No such thing as Moses

[_Jersey Girl]

Throwing this in for anyone who is interested in reading it.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/gerald_larue/otll/chap2.html

[_Jersey Girl]

Yes, I believe that some of the people referenced in the Old Testament stories may well have existed. There's no reason to suppose that they all could not possibly have existed. And I don't really think that Brenton would disagree with this.

No I don't. This is the same as the Egyptian Pharaohs though, the scribes and temple builders dramatised things in their favor.

If any characters in the Israelite scriptures did exist, then, they're more than likely the less significant ones in my opinion.

That the ancients dramatized events in no way discounts the possibilty that their oral histories are laced with historical fact as well as references to human beings who did infact exist.

[_Jersey Girl]

I want a piece of this one, Jersey Girl.

You got it! Let me work my way through your post now.

Yes, I believe that some of the people referenced in the Old Testament stories may well have existed. There's no reason to suppose that they all could not possibly have existed. And I don't really think that Brenton would disagree with this.

I think that some of them did indeed exist. I think that the oral histories of tribes were precious to them in telling the story of their tribe and rounding out the identity of the tribe. Orality was the only method of generational transmission for the nomadic tribes we're talking about. That the stories contain (let's call it) testimony of the ancients perceived encounters with God (Sky God or whomever) or that they attributed victories to a god, doesn't rule out that the persons they spoke of (and later wrote of...I think starting 1000BC or so forward) existed.

But in the case of Moses, there's no particularly good reason to believe that he definitely did exist, and there's some pretty good reason to suspect that he didn't.

I'm listening with my eyes.

In particular, there's some very serious and credible doubt as to whether the Exodus, in which Moses plays a central role, is in fact real history, or made up legend. And if it's just made up legend, then what good reason is there for insisting that Moses, unlike the story he starred in, actually was a real person after all?

There is no archaelogical evidence for the Exodus in the time frame we assume the Bible references. I do think there is some support for the theory that the Exodus is the retelling of the Hyksos Expulsion. We'll likely never know what his historical fact in that regard. My issue isn't with the Exodus or the religious stories. My issue with Brenton is his total dismissal of persons mentioned in the Bible because the stories contain the expression of god belief. Does Brenton think that no persons mentioned in the Bible existed? I think that's what he's saying and if so, that's an utterly absurd position to take. in my opinion.

I'm not disputing that Moses might have existed. He might have, sure. But there's no compelling reason to believe that he did, and lots of sources of doubt and justification for skepticism.

Show me the sources of doubt and justification. When I offered up Sarah Palin's recent remark regarding God's will, Brenton's reply was that she was historical because she wasn't mentioned in the Bible. Sarah Palin, by her own words, will attribute the outcome of tonight's election to the will of God. The ancients, too, attributed their victories and losses to the will of God. Didn't they?

And you aren't helping matters by pointing out that all of the material which mentions Moses is part of this ensemble of highly dubious orally-transmitted religious mythology.

And that is where you and I disagree, Sethbag. The orally-transmitted material is laced with religious mythology and historical fact. The stories are not entirely fable, they are the oral histories of the tribes. That they express religious belief is the same thing as Sarah Palin expressing HER religious belief. Are you ready to defend the position that the various territorial battles mentioned in the Bible didn't happen? The Table of Tribes is total fiction? If so, I'd like to see you throw out every account in the Bible as non-historical. That the stories are dramatized (as Brention points out regarding the Egyptians),doesn't demand that the persons mentioned in the Tankh are ficitious.

All that does is reinforce Brenton's point, which is that there isn't any material, that mentions Moses, that isn't irretrievably mixed up with religious folkore and mythology.

That gets a big "so what" from me, Sethbag. They were god believers of various persuasions in their journey. OF COURSE they attributed events to their God.

For heaven's sake, Jersey Girl, the "five books of Moses" start with Adam and Eve as the first people on Earth, 6000 years ago in a Garden with a talking snake, go on to Noah building a wooden ship and saving all forms of life on Earth from existinction through a global catastrophic flood, to people trying to build a tower to reach God and God then changing all of their languages so that they couldn't understand each other, to thwart them, describes a massive Exodus from Egypt of many thousands of Israelites, which is looking more and more like sheer fantasy, etc.

What has that got to do with anything? There is no possible way that Moses authored the Pentatuch. Please don't pull out the Tower of Babel as an example. It's simply an ancient explanation for the diversity of languages centered around the ancient practice of constructing ziggarats. (Excuse my spelling throughout this post!)

These records literally reek of mythology and folklore.

Of course they reek of mythology and folklore. Why would you expect otherwise?

And if these records are all you can show that mention Moses, are you really arguing that there's still more reason to believe Moses is real, than to believe that he's part and parcel of the folklore and mythology?

What other records would you expect Moses to show up in? What other records are there for anyone who existed during that time period? We're talking about ancient people whose only method of transmitting their history was through passing on verbal accounts. Do you think they did so carelessly? Do you tell the story of your own family history carelessly?

I don't think you've made your case.

The only case I've attempted to make thus far is the importance of ancient tribal orality. Plain and simple. Orality was the only method available to them with which to preserve their histories. That they are laced with religious expression speaks to the culture, not the historicity of the persons mentioned therein.

[_Brenton]

Does Brenton think that no persons mentioned in the Bible existed? I think that's what he's saying and if so, that's an utterly absurd position to take. in my opinion.

Mythologies in other countries were not based off real people, it's obvious to anyone who takes a look at them.
Moses is not credible, because he is a mythological archetype. He represents the age of ARIES. When he comes down Mt. Sinai and sees the Israelites worshipping a cow, he is supposedly angry at their idolatry, but what this infact is is that they are worshipping the age before Aries, and on the new age everyone must shed the old age according to tradition -- this is repeated throughout history. There are other personages/deities which "kill" the bull.

It's all just astrotheological myth. There is no good reason to expect Moses existed.

"Of course they reek of mythology and folklore. Why would you expect otherwise?"
So if you take away all the folklore -- you have very little left except "begat, begat, begat..."

[_Gazelam]

The biblical chronology dates the birth of Moses to around 1527 BC. In the new chronology of Egypt, the pharaoh on the throne of Egypt was Neferhotep I of the 13th Dynasty.

Artapanus writes that a pharaoh named Palmanothes was persecuting the Israelites. His daughter Merris adopted a Hebrew child who grew up to be called prince Mousos. Merris married a pharaoh Khenephres. Prince Mousos grew up to administer the land on behalf of this pharaoh. He led a military campaign against the Ethiopians who were invading Egypt; however, upon his return, Khenephres grew jealous of his popularity. Mousos then fled to Arabia to return when Khenephres died and lead the Israelites to freedom. It may be only a Mosaic story with similarities to the biblical account, yet the only pharaoh with the name Khenephres was Sobekhotep IV, who took the name Khaneferre at his coronation. He reigned soon after Neferhotep I of the 13th Dynasty, as mentioned above, the pharaoh in power at Moses' birth!

Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews', with access to very old manuscripts and writing in AD 93, also mentioned Moses' Ethiopian or Kushite war. Here, Moses led an Egyptian army down the Nile valley, past the Third Cataract, deep into Kush (modern Ethiopia). In the British Museum is a stela which tells of a 13th Dynasty pharaoh undertaking a campaign south into the region of Kush. That pharaoh is none other than Khaneferre, the step-father of Moses according to Artapanus. He is the only 13th Dynasty pharaoh who is recorded as having campaigned into Upper Nubia or Ethiopia. At Kerma on the Nile an official Egyptian building was found, outside of which was discovered a statue of Khaneferre, so dating this building to the 13th Dynasty. This is many hundreds of kilometers south of the known boundaries of 13th Dynasty Egypt and may have been a governor's residence'. It would have been built to secure Egyptian interests in the area after the military victory of the Egyptians led by Moses, as this was the only Kushite war at that time with Egypt. As Moses was a prince of Egypt and was 40 years old according to the Bible when he fled to Arabia, he could certainly have led this military operation - an Israelite leading an Egyptian army to war! If this part of Josephus' account is true then it adds weight to the rest of his account of the life of Moses and also gives us some firmer evidence of the existence of this charismatic leader!
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[_Calculus Crusader]

You'll have to keep waiting because finding the thread in the Celestial forum is not a priority for me right now.

don't bother, it was someone else squirt.

You have my sincere apology for confusing you with JAK.

[_Calculus Crusader]

CC, you owe TAK an apology. Are you Mormon enough to humble yourself and offer this man an apology?

I'm not Mormon at all. (Thank heaven.) He did deserve an apology, though.

[_Sethbag]

There is no archaelogical evidence for the Exodus in the time frame we assume the Bible references. I do think there is some support for the theory that the Exodus is the retelling of the Hyksos Expulsion.

You mean a retelling but with all of the facts altered? If that were true, it wouldn't bode well for the truthfulness of any given fact gleaned from that story in scripture. "Ok, the Exodus didn't happen per se, but the story of the expulsion of the Hyksos may have been repurposed by ancient Israelites and told with Israelites being lead by Moses as the central characters, so even though all the details with regards the Israelites are made up, Moses must still have been real." Sorry, does not follow.

We'll likely never know what his historical fact in that regard. My issue isn't with the Exodus or the religious stories. My issue with Brenton is his total dismissal of persons mentioned in the Bible because the stories contain the expression of god belief. Does Brenton think that no persons mentioned in the Bible existed? I think that's what he's saying and if so, that's an utterly absurd position to take. in my opinion.

We know that the Old Testament is a mixture of history and mythology. Certainly some of the people mentioned in the Old Testament in fact existed, as did places and probably some other events.

The most rational basis for confirming the real existence of figures or stories in the Old Testament is independent confirmation from non-Old Testament sources, through archeology or whatever.

You seem to be arguing that there are no non-Old Testament sources, because all of the sources that existed ended up in the Old Testament. That may, or may not, be true, but it certainly doesn't give us any particular reason to believe that a character in the Old Testament really existed, who cannot otherwise be independently verified.

I'm not disputing that Moses might have existed. He might have, sure. But there's no compelling reason to believe that he did, and lots of sources of doubt and justification for skepticism.

Show me the sources of doubt and justification.

I'm not a scholar of ancient Israel, and have just read some things from time to time, but I'll mention the factors working in my mind to undermine the claim to historicity of Moses. They are that the Exodus is now in very serious doubt, and the belief, which I've read in various places though I can't recall now to cite them, that the Israelites were not foreigners who came into Canaan and kicked the Canaanites out, but rather were just Canaanites themselves, who rose to prominence in various local squabbles and fighting and whatnot.

I've already covered the idea that Moses, as the central figure of the Exodus, is cast into doubt if the rest of the Exodus story is invented (and it matters not if it was invented out of whole cloth, or was a "retelling" of someone else's story, like the Hyksos).

In the Old Testament Moses is central to the story of how the Israelites got to the land of Israel, and part of that story is that Moses himself was not allowed in, but in fact only glimpsed it from afar, and that it was Joshua and the next generation who went in and conquered the existing peoples and took the land for Israel. Well, if it turns out that in fact the Israelites were just Canaanites who over time came to dominate the other Canaanites politically and militarily, then the whole story of the how the Israelites came to enter Canaan and conquer it is fictional. With the major relevant details invented, why should we believe that the man Moses, too, is not invented?

If the Israelites were just a faction of Canaanites who rose to prominence in wars against their neighbors, then how could Moses not have ever entered Canaan? If this "Israel as Canaanites" theory is correct, then apparently all relevant details of Moses's life and rule appear to have been part of fictional, "legendary" accounts, and the Old Testament itself discounts the idea that Moses ever actually lived in Israel (or Canaan). So, why should we believe that despite everything else having to do with these stories having been invented, Moses himself was more likely not invented too?

Moreover, if the Israelites really were just fellow Canaanites who eventually out-competed the other Canaanites for prominence, then this whole thing about Moses only glimpsing it but never entering sounds a lot like the kind of story that reinforces his being a character of myth, rather than of fact.

And that is where you and I disagree, Sethbag. The orally-transmitted material is laced with religious mythology and historical fact. The stories are not entirely fable, they are the oral histories of the tribes. That they express religious belief is the same thing as Sarah Palin expressing HER religious belief. Are you ready to defend the position that the various territorial battles mentioned in the Bible didn't happen? The Table of Tribes is total fiction? If so, I'd like to see you throw out every account in the Bible as non-historical. That the stories are dramatized (as Brention points out regarding the Egyptians),doesn't demand that the persons mentioned in the Tankh are ficitious.

I'm not saying it's all fiction. I accept that some of the things in the Old Testament really happened, and some of the things in the Old Testament are a sort of crude historical fiction, with a basis in fact but with material facts invented or fictionalized. And separating fact from fiction is something I would expect archeologists to do over time, as they were able to confirm or deny various details from the Old Testament.

For example, I have no problem accepting that as part of their becoming prominent in the land, the Israelites engaged in warfare against other peoples. The question is, was this just one faction of Canaanites warring against their neighbors, or was this Israelites moving in from out of state and kicking out the current inhabitants, while their elder statesman Moses never actually got to live in this promised land, but his successors did? If the true scenario is the former, then obvious the latter is substantially invented history, and there's no particular reason to accept any specific part of the claims as being true, absent independent verification.

That gets a big "so what" from me, Sethbag. They were god believers of various persuasions in their journey. OF COURSE they attributed events to their God.

The mere fact that we accept that these people would have made fictionalized claims involving a non-existent deity does not present us with any compelling reason to take their other claims seriously.

What has that got to do with anything? There is no possible way that Moses authored the Pentatuch. Please don't pull out the Tower of Babel as an example. It's simply an ancient explanation for the diversity of languages centered around the ancient practice of constructing ziggarats. (Excuse my spelling throughout this post!)

These records literally reek of mythology and folklore.

Of course they reek of mythology and folklore. Why would you expect otherwise?

I wouldn't. But it does not follow that just because we can expect their accounts to be heavily fictionalized, that we therefore ought to believe any particular person named in these accounts really did exist anyway, absent independent verification. And no, it's not the Israelites' "fault" that we can't independently verify these things, but that still gives us no reason to believe them.

And if these records are all you can show that mention Moses, are you really arguing that there's still more reason to believe Moses is real, than to believe that he's part and parcel of the folklore and mythology?

What other records would you expect Moses to show up in? What other records are there for anyone who existed during that time period?

I wouldn't expect other records. There might be other records, there might not be. Whether there are, or aren't, is not anybody's fault. We're not blaming the Israelites for anything. It's really immaterial whether it surprises us or not that there are no records independently confirming the existence of Moses. The fact remains that they don't.

This non-existence of other records does not constitute a reason why we should be biased in favor of believing that the Moses described in the heavily fictionalized accounts really did exist.

We're talking about ancient people whose only method of transmitting their history was through passing on verbal accounts. Do you think they did so carelessly? Do you tell the story of your own family history carelessly?

Whether this can be chalked up to carelessness, or not, is a judgment call that I find irrelevant to the conversation - the fact remains that their accounts, as they survive to us today, are heavily fictionalized accounts, containing major story elements which are either made up entirely, or else are adaptations of other regional mythology (like the Flood of Noah) with details changed to a more specifically Israelite version. These ancients, whether through carelessness or whatever other reason, have not left us stories we can be confident in believing as actual, literal history (absent independent verification).

The only case I've attempted to make thus far is the importance of ancient tribal orality. Plain and simple. Orality was the only method available to them with which to preserve their histories. That they are laced with religious expression speaks to the culture, not the historicity of the persons mentioned therein.

This is all totally irrelevant to the question at hand. It may be that the culture of the people in question was such that we get no faithful, literally-true history handed down to us from their time, and are left with nothing more than various mythologies mixed together with heavily-fictionalized accounts of things that have a basis in some fact. Whatever the reasons for that, we're still left with heavily-fictionalized accounts mixed with pure mythology, and no particular reason to believe that any given person or event in the stories ought to be taken as true fact, absent some kind of independent verification.

And, again, if there is no independent verification possible, then we may be SOL in terms of sorting out the true figures from the purely mythological. Nobody owes us the truth here. We either have it, or we find it, or we don't. The Flying Spaghetti Monster (peace be upon his noodly appendage) doesn't really give a sauce whether we do or don't.

[_Addictio]

Just wanted to add a comment or two to sorta update where things have continued to go.

If Israel Finkelstein's (and certain others') assessment of the archaeological data is correct, then the problem of a retrojected Moses continues to play out in what were long thought to be the "historical" books regarding David and Solomon. If he's right that the Jerusalem site and immediate surroundings reflect no more than a very small, village-sized set of structures (and associated small-scale economy) for the ninth and tenth centuries, then David's and Solomon's "empire" is also a retrojected construct, not a "history" authored by contemporary Jeurusalemites, or even a later-composed text based upon genuine, same-generation documents/records like a Jerusalem "court history" or "succession history."

Quite a different situation from that supposed by two or three generations of "historical-critical method" scholars (from Wellhausen to contemporary folks like R. Friedman) and even by "secularist" literary critics like Howard Bloom. No? If Finkelstein et al are right, then the whole idea of a tenth-century "Solomonic Enlightenment," for example, during which all that high-quality, sophisticated literary activity supposedly took place, is just the text having its way (again) with readers/scholars who think they have figured out where "myth" leaves off and that other more honorable (and maybe more "orienting") category, "history" begins, in the Hebrew Bible narratives.

Anyway, akin to what Sethbag was saying about Moses, something "somewhat like" the complicated, dramatic, fascinating David/Solomon "succession story" may have actually happened; per Finkelstein, maybe certain actual events in the more powerful, earlier kingdom of Samaria of the eighth century were adapted and projected back, into a previous century and an imagined, golden-aged Jerusalem. Makes sense. That's what lovely, wealthy, nostalgia-inducing "golden ages" are for, after all. Things like comforting your kin-friends and torturing your enemies, I mean.

[_karl61]

just to add real quickly to thoughts about moses. I did read recently about Jesus arguing with some people that Moses wrote and testified about him. At least to the author of the Gospel of John ( I think around chapter 6) moses wrote about him.