Egyptian Political History Recorded by Moses and Encrypted as Irano-Babylonian Allegories by Ezra, 7

Disclosing two kinds of ‘history’ in Genesis, Exodus, Numbers and Joshua:

allegorical legends (‘literal’) and hard facts (‘critical sense’)

Michaelangelo’s magnificent sculpture of Moses the prophet and lawgiver. Most translators render Ex. 34:29

as ‘the skin of his face shone,’ but Hebrew qaran is more literally ‘horned.’ Following Jerome’s Latin translation

of the verse in the Vulgate, the Italian master represents Moses as having the horns of a ram protruding from his forehead.

The aim of this discussion is to demonstrate that the narratives in the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) are legends that cannot be read as historical fact. But having said this, factual information can be unearthed by applying a method able to access sources and their authors. This introduces the ideas of biblical ‘legends’ defined as ‘fictionalized political history,’ and Ezra as the final author who encrypted the original work of Moses that included the factual history of Egypt.

In this and subsequent posts my intention is to tell a story, albeit a complicated one, with the big picture in mind rather than getting bogged down in scholarly arguments and minutiae. As a consequence I have kept references to a minimum so that the storyline of arguments are apparent and not overloaded with information. Yet the books and articles that are cited indicate avenues for further reading where more detailed discussions can be consulted, if that is what you want.

1. Moses as the Author (c. 1200 BCE) of the Torah (Archaic Genesis-Exodus) and Ezra Composing the Pentateuch (c. 458 BCE)

The glaring literary problem to be solved is the lack of consistency and unity in the Pentateuch. This can be appreciated from the presence of doublets (two variations of the same story, e.g., two complete versions of the flood legend intertwined, Gen. 6-8), numerous contradictions, and rough transitions at literary seams where two traditions have been combined. The literary evidence requires two authors.

My proposal is that Moses wrote the Torah (envisaged as archaic Genesis-Exodus) around 1200 BCE. On two occasions he descends from Mount Sinai with tablets of stone with legislation written on them by Yahweh (Ex. 31:18; 32:15-19; 34:1-35). We can infer from the fiction of this legend that Moses was the author of an important document that included Yahwistic laws.

An artist’s impression of Ezra standing on the wooden pulpit and reading from the scroll of the

Pentateuch to the Jewish congregation gathered in Jerusalem.

In the decade or so before 458 BCE (‘the seventh year of Artaxerxes I the king,’ 465-425 BCE; Ezra 7:7) the Babylonian scribe and Persian official called Ezra composed the second edition of the Torah expanded into the Tetrateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers). He attached the older document of Deuteronomy as an appendix, forming the Pentateuch. The central role attributed to Ezra is based on hard evidence. In that year he stood on a wooden pulpit in Jerusalem, especially designed for the occasion, and read from a scroll:

And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate; and they told Ezra the scribe to bring the scroll of the torah (law) of Moses which Yahweh had given to Israel. And Ezra the priest brought the torah before the assembly ... And he read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, … (Neh. 8:1-3).

Scholarly debate continues over what the torah scroll mentioned in this text actually was, but it was almost certainly the Pentateuch (e.g., see Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2007, p. 250). Ezra is the first person in the Bible described with the torah scroll in his hands that could conceivably refer to the Pentateuch, a prima facie case that he composed these documents.

Knowing who wrote the documents fixes the dates of composition and discloses abundant information about cultural circumstances and political events. In turn, this enables us to grasp the ideologies and compositional strategies of Moses and Ezra, and determines what sources they could feasibly have used.

2. Ezra’s Role as a High Official of the Persian Administration Commissioned by Artaxerxes I to Govern the Province of Yehud/Judea

During the days of Ezra Babylonia and Judea were provinces of the Persian (or Achaemenid) empire, with its capital at Parsagade in Iran. According to Oric Basirov a majority of specialists favour the view that the Achaemenid rulers were members of the Zoroastrian faith from Cyrus (559-530 BCE) down to Artaxerxes I (465-425 BCE) and his successors (The World of Achaemenid Persia: History, Art and Society in Iran and the Ancient Near East, eds. John Curtis and St John Simpson, I. B. Tauris, 2010, pp. 80f.). Ezra arrived in Judea with a decree from Artaxerxes I (Ezra 7:11-26) that authorized him to lead the province on the emperor’s behalf, evidence that he was a high official and diplomat of the Persian administration (see Joseph Blenkinsopp, Judaism, the First Phase: The Place of Ezra and Nehemiah in the Origins of Judaism, Eerdmans, 2009, pp. 48-61). In terms of political affiliation Ezra was an Achaemenid Zoroastrian and this suggests that there is more to him than meets the eye.

Some scholars talk naively of a ‘restoration’ of the pre-exilic Israelite cult (i.e., before 597 BCE) in Judea under Ezra, but it is more credibly characterized as a religious revolution led by a high-profile outsider authorized by the imperial Persian bureaucracy. Indeed, Ezra 7:7 states that he brought his own specialist personnel with him to manage the affairs of the Second Temple. This theocracy and new priesthood in Jerusalem was led by Ezra the Aramean immersed in Neo-Babylonian culture as a trained scribe, and with a Zoroastrian geopolitical ideology. This ‘Zoroastrian Jew’ and the ‘Second Moses’ who composed the Pentateuch as ‘the Irano-Babylonian Torah’ came to Judea and imposed a regime on an indigenous population immersed in Canaanite culture and archaic Mosaic traditions. Reading between the lines of biblical texts indicates that he did not receive a warm reception.

3. The Zoroastrian Theological Template of Metahistory Given a Cosmic Chronology of World Ages through Fusion with the Astronomy-Astrology of the Neo-Babylonians

Cyrus the Great was crowned king of Persia in Anshan in 559 BCE and ascended the imperial throne in 539 BCE through his bloodless conquest of Babylonia. As a committed member of the Zoroastrian faith, we can appreciate that the religious footprint of this movement accompanied the political one of Cyrus and subsequent Achaemenid emperors. The land of Babylonia under Persian administration was a diverse cultural and intellectual melting pot. Evidence suggests that the historical theology of Zoroastrian priests was fertilized by the astral science of the Neo-Babylonians, and a new paradigm for understanding global history was born. On the one hand Zoroastrian theology envisaged creation, history and apocalyptic redemption as a grand whole, while on the other Neo-Babylonian celestial science promised a cosmic reckoning able to distinguish world ages linking the beginning and end of time.

The Neo-Babylonians were masters of the scientific discipline of astronomy-astrology within a geocentric or earth-based system (not to be confused with the astrology that appears nowadays in popular magazines). During the sixth century BCE astronomers discovered that the Earth was tilted on its axis relative to the plane of the ecliptic (the sun’s apparent path around the Earth) and became aware of the phenomenon known as the precession (or wobble) of the axis. Precession is defined as:

the continuous shift of the equinoxes backward through the sidereal zodiac, as a result of the slow revolution of the Earth’s axis of rotation about the ecliptic pole, itself caused by the gravitational attraction of the Sun and Moon on the Earth’s equatorial bulge (Larousse Encyclopedia of Astrology, New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1980, pp. 224f.)

In the course of a Platonic Year (or Great Year) of 25,920 solar years the axis traces out one revolution that defines twelve astrological ages, each one of duration 2,160 years. This rhythm can be thought of as a kind of cosmic clock that provides an objective global chronology for mapping the evolution of human consciousness and related changes to civilizations, measured in terms of influences exerted by constellations of the zodiac (signs). According to this cosmic reckoning of time a new age begins when the rising sun, at the time of the spring equinox, moves from one sign to another. The equinox moves backwards through the zodiacal signs in reverse order to that of the sun on its yearly course through the sky, when viewed from the planet Earth.

A diagram illustrating the phenomenon of the precession (or wobble)

of the Earth’s axis that generates astrological or world ages.

During Achaemenid times (539-332 BCE) Zoroastrian priests had a vast vision of Ahura Mazda’s plan for humanity that wrapped creation, world history and redemption through the trials of an apocalypse into a single whole. This can be characterized as metahistory, that is, a global perspective on the rise and fall of civilizations that includes the metaphysical realities of creation and apocalypse. A strong case can be made that Zoroastrian creational theology became integrated with a theory of history through the contact of innovative Zoroastrian thinkers with Neo-Babylonian astronomers. Mary Boyce sets out a feasible historical reconstruction to account for traditional doctrines attested in much later Zoroastrian documents. She argues that at some stage in the period from the sixth to the fourth century BCE sages in a ‘Zurvanite’ branch of Zoroastrianism attempted such a synthesis (Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism, The University of Chicago Press, 1984, p. 20).

Two conjectures are required at this juncture. First, in my assessment of the facts the Iranian movement dubbed ‘Zurvanite’ by Boyce, subsequently deemed heretical by orthodox Mazdeans, is the ‘Israelite Zoroastrianism’ that flourished in Babylonia and Iran through the work of the biblical prophets Ezekiel and Second Isaiah. Second, my contention is that Ezra successfully integrated Zoroastrian salvation history with the Neo-Babylonian cosmic chronology of astrological ages in composing the Pentateuch.

4. Zoroastrian Historical Theology of Eden, World Ages and Apocalyptic Redemption Providing the Narrative Architecture of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers and Joshua

My proposal is that Ezra deployed the Zoroastrian paradigm of creation, world ages and global redemption as the template for composing the overarching narrative themes that connect the books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers and Joshua (hereafter abbreviated as Genesis-Joshua). He adopted the idiom of legend related to the journey of humanity outwards from the heavenly centre of paradise (Eden) envisaged as a fall into sin, followed by an inward spiral of the return journey, and culminating in the redemption of the chosen ones who enter a new ‘Eden’ envisaged as the Promised Land.

The nature of these three stages is:

• The journey outwards from the centre of paradise (Gen. 1:-2:24, Ezra incorporated excerpts from Enuma elish the Babylonian creation epic) begins with the expulsion from the garden due to the disobedience and sin of Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:1-24). There are three episodes: 1. The primeval history recounting the growing sinfulness and corruption of humanity (Gen. 4:1-6:13). 2. The flood myth (Gen. 6-8; Ezra used Atrahasis the Babylonian version). 3. the human race swarming over the continents with the focus then narrowing to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph and their families (Gen. 12-50).

• The crisis that brings the journey to a halt occurs when the Hebrews had settled in the land of Egypt, and become enslaved by the tyrannical Pharaoh (Ex. 1:8-22). Egypt has been corrupted by lust for power and the ‘fleshpots’ (Ex. 16:3) symbolize rampant materialism in a military empire with vassal states. In this abusive environment the Hebrews are cut off from the spiritual sources of existence. The hope of salvation arises with the birth and ascendancy of the hero, the corporate figure of ‘Moses,’ who represents the people of Israel.

• The third phase is the return journey that leads back to the mythic centre of Eden, reimagined as the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey (Num. 13:27; 14:8; 16:13-14, etc,). Moses inspires the Israelites and leads them out of slavery through the deliverance at the sea (Ex. 13-15). The journey from Mount Sinai to the borders of Palestine is told in the book of Numbers, a symbolic trek taking forty years with forty stations along the way. The denouement occurs under a second hero named ‘Joshua,’ the new face of corporate Israel, who leads the conquest and settlement of the Promised Land. This conquest is a historicized form of the apocalypse that happens at the end times, recorded in Ezekiel’s vision of the general resurrection in his vision of the valley of bones (Ezk. 37:1-14) and that of the heavenly temple (Ezk. 40-48). The cycle is completed with this triumphant return to the spiritual centre of Eden.

The Zoroastrian template has determined the documentary structure of four biblical books:

• Genesis is the book of creation that begins with the eternal centre of Eden (Gen. 1-2) and maps the outward journey into the fallen creation and sin set in motion by the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise (Gen. 3);

• Exodus recounts the crisis in Egypt and the beginning of the return with the miraculous deliverance at the sea (Ex. 13-15);

• Numbers tells the story of the trials and tribulations of the return journey through the Sinai wilderness, a journey of four decades;

• the final phase is the conquest (the apocalypse) and settlement of the Promised Land recorded in the book of Joshua.

5. Allegorical Personalities from Abram to Moses and Joshua that Map the Evolution of Human Consciousness across World Astrological Ages

While Ezra used the Zoroastrian ideology of world history, this does not explain the ethnic and cultural origins of the subject matter in his legends. Ezra was an Aramean, that is, a Semite since Aram (the eponymous ancestor of this ethnic group) is listed as a son of Shem (Gen. 10:22).

One of the fundamental aspects of Semitic identity is the sense that the whole tribe is somehow represented by the great sheikh who appears at the head of the genealogy. Sigmund Mowinckel identifies the concept of corporate personality (one person representing the group) as a core value that informs the cultural identity of Semites (The Psalms in Israel’s Worship 1, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1962, pp. 42f.). My assumption is that Ezra viewed the world through the lens of corporate personality, that is, large ethnic, cultural and political themes can be encapsulated and articulated through the idea that a single human being embodies and represents the group. His characters are fictional constructs distilled from wisdom and knowledge of history, and their lives and deeds reveal archetypal truths beyond the reach of ordinary history fixated on, and limited by, the facts of what happened. These legends told through corporate personalities have the genre of allegory.

Ezra composed the birth legend of Esau and Jacob in such a way that his allegorical meaning shines through the explicit language:

And Yahweh said to Rebekah, ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples, born of you will be divided. One will be stronger than the other, the elder will serve the younger.’

When her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb. The first came forth red, all his body like a hairy mantle; so they called his name Esau. Afterward his brother came forth, and his hand had taken hold of Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob (Gen. 25:23-26).

The literal sense is allegorical. The text does not say that Esau and Jacob symbolize ‘two nations’ and ‘two peoples.’ These twins are the opposed nations and peoples, so the ‘symbols’ are embodied in the text itself. For this reason I designate this kind of allegory as ‘embodied’ rather than ‘symbolic.’ Esau is a corporate figure who represents all of the individuals in one people, while Jacob signifies those belonging to a different one. A symbolic allegory has two fields of meaning (one overt and the other hidden) with metaphors generated by mappings from one to the other, and hence it is defined as an extended metaphor. A well-known example is the parable of the sower told by Jesus with his symbolic interpretation (Matthew 13:1-23).

As we have seen, Ezra was immersed in Neo-Babylonian culture and Zoroastrian theology, and he combined the two by deploying the Semitic idea of corporate identity. The astrological ages relevant for understanding Genesis-Joshua are listed below, together with the corporate figures at the centre of the sequential allegories:

Since these allegories convey archetypal truths at a global level I designate them as ‘world-historic legends.’ The literal meaning has to do with ‘allegorical Moses’ and ‘allegorical Joshua,’ and this must be kept in mind in our quest to uncover the secret history of Israel.

In the first series of posts in this branch of the website I am focusing on the secret history of biblical Israel. The allegorical level of meaning will be discussed in some detail in other discussions further down the track, and in the meantime can be set aside.

6. A Kind of ‘Literary Archaeology’: Source Excavation Removing the Layer of Ezra’s Irano-Babylonian Allegories and Unearthing Moses’ Factual Egyptian History

Our investigation has identified two levels of meaning in Genesis-Joshua: first, there is the overt literal sense that needs to be understood as legends/allegories related to world history; second, there is a hidden sense related to factual political history that can only be unearthed through critical analysis of texts. While I have drawn attention to this second level of factual meaning it was not investigated, but is the central focus of the posts that follow.

Two essential points must be kept in mind. First, the assumption is that Moses recorded the factual history of Egypt and details of his own life in the Torah (archaic Genesis-Exodus). Second, our investigation has shown that Ezra encrypted this subject matter by composing fictional allegories that are heavily dependent on Zoroastrian theology and Babylonian literature. By no stretch of the imagination, then, can we expect to find straight history in the complex legends running through these documents. Rather, we need a historical method designed to interrogate texts and to differentiate between core facts and fictional embellishments.

Ezra was a traditionalist who cherished the Torah bequeathed to earliest Judaism through Moses and was intent on transmitting (and thereby preserving) its subject matter, albeit in encrypted form. On this view many passages in these documents have the literary genre of ‘fictionalized political history.’ In composing legends focused on the ‘allegorical Moses,’ Ezra used autobiographical details and hard political facts related to the ‘flesh-and-blood Moses’ living at the end of the reign of Ramesses II (1304-1237 BCE). These legends about Moses have been mistaken for factual reports for almost 2000 years, since rabbinic Judaism was founded at the Council of Jamnia (90 CE). Sigmund Freud showed the way forward by having the insight and courage to challenge entrenched Jewish beliefs in his Moses and Monotheism (1939, discussed in the next post ).

From a cultural perspective the layer of Genesis-Exodus composed by Moses is Egypto-Semitic (‘Hebrew’ or ‘Mosaic’) with an Irano-Babylonian layer placed over it by Ezra. The composition of these documents and their literary history are analogous to an archaeological site whose history of occupation resulted in the deposit of two strata, an Egyptian cultural deposit covered by a later Irano-Babylonian one. The challenging task facing us, then, is twofold: first, to identify fictions in a legend about Moses and, second, to eliminate them from texts so that factual information is revealed. Excavation of texts in this way is the literary equivalent of practising archaeology.

If we want to access the Mosaic stratum then it is necessary to excavate the text using literary criticism, especially source analysis, related to the literary canons of Egypt, Iran and Babylonia:

• Moses was an Egyptianized Semite so his writing can be identified by comparing biblical texts with myths, legends and political records from Egypt.

• In contrast Ezra was a Babylonian Jew and official of the Persian empire. As discussed, his creational theology and theory of history were powerfully shaped by Zoroastrianism. Consequently Ezra’s work comes into view by identifying his written sources that can be consulted in religious texts, legends and political records from Babylonian and Iran.

In our quest to uncover secret history, then, Egyptology, Assyriology (the study of ancient Mesopotamian culture and literature) and Iranology (the study of the culture and history of Iran) are indispensable tools for analysis and interpretation. In each case, when a source has been identified we can compare it with the canonical text and then determine how the author has modified it for inclusion. As a result we can grasp the ideology, compositional strategies and aims of Moses and Ezra.

In conclusion, the counter-intuitive point is that by realizing that the main characters throughout Genesis-Joshua are allegorical, we are free to begin the search for factual history concealed in the texts. By being willing to give up on finding authentic political history in the literal interpretation of the Bible (an extremely difficult step for conservatives who love the scriptures), we have the opportunity of unearthing reliable facts through doing some literary archaeology and detective work.

In particular, subsequent essays focus on our quest to get behind ‘allegorical Moses’ to the real individual living in the land of the Nile, the prototype for Ezra’s ingenious legends about the great prophet and saviour of Israel. We can now proceed together on the assumption that ‘encryption’ is a central factor that needs to be kept in mind in our investigations.

7. The Next Essay on the Real Akhenaten and Moses as His Secret Successor

I have raised more questions than I have answered in this post, but perhaps that is a good beginning. Asking questions opens our hearts and minds to receive answers. The biblical can of worms has been opened, and we can investigate some fascinating topics in future discussions.

The exciting theme of the next post will take us through the portal of time into the mysterious world of ancient Egypt, on a quest to discover the real Akhenaten – known as the heretic pharaoh – and the real Moses whose identity has been carefully masked by Ezra’s composition of complex biblical legends.

The title of the piece is ‘Akhenaten the Pharaoh-Prophet and Moses as His Spiritual and Political Successor.’ I hope you can join me on this fascinating journey into the frontiers of Egyptology and its interfaces with the secret history of Israel encrypted in the Bible.

Abbreviations

Before the Common Era BCE, equivalent to BC ‘Before Christ’

Common Era CE, equivalent to AD ‘Anno Domini’

#Moses #StephenCugley