Originally Posted by Larsguy47

This is another indication that indeed this is a post-stated prophecy about Moses and the Exodus and how he would deliver Israel from Egypt.

Originally Posted by figuer

Read in one of those pseudoscholarly websites the theory that the Exodus myth originated when the priests of Aton fled Egypt afther the death of Akhenaten and took refuge in Canaan. There they kept alive a monotheistic cult, which gradualy mixed with local traditions.

Originally Posted by Larsguy47

Specifically on this connection, one belief is that the cryptic references at Isa. 19 are actually describing the conversion of Akhenaten. That is, after the 10 plagues and Israel left, the next pharaoh actually converts to a form of Yahwistic monotheism. That would be Akhenaten. In that scenario, therefore, though the Jews even in captivity were semi-practicing "monotheists" it became focal for Akhenaten and the Jews now receiving the Ten Commandments at the same time, thus the two were developed independently.

Originally Posted by Larsguy

And just how would Jehovah become known to the Egyptians? I don't think Jehovah's witnesses were out there preaching just yet! No. It was the Ten Plagues that acquainted all of Egypt with Yahweh!

Originally Posted by Riverwind

Are LarsGuy and Nazoo the same person?

Originally Posted by Jack the Bodiless

Well, at least this is the right way round.

...Whereas this isn't.

In Akhenaten's time, the Jews were polytheistic. Centuries later, when Exodus was actually written, they were henotheistic (belief in the existence of many gods, but worshipping only one): the underlying theme in Exodus is that Moses represents the new "Cult of YHWH" (the Golden Calf idol represents EL, the chief deity of the old polytheistic pantheon, the "God" of Genesis).

However, they still didn't become fully monotheistic until around the time of the Exile, which is a bit of a problem for both "Akhenaten theories".

Originally Posted by spin

I don't think they did.

Jews had been in Egypt since the movement Jeremiah alludes to, when Gedaliah was assassinated. Jews were also used as soldiers by the Persians and Cambyses established some as a garrison at Elephantine, so there was a sizable presence of Jews in Egypt well before 500BCE, a presence which the Egyptians did not appreciate, for the Egyptians equated the Jews with Semitic peoples that had fled from Egypt many centuries earlier. Egyptian folk traditions connected the Jews with the Hyksos in various garbled forms, as Josephus writers about in Contra Apion.

It was an Egyptian tradition which has the Jews making an exodus from Egypt. So, why should the Jews doubt it?


There is little doubt that the Jews were Canaanites. How else would they have a Canaanite language? Had they spent a long period in Egypt, where are the traces of Egyptian language on Hebrew. We can see the effects of Greek on Hebrew and Aramaic, but Egyptian on Hebrew is basically zilch.

Archaeology shows that there was no such intrusion of a foreign culture as the conquest implies. What it tells us is that the same material culture was there throughout the Iron Age.

What one should explain is the notion of Israel being empty after Nebuchadnezzar, when we know that it wasn't. Nebuchadnezzar took away the upper classes and left everyone else. Without a directing class structure the land would have fewer rebellious tendencies. So why did the returnees need an empty Israel propaganda? They had to retake the promised land -- from the same people who were left when the nobles were deported, their own lower classes! The returnees entered the promised land just as the returnees from Egypt did according to the developing tradition.


spin