THE MOSES FRAUD
From
Did Moses Exist?
by D. M. Murdoch
Did Moses Exist?
by D. M. Murdoch
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Moses, as the traditional great leader and Law-giver of Israel, is worthy of very interested attention; the results can but be of interest. In no accurate sense was Moses, if he ever lived, a Hebrew at all; indeed, he is expressly called "an Egyptian man" (see Exodus 2:19) - Joseph Wheless (Is it God's World?)
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Dr. Alexander Geddes (Biblical Scholar)
We have now got to the end of the Mythos of Moses, or whoever else was the author of this wonderful production. I trust I have done something like justice to its beauties; and that it will appear, on the whole, to be a well-devised, well-delineated, well-executed piece — nay, that it has not its equal in all the mythology of antiquity; I mean, if it be considered not as a real history, nor as a mere mystical allegory, but as a most charming political fiction, dressed up for excellent purposes in the garb of history, and adapted to the gross conceptions of a rude, sensual, unlearned, and credulous people. Laurence Gardner The Book of Exodus explains that the baby Moses’s life was in danger from the Egyptian authorities, whose Pharaoh had decreed death to all new-born Israelite males...The Pharaoh apparently instructed that ‘every son that is born, shall ye cast into the river’ - and so a woman of the house of Levi, in her attempt to deceive the Pharaoh, placed her three-month-old son in a basket of rushes and pitch, and set him down among the water-reeds. Despite the complete illogicality of this action, which has been pointed out by many writers, the story then becomes even more implausible, for along came the Pharaoh’s daughter, who seemed to care nothing for her father’s dictate. She discovered the baby and immediately began conversing with the boy’s sister, who just happened to be close by. The sister then returned the baby to its mother, who was paid by the princess to nurse him. Hence, the boy was back where he began and any fear of the authorities and their death-threat seems to have been conveniently forgotten. Eventually, the princess adopted the boy as her own son and called him Moses, with no one leveling any query about the child’s natural parents. That is the extent of the biblical story of Moses’s childhood, and in the very next verse (Exodus 2:11) he is portrayed as a grown man. Off To A Bad Start “Biblical scholars have long known that all the books of the Hebrew Bible were written long after the events that they purported to describe, and that the Bible as a whole was produced by composite writers and editors in a long and exceedingly complex literary process that stretched over a thousand years” - Dr. William Dever (Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?) “No direct connections have been found between the abundant documentary evidence from the ancient Near East for the second millennium and the biblical narrative of Israel’s ancestors and origins found in the first seven books of the Bible. As a result, it is impossible to determine whether or not the individuals and events described in the Bible existed, and, if they did, when they should be dated" - Dr. Michael D. Coogan (A Brief Introduction to the Old Testament) The name "Palestine" From the Hebrew Pelistim, meaning "immigrants." The name "Jew" Although Josephus asserts that the Hyksos were “Jews,” no word for “Jew” in any language appears in the historical record until a thousand years after the initial Hyksos expulsion and several centuries after the second one. These “Syrians,” again, are not specified as “Jews,” and we possess no indication that Herodotus had ever heard of such a tribe, much less the kingdom of Judea. Israel As a people and nation, we find no significant presence of an Israel until a century or more into the Iron Age (1300–600 BCE). The term “Israel” can be found in pre-Hebraic Canaanite texts as a person’s name. Late on the Scene In the fifth century BCE, the “Jews" (Yehudim) as such indeed were a fairly new development as the dominant tribe of the region, and it is surmised that monotheistic Judaism or Yahwism as such was not created until the Seleucid period (323–64 BCE), which might explain why the Elephantine Jews were not instructed in strict monotheism in their communiques from the Jerusalem priesthood. The Eastern Connection It is also possible that, during this era, some Semites ended up in the Indus Valley along with any Sumerians, and that sometime later a tribe of them moved back into the Mesopotamian region to become “Abrahamites.” These then may have moved into the Levant and mingled with other Semites there, acquiring attributes of other deities and having their tribal god Brahma demoted to a patriarch. Jewish History a Falsity ...there exists no evidence of the descendants of some two or three million people occupying Canaan for the past decades or centuries, according to the Conquest myth. No archaeological traces can be attributed to the early Israelites in Canaan before the early Iron Age (after 1200 B.C.E.) - Dr. Barbara J. Sivertsen (The Parting of the Sea) Influence of Egypt “... The myths of Egypt will be found to have been copied and reproduced, and declared to have been given directly from the hand and mouth of the Lord, whereas there was no revelation or divine origin in the matter. The Hebrews took them from the Egyptians” - Gerald Massey (A Book of the Beginnings) Depravity of the Jews "No one can study their history, liberated from the blindness which our Christian up-bringing and associations cast over us, without seeing that the Jews were probably the grossest worshippers among all those Ophi--Phallo-Solar devotees who then covered every land and sea, from the sources of the Nile and Euphrates to all over the Mediterranean coasts and isles. These impure faiths seem to have been very strictly maintained by Jews up to Hezekiah's days, and by none more so than by dissolute Solomon and his cruel, lascivious bandit-father, the brazen-faced adulterer and murderer, who broke his freely volunteered oath, and sacrificed six innocent sons of his king to his Javah" - James Forlong (Faiths of Man in All Lands)
Slavery Myth In all this correspondence dealing with these Levantine peoples who would have been surrounding the Israelites, there is no mention of the Hebrews in Egypt or elsewhere whatsoever, as if they did not exist or were of so little consequence as to be unrecognized. Slaughter of the Innocents (Firstborn of Egypt) the slaughter of innocent children or infants is yet another motif found in a number of mythologies, whereby the reigning monarch tries to prevent from being fulfilled a prophecy that a new king will be born who will depose him. As Walker says, “Innocents were slaughtered in the myths of Sargon, Nimrod, Moses, Jason, Krishna and Mordred as well as in that of Jesus.” 545 Children are slain or menaced also in the stories of Oedipus, Perseus, Romulus and Remus, and Zeus, some of whose myths include being shut in chests and tossed into a body of water. What Priests? Exodus 19:22 and 24 anachronistically speak of “priests” before any such individuals ever had been ordained. Exodus Not Supported by Evidence Jewish scholars such as Israeli archaeologist Dr. Ze’ev Herzog contend that “there is no evidence in the archaeological record that Israel was a powerful force, whether at the time of the (Mernenptah) stele’s creation or at any other time during that general period.” In other words, there exists no evidence of the descendants of some two or three million people occupying Canaan for the past decades or centuries, according to the Conquest myth. Like several books of the New Testament as well, various other Old Testament texts are pseudepigraphical: In other words, they were not written by those in whose names they appear. Also like the NT, over the centuries the texts of the OT were redacted many times, which is to say they were edited, interpolated, mutilated and forged - DM In 1679, Spinoza already had “observed that in the Pentateuch certain towns and places bore names that were not given to them until several centuries after Moses” - DM It would seem that the Pentateuch was unknown to these Jews and those at Jerusalem in the fifth century BCE - DM Because of such difficulties, outside of Christian and Jewish fundamentalist circles, relatively few scholars today believe Moses actually wrote the Pentateuch, reflecting a doubt that has lingered during centuries of critical scholarship and that extends to the very historicity of the Israelite lawgiver himself - DM The unreal air of the Pentateuch is obvious also from the lack of archaeological evidence, which continues to elude discovery, despite numerous efforts to find - DM In his book Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus, Gmirkin “argues that the Hebrew Pentateuch was composed in its entirety about 273–272 BCE by Jewish scholars at Alexandria that later traditions credited with the Septuagint translation of the Pentateuch into Greek” - DM "The first and most obvious proof that the so-called Five Books of Moses were not written by Moses, but date from a time many centuries after his reputed life and death, is very simple and indisputable. This proof consists of very numerous instances of what are called post-Mosaica, or “after-Moses” events, related in those books under the name of Moses as their inspired author; events of which Moses of course could not have known or written, as they occurred long after his death" - Joseph Wheless (Is it God's Word) Monotheism vs. Polytheism While it is claimed Moses discovered or developed monotheism, from the numerous biblical references to the Jews worshiping other gods it appears that it was under Hezekiah and then Josiah that fanatical, intolerant monotheism began to be imposed upon the masses, starting around 690 BCE. It should be kept in mind that, even after the fifth century, Jews in general continued to revere deities other than Yahweh, including syncretizing him with the gods Zeus, Dionysus and others. it is surmised that the Jews were not monotheistic until the time of the Maccabees (2nd cent. BCE). Predatory Degenerates (The Apiru) The Egyptians had been dealing with these “vile Asiatics” for over a thousand years before the Exodus purportedly happened. After Jews began to appear in the historical record, there followed a series of commentaries depicting them as descendants of brigands and lepers, shunning and opposing the rest of humanity. Tacitus also mentions the “leprosy” from pigs that purportedly afflicted Moses’s followers, which may refer to trichinosis, a parasitic disease developed from eating raw or under-cooked pig products. This alleged disease state may explain why the affected Israelites became so xenophobic and antagonistic towards swine. ...in all this mass, we find not a single recognition of any certain Israelite presence but, instead, reference to nomadic Semitic “robbers” called ‘Apiru or Hapiru/ Habiru. In Sumerian, Egyptian, Akkadian, Hittite, Mitanni and Ugaritic texts dating from around 1800 to 1100 BCE, the Hapiru are portrayed as “nomadic or semi-nomadic, rebels, outlaws, raiders, mercenaries, and bowmen, servants, slaves, migrant laborers” and so on... ...The Hapiru are identified in Sumerian by the logogram SA.GAZ and in Akkadian sources as habbatu, meaning “robber, bandit, raider.” ...the ‘Apiru,' as their name suggests (“dust makers,” i.e. people who vacate the premises with speed), display a gypsy-like quality, and proved difficult for the state authorities to bring under effective control. Their heterogeneous nature is vividly illustrated by the census lists from Alalakh, wherein one ‘Apiru band includes an armed thief, two charioteers, two beggars and even a priest of Ishtar - Donald B. Redford (Aspects of Monotheism) In the Amarna correspondence of the 14th century, the Hapiru had become such a nuisance to the Egyptians in the Levant that the authorities there had complained these wandering nomads would eventually take over the entire region. It would seem that indeed they did, as part of the Israelite confederation, following their god El, who thus prevails. Israelites and Hyksos “…it must be apparent that the Hebrews were never in Egypt, and that the story in the Book of Exodus had its foundation in the exploits of the Hyksos” - Judge Parrish B. Ladd (The Hebrews, Egypt, Moses and the Exodus) Manetho’s Hyksos were the Israelites of the Exodus, although the Egyptian writer never uses the terms “Hebrews,” “Israelites” or “Jews” to describe these Asiatics. The descriptions of the Hapiru and Shasu are similar to those of the Hyksos and Israelites, such as the supposedly historical material in the Bible that includes the rampaging through Canaan, slaughtering, pillaging and taking virgin girls as slaves.
It should be kept in mind that the Semitic Hyksos and Canaanites were influenced by Egypt in religious matters, and vice versa...The texts demonstrate that the writers of the Pentateuch, for one, were well aware of these legends, traditions and practices. It is noteworthy that Joseph’s wife’s name, Asenath (Gen 41:45), means “holy to Anath,” the popular Semitic goddess also transliterated as Anat, worshiped by the Canaanites or Western Semites, including the Hyksos. Despite the tale that they rampaged against the Egyptians, slaughtering and pillaging, destroying temples and believers, the Hyksos adopted many of the Egyptian manners, as noted, including their religious ideas, although they preferred their “Asiatic” rendition of Baal-Seth, called by them “Apophis,” also the name of one of their kings. The Hyksos or Amorites/ Jebusites of Jerusalem were pre-Israelite Western Semites or Canaanites who worshiped Semitic, Sumero-Babylonian and Egyptian deities. Lady of the Two Trees The Hyksos were known to revere the “Mistress of the Two Trees,” a type of Hathor, the Egyptianized goddess of Byblos, indicating their origin near Phoenicia.
The word qadesh appears in the Northwest Semitic language of Ugaritic, as qds, meaning “holy” and used in reference to the god Ilu...We further discover that Qds is the name of a Semitic goddess mentioned in Egyptian texts of the Ramesside period and that this term, qds, is identified possibly with Ilu’s consort, the Canaanite goddess Atiratu (compare, Ashtar, Ishtar, Asherah). The plural word qadeshim is related also to the Arabic quddusun or “All Holy.” "What most biblical scholars have overlooked is that the representation of Zipporah (wife of Moses) comes strikingly close to representations of guardian goddesses in polytheistic texts" - Dr. Ilana Pardes Goddess Symbolism Moses’s flowering rod, river of blood, and tablets of the law were all symbols of the ancient Goddess. His miracle of drawing water from a rock was first performed by Mother Rhea after she gave birth to Zeus, and by Atalanta with the help of Artemis. In his Hymn to Zeus, Greek poet Callimachus (310–240 BCE) writes that the mother of the gods “Rhea causes the first waters to burst from the rocks of the sacred hill where Zeus was born.” Who is Jehovah? "Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is His name? what shall I say unto them?" (Ex 3:13).
Jehovah as Female "We are informed by various writers that Typhon Seth was feminine. She was the early God of the Jews. In other words, the Jews were formerly worshipers of a female deity. Jehovah, Iav, was originally female" - Eliza Burt Gamble (The God-Idea of the Ancients or Sex in Religion) Oddly enough, some of the earliest forms of the name of the Jewish God seem to have been masculinized versions of the name of Jahi. Variations include Jahu, Jah, Yahu, Iau, Jaho.
"Jehovah was originally female, so, also, was Netpe the Holy Spirit of the Egyptian Tree of Life" - Eliza Burt Gamble Some myths indicate that this God like Ahriman once had a serpent form and may have played the part of the Great Mother’s serpent. The emergence of Yahweh as perhaps a masculinization of the old Persian serpent and fertility goddess Jahi is significant, as is his possible early role as the serpent of the Goddess. Jove was the "Great Virgin" whence everything proceeds - Eliza Burt Gamble (The God-Idea of the Ancients or Sex in Religion) Elohim as Female "According to the testimony of Higgins, Aleim denotes the feminine plural" - Eliza Burt Gamble (The God-Idea of the Ancients or Sex in Religion) The heathen divinities Ashtaroth and Beelzebub were both called Aleim, Ashtaroth being simply Astarte adorned with the horns of a ram - Eliza Burt Gamble (The God-Idea of the Ancients or Sex in Religion) "If I be correct respecting the word Aleim being feminine, we here see the Lord of Death of the feminine gender; but the Goddess Ashtaroth or Astarte, the Eoster of the Germans, was also called Aleim. Here again Aleim is feminine, which shows that I am right in making Aleim the plural feminine" – Godfrey Higgins (Anacalypsis) The Amorites (Giants) A major candidate for the identity of the Hyksos is the Amorites, described biblically as “sons of Canaan,” son of Ham (Gen 10: 16). “Amorite” is a name scholars such as Ugaritic language expert Dr. John Gray aver is a more appropriate moniker for the “Canaanites.” As early as the middle of the 20th century BCE, the Amorites had become a powerful kingdom, previously having lived a “rustic, nomadic life on the Syrian steppes,” before being influenced by the Akkadian culture. Says Redford, “In Palestine and Syria too by the mid-nineteenth century Amorite communities were in the ascendancy.” It was Amorites who founded the city of Babylon, and the legendary figure of Gilgamesh was one of their heroes. One of their main cities was Mari, named for a Semitic goddess, which flourished as first a Sumerian and then an Amorite town between 2900 and 1759 BCE, when it was conquered by Hammurabi. Amorite dominance in Mesopotamia was ended in the early 16th century by attacks from the Assyrians and Hittites, who introduced the Kassites into the region. After dominating since about 2000 BCE, around 1595 the Amorites were expelled from Babylon and forced back to Syria/ Canaan. The tall Amorites have been equated also with the Amalekites, said to be “giants” (Exod 17: 8). After the Amorites usurped the Sumerian and Akkadian civilizations during the first half of the second millennium BCE, they adopted the region’s earlier deities in significant part: “They continued to worship the Sumerian gods, and the older Sumerian myths and epic tales were piously copied, translated, or adapted, generally with only minor alterations.” The Bible claims that both the Jebusites and Amorites (Jos 10:5) occupied Jerusalem before its conquest. Jehovah Nissi The word nissi means "sanctuary" or "exalted place," in regards mountains. In this case it refers to Mount Nissa (thought to be idential with Sinai or Horeb). It also means "banner" or "standard," something raised high. In this instance it pertains to the Brazen Serpent raised by Moses as the standard of the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness. This standard was later destroyed by Hezekiah, king of the Israelites, probably because the serpent is, and always has been, an indelible symbol of the Mother Goddess and her cults.
...raising up the serpent of brass on the pole, with its “hiss.” The Hebrew word is rendered “hiss” is sharaq, denoting “to hiss, whistle, pipe,” a possible indication of Yahweh’s serpentine nature at this point, sensible also in consideration of the god’s apparent role as the goddess Jahi’s serpent, previously discussed. Jehovah-Nissi is in fact Diony-isi (see below). In Assyrian nisi means "men" or "people." In this case it denotes "Jehovah of the People." Jehovah and Aton "The LORD came from Sinai, and dawned from Se′ir upon us; he shone forth from Mount Paran, he came from the ten thousands of holy ones, with flaming fire at his right hand." The solar imagery here is noteworthy, describing Yahweh in terms of a fiery-handed sun god, shining forth from the mountain, here styled “Paran” which means “place of caverns,” an appropriate moniker for the location in the east where the sun god emerges from the nightly cave. It is also noteworthy that the name “Seir” has been identified with Helios and Sirius. In Gaelic it means "west." Sacred Prostitutes The tradition of qadeshim as male temple prostitutes may extend well back into pre-Israelite times. Diodorus on the Jews "King Antiochus besieged Jerusalem, but the Jews stood it out for some time: but when all their provision was spent, they were forced to send ambassadors to him, to treat upon terms. Many of his friends persuaded him to storm the city, and to root out the whole nation of the Jews; For they only of all people hated to converse with any of other nations and treated them all as enemies; and they suggested to him that their ancestors were driven out of Egypt, as impious and hateful to the gods: for their bodies being overspread, and infected with the itch and leprosy, (by way of expiation) they got them together, and as profane and wicked wretches, expelled them out of their coasts: and that those who were thus expelled seated themselves about Jerusalem, and being after embodied into one nation (called the nation of the Jews) their hatred of all other men descended with their blood to posterity. And therefore they made strange laws, and quite different from other people: never will eat nor drink with any of other nations, or wish them any prosperity..." "...Antiochus therefore abhorring this, their contrariety to all other people, used his utmost endeavour to abrogate their laws...When Antiochus’s friends had debated and considered of these things, they were very earnest with him to root out the whole nation, or at least that he would abrogate their laws, and compel them to change their former manner of living and conversation. But the king being of a generous spirit, and mild disposition received hostages and pardoned the Jews; but demolished the walls of Jerusalem and took the tribute that was due." Describing a statue found in the temple by Antiochus, Diodorus related that the king thought it was “Moses who built Jerusalem, and settled the nation, and established by law all their wicked customs and practices, abounding in hatred and enmity to all other men.” Antiochus’s alleged harsh measures represent an extreme reaction to the Yahwists’ absolute separation from and derogation of the non-Jewish populace expressed in the Old Testament and in contemporary life. This xenophobic supremacism extended to Antiochus’s time and was obviously noticeable and greatly offensive to “the nations” or goyim, as the non-Jewish cultures are described throughout the Tanakh. Strabo on the Jews Following Diodorus in the first century BCE, Strabo was of the impression that the Jews were descendants of Egyptians, naming Moses as a dissatisfied Egyptian priest. ...the ancient Greek geographer Strabo contended Moses to be an Egyptian priest who, disgusted with the bizarre representations of the Egyptian gods, left Egypt with a band of followers to establish his new cult in Palestine. Lysimachus on the Jews Josephus quotes Lysimachus as saying: “The people of the Jews being leprous and scabby, and subject to certain other kinds of diseases, in the days of Bocchoris, king of Egypt, they fled to the temples, and got their food there by begging: and as the numbers were very great that were fallen under these diseases, there arose a scarcity in Egypt. Hereupon Bocchoris, the king of Egypt, sent some to consult the oracle of [Jupiter] Hammon about this scarcity. The god’s answer was this: That he must purge his temples of impure and impious men, by expelling them out of those temples into desert places; but as to the scabby and leprous people, he must drown them, and purge his temples, the sun having an indignation at these men being suffered to live; and by this means the land will bring forth its fruits. Upon Bocchoris’s having received these oracles, he called for their priests, and the attendants upon their altars, and ordered them to make a collection of the impure people; and to deliver them to the soldiers, to carry them away into the desert: but to take the leprous people, and wrap them in sheets of lead, and let them down into the sea. Hereupon the scabby and leprous people were drowned, and the rest were gotten together and sent into desert places, in order to be exposed to destruction. In this case they assembled themselves together, and took counsel what they should do; and determined that, as the night was coming on, they should kindle fires and lamps, and keep watch; that they also should fast the next night, and propitiate the gods, in order to obtain deliverance from them. That on the next day there was one Moses, who advised them that they should venture upon a journey, and go along one road till they should come to places fit for habitation: that he charged them to have no kind regards for any man, nor give good counsel to any, but always to advise them for the worst; and to overturn all those temples and altars of the gods they should meet with: that the rest commended what he had said with one consent, and did what they had resolved on, and so traveled over the desert. But that the difficulties of the journey being over, they came to a country inhabited, and that there they abused the men, and plundered and burnt their temples, and then came into that land which is called Judea, and there they built a city, and dwelt therein, and that their city was named Hierosyla, from this their robbing of the temples; but that still, upon the success they had afterwards, they in time changed its denomination, that it might not be a reproach to them, and called the city Hierosolyma, and themselves Hierosolymites.” Rather than serving simply as anti-Jewish propaganda, many of these contentious remarks undoubtedly are based not only on Manetho’s Hyksos but also on the Jews’ own scriptures, which depict them repeatedly engaging in destructive acts, especially the overthrowing of temples and ruination of high places of worship belonging to the non-Jewish tribes, including the polytheistic Israelites of the Northern Kingdom. Banished From Egypt Assmann believes these lepers displaced to Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos, developed an “enclave culture” attempting to prevent any assimilation that would destroy their distinct ethnicity. Tacitus on the Jews Tacitus points out that the Israelites under Moses developed a “novel form of worship, opposed to all that is practised by other men.” Because of their strict sectarianism and xenophobia towards nonbelievers, devout followers of Judaic law left a similar impression on several writers of antiquity, including Roman philosopher and statesman Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Pompeius Trogus on the Jews Pompeius Trogus recounts another story in which the lawgiver is made to be the son of the Hebrew patriarch Joseph. In this tale, Moses not only brings disease and epidemics to Egypt but also steals Egyptian sacred objects, while the Egyptians pursuing him are driven off by storms. Pheonician-Canaanite Origins of the Jews In the fifth century BCE, the Greek historian Herodotus referred to the circumcised “Phoenicians and Syrians of Palestine,” the latter of whom since the Greek historian’s time have been surmised to be Jews, although he did not call them by that name. Contrary to popular notions and the impression given by the Bible itself, in many ways the Israelites were little different from their Canaanite forebears and neighbors. In addition to the religion of Yahweh, the Israelites — the northerners especially — were followers of El and other Canaanite deities, such as those of the Amorite Babylonians. A number of theories have been put forward to account for the origins of the Israelites, and despite differing details they agree on Israel’s Canaanite origins. The culture of the earliest Israelite settlements is Canaanite, their cult-objects are those of the Canaanite god El, the pottery remains in the local Canaanite tradition, and the alphabet used is early Canaanite, and almost the sole marker distinguishing the “Israelite” villages from Canaanite sites is an absence of pig bones, although whether even this is an ethnic marker or is due to other factors remains a matter of dispute. There is archeological evidence of the Canaanite Hyksos people moving into and out of northern Egypt, though the relation of their dates to the biblical account is debated by scholars. “The elements making up Israel derived from Canaanite and Amorite stock, spoke a South Canaanite dialect, and preserved old North Mesopotamian traditions and Canaanite traditions rooted in the second millennium B.C. They did not emerge from the desert as newcomers to Canaanite culture, nor did they speak the language of North Arabia” - Dr. Frank M. Cross, (Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic) Differences between these new “Israelites” and their Canaanite predecessors included the tendency towards a single cult site for several surrounding tribes, rather than the individual “high places” the later followers of Yahweh repeatedly destroy throughout the Old Testament, revealing the religious fanaticism of the south-eastern Amoritish Yahwists/Judeans over the Canaanitish northern Israelites. “The elements making up Israel derived from Canaanite and Amorite stock, spoke a South Canaanite dialect, and preserved old North Mesopotamian traditions and Canaanite traditions rooted in the second millennium B.C. They did not emerge from the desert as newcomers to Canaanite culture, nor did they speak the language of North Arabia” - Dr. Frank M. Cross (Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic) Philo (Jewish Historian on Moses) Philo was a member of what has been claimed to be the wealthiest family in the Roman Empire, and thereby one of the most powerful. Philo’s brother, Alexander the Alabarch (10 BCE–? AD/ CE), was a builder of the Jerusalem temple, while the writer’s nephew, Tiberias Julius Alexander (10– 70 AD/ CE), served as a procurator of Judea and later a prefect of Egypt. Philo’s inflation of Moses’s character is unrelenting, obviously designed to make of the Israelite legislator a more moral and formidable figure than any other man since his time, so great that the one and only God of the cosmos - eschewing all other great men and women of old - spoke directly to this superior man and bestowed upon him the highest honors. Philo even goes so far as to claim that the patriarch is serving immortally in heaven with Yahweh, ruling the world and commanding the elements! The Amorite Connection The name “Israel” is encountered biblically first at Genesis 32: 28, in the story of Jacob, subsequently styled “Yisrael.” The moniker “Jacob,” meaning “supplanter,” is a common Amorite name, and the patriarch is said at Deuteronomy 26: 5 to be a “wandering Aramean,” an anachronistic term said to connote also “Amorite.” Moses and Aaron This duad is based on Osiris and his brother Horus who leave Egypt to wander abroad. These duads, such as Wadjet and Nekhbet and Isis and Nephthys, the two thieves crucified on either side of Jesus, the torchbearers on either side of Mithras, etc, were also personifications of the Morning and Evening Stars, that is of the rising and setting of Venus. Osiris’s exodus out of Egypt is even more impressive than that of Moses, in that the Egyptian god was said to have traveled also “through Ethiopia, all Arabia, India and Europe.” Pagan lore and history is replete with "exoduses." The Hebrew word for “chest" or "ark” is ארון 'arown,' which is not much different from the name 'Aaron'...head priest of the ark cult and Mosaic law. It is possible that, rather than representing a real person, this mythical character was specifically named for his ark-keeping duty. Aaron also could be taking the place of Horus (Horon). Aaron in Arabic is Harun, similar to the Semitic god-name Horon, identified with Horus. Moses the Lawgiver There are at least fifty two other lawgivers throughout the nations and traditions of the world, most of them dating from before the rise of the Biblical Israelites. Samuel N. Kramer included an entire chapter entitled The First ‘Moses, in which he remarks, “There are indications that there were lawgivers in Sumer long before Ur-Nammu was born.” He also states that the literature of the Sumerians “left its deep impress on Hebrews,” clarifying that the influence was indirect, through the Canaanites, Babylonians and others subsequent to the Sumerian culture. Moses the Levite ...the writer of Exodus 2:1, speaking of Moses in the third person, identifies the future lawgiver’s father as an anonymous “man from the house of Levi.” In the same passage, the writer describes Moses’s mother only as “a woman,” very odd if the patriarch himself wrote these verses. Moses not Original From these implausible tales and others, we can assert that, like other biblical figures, the Hebrew lawgiver appears to be not a historical person but a mythical character found in a number of cultures, significantly as an archetypal solar hero or deity. The conclusion of Moses’s mythical nature has been reached many times over the centuries, and, despite the continued fervent bibliolatry or Bible-worship, modern scholars basically have thrown their arms in the air while trying to salvage some historicity. ...the Ten Commandments represent the Jewish version of the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, the Egyptian Book of the Dead and other texts. Like Moses, other figures such as Sargon the Great and the Indian son of the sun god, Karna, were placed by their mothers in reed boats and set adrift in a river, to be discovered by others. “The historian Diodorus Siculus and the geographer Strabo associate the Hebrew lawgiver with Mercurius, Minos, Lycurgus, Amphiaraus, Orpheus, Musaeus, Zamolxis and other leaders and prophets of various shades of respectability” - Professor D. C. Allen (John Hopkins University) Names of various biblical characters also have been discovered at Ebla, such as Abraham and David, long predating any “historical” individuals by those names and indicating their probable mythical nature instead. One major problem with the tradition of Moses composing the Pentateuch and Exodus story of Israel’s founding comes from the fact that several other Old Testament texts omit the patriarch largely or entirely, even when discussing the law or other foundational myths. "The reasons for doubting his existence include, among others, (1) the parallels between the Moses stories and older ones like that of Sargon, (2) the absence of any Egyptian account of such a great event as the Pentateuch asserts the Exodus to have been, (3) the attributing to Moses of so many laws that are known to have originated much later, (4) the correlative fact that great codes never suddenly appear full-born but are slowly evolved, (5) the difficulties of fitting the slavery, the Exodus, and the conquest of Canaan into the known chronology of Egypt and Palestine, and (6) the extreme probability that some of the twelve tribes were never in Egypt at all" - Francis Potter (The World’s Great Religion Leaders) Did Moses See God? Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness - (Exodus 24: 9–10) Are we to believe this scene represents a historical occurrence? Yet, at John 1: 18, we read: “No one has ever seen God,” 28 and at 1 John 4: 12, it is asserted: “No man has ever seen God.” How can we reconcile this apparent contradiction with the verse in Exodus above, along with many others in which Moses, his older brother, Aaron, and others convene with the Lord in the tabernacle or tent for the divine presence? Do these passages truly represent history? There are many such instances in the Bible in which the gods of other cultures are depicted as real beings including where the word elohim is used. A Very Old Man Some modern Christian apologists reckon Moses’s birth to 1526 BCE, based on Exodus 7:7, which makes Moses 80 years old and Aaron 83 when they asked pharaoh to let their people go, an advanced age to be leading hundreds of thousands of warriors in battle. The Impossible Exodus The fact will remain that, not only is this migration an absurd notion for the reasons given here, but also, after over a century of intense exploration, there remains no unambiguous artifact for such a mass movement...In reality, the Exodus story “cannot be accepted as an historical event and must be defined as a national saga.” “The exodus from Egypt is unknown to history save what is written in the Hebrew Bible. Outside of the most meager of circumstantial evidence we possess nothing to substantiate the text” - Dr. Michael D. Oblath (The Exodus Itinerary Sites) “No direct evidence [of] the Israelite sojourn in Egypt and the Exodus can be extracted from archaeology” - Israel Finkelstein and Amihai Mazar (The Quest for the Historical Israel) Extrapolating from the number of 600,000 Israelite men alone, according to the Old Testament, a possible two to three million people are depicted as leaving Egypt, hunted by a fickle pharaoh’s army. These millions of refugees narrowly escape after Moses supernaturally parts the Red Sea, which crashes down upon the pursuing Egyptians, drowning them. The Pentateuch refers to the first five books of the Bible, also called the Torah or the Humash, the latter from the Hebrew word for “five,” comprising Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. We would add to this list the dearth of archaeological evidence for the Exodus of possibly three million people spread around a 130-mile-wide desert, in spite of numerous attempts over the centuries by archaeologists and the faithful alike to find such artifacts. Preposterous Exodus Accounts ...we are asked to believe that possibly two or three million fleeing people tromped through the desert from Egypt to Israel, requiring four decades to make this relatively short journey of 130 miles or so, set on the path by Yahweh speaking through a burning bush and led by supernatural pillars of cloud and fire. Somehow this massive and spectacular event failed to be noticed by any Egyptian scribe or other ancient writers, who relate not one word of the affair, even though it could and should have been recorded by any number of cultures with whom these historians and geographers came into contact, such as the Egyptians, Canaanites, Babylonians, Phoenicians and so on. The improbable nature of the Exodus tale has been recognized many times in past centuries, by earlier generations of scholars, such as Bible scholar and Anglican bishop Dr. John William Colenso (1814–1883): "…Bishop Colenso’s…mathematical arguments that an army of 600,000 men could not very well have been mobilized in a single night, that three millions of people with their flocks and herds could not very well have drawn water from a single well, and hundreds of other equally ludicrous inaccuracies of a similar nature, were popular points which even the most unlearned could appreciate, and therefore especially roused the ire of apologists and conservatives" - G. R. S. Mead According to the Exodus story, millions of escaped slaves were traumatized and tortured in the desert for four decades by Yahweh playing all manner of scary tricks and mind games on them. If the tale were true, such behavior would be condemnable as the practice of a bizarre and anti-human cult with an evil god. If the “chosen people” were so “stiff-necked” that they needed 40 years of being terrorized and abused in the desert, while alternately astonished by mind-bending miracles, one wonders why the all-powerful God would choose them in the first place. Add to this tale a couple hundred thousand animals, as well as the mass of booty supposedly acquired from the Egyptians, and the tale become even more implausible. How was this huge amount of animals fed in the desert? What plant matter would they be able to eat, in the enormous quantities needed? Additionally, how could this huge mass of livestock have been pastured in Egypt to begin with? Wheless calculates that the amount of lambs needed to fulfill the Passover decree at Exodus 12: 21 would be something on the order of at least 240,000, slaughtered in one night. If those were only the lambs, how many other animals were there, including all the adult sheep, cattle, goats and horses, all spared miraculously during the plagues? Wheless also calculates that the pasture lands needed for such a mass would be equivalent to the size of the American state of Rhode Island. Once encamped for four decades, the Israelites were instructed to offer up mass sacrifices of animals, which must be burned. (Lev 4: 11–12) Where did the wood come from for these enormous holocausts, which were attended by a handful of priests, the elderly Aaron and his two sons, before the latter were struck down for looking into the ark, thus leaving only Aaron? And what about all the remains and ashes? How were they disposed of, as Yahweh demanded ritual cleanliness? (Deut 23: 12–14) At Exodus 3:22 and 12:35, the Israelites are to flee through the desert with the enormous wealth of Egypt, taking a mass of silver and gold. Why carry all that weight to live in the desert, where it has no value? Could not Yahweh instantly transport the gold and silver into a safer place in Israel? Was he not capable of hiding it and giving it to the Israelites later? Why would they need this wealth in the first place, since Yahweh is purported to be omnipotent and able to take care of all their needs? During the desert sojourn, two or three million people and hundreds of thousands of animals would require a huge amount of water. One must ask why the good Lord initially gives these thirsty travelers “bitter water,” as is the name of the well, Marah, where the Israelites end up at Exodus 15: 25? Here apologists try to excuse Yahweh’s abuse of his chosen by claiming God is “testing” them. But they have already endured enough, so why let them suffer in this manner? Moreover, such an amount of pillaged booty would leave the nation of Egypt bankrupt and destitute, and the Israelites extremely wealthy, a situation not borne out by the historical and archaeological record. Archaeologists have found no evidence of such wealth among the hill settlers who became the Israelites. Jewish Scribes Plagiarize Manetho …the Exodus story was based on Manetho’s account of the expulsion of foreigners from Egypt into Judea. The traditions in Manetho can be demonstrated to have drawn exclusively on native Egyptian sources and display no awareness of the biblical account. The Exodus story, meanwhile, shows considerable knowledge of Manetho’s accounts regarding Hyksos and expelled Egyptians Moses: The Merciful Leader of God Moses’s solution to this transgression of his fellow sectarians is bloodletting, so he orders the Levitical priestly tribe to slaughter all the men, women and children. (Exod 32:27.) Apparently, this godly gang could only manage to massacre 3,000 people before losing steam, but Moses was not done with the genocidal mania, as, when finally he and his merry band arrived in Canaan, they massacred everyone in their path who would not kowtow or serve them somehow. The pericope at Exodus 32 about the Golden Calf, worshiped when Moses goes up the mountain for too long, is peculiar in that it is the lawgiver’s own brother, Aaron, who institutes this idolatry while Moses is away. Again, the prophet orders the slaughter of all the Israelites but only manages to get through a few thousand. However, the instigator of this illicit worship, Aaron, remains unpunished and, as noted, subsequently receives the only priestly ordination, along with his sons, who are slaughtered by Yahweh later. Curiously, Philo claims Moses chose Aaron as high priest because of his “great virtue.” Why would Yahweh make the initiator of the most infamous episode of idol worship his sole priest afterwards? One also wonders why, if the Israelites took with them a vast treasure from Egypt, Aaron would need to use the Hebrews’ rings and earrings for the calf (Exod 32:2), rather than melting down the Egyptian gold? This element indicates the writer of this passage was not conscious of the motif of Egyptian booty, possibly because it had not yet been woven into the fictional story, which evidently was embellished over a period of centuries. ...Exodus 32:27 records Moses forcing his men to slaughter their own brothers, companions and neighbors because they were revering the Golden Calf, suggesting that murdering one’s best friends and family members is morally superior to idol worship. At Leviticus 26:29, Yahweh threatens his chosen people with the cannibalism of their own children if they do not obey him, a threat repeated elsewhere biblically. "…as Yahveh got angry with his chosen, whom he had repeatedly promised to bring into Canaan, and he caused every one of them, except Joshua and Caleb, to die in the wilderness, there were on the average 1700 deaths and funerals per day for forty years, at the rate of 72 per hour, more than one for every minute of every day; and all the corpses must also be carried “without the camp” for burial, an average of six miles going and returning. And as the census taken at the end of the forty years shows but a slight decrease in numbers from that taken at the beginning, the entire host was renewed by a birth-rate of over one a minute for forty years; and all the debris must be lugged without the camp and disposed of" - James Wheless (Is It God's Word?) In another bloodthirsty act, Deuteronomy 2:34, 3:3 and 3:6 depict the massacre of all the people of Heshbon and Bashan, including innocent men, women and children. Although Genesis 14:13 says that certain Amorites were confederates of Abraham, Deuteronomy 20:17 lays out once again the planned genocide of Canaanitish peoples, including the Amorites. “Amorite” is a name scholars such as Ugaritic language expert Dr. John Gray aver is a more appropriate moniker for the “Canaanites.” D.M., Murdock; Acharya, S. Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver (Kindle Locations 3603-3604). Stellar House Publishing. Kindle Edition. Mt.Sinai: Where is it? There simply exists no credible, scientific evidence for the alleged events on Mt. Sinai, despite claims otherwise: "For years, scholars have speculated as to the location of the actual Mount Sinai where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. At least 13 sites have actually been claimed on the Sinai peninsula as being the correct spot" - J. Kovacs If the holy mountain location were so concretely established, there would not be so many candidates. This fact of multiple locations lends credence to the contention that the Exodus is fictional. The Ten Plagues The plaguing of humanity with some sort of disease or affliction is common throughout history, and such catastrophes frequently were attributed to divine intervention of one sort or another.
Parting the Red Sea As another early example, in the legend of her descent into the underworld, appearing in the Sumero-Babylonian texts dating to at least the Late Bronze Age, the Babylonian goddess Ishtar is also portrayed as “parting the waters:” Ishtar, on arriving at the gate of Hades, to the keeper of the gate addresses the word: “Opener (keeper) of the waters, open thy gate! Open thy gate that I may enter!...” The mythical passage across a body of water can be found in the Americas as well, as in the Maya story recorded in the Popol Vuh regarding the tribes that “crossed the sea, the waters having parted when they passed,” reflecting the ancestral exodus from the homeland of Tulan. Indian myth thus states that the god Rama crossed a sea via “Rama’s Bridge,” while Judeo-Christian tradition posits that the god-king Ramesses attempted to pass through the Red Sea by virtue of “Moses’s Bridge,” so to speak. The Egyptian name Ramesses or Ramses comes from the god Ra and ms, meaning “born of (the god) Ra,” which is not much different from the moniker denoting “the god Rama.” Covenants With God Not Unique As concerns non-biblical usage, the word diatheke appears in the works of numerous pagan writers in antiquity, such as Appian, Aristophanes, Demosthenes, Diodorus, Isocrates, Josephus, Lucian, Plato and Plutarch. Aristophanes employs the term to convey “to arrange an arrangement,” in the name of Apollo. The Ten Commandments The basic sentiment of various biblical commandments can be found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, particularly the 125th chapter or spell, which existed by at least the 19th century BCE. The Book of the Dead likewise depicts the “Hall of the Double Law or Truth where the divine lawgiver Osiris presided as Judge of the Dead.” It is before Osiris in this hall that the deceased must appear to state the 42 affirmations and denials or “negative confessions” about behaviors during the life of the deceased. Because these are “negative confessions,” instead of the commandment, “You shall not steal,” the deceased, hoping for eternal life in heaven, states, “I have not stolen.” Moses as Bacchus (Dionysus) Pausanias also states that “there is a spring below the city near the sea, the water of which they say gushed forth for Dionysus when he struck he ground with a thyrsus.” He continues: “For this reason they call the spring Dionysias.” Here we see several germane elements included in the Moses myth. “... the time and manner of the greatest and most holy solemnity of the Jews is exactly agreeable to the holy rites of Bacchus; for that which they call the Fast they celebrate in the midst of the vintage” Plutarch (Symposiacs) “In Bacchus we evidently have Moses. Herodotus says [Bacchus] was an Egyptian…The Orphic verses relate that he was preserved from the waters, in a little box or chest, that he was called Misem in commemoration of the event; that he was instructed in all the secrets of the Gods; and that he had a rod, which he changed into a serpent at his pleasure; that he passed through the Red Sea dry-shod, as Hercules subsequently did…and that when he went to India, he and his army enjoyed the light of the Sun during the night: moreover, it is said, that he touched with his magic rod the waters of the great rivers Orontes and Hydaspes; upon which those waters flowed back and left him a free passage. It is even said that he arrested the course of the sun and moon. He wrote his laws on two tablets of stone. He was anciently represented with horns or rays on his head" - Godfrey Higgins (Anacalypsis) “That the god Bacchus was the archetype of Moses seems to have been the opinion of many learned men, particularly the celebrated Bishop Huet, and…Vossius, who agree that the Arabian name of Bacchus is Meses” - Logan Mitchell (Christian Mythology Unveiled) Oxford scholar Robert Graves sees the god of intoxicated revelry in a cave painting dating to possibly 10,000 or more years ago, obviously not labeled by the Greek moniker “Dionysus” but possessing related archaic attributes. ...we see that Dionysus dies and is reborn at the winter solstice or “Christmas,” the traditional time of Jesus’s birth...It is further noteworthy that, whereas Jesus is the Lamb, Dionysus is the Kid or baby goat. In his Theogony, Hesiod describes the birth of Dionysus to the mortal woman Semele, subsequently deified, as well as his marriage to Ariadne. The poet styles Bacchus as the “golden-haired,” representing an obvious solar epithet; so too was Apollo “golden-haired.” Euripides...further calls Dionysus the “bull-horned god,” who is “crowned with a crown of snakes” 922 or dragons, making of him an Ophite deity/serpent god as well. So close were these correspondences in the Dionysus myth that certain devout believers wrote long treatises presenting the parallels’ purported biblical originals. One such individual was British theologian and vicar Rev. Theophilus Gale (1628–1678), who cited biblical chapter and verse whence the Greek poets allegedly had plagiarized their Bacchic tales. In his book The Court of the Gentiles, in the chapter The Theogonie of Bacchus from Sacred, or Hebrew, Names and Traditions, Gale lists 17 parallels between the Moses and Dionysus stories and tries to trace them to the Bible, providing various scriptures as their basis. Thomassin also discusses the name of Moses, which “comes from that which was pulled from the waters.” He calls the lawgiver by the Latin moniker Masa extraxit (“Moses extracted”) and says that “Orpheus in the Hymns or in the Mysteries gives to Bacchus the name of Mises, and names him born from the waters...” ...the French priest raises up the two mothers, Nysa, the flight across the Red Sea, the presence of women in the army, the horns, the smiting of a rock for water, the serpent, the “dog,” the “milk and honey,” the role of lawgiver, the “double law” and the miracle-making. Thomassin cites many of the ancient sources for these comparisons, including Clement, Diodorus, Euripides, Nonnus, Orpheus, Plutarch, Sophocles and Strabo. Around the same time, English bishop and theologian Dr. Simon Patrick (1626– 1707) continued the analysis, remarking that, “in Orpheus’s hymns, Bacchus is called Mises, which seems to be the same with Moses; out of whose story all that the Greeks and others say of Bacchus seems to have been framed.” "The ancient poets have placed the birth of Bacchus in Egypt; he is exposed on the Nile and it is from that event that he is named Mises by the first Orpheus, which, in Egyptian, signifies “saved from the waters”… He is brought up near a mountain of Arabia called Nisa [Nysa], which is believed to be Mount Sinai. It is pretended that a goddess ordered him to go and destroy a barbarous nation and that he passed through the Red Sea on foot, with a multitude of men, women, and children. Another time the river Orontes suspended its waters right and left to let him pass, and the Hydaspes did the same. He commanded the sun to stand still; two luminous rays proceeded from his head. He made a fountain of wine spout up by striking the ground with his thyrsus, and engraved his laws on two tables of marble. He wanted only to have afflicted Egypt with ten plagues, to be the perfect copy of Moses - Voltaire For many centuries since antiquity, scholars, theologians and others have noted numerous parallels between Dionysus and Moses, most attempting to establish biblical priority but some declaring that the former post-dated and was derived from the latter. The Greek god Dionysus’s worship extends back at least 3,200 years, but the reverence for a wine deity in general is much older.
Another parallel between the Moses and Dionysus myths occurs in Exodus 15, when Miriam and all the Israelite women dance in a celebratory frenzy praising Yahweh, much like the Bacchae or Dionysian priestesses and Maenads in their ecstatic rapture. In his book The Diegesis, Taylor likewise recited various Moses-Dionysus parallels, such as already provided in the present work. Since Taylor’s time, many others have written about these correspondences, not a few from the perspective that Moses is a mythical copy of Dionysus and not the other way around. In consideration of Dionysus’s appearance in the historical record by name by the 13th century BCE, whereas Moses cannot be found in the literature until many centuries later, it would seem that the latter is a remake of the former. Jehovah as Bacchus ...Iakkhos has been equated with “Iao” and the Jewish Tetragrammaton YHWH. Hence, again, it would not be surprising if Jews were involved in Bacchus worship. In his Moralia, in a section discussing what god the Jews worshiped, Plutarch relates that Bacchus was “one of the gods worshiped by the Hebrews,” reflecting the Dionysus-Yahweh connection. "...the time and manner of the greatest and most holy solemnity of the Jews is exactly agreeable to the holy rites of Bacchus; for that which they call the Fast [Day of Atonement] they celebrate in the midst of the vintage, furnishing their tables with all sorts of fruits, while they sit under tabernacles made of vines and ivy; and the day which immediately goes before this they call the day of Tabernacles (Sukkah). Within a few days after they celebrate another feast, not darkly but openly, dedicated to Bacchus, for they have a feast among them called Kradephoria, from carrying palm-trees, and Thyrsophoria, when they enter into the temple carrying thyrsi. What they do within I know not; but it is very probable that they perform the rites of Bacchus. First they have little trumpets, such as the Grecians used to have at their Bacchanalia to call upon their Gods withal. Others go before them playing upon harps, which they call Levites, whether so named from Lusius or Evius — either word agrees with Bacchus. And I suppose that their Sabbaths have some relation to Bacchus; for even at this day many call the Bacchi by the name of Sabbi, and they make use of that word at the celebration of Bacchus’s orgies... ...Nor would it be absurd, were any one to say that the name Sabbath was imposed upon this feast from the agitation and excitement which the priests of Bacchus indulged in. The Jews themselves testify no less; for when they keep the Sabbath, they invite one another to drink till they are drunk; or if they chance to be hindered by some more weighty business, it is the fashion at least to taste the wine... ...But there are other arguments which will clearly evince the truth of what I assert. The first may be drawn from their High-priest, who on holidays enters their temple with his mitre on, arrayed in a skin of a hind embroidered with gold, wearing buskins, and a coat hanging down to his ankles; besides he has a great many little bells hanging at his garment which make a noise when he walks the streets. So in the nightly ceremonies of Bacchus (as the fashion is among us), they make use of musical instruments, and call the God’s nurses. High up on the wall of their temple is a representation of the thyrsus and timbrels, which surely can belong to no other God than Bacchus. Moreover they are forbidden the use of honey in their sacrifices, because they suppose that a mixture of honey corrupts and deads the wine" - Plutarch (Symposiacs) "The resemblance between the Feast of the Tabernacle and the Greek festivals in honor of Bacchus, or Dionysos, is noticed at some length by Plutarch. He describes the booths of palm-branches and ivy, and the Levites playing on their citherns; the mitre, the tunic, the bells of the high priests’ vestments. He, for his part, had no doubt that the festival was at the Thyrsophoria of the Greeks, and that the Jews were worshipers of Bacchus" - Dr. Edward Hayes Plumptre Dionysus, the Twice-Born the “twice-born” epithet as having to do with grapevines, which are first born as they sprout from the ground and born again as they put forth leaves and ripe fruit. Dionysus and Osiris While Dionysus is associated with Osiris, Pausanias tells us also that, as one might expect, the Egyptian god’s sister-wife, Isis, was worshiped alongside Bacchus at a place called Omphalos/ Umbilicus, the “navel of the world.” Many of these similarities existed hundreds to thousands of years earlier, before Hebrew emerged as a separate language and the Bible was composed. Dionysus and Tammuz (the Sumerian Hero) Lugalbanda, according to the King List, is followed by Dumuzi (Tammuz) a ruler who became the major figure in a Sumerian "holy-marriage rite" and "dying-god" myth which left a deep impression on the ancient world…the women of Jerusalem, to the horror of the prophet Ezekiel, were still lamenting his death in the sixth century B.C. (Ezekiel 8:14). One of the months of the Jewish calendar bears his name to this day – S. N. Kramer (The Sumerians: Their History, Culture and Character)
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Chauvinism and Bigotry
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Now it came to pass, when they had heard the law, that they separated from Israel all the mixed multitude - Nehemiah 13:3
In those days also saw I Jews that had married wives of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab: And their children spake half in the speech of Ashdod, and could not speak in the Jews' language, but according to the language of each people. And I contended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair, and made them swear by God, saying, Ye shall not give your daughters unto their sons, nor take their daughters unto your sons, or for yourselves - (Nehemiah 13:23-25) When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them: Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son - (Exodus 7:1-3) |
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