Joshua Schachterle writes March 27, 2025 – a good article – that there is a third version of the 10 commandments in Exodus 32 when after Moses breaking the stone tablets is told by god to carve out two more stone tablets and to write out the 10 commandments on the tablets. Now, in this case god does not write the 10 commandments, Moses does. Question: In what language? Best I can determine the linear alphabet begins at a turquoise mine in the Negev at 1850 BCE, and that the Hebrew written script was not fully formed until circa 600 BCE. The Moses stories are set well before 600 BCE. Moses was raised in Pharoah’s household so if he knew how to write, he would have written hieroglyphics. This matters because the Jewish author must be projecting backward centuries later to Moses’ time frame assuming a written language familiar to the author. Conclusion, the author must have written the story centuries after the supposed Moses time frame; and supports that the Genesis/Exodus stories are myth.
Thoughts?
This is also a good case against the tradition that Moses composed the Pentateuch. I doubt seriously there was a historical Moses. As far as we can determine from archeology the Israelites were indigenous Canaanites who separated themselves out from their neighbors through cultural practices. That said, there also seems to have been much contact between Canaan and Egypt, both political and cultural. It’s not hard to imagine a group of refugees from Egypt finding a home in Canaan and influencing the locals, bring with them their cultural and religious traditions.
Steve, is that Joshua Schachterle article online? Do you have a link?
Stephen said
… It’s not hard to imagine a group of refugees from Egypt finding a home in Canaan and influencing the locals, bring with them their cultural and religious traditions. …
Especially if one of the “tribes” of Israel have many names of early patriarchs of the tribe which some consider to reflect Egyptian more than Semitic names, as with the Tribe of Levi.
Robert said
BruceRMcF said
Especially if one of the “tribes” of Israel have many names of early patriarchs of the tribe which some consider to reflect Egyptian more than Semitic names, as with the Tribe of Levi.I’ve always been sympathetic to this view of Richard Elliott Friedman. Why make up a story that Moses was really a Hebrew baby found by Pharoah’s daughter and raised as an Egyptian if there was no need to argue for the true Hebrew nature of the Levites?
Quite. Something like, “An Egyptian and his brother tries to strike a deal with a group of Semitic former refugees from the general Palestine area in a fight for political power, loses the fight, and are forced into exile from the core of Egypt into their Palestinian territories along with the cabal who had supported him. The cabal worshipped a southern Storm god YHWH rather than Baal, and spread the worship of YHWH as the primary national God (‘you shall have no other Gods before me’), among the confederation of Hebrew tribes in the Palestinian hill country. It became well enough established that it spread into the neighboring small kingdom to the south of the confederation.” makes for a much less dramatic story than the one that they eventually settled on.
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