The Músà (Moses) of the Moslems is borrowed from Jewish sources, the
Pentateuch and especially the Talmud, with a trifle of Gnosticism which,
hinted at in the Koran (chapt. xviii.), is developed by later writers, making
him the "external" man, while Khizr, the Green prophet, is the internal. But
they utterly ignore Manetho whose account of the Jewish legislator (Josephus
against Apion, i. cc. 26, 27) shows the other or Egyptian part. Moses, by
name Osarsiph=Osiris-Sapi, Osiris of the underworld, which some translate rich
(Osii) in food (Siph, Seph, or Zef) was nicknamed Mosheh from the Heb.
Mashah=to draw out, because drawn from the water[FN#230] (or rather from the
Koptic Mo=water ushe=saved). He became a priest an An or On (Heliopolis),
after studying the learning of the Egyptians. Presently he was chosen chief
by the "lepers and other unclean persons" who had been permitted by King
Amenophis to occupy the city Avaris lately left desolate by the "Shepherd
Kings." Osarsiph ordained the polity and laws of his followers, forbidding
them to worship the Egyptian gods and enjoining them to slay and sacrifice the
sacred animals. They were joined by the "unclean of the Egyptians" and by
their kinsmen of the Shepherds, and treated the inhabitants with a barbarity
more execrable than that of the latter, setting fire to cities and villages,
casting the Egyptian priests and prophets out of their country, and compelling
Amenophis to fall back upon Ethiopia. After some years of disorder Sethos
(also called Ramesses from his father Rampses) son of Amenophis came down with
the King from Ethiopia leading great united forces, and, "encountering the
Shepherds and the unclean people, they defeated them and slew multitudes of
them, and pursued the remainder to the borders of Syria." Josephus relates
this account of Manetho, which is apparently truthful, with great indignation.
For the prevalence of leprosy we have the authority of the Hebrews themselves,
and Pliny (xxvi. 2), speaking of Rubor Ægyptus, evidently white leprosy ending
in the black, assures us that it was "natural to the Ægyptians," adding a very
improbable detail, namely that the kings cured it by balneæ (baths) of human
blood.[FN#231]
Schiller (in "Die Sendung Moses") argues that the mission of the Jewish
lawgiver, as adopted son (the real son?) of Pharoah's daughter, became
"learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," by receiving the priestly
education of the royal princes, and that he had advanced from grade to grade
in the religious mysteries, even to the highest, in which the great truth of
the One Supreme, the omniscient, omnipotent God was imparted, as the sublime
acme of all human knowledge, thus attributing to Moses before his flight into
Midian, an almost modern conception of an essentially anthropomorphous Deity.
Further, that his conscious mission when he returned to Egypt was not merely
the deliverance of his people from the Egyptian yoke, but the revelation to
them of this great conception, and so the elevation of that host of slaves to
the position of a nation, to whose every member the highest mystery of
religion should be known and whose institutions should be based upon it. It
is remarkable that Schiller should have accepted the fables of Manetho as
history, that he should not have suspected the fact that the Egyptian priest
wrote from motives of personal spite and jealousy, and with the object of
poisoning the mind of Ptolemy against the learned Jews with whom he stood on
terms of personal friendship. Thus he not only accepts the story that the
Hebrews were expelled from Egypt because of the almost universal spread of
leprosy among them, but explains at length why that loathsome and horrible
disease should have so prevailed. Still Schiller's essay, written with his
own charming eloquence, is a magnificent eulogy of the founder of the Hebrew
nation.
Goethe ("Israel in der Wüste"), on the other hand, with curious ingenuity,
turns every thing to the prejudice of the "headstrong man" Moses, save that he
does grant him a vivid sentiment of justice. He makes him both by nature and
education a grand, strong man, but brutal (roh) withal. His killing the
Egyptian is a secret murder; "his dauntless fist gains him the favour of a
Midianitish priest-prince . . . . under the pretence of a general festival,
gold and silver dishes are swindled (by the Jews under Moses's instigation)
from their neighbours, and at the moment when the Egyptians believe the
Israelites to be occupied in harmless feastings, a reversed Sicilian vesper is
executed; the stranger murders the native, the guest the host; and, with a
horrible cunning, only the first-born are destroyed to the end that, in a land
where the first-born enjoyed such superior rights, the selfishness of the
younger sons might come into play, and instant punishment be avoided by hasty
flight. The artifice succeeds, the assassins are thrust out instead of being
chastised." (Quoted from pp. 99-100 "The Hebrews and the Red Sea," by
Alexander W. Thayer; Andover, Warren F. Draper, 1883.) With respect to the
census of the Exodus, my friend Mr. Thayer, who has long and conscientiously
studied the subject, kindly supplied me with the following notes and permitted
their publication.
Trieste, October 11, 1887.
My Dear Sir Richard,
The points in the views presented by me in our conversation upon the Hebrews
and their Exodus, of which you requested a written exposition, are, condensed,
these:
Assuming that the Hebrew records, as we have them, are in the main true, i.e.
historic, a careful search must reveal some one topic concerning which all the
passages relating to it agree at least substantially. Such a topic is the
genealogies, precisely that which Philippsohn the great Jewish Rabbi, Dr.
Robinson, of the Palestine researches, and all the Jewish and Christian
commentators--I know no exception--with one accord, reject! Look at these two
columns, A. being the passages containing the genealogies, B. the passages on
which the rejection of them is based:
A.
1. Genesis xxiv. 32 to xxv. 25 (Births of Jacob's sons).
2. xxxv. 23-26 (Recapitulation of the above).
3. xlvi. 8-27 (List of Jacob and his sons, when they came into Egypt).
4. Ex. vi. 14-27 (Lineage of Aaron and Moses).
5. Numb. xxxvi. 1-2 (Lineage of Zelophehad).
6. Josh. vii. 17-18 (Lineage of Achan).
7. Ruth iv. 18-22 (ditto of David).
8. 1 Chron. ii. 9-15 (ditto).
9. Mat. i. 2-6 (ditto).
10. Luke iii. 32-37 (ditto).
11. Ezra vii. 1-5 (ditto of Ezra).
The lists of Princes, heads of tribes, the spies, the commission to divide
conquered Palestine, contain names that can be traced back, and all coincide
with the above.
B.
1. Gen. xv. 13.
2. Ex. xii. 40, 41.
3. Acts vii. 6.
These three give the 400 and the 430 years of the supposed bondage of the Bene
Jacob, but are offset by Gen. xv. 16 (four generations) and Gal. iii. 17
(Paul's understanding of the 430 years).
4. The story of Joseph, beginning Gen. xxxvii. 2, gives us the dates in his
life; viz., 17 when sold, 30 when he becomes Prime Minister, 40 when his
father joins him.
5. 1 Chron. vi. 1-15 (Lineage of Ezra's brother Jehozadak, abounding in
repetitions and worthless).
1. As between the two, the column A. is in my opinion more trustworthy than
B.
2. By all the genealogies of the Davidian line we have Judah No. 1, Solomon
No. 12. By Ezra's genealogy of his own family we have Levi No. 1, and Azariah
(Solomon's High Priest) No. 12. They agree perfectly.
3. If there were 400 years of Hebrew (Bene Jacob) slavery between the death
of Joseph and the Exodus, there were 400 - 80 = 320, between Joseph's death
and the birth of Moses. If this was so there is no truth in the accounts of
Moses and Aaron being the great-grandchildren of Levi (Levi, Kohath, Amram,
Aaron and Moses). In fact, if Dr. Robinson be correct in saying that at least
six generations are wanting in the genealogies of David (to fill the 400
years) the same must be lacking in all the early genealogies. Reductio ad
absurdum!
4. Jacob, a young man, we will say of 40, is sent to Laban for a wife. He
remains in Padan Aram twenty years (Gen. xxxi. 38), where all his sons except
Benjamin were born, that is, before he was 60. At 130 he joined Joseph in
Egypt (Gen. xlvii. 9). Joseph, therefore, born in Padan Aram was now, instead
of 40, over 70 years old! That this is so, is certain. In Judah's exquisite
pleadings (Gen. xliv. 18-34) he speaks of Benjamin as "the child of Jacob's
old age," "a little one," and seven times he calls him "the lad." Benjamin is
some years younger than Joseph, but when the migration into Egypt takes
place-a few weeks after Judah's speech-Benjamin comes as father of ten sons
(Gen. xlvi. 21), but here Bene Benjamin is used in its broad sense of
"descendants," for in 1 Chron. vii. 6-12 we find that the "Bene" were sons,
grandsons and great-grandsons. To hold that Joseph at 40 had a younger
brother who was a great-grandfather, is, of course, utterly absurd.
5. According to Gen. xv. 18, the Exodus was to take place in the fourth
generation born in Egypt, as I understand it.