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I've been working on my new book Did Moses Exist? The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver, which is coming along nicely, although it is much longer than I expected to do - what else is new? That happens with every project I set out on, because I try to be so thorough and incorporate as much of the research on a subject as I can humanly gather. In this popular subject, one can imagine there is a ton of material to sift through, in a variety of languages, dating back to remote ages. Most of my primary-source research for this project is in Greek, Hebrew and Latin, but there is also some relevant Ugaritic and other Semitic languages, as well as Egyptian, et al.

Although many scholars of the past century to today are clear on the mythical nature of the Exodus tale and the probable (to them) non-historicity of the Moses character, there are a number of historical or quasi-historical individuals and events that have gathered attention as the possible "real Moses" and "real Exodus." These events and individuals include, of course, the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, the Hyksos and Ahmose I, Osarseph and the lepers, etc. Thus, I spend much of the first part of the book addressing these issues, while the rest of my work provides the comparative religion and mythology.

For example, there is a lengthy section concerning the profound correspondences between the tales of Moses and the Greek god Dionysus. I have created one of my (in)famous lists featuring Dionysus's attributes in relation to the Moses myth, annotating each attribute with a primary source from antiquity, including the original Greek or other language as well. These parallels have been known for centuries by many among the elite; it is therefore disturbing that they are unknown and even hidden from the masses. Why aren't these similarities between Moses and the mythical figure of Dionysus being taught from the pulpit? Because the bibliolaters have a strict hold over the minds of the masses, unfortunately. Otherwise, these same masses could investigate this material with as much fascination as I do.

The following is a draft table of contents of my book Did Moses Exist?. The order and substance will change but not very much.

Table of Contents

Preface

Comparative Religion Squashed

Introduction

The Pentateuch/Torah
Moses's Era
The Allegorical 'Dark Sayings' of Old
The Book of the Law

Was Moses the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten?

Polytheistic Monotheism/Monism
A Priest of Aten?
Euhemerism/Evemerism

The Exodus as History?

The Route of the Exodus
Four Decades of Desert Traumatization
The Philistines
Giants in the Promised Land
Manna and Magic Water
The Amalekites and the Magic Rod
No Trumpets Needed at Jericho
No Archaeological Evidence
Modern Gatherings Irrelevant
Merneptah Stela

The Hyksos, Ahmose and Osarseph

Conquerors or Captives?
Ahmose I
Osarseph and the Lepers
Chaeremon
Thieves/Son of Joseph?
Herodotus and the Syrians from Palestine
Hyksos as Pre-Israelite Semites

The Exodus as Myth

The Plagues
The Parting of the Red Sea
The Ark of the Covenant
The Wilderness Sojourn
The Exodus of Osiris
Rama, Adam's Bridge and the Indian Jews
The 600,000 as Kabbalistic Motif
The Ten Commandments
The Golden Calf and Smashing of Tablets
Forty Days, Nights and Years

Who Was Moses?

Minos and Manu
The Dionysus Connection

Herodotus
Diodorus
Vine and Wine
Exodus into the Sea
Bacchic Attributes
Jesus and Dionysus
Orpheus and Paul

Moses and Mises
Moses and Jesus
The Hero's Birth
The Slaughter of Innocents
Smiting the Rock
Moses and the Serpent
Moses and the Tabernacle
The Great God Sun

The Origin of Yahweh
El and Yahweh
Babylonian Sun Hymn
Moses as Solar Hero

Conclusion
Appendices

The Great Hymn to the Aten
The Great Mendes Stela
Second Isaiah
125th Chapter of the Egyptian Book of the Dead
The Declaration of Innocence Before the Gods of the Tribunal
Papyrus of Ani (c. 1250 BCE)
Theban Recension
Psalm 19
Psalm 104

Bibliography

As an example of one "small" point I make in DME, not something I dwell upon but which is highly important, I quote Dr. George Smith, the British Assyriologist/archaeologist who discovered the tablets at Nineveh that contain the world-famous Epic of Gilgamesh and the nativity story of Sargon I. I then emphasize that this esteemed scholar's conclusions have not only been accepted into the mainstream as a foundation for Near Eastern studies but that they have since proved to be accurate, not to be dismissed as "outdated." Here is the relevant excerpt:


At this point in DME, I note:


There is much more to come...


This cover too is a mockup that will probably change.

Please feel free to raise issues and questions here. I'm sure there's something I haven't covered yet. <groans>

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Why suffer from Egyptoparallelophobia, when you can read Christ in Egypt? Try it - you'll like it:

Acharya

Looking at your table of contents it appears that you have done a rather thorough job in your research. There have been a few tidbits that have stood out to me while I have looked at the alleged biblical histories, but you have probably already covered them.

One point that shows the Exodus story was invented centuries later than the alleged event are the passages where Moses said he had to avoid the coastal route in order to avoid the Philistines. Apparently the writer did not know that the Philistines did not arrive in the Levant until about 1185 BCE, which would have been a problem for the story. The same type of mistake was made in Genesis when Abraham and Isaac were supposed to have had dealings with Abimelech, the king of the Philistines, which would have really been several centuries in the wrong time period.

The Merneptah Stele propaganda that Christians and Jews claim to be evidence of the existence of Israel when it does not mention Israel at all. The word on the stele is iisii-r-iar, but Christians and Jews looking for evidence for Israel insisted that it be translated Israel simply because they wanted it to mean that, though they have no evidence to support that translation.

The Hyksos seem to have been a combination of cultures and not just Semites as some people suppose. The evidence for that comes from the bows and chariots the Hyksos introduced into Egypt. They were not the type used by Semites, but were the type used by Indo-Europeans such as the Hurrians.

The description of the Ark of the Covenant (for which there is no evidence that it ever existed) seems to have been copied from the ark that carried the Egyptian god Amun during the Opet Festivals. There seems to have been many things in the story of Exodus copied from the Egyptians. Even the name I Am That I Am was copied from an old engraving on a temple to the Egyptian god Ra where it said Nuk Pa Nuk, or I Am What I Am.

Interesting artifacts from the area of ancient Edom indicate that a Moses type figure is associated with a serpent god indicating that the Nehushtan serpent of Moses that was wrapped around his staff was supposed to have held the actual power to perform miracles, which might explain the story about separating the waters when the staff with the serpent wrapped around it was pointed at the sea, and how Moses' staff became a serpent when he threw it on the floor. Nehushtan the bronze serpent of Moses was allegedly destroyed by king Hezekiah so people would stop worshiping it.

Good luck with getting your new book published. You should try that StellarHouse publisher in Seattle.

Rik

Excellent information, Tellurian. You've given me some good info here that I will be incorporating into my book. There are always points here and there that a single individual will miss, which is why we hope to have competent reviewers. Perhaps you would be interested in reviewing my book before it is published? If so, please PM me.

Thanks for the heads up on Stellar House - sounds like the perfect publisher.

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Why suffer from Egyptoparallelophobia, when you can read Christ in Egypt? Try it - you'll like it:

Your thesis follows very closely that of the author Laurence Gardner in his 2003 book entitled "Lost Secrets of the Sacred Ark." On page 50, he makes the statement, "...Akhenaten (henceforth to be equated with Moses) ...". This book, as well as his previous ones (Bloodline of the Holy Grail; Genesis of the Grail Kings; Realm of the Ring Lords), concerns itself primarily with the genealogy of various 'royal' bloodlines. His bibliography is, as is yours, varied and extensive and, while his conclusions might seem far-reaching, his methodology is principled. If you're not familiar with his work, it's worth the time to read them.

This rabbit hole just keeps getting deeper all the time. Not that it amounts to anything more than what expected: To wit, Moses is a mythical figure, a composite of characters.

However, the trail could not be clearer when one actually gets down into the "dirt" to analyze as much of the data as possible: In this case, all aspects of the milieu of the ethnicity, era, culture, etc. The fact is that, by the time of the Christian effort, the Jews were known as "allegorizers" of their scriptures, producing voluminous commentaries and addenda passed down to us as the apocryphal and intertestamental literature, as well as the Talmud and numerous other texts such as the Kabbalah, which itself is a commentary of sorts build upon ancient traditions both Jewish and Gentile.

Jewish Mythmaking: The Talmud, Unicorn and Giant

As an example of how Jews have engaged in mythmaking - a behavior we already know from the Old Testament but which apparently needs to be reiterated because of the bibliolatry programmed into the minds of billions - among many other tales we find one in the Talmud about a unicorn "as large as Mount Tabor," a species too big for Noah to fit on the ark. We also discover a tale about one of the notorious Nephilim (פִלִים), the giants said at Genesis 6:4 to have been the products of the mating by the (fallen) "sons of God" (bene Elohim) with human females. In this tale, we discover that the giant's "footsteps were forty miles long, and one of his teeth served to make a couch for Abraham."

Following is a summary of the tales about the unicorn, ark and giant from the Talmud - are we really to believe they are historical? In reality, the giant story is reminiscent of mystical tales about Buddha, among others.



What is absurd is that sober, grown men have been arguing for millennia about whether or not this tale and a hundred others found in the Bible itself actually happened in history, how they came about and by whose providence. Here is what our "great minds" have been bickering about, while the world is on the edge of chaos on a global basis like never before, largely because of credulously believing these imaginative and mythical tales as "real history."

Well, back to my extended wake-up call...

Buddha as Myth

Here is the comparison with Buddha:


Here is another description of Buddha:


See Did Buddha Exist? Was There a Historical Buddha?

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Why suffer from Egyptoparallelophobia, when you can read Christ in Egypt? Try it - you'll like it:

And here is the reason this book must be written - to dispense with this bigotry that has caused so much trouble globally for centuries.

In the discussion of the Talmud, we discover the question:

"Why are the Gentiles defiled?" pretty much says it all.

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Why suffer from Egyptoparallelophobia, when you can read Christ in Egypt? Try it - you'll like it:

I'm reminded of the blog: Is Jesus a Myth? from May 26, 2009:


Quotes from Judaism

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2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube

The Dionysus Connection

Here's a little taste of where I'm going with Did Moses Exist? In the section of the book with the same title as this post, I have included the commentary of several writers from the 17th century on, such as below.

In his book The New Pantheon; Or, an Introduction to the Mythology of the Ages (1831), Irish Presbyterian/Unitarian minister Rev. William Jillard Hort (fl. 1794-5) remarks:


As we can see, there are numerous parallels here with the story of Moses. While several commentators attempted to make the "heathens" the copiers of the biblical hero, the Greek god is found much earlier in the literary record than is Moses, and, since this tale is clearly mythological and Dionysus's worship was spread from England to India in antiquity, it is more likely that the Moses myth is copied from the Dionysus myth.

As I say, in my book I will provide a list of all these Bacchic attributes, with notation of where they can be found in the primary sources. I will also include a significant amount of the original sources themselves, mainly in Greek. Let us just say that this besmirched older generation of scholars was substantially correct - because they actually READ GREEK, Latin and Hebrew, whereas their critics today more often than not do not possess this important knowledge. In other words, this "outdated" scholarship is factually CORRECT, and these scholars have been maligned unfairly, because of the modern critic's ignorance and lack of necessary skills. "I can't find it," complains the modern critic, referring to a particular attribute. Yes, that's because you can't read the original Greek in which it appears! If you want this information neatly presented to you in your own modern English vernacular, you will need to read my books, for one. That's why I am writing them, because I can and do find these correlations, in their original languages, providing them for you, along with translation(s).

The question remains, why aren't people being taught these Dionysian correlations from the pulpit, when they are being told to believe in Moses as a "historical person?" How can such an important omission be part of an ideology that considers itself the purveyor of truth?

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Why suffer from Egyptoparallelophobia, when you can read Christ in Egypt? Try it - you'll like it:

Books I have found very interesting on the Moses myth are

Moses and Monotheism - Sigmund Freud
The Bible Unearthed - Israel Finkelstein
The Sign and the Seal - Graham Hancock

As to Richard Carrier's bigoted rejection of nineteenth century scholarship, he is best ignored, as are those who follow him with his irrelevant Bayes theory. The key to understanding ancient myth is the link to natural observation of the cosmos. The greats of the nineteenth century such as Massey saw this, but the recent reactionaries want to disparage this basic key in favour of a much narrower racial cultural frame in which Israel is considered in isolation from its large neighbours except for Greece.

Finkelstein presents a very reliable scholarly basis for study of Moses, showing that the archaeological record does not match to the Bible Myth of the Exodus. As to Freud and Hancock, they are both much more speculative, but still interesting and worth reading. The role of Moses within Gnostic thought is one key theme. For example, the serpent on the pole is cited in the key Gospel Chapter John 3, and bears close similarity to the Gnostic Mithraic God Aion, explaining religion in terms of natural time.

In view of Acharya's comment about intellectual fashions, here is as good a place as any to raise a fascinating scholarly observation in the introduction of a book by my old teacher, Professor Raoul Mortley, From Word to Silence. In regard to the philosophy of late antiquity known as the via negativa, the primary method of neoplatonism,

(emphasis added)

From Word to Silence is available free at http://works.bepress.com/raoul_mortley/

One source for useful information on ancient Egypt is the archaeologist Donald Redford. He has specialized in the delta region of Egypt with special research investigating Avaris, the ancient capital of the Hyksos. In his book Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times he wrote the following:

The bare bones of Manethos account runs as follows:

A. 1. The King (Amenophis/Ilor) desires to see the gods.
2. Amenophis son of Paapis the seer declares he may if he cleanses the land of lepers.
3. The King sends all lepers to the quarries east of the Nile.
4. Amenophis the seer predicts an invasion of thirteen years.
5. Amenophis commits suicide.
6. The lepers ask that they be allowed to live in Avaris.
7. In Avaris the lepers choose as their leader Osarsiph, priest of Heliopolis.
8. Osarsiph makes monotheistic and racially exclusive laws.
9. Osariph invites the Shepherds back to Avaris.
B. 10. The Shepherds return.
11. The King hides the divine images and sends his five-year-old son to safety.
12. The King declines to fight the Shepherds and retreats to Ethiopia.
13. The Shepherds lay Egypt waste.
14. Reiteration of the PN Osarsiph and identification with Moses.

http://www.skeptically.org/oldtestament/id4.html

Was it myth or history? No archaeological artifacts or contemporary writings have been found yet to verify the authenticity of the story.

Rik

The Comparative-Religion Work of Gerardus Vossius

More evidence that the post-1950-scholarship cultic view holds no water. Below is the opinion of a professional scholar concerning the massive works of Gerardus Vossius (1577-1649), published in the 17th century and containing much information on comparative religion, including parallels between Moses and other (mythological) figures. As we can see, Vossius was convinced of the link between pagan mythology and biblical stories, although he attempted like so many in his era to point to the latter as the source of the former.

Nevertheless, Vossius's work De theologia gentili is of tremendous interest to scholars and students of comparative religion and mythicism. Unfortunately, this massive opus has never been translated into English.

Concerning Vossius and his "huge work," Dr. Richard A. Popkin - a celebrated scholar who received his PhD from Columbia University and who was a professor at a number of colleges and universities - states:


(Force, James E., and Richard H. Popkin, Essays on the Context, Nature, and Influence of Isaac Newton's Theology, 28.)

As we can see, this work of comparative religion was massive, and is now difficult and forbidding for scholars to study. One of the major reasons for the ignorance of this text is because it is written in Latin, and many fewer scholars today read Latin well enough to undertake such an endeavor. Latin, it should be recalled, was the scholarly language of Vossius's era, and no European scholar could be considered erudite without fluency in it. Hence, we today are greatly impoverished by not being able to access these types of works.

Popkin (27) also calls Vossius's massive three-volume work a "most heroic attempt to compile all the new historical data about ancient and modern polytheistic systems." It would be egregious for us to ignore such works simply because of their date.

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Why suffer from Egyptoparallelophobia, when you can read Christ in Egypt? Try it - you'll like it:

Diodorus on Jewish Bigotry and Supremacy

According to Photius, in his discussion of the Jews, Diodorus Siculus (1st cent. BCE) relates some very interesting insights that sound familiar. Speaking of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (d. 164 BCE), Diodorus (34.1) remarks:


Source: Diodorus Siculus, The Historical Library, Booth translation, 2.543-544

Describing a statue found in the temple by Antiochus, Diodorus relates that the king thought it was "Moses who built Jerusalem, and settled the nation, and established by law all their wicked customs and practices, abounding in hatred and enmity to all other men."

Next, Diodorus relates:


This effort of destroying the pathologically xenophobic Jews obviously did not end with Antiochus, as it continued well into the second century AD/CE, with the ultimate creation of Christianity, a cult that abrogated the law and imposed a supernatural, anthropomorphized incarnation that is blatantly a Judaized syncretism of the numerous gods and goddesses of the Roman Empire.

So, it appears that the Jews were a serious problem in the Empire and that there were repeated efforts to destroy their cult, such as the demolition of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 AD/CE and of Judea in general in 134, before Christianity was struck upon as the solution. As we can see, this sociopathic behavior did not end with that era, however, as we continue to encounter essentially the same mentality in Judaic, Christian and especially Islamic fundamentalism.

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Why suffer from Egyptoparallelophobia, when you can read Christ in Egypt? Try it - you'll like it:

Some try to explain the dislike of Jews as being a modern anti-Semitic hatred of "Christ killers", but the dislike goes back to a long time before the Christian era. Some of the ancestors of the Jews were known as Habiru, aka Hebrews, and before that the Sa Gaz by the Sumerians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habiru#Sumerian_records

The Habiru were rejects from the settlements who formed groups of desert bandits that attacked and looted the settlements. An example of an attack is in the story of Jacob/Israel where they kill the men, enslave the women, and loot the property in Genesis 34:26-30.

Some of the ancient peoples found that Habiru/Hebrews could not be trusted, because they were a violent people who could easily turn and kill each other over religious differences or nudity as was recorded in Exodus 32:25-29 when the alleged Moses had his Levite gang kill thousands of other Habiru/Hebrews.

Many people today believe the ten commandments are those listed in Exodus 20, but those were never called the ten commandments in Exodus. The commandments called the ten commandments in Exodus 34:28 are a very different, more violent, more hostile, more stringent list of commandments that included human sacrifice of the first born sons. In Exodus 34:19 and 20 it explains what animals are to be sacrificed (redeemed) and it includes the first born sons, as was expressed in the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22. Is it any wonder that others considered the practices appalling?

It would seem that when the Habiru/Hebrew/Jews wanted to appear to be more civilized they replaced their older, more primitive, violent, hostile set of ten commandments with the more acceptable set found in Exodus 20, although most people tend to ignore the following commandments in Exodus 21, 22, and 23.

How different history would have been if the Jews in the first century were not so revolting, creating one revolt after another until the Romans completely destroyed Jerusalem and expelled the Jews. What would history have been if the Jews had been a peaceful people?

Rik

So what is the background and motivation for Richard Carrier's arrogant dismissal of earlier scholarship? There are many great books from the nineteenth century whose content is largely forgotten. Of course the quality varies, but Carrier's suggestion that correct thought from earlier times has been fully incorporated in more recent work is ridiculous.

Essentially, Carrier is a creature of fashion, seeking preferment through conformity, like the academics who ignore whole swathes of culture critiqued by Raoul Mortley in my post above. Current dominant fashionable ideas seek to establish history on the model of the physical sciences, rejecting any hint of speculative synthesis in favour of a conservative emphasis on what can be proved without doubt.

Unfortunately, Carrier's agenda takes this scientific attitude to extremes, and supports a prejudiced academic view of the boundaries of legitimate research. It all leads to a self-confirming refusal to engage with topics that the current consensus finds uncomfortable, other than in a limited and dismissive way.

A prime example of this biased dominant academic method is the dismissal of analysis of how Jesus Christ is an allegory for the sun. It seems that people like Richard Carrier consider that the link between Jesus and the sun reminds them of astrology, and astrology reminds them of irrationality, so this is enough for them to dismiss astrotheology as irrational and obsolete.

It does not matter to Carrier and similar writers that the justification for their refusal to discuss astrotheology is illogical. Their stance is more about impressions, power and appearances, and the desire to seem rational, regardless of evidence.

The same problem applies to study of Moses. The Egyptian links, the precessional theme of the golden calf, and the Gnostic cosmic connection between the snake on the pole and the symbolism of Christ, all suggest a strongly astrotheological and mythical identity for Moses. But if we arrogantly dismiss anyone who discusses the primary symbolism of Christ as the sun, how can we hope to enter a discussion of the real identity of Moses?

I'll let Carrier's own words do the talking:

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2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube