surely the Hebrews would resent the fact that the founder of their religion was actually an Egyptian rather than a Hebrew! By this ruse, such political incorrectness was conveniently avoided. Another point in favor of such a maneuver is that this story predates the birth of Moses by many centuries. Similar stories have been told in several other cultures about famous leaders that rose from humble origins to greatness and so would have been well known to an educated class in Palestine.
The Story of King Sargon's Birth
The birth story of Moses is very similar to that of the historical King Sargon of Agade who founded the world's first multi-ethnic empire with his conquest (or reconquest) of Sumer and Akkad in Mesopotamia and the northern and western portions of the fertile crescent. He ruled approximately 2334-2279 BCE.
The Sargon account reads:
1. Sargon, the mighty king of Agade, am I.
2. My mother was a lowly; my father I knew not.
3. The brothers of my father loved the mountain.
4. My city is Azupiranu, which is situated on the bank of the Euphrates.
5. My lowley mother conceived me, in secret she brought me forth.
6. She placed me in a basket of reeds, she closed my entrance with bitumen,
7. She cast me upon the river, which did not overflow me.
8. The river carried me, it brought me to Akki, the irrigator.
9. Akki, the irrigator, in the goodness of his heart lifted me up;
10. Akki, the irrigator, as his own son....brought me up;
11. Akki, the irrigator, as his gardener appointed me.
12. When I was a gardener the goddess Ishtar loved me,
13. And for four years I ruled the kingdom.
14. The blacked-headed peoples I ruled, I governed;
15. Mighty mountains with axes of bronze I destroyed.
16. I ascended the upper mountains
17. I burst through the lower mountains.
18. The country of the sea I besieged three times;
19. Dilmun I captured.
20. Unto the great Dur-ilu I went up, I....
21. .......I altered....
22. Whatsoever king shall be exalted after me,
23. .......
24. Let him rule, let him govern the black-headed peoples;
25. Mighty mountains with axes of bronze let him destroy;
26. Let him ascend the upper mountains,
27. Let him break through the lower mountains;
28. The country of the sea let him besiege three times;
29. Dilmun let him capture;
30. To great Dur-ilu let him go up.
The rest of the text is broken.
From George A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible, 7th edition, p[. 375]
The story of Karna's birth
Another story about a baby of great significance who is born anonymously and placed in a basket on a river is that of the hero Karna from the greatest epic of India, "The Mahabharata".
From "The Mahabharata", Narrated by V Lakshmanan at the website
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bridge/1771/Desh/Mb/mb.html
When Kunti Devi was young, long before the swayamvara in which she would choose the Bharata king Pandu , the sage Durvasas visited the kingdom of Kunti and stayed at the king's palace.
He was served there by the the young princess who had been the first to welcome him. He was so taken by her kindnesses to him that he taught her a splendid mantra.
``If you use this mantra,'' he told her, ``and call upon a god, the god will come down and lie with you for a night. The very next day, you shall have the god's son.''
Kunti dutifully learnt the mantra but the curiosity of youth was killing her. She yearned to use it. Sometimes, she even thought the old sage was leading her down a garden trail. ``It won't work,'' she thought to herself as she stood in the sun and chanted the mantra silently in her mind.
Or would it?
That night, Kunti went to her window and softly mouthed the mantra. In a blaze of light, the sun god himself appeared. He was resplendent and his form so lit up the room that there was no darkness anywhere. He came close to her and Kunti shut her eyes, so bright was his presence.
``You called,'' said the sun god, ``and I have come.''
``But,'' stuttered Kunti, ``I was only testing the mantra. I don't wish to have any children now. I am not married, yet.''
``I can leave now,'' said the sun god, ``if you do not wish me to stay.''
Yet, yet, the sun god was tall, jewels fell across his bare chest and his golden hair framed his face. ``Stay,'' whispered Kunti.
The next day, the son of the sun god was born to Kunti. He wore gold earrings and a gold armor and his very body shone. Kunti placed the baby in a basket and sent it floating down the Yamuna.
The basket floated down the Yamuna into the Ganges which washed it ashore in the land of Anga where it was found by the charioteer Adhiratha.
Adhiratha took the child to his wife and said, ``the gods have given us this child, who wears golden armor and earrings. We shall raise him a warrior, even though I am but a lowly charioteer.''
They named this child Karna. And Karna would prove, in the exhibition that Drona held to showcase Arjuna and his other pupils, that he was a better warrior than them all.
Summary
The exoteric religious and political issues seem well covered by the scenario described above. Moses was a follower of Akhenaten's oppressed religious movement and then became the religious and political leader of a group of Hebrew slaves selected to be the carriers of that minority religion. The near fanatic devotion to monotheism was born out of the struggle with the dominant Egyptian polytheism, much as later Christianity was shaped by Roman oppression. That monotheistic movement was so successful in the long run that it is still with us today.
Some Background Readings
1. Tutankhamen - Amenism, Atenism and Egyptian Monotheism - by Sir Ernest A. Wallis-Budge, 1923
2. The Life and Times of Akhnaton - Pharaoh of Egypt - by Arthur Weigall, 1922
3. A good on-line Bible source can be found at the Bible Gateway
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