CHAPTER 1 THE COPPER SCROLL – TWO THOUSAND YEARS IN HIDING
1. Some definitions of the term ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ use it in a general sense, meaning any scrolls found along the shores of the Dead Sea or even relating to them. In this book the term ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ applies specifically to those discovered between 1947 and 1956 in the eleven caves near to Qumran on the Dead Sea.
2. Scorification is a refining process that removes impurities from metals. It is usually applied to the purification of copper, gold and silver ore and involves mixing the impure ore with granulated lead and borax as a flux. The mixture is heated in a muffle furnace to volatilize low melting point impurities and to combine the rest with lead oxide and borax to form an easily removable slag.
3. My last publishing venture involved the purchase of an old Robert Maxwell company, which published magazines on chess and bridge!
4. Mohammed edh-Dhib
and his brother, Bedouin from the Taamirek tribe, were searching for two lost
black-haired goats in the hills that run along the shores of the Dead Sea.
Climbing up the lower slopes of a hillside they entered a dark musty cave and
stumbled against a pile of sherds, around which lay clay pots, pieces of leather
and some jars….
Without realizing it, they had discovered the first
tranche of the most important biblical texts ever found. Between 1947 and 1956 a
further ten caves, all within a few kilometres of each other, were to yield up
an historian’s dream, ranging from complete scrolls to tiny fragments; in all
some 80,000 items. The caves are located close to what was the site of an
ancient settlement of ultra-religious Jewish Essenes, at Qumran, on the
north-western shore of the Dead Sea. The place is known to the Bedouin as
Khirbet-Qumran – the Stone Ruins of Qumran.
The brothers, not knowing what to do with the seven
scrolls they had found, in what is now known as Cave 1, showed them to a Syrian
shoemaker in Bethlehem, nicknamed ‘Kando’, whom they knew dealt in antiquities.
Kando took four of the scrolls to the Archbishop-Metropolitan of St Mark’s
Monastery in Jerusalem, who promptly acquired them for the equivalent of £24. This priceless acquisition must rank as one of the bargains of all time.
The Metropolitan had in his possession the oldest
complete Hebrew version of the Old Testament Book of Isaiah. (Two versions of
Isaiah were found in Cave 1, given the super-fixes a and b,
which were written in ancient forms of Hebrew. 1QIsaa, dated to
202–107 BCE, contains all sixty-six chapters of Isaiah, apart from a few missing
words. It has thirteen significant variations from the Hebrew Masoretic text in
use today but otherwise is remarkably similar. 1QIsab was written
around the time of Jesus and is less complete, but it is closer to the
traditional Hebrew text. Prior to the discovery of these Isaiahs, the oldest
known Hebrew version was the Cairo Codex, dated to 895 CE. The Metropolitan had
also acquired a Manual of Discipline for the Qumran-Essenes, a commentary on
Habakkuk – a minor seventh century BCE prophet, and a Genesis Apocryphon, which
retells and enhances the Old Testament Book of Genesis.
The three other scrolls from Cave 1 comprised an
incomplete version of Isaiah (1QIsab); a War Scroll, which describes
how the Qumran-Essenes (as ‘the sons of light’), were to wage a final battle
against the ‘sons of darkness’ – those who did not follow their beliefs; and a
scroll of Thanksgiving Psalms. These three scrolls were acquired by Professor E.
L. Sukenik, of the Hebrew University of West Jerusalem, on 29 November 1947.
Shortly after this purchase, on 14 May 1948, Israel
declared its independence and war broke out between Arabs and Jews. The
Archbishop-Metropolitan, Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel (whose name testified to
his allegiance to Arab, Christian and Jewish traditions), lived up to his
pragmatic nature and promptly fled, via Syria, to Lebanon. One can visualize him
scurrying across the runway to catch his plane, with four priceless scrolls
tucked under his billowing cassock. He ended up in America where the scrolls
were briefly put on display at the Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts, in 1951,
but it was not until June 1954 that our mercurial Metropolitan popped up again,
having placed the following advertisement in the Wall Street Journal:
“The Four Dead Sea Scrolls”
Biblical Manuscripts dating back to at least 200 BC, are for sale. This would be an ideal gift to an educational or religious institution by an individual or group.
Box F206, The Wall Street Journal.
Here fate intervened. As my story unfolds you will find that I am quite a fan of
fate and coincidence. By chance Professor Sukenik’s son, Yigael Yadin (an Army
officer who would later rise to become Deputy Prime Minister of Israel), was in
New York and managed, after a hectic scramble around for money, to acquire the
scrolls for $250,000 (through an intermediary, a New York banker/industrialist
Samuel Gottesmann).
After the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel occupied the
West Bank of the Jordan, the caves and ruins at Qumran came under their control
and subsequently have been the subject of continuous archaeological activity. It
was also in 1967 when the last remaining major scroll, the Temple Scroll, was
acquired from our ubiquitous friend Kando, who was still living in Bethlehem and
had secreted the 9m long scroll under his bed for eleven years!
All seven major scrolls from Cave 1, and the Temple
Scroll, now reside in the Shrine of the Book, at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Other fragments from Cave 1 have found their way to the Museum of the Department
of Antiquities, Amman, Jordan; the Palestine Archaeological Museum, in East
Jerusalem (now renamed the Rockefeller Museum); and to the Bibliotheque
Nationale, in Paris.
5. G. Bonani et al., ‘Radiocarbon Dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls’, Atiqot 20 (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority,1991); A. J. T. Jull et al., ‘Radiocarbon Dating of Scrolls and Linen Fragments from the Judean Desert’, Radiocarbon 37 (New Haven, Conn.: American Journal of Science, 1995).
6. Israel Carmi, ‘Dating Dead Sea Scrolls by Radiocarbon’, The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty – Years After Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress July 20–25, 1997 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society in cooperation with The Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, 2000).
7. Jull et al., ‘Radiocarbon Dating of Scrolls and Linen Fragments from the Judean Desert’.
8. This figure was
correct at the time of the First Edition, but by 2003 the amount of Dead Sea
Scroll texts still to be published had dropped to less than 10 per cent. Prior
to their discovery the oldest Hebrew versions of the Old Testament were the
Aleppo Codex, dating to the tenth century CE, preserved in the Shrine of the
Book in Jerusalem, and the Ben Asher text, dating from 1008, now in the Russian
State Library at St Petersburg. The Aleppo Codex was written in Palestine, taken
to Egypt in the eleventh century and found at Aleppo, Syria, in the fourteenth
century. It has suffered fire damage and is not complete.
Virtually all previously discovered Biblical documents,
apart from the Dead Sea Scrolls, are known to us from copies or references to
earlier documents by later writers. They have therefore been subjected to
inaccuracies in copying and adjustments by the writers to meet doctrinal
objectives. George Brooke, ‘The Treasure Under Your Noses: 50 Years of
Manchester and the Dead Sea Scrolls’, Lecture at The Manchester Museum, 6
December 1997.
9. Flavius Josephus
(37–100 CE), a Jewish historian who became a Roman citizen and wrote, amongst
other things, about the Essene community and their settlement on the Dead Sea.
Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE). Gaius Plinius Secundus was
born in Como, Italy, of an aristocratic Roman family. After a spell in the Roman
army he later devoted himself to writing historical treatises on subjects like
oration, and the history of Rome. A friend of Emperor Vespasian, he died during
the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.
Judaeus Philo (c.20 BCE to c.40 CE), a
Jewish-Egyptian philosopher and Greek scholar, who was born in Alexandria. He
worked at Alexandria on Bible commentary and law and mentions the Qumran-Essenes
in his writings.
10. Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1928).
11. Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, ed. Joyce Irene Whalley (London: Sidwick & Jackson, 1982).
12. David Scholer, Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged, trans. by C. D. Yong (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishing, 1993).
13. Ibid.
14. There has been considerable argument about whether there was a scriptorium at Qumran. In particular, Norman Golb (Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1996)), does not believe that there were writing tables. As de Vaux (R. de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (London: Oxford University Press, 1959)) pointed out, received opinion is that scribal tables did not come into use until the eighth to ninth centuries CE, but he cites examples as early as the third century CE. Nevertheless, de Vaux is convinced that the Qumran tables were for writing, not eating, and most scholars today accept his interpretation. There are, in fact, examples of tables being used as early as the fourteenth century BCE, as illustrated in the tomb of Huya at Amarna, Egypt, which shows scenes from the workshop of Iuty, chief sculptor of Queen Tiyi. See Joyce Tyldesley, Nefertiti, Egypt’s Sun Queen (London: Viking, 1998).
15. References in the literature differ about the date the Copper Scroll was discovered. John Marco Allegro, in his book The Treasure of the Copper Scroll (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960), gave the date as 14 March 1952, other historians quote 20 March. I obtained a definitive date from the person who found the Copper Scroll, Henri de Contenson, Directeur de Recherche Honoraire au CNRS. According to him three excavation teams, led by J. T. Milik, D. Barthélemy and Monsieur Contenson himself, began work in March 1952 on various sections of the hills overlooking Qumran. M. Contenson, with a team of ten Bedouin, arrived on site on 10 March and, after preparatory clearing work on Cave 3, found the Copper Scroll on 20 March. Robert Feather, Recorded Interview with Henri de Contenson, Paris, 16 January 1999. See also E. M. Laperrousaz (ed.), Qoumran et les Manuscrits de la Mer Morte (Paris: Les Editions Du Cerf, 1997).
CHAPTER 2 BULLION BY THE BILLION
1. The original international team working on the Dead Sea Scrolls at the École Archéologique Française de Jerusalem (sometimes referred to as École Biblique) and the Palestine Archaeological Museum – later renamed the Rockefeller Museum – comprised Father Jozef Milik and Father Dominique Barthélemy of the École Biblique; John Strugnell and John Allegro from Oxford University; Patrick Skehan and Frank Moore Cross from the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; Claus-Hunno Hunzinger from Germany; and Jean Starcky from France.
2. Mishnaic Hebrew is not known as a fully recognizable form of language until the Rabbinic period of 200 CE onwards, but its early development can be seen in a number of Dead Sea Scroll texts and in the Copper Scroll, which was thought to be copied at least some 140 years earlier. Textual comparisons with the Bible have shown usages drawn, for example, from Ezekiel and Isaiah, therefore indicating an allegiance dating back to at least 700 or 800 BCE.
3. The language and writing system of ‘Ugarit’, in northern Syria, developed around 1500–1400 BCE under the influence of cuneiform (a wedge-like lettering); Akkadian from the Mesopotamian and Sumerian regions. Ugarit reduced the number of letters required from the many hundreds in use in other languages, to a mere twenty-seven. Under the influence of Ugarit and Egyptian hieroglyphs, ‘Proto-Canaanite’ writing was developed in Canaan around 1400–1300 BCE, initially using twenty-seven letters, but by the thirteenth century BCE twenty-two letters. By the eleventh century BCE, Phoenician influence established a normal form of Proto-Canaanite (subsequently referred to as ‘Phoenician’), of twenty-two letters written horizontally from right to left. ‘Paleo-Hebrew’ evolved largely from this form of ‘Phoenician’, around the ninth century BCE.
4. 68 CE is the last possible date for the Copper Scroll to have been engraved by the Qumran-Essenes, as their settlement was destroyed by the Romans at that time. Apart from evidence of a few Qumran-Essenes turning up to help the Zealots resist the Romans at the mountain fortress of Masada near the Dead Sea, where, in 73 CE, 960 Jews committed suicide to avoid capture, history knows nothing more about the Qumran-Essenes.
5. There are at least a dozen authoritative translations available of the Copper Scroll and between each of them there are many variations on phrases, individual words and letters that give completely different readings to the meaning of the text. As an example of the differences of opinion amongst scholars, Jonas Greenfield, (Journal of the American Oriental Society 89 (New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental Society, 1969)), in criticizing the official translation of the Copper Scroll, disagreed with thirteen per cent of the vocabulary.
6. Jozef T. Milik, ‘Le Rouleau du Cuivre de Qumran (3Q15)’, Revue Biblique 66 (Paris: Librairie V. Lecoffre, 1959).
7. John Marco Allegro, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960).
8. M. Baillet, J.T. Milik, and R. de Vaux, Les ‘Petites Grottes’ de Qumran: Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962).
9. Whilst most scholars now agree the Copper Scroll was engraved by the Qumran-Essenes and relates to real treasure, some of the early workers at the École Biblique in Jerusalem, such as Father de Vaux and Father Jozef Milik, did not take its contents seriously and thought them to be based on fable. A small minority, including Norman Golb of the University of Chicago, and Manfred Lehmann (Revue de Qumran, October 1964), maintain that the Copper Scroll was not a work of the Qumran-Essenes.
10. Allegro, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll; Florentino Garcia Martinez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated, trans. Wilfred G. E. Watson (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994); Albert M. Wolters, The Copper Scroll: Overview: Text, and Translation (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996); Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (London: Allen Lane, 1997).
11. John Marco Allegro, the first translator of the Copper Scroll, could not understand the values the Biblical Talent was giving (even though he was using a Talent of 45lb, rather than the more usual value of 76lb), so he quite arbitrarily downgraded the estimates of weights by 1/60 by applying the next Biblical unit down.
12. Geoffrey Wigoder, The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Facts on File, 1992).
13. According to Joseph Fitzmyer – Responses to 101 Questions on the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Paulist Press, 1992) – the Copper Plaque (as he calls it) contains no sectarian terminology and does not mention anything connected with the Community. Professor Lawrence Schiffman, of New York University, identifies numerous words in the Copper Scroll that do not appear elsewhere in the Dead Sea Scrolls (‘The Vocabulary of the Copper Scroll and the Temple Scroll’, International Symposium on the Copper Scroll at The University of Man chester Institute of Science and Technology, 8–11 September 1996).
14. Theodor H. Gaster, The Dead Sea Scriptures (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975).
15. Norman Golb, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1996). John Allegro thought that the treasures were hidden by Zealots – a fanatical band of Jewish rebels who fought against the Romans from 66–73 CE, when they were finally crushed at Masada.
16. M. R. Lehmann, ‘Identification of the Copper Scroll Based on its Technical Terms’, Revue de Qumran 17 (Paris: Éditions Letouzey et Ané, October 1964).
17. Thomas Bradshaw, The Whole Genuine Works of Flavius Josephus (London: Alex Hogg, 1792).
18. John Marco Allegro, The Dead Sea Scrolls (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1956); P. Kyle McCarter, The Mystery of the Copper Scroll: The Dead Sea Scrolls After Forty Years (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1991); J. K. Lefkovits, ‘The Copper Scroll Treasure: Fact or Fiction?’, International Symposium on the Copper Scroll, The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, 8–11 September, 1996; Michael O. Wise, ‘David J. Wilmot and the Copper Scroll’ at the International Symposium on the Copper Scroll, Manchester–Sheffield Centre for Dead Sea Scrolls Research, 1996; Albert Wolters, ‘History and the Copper Scroll’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 722 (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1994).
19. Joseph Conklin and Michelle Andrea, ‘Jeremiah’s Wheelbarrow: The First Temple Treasure of the Copper Scroll of Qumran and the Land of Redemption’ (http://shell.idt.net/conklin/jeremiah.html)
20. Conklin and Andrea have Ezra returning from Babylon some seventy years after the destruction of the First Temple, i.e., in 516 BCE, whereas most authorities date their return to around 458 BCE.
21. André Dupont-Sommer, ‘Les Rouleaux de Cuivre Trouvé a Qoumran’, Revue de L’histoire des Religions 151 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957); Bargil Pixner, ‘Unravelling the Copper Scroll Code: A Study of the Topography of 3Q15’, Revue de Qumran 11 (Paris: Éditions Letouzey et Ané, 1983); Stephen Goranson, ‘Sectarianism, Geography, and the Copper Scroll’, Journal of Jewish Studies 43 (London: Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, 1992).
22. J. F. Elwolde, ‘3Q15: Its Linguistic Affiliation, with Lexicographical Comments’, International Symposium on the Copper Scroll, Manchester–Sheffield Centre for Dead Sea Scroll Research, 1996; J. Lefkovits, ‘The Copper Scroll Treasure: Fact or Fiction – The Abbreviations KK vs KKRYN’, International Symposium on the Copper Scroll, Manchester–Sheffield Centre for Dead Sea Scroll Research, 1996.
23. In Chapter 3, I include comments from Dr Rosalie David, Reader and Keeper of Egyptology at The Manchester Museum, on the peculiarity of the numbering system used in the Copper Scroll.
CHAPTER 3 METALLURGY AND METROLOGY
1. There were two systems of measuring length in use in ancient Israel. The ordinary cubit (ammah) – the length of a man’s elbow to his second knuckle – was equal to 45.8cm and the large cubit measured 52.5cm. Geoffrey Wigoder (ed.), The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Facts on File, 1992).
2. The main sources of
gold in the ancient Middle East were in the regions below Thebes, in Egypt,
stretching south to lower Nubia and east to the Sudan desert. The earliest forms
of gold were found pre-3000 BCE in alluvial beds and were later mined from veins
in quartz rock. Gold from these sources, in its uncombined form, was simply
beaten into the desired shape. Combined ores were crushed into fine particles,
separated by washing and, as heating technology improved, melted and refined in
clay cupolas with the assistance of air blown onto the molten metal. After about
1300 BCE ‘Ketem’ gold began to be imported from Asia.
Silver, which does not normally occur in an uncombined
state in the Middle East, was much rarer than gold up until about 1300 BCE,
having a value approximately twice that of gold. Examples of silver objects that
have been found were usually associated with gold sources, or obtained by
separation from Galena (lead sulphide) ores containing silver mined in the
eastern desert in southern Egypt.
Although gold and silver are still relatively valuable
materials today, with gold fluctuating in price between $280 and $500 an ounce
between 1985 and 1998, and silver currently around $6 an ounce, with the
protracted difficulties of refining in ancient times they were rare commodities
of extremely high value.
3. Giulio Morteani and Jeremy P. Northover (eds.), ‘Pre-historic Gold in Europe: Mines Metallurgy and Manufacture’, Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Prehistoric Gold in Europe, Seeon, Germany, 1993, published by Dordrecht Kluwer Academic, 1995; C. H .V. Sutherland, Gold: Its Beauty, Power and Allure (London: Thames & Hudson, 1959); Timothy Green, The World of Gold (London: Rosendale Press, 1993).
4. Silver was more valuable than gold in the Egyptian New Kingdom period (from 1550 BCE), in line with their relative availabilities of 2:1 in favour of gold. This ratio was slowly reversed, reaching approximate parity around 900 BCE, from which time silver became more abundant than gold.
5. Michael O. Wise, ‘David J. Wilmot and the Copper Scroll’, at the International Symposium on the Copper Scroll, Manchester–Sheffield Centre for Dead Sea Scrolls Research, 1996.
6. Ibid. All the examples of engraving on copper, cited by Michael Wise, on examination turn out to be engravings on bronze. The reference to the Medinet Habu find as being copper is incorrect. It is a bronze tablet measuring approximately 30cm square and is in the possession of the Cairo Museum.
7. One of the best translations of the Harris Papyrus was done by the great pioneering archaeologist, James Henry Breasted. Born in Rockford, Illinois, in 1865, he became the first Professor in America of a ‘Chair of Egyptian’ at Chicago University and was called ‘one of the prophets’ by J. D. Rockefeller, who was later to endow the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem.
8. James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. IV (New York: Russell & Russell, 1912).
9. All references to ‘brass’ in the Old Testament, and there are many, are erroneous. They should be read as ‘bronze’. Brass was not in use until Roman times.
10. There are numerous examples of pharaohs taking over their predecessors goods, by right and by plunder, and taking over tomb furnishings and materials, as well as building structures. A good example is Haremhab who usurped many of Tutankhamun’s possessions and monuments. See, for example, Peter A. Clayton, Chronicle of the Pharaohs (London: Thames & Hudson, 1998).
11. A General Guide to the Egyptian Collections in the British Museum (London: British Museum Publications, 1975).
12. H. Garland and C. O. Bannister, Ancient Egyptian Metallurgy (London: Charles Griffen & Co., 1926).
13. Mummification, involving removal of internal organs and embalming to preserve the dead body, was common amongst Egyptian royalty and upper classes from the Old Kingdom (c.2550 BCE) down to the Greco-Roman period (332 BCE–300 CE).
14. Garland and Bannister, Ancient Egyptian Metallurgy.
15. In addition to the restoration work and analyses of the scroll carried out by Electricité de France, Paris, in the early 1990s, splinters of copper from the scroll were, according to P. Kyle McCarter of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, sent for analysis to Harvard University prior to 1955. The results showed some residual tin and 99.9 per cent copper. The remaining splinters are still in the Freer Gallery, Washington, D.C. P. Kyle McCarter, ‘The Anomalous Spelling of the Copper Scroll’, The Dead Sea Scrolls – Fifty Years After Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20–25, 1997 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society in cooperation with The Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, 2000). See also Albert Wolters, The Copper Scroll: Overview: Text and Translation (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1960); D. Brizemeure and N. Lacoudre, ‘EDF et le Rouleau de Cuivre (3Q15)’, International Symposium on the Copper Scroll, Manchester–Sheffield Centre for Dead Sea Scrolls Research, 1996. (http://www.edf.fr/html/en/mag/mmorte/intro.htm). See also W. V. Davies, Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities in the British Museum – Tools and Weapons I: Axes (London: British Museum Publications, 1987).
16. Wolters, The Copper Scroll: Overview, Text and Translation.
17. Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson, The British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Press, c.1995)
18. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. IV. Interestingly the tomb of Rekhmire, chief minister to Tutmoses III, c.1450 BCE, shows a slab of what appears to be copper being carried on the shoulder of a worker, and its size equates to the proportions of oxhide copper slabs seen illustrated on the sides of Egyptian coffins. This dimensional proportion is approximately 3:8; the same as that of individual sections of the Copper Scroll (Allesandra Nibbi, ‘The Oxhide Ingot and the Hand Bellows Pot of Middle Kingdom Egypt’, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Ancient Egyptian Mining and Metallurgy Conservation of Metallic Artifacts, Cairo, 1995).
19. Correspondence between Dr Rosalie David and the author, 21 December 1998–18 January 1999. She is now a Professor at Manchester University.
20. There is evidence at Qumran that the inhabitants had developed skills in leather-working and pottery making, so they could well have adapted these skills to metalworking.
CHAPTER 4 THE HEBREW TRIBES AND EGYPT
1. The Judaean Essene movement during the second century BCE to the first century CE is described by Josephus, Pliny the Elder and Philo as being made up of static and mobile groupings, perhaps numbering 4,000 in all at any one time. Their testimony never indicates that the Essenes were recruited from anything other than Jews of Hebrew stock.
| 2. | Genesis 12:10 | ‘There was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.’ |
| Genesis 37:23–24, 28 | ‘When Joseph came up to his brothers, they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the ornamented tunic that he was wearing and took him and cast him into the pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it.…When Midianite traders passed by, they pulled Joseph up out of the pit. They sold Joseph for twenty pieces of silver to the Ishmaelites, who brought Joseph to Egypt.’ | |
| Genesis 42:3 | ‘So ten of Joseph’s brothers went down to get grain rations in Egypt…’ | |
| Genesis 46:6 | ‘…and they took along their livestock and the wealth that they had amassed in the land of Canaan. Thus Jacob and all his off-spring with him came to Egypt.’ | |
| Jeremiah 43:5–7 | ‘But Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the forces, took all the remnant of Judah, that were returned from all nations whither they had been driven, to dwell in the land of Judah; even men, and women, and children, and the king’s daughters, and every person that Nebuzar adan the captain of the guard had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, and Jeremiah the prophet, and Baruch the son of Neriah. So they came into the land of Egypt: for they obeyed not the voice of the Lord. Thus came they even to Tahpanhes.’ | |
| Matthew 2:13 | ‘And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Arise, and take the young child [Jesus] and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word; for Herod shall seek the young child to destroy him.”’ |
3. The concept of Abraham as the founder of monotheism is based on the Biblical story that God first appeared to him in a vision and promised that his descendants would inherit the lands from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates. The dating of Abraham by various authorities varies from c.1900 to 1400 BCE, and the evidence for my preference of c.1500 BCE is discussed in Chapter 7. He offered his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice to God, reputedly on a site now known as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Abraham’s other son, Ishmael, is believed to be the father of the Muslims.
4. As his father’s favourite son, Joseph aroused his brothers’ jealousy and was sold by them to Ishmaelite traders, who in turn sold him into slavery in Egypt, around 1350 BCE. A slave in the house of Potiphar, Pharaoh’s captain of the guard, he prospered until Potiphar’s wife took a fancy to him. When Joseph rejected her sexual overtures, she denounced him to her husband who had him thrown into prison. It was while in prison that Joseph’s reputation as an interpreter of dreams came to the attention of Pharaoh.
5. The most notable of
the early commentators on the Old Testament, who all held the belief that Moses
was educated as an Egyptian and held high rank in that country, were:
a) Manetho – a third century BCE Egyptian author and high priest of Heliopolis
b) Philo Judaeus – a first century BCE Jewish writer and philosopher
c) Flavius Josephus – a first century CE authoritative Jewish writer
d) Justin Martyr – a second century Father of the early Christian Church.
6. Josef Popper-Linkeus, Der Sohn des Konigs von Egypten. Phantasieen eines Realisten (Leipzig: Carl Reisner, 1899).
7. Sigmund Freud,
Moses and Monotheism (London: The Hogarth Press, 1951).
Sigmund Freud, as well as being the father of
psychoanalysis, had an abiding interest in ancient religions and archaeology,
particularly Egyptian. In 1931 he wrote a study on the origins of Moses,
entitled Moses and Monotheism, which attracted considerable criticism and
reprobation, largely because he portrayed a first Moses as having been murdered
by the Hebrews and the arrival of a second Moses. The work was heavily
influenced by his own angst over his Jewish parentage and feelings of guilt
about his own nonconformity. Interest in the original concept of Egypt and
monotheism died away, submerged in the controversy engendered by Freud’s extreme
interpretation. See also Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).
A major collection of Freud’s papers and manuscripts
are housed in the Library of Congress, Washington DC. His passion for collecting
ancient relics can be seen in his family house at 20 Maresfield Gardens,
Hampstead, London, which is open to the public, and still contains many of the
personal possessions he lived and worked amongst.
8. Although this part of book was written before the release of the Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dream Works SKG, animated film version of the life of Moses, Prince of Egypt, it is apparent that the film also challenges the conventional view of the origins of Moses.
9. Martin Noth, Exodus: A Commentary (London: SCM Press, 1962).
10. Eberhard Otto, Die Biographischen Inschriften der Agyptischen Spatzeit (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1954).
11. Siegfried Morenz, Egyptian Religion (Ithica, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994).
12. R. T. Rundle Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1978).
13. Alfred Sendrey, Music in Ancient Israel (New York: Philosophical Library, 1969).
14. Ibid.
15. Paul Goodman, History of the Jews (London: Office of the Chief Rabbi, 1941).
16. Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1885). Julius Wellhausen was a nineteenth century scholar who identified at least four different authors of the Pentatuech, to whom he assigned the letters: J–Jaweh, c.950 BCE, by Judaean sources; E–Elohim, c.850 BCE, Ephraim sources; D–Deuteronomy, c.640 BCE; P–Priestly, c.550 BCE, priestly sources.
17. When Moses was
banished from Court he heads for the land of Midian, somewhere in north-west
Arabia, and there marries the daughter, Zipporah, of a Midianite priest (Exodus
2). He has a son by her who is named Gershom – alluding to the fact that Moses
is ‘a stranger in a strange land’, and referring to the land of Goshen in Egypt,
where foreigners traditionally settled.
In the Bible there is serious confusion as to who Moses
married in Midian. Moses’ fatherin-law is variously given as ‘Reuel’, a
Midianite, in Exodus 2:18; as ‘Jethro’ in Exodus 3:1; as ‘Raguel’ in Numbers
10:29; and ‘Hobab’ in Judges 4:11.
18. The Bible (Exodus 2:16) confirms that it was a Bedouin custom for daughters of the tribe to look after the flocks.
19. Thomas Bradshaw, The Whole Genuine Works of Flavius Josephus (London: Alex Hogg, 1792).
20. Ibid.
21. Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, The Mummy: A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology (London: Constable, 1989).
22. Exodus 4:24–26. ‘At a night encampment on the way, The Lord encountered him and sought to kill him [Moses]. So Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched his legs with it, saying, “You are truly a bridegroom of blood to me!” And when He let him alone, she added, “A bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision.”’
23. Charles Weiss, The Journal of Sex Research, (Mount Vernon, IA: Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, July 1966); Julian Morgenstern, Hebrew Union College Annual (Cincinnati: Students of the Hebrew Union College, 1963).
24. Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, The Papyrus of Ani (Avenel, N.J.: Gramercy Books, 1995).
25. Geoffrey Thorndike Martin, The Royal Tombs of El-Amarna – I: The Objects (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1974).
26. To trace back to the roots of why circumcision was practised at all in Egypt, we need to look at the ancient creation stories of Egypt, to the Papyrus of Ani, written during the Eighteenth Dynasty, in the fourteenth century BCE. In it we find that Re, the creator God, initiated the process of bringing other beings into existence:
It is the blood that descended from the phallus of Re
After he proceeded to circumcise himself,
And these gods are those who came into being after him.
This was the myth of how Re, or Ra, brought other gods into existence, from the droplets of blood which came forth.
27. Nicholas de Lange, Atlas of the Jewish World (Oxford: Phaidon, 1984).
28. Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, The Oxford Companion to the Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
29. Pat Alexander, ed., The Lion Encyclopedia of the Bible (Berkhamsted: Lion Publishing, 1994).
30. Irving M. Zeitlin, Ancient Judaism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984).
31. John W. Rogerson, Atlas of the Bible (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1991).
32. Morenz, Egyptian Religion.
33. Other quotes from
Zeitlin underline the lack of influence of Canaan on the Hebrews:
‘Thus, there appears to be no resemblance whatsoever between
this form of social organization (primitive democracy) and that of the
Canaanites which was feudal and hierarchical.’ ‘…no evidence exists of a
Canaanite-Israelite syncretism in technology and social organization’, ‘…where
the primeval legends of Genesis are concerned, there is no apparent Canaanite
influence’. Zeitlin, Ancient Judaism.
34. ‘…Israelite military technology was quite different from that of the Canaanites’ (Yehezkel Kaufman, Toledot Ha-emunah Hayisraelit (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute and Devir, 1971)); ‘…prophecy of the word, which is so distinctive a feature of Israel, was non-existent in Canaan’ (John Gray, The Legacy of Canaan: The Ras Shamra Texts and Their Relevance to the Old Testament (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965)).
35. Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997); Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels.
36. Pope Pius XII referred to the writers of the Bible as ‘the living and reasonable instrument of the Holy Spirit’. His encyclical, Divinio Afflante Spiritu, ended:
Let the interpreter then, with all care and without neglecting any light derived from recent research, endeavour to determine the peculiar character and circumstances of the sacred writer, the age in which he lived, the sources written or oral to which he had recourse and the forms of expression he employed.
37. John Marco Allegro, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960).
38. John Marco Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1969).
CHAPTER 5 THE COCOONED CAULDRON OF EGYPT – HOTBED OF CIVILIZATION
1. Siegfried Morenz, Egyptian Religion (Ithica, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994); Hermann Junker, Die Gotterlehre von Memphis (Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1939); H. Kees, ‘Der Gotterglaube im Alten Agypten’, Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatisch-Agyptischen Gesellschaft 45, (Leipzig, 1941).
2. The Hyksos were semitic invaders from the east who dominated most of Egypt from about 1640 to 1538 BCE. They made their capital at Avaris in the delta region of the Nile and worshipped Seth, Anath and Astarte.
3. James Henry Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1912).
4. Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, Egyptian Religion (Avenel, N.J.: Gramercy Books, 1996).
5. Dates of pharaohs are averages from those given by a number of studies quoted in The Sceptre of Egypt – A Background for the Study of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, by William C. Hayes, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990.
6. R.T. Rundle Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1978).
7. Ibid.
8. Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, The Book of the Dead (New York: Gramercy Books, 1995).
9. Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt.
10. The ‘snake’, the
‘word’, and the ‘eye’ appear in many guises in Egyptian mythology.
Assuming you have a strong stomach, lift the musty lid
of a typical coffin of the Ninth Dynasty, or just examine the texts running
around the outside if you feel too queasy, and you will find references to the
‘Primeval Serpent’, who can speak and who delineates the limits of existence.
Here the ‘serpent’ appears to be an agent of God and on the side of good. In
contrast, in Hebrew theology the ‘snake’ is viewed in a rather odd way. In the
Garden of Eden it is seen as an evil tempter, but in the Midrash (see Glossary)
interpretation and in commentaries on the Hebrew Scriptures, the snake is
referred to as an agent or messenger of God, rather than his opponent.
One possible explanation of this contradiction is that
the ‘evil snake’ derives from the ancient Babylonian Gilgamesh-type myths,
whilst the ‘favourable serpent’ (who is also a protector), derives from an early
Egyptian tradition that percolates in at a later date.
The ‘snake’ is indeed an ongoing creature of
fascination in Egyptian mythology. It appears on inscriptions with beards, as
the male ‘serpent’, and in the form of a cobra as the female version, later
coming to represent female gods. In its many forms it also plays a dangerous
role, as shown in this Pyramid Text, Spell 664:
If you become dangerous to me I will step on you,
but if you recognize me I will not tread on you,
for you are that mysterious and shapeless thing,
of whom the gods foretold that you have neither arms nor legs,
on which to go following your brother gods…
Here is a clear reference to how the snake obtained its form, re-echoed in the Bible in Genesis 4:14:
Then the Lord God said to the serpent,
Because you did this, More cursed shall you be,
Than all cattle. And all the wild beasts: On your belly shall you crawl, And dirt shall you eat,
All the days of your life.’
In another facet of the Memphitic doctrine, the definitive ‘motor’ of creation was seen as the ‘word’ that God gave to name everything in the world – without which there would be nothing.
And then Ptah rested after he had created everything and every Divine Word.
These concepts are again closely echoed in the Old Testament story of the Creation and Adam.
| Genesis 2:19 | And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air: and brought them unto the man [Adam] to see what he would call them; and whatsoever the man would call every living creature, that was to be the name thereof. | |
| Genesis 2:3 | And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it; because that in it he rested from all His work which God in creating had made. |
‘The Divine Word’ features strongly throughout early Egyptian thought, almost as a spiritual force with a power of its own, and associated with the good and favourable act of creation. Intimately associated with the Egyptian idea of the ‘Word’ being the vehicle of God’s creation is the moral concept of good deeds furthering the ‘Word’, and bad deeds harming the ‘ka’ and hindering divine redemption – concepts readily picked up by Judaism and Buddhism. From Pyramid Text 1098 we find:
When the doing of what was to be done was in confusion,
when the doing and the commanding of that which was to be done was asleep.
I create and command for him who commands the good;
My lips are the Twin Companies,
I am the great Word.
Compare this with the beginning of the Gospel of St John in the New Testament:
| John 1:1–3 | In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. | |
| The same was in the beginning with God. | ||
| All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. |
Whilst ‘the Word’ is the speaking or naming element the Supreme God uses in creation, ‘the Eye’ is the seeing element. It is dispatched by Atum to seek out ‘Shu’ and ‘Tefnut’, subsidiary creative-vehicle gods, of air that separates earth and sky, and of cosmic order, respectively. Coffin Texts, Spell 80 (Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt):
…after the appearance of my Eye, which I dispatched while I was still alone in the waters in a state of inertness, before I had found anywhere to stand or sit…
In the Egyptian ‘order’ of creation, which the Bible closely follows, the seeing Eye (which is the third procedure of creation), is followed next by the creation of light. As we have seen, and will see further on, the Bible faithfully follows the subject and approximates the order of creation in Egyptian cosmology. Immediately prior to the creation of light, there is a reference for the first and only time in the Biblical story to God’s seeing and that what He sees is favourable.
| Genesis 1:12–14 | The earth brought forth vegetation: seed-bearing plants of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that this was good. | |
| And there was evening and there was morning, a third day. | ||
| God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate day from night; they shall serve as signs for the set times – the days and the years.’ |
Later on, in the time of the Egyptian New Kingdom, the ‘Eye’ takes on a deeper meaning and becomes a symbol of realization and complete awareness of a higher form of existence beyond mere earthly trappings. Its rebus (representation) appears in numerous Egyptian inscriptions.
Another, more enigmatic, Biblical reference to the power of ‘the Eye’ occurs in Zechariah 3:9.
For behold the stone that I have laid before Joshua; upon one stone shall be seven eyes: I will engrave the graving thereof, saith the Lord of hosts – and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.
This is an apparent reference to the requirement that the coping stone of the Second Temple should have seven eyes to watch over its well-being – seven being a highly significant number in Egyptian and Hebrew belief, viz the seven forms of Osiris, the seven days of creation, etc. (Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt).
It is impossible to avoid the
realization that there are direct Egyptian parallels for all the essential
elements of the Biblical story of creation:
a) creating the sky
b) making man in the image of God
c) breathing life into the nostrils of man
d) creating the birds, fish and animals for the benefit and pleasure of man.
The Egyptian texts continue in the vein of the Prophet Ipu:
Consider mankind as the flocks of God. He made the sky for the enjoyment of their hearts, he repelled the greed of the waters, he created the breath of life for their noses;
His images are they, the products of His flesh. He rises in the sky for their hearts’ desire, for them He has made the plants, animals, birds and fish – all for their delight.
11. Morenz, Egyptian Religion; Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt.
12. Formation of the
planets in our solar system is now believed to have come about by the
condensation of massive dust and gas clouds that enveloped the sun. The theory
has been reenforced by the prediction and confirmation that all the planets
should have the same chemical composition as the sun. For example, the amounts
of oxygen and hydrogen, as free molecules, hydroxyl radical (OH) or water (H2O)
in the planets and in the sun are similar.
It may seem strange to think of water existing on the
sun, but it can retain its molecular bonding as superheated steam up to about
3900oK, and the temperature of sunspots are at about 3300oK compared to a
surface temperature of 5785oK. NASA, in Houston, Texas, has recently reported
that the Galileo space probe to Jupiter shows only 10 per cent of the expected
water content in its atmosphere. Steve Connor, ‘Jupiter Probe Upsets Theories’,
The Sunday Times, 21 January 1996.
13. R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969).
14. The elements of the new doctrine are preserved for us in texts written in the time of Pharaoh Shabako, around 700 BCE.
15. Trinities of gods were formed by a grouping of three Egyptian gods, often as father, mother and child figures comprising a divine family, who were worshipped on a localized basis. The practice arose during the New Kingdom period of the Amenhotep pharaohs. Examples were the combination of Amun, Mut and Khons at Thebes; Ptah, Sekhmet and Nefertum at Memphis; Horus, Hathor and the young Horus at Edfu; Khnum, Satet and Anuket at Yeb (Elephantine). A triad worshipped on a national basis was that of Osiris (worshipped locally at Abydos), Isis (worshipped locally at Philae) and Horus (worshipped locally at Edfu).
16. James B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955).
17. Adriaan de Buck, The Egyptian Coffin Texts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935).
18. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts.
19. By the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty, c.1296 BCE, Osiris is superseding Re as the judge of the dead. The continued adherence to Osiris is attested to by an Osireion (subterranean cenotaph) built in 1290 BCE by Seti I, at Abydos.
20. Morenz, Egyptian Religion.
21. ‘Papyrus 3284’, in the Louvre Museum, Paris.
22. Morenz, Egyptian Religion.
23. A. Moret, ‘Le Rituel du Culte Divin’, Journalier en Egypte (Paris: Musée Guimet, 1902).
24. Morenz, Egyptian Religion.
25. Geraldine Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt (London: British Museum Press, 1994).
CHAPTER 6 THE AMENHOTEP FAMILY CONTINUUM
1. Peter A. Clayton, Chronicles of the Pharaohs (London: Thames & Hudson, 1998); Siegfried Morenz, Egyptian Religion (Ithica, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973); R. T. Rundle Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1978).
2. John Romer, Romer’s Egypt: A New Light on the Civilization of Ancient Egypt (London: Joseph, 1982).
3. N. de G. Davies, The Tomb of Rekh-mi-Re at Thebes (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Egyptian Expedition Publications, 1943).
4. James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955).
5. The Egyptian goddess Hathor took various bovine forms, including one of motherliness as a suckling cow. In her vengeful aspect of ‘Seven Hathors’, she enacted what was ordained by fate.
6. Morenz, Egyptian Religion.
7. Ibid.
8. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament.
9. Morenz, Egyptian Religion.
CHAPTER 7 ABRAHAM – FATHER OF THREE RELIGIONS, FOUNDER OF NONE
1. Israel Eldad and Moshe Aumann, Jerusalem Chronicles – News of the Past, Vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Reubeni Foundation, 1954).
2. Paul Goodman, History of the Jews (London: Office of the Chief Rabbi, 1941).
3. The most likely
date for the completion of the Torah – the first five books of the Bible
(Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy), in substantially the form
in which we know it today, comes from a Biblical reference in Nehemiah 8:1–10. This relates to a public reading of the Torah in Jerusalem, conducted by Ezra
the Scribe, which is believed to have taken place in 444 BCE. A preponderance of
modern scholars, emboldened by the dates of the Dead Sea Scrolls, take this date
as marking the completion of the written down Torah. Inevitably, the ‘old’ story
became embroidered with the rosey tint of hindsight and the message that the
then writers wished to convey.
One historian, John van Seters, takes an extreme view
that the texts were not completed until the fifth century CE, but in the light
of modern thinking this view is hardly tenable. John van Seters, Abraham in
History and Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975).
4. James B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955).
5. Ibid.
6. George W. Anderson, The History and Religion of Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
7. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man (Boston: Little Brown, 1974). Dr Jacob Bronowski was an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and Director of the Council for Biology in Human Affairs at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, San Diego, California. His television series was first screened in the early 1970s.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Hans Eysenck, Test Your IQ (London: Thorsons, 1994).
11. David Rohl, in his book A Test of Time (London: Century, 1995), postulates, with some efficacy, wild divergences in the conventionally accepted dates of Egyptian dynasties from the second millennium BCE onwards. He suggests that some of these dates are as much as 200–300 years out of phase, but his theory finds little support from other historians, and his date of c.1450 BCE for the Exodus is unconvincing.
12. Irving M. Zeitlin, Ancient Judaism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984).
13. Goodman, History of the Jews.
14. David Alexander and Pat Alexander (eds.), The Lion Encyclopedia of the Bible (Berkhamsted: Lion Publishing, 1978).
15. Anderson, The History of Religion in Israel.
16. Obviously these longevities are suspect and, in contemporary terms, impossible. The New Guinness Book of Records (Stamford, Conn.: Guinness Media, 1995) gives the oldest authenticated age of a human as 120 years and 237 days, for Shigechiyo Izumi, who lived on Tokunoshima Island, Japan. Born on 29 June 1865, he died in 1986 and attributed his longevity to God, Buddha and the Sun. Jeanne Louise Calment, of Arles, in France, who was reputed to have been born on 21 February 1875, died on 4 August 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days. The Bible itself, in Psalm 90:10 states that:
The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
And if by reason of strength they be four score years…
17. By the year 2100
BCE the Sumerians were using a 360-day year, based on a 12-month solar calendar.
The ancient Egyptians also used a solar calendar and later added a ‘little
month’ of five days – each of which celebrated the births of Osiris, Horus,
Seth, Isis and Nephthys. Around 2773 BCE, and possibly as early as 4228 BCE,
they cottoned on to the helical rising of Sirius as occurring at the same time
as the annual flooding of the Nile and the conjunction of the sun, thus giving
them a regular interval of 365 sunsets and sunrises, which they took as the
length of their year. See Alexander Hellemans and Bryan Bunch, The Timetables
of Science (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988).
Hellenic astronomers added the missing quarter day to
the Egyptian calendar by adding a leap day every four years. This addition was
only fully accepted by the civilized world when Julius Caesar made it a
mandatory part of the Roman Calendar in 46 BCE, and to correct for the seasons
had to make that year last 445 days – the longest year on record! The final
‘tweaking’ was made by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, who decreed the dropping of
the leap year in years that end in two zeros. (See the Glossary for further
details on calendars.)
Another explanation for the anomalous Biblical years is
that the chroniclers of the Old Testament needed to fit the ages of Biblical
characters to a time-scale that allowed them to count back, generation by
generation, to a preconceived idea of the date of creation at 3760 BCE.
This preconceived date is in itself, a source of
difficulty for Biblical fundamentalists. ‘Big Bang’, the currently accepted
scientific theory of the beginnings of the universe, occurred about 15 billion
years ago. The earliest earth life forms are dated to 3.5 billion years ago – 1
billion years after the earth was formed. Animal life-forms started emerging
onto the land from the seas about 450 million years ago, and the human species
began to evolve away from their ancestral chimpanzees about 8 million years ago,
began walking upright about 4 million years ago and started making stone tools
about 2.4 million years ago.
18. Starting with the first man in the Bible, Adam, we find:
British physicist/mathematician and computer consultant, Roger Smolski, points out that Joseph-Louis Legrange, in the eighteenth century, showed that every positive integer can be written as the sum of, at most, four integers (except for some numbers below 20 if 12 is disregarded). He notes Adam’s age can be reduced to 232+ 202+12; Seth’s to 162+162+202; Kenan’s to 302+32+12; Mahalalel’s to 232+142+112+72; Jared’s to 292+112; Abraham’s to 102+52+52+52. So if there is any significance in the choice of Biblical ages it is in the sequence of the square numbers.
19. Herman Kees, Gottinger Totenbuchstudien (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1954).
20. The authors of the
early biblical texts were fascinated with square numbers. By looking at their
utilization of mathematics and geometry we can get an interesting insight into
their minds. We can also discern, from the knowledge they exhibited and by
reference to other sources, the minimum lapsed time between the events recorded
and their transcription.
The ratio of the circumference of a circle to its
diameter was first given the term ‘pi’ by William Jones, an English writer, in
1706.
Pi = Circumference/Diameter
This equation was shown by Lindemann, in 1882, to be
incapable of solution as a polynomial equation with integer coefficients. In
other words, the division gives you an endless number of figures after the
decimal point. The world record for memorizing ‘pi’ is attributed to Hideaki
Tomoyori, of Japan, who in seventeen hours of recitation in March 1987, got to
40,000 decimal places!
The Old Testament, in describing the building of the
First Temple at Jerusalem, refers to a bowl having a circumference three times
its diameter:
I Kings7:13–14,23 And king Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre.
He was a widow’s son of the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of Tyre, a worker in brass: and he was filled with wisdom, and understanding, and cunning to work all works in brass: and he came to king Solomon, and wrought all his work. … And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from one brim to the other: it was round all about, and its height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.
This is a clear statement that the authors knew ‘pi’ as equal to 3.
The Babylonians were somewhat adrift in
calculating ‘pi’ as 2.518. The Egyptians, however were much more accurate with
their value of 256/81 = 3.1605.
The Greek, Archimedes, arrived at 22/7, which comes to
3.1428. The Chinese got nearest to the value in 500 CE, with their ratio
355/113, which comes to 3.14159. The ancient Indians used the square root of 10,
and came near at 3.16.
21. Anderson, The History and Religion of Israel.
CHAPTER 8 ABRAHAM AT PHARAOH’S PALACE
| 1. | Genesis 20:1–2, 14, 16 | ‘And Abraham journeyed from thence toward the land of the South, and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur; and he sojourned in Gerar. |
| And Abraham said of Sarah, his wife: “She is my sister.” And Abimelech king of Gerar sent, and took Sarah… | ||
| And Abimelech took sheep and oxen, and men-servants and women-servants, and gave them unto Abraham, and restored him Sarah his wife… | ||
| And unto Sarah he said: “Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver; behold, it is a covering of the eyes to all that are with thee; and before all men thou art righted”.’ |
Other faults in Abraham’s character are pointed to by several commentators, who suggest that when his faith in God was tested, by seeing if he would give his son Isaac (his most precious possession) to God, he ‘failed the test’. Failed, because he acted in blind faith, without reasoning. See S. H. Bergman, Faith and Reason (Israel: Hebrew University, 1975); Jacqueline Tabick, Sermon on ‘The Binding of Isaac’, (London: West London Synagogue, 1995).
Nevertheless Abraham, on another occasion, demonstrates fearless physical loyalty to his family in coming to the aid of his nephew Lot when he is in trouble (Genesis 14). Powerfully built, he is somewhat of a ‘merchant adventurer’, living on his wits, ready to adapt to new situations and come out winning. He is brave and effective in the face of danger, not hesitating to come to the aid of his brethren. He leads a sizeable force of retainers and provides amply for his family and loyal servants.
2. Irving M. Zeitlin, Ancient Judaism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984); Abba Eban, Heritage, Civilization and the Jews (New York: Summit Books, 1984).
3. Ernst Sellin, Mose und Seine Bedeutung für die Israelitisch-Jüdische Religionsgeschichte (Leipzig: A. Deichertsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1922).
4. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (London: The Hogarth Press, 1951).
5. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man (Boston: Little Brown, 1974).
6. Zeitlin, Ancient Judaism.
7. After leaving Egypt
the Bible relates that for much of his life Abraham was without a male heir. His
wife Sarah undermined her own position by allowing her handmaiden Hagar to sire
Abraham’s first son Ishmael. Sarah’s trust in the Almighty is rewarded by the
miraculous birth of a son Isaac, when she is ninety years of age. Abraham’s own
faith in one omnipotent God is put to the ultimate test when God demands of him
the sacrifice of his beloved son Isaac. The story has all the elements of true
drama – love, anguish, deception, a miraculous birth, suspense, a supreme act of
faith in an Almighty God through a human sacrifice with the heightened tension
of a last minute reprieve.
Despite a tremendous internal struggle, Abraham’s faith
is strong enough for him to apparently be prepared to fulfil God’s demand and
kill his own son. At the very last minute, even as Abraham’s hand is raised to
stab his son to death, God intervenes and commands Abraham to stop, content that
Abraham’s faith is secure, and a ram is substituted as the sacrifice.
This story, and its demonstration of ‘a supreme act of
faith’, is the basis of the magic that sparked the evolution of not only the
Jewish religion, but of Christianity – seeing Abraham as the spiritual ancestor
of Christ – and of Islam – seeing Ishmael as the seed of the Arabic nations with
Ibrahim (Abraham) as the true ancestor of the Muslim faith.
CHAPTER 9 PHARAOH AKHENATEN – THE KING WHO DISCOVERED GOD
1. Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten King of Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1988); and Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten and Nefertiti (New York: The Brooklyn Museum, 1973); Francis Fèvre, Akhenaton et Néfertiti (Paris: Editions Hazan, 1998).
2. James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt (New York: Russell & Russell, 1906).
3. James Henry Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1906).
4. Arthur Weigall, The Life and Times of Akhnaton (London: Thornton Butterworth Days, 1923).
5. James Henry Breasted, The Dawn of Conscience (London: Prentice Hall, 1976).
6. Donald A. Mackenzie, Egyptian Myth and Legend (London: The Gresham Publishing Co., 1913).
7. Ibid.
8. N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna [I-VI] (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1905).
9. Weigall, The Life and Times of Akhnaton.
10. M. Samuel, Texts From the Time of Akhenaten (Brussels: Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca, 1938).
11. James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt II (New York: Russell & Russell, 1906).
12. Siegfried Morenz, Egyptian Religion (Ithica, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994).
13. A. Volten, Zwei Altagyptische Politische Shriften (Copenhagen, 1945).
14. In one sense his choice of the sun as a representative of infinite power was more appropriate than any other he could possibly have imagined, and he was 5,000 million years correct. We now know that without the sun, the earth and all the planets in our solar system would not exist – but in about five billion years time the sun itself will die and with it all our planets. ‘Sun Storm’, Equinox, Channel 4, 25 August 1998.
15. ‘In the Morning of Man’, The Times Literary Supplement, 29 November 1947.
16. Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest.
17. Aldred, Akhenaten King of Eygpt.
18. N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part I (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1903).
19. A number of the tenets were, subsequently, ‘weakened’ to a greater or lesser extent, through the influences of traditional Egyptian and local practices.
20. Worship in a Temple has not been possible since the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, and there is no prospect of a new Temple being built on the old site, as it is today occupied by the Muslim Dome of the Rock.
21. Belief in the hereafter became prominent in post-biblical Judaism. Hell was referred to as ‘Gehonnim’, after the valley of Hinnom, south-west of Jerusalem, a place of pagan sacrifice.
22. Kathleen M. Kenyon, The Bible and Recent Archaeology (London: British Museum Publications, 1987); Amnon Ben-Tor, The Archaeology of Ancient Israel (Tel Aviv: The Open University of Israel, 1992).
23. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs – Part I.
CHAPTER 10 JOSEPH – PROPHET OF DESTINY
1. The ancient Egyptian ‘Tale of Two Brothers’ is based on a similar plot of attempted seduction and subsequent false accusation. R. T. Rundle Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1978).
2. William Congreve, The Mourning Bride, III, vii (London: Oxford University Press, 1928).
3. Manetho was a third century BCE Egyptian priestly historian, who is believed to have referred to Akhenaten and Joseph in his writings – see Chapter 13.
4. The likelihood of Joseph being ‘given’ a wife from this pro-monotheistic source fits in well with our historical understanding of conditions at the Temple of On in Heliopolis at the time. As N. de G. Davies notes in a treatise on the Smaller Tombs and Boundary Stelae of El-Amarna: ‘…it is precisely in Heliopolis that the jurisdiction of the sun-worshipping King [Akhenaten] would be most readily accepted.’ N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part V, Smaller Tombs and Boundary Stelae (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1908).
5. N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part III, The Tombs of Huya and Ahmes (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1905).
6. N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II, The Tombs of Panehesy and Meryra II (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1905).
7. Donald B. Redford, Akhenaten the Heretic King (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
8. The subsidiary clue to this lavishing of gold collars and associating Joseph with the time of Akhenaten comes from Targum Onkelos to Genesis (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1982) – an interpretive commentary on the Pentateuch. In its coverage of Genesis 49:24 we find: ‘And his prophecy was fulfilled for he observed the law in secret and placed his trust in Divine power, then gold was lifted on his arms, he took possession of a kingdom and became stronger.’ This Targum appears to have been taken from The Book of Jubilees. In the Ethiopian version of this Book, Pharaoh, speaking about Joseph, says: ‘…put a golden chain around his neck, and proclaim before him saying: “El El wa abrir”…And he put a ring upon his hand…’. See Maren Niehoff, The Figure of Joseph in Targums, Journal of Jewish Studies, 1987–88; E. J. Goodrich, The Book of Jubilees (Ohio: Oberlin, 1888).
9. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs – Part V.
10. John Romer, Romer’s Egypt: A New Light on the Civilization of Ancient Egypt (London: Joseph, 1982).
11. Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten King of Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1988).
12. W. H. Murnane, The Penguin Guide to Ancient Egypt (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1983).
13. The memory of the name ‘Faiyum’ has remained in Hebrew culture and crops up in various forms. Moses Maimonides – one of the greatest Jewish philosophers, for example, writing the ‘Iggeret Teman’ (Letter to the Jews in Yemen) or ‘Petah-Tikvah’ (Opening of Hope), in 1172 CE, was responding to a pleading letter from Rabbi Jacob al-Fayuim of Yemen. Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, trans. M. Friedlander (New York: Dover Publications, 1956).
14. Amy K. Blank, The Spoken Choice (Cincinnati, Ohio: Hebrew Union College Press, 1959).
15. The Egyptian
concept of ‘Maat’ started out as meaning straightness in geometric terms but
later came to mean order out of chaos in creational terms – trueness in
behaviour, a continual correct human behaviour, an obligation passed from the
gods onto the king and then to the people, which gradually included righteous
spiritual thinking. A similar parallel exists in Hebrew where the word for
straight is ‘iasar’, which also takes on the meaning of ethical correctness.
Later ‘Maat’ evolved into guidelines for justice and a
legal system, with judges wearing the sign for ‘Maat’ as they sat in judgement.
Here we have the seeds of the divine laws that were to be later developed into
detailed instructions and binding laws on the Hebrew people of Canaan.
For those that did not conform to ‘Maat’ there was,
however, the possibility of forgiveness from God, or recourse to magic. We see
it in the lessons from Merikare, a Pharaoh of the twenty-first century BCE, and
in the following:
Though the servant was disposed to do evil,
Yet it is the Lord disposed to be merciful…
Punish me not for my many misdeeds,
I am one who knows not himself.
I am a witless man.
Adolf Erman, Denksteine aus der Thebanischen Graberstadt (Berlin: Koàniglich Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1911).
This moral sense is already well developed in the writings of the sage Petosiris of Hermopolis, who lived in the fourth century BCE:
No-one reaches the saving west unless his heart was righteous by doing ‘Maat’. There no distinction is made between the inferior and superior person; only that one is found faultless when the balances and the two weights stand before the Lord of eternity. No-one is free from the reckoning. Thoth as a baboon holds [the balances], to count each man according to what he has done upon earth.
Eberhard Otto, Die Biographischen Inschriften der Agyptischen Spatzeit (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1954).
Here we see the seeds of confession and absolution from sin. Later evolved into the Hebrew Day of Atonement, and the Christian doctrine of Original Sin and redemption through a saviour.
16. Reflections of the divine word’s inspirational instruction came out as solecisms of wisdom; the ideas of ‘keep reticent’, hold the truth within yourself, speak justice and do justice. As such ‘Maat’, personified as a goddess figure with feather headdress, became the basis of the Egyptian legal system. Judges wore a necklace holding the sign for ‘Maat’ when they sat in judgement. G. Moller, Zeitschrift für Agyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde (Leipzig, 1920).
17. James B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955).
18. William W. Hallo and William Kelly Simpson, The Ancient Near East: A History (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971).
19. Chaim Rabin, Qumran Studies, Script Judaica II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957).
20. Solomon ben Moses Alkabez, Menot ha-Levi (Venice, 1585).
CHAPTER 11 THE LONG TREK SOUTH
1. Archaeological work, largely carried out by German and French teams, shows that a pseudo-Hebrew Community existed on Elephantine Island until just after 400 BCE. The anomalous existence of the Community is discussed further in Chapter 19. ‘Elephantine’, Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1992).
2. Dozens of papyri, written in Aramaic, were discovered on the Island of Elephantine at the turn of the nineteenth century and give us details of the lifestyle of the pseudo-Hebrew Community that lived and worshipped there. A. E. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century BC (Oxford: Clarendon, 1923).
3. There is the
general principle (recognized, for example, by Plato and Leibnitz) that,
although every effort can be made to remove all physical reminders of a system
or concept, an idea – especially a powerful and plausible one – is the hardest
thing to eliminate.
When terror threatens a valid new idea, the idea tends
to retreat to an environment of safety, sympathy or secrecy. Safety was to be
found in the remoteness of the Island of Yeb (the Island of Elephantine);
sympathy was to be found at On (modern Heliopolis, near Cairo), the traditional
centre of sun worship and the site of the first temple to Aten; secrecy was
always to be a byword for the descendants of the priests of Aten.
4. How long the sympathy and loyalty towards monotheism continued at On after Akhenaten’s death is difficult to determine. Especially as, if it did continue, it would have done so in secret. There are, however, a few clues to be gained from our knowledge that when Jeremiah fled to Egypt, around 580 BCE, and Onias IV around 175 BCE, the place they sought sanctuary at was On. Onias built a Temple at Leontopolis, north of On, at a place now known as Tell el-Yehudiyeh.
CHAPTER 12 MOSES – PRINCE OF EGYPT
1. The word ‘Moses’ meant ‘given birth to’, and was usually associated with a prefix name relating to a god. But it was not unknown for a short-form name to be used on its own. J.W. Griffiths, ‘ The Egyptian Derivation of the Name of Moses’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).
2. Alfred Sendrey, Music in Ancient Israel (New York: Philosophical Library, 1969).
3. Philip Hyatt, ‘Yahweh as the God of my Father’, Vetus Testamentum 5 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1955).
4. Donald B. Redford, Akhenaten the Heretic King (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
5. Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, The Mummy: A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology (London: Constable, 1989); James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt (New York: Russell & Russell, 1906).
6. Irving M. Zeitlin, Ancient Judaism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984).
7. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (London: The Hogarth Press, 1951).
CHAPTER 13 THE EXODUS – MOSES DOES A SCHINDLER
1. Oscar Schindler was a German businessman who, during the Second World War, bribed the Nazis into allowing him to employ over 1,000 Jews in his Polish factories, thereby effectively saving their lives. His life was featured in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film Schindler’s List, based on the novel by Thomas Keneally (London: Sceptre, 1994).
2. Ramses II’s mummy
shows him to have been a tall, distinguished man of lean physique. Usually very
little is given away about the personality of pharaohs in surviving texts. The
records are invariably of encounters with gods, or exaggerations of military
successes and campaigns. We can glean, however, that Ramses II was someone who
could be negotiated with and would, under pressure, have seen reason.
Ramses II’s ambitious building programme probably led
him to make increasing demands on his construction workers, but it seems
unlikely that the work the Hebrews were put to was too distant from their
settlement area in the Faiyum. These considerations, however, do not rule out
the possibility that teams of Hebrew slaves were drafted into Memphis, which was
not too distant, or even to the Theban region.
3. W. Gunther Plaut (ed.), The Torah – A Modern Commentary (New York: The Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981).
4. Ibid.
5. Nina Collins, ‘Perspectives’, The Jewish Chronicle, 30 December 1994.
6. J. H. Hertz (ed.), The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (London: Sonchino Press, 1969).
7. Plaut, The Torah – A Modern Commentary.
8. Hebrew lettering, from the earliest available inscription (dated at c.700 BCE) found on the Siloam conduit at Jerusalem, shows a clear resemblance to Phoenician script of 200 years earlier. The ‘Siloam Inscription’, written in the same script as that on the Moabite stone of the same period (which is now in the Louvre in Paris), was originally acquired by the Museum of Constantinople. The inscription was written on the sidewall of the conduit, and it has been identified with a conduit mentioned in the Second Book of Kings in the Old Testament:
| II Kings 20:20 | And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? |
During the sixth and fifth centuries BCE Hebrew had fallen out of common use and was replaced by Aramaic. By the third or second century BCE it does not appear to have evolved to more than twenty letters, as can be seen on Palestinian ossuaries (bone caskets) from that period.
There is other evidence, however, that traces the Hebrew writing to Canaanite origins, influenced by Egyptian. Jonathan Lotan, an Anglo-Israeli scholar, ascribes the origins of Ancient Hebrew to Egyptian rather than Ugarit. He cites a number of examples of Egyptian hieratic words that were adopted into Ancient Canaanite c.1500 BCE, in his book From A to Aleph: 3 Steps to Writing Hebrew (London: Qualum Publishing, 1996). See also Jacob de Haas, The Encyclopaedia of Jewish Knowledge (New York: Berhman’s Jewish Book House, 1946).
9. Immediately after Akhenaten the transient Pharaoh Smenkhkara ruled for a brief period of months.
10. In converting
Biblical measurements of length into metric units, the Egyptian standard has
been adopted in most descriptions in this book.
The commonly used Biblical measures of length are
generally related to the Akkadian or Ugaritic cubit of 44.5cm (17.4 inches),
although a ‘Royal Cubit’ of 53cm was also in use in Israel. The Akkadian and
Royal Cubit may have come into use for later references in the Bible, but for
earlier Old Testament references I believe that the Egyptian Cubit of 51cm is
more appropriate and gives a much more accurate picture of dimension. Almost all
generally quoted conversions of cubit measurements for the earlier parts of the
Bible are, therefore, probably inaccurate. We can be certain of the accuracy of
the Egyptian Cubit at 51cm from the size of the wooden shrine box, designed to
hold the metal cubit rod and now in the Cairo Museum’s Tutankhamun collection.
There is another example in the Liverpool Museum.
11. K. von Sethe, Die altagyptishen Pyramidentexte, neu herausgegeben und erlautert (Leipzig, 1908–).
12. The Kohathites were the sons of Levi, who was Jacob’s son. Levi’s other sons formed the tribes of Gershon and Merari.
13. K. Skorecki, S. Selig, S. Blazer, R. Bradman, N. Bradman, P. J. Waburton, M. Ismajlowicz and M. F. Hammer, ‘Y Chromosomes of Jewish Priests’, Nature, Vol. 385, 2 January 1997.
14. For the past 3,000 years it has been the custom of male Jews who considered themselves of the priestly line to marry and to have children only with other Jews also from the priestly line.
15. Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: The Penguin Press, 1997).
16. Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered (New York: Penguin Books, 1993).
17. Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English. Letters between [ ] mean likely reconstructions, between ( ) glosses inserted for sense of text.
18. Lucia Raspe, ‘Manetho on the Exodus: A Reappraisal’, Jewish Studies Quarterly, (Vol. 5) No. 2 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1998).
19. Ibid.
20. The conventional idea that Ramses II was the Pharaoh of the Exodus is, I believe, wrong. He may well, though, have been the Pharaoh of ‘the oppression’ who worked the Hebrew slaves to exhaustion fulfilling his building programme.
21. In the Authorized version of the Bible, the rod Moses fashions is referred to as ‘a serpent of brass’. As previously mentioned in Chapter 3, brass was unknown until the time of the Romans. In the Hebrew version of the Old Testament the phrase is translated as ‘a copper serpent’.
22. John W. Rogerson, Atlas of the Bible (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1991).
CHAPTER 14 TOWARDS QUMRAN
1. When Moses died,
Joshua inherited the task of leading the Hebrews in the conquest and settlement
of Canaan – the Promised Land. The conquered Central and Northern areas were
divided amongst the tribes descended from Joseph and Jacob, but they continued
to sustain attacks from the Philistines, Midianites and Ammonites.
There followed a period of ‘Judges’, who guided the
path of the new ‘tribal federation’ until c.1050 BCE, when Saul was
appointed the first King and the beginnings of a dynasty were established. He
was followed by King David and his son King Solomon, the latter undertaking
wide-ranging social and administrative reforms and building the First Temple at
Jerusalem. After King Solomon’s death the Kingdom of Israel was split into the
Northern Kingdom, ruled by Jeroboam, and the Southern Kingdom, ruled by
Rehoboam, Solomon’s son. It is in this period that a firm date of 945–924 BCE
can be established for the incursion of the Egyptian Pharaoh Shosenq I into
Jewish territory. Inscriptions on the Temple of Amum at Thebes list the towns he
captured in Judah to the south, and archaeological evidence shows he reached
Megiddo in Northern Israel. He is mentioned in the Old Testament as ‘Shishak
king of Egypt’ (I Kings 14:25 and II Chronicles 12:1–9).
Various Hebrew kings continued to rule, albeit with
many military setbacks, in the Northern and Southern Kingdoms during the period
of the Prophets Elijah and Elisha (from 870 to 790 BCE). Battles continued with
Aramaeans (Syrians), Moabites and Egyptians until, in 722 BCE, the Assyrians
conquered the Northern Kingdom and dispersed its ten tribes into its territories
further to the north. The Southern Kingdom, now known as Judah, came under the
domination of the Assyrians until about 640 BCE, when Assyrian power started to
decline and the Babylonians became the force in the region. Nebuchadnezzar II
invaded the country and in 586 BCE destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, carrying
the bulk of the population off into captivity in Babylon.
Babylon’s control of Judah did not last long and in 539
BCE King Cyrus II of Persia conquered Babylon. According to the Biblical scribe
Ezra (Ezra 2:64), 42,360 Jews were then encouraged to return to Israel, which
was now part of the Persian Empire. The Persians behaved in a much more benign
way towards the Israelites and they were able to commence rebuilding the Temple
at Jerusalem, within a much contracted Judah.
Many Hebrews, however, stayed on in Babylonia and, in
Biblical terms, they eventually became the dominant literary force. The
Babylonian Torah – in the wider sense of Torah as the written and oral Law –
differed in many respects from the Palestinian Torah, but it was the former that
subsequently established itself as the accepted canon. The Temple was finally
rebuilt in 516 BCE, and when more settled conditions returned in the south,
around 450 BCE, both Ezra and Nehemiah returned to Judah from Babylon. Their aim
was to shore up a weakening observance of Jewish law and to secure Jerusalem as
the religious centre of the country.
Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia, conquered the
lands surrounding Jerusalem in 332 BCE and in 198 BCE control over the country
came under the Syrian part of the Seleucid Empire (as opposed to the Ptolomeic
Greeks, who ruled from Egypt). Attempts by Antiochus IV Epiphanes to Hellenize
his inherited Empire and make his subjects worship Greek gods was the last straw
for the Jews of Judah, and they revolted under Judah the Maccabee in 167 BCE. As
the Hellenic Empire tottered, a free Jewish State was finally re-established in
143 BCE and a line of ‘Hasmonaean’ Jewish rulers set about re-encompassing the
territories – Idumea to the south; Samaria and Galilee to the north; and the
Land of Tubius to the east.
The Hasmonaean rule lasted until 63 BCE, when the
Romans swept into the Holy Land and Pompey established it as a Protectorate.
There was a brief period of interruption by Parthian invaders who set the
Hasmonaean Antigonus on the throne in 40 BCE. Rome responded in 37 BCE by
appointing Herod the Great, an Edomite from an Idumean family, as King of the
Jews. After three years of fighting he established his title, restored the
Temple to its former glory, and ruled the country until 4 BCE and the birth of
Jesus.
Just to complete the picture, in 132 CE, sixty-two
years after the Temple had been sacked by the Romans, Bar-Kochba led another
Jewish revolt. This episode ended in disaster and brought about the expulsion of
Jews from Jerusalem. It was not until the fourth century CE that they were
officially able to return. When they did, the reinstated Jews were increasingly
marginalized by Rome’s growing support of Christianity and the integration of
Greek influences and philosophy into its culture – an effect to which Judaism
was not immune.
2. The continuity of the Levites is difficult to follow from the Bible, but it is clear that some of them were ‘set apart from the community’. In Numbers 16:9 we find: ‘the God of Israel hath separated you from the congregation of Israel’. They were thus able to maintain a different form of Judaism from the mainstream, and, I believe, able to keep some of the holy writings secret from the rest of the people.
| 3. | Isaiah 1:11, 13 | ‘“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me?” saith the Lord: “I am full of the burnt offering of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of the bullocks, or of lambs, or of the goats”…Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity even the solemn meeting.’ |
| Micah 3:9, 11–12 | ‘Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgement, and pervert all equity…The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money; yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say, “Is not the Lord among us? none evil can come upon us.” Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.’ |
4. The new texts discovered at the time of King Josiah are now thought to have formed the basis for the Book of Deuteronomy.
5. The intellectual
and upper classes who returned from Babylon were more ready to adopt the
language and writing of their Aramaic conquerors and that language superseded
Hebrew as the main language of the people until about 200 BCE.
There is clear evidence that the Babylonian ‘Haftorah’
or prayer texts, developed by the Jews living in what is now Iraq, were markedly
different from the Eretz Israel or Palestinian version. For example in the
‘Haggadah’ (the prayer book used in the Festival of Passover), the Eretz Israel
version asks five questions about behaviour at the remembrance feast. In today’s
‘Haggadah’ only four questions are asked. There are also considerable
differences in the form of ‘Kaddish’, the traditional prayer for mourners, and
in other standard prayers used in modern Jewish services.
From the prayers in modern-day usage it is apparent
that the Babylonian school of Hebrew scholars won out over their Eretz Israel
rivals, whose influence was finally overwhelmed with the coming of the Crusaders
and the destruction of their places of learning.
6. Habakkuk 2:4.
7. Richard Elliot Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? (San Francisco: HarperSanFracisco, 1997).
8. The new invaders from Macedonia led by Alexander the Great conquered the country around 330 BCE, and instigated the rule of the Ptolemies in Egypt in 323 BCE.
9. Onias III, the High Priest at the Temple of Jerusalem under the Greek Seleucid rule, resisted Hellenization under the religious persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes. His brother took advantage of the disagreements and superseded him and, as Onias IV, became High Priest. He fled to Heliopolis, in Egypt, c.172 BCE, when Menelaus bribed his way into the position of High Priest. There, Onias IV built a Temple at Leontopolis, near the Egyptian city of On. Some years later he returned to Jerusalem.
10. Professor George Brooke, personal communication with the author, 9 July 1997.
11. According to Philo, the Therapeutae were a first century CE studious Jewish community living in lower Egypt. They appeared to share many features with the Essenes of Judaea, and some of their antiphonal singing at Passover may be evident from some of the scrolls found at Qumran.
12. Herr Joerg Frey’s affiliations are so long that by the time he has given them to you, you have almost forgotten his name! He comes from the Institut für Antikes Judentum und Hellenistische Religionsgeschichte in Tübingen, Germany.
13. Shlomo Margalit, ‘Aelia Capitolina’, Judaica No.45 (São Paulo: Capital Sefarad Editorial e Propaganda, Marz, 1989). In subsequent conversations and correspondence between the author and Shlomo Margalit (early 2002), who lives in Jerusalem, he confirmed that his studies have now convinced him that the so-called New Jerusalem Scroll was almost certainly describing a temple structure that matched that at Akhenaten’s city at Amarna.
14. Geza Vermes,
The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: Penguin Press, 1997). In
Vermes’ translation here, letters between [ ] indicate likely reconstructions,
and those between ( ) glosses necessary for fluency.
Although there appeared to be two versions of a cubit
in use in Judaea at the time of the Qumran-Essenes, one of 44.6cm and another of
52.1cm, for the purposes of comparison I have taken the cubit to measure 51cm.
This latter unit is the one certain length in use in Egypt at the time of
Akhenaten. Nicholas Reeves, The Complete Tutankhamun (London: Thames &
Hudson, 1990). An inscription found inside the Siloam conduit in Jerusalem,
built by Hezekiah, King of Judah from 720 to 692 BCE, gives the length of the
tunnel as 1,200 cubits. The tunnel measures 533m and this gives a cubit of
44.4cm. M. Powell (‘Weights and Measures’, The Anchor Bible Dictionary,
1992), gives a best averaged estimate for the cubit of 50cm ± 10 percent. See
also James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt – Vol. II (New
York: Russell & Russell, 1906).
15. N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II (London: The Eygpt Exploration Fund, 1905).
16. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt – Vol. II.
17. W. M. Petrie, Tell el-Amarna (London: Luzac & Co.,1894).
18. Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten King of Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1991).
19. Ibid.
20. Michael Chyutin, ‘The New Jerusalem Scroll from Qumran – a Comprehensive Reconstruction, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, Supplement 25 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997). The New Jerusalem Scroll describes an idealized Holy City envisaged by the Qumran-Essenes. The Scroll was obviously of great importance to the Community as examples of its contents were found in caves 1, 2, 4, 5 and 11 at Qumran. It describes many City features in a similar manner to those in the Temple Scroll (see Chapter 1), although there are significant differences in dimensions and layout.
21. Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson, British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Press, c1995).
22. Mark Vidler, The Star Mirror (London: Thorsons, 1998).
23. Sun Rays Fall Perpendicularly on Abu Simbel, Press Release No. 225, 5.8.98 (London: Egyptian State Tourist Office, 1998).
24. Mary Barnett, Gods and Myths of Ancient Egypt (London: Brockhampton Press, 1996).
25. The General Assembly Hall, The Mound, Edinburgh, is the location for the first meetings of Scotland’s Parliament, with an official opening ceremony on 1 July 1999. Sometime in the second half of 2001, the Parliament moved to a new building, designed by the Spaniard Enric Miralles, located next to Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh.
26. Roland de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959).
27. J. Van de Ploeg, The Excavations of Qumran (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1958).
28. The Pharisees were the main religious and political opposition to the Temple priests in the Second Temple period. They preached a wider form of Judaism, related not just to the letter of the written text, but also to the Oral Law.
CHAPTER 15 THE LOST TREASURES OF AKHENATEN
1. John Marco Allegro, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960).
2. The body of Akhenaten has never been positively identified. It seems likely that a tomb (WV25) was prepared for him at Thebes before he transferred the seat of his throne to Akhetaten, but it was never occupied. In 1907 a burial chamber, KV55, was discovered at Wadi Biban el-Muluk, in western Thebes, which contained a shrine to Queen Tiyi, Akhenaten’s mother, and a coffin and canopic jars. It seems possible that the bodies of both Akhenaten and Tiyi were taken from the Royal tomb prepared for them at Akhetaten and removed to Thebes during the reign of Tutankhamun. The body was a male and carried the same blood group as that of Tutankhamun, Akhenaten’s brother (A2MN), indicating that it may have been Akhenaten. However, its age at death, estimated at twenty to twenty-five, is too low to confirm ownership.
3. The name Faiyum is found in many variations of spelling; I have chosen Faiyum as the preferred variant unless it occurs otherwise in a specific reference.
4. Bezalel Porten, Archives from Elephantine: The Life of an Ancient Jewish Military Colony (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968).
5. Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered (New York: Penguin Books, 1993).
6. Why the ‘Admonitions’ document should be written in cryptic form is none too clear. In itself it appears fairly innocuous, but it does allude to ‘ways of achieving long life’ and ‘the hidden things of the testimony’ that can be understood by examining the past. Perhaps within the text there is an encrypted message.
7. The Old Testament was translated into Greek from Hebrew versions (maintained by Jews settled in Alexandria), in c.320 BCE. The New Testament was copied by the early Christians in Alexandria, c.150–200 CE. They added six signs from Demotic Egyptian for sounds not available in Greek.
8. Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson, British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Press, c.1995); R.J. Gillings, Mathematics in the Time of the Pharaohs (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972).
9. Allegro, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll; Florentino Garcia Martinez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994); Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: Penguin Press, 1997); Albert Wolters, The Copper Scroll: Overview, Text and Translation (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996).
10. Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English.
11. Jozef Milik. Interview by author. Tape recording. Paris, France. 8 November 1998.
12. Henri Gauthier, Dictionnaire des Noms Géographiques Contenus dans les Textes Hiéroglyphiques (Paris: La Société Royale de Geographie d’Egypte, 1925); Aristide Calderini, Dizionario dei Nomi Geografici e Topografici dell’ Egitto Greco-Romano (Cisalpino-Goliardica, 1935–1980); Alan H. Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947); Erich Lüddeckens, Demotisches Namenbuch, Auftrage der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz (Wisebaden: Reichert, 1980–); Wolfgan Helck and Eberhard Otto, Lexikon der Agyptologie (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1975–); John Baines and Jaromir Malek, Atlas of Ancient Egypt (New York: Facts on File, 1985). Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients (University of Tübingen, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1977– ).
13. This was confirmed by Dr A. R. David, Reader in Egyptology at The Manchester Museum (in correspondance with the author, 18 January 1999), who stated that:
There is no Greek equivalent of Akhenaten. His previous name, before he changed it to show his allegiance to Aten, was Amenhotep IV. The Greek version of Amenhotep was Amenophis. Also, there is no Greek equivalent of the city, Akhetaten. I am not aware that there is any reference to either Akhenaten or Akhetaten in Greek literature, because the king and the city were obliterated from history until the site of Tell el-Amarna (Akhetaten) was rediscovered in recent times.
14. N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1905).
15. H. Frankfort and J. D. S. Pendlebury, The City of Akhenaten – Part II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933).
16. Allegro, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll.
17. Shaw and Nicholson, British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (http://touregypt.net/suntempl.htm).
18. Roland de Vaux,
Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1959); Frankfort and Pendlebury, The City of Akhenaten – Part II.
Various designs of jars found at Qumran and nearby
Ain Feshkha are illustrated in de Vaux’s book. They bear remarkable similarity,
in design, size and colouring, to pottery found in the Amarna area of Egypt,
dating from the Eighteenth Dynasty and the period of Akhenaten. Particularly
good examples of this correlation can be seen in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian
Archaeology at University College London – notably Catalogue No. UC 19153, a
late Eighteenth Dynasty storage jar found at Tell el Yahudiyeh, north of
Heliopolis.
19. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II.
20. Manos, the Hands of Fate (http://www.cs.colostate.edu/catlin).
21. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II; N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part V, (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1908).
22. Ibid.
23. Paul Fenton, Genizah Fragments, Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1981–82; http://www.cam.ac.uk/Libraries/Taylor-Schechter.
24. R. H. Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament II (London: Clarendon Press, 1913).
25. J. Pouilly, La Regle de la Communaute de Qumran: Son Evolution Litteraire (Paris: Gabalda Press, 1913).
26. H. H. Rowley, ‘The Teacher of Righteousness and the Dead Sea Scrolls’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 40, 1957.
27. Shaw and Nicholson, British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt.
28. de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
29. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II.
30. Ibid.
31. There are no obvious queenly candidates who had a tomb built for them associated with either the First or Second Temple in Jerusalem, and certainly not with the Qumran-Essenes. The only remotely possible queens of Israel who could be candidates are Bathsheba – the wife of King David (who had Uriah the Hittite killed in order to marry her); Jezebel – the Baal-worshipping wife of King Ahab c.840 BCE; and her daughter, Athaliah, who ruled in her own right and was also a canvasser on behalf of Baal.
32. Geoffrey Thorndike Martin, The Royal Tomb at El-Amarna –The Objects (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1974).
33. N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part I (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1903).
34. Shaw and Nicholson, British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt.
35. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II.
36. W. M. F. Petrie, Tell el-Amarna (London: Luzac & Co., 1894).
37. Frankfort and Pendlebury, The City of Akhenaten – Part II.
38. N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part III (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1905).
39. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II.
40. S. Goranson, ‘Further Reflections on the Copper Scroll’, International Symposium on the Copper Scroll, The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, 8–11 September 1996.
41. Allegro’s translation of ‘…tithe vessels and figured coins’ is problematic. His translation would certainly exclude fourteenth century BCE Egypt as a location, and probably the First Temple at Jerusalem too, because the earliest known coins date from seventh century BCE Anatolia (Turkey) and were rather crude blob-like gold or silver units. The use of figured coins spread outward to central Mediterranean areas, but they were not struck in Egypt until Greek influences arrived around 320 BCE. For this reason the translations by Albert Wolters (‘…vessels of tribute’), or Geza Vermes (‘…gold and vessels of offering’), are preferred. In general John Allegro uses the term ‘tithes’ where other translators use the term ‘offerings’ or ‘tributes’. The practice of tithe contributions to the Temple was not unknown in Egypt. Clear examples come from honey, meat and wine, destined as tithe offerings to Aten at Akhetaten. On tithe offerings of wine the formulatory docketed phrasing is ‘in the basin of…’, a phrasing frequently copied in the Copper Scroll. See J. D. S. Pendlebury, The City of Akhenaten – Part III (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1951).
42. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part I.
43. References to resins and oils in the Copper Scroll indicate that their use was as an offering, whereas in Biblical times unguents were used to anoint a ruler or consecrate holy vessels. This difference in usage can be related to ritual in the Great Temple at Akhetaten rather than the Temple at Jerusalem. There are several inscriptional examples of unguent being offered by Akhenaten – in the ‘Jubilee Scene’, in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, England, and on an alabaster slab excavated at Tel el-Amarna, now in the Cairo Museum. See Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten and Nefertiti (New York: The Brooklyn Museum, 1973).
44. Shortly after 1892 the Egyptian Department of Antiquities uncovered a painted pavement in the village of Hawata and removed it to the Cairo Museum. See de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part I.
45. Eugene Ulrich, ‘4QJoshua and Joshua’s First Altar in the Promised Land’, in G.J. Brooke and F.G. Martinez (eds.), New Qumran Texts and Studies (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994).
46. Ephraim Stern, ‘Gerizim’, The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavation in the Holy Land (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993).
CHAPTER 16 THE LEGACY OF AKHENATEN
1. Titus Lucretius Carus, 99–55 BCE. From The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (London: Oxford University Press, 1967).
2. Roland de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (London: Oxford University Press, 1959).
3. Numerous ostraca (pot sherds) and relics have been excavated from the site
of Qumran and they all tend to confirm the monastic lifestyle and rituals of the
Essene Community described in their scrolls, and by contemporary writers such as
Philo, Pliny and Josephus. One such fascinating recent discovery was made in
February 1996, by a team of eighteen treasure-seeking Americans using a
bulldozer! They literally stumbled upon two first century CE sherds in a wall
facing the Qumran Community’s cemetery. Whilst the method of ‘excavation’ is to
be deplored, the significance of the find is considerable in that it provides
the first non-Dead Sea Scroll tangible evidence that the people at Qumran
considered themselves a ‘Yahad ’ – a ‘Community’.
The larger piece, written in Hebrew, is part of a ‘Deed
of Gift’ document describing the assets – a house and its surroundings in
Jericho, a slave, valuable fruits – that an individual intended to donate to the
Community when he joined. There is also a description of the process of entry
into the Community involving the giving up of money and worldly goods as a
requirement of membership. The phrasing of the Deed is very similar to that used
in fifth century BCE papyri found at Elephantine, in Egypt.
E. Eshel, ‘The Newly Discovered Qumran Ostraca’,
International Symposium on the Copper Scroll, Manchester–Sheffield Centre for
Dead Sea Scrolls Research, 8–11 September 1996.
4. Paul Fenton, Genizah Fragments, Taylor–Schechter Genizah Research Unit (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1981–82); http://www.cam.ac.uk/Libraries/Taylor-Schechter. Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English – 1QS, 4Q265 (London: Allen Lane, 1997).
5. In 1898, 140,000 fragments of the ‘Genizah’ were donated to the University of Cambridge Library to form the Taylor–Schechter Collection; these now constitute 75 per cent of the Genizah fragments known to exist worldwide.
6. Fragments written on paper are post-eleventh century, those on vellum (leather) are dated between the eighth and eleventh centuries, whilst examples on papyrus are from the sixth to the eighth centuries.
7. Elam lay east of Babylonia, in the modern state of Khuzistan. Its capital was Susa, probably the Shushan of the Book of Esther.
8. O. Eissfeldt, ‘Theologische Literaturzeitung’, No. 10, 1949, translated by G. R. Driver, The Hebrew Scrolls from the Neighbourhood of Jericho and the Dead Sea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951).
9. Could this ceremony be the forerunner of the ‘Barmitzvah’, where a Jewish boy, at the age of thirteen, makes a public commitment to his faith and reads from the Torah in front of a synagogue congregation?
10. The three lower orders of the Masonic movement are known as craft degrees – of which there are about 300,000 members in Great Britain alone, where the modern movement was founded in about 1600 CE. Only a selected few members are ‘invited’ by a Supreme Council to rise above the Third Degree. After that comes the Fourth Degree, ‘Secret Master’, and Fifth Degree, ‘Perfect Master’. Progress thereafter is through various degrees, many with biblical titles – Thirteenth Degree ‘Royal Arch (of Enoch)’, Sixteenth Degree ‘Prince of Jerusalem’, Twenty-fourth Degree ‘Prince of the Tabernacle’, Twenty-eighth Degree ‘Knight of the Sun’, and up to the Thirty-second Degree, ‘Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret’, and the highest Thirty-third Degree, ‘Grand Inspector General’. Stephen King, The Brotherhood (London: Granada Publishing Ltd., 1984).
11. Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered (New York: Penguin Books, 1993).
12. The Qumran-Essenes would have had works in their possession whose contents were contrary to their own beliefs. The Dead Sea Scrolls appeared to constitute an archival library of reference material, as well as a place for the Essenes’ own works.
13. Yigael Yadin, The Message of the Scrolls (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1957).
14. Stephen Pfann, ‘The Corpus of Manuscripts Written in the Qumran Cryptic Scripts’, The Dead Sea Scrolls – Fifty Years After Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress July 20–25, 1997 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society in cooperation with The Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, 2000).
15. Adolfo Roitman, A Day at Qumran – The Dead Sea Sect and Its Scrolls (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1997).
16. Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, The Mummy: A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology (London: Constable, 1989).
17. The New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and Chanukah (celebrating the rededication of the Second Temple c.164 BCE) were festivals developed after the destruction of the First Temple. Other festivals are mentioned in the Temple Scroll, but it is not certain that this scroll was sectarian.
18. The first letter on ‘Works Reckoned as Righteous’ (4Q394–398), as
interpreted by Eisenman and Wise (The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered), gives
a detailed exposition on the Essene calendar and mentions the Passover, Festival
of Weeks, Day of Atonement and Festival of Booths (Tabernacles), but not Purim.
Although conventionally associated with the Persian
period of the fifth century BCE, Purim has recently been shown to have been
based on a much older Assyrian myth dating back at least to the seventh century
BCE. Dr Stephanie Dalley, Shikito Research Fellow in Assyriology at the Oriental
Institute, Oxford University, at a lecture entitled ‘Esther and Purim: The
Assyrian Background’ given on 24 February 1999, convincingly related the story
of Esther and Mordecai to the Assyrian gods Ishtar and Marduk and the name
‘Purim’ to the Akkadian term for the casting of lots, amongst other
commonalities. This attribution to a Mesopotamian rather than Persian source for
the Festival of Purim further explains the Qumran-Essenes’ essential reluctance
to incorporate an ‘alien’ festival into their calendar.
19. Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten King of Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1988).
20. James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt – Vol II (New York: Russell & Russell, 1906).
21. Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, The Book of the Dead (Avenel, N.J.: Gramercy Books, 1995); R.T. Rundle Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1978).
22. Budge, The Mummy: A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology.
23. B. Z. Wacholder, The Dawn of Qumran (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1983); Dwight D. Swanson, ‘A Covenant Just Like Jacob’s – The Covenant of 11QT29 and Jeremiah’s New Covenant’, New Qumran Texts and Studies (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994); Philip R. Davies, Behind the Essenes – History and Ideology in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Atlanta, Ga: Scholars Press, 1987).
24. P. R. Davies, Behind the Essenes – History and Ideology in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
25. Raymonde de Gans, Toutankhamon (Paris: Editions de L’Erable, 1968).
26. Fenton, Genizah Fragments.
27. P. R. Davies, Behind the Essenes – History and Ideology in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
28. Swanson, ‘A Covenant Just Like Jacob’s – The Covenant of 11QT29 and Jeremiah’s New Covenant’.
29. According to a report in the Jewish Chronicle of 22 January 1999, the Vatican has now acknowledged the validity of the Jewish Covenant with God.
30. Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English – 1QS, 4QS265 (London: Allen Lane, 1997).
31. Lawrence H. Schiffman, ‘The Judean Scrolls and the History of Judaism’, The Dead Sea Scrolls – Fifty Years After Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress July 20–25, 1997 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society in cooperation with The Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, 2000).
32. Anthony Tyrrell Hanson, Jesus Christ in the Old Testament, SPCK, 1965.
33. This injunction might well be evidence that Tutankhamun was a Prince of the Royal line, but not the blood brother of Akhenaten.
34. Elsewhere animal sacrifice has continued and still takes place in certain parts of the world amongst particular religious communities. The Incas are even known to have practised child sacrifice up until 500 years ago. A small following of Samaritans still gather at Passover on Mount Gerizim, in Israel, to sacrifice a lamb and keep a midnight vigil. Certain Kali denominated Hindu Temples in, for example, Nepal and Madras still conduct ritual killings, for a monetary offering, of chickens and goats, which are thus made holy and then taken home by individual local congregants to be eaten.
35. N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1905).
36. Florentino Garcia Martinez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994).
37. Words in [ ] indicates partially preserved text. Words in ( ) are interpolations.
38. George J. Brooke, ‘Exegesis at Qumran – 4QFlorilegium in its Jewish Context’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series 29 (Sheffield: Dept of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield, 1985).
CHAPTER 17 PHYSICAL, MATERIAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL LINKS BETWEEN QUMRAN AND AKHETATEN
1. Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson, British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Press, c1995).
2. G. R. Driver, The Hebrew Scrolls from the Neighbourhood of Jericho and the Dead Sea, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951).
3. Eugene Ulrich and Frank Moore Cross, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, Vol.VII – Qumran Cave 4 (London: Clarendon Press, 1994).
4. Joseph A Fitzmyer, Responses to 101 Questions on the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Paulist Press, 1992).
5. Alfred Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries (London: Edward Arnold, 1948); George Posener, ‘Sur l’Emploi de l’Encre Rouge dans les Manuscripts Egyptiens’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 37 (London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1951).
6. Yoram Nir-El and Magen Broshi of the Soreq Nuclear Research Centre/Israel Museum, Jerusalem, ‘The Study of Ink Used at Qumran’, The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty – Years After Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, 20–25 July 1997 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society in cooperation with The Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, 2000).
7. D. Barthélemy and J. T. Milik, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, Vol. I (London: Clarendon Press, 1955).
8. Ibid.
9. Barry Kemp, ‘Amarna’s Textile Industry’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, No. 11 (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1997); Rosalind Hill, Egyptian Textiles (Aylesbury: Shire Egyptology, 1990).
10. Ronny Reich, ‘The Miqwa’ot (Immersion Baths) of Qumran’, The Dead Sea Scrolls – Fifty Years After Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, 20–25 July 1997 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society in cooperation with The Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, 2000).
11. N. de. G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II (London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1905).
12. Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, The Mummy: A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology (London: Constable, 1989).
CHAPTER 18 EGYPT, ISRAEL AND BEYOND – THE OVERLAYING COMMONALITIES
1. Today Egypt is mainly Muslim, with small minorities of most types of Christians – especially Coptic. Israel’s population is 90 per cent Jewish, with Muslim and Christian minorities. The area once occupied by Assyria is now predominantly Muslim, with Christians and a small number of Jews.
2. Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, Egyptian Religion (Avenel, N.J.: Gramercy Books, 1996).
3. H. Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie, (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, c.1885).
4. Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered (New York: Penguin Books, 1993).
5. Theodor H. Gaster, The Dead Sea Scriptures (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976).
6. Irving M. Zeitlin, Ancient Judaism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984).
7. Siegfried Morenz, Egyptian Religion (Ithica, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994).
8. Budge, Egyptian Religion.
9. Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie.
10. John Romer, Romer’s Egypt, BBC Television Series, 1982. Accompanied by the book, Romer’s Egypt: A New Light on the Civilization of Ancient Egypt (London: Joseph, 1982), also by John Romer.
11. From the Authorized English Bible of the Church of England, 1870.
12. Egyptian hieroglyphs c.1330 BCE. Translated by Professor J.H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. II (New York: Russell & Russell, 1906).
13. A. Z. Idelsohn, Jewish Music (New York: Schoken Books, 1929).
14. Ibid.
15. Professor Brooke points out that Psalm 89 is ‘probably even datable to the tenth century B.C.’ George J. Brooke, ‘Exegesis at Qumran – 4QFlorilegium in its Jewish Context’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series 29 (Sheffield: Dept of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield 1985).
16. Alfred Sendrey, Music in Ancient Israel (New York: Philosophical Library, 1969).
17. Idelsohn, Jewish Music.
18. Sendrey, Music in Ancient Israel.
19. James A. Sanders, ‘The Psalms Scroll of Qumran Cave 11 (11QPsa)’, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, Vol. IV (London: Clarendon Press, 1965); James A. Sanders, The Dead Sea Psalms Scroll (Ithica, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967). Although the Psalm Scroll is incomplete, it contains forty-one psalms of the Biblical canon and eight psalms that are not in the Bible, of which five are known from other Greek and Syriac sources, and three are entirely new. One example of these evocative and beautiful works is the ‘Hymn to the Creator’ (letters in [ ] are reconstructions):
The Lord is great and holy, the Most Holy for generation after generation.
Majesty goes before Him, and after Him abundance of many waters.
Loving-kindness and truth are about His face; truth and judgement and righteousness are the pedestal of His throne. He divides light from obscurity; He establishes the dawn by the knowledge of His heart. When all His angels saw it, they sang, for He showed them that which they had not known. He crowns the mountains with fruit, with good food for all the living.
Blessed be the Master of the earth with His power, who establishes the world by His wisdom.
By His understanding He stretched out the heaven, and brought forth [wind] from His st[ores]. He made [lightenings for the rai]n, and raised mist from the end [of the earth].
See also Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: The Penguin Press, 1997).
20. James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955).
21. Morenz, Egyptian Religion.
22. R.N. Whybray, The Succession Narrative: A Study of II Samuel 9–20 and I Kings 1 and 2 (London: SCM Press, 1968).
23. F. Griffith, Stories of the High Priests of Memphis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900).
24. Gressmann, Vom Reichen Mann und Armen Lazarus, Abhandlungen der (Kgl.) (Leipzig: Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1918).
25. O. Weinreich, Neue Urkunden zur Sarapis-Religion (Tübingen: University of Tubingen: 1919).
26. H. Puech, Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, 147 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955).
27. Siegfried Morenz, Amenemope, Zeitschrift für Agyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde (Leipzig, 1953).
28. R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead (London: British Museum Press, 1985).
29. Philippe Derchain, Chronique d’Egypte, 30 (Paris: Le Caire, Imprint de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1955).
30. Morenz, Egyptian Religion.
31. W. Baumgartner, A. Bertholet (Tübingen: University of Tübingen, 1950).
32. Morenz, Egyptian Religion.
33. S. Herrmann, II Samuel vii; I Kings iii (Leipzig : Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Universitat Leipzig, 1953–54).
34. P. Humbert, Recherches sur les Sources Egyptiennes de la Litterature Sapientale d’Israel (Neuchâtel: Secretariat de l’Université, 1929).
35. G. Rawlinson, Histories of Herodotus, II (London: J.M. Dent, Ltd., 1858, [1964]). Compare Ecclesiastes 8:15:
to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun.
Coincidentally many of the wisdom sayings of Solomon in Ecclesiastes are interspersed with the phrase ‘under the sun’ – quite out of context.
Both Isaiah and St Paul (in I Corinthians 15:32) pick up the concept: ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’ See also Isaiah 22:13.
36. Deuteronomy 4:2 – ‘Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish ought from it that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.’ Revelation 22:18–19 – ‘For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things that are written in this book.’
37. Morenz, Egyptian Religion.
38. Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol. III (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
CHAPTER 19 FINAL CLUES FROM THE COPPER SCROLL – ELEPHANTINE ISLAND AND THE FALASHAS OF ETHIOPIA
1. Martin Gilbert, Atlas of Jewish History (London: J.M. Dent Ltd, 1993).
2. Incidentally, Caesarea has slipped to the north of the Taurus mountains, whereas it should be on the coast of Israel between Tel-Aviv and Haifa!
3. John Rogerson, Atlas of the Bible (London: Andromeda Oxford Ltd, 1985).
4. Bezalel Porten, Archives from Elephantine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968). Porten, at one time Associate Professor of Hebrew and Bible at the University of California, puts forward the suggestion that the ‘Elephantine Colony’ originated from Jewish mercenaries brought in to defend Egypt’s southern borders around 650 BCE. He has to admit, however, that this proposal has many difficulties, as indicated in the text.
5. G. W. Anderson, The History and Religion of Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966).
6. Reuven Yaron, Introduction to the Law of the Aramaic Papyri (London: Clarendon Press, 1961).
7. Astarte was originally the Babylonian goddess Anathbethal, who was adopted into the Egyptian pantheon as the daughter of the god Ra around the time of Pharaoh Amenhotep II. She was the protector of horses and chariots and became a particular favourite of Amenhotep III.
8. Yaron, Introduction to the Law of the Aramaic Papyri.
9. T. Eric Peet, Egypt and the Old Testament (Liverpool: The University Press of Liverpool, 1922).
10. A. Vincent, La Religion des Judeo-Arameens d’Elephantine (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1937).
11. A. E. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century BC (Oxford: Clarendon, 1923).
12. ‘Elephantine’, Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1992). See also Peet, Egypt and the Old Testament.
13. Porten, Archives from Elephantine.
14. Ibid. Porten indicates the relative position of the Temple in relation to various adjacent houses. If the Temple was aligned north-west–south-east, the house of Jezaniah ben Uriah and Mibtahiah would be north-west of the Temple, as is indicated in the Aramaic papyri.
15. Michael Chyutin, ‘The New Jerusalem Scroll from Qumran – A Comprehensive Reconstruction’, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, Supplement 25 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997).
16. Despite a modern misconception that Jews are prone to exact punitive interest on money owed to them – a misconception perpetuated by Shylock’s antics in The Merchant of Venice – the fallacy of this prejudice was brought home to me when I was in the process of buying a property. The Exchange Contract came back from the vendor’s solicitors with the usual clause on interest payable should I fail to Complete struck out. I asked my solicitors, if the vendor had made a mistake, as the exclusion was clearly to the buyer’s advantage. They came back with the answer that the vendor was an Orthodox Jew and was not allowed to charge interest on outstanding monies. Jewish law, like Islamic law, does not support the charging of interest, although the Old Testament is ambivalent on the subject....
17. Yaron, Introduction to the Law of the Aramaic Papyri.
18. Porten, Archives from Elephantine.
19. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C.
20. The quotation is from the New English Bible. The land of Cush commenced at ancient Syene, in the region of Yeb (Elephantine Island), and extended south into Nubia, modern Ethiopia.
21. Porten, Archives from Elephantine.
22. A. Knudtzon, Deir El-Amarna – Tafeln (Leipzig: 1915).
23. E.C. B. Maclaurin, ‘Date of the Foundation of the Jewish Colony at Elephantine’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 27 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
24. Amenhotep II’s military successes expanded the Egyptian Empire as never before, penetrating south into the Sudan, further than any previous pharaoh, to beyond the barriers of the Southern Cataracts.
25. The area of Lake
Tana has changed little in over 2,000 years and one can visualize the scene that
must have confronted the weary travellers from Egypt.
The sound of the Blue Nile Falls, where the waters from
Lake Tana pour down, fills the humid air with a deafening roar, like a thousand
lions of Judah, and native Amhara tribesman still paddle their flimsy
papyrus-reed canoes across the Lake, as they have done for the past millennia.
To the north of the Lake lies the turreted fortress of
Castle Gondar, with the immense blue beauty of Lake Tana at its feet. The island
would have reminded the refugees of Elephantine, and provided added security
from marauders, and a sanctuary – a place where they could carry on their
divinely inspired belief in one God and worship him in a cleansed state, washed
by the pure, crystal-clear waters of the Lake.
26. Gilbert, Atlas of Jewish History; See also ‘Elephantine’, Encylopaedia Judaica.
27. Christopher Clapham, ‘The Falasha Fallacy’, The Times Literary Supplement, 10 September 1993.
28. North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry, 1996.
29. Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal (London: Mandarin, 1993).
30. David Kessler, The Falashas – A Short History of the Ethiopian Jews (London: Frank Cass, 1996).
31. Lionel Bender, The Non-semitic Languages of Ethiopia (African Studies Center, Michigan State University, 1976).
32. Wolf Leslau, Falasha Anthology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951).
33. Shoshana Ben-Dor, The Religious Background of Beta Israel: Saga of Aliyah (Jerusalem, 1993).
34. Roland de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959).
35. Joyce Tyldesley, Nefertiti – Egypt’s Sun Queen (London: Viking, 1998).
36. de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
37. Yemenite Jews on the other side of the Red Sea did celebrate Purim and Chanukah. The Falashas also did not appear to celebrate the Festival of Succot (Tabernacles).
38. This is a somewhat weak excuse, as modern techniques make it relatively simple to detect whether blood carries the HIV virus, and all blood destined for use in transfusions is routinely screened for HIV and other contaminants anyway.
39. Steve Jones, In the Blood – God, Genes and Destiny (London: HarperCollins, 1996).
40. Georges-Pierre Seurat was a nineteeth century (1859–1891) French artist who developed a style by using a series of dots to create the impression of an image in his painting, which became known as ‘pointillism’.
41. Kathleen M. Kenyon (revised by P. R. S. Moorey), The Bible and Recent Archaeology (London: British Museum Publications, 1987).
42. Thomas L. Thompson, The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999).
43. N. de. G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part V (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1908).
CHAPTER 20 ACADEMIC AND SCHOLARLY REACTION
1. John J. Collins, Scrolls Scholarship as Intellectual History, The Dead Sea Scrolls at Fifty, Society of Biblical Literature, Qumran Section Meetings, Scholars Press, 1999.
2. Lawrence H. Schiffman and Marlene Schiffman, ‘And it Shall Come to Pass in the End of Days: An Agenda for the Future’, The Dead Sea Scrolls at Fifty – Society of Biblical Literature, Qumran Section Meetings, Scholars Press, 1999.
3. Judah K. Lefkovits, The Copper Scroll 3Q15: A Reevaluation – A New Reading, Translation, and Commentary (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999).
4. Email correspondence between Professor Harold Ellens and the author, Autumn 2002.
5. Eduard Meyer, Aegyptische Chronologie, Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Leipzig: Heinrichs, 1904).
6. Examples of the sun
disc symbol appearing in Israel include: the Bible Lands Museum, Jerusalem, a
small bone plaque carved with the figure of a Philistine being led captive by
two Hebrews who have a sun disc emblem above their heads, found at Megiddo,
dated to c.1200 BCE; portrait of King Jehu, of the Northern Kingdom of
Israel (842-814 BCE), with a sun disc shown over his head, on the black obelisk
of Shalmanseser III, where he is seen rendering gifts to the Assyrian king
(Ninian Smart, Atlas of the World’s Religions (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999)); inscriptions on jar handles, from places such as Hebron,
Tel-Lachish and Beth Shemesh, from the period of King Hezekiah (c.720
BCE), a reforming King who threw out pagan imagery and re-established pure
monotheism, showing the sun disc (representing the Aten) accompanied by a beetle
(representing transformation Kheperu, which I have earlier suggested might be
the origin of the word Hebrew) both Egyptian symbols, and sometimes the words
‘belonging to the King’ inscribed in ancient Hebrew. The earliest manifestation
of the sun disc occurs in the reign of Tutmoses IV. The shift in power from the
priests of Amun at Karnak, to the solar priests, centred at Heliopolis, seems to
have accelerated under this pharaoh’s rule, less than forty years before the
arrival of Pharaoh Akhenaten and fully fledged monotheism. Examples of this move
towards the Aten can be seen in an ivory wrist-ornament, found at Amarna,
showing Tutmoses IV with the solar disc positioned directly over his head, and a
large scarab, or beetle form amulet, of the same pharaoh, inscribed with words
alluding to foreigners who were ‘subjects of the rule of Aten forever’. The
latter piece is now in the British Museum - see Nicholas Reeves, Akhenaten
(London: Thames & Hudson, 2001). The use of scarab beetle imagery, indicating
the creation of life with the daily emergence of the sun, was, of course, not
confimed to the Amarna period , but its use was in keeping with the idea of the
Aten renewing life each day and was definitely in vogue at that time, especially
on jar sealings. In fact the rise in the influence of the Aten can be seen in
the issuing of a large scarab shortly before Akhenaten’s reign, referring to
Aten as ‘the God who makes pharaoh mighty in battle’ (Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten
King of Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1996)). Extensive studies of the
many references to sun imagery in the Old Testament and Dead Sea Scrolls have
been undertaken by people like J. Morgenstern (Fire upon the Altar,
Quadrangle Books, 1963); M. Smith (Helios in Palestine, Eretz Israel 16,
1982); H. P. Stähli (Solare Elemente im Jahweglauben des Alten Testaments,
Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 66, Freiburg University, 1985); M.S. Smith (The
Near Eastern Background of Solar Language for Yahweh, Journal of Biblical
Literature 109, 1990); and more recently by J. Glen Taylor (Yahweh and the
Sun, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series 111,
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993)). Glen Taylor, of the University of
Toronto, Canada, points out that sun, horse, and chariot imagery, evident in
Israelite history, is unlikely to have derived from Assyrian motifs as
archaeological examples are dated to earlier periods than those of Assyrian
influence - such as the three tier cult stand found at Taanach in Israel, dated
to the tenth century BCE. Interestingly the central part of this artifact,
usually occupied by the deity in this type of statuary, is deliberately left
empty, indicating the idea of an invisible God (T. Mettinger, The Veto on
Images and the Aniconic God in Ancient Israel, in H. Biezas, ed.,
Religious Symbols and Their Functions, Almqvist & Wiksell, 1979).
Examples of bullae with ‘Aten’ motifs, found in Israel,
are described in an article by Robert Deutsch, ‘Lasting Impressions’,
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August (Washington, D.C.: Biblical
Archaeology Society, 2002).
7. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (London: The Hogarth Press, 1951).
8. Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997); Erik Hornung, Professor of Egyptology, University of Basel, in his book Idea into Image (New York: Timken Publishers, 1992), comes to many of the same conclusions about Akhenaten and the Hebrews.
9. Raymond Brown, Joseph Fitzmyer, Roland Murphy (eds.), The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (London: Cassell & Co., 1996).
10. Richard E. Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,1997).
11. Many of the names in this group are Egyptian in origin. Korah, according to the Talmud (28 Peschi 18a) was treasurer to Pharaoh; On was the ancient name for Heliopolis, near Cairo, the traditional centre of theology in ancient Egypt.
12. Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?
13. Ibid.
14. Whilst Professor Friedman believes Jeremiah was a Shilonite, and I am inclined to agree with this notion, he takes Ezekiel to be an Aaronite, a stance I do not agree with, as Professor Wacholder’s analysis tends to bear out. Ezekiel constantly refers to geographical locations in the North and says that Israel’s redemption will come from the North not the Aaronite South. Professor Friedman also concludes that the sections of the Old Testament that are identified as being authored by an Aaronite priestly group labelled P, comprising P1 - written before the First Temple was destroyed and before Deuteronomy, in the time of Hezekiah c.610 BCE - and P2, were added later. Professor Friedman ascribes his readings of P to Aaronite interests, but I am not so convinced. There are elements of Professor Friedman’s P that are more consistent with Shilonite ideas indicating the author is not so much anti-Moses but more interested in the original understanding of Akhenaten-style rejection of angels, anthropomorphisms, dreams and talking animals, whilst emphasising cosmic firmaments, and God’s omnipotence over Moses and Aaron. P also never mentions the Temple, but only talks about the Tabernacle. Why would a pro-Aaronite author of P ignore the Temple, the centre of their sphere of influence? The one thread that seems to help define the Shilonite thinking is their adherence to the Tabernacle as a main plank of their belief. Not surprising as the Tabernacle was their exclusive prerogative in earliest times and their exclusion form the Jerusalem Temple may well be the reason why they constantly ignored the Temple and denigrated it whilst it remained in the hands of those they considered illegitimate guardians. That is not to say that the concept of the Temple was not important to them, it was. Nevertheless the true Temple was to be in different hands and of different design.
15. Ben Zion Wacholder, verbal presentation made at the following conference: Dead Sea Scrolls – Fifty Years After Their Discovery, Congress in Jerusalem, July 1977.
16. A. Geiger, Urschrift und Ubersetzungen der Bibel (Brelau, 1857); Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, (Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1885).
17. Ben Zion Wacholder, Ezekiel and Ezekielianism as Progenitors of Essenianism, The Dead Sea Scrolls, Forty Years of Research, ed., Devorah Dimant and Uriel Rappaport (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992).
18. Ibid.
19. A sect closely related to the Essenes, who were based near Alexandria and in the Valley of Natrun, in the Delta region of Egypt.
20. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian.
21. Meyer, Aegyptische Chronologie.
22. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian.
23. Philip R. Davies, Behind the Essenes - History and Ideology in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Program in Judaic Studies, No. 94 (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1987).
24. Shlomo Margalit, Aelia Capitolina, Judaica No. 45 (São Paulo: Capital Sefarad Editorial e Propaganda, Marz 1989).
25. Michael Chyutin, The New Jerusalem Scroll from Qumran - A Comprehensive Reconstruction, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, Supplement Series 25, (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997). The other city, also laid out in an orthogonal pattern, that Michael Chyutin considered might be a possible contender for the New Jerusalem Scroll temple, was Sesebi, in the southern Nubia area of Egypt. Strangely enough this was also a new build site developed by Pharaoh Akhenaten, where he was known as the ‘Lion of Nubia’, (Dr Robert Morkot, Akhenaten in Nubia, Egypt Exploration Society Meeting, SOAS, University College London, 27 February 2001). The information quoted draws on Michael Chyutin’s above study, on an article entitled The New Jerusalem Ideal City, Dead Sea Discoveries I, 1994; a critique by Dwight D. Swanson, Dead Sea Discoveries 6, 1999; e-mails from Michael Chyutin in December 2001.
26. John Kampen, ‘The Significance of the Temple in the Manuscripts of the Damascus Document’, The Dead Sea Scrolls at Fifty, Society of Biblical Literature, Qumran Section Meetings (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1999).
27. Ibid.
28. Yigael Yadin, The Temple Scroll (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985).
29. Esther M. Menn, ‘Praying King and Sanctuary of Prayer Part 1; David and the Temple’s Origins in Rabbinic Psalms, Commentary Midrash Tehillim’, Journal of Semitic Studies, Vol. LII, No.1 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001).
30. Serge Frolov, ‘King’s Law’ of the Temple Scroll; Mishnaic Aspects’, Journal of Jewish Studies, Vol. L, No. 2 (Cambridge: 1999).
31. Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten, King of Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1996).
32. Robert Feather, private correspondence January, 1999, also BBC2 TV Documentary,The Pharaoh’s Holy Treasure, 31 March 2002.
33. S. Birch, Catalogue of the Collection of Egyptian Antiquities at Alnwick Castle (London: R. Clay & Sons, 1880).
34. Freud, Moses and Monotheism.
35. Messod and Roger Sabbah, Les Secrets de L’Exode (Paris: Jean-Cyrille Godefroy, 2001). Incidentally the authors also make out a strong case for the Massai tribe of Africa as being Akhenaten followers-descendants, reprising findings relating to the strange pseudo-Hebrew community at Elephantine, and the Falasha of Ethiopia.
36. God’s name appears in many forms in the Old Testament: as a Hebrew yod, vav and two heys; the double yod; Hashem, or just the Hebrew letter hey - the Name; Makom - Every Place; Adonai - Mastery; El; Eloha; Elohim; Shadai; Tsevaoit; Elohai. Jeremy Rosen, Not so Dashing, Jewish Chronicle, 11 May 2001.
37. Jacques Champollion, Grammaire Egyptienne (Paris: Solin, 1997).
38. ‘Ai’ is the first sounding syllable of the word Israel or Yisrael, as it appears in the Merneptah stela, dated to 1210 BCE - the first Egyptian representation of Israel, as a people. (The ‘Y’ sound equates to the Hieroglyph sound of the ‘double reed’ symbol - indicating supreme ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt, and perhaps equating to the ‘double Yod’, used in the Old Testament to indicate the ineffable name of God).
39. Birch, Catalogue of the Collection of Egyptian Antiquities at Alnwick Castle.
40. John Noble Wilford
‘Discovery of Egyptian Inscriptions Indicates an Earlier Date for Origins of the
Alphabet’, New York Times, 13 November 1999; Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore (http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/home99/nov99/alpha.html).
(Frank Moore Cross, The Ancient Library of Qumran
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), cites examples in the Qumran texts
where endings on verbs as ‘-a’ are restored, even in contexts where they do not
belong. These vowel endings are survivals from ancient Canaanite, which in
vernacular speech were lost about 1,200 BCE.)
41. Ibid.
42. Refer to note 5 for this chapter.
43. Émile Puech, ‘Les Deux Derniers Psaumes Davidiques du Rituel d’Exorcisme’, 11PsApa IV 4-V14’, The Dead Sea Scrolls – Forty Years of Research (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992).
44. Kathleen M. Kenyon, The Bible and Recent Archaeology (London: British Museum Publications, 1987). Another drawing at Kuntillet Ajrud gives credence to a connection back to Aten for the associated find. It shows a procession of five worshippers with arms extended in an attitude of upward adoration and near to the mouth of the leader in what appears to be an open hand - reminiscent of the hand of Aten seen on inscriptions at Amarna (P. Beck, The Drawings from Horvat Teiman (Kuntillet Ajrud), Tel Aviv 9 (Tel Aviv: Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, 1982 ).
45. Transcript of interview with Professor John Tait, at the Institute of Artchaeology, London, 21 December 2001.
46. Schiffman and Schiffman, And it Shall Come to Pass in the End of Days: An Agenda for the Future.