MONOTHEISTIC REVOLUTION OF MOSES

Dr. Zertal dug in the proper place and found the altar of Yehoshua bin Nun and many artifacts of Egyptian origin. This fact has been known for 40 years, but for some reason, no one else is exploring this place.

The cameo (talisman) from the excavations of Zertal made a revolution in the scientific criticism of the Tanakh. Professor Finkelstein’s claim that the Jews were illiterate during the period of Moses and Joshua bin Nun turned out to be a fabrication. Like the statement that the god Yahu appeared in Israel only in the 8th century BC. Indeed, in a cameo of the 13th century BC, his name has already been mentioned.

And the assertion that it was King Josiah who carried out a monotheistic revolution in Judea, for which he ordered the book of Deuteronomy to be composed, is another fiction. It is written in the Tanakh that an old scroll of this book was found in the Temple.

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The cameo that Dr. Stripling discovered and deciphered was made just 50 years after Moses presented to the people of Israel a written contract with the god Yahu. Moses received this mountain and desert god from the Midian priest Yitro and offered it to the people of Israel.

There is every reason to believe that the «tablets of the covenant», that is, the contract, were written in the same letters and the same language as the cameo (talisman) of Dr. Stripling. The very fact that the ark of the covenant contained not the image of the god Yahu, but the agreement of God with the people carved on stone, speaks of the importance of writing for the ancient Jews. The «People of the Book» and monotheism originate already in the time of Moses, or earlier.

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Where and why earlier?

The eastern part of the Nile Delta, which the Bible calls the country of Goshen, was the capital of Egypt, Avaris, and the cities of Pithom and Raamses mentioned in the Bible. Two hundred years before Moses, the Hyksos reigned here. These “Foreign rulers” came from Canaan and established their power in Egypt for two centuries.

The population of Canaanite origin prevailed here, even after the expulsion of the Hyksos pharaohs. This has been confirmed by archaeological excavations.

A record from a southern Egyptian kingdom that existed at the same time as the Hyksos kingdom refers to the Hyksos pharaoh as «the tribal leader of the Canaanites». Say, from the point of view of real Egyptians he was rootless. This problem of «foreigners» haunted the Hyksos, who tried but failed to become true Egyptians. A typical Jewish problem.

Of the five Hyksos rulers, the first and last had names that are directly translated from modern Hebrew. The first ruler of the Hyksos was «Salitis» (the Greek form of the name or title «Shalit», that is, ruler). The last was Hamudi (Pleasant). He was expelled from Avaris by the South Egyptian pharaoh Ahmes, and then besieged in Sharuhen, the capital of the Canaanite possessions of the Hyksos. Other Hyksos pharaohs adopted Egyptian names, for example, Apepi.

“It is recorded that Apepi worshiped Set in a monolatric manner: “[He] chose the god Set as his Lord. He worshiped no other deity in all the earth but Set.» The desert god Seth became the patron of Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos.

Thus, the Hyksos were inclined towards henotheism/monotheism as early as 200 years before the Egyptian revolutionary Akhenaten and three hundred years before Moses. Not surprisingly Moses and his priests leaned toward monotheism/henotheism rather than Egyptian or Canaanite polytheism.

“Proto-Sinaitic writing was the first alphabetic writing system that appeared in the period 1900-1700. BC e. Semitic speakers living in Egypt and Sinai adapted Egyptian hieroglyphic and hieratic writing to write their own language on the principle of acrophony. They chose about 30 glyphs, translated their Egyptian names into the Semitic language, and with the help of the initial sounds of these names conveyed the sounds of their language.

For example, the Egyptian word nt (water) turned into a mem in the Semitic language and conveys the sound /m/, which subsequently developed into the Latin letter M…

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Old Canaanite is a variant of the Proto-Sinaitic script that was used in Canaan, an area that currently covers Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and the western territories of Syria.»

Ancient alphabetic «Sinaitic» inscriptions from Serabit el Khadim in Western Sinai mention the Canaanite goddess Baalat. A similar inscription was found in Upper Egypt. By the 13th century BC., this writing may have developed to the stage that is recorded in the cameo from the altar of Bin Nun.

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Moses drove away from Egypt only a part of the Semitic population of the Delta, which numbered about a million people. Perhaps not all of his followers agreed to follow him into the desert. On the other hand, not only Semites could follow Moses, but also supporters of monotheism, who remained among the Egyptians after the elimination of Akhenaten and his cult of the one god Ra. This is hinted at by the Egyptian names of the kohanim in Israel. The priests Pinchas and Hafni, the sons of Eli, had Egyptian names. The name Moses is also Egyptian.

The priests were certainly literate, as well as Moses that was brought up at the court of the pharaoh. In the end, not God, but people carved the text of the Covenant (contract) with God.

Of course, if the ancient texts were written on papyrus, as is customary in Egypt, then in the Land of Israel they rotted. Humidity in our country is much higher than in Egypt. If the priests did not rewrite the scrolls in time, it was difficult to make out what was written.

The teaching of Moses, written on papyrus, may not have been preserved or may have been changed. Yes, criticism of the Bible is necessary. But there is no reason to deny the main events mentioned in the Bible. This is especially true of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt.

If the biblical story is stripped of fairy tales and literary overlays designed to make the story fascinating (otherwise it will not be read), then this story turns out to be logical. It includes details that cannot be invented for many centuries in another country.

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The monotheistic Judaism of Moses is the result of a failed attempt at a religious revolution in Egypt in the 13th century BC. Moses, close to the court of the pharaoh, led this revolution, and the Levite priests propagated the new faith orally and in writing, probably using the Semitic alphabet and the Hebrew language.

Possibly Moses did not re-create monotheism, but only revived the monotheism of the Hyksos pharaoh Apepi and applied it to the Jews. He replaced the Egyptian god of the desert Seth with the Midian god of the mountainous desert, the thunderer Yahweh.

As the pharaoh’s men persecuted the revolutionaries, Moses made contact with the Midianites in northwestern Arabia, adopted their god Yahweh, and declared to his followers that this was «the god of their ancestors» El. Such a syncretic statement was not obvious to the Jews.

And then Moses took out of Egypt those of his followers who had nothing to lose: state slaves, pastoralists without pastures, unemployed artisans, landless peasants. Moses’ revolution was more social than ethnic.