Was Moses Left-handed?

The Bible says that Ehud, one of the judges in Israel, was a left-handed man (Judges 3:15), as it were many of the warriors of the tribe of Benjamin (Judges 20:16). The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, says that Ehud was an ambidexter, that is, someone who could use both hands alike. By being an ambidexter, Ehud had an advantage in hand-to-hand combat because he could use both hands.

There is a Jewish tradition that says that Moses was left-handed. This tradition is based on a legendary event that happened when Moses was a child. In his article, “Why Did Moses Stammer? And, Was Moses Left-handed,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 88 (May 1995): 256-257, Henry Garfinkel provides the details for the Jewish tradition that Moses was left-handed:

Much of this evidence is derived from the Midrashim, a collection of learned books that search for meanings in the Bible which are not initially apparent. The word Midrash is derived from another word 'darash' which means 'to enquire' or 'to investigate'.

Rabbinic legend records that one day the young Moses was playing with Pharaoh and innocently took hold of his crown, placing it on his own head. One can imagine the consternation and horror that swept the palace. Was this an omen that the young Hebrew would one day destroy Pharaoh

and his evil dynasty and become the most powerful man in the country? The tension must have been so agonizing, that the onlookers became paralysed and dumb with fear. Probably all background noise ceased and the atmosphere must have been intense.

Eventually a test was devised. Some authorities believe that Jethro, the future father-in-law of Moses, proposed the trial and others that the angel Gabriel, disguised as a human-being, was responsible. It was proposed that two bowls were to be brought, one filled with chunks of shining gold, or, according to another author, a piece of bright onyx, or according to yet another authority, a date, and the other bowl with pieces of burning coal. These basins were placed in front of Moses. Were he to take a piece of the former, it was declared, this would indicate that he

would one day usurp the throne of Egypt and he would be killed. On the other hand, were he to take one of the red hot embers, the verdict would be: innocent.

One can imagine, that as the trial started, rhythmic melodies were played and the onlookers, especially Pharaoh, were filled with apprehension and foreboding. Moses, according to some, a mere 3 year old at the time, must surely have sensed that a powerful and compelling drama was taking place. The high tension, the throbbing music and his own feelings of fear all predisposed to a likely trance-state in the youngster.

Tradition teaches that Moses moved his hand towards the bowl containing the gold. When it seemed he was just about to take some of the precious metal, the suspense must have been almost palpable. Midrashic legend explains that the angel Gabriel forced Moses' hand away from its intended path to the container with the fiery coal. He clutched a lump of the material and probably dropped it instantly. No doubt, he burnt his fingers and brought his painful hand to his

mouth to suck and cool the digits. Some glowing splinters probably stuck to his hand so that his lips and mouth also became burnt.

At that moment, the palace atmosphere must have changed completely. Pharaoh probably smiled and then laughed with relief. The royal attendants must have followed his example and started to cheer unrestrainedly.

Moses, already in an almost certain trance-state must have been in mental turmoil. The recent events including his inability to move his hand in the direction that he wanted and then the burns of his fingers, lips and tongue, are likely to have resulted in a terrified youngster, hypnotized, immobile and unable to speak. It is easy to understand how, following such an experience, Moses could have been left with a permanent speech defect.

Interestingly, Louis Ginzberg in his authoritative book The Legends of the Jews writes:

... The coal burnt the child's hand, and he lifted it up and touched it to his mouth, and burnt part of his lips and part of his tongue and for all of his life he became slow of speech and of a slow tongue.

It may be relevant to this discussion to note that one of the prayers Jews are expected to say before retiring to bed at night also contains the name of Gabriel '... may Michael be at my right hand, Gabriel, at my left...'. According to Israel Abrahams this passage appeared in a prayer book in the late fourteenth century but there are similar passages in much earlier literature.

This may indicate that the angel Gabriel is somehow protective of the left side of the body. If this supposition is correct then it may have been Gabriel, the guardian of our left, who saved Moses by forcibly moving his left arm and hand. Generally, the dominant upper limb is the one that is likely to reach out for an article and according to this reasoning Moses may, therefore, well have been left-handed.

Tigay (p. 57), in his article discussing Moses’ speech impediment, wrote about the legend of Moses burning his tongue on a hot coal: “For all their popularity, the legend and the interpretation were dismissed as apocryphal as early as the 12th century by Rashbam.”

The Bible does not provide any evidence that Moses was left-handed. The view that Moses was left-handed is based on a Jewish legend about an apocryphal incident that happened when Moses was a child.

Read the companion post, Did Moses Have a Cleft Lip?

Note: The footnotes for Garfinkel’s article can be found in the article cited below.

References:

Henry Garfinkel. “Why Did Moses Stammer? And, Was Moses Left-handed,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 88 (May 1995): 256-257.

Jeffry H. Tigay, “‘Heavy of Mouth’ and ‘Heavy of Tongue’: On Moses’ Speech Difficulty,” BASOR 231 (1978): 57-67.

Claude Mariottini

Professor of Old Testament

Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, Moses, Left-handed

Did Moses Have a Cleft Lip?

When God appeared to Moses at Mount Sinai and told him to return to Egypt and bring the people “out of the iron furnace” (Deuteronomy 4:20), Moses presented five objections why he should not go back to Egypt and speak to Pharaoh. In his fourth objection, Moses emphasized what has been commonly interpreted as his lack of eloquence as a public speaker. According to the translation of the New Revised Standard Version, Moses said to the LORD: “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue” (Exodus 4:10).

The words of Moses to God, if translated literally, would be as follows: “Not a man of words I . . . for heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue I.” Moses’s words to God have been translated differently be the various English versions:

“I am not a man of words; I have never been so, and am not now, even after what you have said to your servant: for talking is hard for me, and I am slow of tongue” (Exodus 4:10 The Bible in Basic English).

“I'm a terrible speaker. I always have been, and I'm no better now, even after you've spoken to your servant! My words come slowly, my tongue moves slowly” (Exodus 4:10 The Complete Jewish Bible).

“I have never been eloquent-- either in the past or recently or since You have been speaking to Your servant-- because I am slow and hesitant in speech” (Exodus 4:10 Holman Christian Standard Bible).

“ I'm not a good speaker. I've never been a good speaker, and I'm not now, even though you've spoken to me. I speak slowly, and I become tongue-tied easily” (Exodus 4:10 God’s Word to the Nations).

“Lord, I've never been a good speaker. And I haven't gotten any better since you spoke to me. I don't speak very well at all” (Exodus 4:10 New International Reader’s Version).

“I'm not very good with words. I never have been, and I'm not now, even though you have spoken to me. I get tongue-tied, and my words get tangled” (Exodus 4:10 New Living Translation).

These translations have one thing in common: they emphasize that Moses was a poor communicator and that he did not have the ability of speaking eloquently. The translations above reflect the view that the prophet was known by the use of words to proclaim God’s word. The response of Jeremiah to God’s call to the prophetic ministry reflects a similar objection. Jeremiah said to God: “Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak” (Jeremiah 1:6).

However, some commentators have interpreted Moses’ claim that he was heavy of language to mean that he was unable to speak a foreign language. In this case, Moses was saying that he had forgotten how to speak either Egyptian, Hebrew, or both. According to the traditional view of Moses’ life, he spent forty years in Egypt, forty years in Midian, and forty years in the wilderness (he died at the age of one hundred and twenty years, cf. Deuteronomy 31:2). Thus, Moses’ many years away from Egyptian and Hebrew speaking people caused him to forget one or both languages. This view is based indirectly on Ezekiel 3:5 where God told Ezekiel that he was not sent to minister “to a people of a strange speech and of a hard language.”

In his commentary on Exodus, when dealing with Moses’ speech problem, Adam Clark wrote:

It is possible he was not intimately acquainted with the Hebrew tongue, so as to speak clearly and distinctly in it. The first forty years of his life he had spent in Egypt, chiefly at court; and though it is very probable there was an affinity between the two languages, yet they certainly were not the same. The last forty he had spent in Midian, and it is not likely that the pure Hebrew tongue prevailed there, though it is probable that a dialect of it was there spoken. On these accounts Moses might find it difficult to express himself with that readiness and persuasive flow of language, which he might deem essentially necessary on such a momentous occasion; as he would frequently be obliged to consult his memory for proper expressions, which would necessarily produce frequent hesitation, and general slowness of utterance, which he might think would ill suit an ambassador of God.

The view that Moses’ speech problem was that he was not eloquent or that he had forgotten Egyptian or Hebrew, is not very convincing. The expression “heavy of mouth” seems to describe some kind of physical disability. Genesis 48:10 says that “the eyes of Israel [Jacob] were heavy from age: he could not see (Darby Translation). In Isaiah 6:10, heavy ears belong to people who cannot hear (the same idea is present in the Hebrew of Isaiah 59:1 and Zechariah 7:11).

Because Moses’ words imply the idea of physical disability, many modern commentators have said that Moses’ inability to speak well was caused by a medical condition that caused stammering. According to modern research on the problem of stammering, emotional stress and anxiety can cause a person to stutter. This view says that Moses probably suffered some traumatic experience in his youth that caused him to stammer or that Moses had suffered an intense mental and emotional situation that led him to stutter.

S. Levin, in his article “The Speech Defect of Moses,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 86 (October 1992): 632-633, has proposed a new theory to explain Moses’ speech problem. Levin proposed that Moses had a cleft lip. Levin wrote that in describing his condition, Moses said he was “heavy of mouth,” “heavy of tongue” (Exodus 4:10) and “uncircumcised of lips” (Exodus 6:12 KJV). Levin said that to the Israelites, the uncircumcision of the Philistines was considered a physical defect and a deformity that needed to be corrected.

According to Levin, Moses’ words in Exodus 4:10 and Exodus 6:12 clearly suggest that there was a problem with Moses’ mouth and that this was the reason Pharaoh would not listen to him: “I am of uncircumcised lips, and how shall Pharaoh hearken unto me?” (Exodus 6:30 KJV).

In his article, Levin provided several examples from the book of Exodus that he said clearly demonstrate that Moses was born with a physical malformation. For example, Levin said that because of his cleft lip, Moses was easily recognized as the person who killed the Egyptian. He said that Moses was not appointed a high priest because the law did not allow a person with a physical defect to serve as a priest (Leviticus 21:16-21). In addition, he said that after Moses was born, his mother hid him for three months because of maternal embarrassment at his physical abnormality.

Levin wrote that cleft lip is a relative frequent anomaly in babies. According to Levin, about 1 in 1000 babies is born with a cleft lip and that this situation in more prevalent in oriental babies and more common in males.

I find Levin’s argument unpersuasive. Although Moses’ words apparently suggest that he was afflicted with some kind of physical disability instead of lack of eloquence, the text does not provide enough information to help interpreters to identify the cause of Moses’ speech problem.

Tigay has made reference to an Akkadian cognate for the Hebrew word heavy (kbd) by saying that the Akkadian word kabātu “is used in medical texts as a symptom of several parts of the body” (p. 58). Parts of the body that are afflicted with “heaviness” include the head, knee, shins, feet, eyes, nose, and mouth.

Thus, English versions that speak of Moses’ ineloquence, that is, that he was a poor speaker, may be providing an interpretation to Moses’ words that is foreign to the text. The view that Moses had forgotten his Egyptian or his Hebrew does not reflect the true meaning of Exodus 4:10. Although the text seems to indicate that Moses had a physical disability, the text does not provide interpreters with enough information to help them diagnose Moses’ medical condition. The view that Moses’ speech difficulty was caused by a medical condition is almost certain. That this medical condition was stammering or a cleft lip is impossible to determine.

My next post will deal with the question of whether Moses was left-handed. Read the post here.

References:

Adam Clark, Clark’s Commentary on the Old Testament. The Ages Digital Library. In loco (Commentary on Exodus 4:10).

S. Levin, “The Speech Defect of Moses,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 86 (October 1992): 632-33.

Jeffry H. Tigay, “‘Heavy of Mouth’ and ‘Heavy of Tongue’: On Moses’ Speech Difficulty,” BASOR 231 (1978): 57-67.

Claude Mariottini

Professor of Old Testament

Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, Moses, Stammering, Cleft Lip

Was Moses a Bigamist?

In a previous post, I discussed Lamech’s bigamy and named some of the people in the Bible who were married to more than one wife. One issue I did not raise in that post was about Moses’ marital status. The issue I will seek to address in this post is whether Moses also was a bigamist, that is, whether Moses had more than one wife.

The problem of whether or not Moses was a bigamist comes because of the conflict that arose between Aaron and Miriam against their brother Moses. The rebellion of Aaron and Miriam against Moses was over the issue of leadership. Moses’ leadership over the people was questioned because he had married a “Cushite woman.” Below are two translations of the text which refers to the Cushite woman:

“Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman” (Numbers 12:1 ESV).

“And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman” (Numbers 12:1 KJV).

Numbers 12:1 is the only passage in the Old Testament where Moses’ wife is identified as a “Cushite.” Throughout the Pentateuch, Moses’s wife is identified as Zipporah, a Midianite woman and the daughter of Jethro, the priest of Midian (Exodus 2:21; 3:1).

The expression “Cushite woman” is used disparagingly against Moses because he had married a non-Israelite woman. The text in question raises several issues: was Zipporah the Cushite woman? Does Cush in this context refers to Ethiopia or to another place? Thus, the most important question related to our discussion is: Did Moses have one wife, Zipporah or did Moses have two wives, Zipporah and the Cushite woman?

In his book, Antiquity of Jews, Book 2, Chapter 10, Josephus wrote that while Moses lived in Egypt, he commanded the Egyptian army in a war against Ethiopia and that he married an Ethiopian woman. The following are a few excerpts from Josephus’s narrative about Moses in Ethiopia:

(239) The Ethiopians, who are next neighbors to the Egyptians, made an inroad into their country, which they seized upon, and carried off the effects of the Egyptians, who, in their rage, fought against them, and revenged the affronts they had received from them; but, being overcome in battle, some of them were slain, and the rest ran away in a shameful manner, and by that means saved themselves;

(240) whereupon the Ethiopians followed after them in the pursuit, and thinking that it would be a mark of cowardice if they did not subdue all Egypt, they went on to subdue the rest with greater vehemence; and when they had tasted the sweets of the country, they never left off the prosecution of the war; and as the nearest parts had not courage enough at first to fight with them, they proceeded as far as Memphis and the sea itself; while not one of the cities was able to oppose them.

(241) The Egyptians under this sad oppression, betook themselves to their oracles and prophecies, and when God had given them this counsel, to make use of Moses the Hebrew, and take his assistance, the king commanded his daughter to produce him, that he might be the general of their army.

(247) When he had therefore proceeded thus on his journey, he came upon the Ethiopians
before they had expected him;

(248) and joining battle with them he beat them, and deprived them of the hopes they had of success against the Egyptians, and went on in overthrowing their cities, and indeed made a great slaughter of these Ethiopians. Now when the Egyptian army had once tasted of this prosperous success, by the means of Moses, they did not slacken their diligence, insomuch that the Ethiopians were in danger of being reduced to slavery, and all sorts of destruction;

(252) Tharbis was the daughter of the king of the Ethiopians: she happened to see Moses as he led the army near the walls, and fought with great courage; and admiring the subtility of his undertakings, and believing him to be the author of the Egyptians’ success, when they had before despaired of recovering their liberty, and to be the occasion of the great danger the Ethiopians were in, when they had before boasted of their great achievements, she fell deeply in love with him; and upon the prevalency of that passion, sent to him the most faithful of all her servants to discourse with him about their marriage.

(253) He thereupon accepted the offer, on condition she would procure the delivering up of the city; and gave her the assurance of an oath to take her to his wife; and that when he had once taken possession of the city, he would not break his oath to her. No sooner was the agreement made, but it took effect immediately; and when Moses had cut off the Ethiopians, he gave thanks to God, and consummated his marriage, and led the Egyptians back to their own land.

This narrative about Moses fighting in Ethiopia as the commander of an Egyptian army and his marriage to an Ethiopian princess is not in the Bible. It is difficult to believe that Josephus would create a fictitious narrative about Moses’ marriage to an Ethiopian woman, even though some scholars say that this narrative is fictitious. However, the source for Josephus’s information about Moses’ action in Ethiopia and his marriage to an Ethiopian woman is unknown.

Zipporah, Moses’ wife, was a Midianite woman. The Midianites were descendants of Abraham through his wife Keturah (Genesis 25:1-4). The Midianites lived in the Sinai region and in northern Arabia. Since the word “Cushites” or “Ethiopians” refers to black-skinned people, it is possible that the word was also applied to the Midianites to describe them as nomads with dark skin. Some scholars have identified Midian with Cushan. The synonymous parallelism between Cushan and Midian in Habakkuk 3:7 suggests that the words Cushite and Midianite are identical. Both views above try to affirm that Zipporah was the Cushite woman and that Moses had only one wife.

When Moses returned to Egypt from Midian, Moses brought Zipporah and his sons with him (Exodus 4:19-20). But, for unknown reasons, Moses sent Zipporah and his two sons back to Midian with Jethro (Exodus 18:2-3). Some scholars believe that Zipporah died in Midian and that after her death, Moses married the Cushite woman. Others believe that while Zipporah was away in Midian, Moses married a second woman, the Cushite woman mentioned in Numbers 12:1. These two views are attempts at saying that Moses had two wives.

Thus, the derogatory use of “Cushite woman” in Numbers 12:1 by Miriam is either an expression of contempt against Zipporah because she was not an Israelite woman or a racial slur used by Miriam to demean Moses’ Ethiopian wife.

The identification of the Cushite woman in Numbers 12:1 is difficult to ascertain. In Egyptian literature and in the Old Testament, the word “Cushites” refers to Ethiopians or Nubians: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots?” (Jeremiah 13:23 NIV). In Jeremiah 13:23, the NIV has the following note: “23 Hebrew Cushite (probably a person from the upper Nile region).”

On the basis of the statement by Josephus and on the basis of the use of the word Cush in the Old Testament, it is quite possible that the Cushite woman mentioned as Moses’ wife in Numbers 12:1 was not Zipporah, but another woman. However, whether Moses married this second woman while Zipporah was alive or after she died, it is impossible to know for sure.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


Tags: Bigamy, Cush, Cushite Woman, Ethiopians, Moses, Zipporah

Moses and American History

Time has an excellent article by Bruce Feiler on “How Moses Shaped America.” This article is an adaptation of a section of Feiler’s book, America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story. The article shows how Moses, his story, his person, and the Mosaic struggle to bring freedom to a group of Egyptian slaves has inspired American politics and the ideals that shaped American history.

The following is an excerpt from the article:

The Moses story opens in the 13th century B.C.E. with the Israelites enslaved in Egypt. After the pharaoh orders the slaughter of all Israelite male babies, Moses is floated down the Nile, picked up by the pharaoh's daughter and raised in the palace. An adult Moses murders an Egyptian for beating "one of his kinsmen," then flees to the desert, where, later, a voice in a burning bush recruits him to free the Israelites. This moment represents Moses' first leadership test: Will he cling to his unburdened life or attempt to free a people enslaved for centuries?

The plight of the Israelites resonated with the earliest American settlers. For centuries, the Catholic Church had banned the direct reading of Scripture. But the Protestant Reformation, combined with the printing press, brought vernacular Bibles to everyday readers. What Protestants discovered was a narrative that reminded them of their sense of subjugation by the church and appealed to their dreams of a Utopian New World. The Pilgrims stressed this aspect of Moses. When the band of Protestant breakaways left England in 1620, they described themselves as the chosen people fleeing their pharaoh, King James. On the Atlantic, they proclaimed their journey to be as vital as "Moses and the Israelites when they went out of Egypt." And when they got to Cape Cod, they thanked God for letting them pass through their fiery Red Sea. (See 10 surprising facts about the world's oldest Bible.)

By the time of the Revolution, the theme of beleaguered people standing up to a superpower had become the go-to narrative of American identity. The two best-selling books of 1776 featured Moses. Thomas Paine, in Common Sense, called King George the "hardened, sullen tempered pharaoh." Samuel Sherwood, in The Church's Flight into the Wilderness, said God would deliver the colonies from Egyptian bondage. The Moses image was so pervasive that on July 4, after signing the Declaration of Independence, the Congress asked Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams to propose a seal for the United States. Their recommendation: Moses, leading the Israelites through the Red Sea as the water overwhelms the pharaoh. In their eyes, Moses was America's true Founding Father.

But escaping bondage proved to be only half the story. After the Israelites arrive in the desert, they face a period of lawlessness, which prompts the Ten Commandments. Only by rallying around the new order can the people become a nation. Freedom depends on law.

Americans faced a similar moment of chaos after the Revolution. One Connecticut preacher noted that Moses took 40 years to quell the Israelites' grumbling: Now "we are acting the same stupid part." And so just as a reluctant Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, then handed down the Ten Commandments, a reluctant George Washington led the colonists to victory, then presided over the drafting of the Constitution. The parallel was not lost. Two-thirds of the eulogies at Washington's death compared the "leader and father of the American nation" to the "first conductor of the Jewish nation."

Feiler concludes his article by encouraging President Obama to learn “from a figure that nearly every one of his predecessors has invoked.”

This is an excellent article and you should visit Time and read this article.


Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


Tags: American History, American Revolution, Bruce Feiler, Moses

Who Was the Moses of the Bible?

The Bible portrays Moses as one of the most influential figures in Israelite history. His leadership in the legal and religious life of Israel cannot be denied. The legacy Moses left in the early formation of Israel can be distorted but not destroyed, it can be denied but not ignored.

For this reason, many scholars have attempted to evaluate Moses’ legacy by studying his life and work. Those scholars who claim to have found him in Egyptian records have developed widely differing descriptions of Moses. Those who have made efforts to find him in history have concluded that, despite all evidence to the contrary, he never existed.

One recent attempt at finding Moses in Egyptian history was made by Graham Phillips in his book The Moses Legacy (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 2002). I would like to thank one of my readers for calling my attention to this book and to Phillips’ attempt at identifying Moses with Egyptian characters.

The Biblical record is clear in identifying Moses as belonging to the people of Israel. According to the book of Exodus, Moses was born in Egypt at the time when an unnamed pharaoh made the people of Israel work as slaves and then decided to kill the newborn male children of the Hebrews.

In addition, the Bible says that Moses’ parents were Amram and Jochebed, from the tribe of Levi, and that they bore, in addition to Moses, Aaron and Miriam. After Moses was born, his mother Jochebed and his sister Miriam saved Moses’ life by putting him in a basket made of bulrushes. Miriam placed the basket among the reeds by the river bank where the daughter of pharaoh was bathing.

Pharaoh’s daughter saved baby Moses and eventually adopted him as her son and he eventually grew up as a prince of Egypt (Exodus 2:14).

Phillips, however, is not happy with the biblical description of Moses. He argues that there is no Egyptian record of a Moses living during the reign of Amenhotep III, nor in the record of any Egyptian pharaoh.

According to Phillips, the Biblical story of Moses makes no sense because, if pharaoh’s daughter wished to keep Moses’ Hebrew identity secret, “which she must have done, since the pharaoh ordered the killing of the Hebrew babies,” she would not give him a Hebrew name (p. 107-108), as the author of the book of Exodus makes it to be in Exodus 2:10. In addition, Phillips says that it is improbable that pharaoh’s daughter would adopt an Israelite child since in ancient Egypt “the bloodline of the royal family was strictly controlled and manipulated.” Phillips wrote:

“The pharaohs were considered gods and their daughters could only conceive children with someone of the king’s choice: very often himself. Adoption was out of the question. At the same time, it is inconceivable that a pharaoh’s daughter would be allowed to adopt a son” (p. 109).

For this reason, Phillips believes that the Biblical narrative about Moses is an invented history in order to make the person of Moses acceptable to later Israelites. The reason the Biblical narrative was concocted as it appears in the book of Exodus was to hide the fact that Moses was a native Egyptian.

The name “Moses” is not a Hebrew name. The name Moses is an Egyptian name which means “son of” or “begotten of.” The suffix appears in the names of several Egyptian pharaohs such as Ahmoses and Thutmosis. Thus, Phillips concludes that Moses was an Egyptian, not a Hebrew: “If Moses was a prince at the Egyptian court then he is far more likely to have been a native Egyptian” (p. 109).

Phillips identifies Moses with Thutmosis. Thutmosis, like Moses (according to Josephus), commanded the Egyptian army against the Ethiopians. Thutmosis, like Moses, left the Egyptian court and disappeared for several years. After listing other similarities between Thutmosis and Moses, Phillips concludes: “If the Exodus took place during the reign of Amonhotep III, then Prince Tuthmoses is the best candidate by far for the historical Moses” (p. 112).

However, Phillips acknowledges that there is a problem placing the Exodus during the reign of Amenhotep III. According to Phillips, Hebrew religion was already practiced in Egypt even before Moses returned to Egypt with the new knowledge about God.

Phillips believes that Hebrew religion influenced the rise of Atenism. Atenism was the worship of Aten as the one supreme god of Egypt. According to Phillips, Atenism was so similar to Hebrew religion that it was directly inspired by Hebrew religion. Thus, when Akhenaten established the cult of Aten in Egypt, it had already been present in Egypt for more than one hundred years.

In light of the similarity between Atenism and Hebrew religion, Phillips concludes:

“If it [Atenism] was inspired by the Hebrew religion then it would seem that if Moses existed then he lived before Atenism came into being in the early fifteenth century BCE. Yet, as we have seen, there is much evidence to place the Exodus in the mid-fourteenth century BCE, during Amonhotep’s reign. If the Old Testament account of Moses first revealing God to the Israelites in any way reflects historical events, then there must have been two Moses’ [sic]: one who led them to freedom at the time of the Thera eruption about 1360 BCE, and another, earlier Moses, who first revealed God to the Israelites at some point before Atenism made its appearance around a hundred years earlier” (p. 120).

Phillips believes that there are two distinct historical periods in the Exodus story, a period that also involves two pharaohs: the pharaoh who enslaved the Hebrews and the pharaoh at the time of the Exodus and that many years elapsed between the enslavement of the Hebrews and their exodus from Egypt. This two distinct historical periods also means that there were two Moses figures, each separated by at least one hundred years.

If there were two Moseses, and the first one was Thutmosis, who was the second Moses? Phillips believes that he was Kamose, the daughter of Termut (the Thermuthis of Josephus?). According to Phillips, Termutis was a Syrian princess who became part of Thutmosis III’s harem and received the honorary title “daughter of pharaoh.” Termuth became a tutor to several court officials, including Kamose, an unknown figure who became the chief steward of the pharaoh of Egypt. According to Phillips, Kamoses was the original Moses, the Moses who met God at the burning bush. In his description of Kamose, Phillips gives six reasons Kamose was the first Moses (p. 127):

1. His parentage is unknown and seems to have been lower class, even foreign.
2. He was raised by a “daughter of pharaoh” with the same name as Moses’ adopted mother.
3. He held high office at the pharaoh’s court.
4. He was in close contact with foreign slaves, which might have included the Israelites.
5. He left office mysteriously and seems to have been disgraced.
6. His eventual whereabouts are unknown.

After studying the Egyptian evidence for Moses, Phillips concludes:

“Two men called Mose [sic]: one discovered God and inspired the Israelites with a new religion, the other freed the Israelites and revealed God’s laws. It is understandable that later they became confused as one man– a man who was required to live to well over a hundred years of age” (p. 127).

In his conclusion, Phillips wrote:

“The historical Moses seems to have been two separate men: one who lived in the mid-fifteen century BCE and another around a century later. The first Moses discovered God in the burning bush and the second led the Israelites out of Egypt” (p. 129).

What can I say about such a preposterous theory about Moses? This theory has no merit. Phillips’ views can only be accepted if one is willing to completely distort the Biblical record.

Brevard S. Childs (The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary [The Old Testament Library; Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1974]), emphasized that in order to understand the person of Moses and the ultimate significance of his work it is necessary to study seriously the final form of the biblical text.

It is true that the Biblical narrative describing the person and work of Moses are not autobiographical nor biographical in nature. However, the reader should not be overly pessimistic or skeptical about Moses and his work.

Although the name or the work of Moses are not mentioned in any records from the Ancient Near East, and although no Egyptian monument or text mentions his name, gives a record of his birth, or tells about his work in delivering Israel, the biblical traditions are still reliable source material about Moses and his work. Although the debate will continue about the historical reliability of the biblical text or the existence of Moses, there is no compelling reason to deny that the Moses of the Bible was the Moses of the Bible.


Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


Tags: Graham Phillips, Kamose, Moses, Thutmosis

A Modern-day Descendant of Moses

Moses was the great Hebrew leader who brought Israel out of Egypt.

His cousin is alive today.

Read the story here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Moses

Moses as a Leader of the People

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin , the chief rabbi of Efrat, has an excellent article published in The Jerusalem Post dealing with Moses’ leadership of the people of Israel. His study is based on Numbers 13:20: “And you shall strengthen yourselves, and you shall take from the fruits of the land; and the days were when the first grapes became ripe.”

The text below is Rabbi Riskin’s conclusion:

What Moses may have failed to realize is that the real problem lay not with the Israelite gastronomic drive but rather with Moses' form of "long-distance" leadership - either from the lofty heights of Mount Sinai or the inner sanctuary of the Tent of Communion. We should keep in mind that initially Moses rejects God's command to lead because "I am a man who is heavy of speech and heavy of tongue" (Exodus 4:10). This cannot only mean that he stuttered and stammered - because God's immediate response is, "Is it not I who gives (or takes away) speech?" and yet Moses continues to speak of having "stopped up lips" (aral sfatayim).

I would like to suggest that Moses is actually saying that he is a man of "heavy speech" rather than a man of "friendly chatter," a prophet of theology and law, morality and ethics, in constant touch with the divine. Moses's intellect actually "kisses" the divine intellect, until his Torah becomes God's Torah (Guide for the Perplexed). Moses is not a man of the people, a man of small talk who can "sell" God's program to the Israelites, a Madison Avenue product. The Bible itself testifies: "The Israelites did not listen to Moses because of his lack of patience (kotzer ruah) and difficult divine service" (Ralbag's interpretation to Exodus 6:9). Moses, the "man [or husband] of God" (Deuteronomy 33:1) as well as the "servant of the Lord," remains "distant" from the people; he is a prophet for all the generations rather than a leader for his own generation.

Indeed, Moses does not walk among the people; he speaks to the Lord from within the Tent of Communion (Leviticus 1:1, Numbers 7:89). It is Eldad and Medad, the new generation of leader-prophets, who prophesy from within the encampment (Numbers 11:26). Moses' greatest asset - his closeness to God and his ability to "divine" the divine will - is also the cause of his remoteness from the masses. If a congregation is to rise above petty squabbles and materialistic goals, it must be constantly reinspired.

The kvetching of the people goes beyond a craving for leeks and onions; it's the existential kvetch of not knowing what they want. In truth, they actually need - as we all do - a mission, a purpose for being. As it prepares to enter the Promised Land, the nation needs to be recharged with light strong enough to illuminate the world. This, however, will have to await a new leader, perhaps less a man of God and more a man of the people.

I recommend that you read Rabbi Shlomo Riskin’s study in its entirety by visiting The Jerusalem Post online.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Leadership, Moses, Shlomo Riskin

Defending the Bible

Many Christians accept the doctrine of verbal, plenary inspiration of the Bible. Those Christians who hold to this doctrinal view believe that all of the Bible’s words are true and that all its statements are accurate.

Christians who accept and use what is commonly known as Biblical criticism are said to deny that the Bible is the word of God and are no longer within the bounds of orthodox Christianity.

One test that is generally applied to examine orthodoxy is whether one believes Moses wrote the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. Since the Bible is considered to be an inspired book, then the Bible is without error. So, if the Bible says that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, then Moses must have written the five books that carry his name.

There have been many attempts at defending the truthfulness and reliability of the Bible. One of these efforts is the book by Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe, When Critics Ask: A Popular Handbook on Bible Difficulties (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1992). This book is an attempt to provide answers to some of the difficult texts of the Bible.

I have selected one example from the book to show how the Bible is defended. The example I use is taken from their comments on the book of Deuteronomy. The issue is whether Moses wrote Deuteronomy. I cite their statement verbatim from page 113:

DEUTERONOMY 1:1 - How could Moses have written this when biblical criticism claims it was written many centuries later?

PROBLEM: According to this verse, "these are the words which Moses spoke." However, many biblical critics claim that Deuteronomy was written in the third century B.C., many centuries after Moses' time.

SOLUTION: There are many arguments that support the claim that Moses wrote the Book of Deuteronomy.

First, there is the repeated claim of the book that “these are the words of Moses” (1:1; 4:44; 29:1). To deny this is to claim the book is a total fraud.

Second, Joshua, Moses' immediate successor, attributed the Book of Deuteronomy to Moses, exhorting the people of Israel to "observe to do . . . all the law which Moses . . . commanded" (Josh. 1:7).

Three, the remainder of the O'I' attributes Deuteronomy to Moses (cf. Jud. 3:4; 1 Kings 2:3; 2 Kings 14:6; Ezra 3:2; Neh. 1:7; Ps. 103:7; Dan. 9:11; Mal. 4:4).

Fourth, Deuteronomy is the book of the Law most quoted in the NT, often with words like "Moses truly said" (Acts 3:22), "Moses says" (Rom. 10:19), or "it is written in the law of Moses" (l Cor. 9:9).

Fifth, our Lord quoted the Book of Deuteronomy (6:13, 16) as the authoritative Word of God when He resisted the devil (Matt. 4:7, 10), and He also directly attributed it to the hand of Moses, saying, "Moses said" (Mark 7: 10) or "Moses wrote" (Luke 20:28).

Sixth, the geographical and historical details of the book display a firsthand acquaintance such as Moses would have had.

Seventh, scholarly studies of the form and content of Near Eastern covenants indicate that Deuteronomy is from the period of Moses (see Meredith Kline, Treaty of the Great King, Eerdmans, 1963).

I sympathize with the authors’ effort to explain some of the difficult passages of the Bible. There are many texts that need explanation and even I have made several attempts in previous posts to explain some problematic texts of the Old Testament. I have also tried to clarify some issues of translations because I believe that the reader of the Bible needs to have a clear understanding of what the Bible says and teaches.

I am not opposed to a book such as this one. What I am opposed to is the way the Bible is defended. If a writer (or writers) desires to defend the Bible and explain some of the problems we find in the Bible then the defense must be honest and deal with the difficult issues raised by the text.

Take for instance the way Deuteronomy 1:1 is defended. I am quoting the book again:

PROBLEM: According to this verse, "these are the words which Moses spoke." However, many biblical critics claim that Deuteronomy was written in the third century B.C., many centuries after Moses' time.

I emphasized the text in order to show how the writers explain the problem of Deuteronomy 1:1. However, what they failed to do was to cite the remainder of the text. Here is how the text reads in its entirety:

“These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan -- in the wilderness, on the plain opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Di-zahab” (Deuteronomy 1:1 NRSV).

The words in italics are the words the authors quoted; the words in bold are the ones they omitted.

The expression “beyond the Jordan” means in this context “east of the Jordan.” Since Moses never crossed the Jordan River, the words in bold were written by someone who lived on the west side of the Jordan.

If Moses had written Deuteronomy 1:1 the text probably would say: “These are the words I spoke to all Israel” or “These are the words I spoke to Israel in the wilderness.” However, since the writer was on the west side, he said that Moses spoke these words while he was on the east side of the Jordan.

This is how the versions understand the meaning of Deuteronomy 1:1:

RSV: “These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan in the wilderness.”

NASB: “Across the Jordan.”

NIV, GNB: “ast of the Jordan.”

ASV, JPS: “Beyond the Jordan.”

NEB: “Transjordan.”

LXX: "on the other side of"

There are other examples of the same Hebrew word referring to the east side of the Jordan. For instance, in Deuteronomy 3:25 Moses said to God: “Let me cross over to see the good land beyond the Jordan, that good hill country and the Lebanon.” Moses was on the east side and he wanted to go to the west side, that is, “beyond the Jordan.”

In Joshua 1:14-15, Joshua (who was already on the west side of the Jordan) spoke to the Transjordanian tribes: “Your wives, your little ones, and your livestock shall remain in the land that Moses gave you beyond the Jordan. But all the warriors among you shall cross over armed before your kindred and shall help them, until the LORD gives rest to your kindred as well as to you, and they too take possession of the land that the LORD your God is giving them. Then you shall return to your own land and take possession of it, the land that Moses the servant of the LORD gave you beyond the Jordan to the east.”

All translations agree that the Hebrew word translated “beyond” means “on the other side.” All translations have similar reading, except the King James Version. The KJV reads: “These be the words which Moses spake to all Israel on this side of the Jordan in the wilderness” (Deuteronomy 1:1). The translators of the King James Version believed that Moses wrote Deuteronomy, so they tried to harmonize the translation of the text with their view of Mosaic authorship.

The Bible is still the word of God even if Moses did not write the book of Deuteronomy. One can be an evangelical Christian and still accept biblical criticism. Thus, any attempt at defending the Bible should deal with the text in its entirety and deal with the problems of the text with integrity.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Biblical Criticism, Deuteronomy 1:1, Moses, Norman Geisler

Moses and the Exodus

PBS will air “The Bible’s Buried Secrets” on Tuesday, November 18 at 8 p.m. The two-hour “Nova” program will focus on how the Pentateuch came into existence.

In preparation for the program, PBS has interviewed Carol Meyers, an archeologist and professor of religion at Duke University. In this interview Meyers discusses Moses and the significance of the Exodus.

The following is an excerpt from the interview:

Q: Questions about whether or not events in the Bible really happened evoke strong passions. As a biblical scholar, how do you see the issue of historical authenticity in terms of the earliest biblical accounts-the ones for which there is little archeological evidence?

Carol Meyers: Too often in modern western thinking we see things in terms of black and white, history or fiction, with nothing in between. But there are other ways of understanding how people have recorded events of their past. There's something called mnemohistory, or memory history, that I find particularly useful in thinking about biblical materials. It's not like the history that individuals may have of their own families, which tends to survive only a generation or two. Rather, it's a kind of collective cultural memory.

When a group of people experience things that are extremely important to their existence as a group, they often maintain collective memories of these events over generations. And these memories are probably augmented and elaborated and maybe even ritualized as a way of maintaining their relevance.

We can understand how mnemohistory works by looking at how it operates in more recent periods. We see this, for instance, in legends about figures in American history-George Washington is a wonderful example. Legends have something historic in them but yet are developed and expanded. I think that some of the accounts of the ancestors in the book of Genesis are similar. They are exciting, important, attention-grabbing, message-bearing narratives that are developed around characters who may have played an important role in the lives of the pre-Israelite ancestors.

Q: Let's turn to one of the most vivid figures in the Bible, Moses. Who is the Moses of the Bible, and could there have been such a person?

Read the rest of the interview here.


Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Archaeology, Carol Meyers, Exodus, Moses

Moses and Divine Providence

In an excellent article, “When YHWH Tests People: General Considerations and Particular Observations Regarding the Books of Chronicles and Job,” published in The Philip R. Davies Festschrift, Ehud Ben Zvi deals with the issue of divine testing. He wrote that in many societies kings were concerned with assessing whether their servants were loyal and trustworthy servants. Ben Zvi’s contention is that even YHWH needed to know whether his servants were loyal and whether they loved him as king. In his article Ben Zvi said “that the more a personage seemed to embody the values of loyalty and commitment to YHWH, the more likely candidate she or he will be to stand as the main object of a tradition of a divine test.”

I agree with Ben Zvi’s conclusions. The examples Ben Zvi gives in his article provide irrefutable evidence that YHWH’s faithful and loyal servants are tested for their faithfulness and loyalty. In the present study I would like to include another reason for divine testing. I contend that potential servants of YHWH are also tested to see whether they are worthy of a greater assignment.

One good example of a person who was tested by YHWH in preparation for a greater assignment was Moses. The biblical narratives about Moses present him as an individual who went through much trial and tribulation before he was ready for the work God had prepared for him: to lead the people of Israel from their oppressive situation in Egypt to their journey toward the land of Canaan. From a child in peril, to the luxury of the palace, to a fugitive from justice, to the savior of his nation, Moses was tried and tested in preparation for his work of liberating Israel from their oppression in Egypt.

According to the biblical narratives, Moses grew up with the members of the royal family in Egypt, enjoying the life of luxury that came from being the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus 2:10). But all that changed when, in a fit of rage, Moses killed an Egyptian who was mistreating a Hebrew. All of a sudden, Moses became a wanted man and a fugitive from justice.

His attempt at helping the Hebrew slaves was a costly mistake. Instead of becoming the savior of his people, Moses had become an outlaw. Because Pharaoh wanted Moses dead, he had to abandon his life in the palace and leave Egypt. By divine providence Moses fled to Midian, a region outside Egyptian control, where he lived for forty years. When Moses arrived in Midian, he sat by a well and there he was again confronted with injustice. Several women came to the well to water their father’s sheep but some shepherds came and chased them away. Moses rescued the women and helped them water their sheep.

By rescuing the women, Moses acted as a deliverer of the oppressed and by stooping down to water their flock, Moses was serving the women. And it is here where Moses’ education begins. People whom God calls into service must begin their education by finding a place of service because those who lead others must learn how to serve all. This was the lesson Rehoboam never learned.

When Rehoboam sought the counsel of the elders concerning the request of the people of Israel to remove the forced labor, the elder told him: “If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever” (1 Kings 12:7). But Rehoboam disregarded the advice that the elders gave him because in his mind, a king could not be a servant of the people.

Moses’ life in Midian became a time of preparation. The first lesson that Moses had to learn was how to control his anger. Because of anger he became a fugitive. In his encounter with the shepherds he did not kill them as he had killed the Egyptian. The second lesson Moses learned was how to become a servant. By watering the flock for the women, Moses was learning how to serve others. Another lesson Moses learned while in Midian was how to survive in the wilderness. Living in the wilderness helped Moses gain a basic knowledge of wilderness survival and how to find food and water in the desert.

One experience in Midian that greatly contributed to Moses’ spiritual education was his association with Jethro and his family. Jethro was a priest and he became Moses’ father-in-law (Exodus 3:1). It is possible that Jethro belonged to the Kenites, a Midianite tribe of nomads who lived in the wilderness, in the vicinity of Mount Sinai. The Midianites were descendants of Abraham through his wife Keturah (Genesis 25:1-2). Jethro was “the priest of Midian” and it is possible that his God was the God of Abraham. If the Midianites worshiped the God of their father Abraham, then Moses received religious instructions about the God of the Fathers from Jethro.

In addition, in Midian Moses became a shepherd. In fact, Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law at the time he came to Horeb, the mountain of God (Exodus 3:1). Moses’ new profession was his final break with Egypt since shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptians (Genesis 46:34). One lesson shepherds learn very fast is that sheep depend totally on shepherds for their care.

It was by taking care of Jethro’s flock that Moses learned how to be the shepherd of Israel, how to rescue, protect, and feed the people on their journey from Egypt to Canaan. When the Psalmist was thinking about what God had done for Israel, he said: “You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses” (Psalm 77:20). At the end of his life, Moses asked God to raise another shepherd to care for Israel. Moses prayed: “Let the LORD, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint someone over the congregation who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, so that the congregation of the LORD may not be like sheep without a shepherd” (Numbers 27:16-17).

God used the trials and tribulations in Moses’ life to prepare him for his work as the deliverer of Israel. Throughout all the ordeals Moses faced, God was training him for a very special work. It took God eighty years of training to prepare Moses for forty years of ministry.

Going to Midian, living in the wilderness, and becoming a shepherd was not part of Moses’ plan for his life. However, God used those events in Moses’ life to teach and prepare him for his assignment. In order for Moses to become the deliverer of Israel it was necessary for Moses to be tested and tried.

In Moses’ life and experience Christians discover the real meaning of Paul’s words: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

The greatest desire in the lives of those who serve the Lord is to know that they will be able to serve God with gladness of heart and the assurance of divine help. However, the reality is that at times they serve the Lord with much sorrow, suffering, and trials. Although many of the trials and tribulations bring sorrows and discomfort, in God’s providence they can be useful. In fact, as Paul says, these things that happen to the Christian can be overruled by God for his good.

However, if God knows the problems and the struggles of his servants, why then are they not delivered from these afflictions? The answer, as Paul shows, is that in the providence of God, these trials and tribulations can become a teaching time for God’s friends, so that, although they are not removed, God can make them work for their good.

Paul’s words and Moses’ experience teach God’s friends that whatever may be the number and overwhelming character of their trials, they are all contributing to their spiritual preparation. Divine providence uses all things to teach and prepare God’s friends to serve him in a greater way.

It is tough being God’s friend.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Midian, Midianites, Moses, Providence, Test, Tribulation

Mario Liverani and the History of Israel

During the Christmas break I finished reading Mario Liverani’s Israel’s History and the History of Israel (London: Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003). Last week I finished writing a review of the book that I will submit to a major journal for publication. The review is also part of the commitment I made to Chris Brady at Targuman to submit a scholarly work for publication during the Biblical Studies Academic Writing Month. The content of the present post is different from the review I wrote for publication and different from my previous post on Liverani’s book.

Liverani’s book is divided into three sections. In Part I, Liverani presents a description of the different archaeological periods of Israel’s history. In this section, which he calls “The Normal History,” Liverani studies the textual and archeological evidence that contribute to the proper understanding of what was actually happening in Israel and in the countries that form the land of the Bible during a time period that includes Palestine in the Late Bronze Age up to the Babylonian invasion and the exile of Judah in 587 BCE.

The second section is an Intermezzo, a section in which he discusses events that were happening in other parts of the world in the sixth century BCE, a time which he calls “The Axial Age.” In the Intermezzo, Liverani also discusses the diaspora and the myth of the empty land.

The third section, Part II of his book, Liverani discusses the “Invented History of Israel.” By invented history, Liverani means the ideological rereading and rewriting of the Deuteronomic history in order to undergird the political realities of post-exilic Judah. According to Liverani, the rewriting of Israel’s history served as a strategy to implement a program of national recovery that would provide political and religious legitimacy for the people who made a commitment to return and re-colonize Judah after the edict of Cyrus, king of Persia, allowed the exiles to return home.

Liverani makes a distinction between two groups of Jews in post-exilic Judah. Those Jews who were returning home from exile were the “returnees.” The returnees are also called “Zionists.” Those Jews who did not go into exile and remained in the land are called “the remainees.” The remainees are called “the people of the land” by the returnees. This pejorative term was used by those returning from exile to describe all those Jews who did not go into exile.

According to Liverani, the returnees needed a legal justification to take possession of the land that belonged to the remainees. Since the remainees occupied the land, the returnees needed an authoritative tradition assigning ownership of the land of Canaan to the tribes of Israel. This tradition needed to identify the returnees as the legitimate heirs of the land and declare that the remainees should be dispossessed of their land.

Thus, according to Liverani, those Jews returning from exile rewrote the Deuteronomic history and created a set of foundational myths that legitimized the claim of the returnees as the legitimate heirs of the promises of God.

The migration of Abraham from Babylon to Canaan and the promise of God to give Abraham the land of Canaan as an inheritance became the foundational myth to legitimize the returnees’ claim that God brought them from Babylon and gave them the land of Canaan. This idea is covered in Chapter 13: “Returnees and Remainees: The Invention of the Patriarch.”

Although the myth of the patriarchs gave the returnees a promise of the land, they needed another authoritative tradition that allowed them to actually take possession of the land. Thus, the foundational myth of the Exodus provided the returnees with the legitimation for a group of people from the outside to take possession of the land. The foundational myth of the Conquest provided the returnees with the legitimation to take the land from the remainees by force, if necessary. This idea is developed in Chapter 14: “Returnees and Aliens: The Invention of the Conquest.”

Thus, to Liverani, the history of Israel as presented in the biblical text is an invented history. He also deals with “The Invention of the Judges,” The Invention of the United Monarchy,” “The Invention of the Solomonic Temple,” and “The Invention of the Law.” In describing the aim of his work, Liverani wrote:

In the present work I have tried to write– at least in the form of a first draft–a new version of the history of Israel, starting from the results of textual and literary criticism as well as from data collected by archaeology and epigraphy. In doing so I felt free to change the Biblical plot, while keeping a properly historical approach.

Liverani’s history of Israel is a typical example of a minimalist approach to the history of Israel. The minimalists deny this historicity of the biblical narratives. Biblical minimalists say that the history of the patriarchs, the exodus, the conquest, the giving of the law, together with the historicity of Moses and Joshua and the existence of a united monarchy under David and Solomon are post-exilic inventions that were created to justify the political and religious aspirations of a group of Zionists who desired to take possession of the land from of group of people who had lived in the land for almost a century. So, the minimalists feel “free to change the Biblical plot” in order to sustain their presuppositions.

To biblical minimalists, the biblical narratives reflect a rewriting of history that created an ideal past in order to justify the realities as they existed in the seventh and six centuries BCE. To many minimalists, these stories were first created by the people who were involved in the reforms of Josiah in the seventh century. Others believe that some of these stories were “invented” in the sixth and fifth centuries to provide political and religious legitimacy to the post-exilic community of Yehud.

However, if Abraham, Moses, and the patriarchs never existed and if these stories were “invented” in the sixth century, how can we explain the mention of the names of some of those invented people in the prophetic literature of the eighth century?

For instance, in the eighth century BCE, the prophet Micah mentions Moses, Aaron, and Miriam and the exodus from Egypt (Micah 6:4). The Exodus from Egypt is also mentioned by Amos (Amos 2:10; 3:1) and Hosea (11:1) in the eighth century. In addition, Amos speaks of Israel sojourning forty years in the wilderness (Amos 2:10). All the eighth century prophets, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah, mention the patriarch Jacob.

In the Elijah narratives, a source most scholars believe to be independent from the Deuteronomist, when the prophet Elijah (ninth century BCE) seeks to go back to the source of Israelite religion, he goes back to Horeb, the Northern name for Mount Sinai (1 Kings 19:8).

If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob never existed, then it is almost impossible to understand Jesus’ words when talking about the resurrection: “And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22:31-32). How can God be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and how can they be alive when Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob never existed?

The problem with the minimalists is that they use the same approach atheists use when they deny the existence of God. Atheists say to theists: “God does not exist. Now, prove to me that God exists.” Minimalists say that these stories are invented; now the burden of proof is with those who say that they are historical.

James Hoffmeier, in his book Israel in Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 10, talks about the insistence of minimalists that a claim made in the Bible must be corroborated before the statement can be considered historical. Hoffmeier wrote: “[The] assertion that the burden of proof does not rest on the critical (minimalist) historian has become the prevailing attitude in biblical scholarship for the past several decades.”

The matter of the historicity of the biblical text is what prompts the debate between those who are called maximalists and those who are called minimalists. The minimalists accuse the maximalists of accepting the historicity of the biblical text because they presuppose divine intervention in human affairs. They demand proof of the historicity of the events narrated by the text. On the other hand, the maximalists accuse the minimalists of being skeptics and radical ideologues. They say that the minimalists reject Israel’s understanding of its own religious traditions as irrelevant because their views are based primarily on a literary interpretation of the text.

I would like to put the burden of proof on the other side. For once, I would like to see the minimalists prove that Moses did not exist.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Abraham, Mario Liverani, Maximalists, Minimalists, Moses, Patriarchs

Mount Nebo

According to the book of Deuteronomy, after Moses declared the law to Israel and after he had finished the composition of the song to be presented to Israel (Deut. 32), the song in which Moses declared God’s faithfulness and Israel’s unfaithfulness, the Lord gave Moses instructions about his death. The Lord commanded Moses to ascend the Abarim mountains and go up to Mount Nebo and there, before he died, look at the extension of the land that He was about to give Israel as its inheritance (Deut 32:49). The people of Israel had been camping near Mount Nebo since they had entered Moabite territory, after their 40 years’ journey in the wilderness.

The book of Deuteronomy provides specific details about the location of Mount Nebo. Mount Nebo was located in the land of Moab, facing the city of Jericho, in the Abarim chain of mountains, on top of Pisgah (Deut. 32:49; 34:1). Mount Nebo and Mount Pisgah were part of the chain of mountains known as Abarim (see Deut. 3:27).

Pisgah appears in Numbers 21:20 as one of the places on the itinerary of the Israelites’ march through Moabite territory and in Deuteronomy 3:17 as one of the boundaries separating the tribes of Reuben and Gad. The site of Mount Nebo has been identified with Ras es-Siyagha, a mountain between the cities of Madeba and Heshbon. As a result of archaeological excavations at Ras es-Siyagha done by the Franciscan Bible School in the early 1930s, archaeologists have excavated a Byzantine church dedicated to the memory of Moses.

According to Jennings, the church was decorated with beautiful mosaics. The church also contained a quatrefoil baptistry (a baptistry decorated with four leaflets). In addition, “elaborate pictures of trees, fruits, birds, and animals, as well as geometric motifs and dedicatory inscriptions decorated the floors" (James E. Jennings, "Nebo," The New International Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology, ed. Edward M. Blaiklock and R. K. Harrison [Grand Rapids: The Zondervan Corporation, 1983], 332).

Evidently, Mount Nebo was located near the town of Nebo, a place on the eastern side of the Jordan. The book of Joshua declares that the territory of the tribe of Reuben included "the slope of Pisgah" (Josh. 13:20). The Book of Numbers says that the mountains of Abarim were located near Nebo (Num. 33:47). This town was part of the inheritance that Moses gave to the tribe of Reuben at the time of the division of the conquered land in the eastern side of the Jordan (Num. 32:38).

Possibly, both the town and the mountain were named after the god Nebo. According to Babylonian religious tradition, Nebo was the son Marduk, the chief god in the Babylonian pantheon. This association of Nebo with the Babylonia god may explain why the author of Numbers 32:38 declared that the name of the city was changed.

There at the top of Nebo Moses was to be gathered to his ancestors. Moses was going to die in the land of Moab without entering the promised land, which had been the focus of his ministry for 40 years. Because of his disobedience in Meribah, Moses had not honored the holiness of Yahweh in the presence of Israel (Num. 20:1-13; Deut. 1:37; 4:21). For this reason, Moses would contemplate the promised land from afar, without crossing the Jordan river with the new generation of Israelites.

After he had exhorted the people of Israel to be faithful and obedient to God's laws, Moses said his farewell to the people by blessing each tribe of Israel. Then, in obedience to God’s word, Moses left the plains of Moab, where the people were camped, and went up to Mount Nebo. From the top of Mount Nebo, the Lord showed Moses all the land of Canaan, the land that Israel was about to receive as its inheritance, as God had promised to Abraham. From the top of the mountain Moses was able to look at the land of Canaan. Even though it was impossible for Moses to see the complete extension of the land, the writer of Deuteronomy described the geographic limits of the land at it existed in his own day (Deut. 34:1-3). The description of the land follows a north-south direction.

The land of Gilead was on the east side of the Jordan River. This was the land where the Transjordanian tribes lived. Dan was the northernmost limit of the land of Canaan. This part of the land was later occupied by the tribe of Dan. Naphtali, Ephraim, and Manasseh represented the central part of the land. Judah was the southern limit. The Western Sea was the Mediterranean. Jericho, the city of palms (Josh. 6:16, 21; Judges 1:16), was the first city the Israelites conquered after they crossed the Jordan River. Zoar was situated at the south of the Dead Sea. The Negev was the wilderness of south Judah. After he was shown the extension of the promised land, Moses died in the land of Moab and was buried in a valley opposite Beth-Peor. Beth-Peor was the name of the valley where the Israelites had set their camp in preparation for crossing the Jordan River (Deut. 3:29; 4:46).

Thus, Mount Nebo is the site of an important event in Moses’ life and in the children of Israel’s life.

Note:

This article was published in the Biblical Illustrator (Fall 1999): 56-58. The Biblical Illustrator is published by Lifeway.com.

Claude F. Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Abarim, Deuteronomy, Moses, Mount Nebo, Pisga

Rereading Micah 6:4: Miriam, A Leader in Israel

Feminist hermeneutic has made an impact on biblical scholarship because it has demonstrated to interpreters that the biblical text reflects the patriarchal views of the society which gave birth to the text. In addition, feminist interpreters have shown that some of these same patriarchal values and concerns have affected biblical translations.

Feminist writers like to emphasize that the stories in the Bible were written by men for men. In many stories about women in the Old Testament, women remain nameless, as in the case of Jephthah’s daughter and the concubine that was raped and then dismembered or they remain voiceless, their voices only heard through the voice of the male redactor.

The portrayal of Miriam in the biblical text may demonstrate how the biblical writers lessened her influence as one of the leaders of the Israelite community at the time Israel journeyed through the wilderness.

The purpose of this study is to look at Miriam and how she is portrayed in the biblical text and then focus on Micah 6:4 and how the NIV portrays Miriam in its translation of that text.

Miriam appears in five books of the Old Testament: Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, 1 Chronicles, and Micah. Her name appears 15 times in these books, but only 13 in the NIV. On two occasions, in Numbers 12:10 and Numbers 12:15, the NIV uses the pronoun “she” instead of using Miriam’s name, as do most translations.

In Miriam’s first appearance in the biblical text, she is the nameless sister of Moses who watches him on the waters of the Nile. She is called only “his sister” (Exodus 2:4). In this text the reader can see the initiatives taken by Miriam: Miriam speaks to Pharaoh’s daughter and offers to find someone to take care of the child. Because of her, Moses lived his formative years with his own mother. Because of Miriam, Moses lives and does not die. Miriam saves her brother before he can save a single Hebrew.

In Exodus 15:20, Miriam is calledהנביאה “the prophetess.” A prophet (נביא) is a person called by God. Miriam was called by God to lead the people together with Moses and Aaron. Miriam was assigned a prophetical role because she led the community in celebrating God’s victory over the Egyptian army:

“Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea” (Exodus 15:21).

And yet, the song of Miriam has been attributed to Moses:

“Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the LORD, saying, 'I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea'” (Exodus 15:1).

Some scholars have proposed that Miriam’s song was a response to Moses’ song. However, a critical review of Moses’ song in Exodus 15 reveals that the song was written many years after the events. Miriam’s song may be an old composition celebrating Israel’s crossing on the sea. Moses received the credit for the song, but it was Miriam who led Israel in celebrating God’s victory.

In Numbers 12:1-15 there is a controversy over the issue of leadership. In Numbers 12:2, Aaron and Miriam asked Moses: “Has the LORD indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?” (Numbers 12:12). However, Numbers 12:1 attributes the controversy to questions about Moses’ Cushite wife.

The text is not clear on the nature of the conflict, but it seems that Miriam was raising an issue that reflected a concern in the community. Although both Aaron and Miriam are involved in this controversy, only Miriam was punished as a result of this challenge to Moses’ leadership. The public nature of her punishment may indicate that the issue was of interest to the whole community.

That Miriam was a leader in Israel is clearly seen in Micah 6:4: “For I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam” (Micah 6:4 ESV).

In this text Miriam is named as one of the leaders of Israel, together with Moses and Aaron, whom God sent to lead the people out of Egypt. The prophet Micah lists Moses, Aaron, and Miriam as the three leaders of Israel.

Thus, Micah’s statement reflects an ancient tradition that affirms that Miriam had a very significant leadership role in early Israelite history, a role that in later writing was downgraded partly in order to promote Moses as the prominent leader of Israel. Although the biblical text refers to Moses and Aaron as the leaders of the community, the text in Micah 6:4 reveals that Miriam was their equal.

Anderson and Freeman acknowledge the importance of Micah’s statement. They wrote: “What makes Micah’s simple statement so remarkable, and so puzzling, is the fact that nowhere in the tradition are the three siblings presented in a shared leadership role” (p. 519).

However, the NIV’s translation of Micah 6:4 looks like an attempt to diminish Miriam as a leader in Israel. The NIV translates: “I brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam” (Micah 6:4 NIV). The same translation is found in the TNIV.

This translation does not reflect the biblical text. All the other translations reflect the Hebrew text: “For I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam” (Micah 6:4 ESV).

The translation of the NIV takes away the unique leadership role Miriam had in the community. By separating Aaron and Miriam from Moses, the NIV elevates Moses’ position (“I sent Moses to lead you”) and diminishes Miriam almost to an afterthought (“also . . . Miriam”).

The leadership role of Miriam is also diminished in the biblical text. In Psalm 77:20 the name of Miriam is omitted from the list of leaders in Israel: “You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.” Where is Miriam? Her position as a leader of Israel was marginalized by the Psalmist. The memory of what Miriam did for the community was forgotten, consigned to an ideology that minimized the contribution of women to their society.

Reading and interpreting the biblical text is not easy. At times, a translator, in order to make sense of a text, applies methods of interpretation that may reflect cultural and theological biases.

The NIV diminishes Miriam by omitting her name twice. Furthermore, the addition of the word “also” by the translators of the NIV and TNIV gives a slant to the text that serves to undervalue the role of Miriam as a leader in Israel. I do not know whether this addition to the text was intentional. However, the resulting translation has a strong theological overtone, one which may reflect an undercurrent of patriarchy.

In my judgment, the translation of Micah 6:4 in the NIV and the TNIV is not acceptable.

Reference: Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Micah: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. New York: Doubleday, 2000.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Aaron, Femenist Hermeneutics, Interpretation, Micah 6:4, Miriam, Moses, Translation

The Exodus from Egypt: A New Explanation

According to an article published in The New York Times, Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s chief archaeologist, has declared that the parting of the Red Sea and the Exodus of Israel from Egypt is a myth. According to him, the Exodus did not happen because there is no historical evidence for the presence of Israel in Egypt.

People who follow the archaeological debate about the historicity of the Exodus and even of the facts about early Israel know that many archaeologists and biblical scholars deny the events mentioned in the book of Exodus because there is no evidence for the pharaoh and his army being killed during the exodus.

However, another Egyptian archaeologist has developed a theory that may explain the reason no evidence has been found in archaeological discoveries for the defeat of the pharaoh of Egypt. What follows is an excerpt of the article published in The New York Times:

Recently, diggers found evidence of lava from a volcano in the Mediterranean Sea that erupted in 1500 B.C. and is believed to have killed 35,000 people and wiped out villages in Egypt, Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula, officials here said. The same diggers found evidence of a military fort with four rectangular towers, now considered the oldest fort on the Horus military road.

But nothing was showing up that might help prove the Old Testament story of Moses and the Israelites fleeing Egypt, or wandering in the desert. Dr. Hawass said he was not surprised, given the lack of archaeological evidence to date. But even scientists can find room to hold on to beliefs.

Dr. Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud, the head of the excavation, seemed to sense that such a conclusion might disappoint some. People always have doubts until something is discovered to confirm it, he noted.

Then he offered another theory, one that he said he drew from modern Egypt.

“A pharaoh drowned and a whole army was killed,” he said recounting the portion of the story that holds that God parted the Red Sea to allow the Israelites to escape, then closed the waters on the pursuing army.

“This is a crisis for Egypt, and Egyptians do not document their crises.”

The Egyptians and most nations of the past did not document their crises. This statement could explain why there is no record of pharaoh and his army drowning in the sea.

Come to think of it, this is an old explanation.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Exodus, Moses, Red Sea, Zahi Hawass