bacht

Apart from the Exodus there's the question of the Torah, the laws in the Pentateuch. They came from somewhere, and apparently were associated with Moses since at least the time of Ezra (5th C bce). The Samaritans also used the Torah, though they worshipped separately from the Jerusalem temple.

gdeering

Thanks for that reminder, ultimately it turns out that Moses was a writer.


Gregg

spin

That's if you trust the book of Ezra, but wasn't it written centuries after that time? The events attributed to Ezra were a reconstitution of the Jewish faith, the rebirth of the society based on the torah. Such a earth-shaking event doesn't even rate a mention by Ben Sira in the historical synopsis he placed in his book of wisdom (Ecclesiasticus). Even Nehemiah gets a mention, but zippo on the man who kickstarted the religion after its fall. (Sir. 49 takes us through from Josiah to Nehemiah.) There are times when argument from silence makes a big noise.

So, when exactly was that time from which the law was associated with Moses? I've proposed the notion that the exodus tradition is in fact of origin an Egyptian reaction to the Jews who entered the country from the time of the exile, then more introduced under the Persians. Josephus records a tradition of a certain Osarsiph, or Moses, who led a group of lepers away from Egypt chased by the Egyptians, an event that the Egyptians related to the Jews, but was in fact a rehashing of the ejection of the Hyksos. So, was the exodus tradition a reworking of a scurrilous Egyptian polemical attack on the Jews based on the expulsion of the Hyksos? It works for me. The actual historical data we have of the literature allows it. (I pointed out for example the fact that the city of Pithom, mentioned in Exodus 1, was the construction of Necho II ~600 BCE.) How can we date Exodus earlier?


spin

bacht

Well, Josephus mentions Ezra, but of course this is later than ben Sira. Wouldn't the Persian era be the logical time for the establishment of monotheism? They loved Cyrus, according to deutero-Isaiah.

Cambyses conquered Egypt in 525. Then there was a revolt in 486 and another in 460. If Jews were mercenaries for Persia it would make sense that Egyptian nationalists would want them out.

semiopen

It is difficult to support that, given a 13th or 14th centuries BCE as a time when Moses lived.

There are only a few passages in the bible that might be as late as the 10th or 11th centuries BCE.

Here is an interesting analysis of

Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts

The authors seem a little conservative but at least it is an introduction to dating the biblical texts.

spin

I don't know when monotheism was established. There was a lot of henotheism in the Hebrew bible--you can only serve YHWH, no other god. But when monotheism was established is not really an indicator of when the Moses traditions were established.

True, but how does that help us get at a date for the Moses tradition?


spin

Clivedurdle

No!

Possibly theological or astrological m.....

Go to Jung. Go directly to Jung. Do not pass go. Do not collect £200.

(This stuff about the twelve tribes and its astrological meaning is fascinating. Jung is the best source for discussion of this.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_and_Alchemy

bacht

It might be a late possibility if Persian-friendly Jews were expelled. If the Moses tradition was earlier we have to look at possibilities like your Hyksos example. There was the disaster of Josiah killed by Necho, but I don't know how that would be spun into a large-scale migration. Shishak invaded Canaan ca 925 but I don't see how his campaign could be remembered as an exodus.

Moses was supposedly the leader of some group of Hebrews crossing the frontier early in Israel's history. He was also supposedly the author of the Hebrew legal code. Maybe the latter was attributed to him at a later date, or vice-versa.

spin

I don't know if I got my original idea across, but I mention the Hyksos as a source for the Egyptians of the Persian period to project onto the Jews of the Persian period. The Egyptians had long before driven out the Hyksos and now in the Persian period they would be identifying the Hebrews as those people. It wouldn't be a difficult effort for the Egyptians, given that the Jews came from where the Hyksos ended up.

Moses has lots of interesting traditions that didn't make it into the bible, if you read Josephus and others. Moses was a general who fought in the south of Egypt and he married an Ethiopian princess. These were stories obviously produced by Jews in Egypt. Moses speculation was productive there. There was event a Greek play written in the 3rd/2nd c. about him, from which fragments survive.


spin

Clivedurdle

Made in Alexandria?