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CHAPTER SEVEN

THE LEVITES AND THE REVOLTS

The "Hebrews" of Exodus were of various degrees of Hebrew-ness. Many were
quite Egyptian. Many others were assimilated to Egyptian culture. The most
important larger group were traditionally loyal Elohists. Few could have
been Yahwist, inasmuch as Moses was only then expounding the new cult.

In what would have been Goshen, at Tell ed-Dab'a, a town of the Middle
Bronze Age has recently been excavated. It reveals a heavy non-Egyptian,
Palestinian aspect. Skeletal remains, etymology, and artifacts disclose a
heterogeneous population of Semitic and other backgrounds [1]. This would
support our theory that the proto-Israelites were a geographically
separate and autonomous people, to some degree maintaining their old
ethnic identity, living among Egyptians and other peoples from East and
West, intermarrying, holding a full range of occupations, but now caught
up in a xenophobic, anti-semitic period and forced to supply corvées and
employ birth-control. It is not surprising to learn that the Book of
Exodus, as befits a historical work of those times, has much in it of the
popular Egyptian language [2].

The some three million souls that the Bible asserts left Egypt are far too
many. It is not that aggregated tribes of 500,000 or even more have never
moved long distances; they have. The Cimbri and Teutons migrated in this
number over a period of years at the end of the second century B.C. from
the North Sea region to southern France and Italy; after seriously
threatening Roman power, they were annihilated by the Roman legions of
Marius.

NUMBERS LEAVING EGYPT

The number of persons in Exodus has been estimated variously from 2000 to
6,000,000 [3]. The great range of figures adds confusion to the theory of
Exodus. We should at least estimate, if we cannot know, how many persons
left Egypt and how many were alive to muster for the handing down of the
Ten Commandments at the Holy Mountain a couple of months later. Avoiding
such estimates, although usual, leaves many questions open and lends an
air of unreality to the grand project of Moses and the Israelites.
Therefore, reasoning from what little is known and what would have been
possible, I shall try to establish how many people were involved at the
several stages of Exodus.

The conditions of Exodus, as we have described them, were peculiar. The
Exodus of three millions in one group in a few days would imply a line of
marchers stretching from Goshen to Horeb; ten abreast with beasts of
burden or one wagon, three meters apart, say, would produce a column 900
kilometers long. The flocks and herds would flank the marchers. If so many
did leave Goshen, perhaps as a horde fleeing from the disasters, believing
that the Israelites possessed secret knowledge of an undestroyed "Promised
Land" (as likely a reconciliation of Bible and reality as one might
conjecture), the refugees would have dropped to a figure nearer the one
out of fifty that a rabbinical source says completed the march.

Even in this case, I would distinguish between the two types of persons
abandoning their region, and allow for only 60,000 or so organized
marchers at the end of the first two days. I would assume that of the
three millions of refugees, some 300,000 may have been affiliated to the
Exodus movement, but turned back on the vague promise, half-welcomed, of
making up a second wave of Exodus at a later time. This has happened often
in tribal migrations and in the wagon-train movements of the American
western settlements. Another 240,000 Hebrews more or less would have
refused to go from the very first [4], and it would have been with these
that the departing Hebrews had their rumored conflicts.

The 60,000 who arrived at Pi-ha-khiroth near the frontier would include
more warriors than is typical of a tribal migration. Many would have left
their families. Men of working age would be the most anxious to leave. But
when the pursuing Egyptian army was espied, many, especially of the
Egyptians and physically weaker elements, would have deserted and fled to
all quarters during the long bright night. A drop of some 10,000 persons
would be expected at this critical point.

Next came the crossing. Here the legends, as well as logic, would dictate
another serious loss, perhaps another 10,000.[5] The panic would be
extreme, the time very short, the waters appearing from all quarters of
the compass in cross-tides, the muck deep in places, exhaustion general.

The many days of march between the "Sea of Reeds" and Mount Sinai (or
Horeb) would have cost another 10,000 lives from weariness, thirst,
starvation, and illness. And the assaults of the Amalekites would have
cost yet another 10,000 lives, first from the slaughter of Hebrew rear
elements and then, much less, of warriors in battle.

The survivors of Exodus, then, would have numbered 20,000 of which
probably a full 10,000 were warriors. This figure of 10,000 is one out of
sixty of the figure of 600,000 males of battle age carried, as "planned
hope" and "lost vision," in Exodus and the Book of Numbers. The Bible
mentions that the Israelites did not march as a single body but in phased
stages; too large a number were involved to proceed in a single, or even
in two, marching units.

These would then be reinforced by the followers of Jethro, a tribe, or
part of one, of the Midianites, who had been struck by their own
disasters, and who accepted Yahweh and little else in the way of
conditions for becoming Children of Israel. Perhaps 5000 were thus joined
to the 20,000 from Egypt.

The 25,000 would still be a considerable and formidable people. Most were
warriors, too. It would explain the prompt organizational step that Moses
and the Levites took. The twelve tribes of Israel were filled out around
cadres of the same name, in almost every case greatly outnumbered by the
new elements - Egyptian, Asiatic and non-tribal Hebrews. The tribes were
then assigned quotas of fighting men, organized by the decimal system,
which would be called upon by Moses and Joshua when the hour for battle
struck.

IMPEDIMENTA

I have already explained, in Chapter One, that the Exodus was not a
pell-mell flight of a horde of slaves, but that it was well-organized,
with a highly competent and determined Hebrew leadership under Moses,
Aaron, Joshua, Hur, and others [6]. As soon as he had finished his last
session with the Pharaoh and Egyptian councillors, Moses hurried to
Goshen, a few hours away. He may have cut across to a planned rendezvous
with the advance elements already moving out. So far as he could tell, he
had done his job well; the Egyptian forces were under orders not to
interfere with the movement.

The people of Exodus were carrying all that they could. The headquarters
materiel transported by Moses and the Levites consisted of more than one
ordinarily imagines. On the wagon and in the coffin or ark-box carrying
Joseph's remains would be the most secret and precious items. It would not
hold much. They would also have collected and carried a complete
collection of tools, including construction, metal working, medical and
sculpturing instruments; metal rods; gold, silver, bronze; copper and
lead, and preferably alloys of lead and copper already smelted; perhaps
meteoritic iron or even iron from the Caucasus or Anatolia; levers and
ratchets; nails; amber or a substitute; glass rods; magnets; surveying
instruments; sun dials; water clocks; straps and ropes of various kinds;
various small wheels; buckles and pills; artificial and volcanic glass;
drugs; poisons; phosphorus (white and red); flint; a large quantity of
papyrus; clay tablets; styluses; bales of cloth, especially canvas and
wool, and skins of animals; cut hard and soft wood, especially cedar and
shittum; written tablets and papyri, containing history, formulas, and
instructions; military equipment including tools for its repair - swords,
lances, slings, and missiles; staves; possibly some apparatus and models
that Levites were working on or knew about; plus a variety of then known
and now-forgotten implements and provisions, various idiosyncratic fancies
and expressions of ideas of varying utilitarian possibilities, and, of
course, rations for weeks of time, including tons of unleavened bread.

The collecting process had gone on for months. The Bible mentions almost
none of this effort. In a number of passages, both in the Bible and the
legends, we are offered a strange picture - of the Hebrews first borrowing
valuables from their Egyptian neighbors for the trip and then being given
them, with a strong implication of blackmailing and looting the frightened
people - both Egyptian and Hebrew - who were staying behind, and stripping
the ruined houses and settlements.

The implication, too, is that these activities were ordered by the leaders
for the purpose of supplying the expedition. It would be in accord with
the Bible's mode of expression, also, to lay the activity upon the
departing people, whereas, in fact, the Levites and their helpers probably
engaged in the work systematically, going to the known sources of the
required or desired materials. Livestock was probably rounded up from
wherever it was corralled or had strayed, the clip of the ears
notwithstanding.

Calculating solely the transportation of the materiel of the headquarters
and of the special assault and guard troops, perhaps a hundred carts, a
hundred mules, donkeys and horses, and many litters would be needed. After
the Levites, the Judah tribe seems to have been organized and of high
morale. Moses and the Levites would march in the vanguard preceded by
reconnaissance patrols of Levites and Judahs. The throng of followers was
too great to organize properly and probably a detachment of Judahs was
used as a rear guard, with a small Levite staff, under instructions to
delay and hamper any pursuit or harassment but not to fight uselessly for
the unorganized crowd of followers.

In the passage of the Red Sea, by which is meant the tongue of waters and
lakes extending north of the Red Sea, the headquarters detachment and the
special troops, with Moses, would move through first, hoping that some or
most of the people would pass before the waters returned.

The sight of the heavily loaded caravan marching out would have been
impressive. Reports and rumors of it and its contents would have been
immediately relayed to the Egyptian armed forces headquarters and the
Pharaoh at Memphis from road guards and small military posts that were not
overrun before they could flee. Most unnerving of all might have been the
sudden intelligence that a number of trusted officials and technicians had
decamped with the Hebrews. The astronomers would have been quite
discredited by events; the military would call the next move; logically,
it was to pursue and recapture the materiel and slay or take prisoner
Moses and the elite element. The pursuit was launched.

When the pursuing force and head of the Empire were lost, the regime of
the Middle Kingdom collapsed and the Hyksos entered immediately. They
would become aware promptly of the mass exodus when they found the land of
Goshen stripped of valuables, livestock and goods. Soon afterwards, the
Jews found a detachment of desert warriors at their rear, slaughtering the
lagging elements. They showed knowledge of the Jew's history in Egypt.
Moses detailed his best troops to engage them and accompanied them. I
think that these Amalelite-Hyksos were not encountered by chance; they
were on the same mission as the Egyptian forces, to retake the spoils of
Egypt.

Moses took part in the first battle, standing on a prominence with Aaron
and Hur, holding his rod of Yahweh aloft to encourage the Israelite
fighters; before the day was over, he needed their help to keep his arm
up. His staff would be the famous staff that performed before the Pharaoh.
The three men may have been able to induce an electric charge from the
ground and bring about a discharge into the clouds and dust that hovered
very low above them. An effect of this kind would tend to intimidate the
enemy and revive the Israelite morale. It would be especially effective
because the troops were battling in near-darkness under the cosmic clouds.
Every time Moses lowered his arms, the enemy gained an advantage, it is
said [7].

TECHNICIANS AND SECURITY POLICE

More practically, now, we can consider the nature of the Levi's, the
Levites, who were critical in the management of Exodus and the succeeding
wanderings and conquests. Not a tribe, not priests, the Levites may have
included representatives of all the tribes, says the article in the
Encyclopedia Britannica [8]. I said in the first chapter, too, that the
Levites may have been assimilated Hebraic Jews, many or most of mixed
ancestry.

What is a tribe, and what is a nation? The Hebrews of Egypt became in
basic ways the Jewish Nation in Exodus. A tribe is sovereign; it may be
part of a confederation of tribes, but it can go its own way when it feels
it must. Moses put an end immediately to any pure confederation.

It would have been exceedingly difficult to mobilize and lead the Hebrews
from Egypt, and organize them into the masters of a promised land, without
strong central leadership. This implied a group to wield the central power
and carry out the central plan. Such were the Levites who had in many
cases developed their skills under the Egyptian imperial administration.
Only among the Levites were Egyptian names found in later times[9]. The
Exodus marked the end of the Dynasty. In Egypt, the other Hebrews were
terrorized and driven to work without pay, "all except the tribe of Levi
who were not employed in the work with their brethren...Since they had not
been with their brethren at the beginning" they were not disturbed [10].

The Levites appear in modern terms as a kind of technical police and fire
brigade. They seem to be in families, yet not a blood clan. They served as
individuals. They are competent. They are not as beloved or revered by the
people, I think, as were the priests. At first, they are not permitted
priestly functions. They have orders to "shoot to kill" should anybody
approach the holy premises. In fact, they turn out to be something like
the special forces that the Department of Defense organizes from time to
time with high technical qualifications because of the special weaponry
involved. They were indeed handling deadly equipment. They were in charge
of the mobile worship-weapon system: the tabernacle, tent, altar, and ark.
Various wagons were assigned to them for transporting this national
equipment [11].

"Historians are still unable to explain satisfactorily such problems as
the relationship that existed between the Levites and the hereditary
priesthood."[12] Moses developed the Levites as a special arm of Israel.
Satisfied that his older "half-brother" Aaron should have the priesthood
and guarantee its security, he appointed the Levites, the best educated
secular element of the Hebrews, many of whom had served the Egyptians
along with Moses himself, to manage the Tabernacle with its equipment and
the most precious goods of the people. No wonder there was puzzlement
about the Levites centuries later as the environment became more orderly,
uniform, and electrically balanced. Why should the Levites have shaved
from head to foot, for example, if electric shock were not a danger? From
elite troops, the Levites became property and stage managers, with a right
to read the Torah following upon the preeminent right of the Kohens or
priesthood. However, as one reads in Deuteronomy [13], during some lengthy
period, after Moses, the Levites performed the duties of the priests
themselves.

Moses decided, in the name of Yahweh, of course, that death would be
visited upon a priest who approached the Ark with unclean hands - death by
accidental or deliberate electrocution in some instances. Down to today,
significantly, the Law does not get read in the Synagogue before a Levite
washes the hands of the Kohen who is to begin the reading. A
psychiatrist's reasons for this ritual purification (and individual
problems of the genre) in an uncontrolled liberal society are usually
adequate, but shaving one's body completely, wearing special clothes,
removing one's shoes before the altar, and washing one's hands begin to
make up a complex that primordially might have to do with precautions
against unwanted electrical connections. And the technical expert is he
who insures precautions.

Thus the Levites were to serve, but also to control the priests and their
equipment. Exceptions from their control were Aaron, of course, and
Aaron's son, Eleazer, subsequently High Priest. The reason is given in one
place "that there may be no plague among the people of Israel in case the
people of Israel should come near the sanctuary."[14] Here the intent to
avoid a dew of dangerous chemicals and radiation seems clear. The plagues
would be widespread outbursts of skin lesions and sores (mistakenly called
leprosy), but would include plagues of vomiting, diarrhea and eye
diseases, all of which occur with radiation poisoning. These are related
in turn to the plagues of Egypt preceding the Exodus, when the red dust
poisoned the water and covered the land. The natural excitation, emergence
and proliferation of frogs, insects and vermin that would also be lifted
and dropped in the cyclonic winds would be connected by observers with the
chemically caused plagues.

Yahweh exempted the Levites from the Mobilization and Census of the people
because they were his retinue, says a legend [15]. Only Levites from 30-50
years of age were called to active duty. They were divided in eight
sections.

Levites were to consecrate themselves to Yahweh in lieu of the
consecration of the first-born. The implication is strong here that the
Jews were supposed to sacrifice their first-born, of all children and
animals, to Yahweh. The Levites might always impress upon the people that
they and they alone were responsible for and to be credited for removing a
great load of sacrifice from everyone else. Too, one may consider whether
there is a threat contained in this relationship, in the fear that the
Levites may renounce this surrogation and ask Yahweh for a resumption of
the obligation upon all.

Yahweh spoke to Moses and said:

I myself have chosen the Levites from among the sons of
Israel, in place of the first-born, those who open the
mother's womb among the sons of Israel; these Levites
therefore belong to me. For every first-born belongs to me.
On the day when I struck all the first-born in the land of
Egypt, I consecrated for my own all the first-born of Israel,
of both man and beast. They are mine; I am Yahweh [16].

Yahweh said to Moses:

Take a census of all the first-born among the sons of Israel,
all the males from the age of one month and over; take a
census of them by name. Then you will present the Levites
to me, Yahweh, in place of the first-born of Israel; in the
same way you will give me their cattle in place of the
first-born cattle of the sons of Israel.

As Yahweh ordered, Moses took a census of all the first-born of the sons
of Israel. The total count, by name, of the first-born from the age of one
month and over came to twenty-two thousand two hundred and seventy three.

Then Yahweh spoke to Moses and said,

Take the Levites in place of all the first-born of Israel's soils,
and the cattle of the Levites in place of their cattle; the
Levites shall be my own, Yahweh's own. For the ransom of
the two hundred and seventy three of the sons of Israel in
excess of the number of Levites, you are to take five shekels
for each, reckoning by the sanctuary shekel, twenty gerahs
to the shekel; you must then give this money to Aaron and
his sons as the ransom price for this extra number.

Moses received this money as the ransom for this extra
number unransomed by the Levites. He received the money
for the first-born of the sons of Israel, one thousand three
hundred and sixty-five shekels, sanctuary shekels. Moses
handed over this ransom money to Aaron and his sons, at
the bidding of Yahweh, as Yahweh had ordered Moses [17].

From first to last Moses depended upon the Levites for maintaining his
absolute power. According to legend, the Levites were the most faithful to
Yahweh in Egypt where so many of the population lost their religious
ardor. (I think that they may have had the most skilled and curious
religious cultists.) They passed Yahweh's test at Massah ("proof") and at
the waters of Meribah ("contention") where they rallied around Moses when
rioting began over the shortage of water and before Moses had had time to
discover it beneath the rocks [18].

Nevertheless, leadership in domestic security and war went to Joshua, son
of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, not a Levite. He was Moses' personal
bodyguard from the beginning of Exodus.

His devotion, diligence, and aggressiveness were all that Moses could ask
for, and sometimes more. He had neither sons nor daughters; when spies
were sent to survey Canaan and report back whether Israel should then and
there descend upon the Promised Land, Joshua was criticized by the other
spies for having little to lose by going into battle [19].

Legend gives several surprising comments on Joshua, more consistent with
this book's findings than with ordinary opinion. Joshua grew up without
knowing his antecedents; he was raised by strangers, and his father's
name, "Nun," means "fish," because, the legend says, he was cast into the
waters, and swallowed by a whale, then spit up. "The government appointed
him to the office of hangman. As luck would have it, he had to execute his
own father."[20] He was called a fool because of his general ignorance and
the spies called him a "head-cutter."[21]

BLAME THE PEOPLE

At first, Moses, Yahweh and Aaron were concerned that they would not be
able to assemble and march out the mass of people. The Egyptian
taskmasters were instructed to demand more work of the Hebrews for their
unruliness; there was a general uneasiness, a feeling that the Exodus
might not come off, and that all Hebrews would suffer severe
discriminatory penalties. Moses and his following prevailed; the plagues
were most impressive.

When Moses and the Levites could not control the situation, blame for it
is projected upon the people. Because of their unseemly complaints to
Yahweh, "His anger was kindled, and the fire of the Lord burned among
them, and consumed some outlying parts of the camp." The people cried to
Moses, who prayed to Yahweh, "and the fire abated."[22] Moses no doubt
consulted the Ark and recognized that a temporary excess of electricity
was leaving the Earth via tent poles and metals and exposed rock
floorings. The electrical fire would travel to and enhance cooking-fires
in or by the tents.

Having practiced several tricks with Yahweh at the Burning Bush - using an
electric jumping rod and phosphorus - Moses employed them on a group of
Hebrew leaders at a conference arranged by Aaron. They were impressed
enough to hear his proposition, and liked it. But he had other
difficulties from the beginning with organizing the people for Exodus. A
change seemed gradually to come over him.

When the people cried in terror at the sight of the pursuing Egyptians and
reproached those who had brought them out of Egypt, Moses spoke to calm
them and to "see the salvation of the Lord which he will work for you
today."[23]

The problem of bitter water three days into the wilderness from the Sea of
Passage caused murmurings against Moses that he stopped by casting a
certain tree made known to him by Yahweh into the waters, which made them
potable [24].

When the people groaned with hunger and talked of returning to Egypt,
Moses and Aaron addressed them, saying that all was the work of Yahweh:

"For what are we, that you murmur against us?...Your
murmurings are not against us but against the Lord."[25]

Quail fell in great numbers, as did manna, that could be baked into bread.
Moses became angry when people tried to hold the manna overnight and, as
he had warned them, it turned foul and wormy.

Then thirst assailed the Israelites. To their reproaches and threats to
stone him, Moses retorted "Why do you find fault with me?" and, upon the
advice of Yahweh, found water beneath rock. The Levites, we learn, earned
high praise for helping Moses to suppress the protesters.

When a protest was raised, the complaint was turned against the people. To
strengthen their own position, Moses and Aaron displaced responsibility
upon Yahweh, let the people know how sinful they were to attack the Lord,
and then punished them whenever they could.

The Books of Moses are generally unfair to the Jewish people, giving
little credence to their opinions, requiring of them self-abasement,
piling up rites endlessly, dwelling upon their "unfaithfulness" and
exalting the wrath of God. As I labored to fix my mind and feelings within
the mental, social, and physical state of the Exodus and Wanderings, I was
often diverted by free associations to find myself once again amidst the
English dissenters of the 17th century, the American colonial puritans of
the same age, and the westward movements of the New Englanders. All of
these, which I had studied when young, were attempts by groups to relive
the Pentateuch; in some ways they are better analogies than the
anthropological and historical comparisons of the Mosaic Jews with other
semitic and nomadic groups, which are so common, for we have more
information on precisely those matters which are left vague in the Bible -
namely the reasons for the resistance to mosaic theocracy, the limits of
the theocrats as nation-builders, and the souls and aspirations of the
common men and women who were caught up in the new Israels.

Despite the considerable successes of the Jews in surviving as a people
within the Mosaic framework and despite their occasional successes, under
David and Solomon, for example, in setting up a larger national state,
they could not establish an enduring nation over the centuries. It used to
be believed that the position of Israel between great nations such as
Egypt and Assyria made their military position difficult. But this is post
facto reasoning; military history reveals a Roman Republic that wrested
central Italy from numerous apparently stronger neighbors; a revolutionary
France surrounded by enemies, which defeated them all; a Germany
surrounded by enemies that required a concerted alliance including
overseas America to contain it; and a contemporary Israel that has had to
be restrained by distant great powers from conquering an empire in the
Near East.

I am permitted, therefore, to think that the dominating influence of
mosaism in Jewish history was a principal source of Israelite misfortunes
over many centuries. By way of analogy, it was only the breaking away from
mosaic theocracy - the taking in of other peoples, the revolt of
democratic sects such as the Baptists of Roger Williams in Rhode Island,
the coming of new democratic sects such as the Quakers, the rise of free
science and a commercial life free of religious and state regulation -
that permitted the explosive expansion of American culture in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries within a unified and great domain.

Because the people of Israel were downgraded and thwarted and kept as
Children of God and Moses, the Jewish nation labored between an absolute
monarchic vision and the squabbling tribes. The change in Moses, from a
supplicating organizer of a loose aggregate of new believers to a
religiously inspired autocrat, occurred in the first few weeks of Exodus
and might have been predicted from his character. He was afraid at first
that the people would not follow him, but once in control of the people he
set about becoming their absolute master.

It was no doubt Moses who led the Israelites to believe that they had been
abominably enslaved in Egypt. This was required to counter-balance the
call of Egypt to which many of the Israelites responded wistfully and by
rebellion over many years. It was also a useful myth to inspire gratitude
for Moses and Yahweh. The slogan is dinned into their ears: Yahweh (and
Moses) led you out of slavery in Egypt. Obey them gratefully.

As soon as possible, Moses proclaimed a "Royal Covenant"[26] to replace
the implied covenant with Pharaoh. A new authority, Yahweh, had to replace
the old. (Thus were the mosaic Puritan covenanters of New England, who
were fracturing their bond with the royal authority of England.)

About a dozen insurrectionary crises are registered in the Bible and
legends[27]. In organizing the Exodus within Goshen, Hebrews clashed
amongst themselves and with gentiles. A legend goes so far as to say that
all Hebrews who refused to leave Egypt were massacred under cover of the
plague of darkness. The leaders wanted no one to know of the dissent in
the Hebrew ranks. The Bible gives only a hint of this; Moses and his
cohort are opposed by many doubters and realists.

Next, Pi-ha-Khiroth; fights break out as so many desert the Exodus. The
Levites acquitted themselves well here, but there was no way of avoiding a
great many desertions. The sea was crossed and a great feast of singing
and dancing by all, led by Miriam and including angels, took place. But
after the ball was over, Israel petitioned Moses for a return to Egypt.
The legend recites the story in a reasonable way:

Hardly had they seen that the Egyptians met death in the
waters of the sea, when they spoke to Moses, and said:
"God has led us from Egypt only to grant us five tokens: To
give us the wealth of Egypt, to let us walk in clouds of
glory, to cleave the sea for us, to take vengeance on the
Egyptians, and to let us sing him a song of praise. Now all
this has taken place, let us return to Egypt." Moses
answered: "The Eternal said, `The Egyptians whom ye have
seen today, ye shall see them again no more forever.'" But
the people were not yet content, and said, `Now the
Egyptians are all dead, and therefore we can return to
Egypt.' Then Moses said, `You must now redeem your
pledge, for God said, `When thou hast brought forth the
people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this
mountain.'" Still the people remained headstrong, and
without giving heed to Moses, they set out on the road to
Egypt, under the guidance of an idol that they had brought
with them out of Egypt, and had even retained during their
passage through the sea. Only through sheer force was
Moses able to restrain them from their sinful transgression
[28].

Might this indeed have been Moses' greatest error, that he did not turn
his expedition around, and, leaving a force to repel the oncoming
Hyksos-Amalekites, go back to conquer Egypt in the name of Yahweh?

Then there are protests and demonstrations when the first crisis of thirst
occurs, only several days into the desert. The word "murmuring" in the
Bible must be distrusted; it means protest, demonstrations, a crisis
requiring defense and resolution by Moses and the armed forces.

Next comes the food crisis. It lets one imagine that most sheep and cattle
were lost in the first week of Exodus. Now came the quail - a gift and a
punishment from Yahweh. Great flights of the birds fell - probably not
quail alone. But the high doses of pollutants to which they had been
subjected and which helped to bring them to earth poisoned many of the
people. The Anger of God rose and "he slew the strongest of them, and laid
low the wicked men of Israel."[29] Quail can carry a viral infection, it
is argued, but a legend says that they came in a great wind, and the
results were dramatically sudden.

The manna was certainly a godsend; it was not only nourishing but probably
contained a specific antidote to radiation poisoning as does honey [30].
Next came the second crisis of thirst. Here, on the rock at Mount Horeb,
Moses produced water with his rod.

In the third month of the Exodus, Israel was encamped below Mount Sinai.
Moses ascended the mountain and, upon his long-delayed return, was greeted
by the spectacle of the Golden Calf. This revolt will be described
shortly. Then came the mysterious fire of Taberah, so unconnected with a
specific misconduct of the people that the most general explanation is
required; the Wrath of Yahweh was kindled and burned down portions of the
camp. It was an electrical fire. Dissent and complaint were blamed. A
legend speaks persuasively on the subject of the fire. The fire wrought
havoc upon the idolatrous tribe of Dan and upon the Egyptian and foreign
mixed multitude [31]. Yet we learn that as a result of this dissent and
fire, Moses decided upon the election of the new elders by means of a
lottery.

Then Aaron and Miriam personally remonstrated and demanded a showdown with
Moses. Yahweh called Aaron and Miriam to the tent. Miriam emerged a
"leper." Moses was appeased and kept both at their appointed functions.
The people could see that not even the close-in family could affect the
bond of Yahweh with Moses.

A legend says that Miriam and Aaron "talk against Moses" because his wife
is a foreigner, a Kushite, hardly true, since Zipporah was from Jethro,
the Midianite, not out of Ethiopia. Perhaps it is his second wife, we
suggested earlier, also a foreigner. Perhaps Miriam wants Moses to begin a
hereditary line of seers of Hebrew tribal extraction. Moses refuses and
has Yahweh punish them. A foreign wife is preferable to a Jewish wife; she
is without familial and tribal support, without hereditary linkage to
Jacob. Moses is not interested in a succession; perhaps he does not
foresee the survival of Israel, as we imply later on. He is not "a family
man" as we have already indicated.

Next came the Report of the Spies [32]. All who disputed Moses' intimation
that the time might have come for an incursion into the Promised Land were
executed. Many others died in a plague, for once again harkening to the
Call of Egypt. "Let us choose a captain and go back to Egypt, they said."
Further all must now wander a full forty years and never would those who
had departed from Egypt live to see the Promised Land except Caleb and
Joshua who had refused to agree to the majority report.

According to legend, when the people thought that Moses was going to go
against the Report of the Spies, "in their bitterness against their
leaders they wanted to lay hands upon Moses and Aaron, whereupon God sent
His cloud of glory as a protection to them under which they sought
refuge." The crowd even cast stones into the cloud in trying to smite them
[33].

Moses here does something only a true Machiavellian ruler would do; he
punishes the spies for their pessimistic report and punishes the people
for believing it. But he believes it himself, and he tells the people that
now they must continue wandering because of their lack of faith in him and
Yahweh. He also talks Yahweh out of exterminating the Jews for their
general pessimism and nostalgia for Egypt.

Later on occurs the serious revolt led by Korah. For this episode, we
reserve ample space a little later on. After Aaron's death, bitter civil
warfare broke out again, between those who wanted to return to Egypt and
those, especially the Levites, who insisted upon continuing toward
Palestine [34]. The legend says that they actually retreated eight
stations to Moserah. The Tribe of Benja- min lost most of its warriors and
six other tribes lost heavily. Several divisions of Levites were mauled
and did not recover until the time of David, some centuries later. Peace
was made in a great mourning ceremony for Aaron.

Once more there is a grave insurrection, this time at Beth Peor, just
before Moses' death, and of this too we shall shortly speak. When Joshua
assumed command before the entry into the Promised Land, he instituted
severe measures to unify the Israelites. He had all households destroy
their god-images, masks, and other sacred representations [35]. And he
ordered by command of Yahweh a general circumcision; the Bible says that
those born in the desert had not been circumcised [36]. This is odd,
coming so long after Moses had appeared to demand it; it does indicate, I
think, that circumcision was a relatively new practice without heavy
sanctions of opinion and tradition or else that a great many non-Hebrews
had joined Israel on exceptional terms, or both. The population was now
consecrated to the Holy War in Palestine.

Ringing in their ears were the words of Moses' last address to the people
of Israel: "You have been rebellious against Yahweh from the day that I
knew you."[37] True words, spoken by Moses-Yahweh, implying once more that
Moses and Yahweh came late to know the Hebrews. Moses was not born and
bred a Hebrew.

REVOLT OF THE GOLDEN CALF

Moses had gone up to Mount Sinai, at the command of Yahweh, and there
received for the first time the Law and the tablets engraved by the finger
of Yahweh. Returning from the lengthy isolation on the mountain, he
discovered to his consternation that in his absence the people had melted
down their gold and fashioned a calf of it, and around this marvelous
image were worshipping, eating, dancing and singing.

For they had beset Aaron, demanding: "Up, make us gods, who shall go
before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us out of the Land of
Egypt, we do not know what has become of him." So Aaron asked for their
gold jewelry and melted it and fashioned it into a molten calf. And the
people said: "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the
Land of Egypt." Whereupon Aaron "built an altar before it" and declared a
feast day for the Lord.

The people then betook themselves to the seventy members
of the Sanhedrin (the ruling council of elders) and
demanded that they worship the bull that had led Israel out
of Egypt. 'God,' said they, had not delivered us out of
Egypt, but only Himself, who had in Egypt been in
captivity.' The Sanhedrin remained loyal to their God, and
were hence cut down by the rabble [38].

This legend indicates that the Revolt was even more bloody than the Bible
depicts (as well as testifying to the cometary bull).

In his fury, Moses cast down and broke the tablets given him by Yahweh. He
seized the calf. Aaron blamed the people: "You know the people, that they
are set on evil."[39] The people were scattered all about; the military
aspect of the camp was quite lost. Moses stationed himself at the gate of
the camp and called: "Who is on the Lord's side? Come to me."

The sons of Levi gathered around and Moses' orders were brief and harsh:
"Put every man his sword on his side, and go to and from gate to gate
throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his
companion, and every man his neighbor." Within the day, the Levites
slaughtered three thousand men of Israel. Moses had the image of the bull
burned and ground into powder. Then, mixing the gold powder with water, he
forced the heretics to drink it. Order was restored. Moses spoke to the
people, reproaching them but promising to intercede with the Lord
regarding their great sinning. But Yahweh sent a plague upon the people
because of the Golden Calf[40].

Although the Golden Calf disappeared into frightful memory, this was not
the last of non-Mosaic Judaism, and most Jews were lost to Israel and
Yahwism for the worship of Baal and other gods in the centuries to come.
The Northern Ten Tribes, breaking away from the united kingdom to find a
northern Kingdom of Israel "worshipped all the hosts of heaven and served
Baal." King Jeroboam founded at Dan and Bethel sanctuaries that rivaled
the Temple of Jerusalem. He set up in each a golden calf image to Yahweh,
and appointed non-Levites as temple custodians [41]. They were destroyed
in 723 or 722 B.C.

Similar events occurred in the Southern Kingdom under Manasseh. Then,
shortly before the Babylonians descended upon them and carried them off
into exile, Josiah restored Yahweh against much popular opposition. Many
Jews fled then and later to Egypt where they worshipped Anat-Yahweh,
Venus, "Queen of Heaven."[42]

What did the Golden Calf represent, if not Anat-Yahweh (as it is called in
a Psalm)? It was the child of the comet
Venus-Baal-Ishtar-Athene-Minerva-Isis-Devi and a hundred other names from
all over the world. The same calf became the sacred cow of the Hindus who
were moving just then into India.

The young bull was the apparition of the great comet at some points of its
approach and retreat from near collision with the Earth, when it looked
like a cow, bull and calf. "Only if we realize the planetary-cometary
significance of the egel (meaning 'young bull', but also 'roundness'), do
we find any sense in the reaction of the People of Israel to the calf."
"... and... they cried: This is thy God, O Israel, which brought thee up
out of the land of Egypt!"[43] One legend says that, while passing through
the Red Sea, the people saw the Celestial Throne and most distinctly the
ox among the four creatures around the throne (lion, man, eagle, ox) and
therefore they thought to worship the ox as the helper of God in the
Exodus [44]. Another report, already cited, says that the bull was
inscribed on the chariot of the Lord as he drove across the skies in aid
of the Hebrews.

The comet was regarded as the offspring of the greater god
Jupiter-Zeus-Marduk-Amon-Yahweh in many places, and confused with these
divinities, who were universally fire-and-thunder gods.

Moses would not have it so: His Yahweh spoke from heaven and mountains,
true, but was a god of electric fire. He filled the heavens but not
visibly. He was among his chosen people, went with them in those days in
an awe-inspiring physical sense. Still, apparent in the verses of the
Bible is the fright of Moses that somehow Yahweh would not act for him in
the aftermath of the revolt. He pleads for assurances; he has to repeat
the whole act again, returning to the mountain and descending once more,
this time in a subdued triumph.

No Golden Calf could fight for the Jews like the Ark of the Covenant. No
astrology could have provided a people with so personal a god as did the
electrical science of Moses. Yahweh was always moving, always up to
something new. All, even in the remote outskirts of the camp, had their
attention focussed upon Moses and the Tabernacle.

Moses had every reason to become furious. The shock of betrayal was great.
The people were ungrateful, too. They must have hated him to think him
dead and become so happy. The fragility of his charisma was apparent. All
of his plans seemed wrecked, the designs of the sacred machinery and of
the religious center, detailed even to the priestly clothing and ornate
draperies. The gold that the leaders had caused to be begged, borrowed,
and stolen in Egypt was now unclean, and could not be reused for the
instruments of the sanctuary. If the dancing and singing were not enough,
a mere glance at the young bull exhibited its sexual connotations. Why was
it a young bull - to replace Moses, the old bull? (Moses had already
designed an altar with four corner-horns of undesignated species fashioned
of wood in one piece with the altar.)[45] Many of his subordinate leaders
had been massacred in the attempted coup d'etat. For it

was such; Levites, among others, were involved. A cometary image would
replace Moses as the center of sacramental behavior; half of his power
would be gone. His electrical science would be demysticized, desacralized.

The reprisals of the counter-revolution were severe. Perhaps thousands
were slaughtered. All weapons were seized[46]. The gold-poisoned drink
killed many. The legend says it was a form of "capital punishment."[47] A
plague of Yahweh raged among the guilty people, until all who were
involved were dead or had fled into the desert; Moses exterminated all
those who had been unclean. As for the loyal and the non-participating,
and for himself, he discussed seriously with Yahweh the question whether
they too were unworthy to survive.

After the Revolt, Moses had his tent removed from inside to outside the
camp. He posts Levite guards before it and says it is a tent of coming
together. Actually it marked a new phase of reaction. He needed greater
personal safety. He felt more strongly than ever in isolation from and
aversion to the people. Perhaps he thought, too, that one day Yahweh would
set the whole camp ablaze with a fire from his "Mercy Seat" and strong
winds.

KORAH'S REBELLION

A 13th century English painting of the Rebellion of Korah [48] shows the
rebels being assailed from the heavenly canopy by many pointy little
tongues of flame. "These tongues remind us of `little quadrants of
light... constantly jumping' along a wire at the Harvard College
Observatory at Pike's Peak, Colorado, as described in a report [50].

Korah's revolt posed a grave threat to Moses' absolute rule. The boldness
with which the rebels moved in upon Moses and close-in loyal supporters
indicates a large confidence in their chances of success. It happens at
the semi-permanent encampment at Kadesh, whence a short time before the
spies had been sent out. Korah, himself, is rumored to have been Treasurer
to the Pharaoh of Egypt. He was both a Levite and a

Kohathite, therefore of the division of Levites directly responsible for
the management of the sanctuary, except that the most critical jobs were
given to Aaron and his priesthood. Legend has it that Korah was angered at
having been passed over by Moses for the leadership of the Kohathites.
Moses prob- ably had already had trouble with Korah.

Top leaders, at least 250 says the Bible, were openly lined up with Korah.
They had a large popular following, which Moses appreciated. And when the
leaders confronted him at the Tabernacle the day after the rebellion
began, they brought with them their popular following. Moses invoked the
crowd to disperse, and it did so, possibly because he threatened them with
a plague and also because he seemed to be striking a deal with the rebels.

The philosophy behind the rebellion was well thought out. The rebels
declared to Moses: "You have gone too far! For all the congregation are
holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them; why then do you exalt
yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?" Notwithstanding that he is the
one accused of exalting himself, Moses transfers the problem to a grasping
for the top offices: Isn't it enough, you Levites, says Moses, that you do
special services for Yahweh and are near him. "Would you seek the
priesthood also? Therefore it is against the Lord that you and all your
company have gathered together; what is Aaron that you murmur against
him?"[51]

Moses promptly changes the grounds of debate. He does not address the main
charge that he, Moses, acts as alone holy, whereas the doctrine of Yahweh
is that all Israel is holy, each man in his own special relationship to
God, as the Covenant with Yahweh would imply. Moses points out that
Levites are in fact privileged and separated from the people of Israel.
Thus he begins to isolate them from the people and limit their demands.

Moses then, I think, carries out a secret plan which he had held in
abeyance for just this eventuality. No doubt he had conducted experiments
with animals, and, I would guess, with prisoners who were caught in holy
wars and brought to receive judgement within the courtyard or even before
the "mercy seat" of Yahweh[52].

He announced to the rebel chieftains that, since they claimed equality
before Yahweh, they should arrange to present themselves fittingly,
lighted bronze censers in hand, with Aaron, before the Holy of Holies to
see whom Yahweh would select to receive a sign of his favor.  The decision
would be up to Yahweh; this is repeatedly stressed. And they must not
bring their weapons.

The rebels consented and repaired to their tents. Moses, Aaron, Joshua,
and their most faithful assistants went to work. They set the Ark to
accumulate its maximum charge short of sparking, Given both the
atmospheric charge held by the cherubim and the ground charge gathered by
the outer golden sheath of the box and focussing in the rod that extended
above the outer box at the rear center of the mercy seat, a voltage of
from 20,000 to 100,000 could be accumulated.

The total Tabernacle area was about 15,000 square feet, and was fenced off
and guarded. The area enclosing the Altar of Incense before the curtain of
the Holy of Holies was some four hundred square feet. Many, perhaps all,
of the rebel chieftains, could press into the inner sanctum and the rest
would crowd at the entrance. The tent would have been pitched originally
on all area where ground currents of negative ions could readily be
attracted.

Lightning is the discharge of the electrical potential (termed "voltage")
between two points of different charges, when the setting is between air
and ground or is air-to-air. Average amperage (current) may be about
20,000[53]. Electrical charges are measured in coulombs. Current is
measured in joules or amperes. Resistance is measured in ohms. Electrical
discharges can peel a sapling, undress a person, and pluck chickens. The
effects of electroshock upon the human body depends upon the individual
constitution, both genetic and acquired, and upon the intensity of the
current (amperage) which enters the body and where it passes in relation
to the heart or brain. "Fatal traumas

from potentials of 10-24 V are described in the literature."[54] The
current in such cases is perforce low, even under 100 Amperes. In most
deadly instances, voltages of under 400 are involved. "As the great
majority of electrical fatalities are due to currents passing between an
arm (usually the right) and the legs, the current passes through the chest
and affects the organs within it."[55] The longer the "juice is on," the
greater the danger.

Earth current can be a source of great danger. If a current
of 50,000 amperes enters the soil at a point and spreads out
uniformly in all directions, the current density, and hence the
voltage drop, along the ground surface will be appreciable
even at a considerable distance from the flash. The furrows
which sometimes radiate from the point actually struck
show that the voltage-drop may be sufficient to produce
actual discharges through the soil. The voltage between two
points on the earth separated by the length of an animal's
stride might therefore be quite sufficient to pass an
appreciable current up one leg and down the other. There
are many cases of cattle-killing which can be explained in no
other manner. When 126 sheep out of a flock of 152 arc
killed by a single flash it is hardly conceivable that they were
all hit by the main channel [56].

But we need not speak only of lightning. Closer at hand and more
controllable was the artificial lightning of Moses. Granted that an
electrocution of a herd of livestock is possible by lightning, we may
surmise that a deliberate mass electrocution of humans would be possible,
especially 3400 years ago, when electrical conditions of nature were
disturbed. In the earliest beginnings of modern electrical science, and in
a mood of dangerous play that forms an ironic and tragic contrast with the
Old Testament setting, we find enough ideas and procedures to understand
the behavior of Moses and the Israelites. It is worth citing in detail the
new scientists of the mid-eighteenth century in connection with Korah's
Revolt.

Mr. George Graham shewed how several circuits for the
discharge of the Leyden phial might be made at the same
time, and the fire be made to pass through them all. He
made a number of persons take hold of a plate of metal,
communicating with the outside of the phial; and all
together, likewise, laid hold of a brass rod with which the
discharge was made; when they were all shocked at the
same time, and in the same degree [57].

Scientists elsewhere produced similar effects:

In France as well as in Germany experiments were made to
try how many persons might feel the shock of the same
phial. The Abbé Nollet, whose name is famous in electricity,
gave it to one hundred and eighty of the guards, in the
King's presence; and at the grand convent of the Carthusians
in Paris, the whole community formed a line of nine hundred
toises (1754 meters), by means of iron wires between every
two persons (which far exceeded the line of one hundred
and eighty of the guards) and the whole company upon the
discharge of the phial, gave a sudden spring, at the same
instant of time, and all felt the shock equally [58].

Joseph Priestley's own experiment is especially worthy of attention. It is
contained in an essay entitled "Entertaining Experiments performed by
means of Leyden Phial."

A great deal of diversion is often occasioned by giving a
person a shock when he does not expect it; which may be
done by concealing the wire which comes from the outside
of the phial under the carpet, and placing the wire which
comes from the inside in such a manner in a person's way,
that he can suspect no harm from putting his hand upon it,
at the same time that his feet are upon the other wire. This,
and many other methods of giving a shock by surprise, may
easily be executed by a little contrivance; but great care
should be taken that these shocks be not strong, and that
they be not given to all persons promiscuously.

When a single person receives the shock, the company is
diverted at his sole expense; but all contribute their share to
the entertainment, and all partake of it alike, when the
whole company forms a circuit, by joining their hands; and
when the operator directs the person who is at one
extremity of the circuit to hold a chain which communicates
with the coating, while the person who is at the other
extremity of the circuit touches the wire. As all the persons
who form this circuit are struck at the same time, and with
the same degree of force, it is often very pleasant to see
them start at the same moment, to hear them compare their
sensations, and observe the very different accounts they give
of it [59].

Priestley's happy sublimated imagination was far removed from mosaism. (He
was, in fact, a founder of Unitarianism.) He could go on and on with
games, given a few basic electrical principles.

This experiment may be agreeably varied, if the operator,
instead of making the company join hands, direct them to
tread upon each others toes, or lay their hands upon each
others heads; and if, in the latter case, the whole company
should be struck to the ground, as it happened when Dr.
Franklin once gave the shock to six very stout robust men,
the inconvenience arising from it will be very inconsiderable.
The company which the Doctor struck in this manner
neither heard nor felt the stroke, and immediately got up
again, without knowing what had happened. This was done
with two of his large jars (each containing about six gallons)
not fully charged [60].

A number of drawings of mass shockings are to be found. The one in figure
18 from Japan is chosen precisely for its lack of explicitness. Made far
removed, culturally and geographically, from the scene of the experiments,
it would inform or persuade us of nothing scientific. Therefore it
suggests how the memory of Moses' electrical operations might be
distorted, sublimated, and finally misunderstood over the centuries. The
drawings we possess of Korah's rebels show them dying mysteriously,
victims of the invisible Yahweh.

In the deep shadows of the past, grim real games were going on. We can
watch them only half-understanding. We imagine only the simplest devices
and system, even though the applications may have been more sophisticated.

Moses and his officers, early in the morning, poured water over the rock
floor of the tent, wetting it thoroughly to make it as fully conductive
from the earth as possible. A copper wire was laid down and around the
floor of the area. Then the carpets ordinarily covering the floor were
replaced, hiding the wire [61]. The wire connected at the Ark on a metal
rod extending from the outside golden plate of the Ark. Thus a very large
negative charge could gather and be prepared to discharge if contacted or
approached close enough by a positive charge.

	Figure 18. Mass Electroshock. (Click on the above picture for an
enlarged view. Caution: Image files are large.) (Source: Figure 13.2 from
Heilbron. op cit)

The positive charge was in fact gathering from the atmosphere on the
golden cherubim and inner lining of the Ark. The whole inner metallic
complex of cherubim and lining were separated by a screen of wood or glass
from the stored negative charges of the outside lining and its upright
rod.

It is apparent now that the Ark is charging up heavily but is being
prevented from discharging upon itself by the insulation. We recall that
the wire beneath the carpet is disconnected, so we imagine that it was
carried around to the Ark and affixed to a heavy metal bar. The movement
of this bar is controlled by the priest Eleazer, son of Aaron, who can
push it into a lock against the positively charged wing tip of a cherub.
He is insulated by gloves, masks, heavy clothing and non-conducting wood
tongs. This is usual equipment for tending the Ark.

The rebels assembled the next morning, lighted censers in hand [62],
before the Tent. Their large following had come as well, and Yahweh was
enraged. They were threatened and dismissed by Moses. The sight of Joshua
and many armed men frightened them, too. But also and even before the test
of the rebels with censers, Korah and the two men who were rebels but
refused to appear with the assembly at the tent had been killed
dramatically at the instance of Moses. These two men had called out to
Moses defiantly: "Are you going to bore the eyes of these men?"[63]

Aaron stood beside the Holy of Holies on an insulator, with insulating
footgear and clothing, out of contact with any of the possible lines of
electrical charge. He welcomed the rebels, who crowded, elbow to elbow,
into the tent. They prostrated themselves before Yahweh, head, arms,
knees, feet and censers touching the ground. Eleazer pushed the bar into
the wing lock. Most, if not all, of the rebels were promptly electrocuted
as the charges raced towards each other and coursed through each man,
striking upwards at the brain and heart. Those merely stunned and shocked
would be dispatched by the swords of Joshua's guards, moving in from their
insulated corners, after the charges were spent, or the connecting bar was
pulled out.

"Fire came forth from Yahweh and consumed the two hundred and fifty men
offering the incense."[64] Thus the Bible. "The souls, not the bodies of
the sinners were burned..."[65] Thus the legend.

Perhaps this method of mass execution was not followed [66]. The Ark might
provide a second method by individual sparks. In both is involved the
ancient and primitive means of administering justice through the trial by
ordeal. Such is the trial of a woman for adultery, for instance, in the
Bible[67]. The accused is traumatized, and is deemed guilty or innocent
depending upon the outcome of the test or ordeal: "Yahweh will show who is
holy, and will cause him to come near to him."[68]

Electrocution by the Ark of so many, individually, would be much more
difficult. Since each leader was to be judged by Yahweh, each in turn
would be marched to the altar and struck down. Men who were
physiologically resistant to fatal shock would be dealt with by sword.
(The Abbé Nollet in 1746 "gave the shock with porcelain, and observed that
some persons were much more sensible to it than others in whatever part of
the circuit they were placed.")[69] Those who refused the test would be
dispatched by the sword; for the refusal was taken to be a confession of
guilt. A ring of guards around the tent prevented any break-out of the
group.

From a rubbed and electrified jar, Von Kleist, dean of the cathedral in
Camin, in 1745, took "a nail, or a piece of thick brass wire" that carried
a charge; "it throws out a pencil of flame so long, that, with this
burning machine in my hand, I have taken above sixty steps, in walking
about my room."[70] Around the same time, Monnier discovered that "the
Leyden Phial would retain its electricity a considerable time after it was
charged, and to have found it do so for thirty-six hours, in time of
frost. He frequently electrified his phial at home, and brought it in his
hand, through many streets, from the college of Harcourt to his apartments
in the King's gardens, without any considerable diminution of its
efficacy."[71]

Heilbron sums up this development: "Physicists soon learned that an
electrified phial need not explode to be intriguing: when doing nothing at
all, innocently insulated, it unaccountedly preserved its punch for hours
or days. Even when grounded it remained potent, provided that its top wire
was not touched."[72]

The English experimenter, Wilson, equally early (and all of these
experiments and many more occurred before Franklin's discovery of positive
and negative charges), found that the first discharge of a simple Leyden
jar was the most explosive and dissipated the load quickly. "Whereas, when
water was used, the subsequent explosions were more in number, and more
considerable; and when the phial was charged with nothing but a wire
inserted into it, the first explosion and the subsequent ones were still
more nearly equal."[73]

Aaron, of course, came out well from the ordeal. The manner of Korah's
death, by turning into a ball of flame that rolled into a cleavage of the
Earth, is not too far removed from what might have happened in several
cases, with help from the special police, and could have been a report
displaced from these to Korah, the most important figure, as often happens
in the garbling of news reports.

Now Eleazer was told by Yahweh "to take up the censers out of the blaze;
then scatter the fire far and wide."[74] Afterwards, the censers were
melted down and fashioned into a plate for the altar. Thereafter nobody
save of the seed of Aaron would dare to "come near to burn incense before
the Lord ," lest he die. This grim reminder was an endless source of
sorrow to the families of the deceased, the legend says [75].

The next day a mob approaches the tent of Moses, "murmuring" as was their
wont, whereupon the cloud of Yahweh appeared dispersing them. "Wrath has
gone forth from Yahweh, the plague has begun."[76] Some 14,700 people were
killed in this manifestation, says the Bible, before Aaron, with his
blessed censer, could move out and halt the plague. The implication is
that the cloud was directed into the crowd of people, for Yahweh told
Moses to get out of the way before he consumed them. The cloud was of some
type of poison, evidently, probably white phosphorus grenades cast into
their midst by Moses' soldiers. Faced with declaring this, or assigning
the action to Yahweh, the Bible, as it commonly does, simplified and
moderated the action by laying it upon Yahweh; ruthlessness becomes
justice when done by him.

To confirm the end of the three-day tragedy, another contest is rigged.
This time a beam is split into twelve rods, Aaron receiving the rod of
Levi, and the tribes a rod marked for each of them. After a night by the
Ark, Aaron's rod has grown blossoms and almonds. Let us say that it has
been sundered in a most interesting fashion, which we have already
described. Thus Aaron receives one more sign that he is to remain High
Priest; Yahweh does not fear nepotism as did Korah and his rebels.

Following Korah's rebellion, Moses dowses, after Miriam's well dries up.

"Moses then fetched out of the Tabernacle the holy rod on
which was the Ineffable Name of God, and accompanied by
Aaron, betook himself to the rock to bring water out of it."

He refused to find water from any random rock, despite the jeers of those
who said he knew how to find water not because of Yahweh but because he
had once been a shepherd. He insisted upon a chosen rock and succeeded in
two attempts [77].

FREUD AND THE MURDER OF MOSES

Sigmund Freud, inventor of the psychoanalytic method, and principal
creator of the theory of psychoanalysis, could not resist, in the last
years of his life, the temptation to publish his highly speculative book,
Moses and Monotheism. Correctly he foresaw that he would offend Christians
and Jews - and, of course, the world of biblical scholarship.

Brave intellectual that he was, Freud offered frank answers to several
moot issues. First of all, he claimed Moses to be Egyptian. So were most
of the Levites, the retinue of Governor Moses (for Freud placed Moses most
likely as the official in charge of Goshen, with its unruly Hebrew
population). Moses was a devout follower of Pharaoh Akhnaton (Freud calls
him Iknaton) and, upon the overthrow of this great reformer and
monotheistic sun-worshipper, Moses aroused the Hebrews and others in his
bailiwick to follow him out of Egypt to a land where they might worship
Aton instead of Hammon or Amon or the solar identification of Aton, for
Moses was more enlightened, and derived the first abstract god. For his
pains, Moses received death in the end. Following the biblical scholar,
Ernst Sellin, Freud argues that a rebellion overthrew Moses and he was
killed.

The curtain then drops upon this hapless abrogation in the desert. Perhaps
a century later, the same group, with the now assimilated Levites, make a
religious and political pact with their ethnic relatives, the Midianites.
If the Midianite "Jews" of Kadesh agree to a watered-down version of
monotheism that takes in the ancient patriarchs such as Abraham and Isaac
and accept, without mentioning his name, their one god (Aton?), and
upgrade the history of the Exodus, then they - the Egyptian fac- tion, now
practically a tribe - would agree that Yahweh, a local volcano god who
hovers about Mt. Sinai, become their special god, too, and lead them in a
totally chauvinistic, ruthless career of expansion to the north and west.
As token of their good will to their Egyptian brethren, the Midianites
must also accept circumcision, which Freud, particularly in this case but
also in general, believes to originate as a form of mutilation carrying on
from generation to generation the punishment of the young for the murder
of the father. The leader of this new Israel would be known in the future
rewriting of history as Moses (number 2) and the intervening century or so
would be forgotten.

Having concocted this scenario, Freud, a Jew, has brought the Jewish
nation to an all-time historical low. They were, in the days of which
Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy chant, mere barbaric Semites,
acknowledging the memory of a single Egyptian god, guilty of murdering
their greatest leader, and set to follow a frightful marauding God,
Yahweh, whose main claim to fame was that he was better than any other god
they were likely to encounter in the course of their bloody wars. As for
the Exodus, while not a stroll in the desert, it was a group departure
when conditions in Egypt were unsettled.

Freud does not hesitate, in this forceful little book, apologetically
presented, to promote three of his older scientific theses: religion as a
collective neurosis; the unconscious collective memory of humankind as
having begun its guilt-laden career with the murder of the father of a
horde by the sons for possession of the womenfolk; and the slow release of
the load of guilt upon tribes as well as individuals by a suppressed
traumatic incident of early times or early life.

Freud uses the Exodus as a kind of unreliable case study in which the
three concepts are displayed. Moses, says Freud, proclaimed a good god, a
universal god, and became identified in people's minds with him. Although,
to be sure, every attack upon a father or father-figure repeats the
primeval prototype patricide, presumably the more meaningful and great the
figure (e.g. Jesus Christ, Julius Caesar, Abraham Lincoln), the greater
the burden of guilt thereafter. The killing of Moses was the greatest
historical shock for the Jews and they have lived ever since in the guilt
of this recollection, which they suppressed and denied even a few years
after the rebellion against him.

But over many centuries this guilt has worked itself out by an increasing
devotion to the ideals of Moses the First: an ever purer monotheism, a
dedication to philosophy and intellectualism, a renunciation of instincts
to violence, and an obsessive claim to the lion's share of the early
history of universal religion. Little by little, they strove to eliminate
the Yahweh in themselves in favor of the unknown universal god. They
cannot help but feel the chosen people of God; their unique guilt goes to
prove this.

It might be thought that, having gone this far, Freud would bestow his
blessings upon Christianity. For Christianity, he points out, is founded
upon the murder of the son who is also the father. As grateful recipients
of this favor from Jesus, who stands for all sinners and who dies for
their sins, the Christians are relieved from the very heavy burden of
guilt carried by their fellow-Jews (speaking now of the earliest
Christians who were all Jews): Freud offers this possibility. But, he
argues, it does not happen so. For, the relief from the burden of their
sins only permits Christians to behave badly with less troubled
consciences. And especially badly towards the Jews who raised the issue in
the first place in this particular form.

Hence Freud ends where he began - and where most scholars feel that he
should have stayed - in the anthropological perspective that regards all
religions as a more or less uncomfortable treatment of neurosis. But a
great mind, like Freud, or Picasso, or Plato, or Leonardo, or Marx, or
Dewey, is incapable of a work that is all bad. In the present instance,
Freud does not labor under the compulsion of biblical scholars to cover up
for Yahweh. He makes Judaism a part of the anthropology of religion. He
reveals, by his very errors and wild speculations, the flimsy foundations
of biblical exegesis that are made to seem solid by the silent consensus
of biblical experts to assume or ignore them.

But there are a number of improbabilities and impossibilities in Freud's
study of Moses and the beginnings of the Jewish nation. For some of these
he was responsible, such as various exaggerations, as when he exaggerates
the unconscious guilt felt by Jews for the "murder" of Moses; it is most
doubtful that the average Jew has, since the Romans became Christian, been
more guilt-laden than the average Christian. And one must challenge, too,
whether a group-trauma operates in the group over the millennia just as an
individual trauma functions in a single lifetime. The old bulls are
disposed of in many a mammal group without guilt-feelings. There had to be
an interposition of conscience, which would require a more fundamental
genetic or environmental change than a repetition of an act that had been
going on long before humanization occurred.

Freud's official biographer, Ernest Jones, provides illumination: Freud
had thought of his idea for many years. Nearly thirty years earlier he was
looking upon Carl Jung as his successor and referred to him as "son and
heir." Further, "Jung was to be the Joshua destined to explore the
promised land of psychiatry which Freud, like Moses, was permitted to view
from afar. Incidentally, this mark is of interest as indicating Freud's
self- identification with Moses, one which in later years became very
evident."[78] I pointed out earlier how, when in Rome, Freud was drawn to
Michelangelo's statue of Moses and contemplated it for a long time.

So the "truth" which Freud revered was hidden from the master of
unconscious truths. When the time came to analyze Moses, his genius failed
him, for he was talking about "himself." Moses was not to have the traits
that are strewn about the biblical record for the edification of the
psychoanalyst, nor commit all of the horrendous acts that are described or
to be inferred. Moses the First was a good man, like Freud; rather flat in
profile, to be sure; and Egyptian, not Christian, because of some
inconvenient lapse of time. Moses the Second was the Bad One and the Jews
had become unhappily stuck with him and his Yahweh.

For two additional errors in his scenario, Freud was not completely
responsible, but they are fatal to his work; they are errors of the same
biblical historians who denounce him. The first is the false and evasive
notion that the Exodus was not a journey through catastrophe. There was
nothing in the experience, Freud believed, to determine Moses' behavior or
a people's character or the events of history or a peculiar religion.

The second error that the professional establishment handed Freud was that
Akhnaton lived before Moses. Velikovsky has demonstrated the opposite:
Moses came first.[79] This of course is logically fatal to the thesis that
Moses was a devoted disciple of Akhnaton and led a utopian community to
the practice of his religion. The Encyclopedia Britannica, to exemplify
what confronted Freud, even in 1974, some sixty years after Freud got his
key idea, gives the reigning dates of Akhenaton (their spelling) as 1379
to 1362 B.C. and calls him "possibly the first monotheist in recorded
history." (Freud uses the dates 1375 to 1358 B.C.) The same work accords
Moses the date "fl(ourished) 13th century B.C." and reports that "Ramses
II (1304-c.1237) was probably the pharaoh at the time." Freud puts the
Exodus between 1358 and 1350 B.C., dates that he regards as shortly after
the death and obloquy of Akhnaton. Hence Moses is supposed to have
followed Akhnaton, and closely enough so that the fluid dating might even
have permitted Moses to have per- sonally known the guidance of Akhnaton.

Freud, the iconoclast, followed the great majority of traditional scholars
on the key fact and went wrong. But how was he to know? Velikovsky had not
begun to work on the problem. Freud was one more victim of the chaotic
Egyptian chronology. The other psychoanalyst gone egyptological,
Velikovsky, had discovered the weak point in Freud's psychic armor, and
knew "in his heart" that Hebrew and Egyptian history must be synchronized.
So he proceeded with an iron will, indefatigably, to disassemble the
"unassailable" structure of ancient Near East chronology. In the process,
and with the help of an unsupported, unpaid, self-disciplined, polymathic
group of scholars, he ended up engaged in an assault upon the belief
system of modern science as well [80].

BETH PEOR

There is usually a suspicion of foul play when a person disappears. Moses,
says the Bible, went off alone to die and was buried by Yahweh in a gorge
below Mount Nebo whence he had looked out over the Promised Land. (See
figure 19) Strangely, it seems, he was buried facing Beth-Peor, where the
last of the collective disturbances that marked his rule had occurred
[81].

There the Israelites in large numbers had united with settled Moabites or
Midianites in unauthorized religious festivals - particularly, recounts
the Bible with some indignation, fertility rites encouraging free love in
the fields in the name of the local Baal, with the purpose of inspiring
nature to greater productivity. Freud cited Ernst Sellin, a German
scholar, as proving Moses died in a revolt, but gives little detail on the
occurrence, referring only to Hosea, a prophet of six centuries later, as
insinuating the events. As I read this on a remote island, far from a copy
of Sellin's book, I sought to follow the hypothesis by myself, in
anticipation of ultimately locating the work.

Hosea writes a diatribe against the Israelites, which he acts out.
Imitating, so he says, the behavior of Yahweh towards the Jews, he takes
in marriage a prostitute. The history of his relationship to the
prostitute whom he has freely and firmly wedded then comes to stand for
the history of the wedding and marriage of Yahweh and the whoring people
of Israel. I thought that Hosea or Yahweh here could as well be Moses,
speaking as he often did for the Lord. And I thought of how Moses might
have acted in the circumstances of Beth-Peor.

I concluded that there was a possibility that the old man, Moses, would
have met his death in a murder or under undignified circumstances - a
stone thrown, a stroke - in the course of suppressing the Baal-Peor heresy
[82]. He was fearfully agitated and may have been fatally strained in
dealing with the heretics and their Moabite seducers. Moses' loathing of
sexual deviancy, his strenuous efforts to keep Yahwism free of sexual
imagery (No Zeus bull rapist of Europa he! No Baal bull here!) and his
severe attitude in general towards breakdowns of law and order, made him
more ruthless than ever: the peoples' chiefs were hanged, murders were
committed and sanctified, and plague carried off thousands of Israelites,
24,000 says the Bible. Moses directed, further, the extirpation of the
Midianites [83], first the men in battle followed by massacre, then
cold-bloodedly the male children and all women who were not virgins. Their
camps and cities were burned, and their livestock and valuables taken as
booty.

	Figure 19: Myth of Moses Blessing the Tribes, and His Death.
(Click on the above picture for an enlarged view. Caution: Image files are
large.) (Bible of San Paolo Fuori le Mura ca. A. D 870., folio 49v)

The verses on executing the Israelite leaders carry a grim double meaning
1) "Take all the chiefs of the people and execute them in full sunlight
before the Lord so that My blazing wrath will be turned away from Israel"
and 2) "Cut off the heads of the leaders of the people and impale them in
the courtyard before My Holy Tent so that my blazing wrath will be turned
away from Israel." Further, Moses ordered his officers: "Each of you slay
those of your men who attached themselves to Baal-Peor."

The crowd before the court of the Tabernacle was full of grief and rage.
To the many deaths occurring with the raging plagues of Yahweh there was
added to their grief this harsh remedy to propitiate Yahweh which would
also strike down many of their loved ones.

At this juncture, there passed before their eyes the noble Zimri, with his
Midianite companion, the lady Cozbi, as they went into his family tent.
Phineas, son of Eleazer and grandson of Aaron, in a fury, seized a spear
and followed them. He drove the spear through their bellies. Moses
approved. The plague ceased. Moses heard from Yahweh that Phineas' zeal
for Yahweh's honor had saved Israel from extinction. Phineas earned the
perpetual right to the priesthood for his family by this action. But what
Moses had said was good in the eyes of Yahweh was perhaps beyond the
sufferance of the people.

It was Moses' last battle on behalf of Yahweh. He knew that he was to die
and perhaps wished to leave things tidy [84]. We note in Hosea, moreover,
a repeated violent denunciation of the tribe of Ephraim, to which Joshua
belongs, and which took for itself perhaps the richest section of the
Promised Land. Possibly, Ephraimites accompanied Moses on his last
journey.

No matter how Moses met his death, the Bible would adorn it with some
elements of the legendary. Founding heroes of a nation are not permitted
to die ignominiously or even ordinarily. Romulus, founder of Rome, was
reported to have been swept into the skies where he joined his father,
Mars. But, as Freud says, a murder by his own people would be shameful,
considering what role Moses must be given in the founding of Israel. Hence
what would be in any case censored and elabo- rated for the sake of the
sacred egoism of the tribe would in this case invariably result in strong
guilt feelings. Proportionately, as the return to Mosaic rule and law
would be demanded by the prophets and priests, the guilt feelings would be
restimulated, and work their way out in an even more frenzied and
dedicated mosaism or Yahwism. This, then, would be the effect of a murder
of Moses upon the history of Judaism. It is to be expected that the verses
involved are considered as some of the most confusing and esoteric of the
Old Testament.

So much was surmised by me from the normal open lines of the Bible. Three
months later and five thousand miles distant, a microfilm copy of Sellin's
work at the New York Public Library was consulted [85]. What had Sellin
discovered? First, in various places the Bible refers to a Messiah, a
servant of God, who is to deliver the Jews from their enemies; this
person, says Sellin, was Moses. Moses was once the Redeemer and would
return again to save the Jews and establish in Jerusalem "a Kingdom of God
for all nations."[86] In line with Hosea, Moses was considered by
tradition, writes Sellin, to have been the atonement victim of the Baal
Peor heresy. Long before, Moses had asked Yahweh to kill him in atonement
for the sins of the people. This was during the Golden Calf Revolt [87].
The tradition of a second coming of Moses persisted into the third century
and is even to be located in the New Testament, in the Gospel of Matthew
(17:1-13).

The major thesis is summarized by Sellin: "Moses, in Shittim in the Holy
place of his God was killed by a trick of his own people after they turned
to Baal Peor and Moses had called them to repent or in any event had
called down punishment upon them. Maybe his sons encountered death with
him as well."[88] Sellin derives this scenario from three places in
Hosea's book, and relies upon a reconstruction and some rearrangement of
lines at ambiguous points; in these respects his ability is unquestionable
and I would accept his new rendering. I repeat the verses here:

"They have dug a deep pit-trap in Shittim."[89]
"The days of terrible ordeal arrive; now come the days of
reckoning.
Israel shrieked:
'A fool is the Prophet, a madman in his mind,
Because of the enormous guilt and the great making of
enemies.'
Ephraim skulked by the tent of the Prophet and laid
snares on all his paths.
In Shittim in the house of his God they have dug a deep
pit.
Like vines at the panicle I found Israel, like an early fig
on the fig tree.
They came to the Baal of Peor and gave themselves up to
shame, and became abominable fornicators.
I have seen Ephraim as a poisonous plant. Ephraim
chose as its hunting game the prophet
and Israel led his sons out to be strangled,
The people shall disappear beyond sight like birds .
May it be the end of child-bearing, of conception, of
pregnant bellies.
Even should their sons grow, I shall take them away until
there will be no one left.
But a curse upon themselves as well, when I come
skulking upon them.
Give them, o Yahweh, what you can and will,
Give them a childless belly and withered breasts."[90]
"But through a prophet I brought Israel out of Egypt,
and, it was shepherded by a prophet.
Ephraim aroused his anger. Israel made him better.
So long as Ephraim read my Torah the prophet was
preeminent in Israel. Though he made atonement
because of Baal he was killed.
I will leave his blood upon you and I will make you pay
his shame."[91]

From the new rendering emerge certain clues. A great crime has been
committed. The prophet who is involved was certainly not Hosea and is not
any prophet before Hosea but Moses. Ephraimites are most involved in the
sin and the crime. The people are enraged against Moses, a "fool" and
"madman", burdened with the guilt of massacring his charges and hated for
it. The conspirators hide themselves on the approaches to his tent, seize
him, take him to the Holy Tent where stand the altars, and there dig a pit
and bury him in it. They kill his family as well. Not since the original
sin of Adam and Eve has such a sacrilegious act occurred. Ephraim (and by
implication Israel) repeats the original sin; it is the original sin of
the history of Israel from its founding to Hosea's time [92]. For it,
Israel and especially the Ephraimites are cursed and must pay in days of
terrible ordeal and reckoning. The worst curses of Hosea are in these
lines. He would have the land and the people return to the desert so that
Yahweh might rule as of old.

The Biblical scholar, Gressmann [93], and others, among them Sellin,
believe that the judges refused to carry out the orders of Moses for the
killing of all the people implicated in the Baal Peor orgies and rites,
and that the Levites, obeying Moses, began to carry out the massacre. I
think that these deaths must be the 24,000 who were scourged by Yahweh, as
the Bible reports. The scourge or plague now was of the Levites' swords.

My theory is this: While the Levites were dispatched and dispersed upon
their murderous mission, the Ephraimites trapped Moses, killed or disarmed
his guards, killed him, buried him, and held prisoner Joshua of their own
tribe. When Joshua agreed to recognize the coup d'état and to take
command, as was his right, and as Moses would wish, he was released, and
he ordered the Levites to cease operations. The killings by Phineas are
passed over in arriving at the new ruling formula, and his sacred role is
confirmed.

We note in connection with Joshua's role a legend educed by Elie Wiesel
[94]:

"When Moses refused to die, says the Talmud, God made
him jealous of Joshua... God's explanation to Moses that he
must die, to allow Joshua to take over, meant to Joshua that
so long as he himself would not take over, Moses would go
on living. For him to rule, his beloved teacher had to die,"

One perceives here what could be a rationalization of Joshua's conduct and
a hint of the killing of Moses.

An impressive network of authorities stress that Moses' death took place
in public. It is witnessed, or almost witnessed, or circumstantially
witnessed, even though the Torah and Bible assert that he finally died
alone. Ginzberg [95] thinks that the legendary assertions originated to
combat the vulgar demand that Moses not die but be made to ascend to
heaven. A typical scenario has all of the people following him until they
were dis- missed; then the senate followed him until they too were
dismissed; then finally a cloud descended over him and he was lost to the
view of his last companions, Eleazer the priest and Joshua the
generalissimo and heir apparent to Moses' authority.

Can we decipher this legendary scenario? Only within strict limits.
Suppose an alternative hypothesis; not Ginzberg's, but one in keeping with
the theory of these pages, is suggested: if a great hero is killed and
secretly buried by some of the very people to whom he is and will remain a
hero, he must in legend either "really" not be killed and/or ascend to
heaven. Thus Jesus is said to have been voluntarily killed and to have
ascended to heaven. If he had been killed by his own people who had
continued to believe in him, he would have ascended to heaven when his
mission was completed without having being killed. But the Christians'
discrimination against both Roman and Jewish authorities permit them to
assert that he was killed; they need not cover the fact.

A second point may be induced from the scenario. The public is asserted as
a witness of Moses' death, at least down to the very last moment, when the
two witnesses are left standing outside of the cloud enveloping Moses. If,
on the one hand, the Bible has Moses dying quite alone, and the traditions
have Moses dying in public, the contradictory insistence now upon the one,
and then upon the other, implies that neither is correct and that both are
straining for their own kind of credibility. If the solitary death admits
the public, it must explain what kind of public was present and what it
saw. If the public death admits the solitary, it must implicitly allow the
belief that Moses was secretly killed. So the two legends exist in eternal
uneasy partial contradiction,

The legends of Moses' death dwell pathetically upon his desire to live,
particularly to live to lead Israel into the Promised Land. The legends
seem to feel an injustice is being done. We weep in sympathy with the
grand old man's frustration and importunities to Yahweh. Why, too, must he
die so alone? Why does Yahweh harden his own heart so, we wonder? Then, in
a start of realism, we recall that Yahweh is Moses, and lives after Moses
in the minds of the tellers of the story. Moses is condemned, dies, and is
buried by Yahweh no more than the sons of Aaron are electrocuted by Yahweh
for approaching the Ark in an improper frame of mind. Moses is killed by
his enemies and his remains are disposed of. Both murder and burial
probably occurred within the sacred precincts. Foes and friends join
thereafter in a conspiracy to cover up the deed and refashion its
circumstances into a sacred lie. Soon the sacred lie transforms itself
psychologically into holy myth.

When the Israelites had crossed over the dry bed of the Jordan, Joshua did
not immediately press on to attack Jericho. Instead, following the order
of Yahweh to "circumcise the sons of Israel again, the second time,"[96]
Joshua performed the ceremony and "when they had completed circumcising
all the nation, they kept sitting in their place in the camp until they
revived."[97] Yahweh, satisfied, said "Today I have rolled away the
reproach of Egypt from off you." In these passages, the Bible explains
that all the circumcised men out of Egypt were dead but "all the people
born in the wilderness... had not been circumcised."[98] Max Weber
believes that the operation was performed so as to emulate the circumcised
Egyptians and "allegedly in order to escape the scorn of the
Egyptians."[99] Neither reason is correct, I think; rather the mass
circumcision was an atonement for the collective guilt in the death of
Moses, and a fresh affirmation of loyalty to the army of the confederation
in preparation for the campaigns ahead.

The location of Moses' grave was taboo to all except the High Priests and
his attendants. In a sense, and as it would appear, Moses died by order of
Yahweh. The Bible's insistence upon the unknown grave, while declaring it
to be nearby, seems needless unless it is an unwitting confession that
Moses was deliberately put into a grave that should be unmentionable and
unknown (except in this metaphorical sense). And, as the Bible says, "his
eyes had not grown dim and his vital strength had not fled."[100]

Notes (Chapter 7: The Levites and the Revolts)

1.  Bimson (1979), 16.

2.  A.S. Yahuda, The Language of the Pentateuch in Its Relation to
Egyptian, vol. 1, London: Oxford U. Press, (1933), 294.

3.  Some say that Jacob (Israel) and his twelve sons and fa- milies (Gen.
46:37) totaling 170 persons in Egypt could not in 430 years grow to 2
millions. They could have grown to 10 or 100 millions or more,
theoretically, by the exponentials of population theory. Daiches (p. 82)
estimates 2000 to 6000 marched in Exodus, on no evidence. Cf. Ginzberg II,
p. 375; 600,000 heads of families plus five children each on horseback,
plus a mixed multitude, "exceeding greatly, the Hebrews in number." The
"mixed multitude" referred to in Ex. 12:38 in some translations is termed
"persons of mixed ancestry" im the Douay (R.C.) translation and a fn. p.89
defines the term as "half- Hebrew and half-Egyptian." Sir Flinders Petrie
(Egypt and Israel, p.67) offered an ingenious explanation of the
numbers... Instead of translating the Hebrew word for "thousand" as a
numeral, he would translate it as "family" or "tent" Thus the number in
the tribe of Manasseh in the first census at the Holy Mountain, 32, 200,
would really mean 32 tents for 200 people, at six people per tent or
family. The total number in exodus would be 5-6000 people. This attractive
hypothesis is not accepted by experts in the Hebrew language. G.
Mendenhall, 77 J Bib Lit (1958) 52-6, says the same word may mean
"military units."

4.  A legend (IV G fn, 806) claims that only one in fifty He- brews
believed in Yahweh and left Egypt. (Cf. Psuedo-Philo, 14:156)

5.  Psalm 68:22 speaks of the people lost in the depths of the Sea of
Passage and promises them redemption and revenge.

6.  See also Ex. 1:9-10; Ex. 4:3-4; Ex. 16:22, all indicating an organized
movement. But they are not tight tribal groups, more

an insurrectionary movement like the Long March of Mao and the Chinese
communists. "The human groups whom he proposes to lead out are only
loosely associated with one another; their traditions have grown faint,
their customs degenerate, their religious associations insecure." (Buber,
69).

7.  Ex. 17:8-14.

8.  VI EB 180-1 Cf. Buber, p. 218-9; fn 284, on theory and literature of
Levite origins.

9.  Freud, 46, and curiously, several XIII Dynasty Pharaohs possessed
semitic names (Bimson, 17 fn. 50).

10.  III G 248.

11.  III G 194.

12.  IV EB, 180-1.

13.  Deut. 33:8-11.

14.  On Levite functions, cf inter alia Num. 4:4-15; ch.18; 6:22-7.

15.  III G 224, 228.

16.  Num. 3:11-13.

17.  Num. 3:40-51.

18.  Ex. 17:1-7; Num. 20:2-13.

19.  III G 272.

20.  IV G 3; (cf. IV G 353-4)

21.  IV G 3 fn2.

22.  Num 11:1-3.

23.  Ex. 14:13.

24.  Ex. 15:25.

25.  Ex. 16:7-8.

26.  Buber's term, pp.102-3; 108.

27.  Winnett offers a close discussion of the murmurings. For mnemonic
purposes, the Biblical editors sought to contain the number at ten.
Winnett establishes the important point: the editors labored to change the
insurrectionism against Moses into tests of Yahweh.

28.  III G., p.36-7.

29.  Ps. 78:31; cf. Ps. 106:13-15; Ex. 16:12-13; Num. 11:20, 31-2, 33.

30.  Ziegler, p. 47.

31.  III G 243ff.

32.  Num. 14:1-4; cf. III G 172.

33.  III G 277.

34.  III G 333ff.

35.  Buber, 202.

36.  Joshua, 5:2-8.

37.  Deut. 9:24.

38.  III G 122-3.

39.  Ex. 32. 22.

40.  Ex. 32:35.

41.  2 Kg. 17.

42.  Velikovsky, W. in C., 297.

43.  Gunnar Heinsohn ltr. II SISR I(1977), 3.

44.  III G 123.

45.  Ex. 27:2.

46.  III G 132.

47.  III G 130.

48.  Num. 16.

49.  Daiches, 183.

50.  Ziegler, 15.

51.  Num. 16:8-11.

52.  In the early years of modern electrostatics, experimenters used
animals and human subjects repeatedly. Grey, in 1731, electrified a boy
and suspended him from a rope; he suspended a second boy, unelectrified;
then he connected them with a wire and observed with satisfaction that the
"fire" (charge) passed to the second boy. (Cf. Priestley, pp. 52-3.) Only
rarely did someone die; Moses would probaly have no qualms about "putting
the heat" on prisoners; it would be an easier death than others then in
vogue.

53.  "Lightning" 10 EB 967.

54.  Manoilov, 133.

55.  16 EB 698, "Electrical shock."

56.  Corliss, op. cit. cf. Manoilov, 152.

57.  Priestley. 122.

58.  Ibid., 125-6.

59.  Ibid., II 151-2.

60.  Ibid., II 152.

61.  Joseph Bozolus, an Italian priest and professor, proposed in 1767 to
lay two wires underground connecting with a Leyden Jar at one end and
close enough at their other ends to let sparks jump in coordination with
coded messages sent at the Leyden Jar end. This was one of the first
schemes for a telegraph. (Stottely, pp. 226-9.) Heilbron recalls (320)
that Le Monnier "passed the shock through a mile of long-suffering
Carthusians joined together by grounded iron wires. In fact moist ground
may offer a discharge path as good as a human chain."

62.  In Galvani's classic discovery of the neural response to
electro-shock, the scalpel that discharged to the frog's nerve and caused
the leg muscle to contract had been charged accidentally by ionized air
emanating from an idle electrostatic machine that happened to be nearby.

63.  This follows the New World translation; some Bibles view the
"blinding" as a metaphor, e.g. "Do you expect these people to be blind?"
(Jerusalem Bible.)

64.  Num. 16:35. The number seems impossibly large, like the number of
those leaving Egypt and other numbers. There may at one time have been a
formula for inflating biblical numbers, but no one has yet been able to
break the code. Decimal numbers and numbers to the base of 60 are
preferred. Here a clue that about 50 might be involved is available in the
melting of the censers into an altar plate subsequently (see below,
VI-40). The altar would not hold a plate, even a thick one, made up of the
bronze of more than fifty melted censers.

65.  II G p.303.

66.  Martin Buber rather believes (309-10) that Korah and the Rebels were
doused with oil, burned, and cast into a pit, than

that they were electrocuted by a powerful battery, as Fisher had suggested
(in Beiträge zur Urgeschichte der Physik in Schweig- ger's Sinne, 1833, pp
4 ff), My position would be that such a "voltaic pile" was not beyond
Moses' capabilities but was unnec- cessary, since the electrical
trubulence of those times in effect provided continuous "batteries" of
nature for electrostatic devices and procedures. As for Martin's theory,
it wanders too far from the story, which is obviously attempting to be
historical. Velikovsky's similar solution (W. in C. p. 56) is similary
mistaken; furthermore, he generally interprets electrical fires as
petroleum fires.

67.  Num. 5:16-31.

68.  Num. 16:5.

69.  I Priestley. 125.

70.  Ibid., 102-4.

71.  Ibid. 125.

72.  Heilbron, 320.

73.  I Priestley, 122.

74.  Num. 36:37.

75.  III G 303.

76.  Num. 18:46.

77.  III G 310-2.

78.  Jones, (1 vol. ed. ) 246. Cf. I. Velikovsky, Oedipus and Akhnaton
(1960) 196-202.

79.  Velikovsky, A. in C. 329 et passim, where Akhnaton is made
contemporary of Ahab.

80.  The literary sources of this paragraph are extensive. Cf. de

Grazia et al. (1978), and Society for Interdisciplinary Studies, A revised
Chronology for the Ancient Near East, Cleveland (Eng.), 1977.

81.  Num 25:1 ff. "Peor" says a legend, is a second name for an Angel of
Death that Moses had once scared away for excessive vindictiveness against
the Jews, and by facing Peor, he would continue to frighten the angel away
from this same task.

82.  Numbers 25:3 Baal Peor, it is suggested, is the god or lord of fire.
Mendenhall noted there is no satisfactory semitic ety- mology for the word
Peor, but the meaning now seems clear. Peor is the Hittite word for fire.
It is the base of the Greek word, Pyr, meaning fire, and of course the
English word fire." (Von Fange, 136.)

83.  Num. 31.

84.  Deut. 31:1-2. "The lord spoke to Moses, saying, Avenge the Isralite
people on the Midianites; then you shall be gathered to your kin."

85.  Ernst Sellin, Mose and seine Bedeutung fur die Israelitisch-Judische
Religiongeschichte, Leipzig (1922).

86.  Sellin, 81-113, based mostly on a study of Deutero-Isaiah. See also
Sellin, Introduction to the new Testament, 142-4. The second original sin
is rendered below for Hosea, 9:10.

87.  Ex. 32:32.

88.  Sellin, 49.

89.  Hosea,5:2. The accursed Shittim was the point of entry into the
Promised Land (Num. 33:49; Joshua 3:1; Ex. 33:1-6; Hosea 6:4-6).

90.  Hosea, 9:7-14.

91.  Hosea, 12:14-13:1.

92.  Hosea, 9:10.

93.  Citing Num.. 25:6-15.

94.  Five Biblical Portraits, South Bend, Ind. :U. of Notre Dame Press,
1981.

95.  IV G fn 904.

96.  Joshua 5:2(New world tr.).

97.  Joshua 5:8.

98.  Joshua 5:5.

99.  Ancient Judaism, 443 fn. 2:92.

100. Deut. 34:7.