Moses was the world's first great teacher. He is still one of the
world's great teachers. Seven million people yet look to his laws for
special daily guidance, and more than two hundred millions read his
books and regard them as Holy Writ. And these people as a class are of
the best and most enlightened who live now or who have ever lived.
Moses did not teach of a life after this--he gives no hint of
immortality--all of his rewards and punishments refer to the present. If
there is a heaven for the good and a hell for the bad, he did not know
of them.
The laws of Moses were designed for the Now and the Here. Many of them
ring true and correct even today, after all this interval of more than
three thousand years. Moses had a good knowledge of physiology, hygiene,
sanitation. He knew the advantages of cleanliness, order, harmony,
industry and good habits. He also knew psychology, or the science of the
mind: he knew the things that influence humanity, the limits of the
average intellect, the plans and methods of government that will work
and those which will not.
He was practical. He did what was expedient. He considered the material
with which he had to deal, and he did what he could and taught that
which his people would and could believe. The Book of Genesis was
plainly written for the child-mind.
The problem that confronted Moses was one of practical politics, not a
question of philosophy or of absolute or final truth. The laws he put
forth were for the guidance of the people to whom he gave them, and his
precepts were such as they could assimilate.
It were easy to take the writings of Moses as they have come down to us,
translated, re-translated, colored and tinted with the innocence,
ignorance and superstition of the nations who have kept them alive for
thirty-three centuries, and then compile a list of the mistakes of the
original writer. The writer of these records of dreams and hopes and
guesses, all cemented with stern commonsense, has our profound reverence
and regard. The "mistakes" lie in the minds of the people who, in the
face of the accumulated knowledge of the centuries, have persisted that
things once written were eternally sufficient.
In point of time there is no teacher within many hundred years following
him who can be compared with him in originality and insight.
Moses lived fourteen hundred years before Christ.
The next man after him to devise a complete code of conduct was Solon,
who lived seven hundred years after. A little later came Zoroaster, then
Confucius, Buddha, Lao-tsze, Pericles, Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle--contemporaries, or closely following each other, their
philosophy woven and interwoven by all and each and each by all.
Moses, however, stands out alone. That he did not know natural history
as did Aristotle, who lived a thousand years later, is not to his
discredit, and to emphasize the fact were irrelevant.
Back of it all lies the undisputed fact that Moses led a barbaric people
out of captivity and so impressed his ideals and personality upon them
that they endure as a distinct and peculiar people, even unto this day.
He founded a nation. And chronologically he is the civilized world's
first author.
Moses was a soldier, a diplomat, an executive, a writer, a teacher, a
leader, a prophet, a stonecutter. Beside all these he was a farmer--a
workingman, one who when forty years of age tended flocks and herds for
a livelihood. Every phase of the outdoor life of the range was familiar
to him. And the greatness of the man is revealed in the fact that his
plans and aspirations were so far beyond his achievements that at last
he thought he had failed. Exultant success seems to go with that which
is cheap and transient. All great teachers have, in their own minds,
been failures--they saw so much further than they were able to travel.
* * * * *
All ancient chronology falls easily into three general divisions: the
fabulous, the legendary, and the probable or natural.
In the understanding of history, psychology is quite as necessary as
philology.
To reject anything that has a flaw in it is quite as bad as to have that
excess of credulity which swallows everything presented.
It is not necessary to throw away the fabulous nor deny the legendary.
But it is certainly not wise to construe the fabulous as the actual and
maintain the legendary as literally true. Things may be true
allegorically and false literally, and to be able to distinguish the one
from the other, and prize each in its proper place, is the mark of
wisdom.
If, however, we were asked to describe the man Moses to a jury of sane,
sensible, intelligent and unprejudiced men and women, and show why he is
worthy of the remembrance of mankind, we would have to eliminate the
fabulous, carefully weigh the traditional, and rest our argument upon
records that are fair, sensible and reasonably free from dispute.
The conclusions of professional retainers, committed before they begin
their so-called investigations to a literal belief in the fabulous,
should be accepted with great caution. For them to come to conclusions
outside of that which they have been taught, is not only to forfeit
their social position, but to lose their actual means of livelihood.
Perhaps the truth in the final summing up can best be gotten from those
who have made no vows that they will not change their opinions, and have
nothing to lose if they fail occasionally to gibe with the popular.
On a certain occasion after Colonel Ingersoll had delivered his famous
lecture entitled, "Some Mistakes of Moses," he was entertained by a
local club. At the meeting, which was of the usual informal kind known
as "A Dutch Feed," a young lawyer made bold to address the great orator
thus: "Colonel Ingersoll, you are a lover of freedom--with you the word
liberty looms large. All great men love liberty, and no man lives in
history, respected and revered, save as he has sought to make men free.
Moses was a lover of liberty. Now, wouldn't it be gracious and generous
in you to give Moses, who in some ways was in the same business as
yourself, due credit as a liberator and law-giver and not emphasize his
mistakes to the total exclusion of his virtues?"
Colonel Ingersoll listened--he was impressed by the fairness of the
question. He listened, paused and replied: "Young man, you have asked a
reasonable question, and all you suggest about the greatness of Moses,
in spite of his mistakes, is well taken. The trouble in your logic lies
in the fact that you do not understand my status in this case. You seem
to forget that I am not the attorney for Moses. He has more than two
million men looking after his interests. I am retained on the other
side!"
Like unto Colonel Ingersoll, I am not an attorney for Moses. I desire,
however, to give a fair, clear and judicial account of the man. I will
attempt to present a brief for the people, and neither prosecute nor
defend. I will simply try to picture the man as he once existed, nothing
extenuating, nor setting down aught in malice. As the original office of
the State's Attorney was rather to protect the person at the bar than to
indict him, so will I try to bring out the best in Moses, rather than
hold up his mistakes and raise a laugh by revealing his ignorance.
Modesty, which is often egotism turned wrong side out, might here say,
"Oh, Moses requires no defense at this late day!" But Moses, like all
great men, has suffered at the hands of his friends. To this man has
been attributed powers which no human being ever possessed.
Moses lived thirty-three hundred years ago. In one sense thirty-three
centuries is a very long time. All is comparative--children regard a man
of fifty as "awful old." I have seen several persons who have lived a
hundred years, and they didn't consider a century long, "and thirty-five
isn't anything," said one of them to me.
Geologically, thirty-three centuries is only an hour ago. It does not
nearly take us back to the time when men of the Stone Age hunted the
hairy mammoth in what is now Nebraska, nor does thirty-three centuries
give us any glimpse of the time when tropical animals, plants and
probably men lived and flourished at the North Pole.
Egyptian civilization, at the time of Moses, was more than three
thousand years old. Egypt was then in the first stage of senility,
entering upon her decline, for her best people had settled in the
cities, and this completes the cycle and spells deterioration. She had
passed through the savage, barbaric, nomadic and agricultural stages and
was living on her unearned increment, a part of which was Israelitish
labor. Moses looked at the Pyramids, which were built more than a
thousand years before his birth, and asked in wonder about who built
them, very much as we do today. He listened for the Sphinx to answer,
but she was silent, then as now. The date of the exodus has been fixed
as having probably occurred during the reign of the Great Pharaoh,
Mineptah, or the nineteenth Egyptian Dynasty. The date is, say, fourteen
hundred years before Christ. An inscription has recently been found
which seems to show that Joseph settled in Egypt during the reign of
Mineptah, but the best scholars now have gone back to the conclusions I
have stated.
At the time of the Pharaohs, Egypt was the highest civilized country on
earth. It had a vast system of canals, an organized army, a goodly
degree of art, and there were engineers and builders of much ability.
Philosophy, poetry and ethics were recognized, prized and discussed.
The storage of grain by the government to bank against famine had been
practised for several hundred years. There were also treasure-cities
built to guard against fire, thieves or destruction by the elements. It
will thus be seen that foresight, thrift, caution, wisdom, played their
parts. The Egyptians were not savages.
* * * * *
About five hundred years before the birth of Moses there lived in Arabia
a powerful Sheik or Chief, known as Abraham. This man had a familiar
spirit, or guide, or guardian-angel known as Yaveh or Jehovah. All of
the desert tribes had such tutelary gods; and all of these gods were
once men of power who lived on earth. The belief in special gods has
often been held by very great men: Socrates looked to his "demon" for
guidance; Themistocles consulted his oracle; a President of the United
States visited a clairvoyant, who consented to act as a medium and
interpret the supernatural. This idea, which is a variant of ancestor
worship, still survives, and very many good people do not take journeys
or make investments until they believe they are being dictated to by
Shakespeare, Emerson, Beecher or Phillips Brooks. These people also
believe that there are bad spirits to which we must not harken.
Abraham was led by Jehovah; what Jehovah told him to do he did; when
Jehovah told him to desist or change his plans, he obeyed. Jehovah
promised him many things, and some of these promises were fulfilled.
Whether these tutelary gods or controlling spirits had any actual
existence outside of the imagination of the people who believed in
them--whether they were merely pictures thrown upon the screen by a
subconscious spiritual stereopticon--is not the question now under
discussion. Something must be left for a later time: the fact remains
that special providences are yet relied upon by sincere and intelligent
people.
Abraham had a son named Isaac. And Isaac was the father of Jacob, or
Israel, "the Soldier of God," so called on account of his successful
wrestling with the angel. And Jacob was the father of twelve sons. All
of these people believed in Jehovah, the god of their tribe; and while
they did not disbelieve in the gods of the neighboring tribes, they yet
doubted their power and had grave misgivings as to their honesty.
Therefore, they had nothing to do with them, praying to their own god
only and looking to him for support. They were the chosen people of
Jehovah, just as the Babylonians were the chosen people of Baal; the
Canaanites the chosen people of Ishitar; the Moabites the chosen people
of Chemos; the Ammonites the chosen people of Rimmon.
Now Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob, and his brethren were
naturally jealous of him. So one day out on the range they sold him into
slavery to a passing caravan, and went home and told their father the
boy was dead, having been killed by a wild beast. To make the matter
plausible they took the coat of Joseph and smeared it with the blood of
a goat which they had killed. Nowadays, the coat would have been sent to
a chemist's laboratory and the blood-spots tested to see whether it was
the blood of beast or human. But Jacob believed the story and mourned
his son as dead.
Now Joseph was taken to Egypt and there arose to a position of influence
and power through his intelligence and diligence. How eventually his
brethren, starving, came to him for food, there being a famine in their
own land, is one of the most natural and beautiful stories in all
literature. It is a folklore legend, free from the fabulous, and has all
the corroborating marks of the actual.
For us it is history undisputed, unrefuted, because it is so natural. It
could all easily happen in various parts of the world even now. It shows
the identical traits of human nature that are alive and pulsing today.
Joseph having made himself known to his brethren induced some of them
and their neighbors to come down into Egypt, where the pasturage was
better and the water more sure, and settle there. The Bible tells us
that there were seventy of these settlers and gives us their names.
These emigrants, called Israelites, or Children of Israel, account for
the presence of the enslaved people whom Moses led out of captivity
three hundred years later.
One thing seems quite sure, and that is that they were a peculiar people
then, with the pride of the desert in their veins, for they stood
socially aloof and did not mix with the Egyptians. They still had their
own god and clung to their own ways and customs.
That very naive account in the first chapter of Exodus of how they had
two midwives, "and the name of one was Shiphrah and the other Puah," is
as fine in its elusive exactitude as an Uncle Remus story. Children
always want to know the names of people. These two Hebrew midwives were
bribed by the King of Egypt--ruler over twenty million people--in
person, to kill all the Hebrew boy babies. Then the account states that
Jehovah was pleased with these Hebrew women who proved false to their
master, and Jehovah rewarded them by giving them houses.
This order to kill the Hebrew children must have gone into execution, if
at all, about the time of the birth of Moses, because Aaron, the brother
of Moses, and three years older, certainly was not killed.
Whether Moses was the son of Pharaoh's daughter, his father an
Israelite, or both of his parents were Israelites, is problematic. Royal
families are not apt to adopt an unknown waif into the royal household
and bring him up as their royal own, especially if this waif belongs to
what is regarded as an inferior race. The tie of motherhood is the only
one that could over-rule caste and override prejudice. If the daughter
of Pharaoh, or more properly "the Pharaoh," were the mother of Moses,
she had a better reason for hiding him in the bulrushes than did the
daughter of a Levite, for the order to kill these profitable workers is
extremely doubtful. The strength, skill and ability of the Israelites
formed a valuable acquisition to the Egyptians, and what they wanted was
more Israelites, not fewer.
Judging from the statement that there were only two midwives, there were
only a few hundred Israelites--perhaps between one and two thousand, at
most.
So leaving the legend of the childhood of Moses with just enough mystery
mixed in it to give it a perpetual piquancy, we learn that he was
brought up an Egyptian, as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, and that it
was she who gave him his name.
Philo and Josephus give various sidelights on the life and character of
Moses. The Midrash or Commentaries on the History of the Jews, composed,
added to or modified by many men, extending over a period of twenty
centuries, also add their weight, even though the value of these
Commentaries is conjectural.
Egyptian accounts of Moses and the Israelites come to us through
Hellenic sources, and very naturally are not complimentary. These
picture Moses, or Osarsiph, as they call him, as an agitator, an
undesirable citizen, who sought to overturn the government, and failing
in this, fled to the desert with a few hundred outlaws. They managed to
hold out against the forces sent to capture them, were gradually added
to by other refugees, and through the organizing genius of Moses were
rounded into a strong tribe.
That Moses was their supreme ruler, and that to better hold his people
in check he devised a religious ritual for them, and impressed his god,
Jehovah, upon them, almost to the exclusion of all other gods, and thus
formed them into a religious whole, is beyond question. No matter what
the cause of the uprising, or who was to blame for it, the fact is
undisputed that Moses led a revolt in Egypt, and the people he carried
with him in this exodus formed the nucleus of the Hebrew Nation. And
further, the fact is beyond dispute that the personality of Moses was
the prime cementing factor in the making of the nation. The power,
poise, patience and unwavering self-reliance of the man, through his
faith in the god Jehovah, are all beyond dispute. Things happen because
the man makes them happen.
* * * * *
The position of the Israelites in Egypt was one of voluntary vassalage.
The government was a feudal monarchy. The Israelites had come into Egypt
of their own accord, but had never been admitted into the full rights of
citizenship. This exclusion by the Egyptians had no doubt tended to fix
the Children of Israel in their religious beliefs, and on the other
hand, their proud and exclusive nature had tended to keep them from a
full fellowship with the actual owners of the land.
The Egyptians never attempted to traffic in them as they did in slaves
of war, being quite content to use them as clerks, laborers and
servants, paying them a certain wage, and also demanding an excess of
labor in lieu of taxation. In other words, they worked out their
"road-tax," which no doubt was excessive. Many years later, Athens and
also Rome had similar "slaves," some of whom were men of great intellect
and worth. If one reads the works of modern economic prophets, it will
be seen that wage-workers in America are often referred to as "slaves"
or "bondmen," terms which will probably give rise to confusion among
historians to come.
Moses was brought up in the court of the king, and became versed in all
the lore of the Egyptians. We are led to suppose that he also looked
like an Egyptian, as we are told that people seeing him for the first
time, he being a stranger to them, went away and referred to him as
"that Egyptian." He was handsome, commanding, silent by habit and slow
of speech, strong as a counselor, a safe man. That he was a most
valuable man in the conduct of Egyptian official affairs, there is no
doubt. And although he was nominally an Egyptian, living with the
Egyptians, adopting their manners and customs, yet his heart was with
"his brethren," the Israelites, who he saw were sore oppressed through
governmental exploitation.
Moses knew that a government which does not exist for the purpose of
adding to human happiness has no excuse for being. And once when he was
down among his own people he saw an Egyptian taskmaster or foreman
striking an Israelitish workman, and in wrath he arose and killed the
oppressor. The only persons who were witnesses to this affair were two
Hebrews. The second day after the fight, when Moses was attempting to
separate two Hebrews who had gotten into an altercation with each other,
they taunted him by saying, "Who gavest thee to be a ruler over
us?--wilt thou also kill us as thou didst the Egyptian?"
This gives us a little light upon the quality and character of the
people with whom Moses had to deal. It also shows that the ways of the
reformer and peacemaker are not flower-strewn. The worst enemies of a
reformer are not the Egyptians--he has also to deal with the Israelites.
I once heard Terence V. Powderly, who organized the Knights of
Labor--the most successful labor organization ever formed--say, "Any man
who devotes his life to helping laboring men will be destroyed by them."
And then he added, "But this should not deter us from the effort to
benefit."
As the Hebrew account plainly states that the killing of all the male
Hebrew children was carried out with the connivance of Hebrew women who
pretended to be ministering to the Hebrew mothers, so was the flight of
Moses from Egypt caused by the Hebrews, who turned informants and
brought him into disgrace with Pharaoh, who sought his life.
Very naturally, the Egyptians deny and have always denied that the order
to kill children was ever issued by a Pharaoh. They also point to the
fact that the Israelites were a source of profit--a valuable asset to
the Egyptians. And moreover, the proposition that the Egyptians killed
the children to avoid trouble is preposterous, since no possible act
that man can commit would so arouse sudden rebellion and fan into flame
the embers of hate as the murder of the young. If the Egyptians had
attempted to carry out any such savage cruelty, they would not only have
had to fight the Israelitish men, but the outraged mothers as well. The
Egyptians were far too wise to invite the fury of frenzied motherhood.
To have done this would have destroyed the efficiency of the entire
Hebrew population. An outraged and heartbroken people do not work.
When one person becomes angry with another, his mental processes work
overtime making up a list of the other's faults and failings.
When a people arise in revolt they straightway prepare an indictment
against the government against which they revolted, giving a schedule of
outrages, insults, plunderings and oppressions. This is what is politely
called partisan history. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was a literary indictment
of the South by featuring its supposed brutalities. And the attitude of
the South is mirrored in a pretty parable concerning a Southern girl who
came North on a visit, and seeing in print the words "damned Yankee,"
innocently remarked that she always thought they were one word. A
description of the enemy, made by a person or a people, must be taken
cum grano Syracuse.
* * * * *
When Moses fled, after killing the Egyptian, he went northward and east
into the land of the Midianites, who were also descendants of Abraham.
At this time he was forty years of age, and still unmarried, his work in
the Egyptian Court having evidently fully absorbed his time.
It is a pretty little romance, all too brief in its details, of how the
tired man stopped at a well, and the seven daughters of Jethro came to
draw water for their flocks. Certain shepherds came also and drove the
girls away, when Moses, true to his nature, took the part of the young
ladies, to the chagrin and embarrassment of the male rustics who had
left their manners at home. The story forms a melodramatic stage-setting
which the mummers have not been slow to use, representing the seven
daughters as a ballet, the shepherds as a male chorus, and Moses as
basso-profundo and hero. We are told that the girls went home and told
their father of the chivalrous stranger they had met, and he, with all
the deference of the desert, sent for him "that he might eat bread."
Very naturally Moses married one of the girls.
And Moses tended the flocks of Jethro, his father-in-law, taking the
herds a long distance, living with them and sleeping out under the
stars.
Now Jethro was the chief of his tribe. Moses calls him a "priest," but
he was a priest only incidentally, as all the Arab chiefs were.
The clergy originated in Egypt. Before the Israelites were in Goshen,
the "sacra," or sacred utensils, belonged to the family; and the head of
the tribe performed the religious rites, propitiating the family deity,
or else delegated some one else to do so. This head of the tribe, or
chief, was called a "Cohen"; and the man who assisted him, or whom he
delegated, was called a "Levi." The plan of making a business of being a
"Levi" was borrowed from the Egyptians, who had men set apart,
exclusively, to deal in the mysterious. Moses calls himself a Levi, or
Levite.
After the busy life he had led, Moses could not settle down to the
monotonous existence of a shepherd. It is probable that then he wrote
the Book of Job, the world's first drama and the oldest book of the
Bible. Moses was full of plans. Very naturally he prayed to the
Israelitish god, and the god harkened unto his prayer and talked to him.
The silence, the loneliness, the majesty of the mountains, the great
stretches of shining sand, the long peaceful nights, all tend to
hallucinations. Sheepmen are in constant danger of mental aberration.
Society is needed quite as much as solitude.
From talking with God, Moses desired to see Him. One day, from the
burning red of an acacia-tree, the Lord called to him, "Moses, Moses!"