Moses the Egyptian?
The Historicity Of Moses And The Exodus | Ralph Ellis (1:30 min)
I watched a video by Ralph Ellis on the historicity of Moses in which the hypothesis is advanced that Moses and the Hebrews were not slaves, but a ruling elite of “shepherd” kings expelled from Egypt and that although Moses was a historical character the Biblical account is largely fictious depicting the Hebrews as victims when they were the oppressors. Ellis bases his idiosyncratic theory on the Egyptian historian Manetho and on Josephus and he concludes that the Great Pyramid of Giza was Mount Sinai (lolz). The only thing missing is Anunnaki and space aliens. Ellis makes much of the fact that Moses name simply means “son” (Egyptian Meses) and does not refer to a god such as Ramses (son of RA) but why would it? There is nothing suspicious about shortening the name and dropping any reference to “foreign gods” besides it makes it theologically satisfying because Israel (and Jesus) is referred to as “my son” drawn (Exod 2:10) through the waters (Red Sea/baptism) to become Sons of God (Hos 11:1, Matt 2:15). The tribe of Ephraim was already half Egyptian and Abraham had an Egyptian concubine who conceived Ishmael. The ties between the Jews and Egypt run deep.
These types of videos take advantage of people’s lack of knowledge on what are rather arcane and specialist subjects. They attempt to discredit Scriptures as completely fabricated and state that Abraham was not real, Moses was not real…Jesus was not real. Scripture is clever fiction. The attacks always follow the same patterns. The city of Nineveh does not exist (oops, we found it buried under sand) the siege of Tyre did not happen (oops, it did), Jericho did not fall (oops it did but the date is wrong) on and on…
Manetho is associated with the reign of Ptolemy I Soter c. 300 BC, but this is uncertain and a late primary source for the time of Moses who was at least a millennium earlier. Manetho has been cited as an early example of antisemitism (lolz). Manetho’s history of Egypt, potentially presented as a counter-narrative to the traditional story of Exodus, portrays Jews negatively; Manetho’s depiction of Jews — or Lepers and Shepherds – exudes anti-Jewish themes. We might ask why the anti-Jewish sentiment and it might have something to do with a playwright (Hollywood producer sic) Ezekiel the Tragedian, who made a play out of the Exodus story around about the same time (300 BC) and translated it into Greek. Apparently, the Egyptians were rather miffed at having their Pharaoh and their gods portrayed as incompetent. They did not like having their gods mocked and their suffering praised (who would have thunk it?). The result was that Yahweh was henceforth portrayed as a god with a donkey head and this carried over to portraying Christ as a crucified donkey. However, the story is more complex (it always is) because the name Manetho is thought to be derived from Thoth who was the Egyptian god of wisdom etc and who was synthesized with the Greek Hermes Trismegistus to eventually deliver the gnostic belief and it was Moses who defeated the Magicians of Egypt (Jannes and Jambres). So, at the core of this is the struggle between the occult knowledge (gnosis) of Egypt and the revelation of Yahweh and this Egyptian antagonism against Moses carried over from ridiculing Judaism to ridiculing Christianity (hence the crucified donkey), eventually Gnosticism (developed in Egypt) was expelled from the Christian church.
Flavius Josephus was from priestly and royal descent and essentially, he sold out to the Romans to save his skin. He is therefore not unbiased (no historian is) and it is interesting that the earliest surviving attestation to Manetho is that of Contra Apionem (“Against Apion”) by Flavius Josephus, nearly four centuries after Aegyptiaca was composed. Even here, it is clear that Josephus did not have the originals and constructed a polemic against Manetho without them. Avaris and Osarseph are both mentioned twice (1.78, 86–87; 238, 250). Apion 1.95–97 is merely a list of kings with no narratives until 1.98, while running across two of Manetho’s dynasties without mention (dynasties eighteen and nineteen).
Ralph Ellis makes the point that the Jews wanted to be portrayed as “victims” when they were really rulers who were expelled but that is not the case because the Jewish “elite” and priestly aristocracy vehemently denied that they had ever been slaves – They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?” (John 8:33). The irony is that they were under Roman occupation when they spoke these words and the nation had been forged as slaves in Egypt. They wanted to forget their origins because they were a superior nation not slaves to the goy.
As to Ellis’s nonsense about the Pyramid being Mt Sinai because the Sinai desert is part of the Sahara Desert, and it was impossible to wander there (forget that the Egyptians had a copper mining operation in Sinai lolz). Moreover, the wandering of the Israelites did not happen in the Sinai Peninsula but the Arabian Peninsula near the land of Midian (where Moses spent time and found a wife) and Mount Sinai is actually Jebel al-Lawz in Arabia or the burnt mountain they are part of the mountains of Midian. This might explain why there was a Jewish kingdom in Yemen in 5 BC and why Mohamed found so many Jewish tribes in Arabia nearly a thousand years later. This article discusses the alternative route The Exodus Route restored and this article The apostle Paul referred to Mt. Sinai as being in Arabia (Gal 4:25) though there are those who dispute the alternative route but I remain confident that it is correct but there is much to be examined see here: The Exodus & Wilderness Wanderings under Moses 1446-1406 BC as to the career of Moses before his election there may be some truth to his Conquest of Ethiopia and it would explain his “black” wife (alongside his Midianite wife).
As to Akhenaten. He was a contemporary of King Saul and seems to have been greatly influenced by the Jewish religion and was attracted to its monotheism. It consolidated power under one man and made him the high priest/son of god.
The Armana letters are diplomatic letters between Akhenaten’s court and the kings in the Levant at the time David(Dadua) took Jerusalem. It describes the King Labaya dying in exactly the same fashion as King Saul. This write up in Wikipedia describes the issue better than I can.
“Still others, such as David Rohl, have advocated a totally revised chronology of ancient Israelite and Egyptian history, and instead identify Labaya with Saul, and Mutbaal with Saul’s son Ishbaal. Ish-baal and Mutbaal, whose names have the same meaning, “Man of Baal”, moved their capital to Transjordan after the death of their fathers, whose center of power had been west of the Jordan river. Rohl further identifies Dadua, Ayab and Yishaya, three figures mentioned by Mutbaal in a later Amarna Letter, with King David, his general Joab and David’s father Jesse.”
I have featured David Rohl and his alternative dating schema here and as to the story of Moses in the basket and Sargon of Akkad see here (scroll down)
Conclusion
There is no reason to discount the historical content of scripture even if it is sacred history. Moreover, I have demonstrated in previous articles here and here that Scripture contains sacred geometry and mathematics encoded in the language. Not only that but an awareness of the Precession Cycle can be found in the text. So inspired scripture was the first to develop and use an alphabet (before Egypt and Phoenicia) the first to encode the alphabet alpha numerically, the first to practice sacred geometry and encode it in language (before the Egyptians and the Greeks) and the first to link it to Cosmogony (the precession cycle). Not bad for a work of fiction.