themselves admitted
having learned the custom
of circumcision from the
Egyptians.
8
But an
Egyptian Moses does not appeal to him. " The
Moses we know was the ancestor of the
priests of
Qades ; he stood therefore in relation to the cult,
was a
figure of the genealogical myth and not an
historical
person. So not one of those who has
treated him as an historical
person except those
1
L.c., pp. 38, 58. 2 L.c., p. 49. 8 L.c., p. 449.
IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN
57
who accept tradition wholesale as historical truth
has succeeded in filling this empty
shape with
any content, in describing him as a concrete
personality; they have had nothing to tell us
about what he achieved or about his mission in
history.
1
On the other hand, Meyer never wearies of
telling us about Moses' relation to Qades and
Midian. " The figure of Moses so
closely bound
up with Midian and the holy places in the
desert.
55
* "
This
figure of Moses is inextricably
associated with
Qades (Massa and Meriba) ; the
relationship with a Midianite priest by marriage
completes the picture. The connection with the
Exodus, on the other hand, and the story of his
youth in its entirety, are absolutely secondary
and are merely the consequence of Moses having
to fit into a connected, continuous
story.
558
He
also observes that all the characteristics contained
in the
story of Moses
5
youth were later omitted.
"
Moses in Midian is no longer an
Egyptian and
Pharaoh
5
s
grandson, but a shepherd to whom
Jahve reveals himself. In the story of the ten
plagues his former relationships are no longer
mentioned, although they could have been used
very effectively, and the order to kill the Israelite
first-born is
entirely forgotten. In the Exodus
and the
perishing of the Egyptians Moses has no
part at all; he is not even mentioned. The
1
L.c., p. 451. 2 L.c. p. 49. 3 L.c. y p. 72.
58 MOSES AND MONOTHEISM
characteristics of a hero, which the childhood
story presupposes, are entirely absent in the later
Moses ; he is only the man of God, a performer of
miracles, provided with supernatural powers by
Jahve."
*
We cannot escape the impression that this
Moses of Qades and Midian, to whom tradition
could even ascribe the erection of a brazen
serpent
as a
healing god, is quite a different person from
the
august Egyptian we had deduced, who dis-
closed to his
people a religion in which all magic
and sorcery were most strictly abhorred. Our
Egyptian Moses differs perhaps no less from the
Midian Moses than the universal god Aton
differed from the demon
Jahve on his divine
mountain. And if we concede
any measure of
truth to the information furnished
by modern
historians, then we have to admit that the thread
we wished to draw from the surmise that Moses
was an Egyptian has broken off for the second
time; this time, so it seems, without any hope
of its
being tied again.
V
A way unexpectedly presents itself, however,
out of this
difficulty too. The efforts to recognize
in Moses a
figure transcending the priest of
!
L.c., p. 47.
IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN
59
Qades, and confirming the renown with which
tradition had invested him, were continued after
E.
Meyer by Gressmann and others. In 1922
E. Sellin made a
discovery of decisive importance.
1
He found in the book of the prophet Hosea
second half of the
eighth century unmistakable
traces of a tradition to the effect that the founder
of their
religion (Moses) met a violent end in a
rebellion of his stubborn and
refractory people.
The religion he had instituted was at the same
time abandoned. This tradition is not restricted
to Hosea : it recurs in the
writings of most of the
later
prophets; indeed, according to Sellin, it
was the basis of all the later
expectations of the
Messiah. Towards the end of the
Babylonian
exile the
hope arose among the Jewish people
that the man
they had so callously murdered
would return from the realm of the dead and lead
his contrite
people and perhaps not only his
people into the land of eternal bliss. The
palpable connections with the destiny of the
Founder of a later religion do not lie in our present
course.
Naturally I am not in a position to decide
whether Sellin has correctly interpreted the
relevant
passages in the prophets. If he is right,
however, we may regard as historically credible
the tradition he
recognized: for such things are
1
E. Sellin, Most und seine
Bedeutung fuer die israelitisch-juediscfu
Religionsgeschichte, 1922.
6O MOSES AND MONOTHEISM
not
readily invented there is no tangible motive
for
doing so. And if they have really happened
the wish to
forget them is easily understood. We
need not
accept every detail of the tradition.
Sellin thinks that Shittim in the land east of the
Jordan is indicated as the scene of the violent
deed. We shall see, however, that the choice of
this
locality does not accord with our argument.
Let us
adopt from Sellin the surmise that the
Egyptian Moses was killed by the Jews and the
religion he instituted abandoned. It allows us to
spin our thread further without contradicting the
trustworthy results of historical research. But we
venture to be
independent of the historians in
other
respects and to blaze our own trail. The
Exodus from
Egypt remains our starting-point.
It must have been a considerable number that
left the
country with Moses ; a small crowd would
not have been worth the while of that ambitious
man, with his great schemes. The immigrants
had
probably been in the country long enough
to
develop into a numerous people. We shall
certainly not go astray, however, if we suppose
with the
majority of research workers that only a
part of those who later became the Jewish people
had
undergone the fate of bondage in Egypt. In
other words, the tribe
returning from Egypt
combined later in the
country between Egypt and
Canaan with other related tribes that had been
settled there for some time. This
union, from
IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN 6 1
which was born the
people of Israel, expressed
itself in the
adoption of a new religion, common
to all the tribes, the
religion of Jahve; according
to E.
Meyer, this came about in Qades under
the influence of the Midianites.
Thereupon the
people felt strong enough to undertake the
invasion of Canaan. It does not fit in with this
course of events that the
catastrophe to Moses and
his
religion should have taken place in the land
east of the
Jordan it must have happened a long
time before the union.
It is certain that
many very diverse elements
contributed to the
building up of the Jewish
people, but the greatest difference among them
must have
depended on whether they had
experienced the sojourn in Egypt and what
followed it, or not. From this
point of view we
may say that the nation was made up by the
union of two constituents, and it accords with this
fact that, after a short
period of political unity,
it broke asunder into two
parts the Kingdom of
Israel and the
Kingdom of Judah. History loves
such restorations, in which later fusions are re-
dissolved and former
separations become once
more
apparent. The most impressive example
a
very well-known one was provided by the
Reformation, when, after an interval of more
than a thousand
years, it brought to light again
the frontier between the Germania that had been
Roman and the part that had always remained
62 MOSES AND MONOTHEISM
independent. With the Jewish people we cannot
verify such a faithful reproduction of the former
state of affairs. Our
knowledge of those times is
too uncertain to
permit the assumption that the
northern
Kingdom had absorbed the original
settlers, the southern those returning from Egypt;
but the later dissolution, in this case also, could
not have been unconnected with the earlier
union. The former
Egyptians were probably
fewer than the others, but
they proved to be on
a
higher level culturally. They exercised a more
important influence on the later development of
the
people because they brought with them a
tradition the others lacked.
Perhaps they brought something else, some-
thing more tangible than a tradition. Among the
greatest riddles of Jewish prehistoric times is that
concerning the antecedents of the Levites. They
are said to have been derived from one of the
twelve tribes of Israel, the tribe of Levi, but no
tradition has ever ventured to
pronounce on
where that tribe originally dwelt or what portion
of the
conquered country of Canaan had been
allotted to it.
They occupied the most important
priestly positions, but yet they were distinguished
from the priests. A Levite is not necessarily a
priest; it is not the name of a caste. Our sup-
position about the person of Moses suggests an
explanation. It is not credible that a great
gentleman like the Egyptian Moses approached
IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN
63
a
people strange to him without an escort. He
must have brought his retinue with him, his
nearest adherents, his scribes, his servants. These
were the original Levites. Tradition maintains
that Moses was a Levite. This seems a
transparent
distortion of the actual state of affairs: the
Levites were Moses
5
people. This solution is
supported by what I mentioned in my previous
essay: that in later times we find Egyptian
names only among the Levites. 1 We may
suppose
that a fair number of these Moses
people escaped
the fate that overtook him and his
religion.
They increased in the following generations and
fused with the
people among whom they lived,
but
they remained faithful to their master,
honoured his memory and retained the tradition
of his teaching. At the time of the union with
the followers of
Jahve they formed an influential
minority, culturally superior to the rest.
I
suggest and it is only a suggestion so far
that between the downfall of Moses and the
founding of a religion at Qades two generations
were born and vanished, that
perhaps even a
century elapsed. I do not see my way to deter-
mine whether the Neo
-Egyptians as I should
like to call those who returned from
Egypt in
distinction to the other
Jews met with their
1
This
assumption fits in well with what Yahuda says about the
Egyptian influence on early Jewish writings. See A. S. Yahuda,
Die Sprache des Pentateuch in ihren
Beziehungen zum Aegyptischen, 1929.
64 MOSES AND MONOTHEISM
blood relations after these had already
accepted
the
Jahve religion or before that had happened.
Perhaps the latter is more likely. It makes no
difference to the final result. What
happened at
Qades was a compromise, in which the part
taken
by the Moses tribe is unmistakable.
Here we may call again on the custom of
circumcision which a kind of " Leitfossil "
has
repeatedly rendered us important services.
This custom also became the law in the
Jahve
religion, and since it is inextricably connected
with
Egypt its adoption must signify a con-
cession to the
people of Moses. They or the
Levites
among them would not forgo this sign
of their consecration.
They wanted to save so
much of their old religion, and for that price they
were
willing to recognize the new deity and all
that the Midian
priests had to say about him.
Possibly they managed to obtain still other con-
cessions. We have
already mentioned that Jewish
ritual ordains a certain
economy in the use of the
name of God. Instead of Jahve they had to say
Adonai. It is
tempting to fit this commandment
into our
argument, but that is merely a surmise.
The prohibition upon uttering the name of God
is, as is well known, a primaeval taboo. Why
exactly it was renewed in the Jewish command-
ments is not
quite clear; it is not out of the
question that this happened under the influence
of a new motive. There is no reason to
suppose
IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN
65
that the commandment was
consistently followed;
the word
Jahve was freely used in the formation
of
personal theophorous names, i.e. in combina-
tions such as
Jochanan, Jehu, Joshua. Yet there
is
something peculiar about this name. It is
well known that Biblical
exegesis recognizes two
sources of the Hexateuch.
They are called J and
E because the one uses the holy name of Jahve,
the other that of Elohim ; Elohim, it is true, not
Adonai. But we
may here quote the remark of
one writer: the different names are a distinct
sign of originally different gods.
1
We admitted the adherence to the custom of
circumcision as evidence that at the
founding of
the new
religion at Qades a compromise had
taken
place. What it consisted in we learn from
both
J and E; the two accounts coincide and
must therefore go back to a common source,
either a written source or an oral tradition. The
guiding purpose was to prove the greatness and
power of the new god Jahve. Since the Moses
people attached such great importance to their
experience of the Exodus from Egypt, the deed of
freeing them had to be ascribed to Jahve; it had
to be adorned with features that
proved the
terrific
grandeur of this volcano god, such as, for
example, the pillar of smoke which changed to
one of fire
by night, or the storm that parted the
waters so that the
pursuers were drowned by the
1
Gressmann Mose und Seine ^eit^ 1913.
E
66 MOSES AND MONOTHEISM
returning floods of water. The Exodus and the
founding of the new religion were thus brought
close
together in time, the long interval between
them being denied. The bestowal of the Ten
Commandments too was said to have taken place,
not at
Qades, but at the foot of the Holy Moun-
tain amidst the
signs of a volcanic eruption. This
description, however, did a serious wrong to the
memory of the man Moses; it was he, and not
the volcano
god, who had freed his people from
Egypt. Some compensation was therefore due to
him, and it was given by transposing Moses to
Qades or to the mount Sinai -Horeb and putting
him in the place of the Midianite priest. We shall
consider later how this solution satisfied another,
irresistibly urgent, tendency. By its means a
balance, so to speak, was established
:
Jahve was
allowed to extend his reach to
Egypt from his
mountain in Midia, while the existence and
activity of Moses were transferred to Qades and
the country east of the
Jordan. This is how he
became one with the person who later established
a
religion, the son-in-law of the Midianite
Jethro, the man to whom he lent his name Moses.
We know nothing personal, however, about this
other Moses he is
entirely obscured by the first,
the
Egyptian Moses except possibly from clues
provided by the contradictions to be found in the
Bible in the characterization of Moses. He is
often
enough described as masterful, hot-tempered,
IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN
67
even violent, and yet it is also said of him
that he was the most
patient and sweet-tempered
of all men. It is clear that the latter
qualities
would have been of no use to the
Egyptian Moses
who planned such great and difficult projects for
his
people. Perhaps they belonged to the other,
the Midianite. I think we are
justified in separat-
ing the two persons from each other and in
assuming that the Egyptian Moses never was in
Qades and had never heard the name of Jahve,
whereas the Midianite Moses never set foot in
Egypt and knew nothing of Aton. In order to
make the two people into one, tradition or legend
had to bring the
Egyptian Moses to Midian ; and
we have seen that more than one explanation
was
given for it.
VI
I am
quite prepared to hear anew the reproach
that I have
put forward my reconstruction of the
early history of the tribe of Israel with undue and
unjustified certitude. I shall not feel this criticism
to be too harsh, since it finds an echo in
my own
judgement. I know myself that this reconstruc-
tion has its weak
places, but it also has its strong
ones. On the whole the
arguments in favour
of
continuing this work in the same direction
prevail. The Biblical record before us contains
68 MOSES AND MONOTHEISM
valuable, nay invaluable, historical evidence. It
has, however, been distorted by tendentious
influences and elaborated
by the products of
poetical invention. In our work we have already
been able to divine one of these distorting ten-
dencies. This discovery shall guide us on our
way. It is a hint to uncover other similar distorting
influences. If we find reasons for
recognizing the
distortions
produced by them, then we shall be able
to
bring to light more of the true course of events.
Let us
begin by marking what critical research
work on the Bible has to say about how the
Hexateuch the five Books of Moses and the
Book of Joshua, for they alone are of interest to
us here came to be written.
1
The oldest source
is considered to be
J, the Jahvistic, in the author
of which the most modern research workers think
they can recognize the priest Ebjatar, a con-
temporary of King David.
2
A little later, it is
not known how much later, comes the so-called
Elohistic, belonging to the northern kingdom.
8
After the destruction of this kingdom, in 722 B.C.,
a
Jewish priest combined portions ofJ and E and
added his own contributions. His compilation
is
designated as JE. In the seventh century
Deuteronomy, the fifth book, was added, it being
alleged that the whole of it had been newly found
1
Encyclopedia Britannica, XI Edition, 1910, Art.: Bible.
2
See Auerbach, Wuste und Gelobtes Land, 1932.
3
Astruc in 1 753 was the first to distinguish between Jahvist and
Elohist.
IF MOSES WAS AN EGYPTIAN
69
in the
Temple. In the time after the destruction
of the
Temple, in 586 B.C., during the Exile and
after the return, is
placed the re-writing called
the
Priestly Code. The fifth century