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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 135. The Sources for the History of Moses
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The Sources for the History of Moses
But unity after all is a relative term. A general unity of plan and purpose may be, and often is, found in a work made up of contributions by several authors agreeing in their general attitude to the subject under discussion, while differing from each other in their way of presenting it, and in the emphasis which they lay on its different parts. The Pentateuch, it is now maintained, is neither the work of a single author, nor even the product of a single age, but a compilation from a number of older and originally independent works, separated from each other in date by several centuries.
Let us set down, as briefly as possible, the several documents which modern literary criticism claims to have discovered in the Pentateuch. The two oldest sources are those now commonly known as “J” and “E”-the former, called “J” on account of its author's almost exclusive use of the sacred name Jehovah, written probably in Judah in the ninth century b.c., and the latter, called “E” on account of the preference for Elohim (“God”), written probably a little later in the Northern Kingdom. The principal materials out of which the two narratives were constructed were partly oral tradition, and partly written laws. Excerpts from these two sources were combined together, so as to form a single continuous narrative (JE), by a compiler, or redactor (RJE), who sometimes at the same time made slight additions of his own, usually of a hortatory or didactic character, and who lived probably in the early part of the seventh century b.c. The parts derived from J and E are in tone and point of view akin to the writings of the great prophets: the additions which seem to be due to the compiler approximate in both style and character to Deuteronomy (seventh century b.c.). Another source is the one which, from the priestly interests conspicuous in it, is commonly denoted by “P”: this is evidently the work of a priestly school, whose chief interest it was to trace to their origin, and embrace in a framework of history, the ceremonial institutions of the people. The fourth document is the Book of Deuteronomy. The kernel of this book, to which the symbol “D” strictly belongs, and as to the extent of which there is some difference of opinion, is identified with the Book of the Law discovered in the Temple in the eighteenth year of Josiah (622 b.c.). It formed the basis of the religious reform undertaken by him as recorded in 2Ki_22:1-20; 2Ki_23:1-37.
Those who desire to view the Pentateuch in its historical perspective, should think of it as a series of strata: the oldest and lowest stratum consisting of JE-for J and E, as they are very similar in character and tone, may, for many practical purposes, be grouped together as a single stratum-expanded here and there by additions made by RJE; the second stratum consisting of the discourses of Deuteronomy, written in the seventh century b.c., and combined with JE not long afterwards; and the third and latest stratum consisting of P.1 [Note: S. R. Driver, The Book of Exodus, xii.]
Of these sources J is obviously the oldest, and most nearly represents the ancient popular tradition concerning the events of the Exodus; but it must be borne in mind that both J and E are parted by a gulf of some centuries from the incidents which they record, and in point of fact embody the ideas of a late age respecting Moses and his work.2 [Note: R. L. Ottley, The Religion of Israel, 27.]
2. Are there any other sources for the life of Moses? What about the Egyptian monuments? Not much can be said of the testimony of the inscriptions to the Oppression and the Exodus. Of course, those who accept these facts as narrated in the Book of Exodus will find in the inscriptions interesting antiquarian and topographical illustrations of them; but those who seek corroboration of the facts from the monuments will be disappointed. There is certainly no sufficient reason for questioning that the Israelites were long resident in Egypt, that they built there the two cities Pithom and Raamses, and that afterwards, under the leadership of Moses, they successfully escaped from the land of bondage: but none of these facts are vouched for by the inscriptions at present known. The discovery of the site of Pithom, for instance, valuable as it is archæologically, is not evidence that the Israelites built the town. The mention in inscriptions of other persons passing to and fro by Succoth and Etham is not evidence that the Israelites left Egypt by that route-or indeed that they left Egypt at all. What we know about “Goshen” is consistent with the residence there of a comparatively small band of foreign settlers, but not (as Professor Sayce has pointed out) with the numbers which, according to the Pentateuch, resided in it at the time of the Exodus. The utmost that can be said is that, from the fact of the topography of the first two or three stations of the Exodus being in agreement with what the monuments attest for the age of the nineteenth dynasty, a presumption arises that the tradition was a well-founded one which brought the Israelites by that route.
There is nothing, perhaps, more disappointing, alike to the Biblical student and to the Egyptologist, than the fact that neither in the almost Semitic region of Goshen, nor in the whole land of Egypt, has, so far, any reference whatever been traced on any single monument to the sojourn of the Israelites or their escape from bondage. We are not unnaturally surprised, when the incidents loom so large in the life-history of the Jewish nation, and indeed in the history of the world. The Egyptians, who have left several notices of the movements of tribes in this very region of Goshen, are absolutely silent as to the coming and departure of the Israelites.1 [Note: L. E. Steele, in The Irish Church Quarterly, i. 126.]
3. Josephus (c. Apion) gives certain traditions as to the Exodus preserved by Manetho, an Egyptian priest and historian of Heliopolis, during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, b.c. 285-246. Manetho is quoted as stating that a priest of Heliopolis, named Osarsoph, afterwards Moses, raised a revolt of persons afflicted by leprosy and other foul diseases, who had been settled on the borders to deliver Egypt from the pollution of their presence. They were defeated and driven out of Egypt into Syria by Amenophis king of Egypt. In chap. 32 a similar story is quoted from Chœremon, the leaders of the Jews being Moüses Tisithen and Joseph Peteseph. In chap. 34 a third version of the story is quoted from Lysimachus. According to Josephus, Manetho stated that Jerusalem was built by the followers of shepherd kings, Hyksos, when they were expelled from Egypt by Tethmosis. He apparently regarded these Hyksos as the ancestors of the Israelites. It has sometimes been maintained that the story of the expulsion of the lepers is a truer version of the Exodus than that given in the Old Testament; and some who reject Manetho's main story quote his names of persons and places. It is safer to regard his and other narratives as mere perversions of the Biblical account.
In many wild, distorted forms, the rise of this great name, the apparition of this strange people, was conceived. Let us take the brief account-the best that has been handed down to us-by the careful and truth-loving Strabo. “Moses, an Egyptian priest, who possessed a considerable tract of Lower Egypt, unable longer to bear with what existed there, departed thence to Syria, and with him went out many who honoured the Divine Being. For Moses maintained and taught that the Egyptians were not right in likening the nature of God to beasts and cattle, nor yet the Africans, nor even the Greeks, in fashioning their gods in the form of men. He held that this only was God,-that which encompasses all of us, earth and sea, that which we call Heaven, and the Order of the world, and the Nature of things. Of this who that had any sense would venture to invent an image like to anything which exists amongst ourselves? Far better to abandon all statuary and sculpture, all setting apart of sacred precincts and shrines, and to pay reverence, without any image whatever. The course prescribed was, that those who have the gift of good divinations, for themselves or for others, should compose themselves to sleep within the Temple; and those who live temperately and justly may expect to receive some good gift from God, these always, and none besides.” These words, unconsciously introduced in the work of the Cappadocian geographer, occupying but a single section of a single chapter in the seventeenth book of his voluminous treatise, awaken in us something of the same feeling as that with which we read the short epistle of Pliny, describing with equal unconsciousness, yet with equal truth, the first appearance of the new Christian society which was to change the face of mankind. With but a few trifling exceptions, Strabo's account is, from this point of view, a faithful summary of the mission of Moses. What a curiosity it would have roused in our minds, had this been all that remained to us concerning him! That curiosity we are enabled to gratify from books which lay within Strabo's reach, though he cared not to read them.1 [Note: A. P. Stanley, History of the Jewish Church, i. 91.]
4. An immense mass of traditions gathered round Moses. Many of these are collected in Josephus, Ant. ii.-iv., c. Apion; Philo, Vita Moysis; Eusebius, Praep. Ev. 9; in the Targums and rabbinical commentaries; and in the pseudepigraphal works ascribed to Moses. Traditions are also found in the Koran, and in other Arabian works. It is possible that there may be in this wilderness of chaff some grain of fact not otherwise known; but, speaking generally, the student of Old Testament history may set the whole on one side.
5. There remain the references to Moses in the New Testament. The New Testament makes frequent reference to the history of Moses. For the most part, however, it adds nothing to the Old Testament narrative. In some instances it follows a text differing from the Massoretic Text, or a tradition varying from the Pentateuch, but these differences do not affect the general history of Moses.
The New Testament constantly refers to the law of Moses, and to Moses as the founder of Old Testament religion, and refers to the Pentateuch as “Moses” (Luk_16:29). His prophetical status is recognized by the quotation in Act_3:22. At the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah appear as the representatives of the Old Testament dispensation, and Christ and they speak of His approaching death as an “exodus” (Luk_9:31; cf. 2Pe_1:15). While the New Testament contrasts the law with the gospel, and Moses with Christ (Joh_1:17, etc.), yet it appeals to the Pentateuch as bearing witness to Christ (Deu_18:15-19, in Act_7:37) in a way which implies that what Moses was to the old, Christ is to the new, dispensation. Similarly, the comparison between Moses and Christ in Heb_3:5-6 implies that, though Christ was greater than Moses, He was, in a sense, a greater Moses, and that Moses was a forerunner and prototype of Christ.1 [Note: W. H. Bennett, in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, iii. 447.]