Mythvision has some videos (especially ** you do not have permission to see this link **) defending the thesis that Moses (and the Pentateuch as a whole) dates to the Hellenistic period, about the late fourth century. He seems to be particularly influenced by the work of Russell Gmirkin.
The videos are long, and I fell asleep watching them and had to rewatch sections multiple times, but the basic case, as I have been able to put it together, goes something like this:
Despite lots of earlier documents where we might have expected some mention of Moses or knowledge of the Torah to show up, we have nothing until the 4th cent. Interestingly, this argument can be extended to the oldest books of the Old Testament–when we do find a rare mention of Moses in an early book, the passage is of dubious authenticity.
The earliest dateable reference to Moses is the Aegyptiaca of the Egyptian Hecataeus (c. 320). His story of Moses does not appear to be derived from the Pentateuch. He relates that Jerusalem was founded by Moses who led a group of Egyptian immigrants, built the temple there, established their laws, and divided them into twelve tribes. Strabo and other historians seem to echo this story.
Another extra-biblical source he draws attention to is Manetho, (an Egyptian priest writing c. 285. BC). According to his story, it was the Hyksos who, when driven out of Egypt, settled Jerusalem.
He doesn’t think these are actually historical accounts. But he does think the authors of the Pentateuch adopted and inverted these stories: Rather than hated Hyksos oppressors who were driven out of Egypt, Jerusalem was founded by oppressed slaves who overcame Egyptian might and escaped to Judea. He claims you can see traces of the earlier stories in older layers of the Penteteuch, E.g., Ex. 6:1 or Ex. 12:39 which describe the Jews as being driven out of Egypt, or the Song of the Sea in Ex. 15:17, which, in the context of Moses’s leading them our of Egypt, describes YHWH as planting them in the temple–implying, he says, an early tradition linking Moses to the establishment of the Temple in Jerusalem. Consider also 1 Sam 12:18 which describes Moses and Aaron as *settling* the people in Judea.
Anyway, that a is a very brief sketch. Is anyone familiar with this line of argument? How mainstream is it?
The earliest dateable reference to Moses is the Aegyptiaca of the Egyptian Hecataeus (c. 320). His story of Moses does not appear to be derived from the Pentateuch. He relates that Jerusalem was founded by Moses who led a group of Egyptian immigrants, built the temple there, established their laws, and divided them into twelve tribes. Strabo and other historians seem to echo this story.
I have an article somewhere that seeks to show that this account does have traces surviving in the Pentateuch, an “alternative” Moses origin story peeking out from behind the larger narrative. I’ll see if I can dig it out.
I have noted elsewhere that the Mosaic Covenant system is marginalized in the Enoch tradition of the third century. There is a reference to Sinai that leaves all that out! So as late as the third century there is still a surviving non-Mosaic strain of Hebrew tradition.
ps: Found it!
** you do not have permission to see this link **
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