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CHAPTER EIGHT

THE ELECTRIC GOD

A famous figure of the French Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century,
Voltaire, reduced the miracles of the Bible to a laughing stock of the
French salons. Voltaire nevertheless believed in a god. In a world then
bemused by the technology of clocks, with clock-makers and
clock-philosophers everywhere, he examined the astronomical system of the
Earth and the heavens and pronounced it a clock. With all of this
clockwork, said he, there must be a clock-maker somewhere. So Moses and
his men will be readily understood when, in an environment that exhibited
electrical effects in many places, they found, behind the grand son et
lumière show, a great electric god, Yahweh.

It may be that Moses, in ways unsuspected by the psychohistory of science,
has infiltrated the lives and work of Newton, Darwin, Edison, Einstein,
and others; by his tenacious insistence on the single god, he made all
things dependent on a single system incorporating a key machine assembly,
and therefore made an integrated philosophy of nature imperative. In one
legend, Moses cannot get the great natural bodies Sun, Moon, Earth,
Heaven, Stars, Planets, Sea, Rivers that is, all the gods of the Greeks,
to intercede on his behalf with Yahweh because, they said, they were but
Yahweh's helpless creatures [1]. Possibly Yahweh's invisibility was a
model of the ordinary invisibility (immateriality) and omnipresence of
electricity, and of its appearing as incorporeal "fire" when it was
visible. I think it no coincidence that among the enthusiasts and
practitioners of early electrical science were numerous mosaist clergyman,
both Catholic and Protestant. G. Beccaria, pioneer of electrical field
theory, was a Piarist; John Wesley, founder of Methodism, wrote copiously
on electricity.

By one cause or another, being mortal, Moses died. But Yahweh did not die.
Even in the technical sense of "the name of the Lord," he did not die,
because the Ark and Altar remained in the Yahwist repertory for some
centuries. He was no longer, thereafter, much of an hallucination; he
joined the ranks of the gods as a pure collective delusion. With the ups
and downs typical of divine careers, he has come into the present.

Moses' greatest triumph was to bequeath a portion of his mind to posterity
by means of Yahweh. Unfortunately, it was the wrong part, the
conscience-loaded superego, but so it must go with the birth of religious
cults. Since it was the hallucinatory and delusionary operations of his
mind that were handed down, these would in some ways not be truly Moses.
They would be idiosyncratically Moses, but not completely him.

Moses stopped far short of placing all his religious impulses into the
hallucination of Yahweh; he seems to have been previously what might be
called a liberal Hermist, a devotee of Thoth-Hermes-Mercury. His
invention-conversion to Yahweh did not eradicate the Hermetic qualities
that took deep root during his Egyptian years. His great and versatile
skills gave him a reputation throughout the ancient world for being a
veritable Hermes.

Julian Jaynes has developed a theory that the human race, for a period of
time extending up to the classical period, was of two minds, one rational
and pragmatic (corresponding to the traits of the left hemisphere of the
brain) and the other mind hallucinatory and occupied by gods who talked to
men and appeared before them (corresponding to the traits of the right
side of the brain) [2]. Moses, he said, was an archetype of this type of
mind. The hallucinations are of a type well-known in psychiatry, often if
not always associated with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. This is
true, I think, and also Moses was much more than Yahweh, and maintained a
pragmatic balance that brought him great and justified fame as a scientist
and leader,

There is much to be said for Jaynes' theory. Its analytic side is in line
with what is advanced in these pages, and I have elsewhere pointed out
that the complex membrane dividing the two lobes of the cerebrum, the
corpus callosum, may well be the site of schizoid behavior; in fact, I
have hypothesized that behavior which is specifically human has occurred
because of a possible physiological-psychosomatic microsecond block in
transfers of information and impulses through the corpus callosum; this
delay would constitute an instinct block and therefore would promote human
self-awareness, reflection, and the feeling of talking to oneself, whence
one hallucinates others as well [3].

Jaynes was not able to cope with the historical materials, largely because
he relied upon conventional ancient history and chronology. As a result,
he was put into a position where he had to perceive just the opposite of
the actual process. He says that the "bicameral mind" as he terms it,
finally broke down because world-conditions became unsettled and the gods
that had satisfied the needs of the hallucinators such as Moses lost face.
In reality it was the catastrophes of the world whose terrible stresses
made hallucinatory leaders out of borderline cases and staunch believers
out of normal people. (And elsewhere Jaynes makes this very point.) There
is every reason to believe that long cycles of history occurred before the
time of Exodus and Moses when there were "golden ages" of Saturn and
Elohim, whose central and celebrated significance was the reduced role
permitted to mosaic characters, that is, reduced schizotypical behavior.

Yet, as one studies Moses as a person, it is plain that his peculiarities
as a human being are remarkably well reflected in Yahweh as a god. If
Yahweh were given a worldly childhood and experience, like some gods and
god-heroes, instead of being presented full-blown, they could be like the
childhood and experience of Moses. If Yahweh were extinguished from
Biblical history as a god and become a kind of sequestered ruler speaking
only through Moses, he might appear inexplicably incoherent, stupid,
non-revealing of his motives and reasons and of his knowledge of the
world. Moses would be continually besought by his people to seize the name
and authority of the hidden power.

One is placed in a tight logical-psychological corner here. Speaking now
for persons bred in cultures colored by mosaism, one's conception of a
father is Moses' conception and is also, in fact, Moses. So when one says
Moses is like a father, and is also like Yahweh, who is the father, one is
measuring a standard by the standard itself.

One has to make a very simple statement, which sets up a very different
anthropological perspective, namely: "I would not want Moses, hence
Yahweh, for my father." When asked "Why?" one responds in the pragmatic
manner: "Because I do not like the consequences." Then one lists those
experiences that emanate from fathers like Moses-Yahweh. Those that evolve
from other kinds of fathers are possibly better; in any event, one rejects
the mosaic consequences.

THE NAME OF YAHWEH

Recently circles of biblical scholarship were agitated by some newly
uncovered tablets of the ancient city of Ebla in Northern Syria that were
reported to contain the name "Ya." If this were a contraction of "Yahweh,"
it might be Moses' Yahweh, and place the god several centuries earlier
than we have him here. One of Moses' inventions would be struck from our
list. More lately, it appears that the syllable might have had several
usages in the Semitic languages, and that no single tie with Moses' Yahweh
has appeared [4].

There is some likelihood, however, that Moses derived the name from the
Midianites or another tribe thereabouts when he was in exile. Buber, for
instance, says that Yahweh may be related to "Ya-hu," that is "O He!" of
the Dervishes and that this cry occurs once in Genesis during the
blessings of Jacob [5]. The name is not foreign to Genesis; Abraham uses
it, but more commonly used is Elohim, and most likely, Yahweh was
implanted in the Book of Genesis by Moses or Yahwist editors [6].

A suggestion can be made that would lend integrity to such an assertion.
In the years of the grandson of Adam, "men began to call upon the name of
Yahweh." I make the identification, as have others elsewhere, of Yahweh
with gods of lightning and fire, such as Zeus and Jove, and I place the
beginnings of the great electrical gods around the time of Adam and Eve,
replacing Elohim and Saturn. Yahweh may have been inserted into Genesis to
claim his own from times long past.

Ziegler maintains that "the original god of the Hebrews at the Exodus was
Zeus." The Greeks change H to E and final H to S. (Jeremiah is Jeremias).
The "Y" was originally a "Z". Thus YHWH becomes ZEWS or ZEUS, and with the
erroneous transliteration of Y for J, "Jews." The Etruscan-Roman case,
"Jove," pronounced "Yowe" is so close to Yahweh that the Roman Jupiter may
be considered as basically the same entity [7].

Another theory holds that Moses framed the word from Egyptian roots,
meaning "I am." Egyptian was familiar to all Hebrews and was Moses' native
tongue. A Jewish legend says that Yahweh's first word when he announced
the Decalogue was Egyptian: "Anoki!" ("It is I") [8]. The Bible has Yahweh
announcing the well-known "I am that I am" from the Burning Bush. The
phrase has been played upon endlessly, which is what a religious phrase
should be and do for people. Moses is given to understand this when he
asks Yahweh for more concrete identification, and it is denied him.

Let me now assemble the name of Yahweh in the context of this book. Moses,
learned as he was, had known the syllable "Ya"; he heard it, and also
other compound words including it, in Egypt and then in Midian among the
Kenites and the nearby tribes. It was a godword, part of various sacred
epithets. He heard a sound very much like "Yahweh" streaming with light
from the Burning Bush. This is the essence of god, he thought; it is the
name of god and is hinted at in all the "ya" syllables that I have heard.

Now he asks what it is, and "Yahweh ehweh" is heard. This makes sense. "I
am that I am." "I am the great I am." I am It!" "I am the essential
principle." Not the principle of light alone. It is already sound and
light. It is the activity of the skies and earthly nature. It is the main
and primary manifestation. It is connected with the old gods as well.

Yahweh tells Moses: "Say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to
you... Yahweh, the God of your fathers... has sent me to you: this is my
name forever and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.
"[9]

Then Yahweh tells Moses that his plea before the Pharaoh is to lead the
Israelites thither to worship him. Unless Moses convinces the Hebrews that
they should worship Yahweh [10] and that this will be the way that they
will be able to break through to freedom, and unless he is ready to give
the Pharaoh a good reason for their leaving Egypt, after so many years of
sacrificing within Egypt, his plan will not work. He must therefore tie in
Elohim, whom both Hebrews and Egyptians acknowledge, with Yahweh. So
Yahweh is a very new god of special manifestations and a concrete task to
perform: getting Moses through the specific obstacles on both sides to an
Exodus.

Hence, Moses was the inventor of Yahweh in every meaningful sense of an
invention, no invention ever being unprecedented and quite new. Merely to
imagine that it would be possible to propose a new god to the world was
audacious and brilliant. Yahweh is explicitly new, yet another name, as
Yahweh says, for the old god of the Hebrews. His name dwells most
precisely on the mercy seat of the Ark, and then in the place in the
temple chosen by him. With negligible exceptions he speaks only to and
through Moses.

Moses invents Israel as well, in the sense that he takes a nickname given
to Jacob after Jacob has wrestled with God or the Angel of God, and
attaches it to the descendents of Jacob and the initiates into the new
Yahwist Israelite group led by Moses himself. The term is translated
variously as "the god-fighter " "God fights,"[11] "the god who battles,"
or "god rules." [12] Israelites were then "the people of the fighting
god." Yahweh is of course a bellicose god, so the name is apt, and both
"Israel" and "Yahweh" become battle cries of the newly founded nation.

The idea that the Jews never spoke the name YHWH seems to me preposterous.
The name was inutterable simply because its authentic voice came only from
the Ark of the Covenant. When the time came that the Ark was rarely
functional, the name became secret. The name of "Amen" had the same
history; presumably the Egyptian pyramids, too, were no longer displaying
or sounding the god's name; whereupon it was said that Amon hid himself -
not of course from all prayers and enunciations to which the response is
"Amen."

Does not the idea that YHWH has the electric name of god when he spoke
through the noise of the ark contradict the very Third Commandment that
says: "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain?" Of this,
Ziegler says, "with the idea of YHWH as an electrical discharge, there are
at least three possible reasons for the commandment. First, there might
have been a danger of injury to those using the power indiscriminately.
Second, its use might have allowed the enemies of Israel to obtain this
secret, Third, a frequent use of the power might discourage the worship of
it."[13] Or at least, so Moses thought at the time. Actually the ark
ceased to speak as YHWH when the electric age ended - around 600 B.C. -
and the substitute notion arose that the commandment referred to the human
voice not uttering the word YHWH, because it was the name of God[14].

Moses was concerned with law and order, and therefore with blasphemy. The
Douay (R.C.) Bible adds abruptly to the Third Commandment: "For the Lord
will not leave unpunished him who takes his name in vain."[15] The
Jerusalem Bible (also R.C.) renders the verse as banning utterance of the
name of Yahweh to misuse it (that is, maliciously or for unholy purposes).

Ziegler argues that "we are warned against effecting the sign or signature
of the powerful YHWH. More specifically here, the Third Commandment
forbids us without good reason to discharge an electric arc with its
accompanying flash of light and noise. It is believed here that this
discharge is the name of God, YHWH."[16] Later on the sound becomes a word
and then a secret word, for the sound has gone.

Cassuto gives this version of the Commandment: "You shall not take up the
name of the Lord your God for unreality, for the Lord will not hold him
guiltless who takes His name for unreality."[17] I think that Cassuto's
version gives us the clue for expatiating fully the commandment.

The word is the thing. We face here the crux of the ancient philosophical
debate between the "realists" and "nominalists," Platonists and
Aristotelians. (Primitive, untrained thinkers, and religious devotees are
generally realists; the word is a sacred entity and not to be used as a
mere tool nor certainly for deliberate blasphemy.) The thing, by reverse
(and incorrect) logic, is the word, and especially the sounded name, for
the most ancient sacred associations of things and sounds came before the
written word.

The electrical discharge is the voice (as well as the vision) of Yahweh,
and, in the Ark, the name of Yahweh. Blasphemy is any assertion that the
sound of Yahweh is unreal and does not exist, and by inference that the
name is an inconsequential incident; and by extension blasphemy is also
any assertion that the name can be used for purposes other than harkening
to the emanations from the sole source of the authentic God on the Ark.
For common people, the sin of blasphemy is ordinarily a denial of the
reality of the word, or ridicule of it.

Bearing in mind this anthropological and psychological process, one can
understand how the cult of the secret name of god developed and how the
common sin and crime of blasphemy evolved.

Does not the design of the Ark contradict the second commandment: it says
"You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of
anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that
is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve
them.." This is altogether strange since the Lord also commands that Moses
make the Tabernacle and the Ark "after the pattern for them, which is
being shown you on the mountain." And the Ark even carries two cherubim.
The Ark itself was duplicated at a later time by a private person and
carried off by the tribe of Dan. The answer is, of course, "I am a jealous
god," who reserves the right to spot and destroy possible competitors,
such as the Golden Calf

The cherubim were almost surely recognizable likenesses of living things,
although Cassuto apologized that since they were composites of more than
one being, they were not to be banned. He surmises that "on the kapporeth
[the lid or mercy seat] there was not sufficient room for two images of
quadrupeds, and it appears that the cherubim on it were erect figures,
like the cherubim of Ezekiel's visions and those of Solomon's Temple [18].
R.W. Moss also believed them to be winged human figures [19]. The mention
of quadruped is logical, inasmuch as many winged bulls and other animals
are to be found of the same general period throughout the Near East, The
word "cherubim" itself seems related to an Assyrian word for the winged
bull.

Yahweh was a ground force sometimes exhibiting himself, but ruled the
heavens invisibly. By keeping Yahweh as a heavenly god, under a new name,
and invisible, Moses could avoid choosing among the specific historical
heavenly gods. Moreover, Yahweh must not be identified with a heavenly
body, for a good reason; the heavenly body could not be controlled or
possessed uniquely by the Jews, that is, by Moses,

As time passed and the name of YHWH disappeared along with his image in
electrical form and his burning of the altar-offerings, the Jews might
have been expected to bring back images, especially of YHWH. But here we
may call into play Freud's concept of instinctual renunciation which he
applies to the self-denial of holy image-making [20]. This refusal of the
strong urge to reproduce the forms of the deity was probably built up in
the mosaic period and later on maintained by the compulsive repetition of
the highly ritualistic religion, with discipline maintained by the
priesthood. Referring to Max Weber's analysis of rabbinical Judaism, we
may speculate that any image of

Yahweh would have to represent some other culture's image and therefore
violate the "pariah" tendencies of the Jews.

Yahweh and Moses made the Jews a lonely people, isolated, not sharing
other gods, as other nations did whenever they so desired for purposes of
international amity and communication of sentiments. This was a source of
pain to many Jews, as it was a source of pride to others. Many more Jews
chose other gods than other people chose Yahweh. No wonder, then, that the
Jews as a group never could fulfill the promises of Yahweh that they would
multiply in vast numbers. Moses' deep aversiveness to humanity determined
in the beginning of Israel that this should be so.

THE CHARACTER OF YAHWEH

Yahweh says and Yahweh does. What he says consists of describing himself,
expressing his emotions, relating what he has done, instructing as to what
must be done, and foretelling what he will do. In describing the
hallucinatory voices of schizophrenic patients, Jaynes stresses that they
speak "often in short sentences."[21] They command, yell, curse, and
consult. They are sometimes rythmical. The abrupt commands of Yahweh, his
great noises, curses, and marvelously clear consultative advice enrich the
verses of the Books of Moses. The lack of explanation is typical of both
hallucinatory voices and of Yahweh's words. One must wonder whether the
halluci- natory patients have learned through mosaism to speak like Yahweh
or Moses is the prototype of hallucinators.

All that Yahweh says is in an absolutely authoritative mood. This includes
those expressions which comment upon behavior that is against his will or
interests; one learns of the crime when Yahweh refers to it and considers
what punishment to meet out, without trial, of course. This last kind of
behavior is presumably an exercise of "free will" on the part of Israelite
believers or non-believers or on the part of gentile non-believers. They
have the uniquely human ability to obey or disobey him. It is a
totalitarian system in that no human act is done outside of his
jurisdiction or without religious meaning. A secular sphere does not exist
for him.

What Yahweh does, supplementing what he says, is to cause all things to
happen, even expressions of disobedience coming out of "free will", in the
sense that if he wished to do so, he could make people will what he wanted
them to will. He is thus all-powerful, even against free will. Sometimes,
as with Pharaoh, Yahweh plays a mean game with people, forcing them to be
bad so that he can punish them more. "I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and
though I multiply my signs and wonders..., he will not listen to you."[22]

He even asserts a power to be bad, to do evil. He is not bound by notions
of good or evil. "Who makes peace and creates evil, I Yahweh do all
this."[23] Speaking through the prophet, Ezekiel, Yahweh proclaims of
Israel: "I defiled them through their very gifts in making them offer by
fire all their first-born, that I might horrify them: I did it that they
might know that I am Yahweh."[24] Nor is he bound by promises and laws or
a principle of consistency. Thus he is unlike Zeus, as Eliade Points
out.[25] He is in this sense, like Moses, charismatic, above the rules.

Although he causes all things to happen, only selective actions of Yahweh
are described. Yahweh acts in categories set up almost always by his
worshippers, rarely by non-believers or opportunists outside of Israel. He
rules the heavenly host, destroys nations, feeds Israel, punishes friend
and foe, and so on; he wills all natural forces and especially great or
unusual natural forces.

Particular actions are of the same kind, but deal with special cases that
come to his attention, such as punishing a named person or giving a sign
at a certain time and place or appearing on the mercy seat of the Ark, or
sending down manna or causing all East wind to blow. As with his speech,
all that he does is likewise in an authoritative mood.

Can one then slip in a substitute word for Yahweh such as "nature" and
read the Exodus and wanderings as natural history? If one uses the word
"nature" or "a natural force," can one then also eliminate all
anthropomorphic or metaphorical references? Such would be, for example,
reading only the first three words from "Smoke went up from his
nostrils..."etc[26] Perhaps, yet one must not dismiss metaphor. In a
certain broad sense all lan- guage originated metaphorically, and further,
one can often find a fact through the metaphor used to describe it. If
Yahweh (Nature) melts mountains like wax, it may be that sudden eruptive
thermal melting is occurring, producing the viscous appearance and
softness of wax. Or, whenever Yahweh "appears," is it to be taken as
metaphor? A god who is everywhere, omnipresent, cannot "appear" in one
place; he was already there; or, logically, since nothing is beyond him,
he can appear, even in seeming contradiction to himself.

No, Yahweh is not Nature animated. And he is not metaphor (unless
hallucination is metaphor, which in a way it is but in a way that is
irrelevant here). The activities of nature - especially the powerful,
disastrous and brutal forces - are contained within the sum total of
activities - moral, social, political, and military - of a hallucinated,
all-powerful man.

But then, in the end, all words and deeds are but weak tools to describe
one to whom the absolutes of presence, knowledge, power, and activity are
assigned. One either makes of blind faith a virtue or brings to bear the
tools of psychiatry. A logical exposition of Yahweh's mental labyrinth is
impossible. It is the ghost of Moses' mentation.

A religion cannot come to be without voices sacredly and definitively
authorized to speak accurately on behalf of the god; therefore, it has to
be presumed that Moses, who claims and is accorded such credentials, is
speaking the truth about Yahweh. Yet Moses himself is but a delegate of
limited instructions, and often repairs to Yahweh for further orders or
clarification. But Yahweh, the absolute one, knows that, at best, Moses is
only a superior human; that is, Moses is still a weak reed to lean upon
for establishing godly rule among a portion of the human race.

And, as for the Jews as a body of people, Yahweh has little confidence or
trust in them, and the grounds on which he has chosen them as his
"peculiar treasure" are indefinite, to say the least. The choice seems to
have been practically a random act of grace on his part.

An outside observer can scarcely be faulted, then, if he feels himself
racing giddily in a circular trap, with his every attempt to question a
fact or a cause being referred back to an absolute quality which respects
neither fact nor cause. He can only cease his anxious circlings, he is
assured, if he accepts to believe, or if he is coerced into non-believing
acceptance. Accepts what? Authority, of course, and please do not begin
circling around again in search of the justification of authority. That is
merely another circle around Yahweh.

Are the words and actions of Yahweh such and only such as would emerge
front the delusionary projections of Moses? Generally, yes, and nothing
important comes other than through the screen of Moses or through the
operations of nature. Are all the events that occupy the perceiving
apparatuses of the speaker(s) of the Pentateuch - Moses and all the
preceding rememberers and all those who have worked upon the materials
after Moses - possible or probable when appraised by the rules for testing
the occurrence of events that are laid down by social and natural
scientists? Again the answer is yes. The "unscientific miracles" that are
left to explain are few and casual, not worth explaining, one might say. I
am not here denying the great mysteries of existence, I merely assert that
these are in no wise explained by the Pentateuch-Torah: Moses and mosaists
are not theologians, much less philosophers.

Those who accept such scientific answers do not generally find themselves
less in control of themselves and of the world about them, and less happy,
than those who have accepted the authoritative complex of Yahwism or have
resigned themselves to the coercion to accept the same. That this should
be generally believed, even among psychologists after the manner of
William James, does not make it so. It is ordinary to feel, when anxious,
that "the grass grows greener on the other side of my fence." I would not
deny, however, that one day a religion might be invented that would
deliver a delusional system that would make humankind happier than even a
dependence upon truth and consequences.

SIN VS SCIENCE

If Moses is a scientist, a great inventor, why does he not hallucinate a
god who is recognizably a scientist? Yahweh writes; he organizes lists or
rules; he keeps books; and little else that is technical; he is the
product, not the fountainhead of the science of Moses. Yahweh, though, is
an unlimited, ungoverned power. Being a great scientist is certainly
sometimes a strong fantasy and even can be hallucinated, but the urge to
know is subordinate to the urge of power. The urge to power was
exceedingly strong in Moses, for reasons and in ways already put forward.
Further, hallucinations generally fulfill a role that is absent in the
person, not one that is satisfied.

Everybody had always said that Moses was a supremely intelligent person.
But that was not enough. They also withheld from him, partly because his
demands were so excessive, the power that he wanted. Only god could give
him that, so Moses, the archetypical mad scientist, invented a god.

This invented god is full of instructions but is a perfectly bad model for
a teacher. He rarely connects things causally. He rarely explains. He
simply asserts and commands. That is quite satisfactory for Moses who has
no love for his pupils, and, more and more, wishes them simply to memorize
and obey.

Moses' Yahweh begins as a set of creative miracles coming out of Moses'
science and his cooperation with and exploitation of nature. Then, owing
to the rush of catastrophe, what begins as a fairytale ends in a monstrous
takeover by wild natural forces. Yahweh becomes catastrophic. Yahweh
symbolizes the most terrible memories.

Moses is changing his own character, though in directions pointed out by
his earlier character. Yahweh is accompanying

this change with changes in his character. Every attempt is made by Moses,
the Bible, the people, to assemble and reorder their minds in the process
and aftermath of the natural catastrophe of Exodus. Moses' mind and to a
quintessential degree that of Yahweh moves towards severity, punishment,
and order. As much as must be forgotten and reassembled, that much is to
be converted into sin, blame, and chastisement.

The invention of a punishing god is to help people to remember lessons of
unity and ethnicity. "Early Israel was the dominion of Yahweh, consisting
of all those diverse lineages, clans, individuals, and other social
segments that, under the covenant, had accepted the rule of Yahweh and
simultaneously had rejected the domination of the various local kings and
their tutelary deities - the baalem."[27]

To recall the slogan: "Yahweh brought you up from Egypt," is to recall
slavery and catastrophe. And it is also to recall simultaneously Moses. So
the edifice of history and religion is the private property and power of
Moses. In the famous formula of Harold Lasswell: the power-driven man
displaces his private motives upon public objects, and rationalizes the
displacement in terms of the public interest [28].

Moses needs a god of power - nothing very much else. Once Moses has his
god, and that god has become identified with a catastrophe, then the god
has to be the center of a cult of power centered around the expiation of
disaster. For Moses, and therefore Yahweh, there is no other route, and
for the people who became Israel there was no escape, no turning back to
the call of Egypt, no popular vote on what type of character Yahweh should
be, no fairytale religion except in the underground of their popular
legends, no evasion of his rule. The continuous disastrous circumstances
of nature and society, beginning in Egypt and ending generations later,
reinforced the authority of the god that the people had taken, for better
or for worse, as their spouse (as the prophet Hosea would call the
relationship). Not even by turning whore (again using Hosea's image) could
Israel escape the claims of its husband, and indeed suffered the mosaic
penalty for adultery, death.

It is not hard to prove the primary obsessions of the Books of Moses. One
can examine, even if summarily, the amount of declaiming about sin, guilt
and compulsion that occurs in their pages. Should the reader at this point
complain that everybody knows this to be true, I would grant that most may
know it but few have the nerve and stomach to bear it in mind. As their
part of the general trend of scholars and ministers to make the Bible
unthreatening, by erasing the natural catastrophes, and by "humanizing"
Moses, they also downgrade or dismiss its obvious impact and look in it
for sweet and rare words like love. Buber's elaborate Index to his life of
Moses contains no references to sin, guilt, blame, or punishment. Nor does
the equally detailed Index of Daiches.

The major concordances of the Bible list references and passages to all
except minor words. If we look into a concordance to see how often certain
significant words are used in the Books of Moses, we shall find them in
context. Should we count the references to sin, guilt, punishment,
coercion and enemies, and then their contraries of love and friendship, we
might test our impression that aggression in its various forms
overbalances affection in the Books of Moses. And, as Table 11 shows, so
it does. Overwhelmingly. In the two concordances, based upon two different
translations, differences occur. But both versions agree emphatically at
all important points.

The five books of Moses carry from eight to twenty times as many
accusatory, demanding, punitive and hostile references as they do
affectionate and friendly ones. If Genesis is removed from the calculation
on grounds that it was mostly inherited by Moses from the earlier Hebrew
religion and incorporated partly to bolster his claim to base Yahwism upon
the "god of the fathers," then the extreme misanthropism of mosaism
becomes all the more evident [29]. Love and friendship are absolutely
wanting in Moses himself, if this statistical indicator possesses any
validity.

To search out additional evidence, we can fashion another kind of sample,
this time the first verse that appears on every upper left hand corner of
every page of the Oxford Bible. Of the Pentateuch, there are 262 pages and
therefore a sample of 262 verses. Statistically the sample approaches
randomness and adequacy, so that what is represented in the 262 verses is
probably close to what is contained in the whole. We judge in each case
whether the statement does or does not directly involve sin, blame, or
compulsion. Table III reveals the findings.

Sin is guiltiness and is defined as an ascribed quality of deserving
punishment, implicitly or explicitly stated, and attached to an action.
Blame is the assignment of guilt or sin or evil to a person or object
involved in an action. Compulsion is a holy penalty established in the
verse or referred explicitly to its being provided elsewhere for this
described action.

TABLE II

Affection and Aggression in the Books of Moses

Explicit wortds of  Strong's  Concordance  Presbyterian Concordance

Books of Moses     5 Books     Genesis            5 Books        Genesis
of Moses      only             of Moses         only

Love, Loved, Loves
Lovest, Loving      41             15               52           14

Guilt, Guilty       16              1                66           2

Must                17              4                24          11

Lest                CA             17                22            1

Anger, Angry        43              7                66          12

Obey, Obedient,
Obedience           21              3                12           5

Sin, Sinned, Sins,
Sinning, Sinners,
Sinful, Sinneth    204              8               179           6

Enemy, Enemies      58              3                64           6

Friend, Friends      5              3                12           5

Sources: James Strong, Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1963) based on the Authorized Version; and the Living Bible
Concordance, J.A. Speer, ed., Poolesville, Md.: Presbyterian Church, 1973,
based on K.N. Taylor's (Paraphrased) Bible, 1972.

Half of the Books of Moses, we would conclude, is devoted to alleging sin,
casting blame, or inflicting and threatening punishment. Very few of the
balance of actions are concerned with love, neighborliness, mutual help,
sowing and reaping, or the like. The rest is mainly comings and goings.
The catastrophes of Genesis such as the Deluge and others less definitely
treated are long gone into thousands of years of tradition. Moses copied
Genesis; he lived and wrote the essentials of Exodus, and the other books
are in a way commentaries upon Exodus or extensions of it. Hence they
reflect his character.

We can observe that little place is left in mosaism for an honest mistake
or an error in judgement, There are no means of discriminating between
pragmatic and sacred action. This is truly primitive or, better,
traumatized; practically everything is within the grasp of religion. It
reveals, too, how profoundly Moses had changed from a scientific genius;
to all intents and purposes, apart from his bag of techniques, Moses had
become a wholly obsessed, hallucinatory, punitive theocrat.

TABLE III

Sin, Blame, and compulsion

Book          Actions involving               All other verses
Sin, Blame, or
Compulsion

Genesis           18 = 27%                              48
Exodus            32 = 58%                              23
Leviticus         30 = 79%                               8
Numbers           19 = 35%                              35
Deuteronomy       26 = 53%                              23

Total            125 = 48%                            137

Those who profess a Christian, Moslem or Judaic mosaism, or who are
subjected to mosaic education in the contemporary world number some 1.3
billions, a third of the world's people. The history of Europe and the
Near East has been deeply affected by mosaic conduct and ideas for 1900
years - since the Christians let them out of the bag, so to say.

There should not be so many mosaists in history if the momentum of mosaism
came only from Moses. That is, people have had within themselves, as a
product of their genesis and ancient history, a capacity for grasping and
becoming Mosaists and Yahwists. They can become something else - and
obviously most people who have ever lived were something else - but not
something so different that they are freed in utero or in culture from the
possibility of lending themselves, as leaders or fol- lowers, to mosaism.
The human is catastrophically constructed and prone to a kind of
schizotypical behavior.

What universally appealing features can make mosaists of normal humans?
First there is the world out of control: the heavy anxiety in the face of
disturbed nature and nations creates the need for psychological, if not
actual, control and security. In ancient history, and still today, nations
imitate nature. There is a constant interplay of metaphor between the two:
rulers and winds are strong; saviors and suns bring illumination; and so
on into hundreds of parallels. When we have "Gott mit uns" we feel a
control over both our human problems and our natural problems.

Mosaism very clearly places gods on earth among us. It establishes a
worldly god who is interested in the smallest details of our existence, so
as to control us; but we are controlling him (little does he know) by
occupying him with our problems. A jealous god, like a jealous lover, is a
prisoner of his chosen one. This limitation of, or demand upon, the
divinity is most useful for the organization of primitive political power
and of political power primitively. If people look elsewhere than within
the fabric of their conscience for their god, the rulers cannot so neatly
use him.

Further, the insistence upon a single god, monotheism, pyramids the
possibilities of employing the one god for the purpose of absolute social
control. There has been a great god in most cultures and the erosion of
his powers is fought in order that power may be more concentrated in the
hands of rulers. Monotheism simplifies the monopoly of authority and
totalitarian rule.

Inasmuch as societies have not discovered how to exploit the mines of
human energy without coercion and oppression, they may find in mosaism an
ample and simple ideology of sin, blame, and coercion. Unconsciously,
sincerely, and manipulatively, the power to speak in the name of a single,
absolute, demanding and unbound god is a very great power; it leaks into
politics, family relations, work groups, and every other sphere of life,
with plenty of power to spare: it is theoretically unlimited.

When, to this power, is attached the logic of sin, blame, compulsion, and
punishment, the power is greater and more effective. Thus occurs the
formula: Yahweh has an interest in all your actions; all your actions are
good or bad; that is, either demanded by or prohibited by him. If you fail
to be good, you can expect punishment now or later, and punishment then is
never a surprise, for the storing up of evil is great in you. If you do
good and suffer, this is for a past misdeed, even as Moses was kept from
the Promised Land by an obscure fault.

Even the most heinous deeds are in the name of Yahweh or are committed as
a punishment by him. Sacrifice to Yahweh of the first-born of children and
cattle was originally proclaimed as the price of his guiding the
Israelites out of Egypt. It is avoided or discontinued by Moses by the
expedient of dedicating the Levites as substitutes for the sacrifice, the
cost being obedience to the Levites. The duty of such sacrifices remains
as a holy theoretical obligation. Exceptional killings of offspring occur
in the royal families of Judah and Israel, and elsewhere.

The gruesome passages on infanticide and cannibalism in Deuteronomy
(28:53-75) are put into the future tense. However, it is not reasonable to
believe that the prophets, in accord with what scholars say often, told
history in foretelling events, whereas the Deuteronomist had no historical
sense when foretelling events. Both recited history. The terrible memories
of sieges and famines erupt in the present tense. We stress here that the
people are assured that they were condemned to commit these acts because
of their disobedience to Yahweh.

Again, as we said earlier, the concept of absolute, peak obedience to
Yahweh makes all other crimes pale into insignificance, and all evil
actions are capable of losing their criminal quality. Moses could commit
his frightful actions because they were in the name of Yahweh. When any
and all crime can be justified if attributed to a god, then secular
authority will not lag far behind. Rarely is an action mentioned that is
good, either pragmatically and socially or religiously; much less is it
praised. A dreadful negativism pervades the Pentateuch or Torah.

All of this is helpful in controlling a population without their consent.
At any instant, the criminal or charitable or pragmatic (useful) nature of
an action may be altered; the psychological bind in which a person finds
himself is obvious, as is the inherent connection with schizophrenic
training, where Moses is the trainer.

The connection with ritual becomes manifest here as well. One reaction to
contradictory and inexplicable behavior of authorities is catatonism. The
person dares not move in any direction. To reestablish control over this
numbed mind, highly explicit and numerous behaviors are prescribed; life
processes become ritualized.

Moses inaugurated an obsessive ritualism, that was to be perpetuated over
the generations by the succession of priests. The signal quality of
obsession, which can begin with the obsession of sin, is that it provides
a compulsiveness to behavior. That is, once put on the treadmill of
obsessive-compulsive conduct, the person cannot get off of it. If a
population behaves so, the rulers know at any given moment where the
people are and what they are doing. They will not become friendly with
foreign people, as at Beth-Peor; they will not be running up to the high
places and behaving licentiously,

as the Yahwist prophets later complain. They will be working
painstakingly, guiltily, and reserving the Sabbath for Yahweh. There is
this to be said on the positive side of mosaism, but only from a
psychological and not from an ethical or religious viewpoint. By keeping
people eternally in pain and guilt, with a sense of being continually
observed by the kind of mean father that Moses conjured, there would be
produced not only many mad-persons but also some unusual number of
geniuses. For creative, driving genius is a kind of malady of deviance
that can win freedom from mosaism but cannot win freedom from the
watchfulness, self-consciousness, restless movement, and obsessiveness
that had been inculcated by mosaic training.

Unfortunately for mankind, more humanistic and pragmatic forms of
pedagogy, as in classical China and Greece, Augustan Rome, Medieval Islam,
Renaissance Italy, and the centers of nineteenth-twentieth century science
- including always the formidable humanistic Judaic contribution - have
had only small constituencies, and are always in danger, whether from some
extended form of mosaism or another religiously founded authority-formula.

IMMORTALITY

In Yahwism, life after death is a matter for legends and rabbinical
speculation. Moses is given a guided tour of all the wonders of heaven
says one story, while he is supposed to be on Mt. Sinai elaborating
designs for the Israelite camp and carving the tablets of the Decalogue.
But the Bible, more correct as to Moses' mentality, has Yahweh visiting
face-to-face, "mouth-to-mouth," with Moses on solid ground.

Yahweh does not grant immortality nor even comment upon it. Death is
everywhere in the Books of Moses, and death is final. There is no
intimation that Moses believes in heaven as an abode for the souls of the
departed or as a place for terrestrial visitors, nor for that matter does
Moses believe in a hell or a sheol, where the dead may receive punishment
or purgation.

This lapsus on Moses' part is strange. First, one might think that so
ambitious a man would find a place where he might continue his mission
after death. Whether he would have received the inspiration from Egyptian,
Hebrew, or Mesopotamian sources, he might have felt the need to project
himself into a prolonged relationship to Yahweh. Further, it might have
consoled his people "in the land... of the shadow of death"[30] to provide
a place for at least the better among them in heaven, and it might have
helped him to control the people were he able to assure them, as did later
Christian mosaists, of burning in hell-fires for their wrong-doing to
Yahweh-Moses while they were alive.

Various explanations occur to us. Moses was in need of immediate
obedience, not in allowing a lifetime of choices to qualify for heaven or
hell. "Obey, or be burnt now!" is rather obviously his theme, whether
addressed to individuals or to all of Israel. On the annual Day of
Atonement, one goat is burnt before Yahweh and another, the scape-goat, is
heaped with the sins of all the people and loosed into the wilderness to
find his way to Azazel, the evil demon. Atonement is earthly, too. Moses
would have felt threatened with the loss of control of the people, if each
had come to think of himself according to Plato's vision as destined to
occupy one of the myriad of stars.

Moses is intent upon conquering an earthly Promised Land where Israel may
dwell in material comfort and seek to please Yahweh. "The God he
discovered was eventually a protecting lawgiver who enunciated comments to
the people in their own interests, not in the interests of their eternal
salvation, for such a concept was quite foreign to Moses' way of thinking,
but in the interests of their earthly welfare [31].

This nationalistic goal would be rendered vague and even unessential, if a
heavenly goal and immortality were projected as well. Perhaps he believed
in an eternal nation, with endless religious and blood descent, whose
people would fulfill their need for immortality in the transmission of
Yahweh along the lines of their descent as the Chosen People, "the
Peculiar Treasure" of Yahweh.

There is another side to this matter of the Chosen People. Yahweh commands
the destruction of all peoples who stand in the way of his "children." The
limits of their territory, it may be argued, are those of the Jordan
Valley and Canaan; but the directive is without limits, according to
another argument. Since even related tribes come under the annihilating
directive, thanks to the monopoly the Israelites allow themselves in the
use of the Ineffable Name, one would have to conceive of a special heaven
for Israelites only. This invites theological problems, and we know that,
as Neher points out, Moses was adverse to such. Later on, Christian and
Muslim sects would produce the theologians to invent exclusive heavens for
their true believers.

Moses himself would probably not care for such a heaven, no matter how
thinly populated by select yahwists such as Aaron, Joshua and himself,
some of the people of Israel, of whom he has little good to say, might by
some independent judgement of Yahweh, find their way there. He would not
like his decision-making powers to lapse, and, if they were tendered to
him ad infinitem, heaven would soon be cleared, and hell full.

These musings may not be in vain, because ultimately they lead us to a
hard theory. Moses, we have stressed, possesses a catastrophist mentality
and an earthly mission; he has no interest in preserving the souls of the
people of Israel. If one were to judge by the many times that he
prophesies for them, and threatens them with, total destruction for their
failures in respect to himself and Yahweh, one might guess that he fully
expected the world, or at least the world of the Jews, to go up in flames
and destruction at any time. And certainly, he would believe that, upon
his own demise, and deprived of his leadership, the chances of their
prompt destruction would be greatly increased.

Can we go one step farther and say that Moses harbored the wish, not very
deep below the surface of his consciousness, that the Chosen People be
destroyed? Yahweh occasionally toys with the idea. In the Revolt of the
Golden Calf, Yahweh says of Israel: "Let me alone, that my wrath may burn
hot against them and I may consume them; but of you I will make a great
nation."[32] But when Moses remarked that he would lose face with the
Egyptians, and that he should remember his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and
Israel [Jacob], Yahweh repented and forebore to kill them all.

Again, quoted by Ezekiel [33], because they profaned the sabbaths and
walked not in his laws, Yahweh says: "I promise to pour out my fury upon
them in the wilderness, in order to exterminate them." He withholds his
hand: "But I acted for the sake of my own name that [it] might not be
profaned before the eyes of the nations, before whose eyes I had brought
them forth." Again, too, a vulgar regard for public opinion.

This catastrophic wish and its related belief disposes of the problem of
immortality. Like many a sick and dying person, and like many otherwise
normal persons, Moses wanted to take the world with him. Or, if he refused
to entertain such a notion, he would expect and prophesy such an event.
Then there would be no problem of immorality; the solution would be total.
Neither Moses nor Yahweh, when they argue the question of extirpating the
Israelites, wonders how to go about judging their merits and assigning
them a place in the afterlife.

I would conclude, until otherwise instructed, that Moses carried like a
great lump with him an obsessive idea: when Moses dies, Israel must die
with him. Reinforcing his obsession was the unconscious appreciation that
Yahweh also must die with Moses.

Moses did not grow kinder with age; the obsession would have become more
and more difficult to suppress and conceal; it might ultimately have
contributed to the cause of his death - by a flying stone, by shock, by
accident, by abandonment, by physical removal from office, by execution.
Then, despite his unconscious wishes, Yahweh, mosaism, and Israel did
survive. As the psychological imprints of Moses, they survived.

The brand of Moses and Yahweh upon the character and history of the Jews
carries this sadism into a corresponding masochism of self-destruction. No
matter how successful in mundane terms, no matter how let to live in
peace, they were haunted by the fear

that they would be destroyed as a people. It is of course part of the
tragic game that they should be encouraged by their religion and leaders
to believe that this destruction is the desire and intent of the outside
world, for they could not permit themselves to recognize that it was Moses
and Yahweh who wanted them to die as a people. Yet, with unerring
technique, they set themselves up time after time for destruction,
expecting, in the end, to tell themselves: "You see now it is as it is
written in the Law. We shall be destroyed for our sins." And they
permitted their destroyers to say: "By your own profession, it would not
happen, if it were not that you are wicked."

One after another national disaster is attributed to Yahweh - whether the
instrument is some now-dead nation, whether the Egyptians, or the
Neo-Babylonians; it happens because they have misbehaved towards Yahweh;
the score of millennia amounts to an impressive collective masochism.
Hardly is one disaster ended, than the prophets of new disaster arise,
recalling to them all the previous disasters back to Exodus. Although it
cannot be said that people behave as they say or believe, never- theless,
in the absence of a competing ideology - and the Jews have never permitted
one in their midst - it cannot be argued that the dominating ideology has
been without effect.

MONOTHEISM

Myth presents us with a cluster of ideas about Judaic-- Christian-Islamic
religion which are in significant respects untrue and harmful. The
function of the myth (as is typical) is to make its believers feel well
and superior to others. So it is with the myth that Yahwism is monotheism;
further, that Yahweh is invisible; further, that monotheism is good for
people and naturally reasonable.

Yahweh is very much anthropomorphized, in fact. He is portrayed as a
magnificent man. He is, like Moses, exclusive and will not show himself to
anyone in his true figure. Once he promised Moses to exhibit himself to
the Elders on Mount Sinai, but they were treated only to a smooth rock and
bright light. "No prophet had anything to tell of a figure resembling the
human until Ezekiel..."[34] He does reveal his presence by the light of
the Ark and the column of smoke. He sits on the "mercy seat." He directs
campaigns, promulgates laws, decrees punishment and in every way, save
sexuality, which he treats almost entirely by restrictions, he is human. I
have found it difficult to distinguish between Moses and Yahweh once
Yahweh is assumed to be Moses' other self and his presence is otherwise
manifested in forces of nature and in the good and evil fortunes of
people. Then, too, he has the normal emotions of hate, love, anger,
boastfulness, jealousy, mercy, but not fear, because fear is the
reciprocal of power, and power is the essence of Yahweh.

Yahweh does not claim that he is the only god. Nor does Moses claim that
Yahweh is the only god. He is content to quote Yahweh to the effect that
Yahweh is the same god as the god of the Hebrews. At the Burning Bush we
hear "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob."[35] And again, after Moses' first meeting with
Pharaoh, "I am Yahweh. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as
God Almighty (El Shaddai), and by my name of Yahweh I did not make myself
known to them."[36] Buber says that Moses saw the god of his wife's tribe
but recognized him as the god of the fathers [37]. This is interesting but
goes unexplained: how do you recognize a god as your own?

It is perplexing. Surely the Hebrews of Egypt knew their god, Elohim El
Shaddai, God-Most-High, well enough to tell whether he would permit
himself another name. Gressmann, among others, declares Elohim and Yahweh
to be two distinct gods. "Yahwism, in mosaic times, suppressed the older
religion of El."[38] "The legends treat the patriarchs as thoroughgoing
pacifists. Their god is a god of peace-loving men," writes Max Weber [39].
Moshe Greenberg tells us so:

The God of the patriarchs shows nothing of YHWH's
'jealousy'; no religious tension or contrast with their
neighbours appears, and idolatry is scarcely an issue. The
patriarchal covenant differed from the Mosaic Sinaitic
Covenant in that it was modeled upon a royal grant to
favourites and contained no obligations, the fulfillment of
which was to be the condition of their happiness [40].

Perhaps the Hebrews had become Egyptianized and religiously indifferent,
as legends indicate. Messianism is not specifically conceptualized in
Exodus; but sociologically Moses would have to be understood by the
Hebrews and related populations as a messiah coming with a representation
of the old god on a specific mission of deliverance.

And always there were the looming catastrophe, the perceived comet and the
plagues to validate a return to religion and messianism. With Moses there
came another kind of god. With Jesus there came still another, closer to
Saturn-Elohim than to Yahweh. The disciples and crowd of Jesus formed one
more of the several splinter movements that took their devotees from
Judaism. The Israelites had no sooner struck the deserts when they began
building variant gods: idols of Egypt came out of the luggage; a new
cometary Baal emerged in the Golden Calf.

Following the proclamation of the Covenant, Yahweh claims the whole earth;
Israel is but his "peculiar treasure."[41] In Amos' prophecies, Yahweh
asserts that he led other nations to safety at the same time as he
retrieved the Hebrews from Egypt. He says that he punishes them all alike,
including the people of Israel [42].

These seem but minor claims when contrasted with the striking verses that,
along with much other evidence, put Yahweh in his place. They are the
words of Moses, in a farewell address to Israel, as recomposed by a writer
during monarchic times, six or seven centuries later:

When the Most High [Eyon] gave to the nations their
inheritance, when he separated the sons of men, according
to the number of the sons of God. For the Lord's
[Yahweh's] portion is his people, Jacob [43] his allotted
heritage.

The Lord [Yahweh] alone did lead him and there was no
foreign god with him [44].

Clearly Yahweh here is one of the sons of god, to each of whom a nation of
the Earth's people was distinguished and allotted.

Yahweh receives Israel, and is free of interference from any foreign god.

"The sons of god" are "the divine beings who belong to the heavenly
court," and when god speaks of them he uses the term "us" and "our."[45]
It is a very old relationship, encountered in the first chapter of
Genesis, The resemblance here to the Olympian family of gods under Zeus
the Father is notable; the Greek gods take up the sides of different
nations as in the Iliad; have favorite countries as Athene with Athens;
and so onto other conformities.

A god is usually an idea of a people about a being that controls their
destiny. The people establish a religion to control their god by being in
step with him. The more out of control their destiny, the more they look
for and seek to control a god. The god takes on traits that are
appropriate to their problems: if fire is threatening to their world, a
fire-god occurs; if sheep are critically important, god will tend their
flocks. The worse the problem, the greater the status of the god attending
to it.

Stabilizing the universe is a most common trait of the most powerful gods.
Therefore we reason that the unstable universe has been the most important
problem when the greatest of gods came upon the scene. The moral dogmas of
humans are avocational pronunciamentos of the great gods; try as may the
philosophers and theologians of another, later age, they cannot get rid of
the essence of divinity, the bringing and removing of catastrophe. Yahweh
saved the Hebrews from catastrophe: specifically, he brought them out of
Egypt and through the years of wandering; but these events are formal
history, the idiosyncratic chronology moving on top of the informal
history of the catastrophe.

Elohim (God-in-Heaven) would appear to have preceded Yahweh in the Hebrew
theogony. He is frequently mentioned. He is securely identified by a
number of writers as the Osiris of the Egyptians, the Saturn of the
Romans, and the Kronos of the Greeks. Other god-names in Genesis are El
Shaddai, El Eyon (God Most High), El Olam (Eternal-God), El Bethel (God of
Bethel), and El Ro'i (God of Vision) [46]. The word "Elohim" denotes a
plural entity in Hebrew. Isaac Asimov, in his commentaries on the Bible,
discussing this point, concludes that an original polytheism existed; we
would agree.

Cyrus Gordon in all analysis of Psalm 82 shows that Elohim is regarded as
the "President of the gods."[47] The gods let rulers be wicked. Whereupon
"all the foundations of the earth totter." Elohim then says:

Ye are gods
And all of you are deities.
But ye shall die like mankind,
And fall like any of the princes
Arise, 0 God [Elohim], rule the earth;
For Thou shalt take over all the nations!

Gordon finds a parallel to the Psalm in the Ugaritic epic of Krt. We would
again see in Elohim the great god Saturn whose recall of the world's
people to his Golden Age is longed for. The character of Yahweh, like
Indra, as well as Zeus, is bound up with catastrophe and war. Max Weber
writes [48]:

Yahweh, like Indra, is fit to be god of war because, like
Indra, he was originally a god of the great catastrophes of
nature. His appearance is accompanied by phenomena such
as earthquakes [49], volcanic phenomena [50],
subterraneous [51], and heavenly fire, the desert wind from
the South and South East [52], and thunderstorms. As in
the case of Indra, flashes of lightning are his arrows [53] as
late as the prophets.

Yahweh includes insect and snake plagues, and epidemics in his repertoire.

The connection of the qualities of Yahweh as a god of
frightful natural catastrophes, not of the external order of
nature, preserved down to the time after the Exile, [that is,
for a thousand years] was, beside the general relationship of
those processes with war, based historically on the fact that
God had made use of his power first in battle...

We have seen in this book that what Weber says of Yahweh as god of
catastrophe and battle is exactly correct. But we have also seen that
Weber is quite deceived by a Biblical reductionism of the Exodus
environment so that he reverses the order. Yahweh, in fact, historically,
made use of his power first to create catastrophes, then to bring wars.
His pugnacity, Moses' pugnacity, and the bellicosity of the Israelites,
Hyksos and many other nations followed, both in time and as effect, the
natural disasters whose turbulence destroyed the social order.

Gressmann, like Weber, committed "the four sins of modern biblicism":
confused chronology; reductionism; primitivism; and uniformitarianisin. He
too observed that catastrophe was connected with Yahweh. "The catastrophe
of the Sea of Reeds," he declares, "laid the basis for the Yahwist
religion."[54] He treats this event as a local disaster caused by a
volcano and tidal wave at the gulf of Aqaba, far from Egypt; the plagues
are to him relatively meaningless. Therefore he is in no position to make
the correct statement, which is that cometary Yahweh brought the
ecological catastrophes of Yahweh, which incited Yahwist aggressiveness
among people, and all of this laid the basis for Yahwism.

But, if Yahweh is just coming upon the scene, and Elohim is Saturn, how
could Yahweh not be known to the Hebrews before Moses, since Yahweh is
like Zeus and Jove, and Horus-Amon? And these gods have been heavily
worshipped for perhaps 2500 years. There is a gap. A god of the Hebrews is
missing.

Perhaps, unlike other peoples, they clung to Elohim from the first
creation of the world in Genesis and through the flood and thereafter,
disregarding candidates for a Jove-type god until Yahweh was introduced.
Then Elohim would be given an additional name and, with this new name,
certain new qualities,

The early Hebrews moved long distances, had many skills, were not
bellicose, and lived among many nations. Their religion shared many
legends and features with other peoples. Perhaps their monotheism had its
origins in an innocuous name that was not objected to by their neighbors,
not a source of contention.

That is, Monotheism may be a pantheistic device. We tend to think of it as
we see it in Moses, as a parochial, exclusive, anti-polytheistic device.
It may not be so.

But if Moses were the Messiah, coming upon a people in distress with a new
version of god, there would seem to be good reason why a universalistic
uncompetitive god should suddenly acquire the traits of a nationalistic
jealous god - keeping monotheism constant.

Still this would presume that Elohim, and also El Shaddai, were plugging
the gap. However Elohim-Osiris-Saturn, while still a great god in Egypt,
had long given way there to Horus-Amon and Thoth. "From the sixth dynasty
on, Horus alone appears as the true patron of monarchy" until the end of
the Middle Kingdom.[55] Then Seth, who can be identified as the perennial
antagonist of Osiris, Horus, and Isis (Venus), becomes the principal
divine monarch of the Hyksos until their overthrow by a combined
Israelite- Egyptian army.

But Thoth is not to be neglected. He is the Egyptian Hermes or Mercury,
who bear a caduceus like Moses' Brazen Serpent. Just as Hermes served
under Zeus in Greece, Thoth might have served under Horus in Egypt. His
cult in Egypt was huge. His character is singular. In Egypt, Rome, Greece,
Phoenicia, India and Mexico, he is powerful and gives judgement on the
law; clever; rebellious; electrical; inventor of writing, expert scribe
and linguist; magical; a wizard; a healer; mundane; instructor; guide of
wanderers and roads; equivocal; he hides himself; but never so great as
the greatest on high, never El Shaddai (God Almighty), never Jupiter. But
when Horus resigned his earthly power, Thoth succeeded to his throne [56].
The cult of the ram followed the cult of the bull in Egypt [57] that is,
Thoth followed Horus.

It is conceivable that Abram when he changed his name to Abraham, was
adding the Egyptian god Ra to the name of his Hebrew capital city of
Ramah. Ram is Thoth and its totem animal is the ram. In this case, one
might investigate whether the god of the fathers may not always have been
a Saturn or a Jove, but a Mercury.

Moses would have been familiar with Thoth - the sophisticated man's god -
in Egypt. Perhaps when he began to hallucinate Yahweh, the traits of
Yahweh became a combination of those of Jove and Mercury, Horus-Amon and
Thoth. The mundane Thoth is perhaps the strongest model. What he found the
Hebrews enjoying was a composite of Elohim and Amon-Thoth, perhaps so
indefinite as to be the source of legendary complaints that the Hebrews
had lost their religion in Egypt.

Thoth, believed the Egyptians, created the world by the force of his word
[58]. And the Gospel according to John says, "In the beginning was the
Word." Whose word, Thoth's? We have noted how strong for the word were
Yahweh, and Moses: "Write it down in your Book!" And how Moses has been
inextricably identified with Thoth-Hermes by scientists of the occult over
the ages. Biblical exegetes insist that "Logos," the original word in
John, means more than Word; it means Life, Intelligence, Light, and
metaphorically, Christ the Savior, present in the Word and in God from the
beginning of creation. So did Thoth represent his Word, too, as life,
intelligence and light striking upon mankind.

We must observe closely and speculate cautiously: Moses as a "rational"
cultist was Thoth-Hermes; Yahweh was Zeus-Horus-Amon. That is, when it
came to projecting a god, Moses' personal need was for a stern, heavy
father-figure, connected with lightning and meteors [59], admittedly more
powerful than Thoth. Moses does not introject Zeus as well as he does
Hermes, Horus as well as he does Thoth. This may explain why Yahweh is
such a crude and simple power-directed god, so unidimensional. He provides
the strength and will, the compulsion, and the brute force. Thoth-Moses
provides the brain.

The reasons why Moses chose monotheism are fairly plain. Not only was
there this syncretistic monotheism to work with among the Hebrews, but
Moses had only the technology for one god. If the god were to be wandering
with, talking to, and working with a tribe, he should better be
unaccompanied by potential competitors.

Moses did not have the ability to talk to more than one god at a time. He
was a rigid person, and changed roles only with great difficulty. He could
not be the executive secretary of a council of gods. He had in mind the
concentration of power in his own hands: as on earth, so in heaven. A
single god seemed logical, and could manage everything alone, with
occasional messengers or angels. By the same line of reasoning, we may
understand why there is no devil in Yahwism; Yahweh is his own devil--
demon when necessary. Moses did not need to split his ambivalence into
personalities. The destructive behavior of Yahweh gave Moses all the
satanism that he needed.

To be possessed by two or more gods at the same time is not at all
impossible; indeed, such is the case with most people and most of history:
monotheism is claimed only for some few religions. The human mind
compartmentalizes readily. Saturn, Mars, Jupiter and other gods occupied
the Roman mind, and no one will say that the Romans were confused or
impractical, at least not by historical standards.

Nor does personal development - although many imagine such - shunt all
that is god's onto one's superego or conscience. Just as a boy will take
several men as his models, believing, whether true or not, that these men
possess abilities and traits that he must emulate, so he may take on
several hypothesized gods as his inspiration for learning different skills
and achieving different goals in life.

So it was that Thoth-Hermes could fill the developing Moses with desires,
techniques, and traits, and then bow down within Moses to let pass the new
god of the conscience, the aggressive and absolute Yahweh, who is
exclusively to occupy the grand ballroom of world dominion in Moses' mind.

In this basic sense, Moses was a double religious personality, and thus,
quite specifically, polytheistic. He was Thoth-Hermes in his ego and
unconsciously, while he was Yahweh-Zeus in his superego and consciously.
This, if nothing else, can explain why monotheism may never have existed
in mosaism except as a formal, scholastic, linguistic construction, ex
post facto.

This construction of monotheism, once it burst its priestly bonds,
encouraged everyone from philosophers to mechanics to shave off strips of
reality from the religious sphere. They might invest their conscience in
Yahweh while inventing a realistic, objective, scientific world, as did
Isaac Newton and a host of other workers. Or they might reinvest their
conscience in Jesus, while dealing pragmatically with the scientific
world. Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), one of the founders of electrical
science and experimental method, was an early Unitarian leader. John
Wesley (1701-1791), founder of Methodism, wrote on "Electricity made Plain
and Useful, by a Lover of Mankind and Common-sense."

Such is the "monotheism" that the present world inherits and passes on. It
is descended from the monotheism of Moses. It consists of concurrent and
successive images of a single god, who is usually accompanied by a host of
celestial figures. It is certainly not the logically sharp and eternally
consistent monotheism, such as the human mind has conceived and
maintained. Monotheism belongs actually in the category of legal fictions,
together with concepts such as "sovereignty." All the world may be
persuaded of one god, with no single person agreeing within himself on the
matter, and with no two persons agreeing between them. Nevertheless, the
persuasion of monotheism will have substantial effects upon mind and
conduct.

Notes (Chapter 8: The Electrical God)

1.  III G 431.

2.  The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind,
Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1976.

3.  The Palaetiology of Homo Sapiens Schizotypicalis, Princeton: Quiddity
Press, 1976. See, now, Homo Schizo volumes I and II, Princeton, N.J.:
Metron Publns., 1983.

4.  William J. Broad, "Syria Said to Suppress Archaelogical Data." 205
Science (31 August 1979), 878-1, 880.

5.  Gen. 49:18; Buber, 50.

6.  Winnett, 20-4.

7.  Ziegler, 98.

8.  III G 94.

9.  Ex. 4:14-15.

10.  II G 318-9.

11.  Auerbach, 189.

12.  Buber, 113-4.

13.  Ziegler, 14.

14.  Ibid., 72. See A. de Grazia, Chaos and Creation, Princeton, N.J.:
Metron Publns, 1981, where a setting of the skies is said to begin at this
time.

15.  See also Lev. 19:12 against swearing falsely and profaning the name.
Lev. 24:15 sets the death penalty by community stoning for cursing the
Lord or blaspheming his name. Weber writes (p. 447, fn.23), "The abuse of
the name of Yahweh finds its Correspondence in the sanction of blinding."
Why? So that

they may not ever see Yahweh upon the Ark speaking his name? Cf. Gaster,
nos. 187, 72; Erman, SBAW (1911) pp. 1098 ff.

16.  Ziegler, 13.

17.  Cassuto, 243-4.

18.  Ibid., 334.

19.  III Ency. Relig. and Ethics, 510.

20.  Moses and Monotheism, 144.

21.  Jaynes, 89ff.

22.  Ex.7:3-4. See also here in chapter I, where it is shown that this
"hardening" theme is owing to the comet's implacability.

23.  Is. 45:7; Cf. Buber, 58.

24.  Ezek. 20:26. See Ex. 13:1-2; 34:19-20; 23-29; Lev. 27:26- 7; Num.
3:13; 8-17-8; 18-15. Cf. Gen. 22:1-19; I Kg. 16:34; II Kg. 16:3; Mic. 6:7.

25.  M. Eliade, Traité d'Histoire des Religions (1964, 1974), 88.

26.  2 Sam. 22:9.

27.  George E. Mendenhall, The Tenth Generation: The Origins of the
Biblical Tradition, Baltimore: John Hopkins U. Press, 1973.

28.  Psychopathology and Politics (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1930.

29.  This sharp statistical distinction between the religion of Genesis
and the other Books of Moses supports the argument made elsewhere in this
book, that Moses invented Yahweh and that Yahweh is unconnected with
Elohim in actuality.

30.  Jer. 2:6.

31.  Daiches, 154.

32.  Ex. 32:9-10.

33.  Ez. 20:13-14 (New World transl.)

34.  Buber, p.117; Ezek. 1:26.

35.  Ex. 3:6.

36.  Ex. 6:2.

37.  Buber, 44.

38.  Mose and seine Zeit. p.433.

39.  Max Weber, 49, citing Gen. 13:8f.

40.  "Judaism," 10 EB (1980) 304. Also Cassuto (27) and Sellin are unusual
in stressing that Moses was a Messiah and Savior.

41.  Buber, 105.

42.  Amos 9:7-10.

43.  Jacob is Israel.

44.  Deut. 32:8-12; Oxford Bible, fn 256-7 says "sons of god" means "the
divine beings who belong to the heavenly court."

45.  Cf. Gen. 1:26; Ps. 29:1; 1 Kg. 22:19; Job. 1:6; Is. 6:8.

46.  Andrew Jukes, The Names of God, London: Kregel, 1888.

47.  Contained as pp.129-31 in G.A. Tuttle, ed., Bible and Near Eastern
Studies, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans.

48.  Weber, 128-130.

49.  Ibid. I Sam. 14:15; Is. 2:21f, 46:6.

50.  Ibid. Gen. 19:24; Ex. 19:11f; Psalm 46:6.

51.  Ibid. Is. 30:27.

52.  Ibid. Zech. -:14.

53.  Ibid. Psalm 18:14.

54.  Mose and seine Zeit, 443.

55.  J. Van Seters, The Hyksos (1966), 99 quoted by Bimson, I SISR 4
(1977) 9.

56.  Larousse Encycl. of Mythology, "Thoth."

57.  Tomkins, 169.

58.  Mircea Eliade, Myth of the Eternal Return, 22.

59.  See G.A. Wainwright, "The Relationship of Amun to Zeus and His
Connection with Meteorites," XVI J. Egypt. Archaeo. (1930), 35-8.

CONCLUSION

In what could be called his last sane moment, before he had ever talked to
Yahweh, Moses was leading his flock and saw a bush that was alight and not
reduced to ashes, and said to himself: "I will turn aside, and see this
great sight, why the bush is not burnt."[1] This kind of "why" stood
behind my undertaking this book and has, I hope, conveyed my reader
rewardingly through its pages.

The work is now finished, with its details fitted into its major parts and
there assembled into the whole. Some 3500 years ago, the area subject to
the Bible came under an extra-terrestrial force, apparently a great comet,
which, amidst the destruction that it wrought, set into motion the human
characters whom we have come to know well: Moses, the Pharaoh, Aaron, and
especially the Israelites, who were shaped into a chosen people.

The experiences of this people contained the material of a great and true
story of disaster and survival. The story centers upon a scientific genius
- Moses - and a new god - Yahweh. Yahweh is recognized as a great comet,
as an electrical presence on earth, as the hallucinations of Moses, and as
all cognate mental and social behavior in the times and places of Exodus,
the Wanderings, and the invasion of Canaan. Of Yahweh, Vriezen has stated
correctly: "If this God has to be typified in one word, that word must be:
Power; or, still better, perhaps: Force. Everything about and around
Yahweh feels the effect of this. He as it were electrifies his
environment."[2] His electrifying force is more than psychological and
metaphorical; "The Great I Am" is electrical in fact. The ideology of
mosaism, a set of formulas for tying the aims of Moses to the purposes of
Yahweh, proved to be adaptable from one restricted area and culture, the
Judaic, to several grand civilizations - Byzantine, West European,
Islamic, and American.

The Ark of the Covenant, "the Vehicle of Yahweh," symbolized, as well as
played a critical part in, the whole story. Its electrical functions
represented the achievements of the Egyptian theocratic establishment from
which Moses, one of its luminaries

and scientific managers, was expelled. The Ark was the centerpiece around
which the aggregate of survivors of the flight from Egypt were organized
into a new nation. The Ark gave voice to the new god, Yahweh,
distinguishing him from related old gods, and lent credibility to his
being one god, the great god, the most active god, a god who moved and
rested with his followers, an invisible god, a god of explicit advice, a
god who was independent of any sky body once he was defined by Moses,

Numerous miracles of the Bible have been shown to be based upon historical
happenings: the escape from the enemy, the finding of food and drink, the
punishment of sinners by god's fire, and so on to all significant
miracles. They are demonstrable by ordinary rules of anthropology relating
to a group interacting with nature to produce recognizable cultural
behavior. Much of the non-miraculous but apparently nonsensical - the
clothing, the taboos, the prayers, the rites, the devices, the social
behavior, the attitudes of people - can be linked to the miracles, the
setting, the motives and purposes of the leaders and people. All of this
invites a renewed attention to old problems under a new light. We may be
in a better position to learn from the Bible and to know what is not to be
learned from it. The experiences of Moses and Israel may be better guides
through history than they have been in the past.

Yet even such generalities seem bland and anti-climactic following the
outburst of arguments and propositions in the individual chapters. But
rather than summarize all of these too, which are clearly signalled where
they occur in the book, I should like to enter a plea on behalf of their
implications. It is that Biblical scholars may join with specialists of
other cultures throughout the world in reviewing materials of this
electrical period of Exodus. It is, furthermore, that natural scientists,
espe- cially geologists and meteorologists, may lend their skills as
historians of nature to the researchers in human history. I have no doubt
that my book is to be corrected in many ways; I would, however, be
gratified if the process of correction be managed so that all benefit in
their own field of interest, rather than that I be loaded with the sins of
all and sent into the desert to Azazel.

Figure 20: The Moses of Klaus Sluter. (Click on the picture for an
enlarged view. Caution: Image files are large.) ( Sculpture at chartreuse
de Champmol, Dijon A.D 1404)

Notes (Conclusion)

1.  Ex. 3:3.

2.  The Religion of Ancient Israel (London: Lutterworth Press, 1967),
citing N. Soderblom, P. Volz and J. Pedersen.

APPENDIX

TECHNIQUES FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF

LEGENDARY HISTORY

The Book of Exodus reminds one of the Iliad and other great epic poems.
But Iliad and Odyssey chanted of much later events [1]. I am ready to
believe, with Cassuto, that "one of the principal sources - possibly the
principal source - was... an ancient epic poem, an epos dating back to
earliest times, that told at length the story of the Egyptian bondage, of
the liberation and of the wandering of the children of Israel in the
wilderness."[2] It has numerous lyric passages still, also word and sound
play, and formulas and fixed numbers to help remember its verses.

V. Cassuto points out various sacred literary harmonies through the text:
the play upon threes, sevens, and seventies, for example; the repetition
of words for emphasis; the use of expressions of salvation and deliverance
in the 3rd episode of Moses in Midian, and so forth [3].

THE LIMITS OF DISTORTION

There was a major difference, however, between the Exodus and other epic
accounts. The Exodus began in writing, under the authorship and direction
of Moses, then was carried by epic tradition in oral form, and then was
revived in written form in the tenth century at which time there was no
Homer to reassemble it. So it came together afterwards piece by piece for
five hundred years, as sacred history and in writing. In inception and
conception, the Exodus was modern; it was to be a sacred written history.

Luckily for students of ancient events, the Exodus was from its beginnings
a sacred happening so that no despot, no matter how powerful, could
afterwards rewrite it with impunity. Apart from the theological miracles
that the Books of Moses describe (which we translate into historical and
scientific miracles), the book in itself represents a set of historical
miracles. First there was Moses who believed in historiography. Then there
was Moses' Yahweh whose imprimatur on the mosaic word made tampering
sacrilegious. Afterwards, there was spawned by the new nation a
priesthood, Aaronites, Levites, and popular priests and prophets that
oscillated between centralized and decentralized federationism. These men
were compelled to recite historical truths even when the truth hurt their
interests; they could never erase it; they could only accent their own
position in the process of history, swearing continuously that they were
only repeating what had been historically said. The divisiveness of the
Jews let this process go on for many centuries.

Then, in exile in Babylon and fortunately deprived of their own secular
leadership, the priests crystallized their Torah, and upon their return to
Jerusalem, decided once and for all that they possessed the sacred
truthful history that must hereafter only be discussed, never changed.
Thenceforth, no matter where they might be, those who claimed descent from
the Exodus preserved with very little change the writings, while the
Christians, who might have rewritten them, were from their own beginnings
somehow persuaded that the Books of Moses were reconcilable with the
teachings of Jesus and therefore sacred and untouchable. Thus happened the
miracle of the Torah, that unique book.

As a result, we have found much history in the Books of Moses, and we
shall find much more. But perhaps the moment has arrived to explain how
this adventure in historical discovery is engineered. What logic and
techniques am I trying to employ? I shall explain my procedures now,
hoping that the reader has reached "the point of no return."

First of all, we need some agreement on the composition of the Pentateuch.
Who wrote or pronounced what in Exodus? Who says that they did so? When
did they say so? And we begin by asserting that Moses himself kept the log
of Exodus; he wrote, too, of his talks with Yahweh; he recorded as well
the laws that he promulgated. We have already learned of his passion for
the written word, which is integral to his character, and became part

of the Jewish national character. The log is reported in the Book of
Numbers: "Moses recorded their starting points in writing whenever they
broke camp on Yahweh's orders."[4] We recall, too, that Yahweh refers to
Moses' book and tells him what to write in it as well as helping him write
the Decalogue.

Probably most scholars will agree that writing was indeed occurring in the
wilderness. The major problems occurred subsequently. The writings were
entirely lost. The period between the events, which in great part, no
doubt, were not even originally recorded by Moses, but in vital parts
were, and the canonization of the experience and its discussion consists
of some eight or nine hundred years. "The final redaction and canonization
of the Torah book... most likely took place during the Babylonian Exile
(6th-5th century B.C.E.)."[5]

Hence the attempt to establish the authenticity of Biblical passages has
depended largely upon linguistic analysis, and, to a lesser degree, upon
internal consistency, comparative history and archaeology - all supervised
by logical and anthropological speculation. Linguistic analysis allows an
expert to criticize and perhaps rearrange passages in accord with what is
known of the progress of the Hebrew language and of the style used by
different individuals whose accounts have come down to the present.

Linguistic analysis is inadequate often not only because of the
uncertainty of its data and of its premises, but also because it cannot
discover the career of oral traditions. We know from general anthropology
and ancient literature that an exact rendition of a large body of verse
and prose (such as Homer's Iliad and other epic works) can be transmitted
over generations and centuries. The same exactitude can be expected of a
sacred written work which is committed to collective memory, then lost in
written form. Even though the style and other minor changes may be
introduced when the oral version of the original written version is
written down, the substance of the account may be exact. In both cases, in
the period of oral transmission, trained speakers can memorize and
reproduce exactly thousands of lines heard from the lips of a teacher.

All along the line, a sacred duty to repeat the original faithfully
encounters social interests to whose advantage certain changes might be
made. In the case of the Bible, much effort must go into locating such
interests, whether by internal analysis or by matching the known later
political and natural environments with the suspected changes in the text
over time.

We have to take it for granted that those who had the last word to say on
the Old Testament said it the way they wanted it. Nobody knows the name of
these gentlemen, but they were a group of Jewish scholar-priests living
800 years after Moses. We can assume that they were a corporate group and,
therefore, the "very last word" would have been that of a "research
director," namely a qualified priest with political and social engagements
and contacts, more attuned to the mission of the Old Testament as he saw
it than to the literal nuances of the text.

We know, too, that the period in which the last important editing was done
was without general physical upheavals. Hence, the editing would lack the
first-hand experience with catastrophe that marks the age of Moses and the
age of the prophets and would not be conversant with strong references of
the words, as compared to alternative weak references. Lacking direct
comprehension, they would be tending toward using the name of Yahweh ever
more promiscuously as a shorthand substitution for natural explanations or
references. They would be uniformitarian ("conditions were the same then
as now") and metaphorical ("what a fine analogy is implied in this
language about angels.") Pari passu, the translations that are generally
used now exhibit both tendencies of the text editors to a marked degree.

The editing, moreover, occurred in a parochial and depressed period of
Jewish history, the period of the Babylonian exile from which only some
fraction was freed by the Persians and wanted to return to the Jerusalem
area. The priest-scholars would be intent upon preserving their small
ethnic and linguistic group, and would be without hope of expanding their
realms, as contrasted, for example, with Jesus and Paul, working with the
protection of and with the model of the seemingly universal Roman Empire
before their eyes.

The unwritten directive that would guide their minds and hands would then
be:

1) The "Chosen people" are a "select and exclusive people," and should
preserve their religious heritage against any infiltration, expansion, or
assimilation.

2) Establish the continuity of Yahweh with Elohim, i.e., between the gods
of Genesis and Exodus.

3) Eliminate realistic and natural explanations of events in favor of the
indefinite, all-explaining "hand of god."

4) Provide a maximum of ritual so that the priests must be involved in all
personal actions: "Whatever is not forbidden, must be prescribed."

5) Let it be clear that all that Moses did he did under strict orders from
above, and further that he was the last man to be under such direct divine
guidance.

6) Stress the undeserving character of the people; build up their guilt;
establish, as the only route for the expiation of this guilt, renewed
obedience to the Torah (the Law) and to the Priests and Levites who
administer it.

7) Evade the secular, the political, and the contemporary environment of
Judaism.

Then, of course, the last word to the people of Israel would carry a
meaning like: "now you have your inalterable sacred text. It is your first
and last resort on all life's issues. And you have the priests to answer
any questions. Lucky, undeserving people under Yahweh that you are!"

I would argue that something like this revisionary process actually
occurred and needs to be watched for in educing history from the Torah.
Nevertheless, one must not take the naive cynical view that anybody who
handled Biblical material in the course of a thousand years could shape it
to his whims and fancies. On the contrary, the great scandal of the Bible
is its uncompromising confrontation of real human behavior which in modern
"scientific" society is confessed to psychiatrists or kept secret at all
costs.

The Revolt of the Golden Call offers a case in point. Frederick Winnett
flatly declares that the story of the Golden Calf (incident, affair,
revolt, revolution - one names it out of prejudice often, just as modern
scholars quarrel over whether the Korean or Vietnam conflict was a "war")
was a product of the southern penmen of Judah after the Northern Kingdom
had been destroyed in 722 B.C. and its inhabitants lost to Judaism [6].
The Northern Kingdom, reports the Bible, had two major places where images
of golden calves were worshipped. Hence, southern blame-mongers had
inserted the Golden Calf of the Holy Mountain into the story of Exodus to
prove just how blasphemous and deserving of destruction were the
idol-worshipping northerners. This intervention would have occurred
shortly after 715 B.C.

However, as we have already evidenced earlier, we here take the Golden
Calf revolt seriously, and fit it neatly into our total theory of Moses'
character, of Yahweh, and of how the people really felt about religion.

Are we now to erase our theory and loosen one of the stones of our
edifice? I think that the answer must be negative, for several reasons.
The weakest of these reasons is that practically all biblical scholars
accept and discuss the Golden Calf revolt in its place in Exodus. This is
an appeal to authority; but it is the authority of linguistic analysis in
which we ourselves are weak and impressionable.

The next reason, concerning which we feel stronger, treats of the minds of
the vindictive writers of the Southern Kingdom. These men, scholars
themselves, are caught in a bind. Just as rulers nowadays almost
invariably reject rational advice to assassinate their political enemies,
the priestly writers cannot violate the rules of the Bible, including that
what goes into it must be sacred and true, and, further, must not violate
a widespread appreciation of what the book ought to contain. Tampering
with Moses was like playing with dynamite.

A third reason is a question: Are we certain that Jeroboam did indeed
cause two golden calves or bulls to be erected at two principle sites of
his Northern Kingdom of Israel? Or is this one the concocted story? Or
were these images only rumored to be "golden calves," and were something
else; or were they metaphors for the very word "images"? They might be
arks, even the ark seized by Dan.

A fourth reason for maintaining the credibility of the Golden Calf Revolt
is that, after the return from the exile in Babylon, a priestly group had
occasion to make revisions in the Hezekiah recension that, says Winnett,
had produced the story. They had good reason to remove the story if it
were not true, because the Southern Kingdom itself had also been destroyed
shortly after the Northern Kingdom and therefore the redactors may have
felt less triumphant and scornful and more subdued. They let the story
stand.

A fifth reason is that the Torah did not then and does not now include
accounts of all that happened during the Exodus. The oral tradition was
rich and exact. It is likely that the scholars who wrote down the story
found as their basis something closely matching the act of elevating the
image of the Golden Calf to worship among numerous stories of Moses'
struggle to maintain an imageless Yahweh. With malice aforethought, they
wrote up this story and inserted it at a most logical place, if it were
not indeed the proper place. What more likely occasion for this act to
occur than after a prolonged absence of Moses on the Mountain? Winnett
advances this possibility when he writes that "the story was present... in
the form of the [mosaic] tradition that reached D [the redactor], and, of
all the incidents related in the tradition, that of Aaron's making an
image of Yahweh in the form of a bull seems to have made the greatest
impression on his mind."[7]

At this point, it may be proper to argue a scenario: the great revolt at
Sinai (Horeb) happened; among the gods raised up was the golden young
bull; Moses put down the revolt harshly; the people never could quite
believe Yahweh was fully competent when invisible or that the whole
outside world of bull-worshippers was wrong; the bull theme reappeared
many times, usually tied loyally to Yahweh, and in the days of Jeroboam,
images, including the bull, were well-received, just as Zeus, not a bull,
could be represented as such on occasion, as when he kidnapped Europa.

Without question, the written Books of Moses expanded with time, as in
this case, and usually, where a major affair is concerned, an oral
historical tradition and a structure of truth are present. So it goes with
the Moral Decalogue, the plagues, the confusing infancy of Moses, and
other important elements; the written increments, uncovered by linguistic
analysis, are founded upon ancient and authentic oral accounts and lost
fragments. I think that more barriers to understanding the Bible have been
erected by poor sociological and philosophical theorizing than by the more
commonly criticized exegetes.

UNBELIEVING SCHOLARS

Theodor Gaster's book of Myth, Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament is
a compendium of analogous actions performed by characters in a number of
different cultures. His typical procedure is to take an act or practice
from a passage in the Bible and to show that similar behavior is
discoverable in several other tribal or folk cultures here and there in
the world. Explanations are rarely afforded. As an example, he writes of
the taboo on touching the Ark of the Lord [8]. As we have already told it,
the unlucky Uzzah tries to steady the Ark when an ox drawing it on a wagon
stumbles; he is struck dead. Gaster gives two parallels. One is from Troy,
where Ilus tried to rescue the Palladium of Athene from the flames and was
blinded. In the second, Metellus rescues the same type of object from the
temple of Vesta and is also blinded. Both have their sight restored.
Gaster then ends the discussion.

This procedure is purely descriptive and primitivist anthropology, even
less sophisticated than that of Frazer on whose nineteenth century work
Gaster's is founded. Human behavior must of course be analogous
everywhere. People talk, eat, produce, have sexual relations, fight with
weapons, and symbolize their actions, in basically similar ways
everywhere. The resemblances of the three actions that he cites seem to be
superficial. His implication here, as throughout his book, is that these
are not events; they have no causes nor consequences; they are simply
cartoon sketches coming off the brushes of long-gone legend creators. But
our book is dedicated in part to showing that each and every legendary
episode has a lesser or greater accumulation of characteristic
symbolization centered around a core of historical reality; it is like the
trillions of manganese lumps on the deep ocean bottoms that have
accumulated around cores of shark teeth and other bones and stones; they
are all alike but have a unique happening as a seed.

By way of contrast to Gaster, U. Cassuto's Commentary on the Book of
Exodus (1951, 1959) uncovers a string of three stories of wells, with
Abraham, Jacob, and Moses as the heroes, each obtaining a bride thereby
[9]. In this case, however, the fact that wells were universally employed
for meetings and rendezvous is made significant by a close parallelism of
Jacob's story with that of Moses. The two plots, involving other shepherds
and the damsels Rachel and Zipporah, suggest a deliberate embellishment to
tie Moses to his ancestor Jacob. Nonetheless Cassuto explicitly denies
that his book aims at establishing historicity.

In 1957, Greta Hort published two articles on "The Plague of Egypt,"[10]
there tying together skillfully much scientific knowledge pointing towards
the actuality and sequence of the plagues. Briefly she argues that an
unprecedented rainfall in Ethiopia eroded the red soil basin of Lake Tana
and the banks of the Blue Nile and sent red floodwaters causing down the
some 2000 miles of river, carrying with them a red micro-animal Euglena
sanguinea as well. This polluted flood killed the fish of the Lower Nile
and drove the frogs ashore, where insects infected them with an anthrax.
Infestations of mosquitoes and flies followed. Independently a fierce
hailstorm from the North blew up the Nile Valley. Fire is not mentioned.
Weather conditions were propitious afterwards for a massive locust
invasion. The dried-out land gave up its coating of red powdered dust to
the first khamsin or sandstorm of the year, bringing days of darkness. She
advances plausible reasons why the Hebrews should have been spared, in
their partial isolation, some of the plagues.

The plague upon the first-born is reduced to a ruination of the first
fruits of the harvest that were ordinarily consumed in spring. The
Israelites left then partly out of fear of being robbed of their harvests
by the less fortunate Egyptians. Pharaoh was hard-hearted about letting
them go; although prayer expeditions to the desert were not unknown, he
would not chance the Hebrews leaving, because their god might answer their
prayers and discountenance his god, and because sedition might be served
with such moving about of people.

I cannot do justice to Hort's ingenious scenario here. By way of negative
criticism, I would allude to the enormous distance the red dust and
flagellates would need to descend. Also, the lack of repetition of the
plagues in earlier or later times makes the Exodus still unique. Critical
connections are missing between the other plagues and the hailstorms and
locusts. The first-born killing is laid aside. The magic wand contest is
evaded. So is the climactic movement of waters in the passage out of
Egypt. Nor are the negotiations or the human movements incorporated
precisely into her scenario.

The actuality of biblical events is, of course, a provocative issue in
scientific quarters. A few rears later, Dorothy Vitaliano, in Legends of
the Earth [11] stresses again a geological approach in attempting to
restrain popular faith in ancient and folk accounts of unusual natural
events. Vitaliano confronts causation directly, like Hort and unlike
Gaster. She offers to explain the plagues as natural events, giving as
much credence to the Bible as she can admit.

But she is operating with a weak instrument, the uniformitarian law that
the same natural conditions of today have prevailed over millions of
years. Consequently, there is not enough energy in the ordinary,
terrestrial, natural forces she employs to deliver the quick succession of
shattering blows to the Egyptian Empire. Nor are the forces integrated by
a single, sufficient cause. Her a priori refusal to consider an
extra-terrestrial force cuts short the explanation at an unsatisfactory
point. The major concession that she makes to the literalness of the Bible
is the connection (which earlier I have adversely criticized) between the
explosion of Thera-Santorini and the tidal waters sweeping in upon the
Egyptian army [12].

A much greater freeing of the intellect is required before the Exodus
events can be understood. It is notable that upon the conclusion of her
heavily researched studies, Hort qualifies the results by reference to
research by Professor Bodenheimer "on the connection between solar
activity and pests" and the hope for an ultimate explanation by "cosmic
and terrestrial" connections [13].

The combination of uniformitarianism and disbelief in legend leads, as
with Buber and Daiches and Gaster, to a general distortion of the Bible by
reductionism. The result is a sugar-coating of reality by a questionable
commonsense. Shrinking from the realities of Exodus, not one but most
editors and scholars have painted its human and natural background, the
wanderings, and the struggles, as a quaint nineteenth century romance.
Martin Buber was one of the best of biblical scholars and a hero of
resistance to the Nazis; but little of the madness that he experienced
under Nazism ruffles his calm book on the life of Moses.

He is a rationalist - wrongly regarded as an existentialist - who ever so
subtly deflates the rhetoric and propositions of the Bible, following a
principle of maximal reductionism; at the same time, he is trying to keep
his people, the Jews, bound together in a community, with the Bible as its
glue. Perhaps the double task is impossible, or perhaps he is more an
expert than a theorist; for his book is littered with disconnected,
uncontrolled, and fallacious surmises.

At one moment he may be Machiavellian. Thus he thinks that Moses had no
clear mission in Egypt but, when rejected by the Hebrews, got himself
accredited as the representative of the Hebrew god at the Pharaoh's court
[14]. Machiavelli himself might have approved this notion; he regarded
Moses as a model prince, perhaps even better than Caesar Borgia: Moses
formed a nation and led it forth to survival.

Then again Buber stretches time with an uncontrolled imagination; Moses is
a kind of spook who haunted Pharaoh's court for years while the plagues
went on at large intervals [15]. Buber analyzes the passover feast as an
old shepherd festival of spring [16]. (Why each family should stay in its
own home during a fiesta is rather strange.)

His scenario of Moses talking with Yahweh is a fine example of
reductionism, himself, quite unbelieving, yet letting his reader believe:

In our vision, we see this man Moses at times, following
some new and wearing experience with his people, entering
the leader's tent, sitting down on the ground and for a long
time weighing in his soul whatever may have befallen; until
at length the new comprehension rises to the surface and the
new word oppresses his throat; till it finally darts across into
the muscles of his hand, permitting a new utterance of the
Zealous God to come into being on the scroll [17].

This is practically all that passes for psychiatry in the book. Is Moses,
or is he not, talking with Yahweh?

Of all that is said and done in the Crossing of the Sea, Buber concludes:
"It is irrelevant whether 'much' or 'little', unusual things or usual,
tremendous or trifling events happened; what is vital is only that what
happened was experienced, while it happened, as the act of God."[18] Here
is your second greatest episode in Jewish history! (If the handing down of
the Decalogue is the greatest.) "Miracle, he says, is "nothing but an
abiding astonishment." But he cannot escape the urge to trivial- ize
events: "It may be assumed that the frontier guards set out in pursuit of
the fugitives."[19]

As for the greatest episode, at Mt. Sinai, "every attempt to penetrate to
some factual process which is concealed behind the awe-inspiring picture
is quite - in vain."[20]

The principle of uniformitarianism leaks out now and then: "We must
maintain the conclusion that, for times about which we have nothing more
than reports impregnated with material of an obviously legendary
character, it is necessary to assume the same fundamental forms of
historical behavior as we know in periods which have found more sober
chroniclers." This, regarding the Passover! Things were then as they are
now, legend-analysis is futile! (Notwithstanding that in the aftermath of
catastrophe, legend, rather than purely factual history, is more likely to
be written and to survive.)

Gripped by philosophical confusion, he speaks of natural forces at the
crossing from Egypt: "Here there is no Nature in the Greek, the Chinese or
the modern Occidental sense. What is shown us of Nature is stamped by
History."[21] And the history is stamped by wonder, he says, which
produces cosmic exaggerations. "The defeated Egyptian 'dragon' grows into
a symbol as vast as the world in the drama of rescue which serves as
prelude to the revelation..." From what unconscious source did Buber
conjure up the Egyptian 'dragon'? It can be none other than Typhon, the
great monster whom Zeus struck down with thunderbolts at the time of
Exodus, and the name of the first Hyksos king of Egypt whose forces were
invading the country at the moment of Exodus.

If this be sheer conjecture about Buber's mind, let it pass as such. But
let me nevertheless conjecture about a similar effect in the mind of David
Daiches, for he, like Buber, dismisses any psychological approach to
Moses. In the Epiloque to his learned and beautiful "coffee-table" book on
the life of Moses, Daiches writes "For generations schoolboys have asked
each other: 'Where was Moses when the light went out?' and replied, 'Under
the bed, looking for the matches.' Thus he moved easily from the sublime
to the ridiculous, a fate shared by many great names."[22]

Perhaps Freud, master of the theory of wit, a biographer of Moses to whom
Buber gave only one demeaning sentence and Daiches gave two, quoting Buber
approvingly, would have noted this remark. Also, that the remark is in the
last paragraph of the book.

Why should schoolboys "for generations" (I remember well the joke)
associate Moses with the light going out and why was he "under the bed
looking for the matches"? Moses was the great leader of the times when
darkness befell the world. Under the grim pall (pallet?) was it not he who
was finding matches to make light?

I play this game only to show that it is serious. Humor is an escape from
fear. When legendary characters or historical characters or identifiable
substitutes for them are involved, not alone Freud, but also
anthropologists generally nowadays suspect that a clue to something that
happened in history is contained in the joke. That Daiches should choose
these words to be among his last of the book, which tackles an awesome
subject, is nothing more, I suppose, than a little giggle of unconscious
self-depreciation. It confesses that he has not solved the problem of
Moses and has hardly dared to address it.

THE PRAGMATICS OF LEGEND

Many scholars specialize in analyzing legends, but I do not know of a
manual of their techniques. Whoever has not worked with legends is prone
to believe that their analysis is a waste of time, baseless, or even
fakery, like persons often believe who have not worked with the analysis
of dreams, handwriting, or propaganda, or with the authentication of
documents and paintings. On the other hand, some of those who have done so
believe that rules of analysis are impossible to formulate and an informed
intuition is the only resort. Nevertheless, I feel an obligation to
announce what rules I try to follow, and to accept the critical
consequences. Actually the rules are simple enough and can be practiced
generally with fair success.

We can take as a first rule what was to some degree done earlier in this
chapter: Locate and dissolve the editorial screen imposed later upon a
legend by well-wishing, malicious, power-seeking, or unbelieving
translators, reporters, or scholars. An extra brief example is the word
"Noga" translated "great light" from Isaiah, without regard for the fact
that the word has another meaning "the planet Venus." Now I think that the
reader will wish to analyze my own book here in this way.

Read god-names as words performing specific functions. The fire referred
to in the Pentateuch is of several varieties, and it is possible, although
I have not studied the matter, that in a significantly high proportion of
cases, the possessive "Yahweh" is appended to instances of fire other than
ordinary combustion. The same may be true of natural phenomena other than
fire, as for example, it was "Yahweh's wind," not simply a heavy wind,
that brought down a massive flight of quail. It is ordinarily believed, in
instances such as these, that the taking of the Lord's name is either to
indicate that all things are caused by Yahweh, or else that any
benefaction (or punishing act) is the work of Yahweh. That is, the grammar
is to be read as, for instance, we might say that interference with radio
reception is caused by the Van Allen belts, meaning a special kind of
belt, not that Van Allen caused the belts.

In the Books of Moses, the name Yahweh, when it occurs, can have six
additional functions besides this first, which is a shorthand substitute
for the cause of a variety of natural events or a confession of ignorance
of such causes. "Yahweh" is a battle-cry; the Israelites attack or rally
with the calling of a name, as in the old American song "Rally around the
flag, boys!"

Yahweh is a collective, abstract fiction of authority, objectified in the
minds of community members, giving binding force and security to their
transactions. Yahweh is who is obeyed when obedience is demanded.

Yahweh is a label or designation of what is collectively sacred. A secular
(slightly sacred) example is the label "Property of the U.S. Government."
It joins hundreds and thousands of things, actions, persons in a
commonalty. Yahweh is an attribution to a delusionary universal being of
responsibility, accountability, or blame by people who wish to evade or
avoid or are ignorant of such. "My son died by the will of Yahweh."

Perhaps the most important function of the word is the dynamic for
activating Moses and hence Israel. Yahweh is the inner necessity of Moses
to objectify and reify his conscience and to spread his inner dialogue
upon the official public record. "Yahweh says 'Do this' lest you die."
Finally Yahweh is the inner necessity of other Israelites to objectify and
reify their consciences in a privatized dialogue or collective sanctioned
discourse, as limited by authority, sacred labels, and Moses' priority.
They are discouraged save on rare occasions to place any hallucinations or
delusions upon the public record or to discuss them in public.

Different Israelites, as I have explained elsewhere, would have various
Yahwehs. No two Yahwehs are the same. Yahweh is a somewhat different
component in each Israelite's mind, character, and behavior. No doubt many
of the people neither perceived Yahweh nor believed in other people's
perceptions, such as Moses'.

A corollary of this general rule about god-names is: If you accept an
authoritative voice speaking for god, or talk with him yourself, then
there is no point in your analyzing a legend; it is done for you, you are
in a different kind of ball game.

A third rule is to treat every legend as a confused and bothersome
collective memory containing some truth and therapy for those telling it.
Yahweh's wind blew a great flight of quail down around the Hebrews when
they were starving for meat. Thus he answered their need upon hearing of
it from Moses. But then, because they had complained of him, he caused
many to die of eating the meat. We expect and know of the destruction of
the biosphere occurring in catastrophe. Violent atmospheric turbulence
with heavy radioactivity would both bring the feast and poison the
feasters. A legend says that the wind that downed the quail was terrible
enough to destroy the

whole world. Tornados, it is now demonstrable, have plucked chickens [23].
The bird was probably coturnix coturnix, the common quail of Europe, Asia
and Africa and the only migratory gallinaceous bird.

If long ages have said so, respect a legend's claim to history.

Persistent discussions of infanticide or cannibalism under extreme
conditions merit belief. More broadly the intense conviction that the
Exodus happened is some proof of it. But what of the intense conviction of
Yahweh? The belief that Yahweh happened is true in relation to all the
qualities that make him an historical god, and make many other divinities
also "historical gods." He is a unique god, and says so himself, therefore
historical, with a highly touted, historical mission as well.

Do not be arrogant about how scientific our age is, and about how much is
known today that used to be unknown. One thinks of perfumes,
mummification, herbal medicine, etc. The evidence of this book shows that,
partly because of hyper-electrical activity in nature, Moses' generation
knew more about electrostatics than did the modern world until perhaps
1850. I speak not alone of natural history but in some cases of pure
science and applied science. Where not lapsing into oblivion, a great deal
of material, and the literary evidence of it, has been destroyed. It is
hard to believe that the many thorough and even brilliant scholars who
have dug and delved into the Old Testament setting could otherwise have
believed that the wandering and desolated peoples were ignorant
primitives. But they have been seduced into following the excursions of
anthropologists into primitive cultures. Robert Temple has recently shown
how advanced is some astronomical knowledge of the Dogon tribe of Mali;
they have known since time immemorial of the invisible dwarf white star,
Sirius B, and it is important to them. Obviously they have held onto sound
remnants of a lost scientific corpus [24].

Harken, also, to new scientific knowledge that may require old analyses of
legends to be revised. Radioactivity was unknown or quite misunderstood
until recently. The possibility of explosive meteoric "chemical factories"
was ignored until recently and hence the manufacture of great quantities
of manna in the atmosphere by natural means was not considered. Another
area of recent scientific progress has been psychiatry. Even a century ago
there did not exist the systematic, empirically tested categories of
mental aberrations such as we here apply to Moses. Or, in the field of
geography, it has been established that three large rivers once flowed
west to east across the whole width of Arabia, and that there was a great
lake, now dead, in Northern Arabia, and that, too, immense areas of
blasting and burning are discoverable [25].

Bear in mind that, within broad limits of individuality and broad limits
of culture, human nature and behavior do not change.

People hallucinate today and hallucinated then, under similar conditions.
By torture, starvation, a volcanic eruption, and fear, a great many people
are compelled to hallucinate. "Angels" may be hallucinations but sometimes
only in the limited sense of reifying incredible natural operations and
events occurring in the atmosphere.

Neither believe nor disbelieve an event on the first reading of it.

This rule applies to very many cases in the present work. The problem
arises mostly, or course, in relation to disbelief, regarding the quail,
the manna, the rod of Moses, etc. I first disbelieved the story of over
three million souls joining the Exodus. Continually nagging the passages,
I finally theorized that many people could have left Goshen, for various
reasons, and only a small fraction accomplished the Exodus.

Judge a possible truth both by itself and by its context. The story of
Miriam's rebellion against Moses and her punishment by leprosy is rendered
believable in the context of many cases of leprosy that do not conform to
medical definition today. Knowing what the Inner Sanctum contained and the
Meaning of the ominous cloud allows one to deem the story credible.

Transform the words of a legend to behavior. Words too are a form of
behavior. Visualize them as real operations. Just out of Egypt, Moses
holds up his rod all the long dark day in battle with the Amalekites, but
needs to be propped upon a stone and helped by Aaron and Hur. Why doesn't
Yahweh hold it up or give Moses the strength? The "self-reliance" imposed
upon Moses lends an air of factuality; further inquiry leads me to regard
the story as true. The darkness makes light a heavy morale factor.

Translate the legend into a story-form and a language that you read in the
newspapers or watch in films or use in your ordinary work and days. I
could not understand Pharaoh's actions until I displaced him into the
setting of a contemporary head of state, interposed all I had come to know
about the goings-on in, say, the U.S. Presidency, and then carried them
back again to the Middle Bronze Age in Egypt.

Accept the possibility that two legends may be talking about the same
event in a different way. Did Moses really spend two forty day-night
periods on Mount Sinai, or was there so much material coming out of one
episode that it was made into two? Nothing vital is at stake in either
case. The first prolonged period has to stand, in order to make the Golden
Calf Revolt and other matters plausible. The second does not. It may have
been a brief return following the suppression of the revolt for prayer,
supplication, and redemption of the wicked people, whereupon the halo and
the message. It would also let people test themselves in Moses' absence
and redeem themselves by passing the "faith and patience test." Another
case, already discussed, is that of the Greek Phaeton and Typhon legends,
both evidently dealing with the cometary events of the Exodus.

Ask what elements are missing from the legend that should be there, and
why so? By any ordinary standards, twelve springs of water are
insufficient to draw water for 20,000, much less two million people. But
so the Bible says, a few days out of Egypt, at Elim, this happened [26].
Until 1930, Tehran, Iran, with 200,000 people gathered all of its water
supply from twelve wells above the town which discharged 800 liters (212
gallons) per second [27]. What is available now at Elim is not binding
upon our judgement. The behavior of giant bodies of water in catastrophes
is an encyclopaedia of the amazing; the Mississippi River reversed itself
for several hours in the New Madrid (U.S.A., Missouri) earthquakes of
1811-2 [28]. A single verse on the volume of flow of the springs would
have helped, but then who would accept the Bible generally and doubt this
fact?

Grant the legend a generous quota of exaggerations, time lapses, and
contradictions. I have addressed the problem of the numbers in the Exodus
in this spirit. The problem of the great ages of Moses and others by
modern standards continues to baffle one. One possibility is some
electrical and/or atmospheric effect upon life duration. Another
possibility is the calculation of ages by a different calendar, perhaps
one of 260 days such as obtained in earliest times among the Mayans and
other Meso-Americans and persisted as a sacred calendar after they knew
and practiced a contemporary calendar. Then at 120 years of age, Moses
would have lived 31,200 days. Measured on the year base of 365 days, he
would be 85 years old. I prefer this solution.

There is much rhetorical exaggeration in the Bible, which is in part a
panegyric for the Jews. Still I doubt whether the promise of Yahweh to
multiply his chosen people to the number of stars and sands of the
seashore exceeds in optimism the promises contained in the typical annual
State of the Union Address of the President to the American people. Nor
does it exceed the optimism with which the President views the heights
achieved in the American standard of living, inviting now a comparison,
too, with Moses' haranguing the Jews on their fine diet of quail
(poisoned) and manna bread (wormy). Nor should one forego comparison
between an American speaker describing the history of the U.S.A. on the
Fourth of July and Moses in Deuteronomy, reciting the history of Israel
since the Exodus.

Another rule is to seek particular truths in a legend which is false as a
whole, and seek truth as a whole in a legend which contains false
particulars. Thus, by rule number two of this list, we do not see a real
Yahweh addressing Moses in the episode of the Burning bush. But the
electrical environment and effects, and the reactions of Moses' character
are such as to make the event believable and significant.

In converse, the Plagues of Egypt are convincing as a whole set of
interconnected events that should not be dismissed because of perplexities
in connection with the death of the Egyptian first-born, and because of
repeated statements that the Hebrews in Goshen were exempted from them.
Wishful thinking usually exaggerates the pains of one's antagonists and
would create out of a quantitative difference between the sufferings of
Goshen and Memphis a qualitative difference,

An explanation of all events should be attempted, within the limits of
time and space available. It is not only irritating, but also and more
importantly unscientific, to interpret only those events for which
plausible explanations are available, while avoiding others more obscure
and contradictory. One should not explain manna without conjecture upon
the strange dew that fell with it. Further, a Bible critic cannot be both
an historian and a faithful believer. He cannot pick and choose,
preserving his reputation as now one and then again the other.

One may not say, as has Daiches, that normal natural conditions prevailed
at Sinai during the handing down of the Ten Commandments, and that perhaps
"the Kenites, who were desert smiths and would therefore carry fire about
with them and whom the biblical story associates closely with Moses, were
able to produce smoke and fire which came to be looked on and remembered
as some kind of divine sign."[29] For then, after this incredible
reductionism, he blandly finishes his book on Moses without twanging the
nerves of even a moderate believer by tucking in a few 'words where he
"concludes" that it would be "too crude" to say that Moses thought that he
might get people to obey him by getting them to believe in Yahweh [30]."
Too crude , but he will let it slip off his tongue anyhow. The most
significant actions are denied to Yahweh, but he will not address the
question of whether Yahweh exists only through Moses or even whether Moses
manipulates Yahweh.

Sigmund Freud's paraphernalia of psychiatry is simply abandoned when he
writes about Moses as a person. Velikovsky evades arguments that may
antagonize, whether nationalistically or religiously, Jews or
fundamentalist Christians. Eliade, while including all other religions
within his generalizations of historical cyclism, finds that Christianity
is donated a particular linear course of history, leaving us with the
uneasy question whether he is postulating an indefinitely long, perhaps
eternal, course for Christianity; at any rate, it is made an exception to
various generalizations by this method.

It is helpful to check out the common psychological mechanisms in legends
to see how they are operative: wishful thinking (Freud's omnipotence of
thought and James' will to believe); the fear of loss of control of the
self and the world; hierocentrism, ethnocentrism, and self-centrism;
reification of nature and objects; and the projection of feelings of
guilt, blame and punishment onto the legendary characters and actions.
Whose wish for what control over what fear is evident in what animated
beings, and in the plot of their behavior?

Nor are the rules of historiographical criticism to be overlooked. One
needs to look for signs of repeated con- firmations of an event, of the
implied presences of eyewitnesses, and even of expert witnesses, and of
chronological sequences making logical sense. The Bible is heavily
historical in its approach to events; the chains of interconnections among
events are many and strong. Unlike practically all legendary material, it
carries details of chronology.

With the later help of Christians and Moslems, the Jews were able to
assert the authenticity of the Old Testament and benefit from a general
approbation of its contents. The pagan world was not so benevolent,
lacking the same spiritual investment, whereupon it occurs to us to check
whether pagan sources provide some contrary renditions of our subject and
supply an alternative theory. We find in the negative.

The opinions of the pagan writers of the Hellenistic and early Christian
periods about Moses and the Jews are generally stereotyped. Almost none
are in depth, whether friendly or unfriendly. On the basis of John Gager's
research [31], the pagan stereotype can be depicted in an understandable
form:

Moses was an Egyptian, possibly a Heliopolitan scientist, said Apion;
Moses led "numerous reasonable men" out of Egypt (Strabo). Moses and
Yahweh, his god, brought plagues upon Egypt. The plagues "disfigured
bodies", said Tacitus (radiation diseases?) The Jews were carriers of the
plagues. They were expelled because they were lepers and forever resented
their treatment. They were iconoclasts and destroyed all gods wherever
they went; they were atheists, in this sense. The Jews were aloof,
aversive to contacts with other peoples, suspicious and misanthropic.
"Having been appointed leader of the exiles, he [Moses] secretly took the
holy objects of the Egyptians. In trying to recover these objects with
force, the Egyptians were forced by storms to return home" (Pompeius
Trogus, 1st century A.D.).

It is remarkable that this caricature, assembled from numerous fragments,
can be applied to the scenario of the book here. Every element in it, no
matter how distorted, can be associated with corresponding realities of
Moses and the Exodus. Like an elaborate rumor, it has a certain probative
value, in that its parts can be traced to reality, while it contains no
fundamental contradictions of it. However, without full historical
understanding, the stereotype leads directly down the road to
anti-semitism.

It is useful also to apply certain rules about rumormongering to legendary
materials directly. This is to disassemble artificial conglomerations and
reveal the underlying reality. In solving for the original event, one
recognizes a heavy simplification occurring initially over time: single
causes eject multiple causality; a leader replaces a group of leaders; one
reason is given for a complex of reasons. The simplifying process lends an
air of stupidity to legends; however, it is a way of buying temporal
endurance at the cost of realism.

There is also an invariable stereotyping, such as we have found in
historiography as well. Again the Bible as legend veers towards history
because of its frequent insistence upon the uniqueness of events and
personalities. Aaron is, like Moses, authentic psychologically and yet not
stereotyped. Even Miriam is not, though less is said of her. Joshua, of
whom almost no characterization is given, can be put together into a
convincing personage.

Events, too. When it is said of the plague of frogs that the animals came
onto the beds and into the ovens, this actually happens in local
situations. And when there comes the "very heavy hail such as had never
been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation,"[32] the
superlative is precise amid a context of precision, and is validated by
this, and within the natural realm of events, and within the context of
the total set of disasters. We know what pride the ancient Egyptians
possessed in their knowledge of their own history; Plato tells of how
Solon of Athens was lectured by the Egyptian seers on this point. The
usage is stereotyped; the validity of the fact conveyed is not.

One watches, too, on all sides for the inevitable distortions that
accompany the memory of events, bearing in mind, when observing the
distortions, the inevitable hints of their cause which they contain. The
repeated references to the Egyptian people as complaisant in lending and
giving their valuables to the departing Hebrews hardly succeed in covering
up the spontaneous and systematic looting that occurred in the
disorganized and chaotic situation. The need to preserve for racist Yahweh
a pure race of his chosen people is a continual source of distortion in
the verses dealing with the character and conduct of the Hebrews in Egypt
and their mingling and merging with tribes during the wanderings and in
the Promised Land.

There is, too, as with rumor-mongering generally, a vulgarization in the
account of events. What Moses does is reduced typically to the level of
understanding and gullibility of the common man (though much of this may
be the work of the priests and editors.) Legend lives by speaking to the
common denominator of people; they must hear it, like it, be moved by it,
and demand that it be passed on for generations without end. History
reduced to miracles is the best insurance that it will live, somehow, for
a long time. The Torah strives mightily to preserve history in the face of
the competitive temptations and advantages of legend.

Finally, I should like to mention the pitfalls of a simplistic
anthropological approach to the Old Testament, a matter that has arisen
already on occasion in the chapters of this book. German scholars,
following James Fraser, were especially impressed by the possibilities of
reducing the peculiarities of the Biblical text to the commonality of
comparative primitive cultural anthropology.

The bedouin primitivist school of Old Testament interpretation is well
expressed in America by Julian Morgenstern who in 1929 wrote of the
origins of the ark and continued in 1945 with studies of the ark, ephod,
and tent [33]. Briefly summarized, he finds numerous Arab and pre-Arab
mobile boxed and tented litters, carrying god images and sacred stones (or
bethyls), usually on camels. These performed ark-like functions of
pointing out routes, rallying tribesmen in battle, and transporting and
exhibiting the deity. He concludes that the Ark of the Covenant was of
this ilk and not much more - even less, since it would not, at least later
on, have carried the image of Yahweh. Further, he claims that to the
Ephraimites' tribe belonged the first ark, which then diffused among the
confederation.

Against this line of arguments two major thrusts can be directed. One,
represented by Roland de Vaux, is historical. The Ark and the Tent, says
this authority, were present and together from the very beginning of the
wanderings [34]. Lacking here the justification and space for an extended
comparative analysis of the two propositions, of which I favor that of de
Vaux, I can move to a second mode of rebuttal, which is logical and
provides at the least a stalemate.

In the history of artifacts and institutions, there frequently occurs that
these possibilities exist: that the historical actuality, form, and
function of the central concept evolves, stagnates, or devolves. Thus "an
ark" at any point of time, say between 2000 B.C. and 2000 A.D., may exist,
but its form and functions may be significantly different. One might find
among the bedouins of North Africa, following World War II, artillery
shell cases of 105 mm. caliber. Judging by their form and function,
carrying nuts or valuables on camels, they are of the species of mobile

storage jars. In a brief prior period they carried high explosives and
were associated with a complex propelling machine and military
organization. They have devolved, or evolved, depending on the "ideal"
function assigned them. This is an extreme example of what occurs with all
artifacts and institutions over time.

Another example is to be found in the Ark of the Torah, the standard chest
that contains the Law in Jewish temples. Its design was traced by Joseph
Jacobs. Its original was clearly a Roman desk constructed to hold scrolls
[35].

Whatever arks and ephods and tenting may have been before and since the
Ark of the Covenant and Tabernacle, and even elsewhere at the same time,
the problem of the particular Ark of Moses remains. Logically not only can
it be all that we said it is (and for our purposes the Biblical
description is as justifiable as any other design), but also it is to be
expected that the Ark, like all inventions, was built upon prior artifacts
and institutions and was part of the inheritance of subsequent peoples who
changed its form and function, keeping its "spiritual" functions, say, and
depressing its physical construction, and forgetting (partly because of
changed meteorological and social circumstances) its illuminating divine
occupancy.

If thus, historically and logically, we can substantiate our position
respecting the actuality and functions of the ark, we may proceed to a
third point, a counter-allegation. This is directed against bedouin
primitivist thinking in general, which is a learned and potent kind of
reductionism of the Bible. Once the catastrophic setting of Exodus is
dismissed as exaggeration and falsehood, and most that we know of Moses is
regarded as merely a fanciful hero's tale, then the door is opened wide to
a new history of the Jews as an escaped slave remnant finding haven among
an undisturbed nomadic tribe, and, in gratitude or by necessity, adopting
their local volcano-god. But once the natural conditions of Exodus and the
character of Moses and his cohorts are established, there can be assigned
to bedouin primitivism only the limited role that I have already granted
it in this book.

Notes (Appendix)

1.  I examine the Homeric origins in a 1968 manuscript on the Disastrous
Love Affair of Moon and Mars, yet unpublished, but Velikovsky, in part II
of W. in C. presents the original case.

2.  Cassuto, 2.

3.  Ibid., 27-8, et passim.

4.  Num. 33:1-49.

5.  "Biblical Literature," 2 EB 882.

6.  Winnett, op. cit.

7.  Ibid., p. 132.

8.  1969, p. 476.

9.  Tr. Israel Abrahams (1959), Hebrew U., Jerusalem, 26-7.

10.  69 Zeitschrift fur Alttestament. Wiss. (1957), 84-103 and 70 ZAW
(1958), 48-59.

11.  Op. cit.

12.  This approach is also used by A.G. Galanopoulos and E. Bacon,
Atlantis, Bobbs-Merril Co.: Indianapolis, 1969, 192-9.

13.  Hort, p. 59.

14.  66.

15.  67-8.

16.  69-73.

17.  144-5.

18.  77.

19.  74.

20.  111.

21.  79.

22.  256.

23.  J.G. Galway and J.T. Schaefer, "Fowl Play," 32 Weatherwise (1979)
116-8.

24.  The Sirius Mystery. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1976.

25.  Von Fange, 131.

26.  Ex. 15:27.

27.  17 EB 519.

28.  James Perrick, Jr., The New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-1812, (1976)

29.  Daiches, 90.

30.  Ibid., 237.

31.  Moses in Greco-Roman Paganism, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1972.

32.  Ex. 10:24.

33.  The Ark, the Ephod, and the "Tent of Meeting," Cincinnati: Hebrew
Union CP, 1945.

34.  The Bible and the Ancient Near East, New York: Doubleday, 1967, ch.
8, 136-51.

35.  "Earliest Representation of the Ark of the Law," 14 JQR (1902),
737-9.

(end)