Date 07-01-2009
GMTime 02:59:36
How Darius Founded Judaism
The Pentateuch 1
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, June 18, 2001
Abstract
Persian Propaganda
Genesis has many anachronisms for a book supposedly written by Moses before the Iron Age. Apologists have to say they are later alterations and insertions, but what then was the Holy Ghost doing? The claim of believers is that the Holy Word of God is kept uncorrupted by the Holy Ghost, but there are so many things wrong with the bible that the Holy Ghost has been asleep on the job for many centuries! Among the first curiosities is that an Egyptian prince with no known knowledge of Babylonia, begins his books of the Torah with a lot of stories known to be from Mesopotamia. Professor Alberto Soggin says that the outlook of the myths of the Pentateuch, the Former Prophets and the Major Prophets was that of people in Mesopotamia who were emigrating to the new land (to them) of Canaan where they would meet opposition from the natives sympathetic to the Egyptians. He means what is mistakenly called the “return from exile” in the fifth century BC, 700 years after Moses was putatively writing the Pentateuch.
The Patriarchal and Mosaic sagas in the Pentateuch serve as a metaphor for this colonization, falsely depicted as a “return” from “exile”, and to form a basis for a new interpretation of cult practices like Passover, the names of people in different taxation areas and the covenant with God at Sinai. It also contains the laws laid down by various phases of “returners”, some poetic and some hortatory material. The Pentateuchal literature can only be understood in relation to the cult (C R North) because it was written at least in essence to justify the cult by the Persian administrators of the fifth century BC. Some of the Canaanites of Palestine before the “return” might have worshipped a Baal called Yehouah but no honest scholar would pretend that the cult was the same. The only common feature will have been the name of the god.
The population of the Persian district of Yehud was only about 20,000 even though two million left Egypt, we deduce from Exodus. Even if other places besides Judah were settled, it is a huge discrepancy. What is the purpose of this exaggeration in the scriptures? It is to show what the scriptures always show, that the Jews have been constant sinners against the true god, who had punished them by reducing them to a remnant. The Jewish “returners” were to be made dependent on the Persian conception of god for whom the Persian king was the earthly representative. That they previously worshipped Canaanite Baals and Egyptian deities was attributed to apostasy from the true God, which is why they had been reduced. Thus the Persians used religion as a factor in their foreign policy, and that is why today we have Judaism and Christianity.
The disparate group of twelve tribes uniting in a religion built around the temple reflected only the disparate groups of people sent as “returners” by the Persian king to found a unity around Ahuramazda, renamed as the local god, Yehouah. Isaiah 41:18ff speaks of a “Second Exodus” just as there is a “second temple”. The truth is that here “second” means “first” because the story given to the emigreés was that they were “returning” to resume proper worship of their god. Most were not, they were new settlers, themselves uprooted as the biblical Israelites were by the Assyrians and the Jews by the Babylonians. Even if any of them had had Canaanite ancestors, they were not personally returning because they had been about three generations in a foreign country. So, they were merely “returning” in a propaganda sense, with a mission given them by the Persian king and with a god in the mould of the Persian God of Heaven.
Biblicists, like Nelson Glueck and W F Albright, ignored the propagandist nature of the stories of the Patriarchs and persisted in trying to tie them into history. They could find nothing convincing that did, but the Jewish and Christian churches are never short of finances to pay willing dupes to lie for God. Ziony Zevit has written a hefty tomb on Israelite religions which in many respects is excellent, but tediously he cannot resist offering spurious and unconvincing links with the stories of Jewish mythology in the bible.
If ancient propaganda is to be truth then Christians and Jews can make it true simply by saying so as often and loudly as possible, until more reasoned views are drowned out. Discoveries are ignored—discredited not by evidence but by by sheer weight of pious opinion—and forgotten for the time being. Each time someone realizes, points in amazement at the dishonesty and highlights the arguments counter to these religions, but each time the truth is overlaid afresh with layers of pious defaecation from the holy Joes with easy livings to defend. These truths have to be rediscovered every generation, but now mass communication offers the chance of people taking notice.
Though the Biblicists know better than most people, being scholars and even archaeologists, they persist in using expressions that they know to be at best questionable—the “Patriarchal Age”, the “Exodus”, the “United Monarchy” and the “Davidic Empire”. This really is dishonesty.
Even honest scholars like Professor Soggin can say we must take the utmost care in using the material “without adopting a skeptical attitude” to it. Religious apologists always say this, but knowledge advances by being skeptical, not by being gullible. Skepticism invites inquiry and inquiry can prove a view right or wrong. Scientific inquiry demands skepticism, but Christians will not be shown to be wrong. Biblical scholars say: “We will not look! We do not want to see! We do not want to know!”.
Even worse! the Albrightians are saying: “We know but we will not admit it!” Biblical scholars know already that none of the scriptures is true, if taken to be the word of God and not the instrument of Persian foreign policy, and the policies of the later Greeks and Maccabees. That is why they resist any proper scientific investigation and put fellow Biblicists in charge of every crucial excavation and inquiry to confuse or even destroy damning evidence. Rumours abound from students engaged in biblical archaeological fieldwork about important evidence being removed from the site and disappearing or being deposited somewhere irrelevant. Is it the Hebrew God who needs this crookery, or professional Jews and Christians comfortably picking the pockets of gullible innocents?
The Elements of the Pentateuch
The Pentateuch—the first five books of the Bible—is traditionally said to have been written by none other than Moses himself. Doubtless believers will still believe this myth too, but it is manifestly untrue by the evidence of the Pentateuch itself. In the Pentateuch, anyone can read of the death of Moses, and the fact that he never got to enter the Promised Land:
So Moses the servant of Yehouah died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of Yehouah. And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor, but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died.Deuteronomy 34:5-7
Then we are told:
Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses.Deuteronomy 34:10
It should not need to be said that Moses cannot describe his own death and burial and, if he could, he could remind people where he was laid down! The final point shows that the true author was writing such a long time later that he thought it worth commenting that no one like Moses had ever been known since. These excerpts are from the appendix to Deuteronomy that is unquestionably later than the main part of the book, but the book is also late in the supposed historical sequence of the bible. Though the Pentateuch ends when Moses had only seen the land from afar, and before Joshua had supposedly taken it by conquest, whoever wrote these books did so in the knowledge:
- that the Israelite state existed as a settled community where the Canaanites no longer lived,
- Abel Mizraim east of the Jordan is called “beyond Jordan” (Gen 50:10), implying an author living in Palestine already.
- As Abram reaches Shechem we read: “The Canaanite was then in the land”, (Gen 12:6) an expression that presumes they no longer were, and so must have been written much later.
- When Abram’s and Lot’s herdmen were quarrelling, we read: “The Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled then in the land”, (Gen 13:7) again implying they no longer did. If Perizzites were Persians, then the author is in Hellenistic times.
- Dan appears twice (Gen 14:14, Dt 34:1) in the Pentateuch even though the tribes had not yet settled in Canaan. Elsewhere the bible itself explains that before the supposed conquest, Dan was Laish (Jg 18:29).
- If laws imply a settled, agricultural society (Ex 23:10-11, Lev 19:19), then Moses could not have written them.
- of historical events later than the supposed time of writing at the beginning of the Iron Age, beginning with the Philistines.
- The table of nations in Genesis 10 mentions the Philistines who settled about 1200 BC, roughly when many think Moses was dead or dying. In it, moreover, Nineveh is put on a par with Calah, though it was not a “great city” until it became the capital of Assyria in the place of Calah in the seventh century BC. The list, being later than the Assyrians, applies best to the time of the Persians not to the time of Moses.
- The author of these books also has Abraham dealing with Philistines 600 years before they had arrived in Palestine—Palestine being an alternative way of writing Philistine!—according to Genesis 21:32 and 34. The author did not know that the Philistines only settled in Palestine at the time the Israelites were supposed to be doing so, in the biblical myth. He just knew that Philistines were there.
- To speak of Ur “of the Chaldees” in Genesis 11:28— implies a time after the Neo-Babylonian period in the sixth century BC, the expression not being common earlier.
- Genesis 36:31 acknowledges that the children of Israel were ruled by a king, even though the supposed author, Moses, was not yet in the promised land. Furthermore, the Royalty Law of Deuteronomy 17:14-15 applies to a state with a king, presuming a monarchy.
- To speak of the “Magicians of Egypt” in Genesis 41:8 implies that the book was written when magicians had become known. Magicians were the Persian magi, so the composition was after the Persian period, and indeed all of the allusions in the stories of Joseph are better explained as being from the Persian or Hellenistic ages.
The fact that the “Exile” is also alluded to in Deuteronomy proves that the Pentateuch—at least in its present recension—is post-exilic. It is from the time of Ezra in the Persian period. Scholars such as S H Hooke in Peake’s Commentary unanimously accept that Genesis was written in the Persian period to explain why Yehouah (or at first El) had chosen Israel.
The Pentateuch was not written by Moses, but by different writers compiling some older material, instructions by Persian officials setting up the theocracy of Judea, and later priests influenced by the Greeks. The Persian instructions were the central portion of Deuteronomy. The older material consisted of Mesopotamian myths, elements of Syrian myths, and folklore. The priests added detailed laws to do with temple worship (Leviticus is a manual of temple sacrifice), genealogies to give credence to their authority, and bogus history to justify the temple cultus from a putative antiquity. It all showed the Israelites as serial apostates from the worship of Yehouah, their new God of Heaven under the Persians, and a lucrative meal ticket for the priests.
Yet Jeremiah and the Psalmist, for example, contradict the Pentateuch utterly regarding temple sacrifice, writing that Yehouah said:
For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices.Jeremiah 7:22
The Psalmist replies:
Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire. Mine ears hast thou opened. Burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required.Psalms 40:6
These were writing in opposition to the temple cult—which must therefore have already been established—not necessarily in the Persian period but possibly in the time of the southern Greek kings, the Ptolemies. Note that Jeremiah travels to Egypt, and that many of the psalms have the hallmark of the Essenes who also had Egyptians connexions.
Compositional Hypotheses
Translations of the bible hide the fact that God is not just called God, but has several names:
- the most common is “Yehouah” (YHWH, Yahweh, Jehovah, and now Jarvay) with about 7000 occurences;
- “Adonai” (Lord, properly “My Lords”, a plural of majesty) which is the common substitute for Yehouah because the latter is ineffable;
- “Elohim” (~3500), literally, “Gods” but declared another “plural of majesty” to justify its singular translation, and used by the authors of the Priests’ Code;
- the combination “Yehouah Elohim” is common and translated as “Lord God”, an obvious mistranslation when “Yehouah of the Gods” looks literally more correct;
- El is the Canaanite word for their high god but also more generally is taken to mean God;
- “El Elyon” is “God the Highest”, implying other gods, and apparently a Phœnician name of God, according to Eusebius citing Philo of Byblus;
- El Shaddai is translated as God Almighty, but no one knows what it means—some clues suggest it is a mountain or storm god, others that it is a fertility god;
- “Yehouah Sabaoth” is “Yehouah of the Hosts (of heaven)”, also implying other gods, and is the word favoured in the early Persian works of the bible.
Frank Delitzsch thought the first books of the bible were stitched together by an editor from earlier sources called, after their name for God or style, J, E, P and D. Wellhausen took up this idea and championed it but putting the Priestly stage at the end instead of the Deuteronomist, and not first where it had been thought to be from the biblical story. Scholars squabbled about whether the first source was E or J. The different names for God must have had a purpose, at least at first. El and Elohim, implying El, must have been competing names with Yehouah. Both had to be retained to satisfy competing factions.
J saw God as a man, so that man could be formed in His image. This anthropomorphic God closes the door of the ark (Gen 7:16), visits the Tower of Babel (Gen 11:5), takes walks in gardens, and so on. The author E has God revealing himself not directly but through the “angel of the Lord” (Gen 21:17 and 22:11), through dreams and interpretations (Gen 40:8) and through his prophets, typified by Moses (Num 12:6-8). The Yehoustic layer has Babylonian words in it. The Elohist only begins with Abraham. The author P combined the books of J and E (or used a prior combination of these books), adding new material. P has a much more impersonal grand God, and was more concerned with points of doctrine and ritual than narrative. P is mainly lists of laws and presupposes an active temple. D is the author of Deuteronomy and has a consistent style of his own that some say can be detected throughout the histories. Much of it, though, is explained by the overall purpose of the Persians in presenting these laws and books—to persuade the Hebrews to be loyal and obedient to God through His king, the Shahanshah.
There is a modern preference for the view that much of the Yehouistic material was written later than originally thought, implying an absurdly long period of oral and written transmission of the Pentateuchal narratives for them to be genuinely old. Julius Wellhausen thought the editing process was completed in the Persian period. There were later changes surely in the histories and prophets, and Exodus/Numbers is also late. More and more Old Testament texts are considered postexilic, and their historical allusions are not reliable.
The stories that were put together at the start of Genesis were fragments of older myths used to explain God’s purpose in history and to place Israel central to it. None of them are Canaanite—all are Mesopotamian.
None of the myths [of Genesis 1-11] has been shown to be of distinctively Hebrew origin, while most of them, the Flood story in particular, are of Mesopotamian origin.S H Hooke, Peake’s Commentary
The aim is always to show the Jews as disobedient and rebellious toward God and needing to seek perfect righteousness to escape retribution. Syrian myths such as those of the Patriarchs were added. Mainly they were originally unrelated stories, some of which were associated with different local shrines and doubtless the people who worshipped at them. An editor has merged them as a genealogical assembly ultimately to promote the idea of the unity of Israel.
Noth thought that there was a common source behind J and E which he called G (Grundlage). Since J and E seem to represent two factions, he could be right, because they were telling essentially the same story but could not agree on who was the High God. The different factions wrote them in their own preferred way and the compromising editor has merged them judiciously to satisfy both.
This suggests that the beginning of Genesis, not including the Priestly additions, is early. Rolf Rentdorff believes that large units of composition agglomerated already soon after Genesis was composed:
- the Primordial Unit
- the Patriarchal Unit.
From Genesis 12 the Patriarchs are shown as arriving from Mesopotamia instructed by God to set up proper worship of Him and begin the redemption of mankind through obedience to God’s commands. Genesis 37 to 50 give the story of Joseph as an explanation of how Israel got into slavery to Egypt in preparation for yet another “return” when Moses takes the Israelites on an Exodus from Egypt back to Canaan. The connecting together of all the units of Genesis was undertaken by an editor who inserted chronological signposts (Gen 16:16; 17:24) and theological passages (Gen 17; 35:9-13).
Tamara Cohn Eskenazi advises us to consider the use of motifs, keywords and themes in the Pentateuch. She highlights the use of the word NKR in Genesis 37-42. It pertains to “recognizing” and, in the passage, Jacob is invited to “recognize” Joseph’s clothing. Tamar deceives Judah with clothing and shows him what had happened by sending him items he “recoconizes”. Joseph “recognizes” his brothers but makes himself “unrecognizable” to them and, sure enough, they do not “recognize” him. The art of recognizing, Eskenazi tells us is a “moral imperative to readers”. We should drink to that because the author is teasing the reader who does not “recognize” the book for what it really is, dressed up as it is as a holy work. The bible is, like Tamar, disguised as something it is not, but the reader cannot “recognize” it. But the author knows, and mercilessly teases the gullible reader.
