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history and myth of Exodus

Hmm, Even the story you tell bears very little resemblance to the standard Moses narrative. It seems like we might be getting into King Arthur territory here. There may have been a man named Moses who was a leader and who lived in Egypt for awhile. Just about the level of detail and knowledge available for the hypothetical historical King Arthur.

The problem, is of course, that Moses, if he existed is only one of 1000's of ancient leaders for which the details of have long since faded into time. The only difference here is that the particular leader got elevated into the heroic figure of religions that most of us have at least a cultural connection to and thus some interest in. That doesn't mean there are any facts available to satisfy our curiosity.

One problem with this angle, tho, is the solidity of the Moses-as-lawgiver story.

Had Moses just been one of many rulers who one group happened to have chosen as the lawgiver, we would expect competition from other groups claiming that, no, it was their guy, especially the Aaronites.

But even at their Moses-bashing worst, the Aaronites never disputed that it was Moses who had the Law written on tablets as dictated from the most high God directly to him (typical of the times).

If we want to go with the most typical scenario for the Ancient Near East, then we would expect that Moses did in fact promulgate the first central code of law for the Hebraic tribes, that he had that law written on clay tablets and sent out to the tribes to serve as a guide for the judges, that he presented this law has having been received from the most high god, and that one especially sacred set of tablets with the law was kept in a central location under the protection of the High Priest and his court.

And when the most typical scenario fits the evidence, you have to let that stand as the central hypothesis.

That said, the most likely scenario isn't always the one which turns out to have actually occurred!
 
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That said, the most likely scenario isn't always the one which turns out to have actually occurred!

Before this discussion turns unfriendly, I think everybody should keep this in mind. The issue here is not what happened but what is most likely to have happened. Everybody is making guesses and I want to acknowledge that everybody in this conversations seems to be better informed on this topic than I am.

As to Moses-as-lawgiver:
The argument as I understand here is that it would have been difficult to pitch an entirely unknown entity as the great originator of Jewish religion and culture unless the disparate groups of Judea and Israel had some common memory of somebody name Moses that was a leader. And if there is any kernel of truth to the idea that Moses existed he probably was viewed as the great lawgiver even before his story was written down and standardized. Sounds plausible and bordering on likely to me but HM may not agree.

I'm glad Piggy mentioned the Aaronites. Does the existence of this group provide support for the existence of an actual historical Moses?

Definition of historical Moses: Hebrew leader that left Egypt and was part of group that established returning Hebrews into a position of power or priestly authority.

Everything up to now seems to be centered on theories that date to about 1200 bce. Does everybody reject the much earlier dates and the much earlier pharaohs for the inspiration of the Exodus story?

Does anybody believe that any particular pharaoh is a leading candidate or pair of pharaohs since I guess there are two in the story?
 
Before this discussion turns unfriendly, I think everybody should keep this in mind. The issue here is not what happened but what is most likely to have happened. Everybody is making guesses and I want to acknowledge that everybody in this conversations seems to be better informed on this topic than I am.

As to Moses-as-lawgiver:
The argument as I understand here is that it would have been difficult to pitch an entirely unknown entity as the great originator of Jewish religion and culture unless the disparate groups of Judea and Israel had some common memory of somebody name Moses that was a leader. And if there is any kernel of truth to the idea that Moses existed he probably was viewed as the great lawgiver even before his story was written down and standardized. Sounds plausible and bordering on likely to me but HM may not agree.

I'm glad Piggy mentioned the Aaronites. Does the existence of this group provide support for the existence of an actual historical Moses?

Definition of historical Moses: Hebrew leader that left Egypt and was part of group that established returning Hebrews into a position of power or priestly authority.

Everything up to now seems to be centered on theories that date to about 1200 bce. Does everybody reject the much earlier dates and the much earlier pharaohs for the inspiration of the Exodus story?

Does anybody believe that any particular pharaoh is a leading candidate or pair of pharaohs since I guess there are two in the story?

We kow there's already a people called Israel in Canaan at the time of Merneptah, ca. 1200 BCE. Assuming there even was a minor Exodus event, involving only the Levites or even just a band that later became the core of the Levites they could have arrived before or after his reign. The earliest of what Dever sees as Proto-Israelite sites are dated to the 12th. century, i.e. 1100s. That might make Ramesses III the pharaoh under whom the Levites left Egypt - perhaps with his blessing. Remember that he did settle units of the Philistines, and probably the Shardana, in Canaan as garrison troops after defeating the massive invasion at the Nile delta. Might he also have resettled some rather troublesome slaves there as well?
 
We kow there's already a people called Israel in Canaan at the time of Merneptah, ca. 1200 BCE. Assuming there even was a minor Exodus event, involving only the Levites or even just a band that later became the core of the Levites they could have arrived before or after his reign. The earliest of what Dever sees as Proto-Israelite sites are dated to the 12th. century, i.e. 1100s. That might make Ramesses III the pharaoh under whom the Levites left Egypt - perhaps with his blessing. Remember that he did settle units of the Philistines, and probably the Shardana, in Canaan as garrison troops after defeating the massive invasion at the Nile delta. Might he also have resettled some rather troublesome slaves there as well?

I'm with you here, except for the last bit. The Levites would not have been slaves, but highly elite people.

I also don't think it's particularly useful to try to identify which actual pharaoh was the "pharaoh" of the exodus stories, since it seems pretty clear at this point that the written exodus tales are mere propaganda. The "pharaoh" of those tales is no one.
 
I think everybody should keep this in mind. The issue here is not what happened but what is most likely to have happened.

Absolutely. History is always about probabilities based on available evidence, and you just can't get any better than that. Wish we could, but we can't.

And we have to temper our certainty with the understanding that unlikely events do occur. In fact, even million-to-one shots happen.

I will also echo a point made by Richard Friedman: The strongest evidence for any theory of Biblical history is not any single piece of evidence, but rather convergence.

Which is to say... when multiple threads of evidence from diverse fields of scholarship -- archaeology, comparative history, linguistic analysis, etc. -- all point to the same conclusion, then we are moved to prefer that scenario over others.

The primary problem with most contrarian positions is that they do not provide convergence. And the reason most successful new theories become mainstream is that they do provide convergence.

For example, there are always radical theorists who want to take pot shots at the documentary theory -- that is, our current understanding of the composition of the modern Hebrew Bible from multiple sources -- but as our understanding increases, we find that more and more arrows point in that direction.

Especially important is the linguistic puzzle, filled in year by year as we uncover more documents, which allows us to more accurately date not only manuscripts but the sources of those manuscripts.

Contrarians are able to posit alternative scenarios for each individual piece of evidence (this is always possibe) but those scenarios point in a hundred different directions. They do not converge.

So if anyone wants to truly challenge the documentary theory, or the contemporary understanding of the historical Jesus, they can't simply serve up less-likely alternative scenarios for each individual piece of evidence. To do so is to multiply by a fraction.

Any real challenge will have to present a coherent alternate scenario that adds up and fits together at least as well as, and preferably better than, the existing theory.

Hypotheses about Moses and the exodus are not on ground that's as solid as the documentary theory or our view of the historical Jesus. But there are clearly ideas that exhibit much better convergence than others.

I do have my preferences for explanations, and there are some explanations that I find extremely unlikely, but in this case, I freely admit that new discoveries could radically change our perspective in ways that are no longer possible with either the DT or HJ.

For my money, at the moment, it seems to me that the existing evidence is best explained by an actual leader named Moses who solidified his place in history by promulgating the first written law code to the Hebrews.

If you asked me to put money on it, though, I wouldn't take nearly the same odds as I would for DT or HJ, for which I would take some very long odds indeed.
 
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For my money, at the moment, it seems to me that the existing evidence is best explained by an actual leader named Moses who solidified his place in history by promulgating the first written law code to the Hebrews.

Does the Moses you envision lead a group out of Egypt?

Does he lead a group that lives outside Judea/Israel for an extended period of time?

Does he have a brother named Aaron?

Do you have some thoughts about whether he died before entering Judea/Israel?

Do you believe there was a Joshua?

What I'm getting at here is that so far I'm clear that you think there was an HM but I'm wondering whether your views are so vague about the guy that you don't really believe we know enough about him to make a good guess as to whether substantial elements of the biblical story have a factual foundation.
 
Absolutely. History is always about probabilities based on available evidence, and you just can't get any better than that. Wish we could, but we can't.

And we have to temper our certainty with the understanding that unlikely events do occur. In fact, even million-to-one shots happen.

I will also echo a point made by Richard Friedman: The strongest evidence for any theory of Biblical history is not any single piece of evidence, but rather convergence.

Which is to say... when multiple threads of evidence from diverse fields of scholarship -- archaeology, comparative history, linguistic analysis, etc. -- all point to the same conclusion, then we are moved to prefer that scenario over others.

The primary problem with most contrarian positions is that they do not provide convergence. And the reason most successful new theories become mainstream is that they do provide convergence.

For example, there are always radical theorists who want to take pot shots at the documentary theory -- that is, our current understanding of the composition of the modern Hebrew Bible from multiple sources -- but as our understanding increases, we find that more and more arrows point in that direction.

Especially important is the linguistic puzzle, filled in year by year as we uncover more documents, which allows us to more accurately date not only manuscripts but the sources of those manuscripts.

Contrarians are able to posit alternative scenarios for each individual piece of evidence (this is always possibe) but those scenarios point in a hundred different directions. They do not converge.

So if anyone wants to truly challenge the documentary theory, or the contemporary understanding of the historical Jesus, they can't simply serve up less-likely alternative scenarios for each individual piece of evidence. To do so is to multiply by a fraction.

Any real challenge will have to present a coherent alternate scenario that adds up and fits together at least as well as, and preferably better than, the existing theory.

Hypotheses about Moses and the exodus are not on ground that's as solid as the documentary theory or our view of the historical Jesus. But there are clearly ideas that exhibit much better convergence than others.

I do have my preferences for explanations, and there are some explanations that I find extremely unlikely, but in this case, I freely admit that new discoveries could radically change our perspective in ways that are no longer possible with either the DT or HJ.

For my money, at the moment, it seems to me that the existing evidence is best explained by an actual leader named Moses who solidified his place in history by promulgating the first written law code to the Hebrews.
If you asked me to put money on it, though, I wouldn't take nearly the same odds as I would for DT or HJ, for which I would take some very long odds indeed.

Concerning the hilited area, what code are referring to? It can't the either that found in Leviticus, parts of Numbers and much of Exodus nor can it be the one in Deuteronomy (P and D, respectively).
 
Concerning the hilited area, what code are referring to? It can't the either that found in Leviticus, parts of Numbers and much of Exodus nor can it be the one in Deuteronomy (P and D, respectively).
Yes, which code? There are three sets of commandments. The earliest, and the only one explicitly labelled "the Ten Commandments" in the Torah, is in Exodus 34. It is void of moral content, and consists of cultic regulations, indicating that by the time it was composed, an elaborate priesthood already existed.

The author of Deutoronomy was not Moses. Autobiographies never contain accounts of their authors' death, or relate that their tombs can no longer be found.
 
I've been thinking about this issue a bit. Coming into this thread my view was that the Moses narrative was completely fiction and I was a bit surprised to find disagreement on that.

But how far from complete fiction is this thing?

OK, there was a guy who lived in Egypt sometime around 1200 BCE that lead a contingent through the desert that would eventually control the Judea/Israel area.

But was it a big group as the bible says. Well no. There is no evidence of large encampments in the desert in the relevant time frame.

OK, so it was a small group. But how small could it have been? This group is supposed to eventually successfully conquer significant portions of Judea/Israel. OK so maybe it was just the right size so as to not leave a detectable amount of artifacts behind but big enough so that they could eventually conquer Judea/Israel.

And they hung out in the desert for forty years? Well that seems like a stretch. What did they eat? OK maybe they didn't do that much hanging out in the desert.

But then this group goes on to do all this conquering. Except the cities they supposedly conquered didn't exist at the right time or they showed no signs of mass destruction in the right time frame.

So what kind of an historical Moses do we have here. The birth narrative looks to be completely made up, probably no hanging out with the pharaoh and no mass murder of children. No leading a large group through the desert, no hanging out in the desert for forty years, no blowing trumpets and walls come tumbling down and apparently no walls coming down period in the right time frame. And now the whole handing down of the law looks questionable?

So what's left? Some people perhaps with Egyptian sounding names migrated in and out of Egypt, driven perhaps by famine or perhaps they were captured during battles and eventually migrated out of Egypt. Maybe there's an argument here that some of them became priests which led to the incorporation of some Egyptian religious ideas, but not all that many Egyptian religious ideas because Judaism, even a polytheistic Judaism doesn't look like it incorporated that much of the Egyptian religion to me.

And there is a theory that maybe one of them was named Moses (or at least some ancient approximation of that). I'm not sure I see enough of the biblical Moses story here for me to think that an HM existed even if some guy named Moses that was a leader of some group at some time in the past did exist that served as the inspiration for the Exodus stories.

I think this situation is a bit different than the HJ issue. If the HJ existed he doesn't need to do that much except play a significant role in a small religious sect and be the guy that was at the right time and place to adopted by the founders of Christianity as their main guy. And it is at least plausible that this happened.

With the HM issue there is so much of the story we know to be false that with the amount of the story left it is questionable whether it is reasonable to call any hypothetical Moses the HM IMHO.
 
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Tim, Piggy, Hans,

just wanna say thanks, this is fascinating reading, well-written, and just on the right level for me to comprehend the issues and argument. For me, it doesn't matter much if an agreement is reached, but to see the limits of what is and isn't possible, and, well, just to educate myself on some current and reasonable views.
 
Before this discussion turns unfriendly, I think everybody should keep this in mind. The issue here is not what happened but what is most likely to have happened. Everybody is making guesses and I want to acknowledge that everybody in this conversations seems to be better informed on this topic than I am.

As to Moses-as-lawgiver:
The argument as I understand here is that it would have been difficult to pitch an entirely unknown entity as the great originator of Jewish religion and culture unless the disparate groups of Judea and Israel had some common memory of somebody name Moses that was a leader. And if there is any kernel of truth to the idea that Moses existed he probably was viewed as the great lawgiver even before his story was written down and standardized. Sounds plausible and bordering on likely to me but HM may not agree.

I'm glad Piggy mentioned the Aaronites. Does the existence of this group provide support for the existence of an actual historical Moses?

Definition of historical Moses: Hebrew leader that left Egypt and was part of group that established returning Hebrews into a position of power or priestly authority.

Everything up to now seems to be centered on theories that date to about 1200 bce. Does everybody reject the much earlier dates and the much earlier pharaohs for the inspiration of the Exodus story?

Does anybody believe that any particular pharaoh is a leading candidate or pair of pharaohs since I guess there are two in the story?

Except what I'm saying is that that memory of Moses is seriously distorted, and we don't actually know which parts were distorted and from what original form. It seems to me unsupportable to pretend to know even that he came literally from Egypt, as opposed to, dunno, for example being one of the local princes that revolted against Egypt and sided with the Hittites, basically getting some millions of Hebrews out of being a part of Egypt.

People seem to have this strange idea that they can look at a story and just tell what's made up and what did it start from, without needing any corroborating evidence or anything. And I don't see how that would even work, unless someone won Randi's money already. Stories can start from lots of other stuff than a historical guy, including from another story, or whatever.

ETA: As for "plausible", shoot, to the right person anything is plausible. For a lot of people it's plausible that Moses actually led 2 million Jews out of Egypt, and spent 40 years in the desert eating magical food. For a lot of people it was plausible that Moses had horns on his head. For me it's plausible that Moses needed a wheelbarrow to carry his gigantic balls, because if you're going to go to the Pharaoh and give an ultimatum, you kinda need those ;) Plausible really doesn't mean anything, so I'll happily grant that whatever anyone wants to believe, is plausible to them.
 
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Does the Moses you envision lead a group out of Egypt?

Does he lead a group that lives outside Judea/Israel for an extended period of time?

Does he have a brother named Aaron?

Do you have some thoughts about whether he died before entering Judea/Israel?

Do you believe there was a Joshua?

What I'm getting at here is that so far I'm clear that you think there was an HM but I'm wondering whether your views are so vague about the guy that you don't really believe we know enough about him to make a good guess as to whether substantial elements of the biblical story have a factual foundation.

I think it's more likely that there was a historical Moses than that there was not.

If there was not a historical Moses, then we have to assume that the person who did promulgate the first code of law among the Hebrews, who would have had to have been a very powerful person within that society, decided not to claim that God gave him the law, but rather that God gave the law to a historical hero or folk hero.

You might say, well, that was to legitimize it.

But that makes very little sense for several reasons.

First, it's already legitimized by God and by this ruler's own power.

Second, we have no historical parallels for this, and it doesn't make a lot of sense psychologically.

Third, if Moses were already a figure to which such things could be attributed, why does no one protest (especially the Aaronites) that the new stories were not legitimate, or try to claim that it was their guy instead who recieved the law? Attempting to attribute the law to a figure from the past whom no one believed established the law already would be very difficult to do. It would not increase legitimacy, but rather undermine it.

So the legitimacy angle just doesn't pan out.

I also don't buy the "origins story" angle -- that there was a desire to trace origins to Egypt for clout -- because neither the Mushites nor Aaronites (the Levitical groups chiefly responsible for these Biblical texts) trace origins back to Egypt, but rather to Mesopotamia and Syria (both via competing Abraham stories). And in any case, the stories serve to glorify the Hebrews over Egypt, not to glorify any Egyptian roots.

If the HM hypothesis is correct -- and the evidence is so sketchy that I think we have to stop at hypothesis -- then I think you have to also have a historical Aaron hypothesis, although there's no reason to think they were brothers.

First of all, only one group of authors identify them as brothers, and secondly, genealogies in Biblical literature do not serve to identify actual family lines, but rather to outline and solidify the current alliances and enmities of the time of the authors.

Under this hypothesis, Moses is the leader of an elite group of warrior priests who came up from Sinai and unified the Hebrew Tribes after making a pact with Ephraim and Judah to displace Benjamin, and possibly introduced circumcision as well as Yahwism as the state religion.

This would be a very effective combination of techniques for solidifying power and control.

According to this view, the Levites were never slaves in Egypt. They were most likely captive elites who retained rank within Egypt, perhaps over generations. Within Egypt, they would have been of little note, but once out on their own and reunited with their ancestral tribes, what they learned in Egypt would have made them top dogs.

If this view is at all accurate, Moses certainly did not die before entering Canaan, and that story is later Aaronite propaganda.

The thing about these sections of the Bible is that they're like... well, it's as if someone a few centuries now were to weave together commentary from Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann to make a single history of the George W. Bush and Obama presidencies. You get Aaron-bashing from the Mushites, and Moses-bashing from the Aaronites.

But some things cannot be spun. Like boulders in the river, there are facts that everyone agrees upon. And there are also myths which serve the purposes of both sides, and those get perpetuated, too (such as various types of pro-America propaganda).

The Moses-as-lawgiver trope appears to be -- can't say it is, but it seems to be -- a boulder-in-the-river fact.

On the other hand, the exodus story serves the purposes of all the Levitical groups -- Mushites from Shiloh, Mushites from the northern and southern temples in Israel after the disposition of the Shiloans, Zadokite Aaronites, and non-Zadokite Aaronites -- by claiming that it was they who delivered Israel from bondage and don't you ever forget it!

No doubt, the exodus story we have today is many generations post-Moses and post-Aaron, assuming they were historical persons and that Moses did write the first Hebrew code of law. That story could not have gotten traction in their own day.

Joshua is also, in my opinion, most likely a historical figure, a warrior king who conquered some of the other city-states in Canaan. But the various conquest stories later told and written about him, especially the version which have him always victorious, are dubious.

It's difficult to find straightforward military accounts in these sections of the Bible. But there are some. For example, we have 3 accounts of the destruction of the cities of the plain (including Sodom and Gomorrah). Two of them claim that God destroyed the cities, but in the third (from a source whose origins are now lost) they are destroyed in a war.

Anyway, the various stories about Moses serve various purposes. His birth story is meant to explain his Egyptian origins in a satisfying way while asserting a set of providential portents and so on.

The various law-receiving stories are necessary because the Law wasn't like the US Constitution, it couldn't simply be amended, so subsequent leaders who wanted to add to it had to expand on the story.

Much of the remaining tales are competing Mushite and Aaronite propaganda, either glorifying Moses and bashing Aaron, or glorifying Aaron and bashing Moses as much as one could get away with.

ETA: Although the Levites may have begun as warrior-priests, at some point rather early on they lost their military role and continued to hold power as co-regents with the military rulers. It worked for them for a thousand years. Not bad.
 
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Except what I'm saying is that that memory of Moses is seriously distorted, and we don't actually know which parts were distorted and from what original form. It seems to me unsupportable to pretend to know even that he came literally from Egypt, as opposed to, dunno, for example being one of the local princes that revolted against Egypt and sided with the Hittites, basically getting some millions of Hebrews out of being a part of Egypt.

People seem to have this strange idea that they can look at a story and just tell what's made up and what did it start from, without needing any corroborating evidence or anything. And I don't see how that would even work, unless someone won Randi's money already. Stories can start from lots of other stuff than a historical guy, including from another story, or whatever.

ETA: As for "plausible", shoot, to the right person anything is plausible. For a lot of people it's plausible that Moses actually led 2 million Jews out of Egypt, and spent 40 years in the desert eating magical food. For a lot of people it was plausible that Moses had horns on his head. For me it's plausible that Moses needed a wheelbarrow to carry his gigantic balls, because if you're going to go to the Pharaoh and give an ultimatum, you kinda need those ;) Plausible really doesn't mean anything, so I'll happily grant that whatever anyone wants to believe, is plausible to them.

Of course, any historical exodus event would have been a minor affair involving a small band. The 40 years trope is formulaic in that part of the world. Muhammad was supposed to have been 40 years old when he received his first revelation. A generation is supposed to be 40 years, though, biologically, it is only 20 years.
 
Concerning the hilited area, what code are referring to? It can't the either that found in Leviticus, parts of Numbers and much of Exodus nor can it be the one in Deuteronomy (P and D, respectively).

What exactly the original code was, that appears to be lost to history, until and unless some really bright scholars manage to find a way to tease it out, which they might one day.

We can assume that it would have formed part of a Davidic Torah, which must have existed, and which we can get a sense of by viewing the overlap between the Old Judean (Yahwist / J) Torah and the Old Ephraimaic (Elohist / E) Torah which would have been based on it, at least in part.

It may have been preserved, either in original or expanded form, as a relic in the Tabernacle and later the Temple, but of course the contents of the First Temple are lost.
 
OK, there was a guy who lived in Egypt sometime around 1200 BCE that lead a contingent through the desert that would eventually control the Judea/Israel area.

But was it a big group as the bible says. Well no. There is no evidence of large encampments in the desert in the relevant time frame.

OK, so it was a small group. But how small could it have been? This group is supposed to eventually successfully conquer significant portions of Judea/Israel. OK so maybe it was just the right size so as to not leave a detectable amount of artifacts behind but big enough so that they could eventually conquer Judea/Israel.

And they hung out in the desert for forty years? Well that seems like a stretch. What did they eat? OK maybe they didn't do that much hanging out in the desert.

Richard Friedman, for example, postulates that the Levites first established themselves in the Sinai, possibly over a few generations, before making their move on Benjamin with the aid of Ephraim and Judah.

Why the Ephraimites and Judeans wanted to get rid of the Benjaminites, nobody knows.

But it's easy to see why they would have wanted to ally themselves with cousins who were kicking butt to the south.
 
. . . (mega-snip) . . . Joshua is also, in my opinion, most likely a historical figure, a warrior king who conquered some of the other city-states in Canaan. But the various conquest stories later told and written about him, especially the version which have him always victorious, are dubious.

I don't see Joshua as the least bit historical. The lack of any historical or archaeological support for an invasion, plus the likelihood of an internal movement from the plains to the hills, along with the narrative of the Book of Judges, which is far more realistic than Joshua; all point to Joshua as a grand myth and nothing more.

It's difficult to find straightforward military accounts in these sections of the Bible. But there are some. For example, we have 3 accounts of the destruction of the cities of the plain (including Sodom and Gomorrah). Two of them claim that God destroyed the cities, but in the third (from a source whose origins are now lost) they are destroyed in a war.

I'd be interested in hearing chapter and verse on particularly the third story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. This is new to me. The language of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is formulaic. It's phrases are also found in the story of the rape of Deborah by Shechem, the outrage at Gibeah in Judges and the rape of Tamar by Amnon in 2 Samuel.

Anyway, the various stories about Moses serve various purposes. His birth story is meant to explain his Egyptian origins in a satisfying way while asserting a set of providential portents and so on.

Moses' birth is also very mythic. Not only was it lifted from the story of the birth of Sargon the Great of Akkad, the image of the solar child in his boat floating on the waters of the great abyss was a common and potent mythic image in Egypt.

The various law-receiving stories are necessary because the Law wasn't like the US Constitution, it couldn't simply be amended, so subsequent leaders who wanted to add to it had to expand on the story.

Much of the remaining tales are competing Mushite and Aaronite propaganda, either glorifying Moses and bashing Aaron, or glorifying Aaron and bashing Moses as much as one could get away with.

Yes, in who Wrote the Bible?, Friedman talks at length about the competing Mushite / Aaronite propaganda. HOwever, I'm still trying to figure out what laws Moses himself could have given the Israelites.

ETA: Although the Levites may have begun as warrior-priests, at some point rather early on they lost their military role and continued to hold power as co-regents with the military rulers. It worked for them for a thousand years. Not bad.

What evidence do you have, other than the Levites and others killing worshippers of the golden calf, that the Levites were originally warriors?
 
Could the exodus story be more a symbolic departure from Egyptian influence in Canaan rather than an actual move from Egypt?
 
Could the exodus story be more a symbolic departure from Egyptian influence in Canaan rather than an actual move from Egypt?

Yeah, if you'll look back on the thread,you'll find some posts I made to that effect. This is based on archaeologist William Dever's researches into what he believes to be Proto-Israelite villages in the hill country. He speculates that, toward the end of the Late Bronze Age, these peasants left the plains, controlled by the Egyptian-sponsored Canaanite city states to do small scale, dry country agriculture and animal husbandry in the hills, which had lain dormant for some time.

In support of his theory is the archaeological evidence of lopsided distribution of wealth in the form of grave goods. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Part of the cause of the collapse of many of the kingdoms at the end of the Bronze Age had to do, apparently, with the unwillingness of the masses to defend them against outsiders. Further, at the sites Dever identifies as Proto-Israelite, there's an absence of pig bones in their middens, indicating an early mark of separation. At the same time, sites that can be identified as Philistine show a marked increase in pig bones in their middens.

All this notwithstanding, there might well have been a very small scale exodus event or even a series of slave escapes that form the basis of the Exodus story.
 
To get back to the part about those supposedly Egyptian Levites...

It helps if one understands that

A) we don't have the vowels for Egyptian. So anyone who tells you stuff like knowing that Phinehas sounds exactly like two Egyptian words is... misleading you, to say the least. We don't actually know what p-nhs sounded like in Egyptian. There are AT LEAST three vowels in there, and they could have been anything at all. Out of 5 vowels, there are 125 combinations, and only at most 2% to 4% of those will sound ANYTHING like pi-nehas.

So building whole flights of fantasy from that identification as a fact is bogus.

B) as I was saying, we don't actually know that p-nhs was an Egyptian name. We didn't actually find any name in Egypt that was that. And in fact, since it starts with "the" (definite article), we have all reasons to suspect that no Egyptian ever was actually named that. They didn't put that bit in names. Even when someone was named stuff like "Beloved Of Ra" or "Daughter of Sobek", they didn't jam a "the" in there too.

C) Egyptian had a Rebus writing system, and rather short words. You could turn ANY word whatsoever into a combination you can actually write in Egyptian. You could write "Obama" in Egyptian, and that doesn't mean he's Egyptian.

In fact, I could do the same for Piggy. Let me see...

p-gHs

... meaning "the gazelle". Since we don't know the vowels, I can fill in pi-gHis, for example. (Same as it's done for p-nhs.) Ok, that settles it, Piggy is Egyptian :p

I could even give you the hieroglyphics for that, but you can check my gazelle transliteration for yourself for example here:

http://hieroglyphs.net/0301/cgi/lookup.pl?ty=tr&ch=g&cs=1

Basically the whole thing isn't as much fact, as just a rationalization for euhemerizing the myth.
 
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