4

Deceit and Disguise

And Joseph knew his brethren, but they knew not him.

GENESIS 42:8.

Reuel’s scheme relied upon two people—a brother and sister. Dinah was Israel’s only daughter. Her disgrace set the stage for Reuel’s cleverly planned conspiracy.

After Israel and his family had finally passed through the dangerous territory of Edom into drought-ridden Canaan he found himself with a young and naive daughter on his hands who longed to trade her predictable life of herding animals and tending flocks for more urban delights. Consumed with curiosity the rebellious teenager slipped out of camp to visit the local village.

Dinah’s beauty soon captured the attention of Shechem whose “soul clave unto Dinah” and “he loved the damsel.”¹ He “saw her, he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her.”² Shechem pleaded with his father, Hamor, to negotiate with Dinah’s father, Israel, to permit a marriage.

When Hamor approached him Israel “held his peace”³ until he had a chance to consult with his elder sons. As Hamor feared, when they heard about their sister’s sexual encounter they “were grieved, and they were very wroth.” It was a thing that “ought not to be done.”⁴ Hamor tried to calm the volatile situation by offering the outraged brothers friendship and land. Israel was prepared to listen, but his sons rejected the bribery outright. Fearing that their father would reach an agreement despite their objections they threw out another challenge, “We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to one that is uncircumcised.”⁵ They proposed a bold compromise.⁶ If Shechem, Hamor, and all the males of the village would submit to circumcision then they would “consent”⁷ to Dinah’s marriage.

Hamor agreed to the drastic measure and persuaded the other males of the village to endure the bloody procedure, leaving them weak and vulnerable to the brutal vengeance that followed: “And it came to pass on the third day, when they were sore, that two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brethren, took each man his sword, and came upon the city boldly, and slew all the males. And they slew Hamor and Shechem his son with the edge of the sword, and took Dinah out of Shechem’s house, and went out.”⁸

Israel was livid that his sons had gone behind his back to murder in the name of their wounded pride. He knew that the inevitable wrath of Shechem’s neighboring tribes would soon be felt. “And Jacob [Israel] said to Simeon and Levi, Ye have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land . . . they shall gather themselves together against me, and slay me; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house.”⁹ But his sons were unrepentant. One sneered, “should” Shechem “deal with our sister as with a harlot?”¹⁰ This disrespect was a minor vice compared to the viciousness they had exhibited. But which son would have dared to defy their father with sarcasm? Levi the scribe was the more articulate of the two. It seems likely that he would be the most verbally defiant. Who was this man possessed of a razor tongue? And what part did he play in Reuel’s dark conspiracy?

LEVI

Dinah’s story reveals Levi’s ruthless character. Determined to carry out his own agenda of murder he had avenged his sister without consulting her. We will never know the true nature of the relationship between Dinah and Shechem because after this drama she disappears from the pages of the Torah. Or does she? As we will show there is reason to believe that Israel’s daughter adopted a new identity, a new name, and a new elevated role among the children of Israel.

Levi is depicted as haughty, cruel, brutal, deceitful, hot-tempered, and sarcastic. Not exactly the traits expected of the founder of a priestly caste. How did such a scheming man become the forefather of the Levites, high priests of Israel? It’s a question that has continually baffled biblical scholars.¹¹

Levi’s sarcasm speaks forcefully to his embittered nature. Perpetually full of rage he nurtured a special hatred for his half brother, Joseph. Joseph’s rags-to-riches story has inspired thousands of imitations. He was Israel’s eleventh son but the first child born to his adored wife Rachel. “Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colors.”¹² This coat, symbolizing Joseph’s special place in Israel’s heart, inflamed the hatred of his other sons who “saw that their father loved him more than all of his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him.”¹³

Joseph threw fuel on the flames of their antagonism when he told his older brothers about a dream in which they all bowed before him. The brothers “hated him yet the more.”¹⁴ Someone (probably Levi) snapped, “Shalt thou indeed reign over us?”¹⁵ Joseph, unperturbed, escalated the situation by relating another dream in which even “the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.”¹⁶

Shortly afterward Joseph’s brothers guided the family’s flock into the wild. When Joseph followed he became lost. A “certain man found him”¹⁷ and pointed him in the right direction. Circumstantial evidence indicates that this “certain man” was Reuel.^*6 By now, the elder brothers had reached the end of their patience with their arrogant sibling and rather than welcoming him back into their midst “they conspired against him to slay him.”¹⁸ Levi, their likely spokesman,^*7 said, “let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, some evil beast devoured him.” In a whisper he slyly adds, “and we shall see what will become of his dreams.”¹⁹

Reuben, Israel’s eldest son, didn’t have the stomach for brazen murder, “Let us not kill him” he urged. His alternative was to “shed no blood, but cast him into this pit.”²⁰ The others reluctantly agreed and, stripping Joseph of his prized multicolored coat, tossed the seventeen-year-old into the pit. When Joseph cried out, the guilty brothers “saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear.”²¹

Unexpectedly, a company of Midianite merchants came upon the scene. Israel’s fourth son, Judah, took the opportunity to finesse their crude plan by suggesting that they sell Joseph into slavery to profit from his disappearance. The brothers negotiated a deal with the Midianites, who pulled Joseph from the pit and later sold him to Ishmaelite traders for “twenty pieces of silver.”²² The Ishmaelites then resold Joseph to the Egyptians.

Reuben secretly returned to the pit, possibly with the intention of freeing Joseph but he was gone. Rejoining the others, he despaired, “The child is not; and I, whither shall I go?”²³ As the eldest son, Reuben was justifiably afraid that his father would hold him responsible for Joseph’s failure to return. His entire future was at stake, leaving him vulnerable to Levi’s latest scheme, which was to pretend that Joseph had died as the result of “some evil beast” that had “devoured him.” Reuben had little choice but to go along with the lie.

The brothers wasted no time smearing goat’s blood over Joseph’s discarded coat before breaking the news to their father about his favorite son’s “disappearance.”

The image of that blood-spattered coat haunted Israel. “This have we found: know now whether it be thy son’s coat or no,”²⁴ Levi^†8 prodded. As expected, Israel cried, “It is my son’s coat; an evil beast hath devoured him.”²⁵

Full of hypocrisy, the elder sons tried to console their father but “he refused to be comforted” saying, “I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning.”²⁶ Joseph’s mother, Rachel, wept uncontrollably over the loss of their love child. They had waited so long for him. Now he was gone. But not as permanently as they had been cruelly led to believe.

JOSEPH AND POTIPHAR

Joseph had been sold to Potiphar, a high-ranking Egyptian who gradually came to have great respect for his exceptional slave. A Jewish folktale suggests that the young captive’s expertise in the use of hypnotism helped him gain such unusual favor with his powerful master:

One day, whilst Joseph was waiting upon his master, the latter noticed how Joseph’s lips were moving silently, and he suspected his servant of being a magician and preparing to cast a spell upon his master.

“What is the meaning of the whispering,” cried Potiphar, “dost thou intend to make use of occult arts against me, and to bring magic into Egypt, the land of magic and magicians?”

“Far be it from me,” replied Joseph, “to do such a thing.”

“Then why are thy lips moving silently?” asked Potiphar, still suspicious.

“I am praying to my God,” said Joseph, “imploring Him to make me find favor in thine eyes.”

It happened that Potiphar once asked his perfect servant to bring him a cup of hot water, and Joseph hastened to comply with his master’s request. Potiphar took the cup and said “I have made a mistake, for it is a cup of tepid water I really want.”

And Joseph replied: “The water is tepid, as my master desires.”

Potiphar dipped his finger in the water, and behold it was tepid indeed. Potiphar wondered greatly and made up his mind to test Joseph’s powers even further.

“It is not water at all I wanted, but a glass of mixed vermouth.”

“If my master will drink from the cup in his hand he will find that it contains mixed vermouth,” said Joseph.

Potiphar drank, and to his amazement found that the cup really contained a delicious wine. Continuing to Joseph he said again:

“I would rather have absinthe mixed with wine.”

And Joseph replied: “My master has only to drink from the cup to find that it contains absinthe mixed with wine.”

And indeed, Potiphar convinced himself that the cup Joseph had brought him contained absinthe mixed with wine.

Continuing his test, Potiphar again said: “It is spiced wine I would rather drink,” and once more he discovered that his cup contained spiced wine. And when he saw that God was clearly on Joseph’s side, and fulfilled all his desires, he honored him greatly, taught him all the liberal arts, and placed before him better fare than the food offered to the other slaves. He also placed the keys of all his possession and treasures in Joseph’s hand, appointing him his chief steward.²⁷

Under the spell of hypnotism, “A profoundly responsive subject hears, sees, feels, smells, and tastes in accordance with the hypnotist’s suggestions.”²⁸

The Egyptians practiced hypnotism for centuries before the time of Reuel. The earliest evidence of its use comes from an Egyptian papyrus dating from 1552 BCE—one of the oldest medical texts in existence. “In the Ebers Papyrus, a treatment was described in which the physician placed his hands on the head of the patient and claiming superhuman therapeutic powers gave forth with strange remedial utterances which were suggested to the patients, and which resulted in cures.”²⁹

Some three hundred years later, the Egyptian priests introduced “Sleep Temples” in which patients were treated with the art of suggestion. Unlike Western holy men, who were warned against such indulgences by the Church, the priests of ancient Egypt enthusiastically embraced hypnotism and probably advanced the art well beyond what we have achieved in the last century and a half—the short time that the West has hesitantly experimented with hypnotism.

JOSEPH THE NARCISSIST

Jacob and Rachel spoiled their only son, Joseph. He was special. He was gifted. He was so much better than Leah’s sons, his older half brothers. This upbringing turned him into what today we would call a narcissist: a person with “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy.”³⁰ Is this an apt description of Joseph? Certainly, his brothers thought so. And he was a narcissist possessed of a rare skill; the use of the subtle and potent weapon of hypnotism.

Even such a prominent and powerful figure as Potiphar was brought under the sway of the young man from the east. Joseph eventually usurped every aspect of Potiphar’s life and ultimately became the master of his master. Potiphar was so entranced that “he knew not ought he had, save the bread which he did eat.”³¹ Potiphar was not the only member of the family mesmerized by this strange slave. His wife became sexually obsessed with Joseph: “And it came to pass after these things, that his master’s wife cast her eyes upon Joseph; and she said, Lie with me. But he refused.”³²

Joseph’s refusal only whetted her interest. After arranging for all the other men and servants to be absent, Potiphar’s wife again tried to seduce her husband’s servant. Once more he spurned her. This time her passion turned to rage, and she charged Joseph with rape. Joseph had made a big mistake. Upon hearing his wife’s wailing, Potiphar was shaken from his trance and “his wrath was kindled.”³³

PRISON

Potiphar threw Joseph into prison. But once again he succeeded in casting his amazing charisma over those around him. By exercising his powers of astute observation and his keen instinct for survival, Joseph worked his magic on the Keeper of the Prison and effectively seized control of the jail. He made it his business to befriend new prisoners and earned a valuable reputation as an interpreter of dreams; a talent that was considered priceless.

He discovered that the pharaoh’s butler was a fellow inmate and successfully impressed him by predicting that his dreams meant that he would shortly be released; probably a tale he repeated to all the prisoners sentenced to death. If they believed him he succeeded in calming their worries and eliminating behavioral problems. Many probably went to their deaths convinced that they would be spared at the last minute just as Joseph had predicted. And the few who were released became his enthusiastic supporters. This strategy eventually paid high dividends. Before the pharaoh’s butler was freed, Joseph planted an autosuggestion: “think on me when it shall be well with thee,” he murmured.³⁴

JOSEPH AND THE PHARAOH

After the pharaoh suffered two deeply disturbing dreams about the dire fate of the precious corn crop so crucial to his realm’s survival he turned to the court magicians to interpret his haunting visions. But the experts were bereft of answers. Their failure, combined with the butler’s newly improved circumstances, triggered his memory of the talented Hebrew slave and his canny ability to interpret dreams. He told the pharaoh about the imprisoned man’s amazing abilities.

Joseph was promptly summoned to an audience with Egypt’s leader. It didn’t take long for the pharaoh to become ensnared by Joseph. The stranger from the east offered a logical explanation for his troubling dreams. Seven years of plentiful crops would be followed by seven years of famine and drought.

Joseph advised the pharaoh to store food during the coming years of plenty to ensure a reserve when any deadly famine struck. The pharaoh recognized wise advice when he heard it and immediately appointed his former prisoner to a position of high authority.

Joseph’s meteoric rise to power came despite the fact no one could possibly know if his dream interpretations were correct. Seven years of plenty and at least one year of famine had to pass before the prophecy could be tested. This suggests that Joseph had hypnotized the most powerful man alive and lulled him into a vulnerable state of extreme suggestibility.

Is this story of dreams and the malleability of a powerful mind merely a myth? Or is it a phenomenon with roots that lie tangled around a common human weakness?

Even in our times the rich, famous, and influential are often surrounded by sycophants. They can develop a blind spot when a person with Joseph’s kind of unbridled entitlement crosses their path. They can even find the experience refreshing in contrast to the kowtowing attitudes of their usual entourage. Always in control themselves, they can dangerously underestimate the ruthlessness of their new friends.

The pharaoh was considered literally a god. To look him directly in the eye could result in death. This made him vulnerable to a stranger who not only didn’t hesitate to meet his gaze but showed no fear. And once invited in, the narcissist can subsume the life of his victim. At first the two unusual partners dance the dance of equals. But before long the original positions of power are reversed. All the benefits of power, glory, and fame that the narcissist believes they were born to assume are leached from their more influential mark.

Tales like that of the young Hebrew slave rising to become Egypt’s highest-ranking official are staples of other times and places. Rasputin (1872–1916) entranced the royal family of Russia, eventually rising to an unprecedented position of influence for a commoner. His gift for hypnotism convinced a vulnerable Tsarina Alexandra that he held the cure to her only son’s life-threatening hemophilia. Eventually, his dominant sway helped topple the Russian royal family.

Rasputin and Joseph were entirely different characters, but they demonstrate how even the most untouchable can fall prey to the influence of a canny narcissist who can expertly wield the little understood and underappreciated art of hypnotics.

DISGUISE

The drought and famine that Joseph had predicted did devastate the entire Middle East. But Egypt, with its plentiful storage of food, remained an oasis in the bleak desert of mass starvation. In Canaan, Israel and his family grew desperate for food. He was forced to send ten sons to Egypt to seek relief: “Behold, I have heard that there is corn in Egypt: get you down thither, and buy for us from thence; that we may live, and not die.”³⁵

By this time, Joseph’s mother, Rachel, had died giving birth to another son whom she called Benoni, meaning “son of my sorrow.”³⁶ But Israel changed the boy’s name to Benjamin, meaning “son of the right hand,”³⁷ which indicated his most favored status. Despite his delight in this new arrival, Israel had never forgotten Joseph and suspected that Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah might have had a hand in his disappearance. So, when he was forced to send them to Egypt he refused to let Benjamin accompany them, “Lest peradventure mischief might befall him.”³⁸

By now Joseph was the governor of a province that lay at the eastern entrance of Egypt. New arrivals from Canaan had to travel through this territory. When the brothers who had tried to kill him arrived, Joseph hid his shock and coolly and cleverly adopted a disguise. He made “himself strange to them”³⁹ and enjoyed the satisfaction of watching as his hated brothers “bowed down themselves before him with their faces to the earth”⁴⁰ just as he had predicted in the dreams that had enraged them. When the moment passed he promptly accused them of being spies and threw them into jail where they were left to their misery for three days. Spies, then as now, could be subject to torture and were frequently executed. From Joseph’s perspective, a few days of terror were mild punishment for those who had plotted to leave him to die a lingering death in a pit before condemning him to an expected short and brutal life as an Egyptian slave.

Time was on Joseph’s side. He spent it devising a plot of his own. He had learned that his mother had died giving birth to Benjamin and that his father had forbidden his half brothers to take this new favorite to Egypt. Having nearly died at the hands of these men, Joseph was determined to secure the safety of his younger brother, a boy he had never met. First, he had to break up the cold-blooded team of Simeon and Levi. Second, he must test the trustworthiness of the others.

With these objectives in mind, Joseph had them hauled before him. He used an interpreter to mask his fluent Hebrew. This clever ploy also gave him extra time to carefully consider his responses to their quivering statements. Reuben expressed shame for what they had done to Joseph saying in Hebrew to his brothers, “Spake I not unto you, saying, Do not sin against the child; and ye would not hear?”⁴¹ This was the first indication of guilt from any of them. No doubt Joseph scanned the reactions of his other brothers for a response to Reuben’s confession.

Joseph renewed his torture of his enemies. He announced, again through the interpreter, that they could return to Canaan with plenty of corn to satiate the family’s hunger. But there was a shocking caveat to his life-saving offer. He “took from them Simeon, and bound him before their eyes.”⁴² Jewish folklore claims it was Simeon who had thrown the young Joseph into the pit;⁴³ the logic of revenge demanded an “eye for an eye.” Simeon was taken hostage and Joseph declared that he would only be freed when Benjamin was brought to Egypt and presented to him.

This was an unexpected blow to Levi. He was close to Simeon. One can imagine him frantically urging the brothers to race back to Canaan so that they could gain Simeon’s release. Speed was imperative because Simeon was being left behind without access to food.^*9 Any delay and he would starve; exactly the kind of cruel death planned for Joseph when Simeon cast him into the pit. When the brothers arrived home and told their father about Simeon’s deadly predicament they were shocked at his response. Israel accepted that his second-born son was as good as dead, “Simeon is not,”⁴⁴ and refused to send Benjamin to Egypt even if it meant the other son’s slow death. Reuben made a valiant effort to persuade Israel to change his mind, ensuring Benjamin’s safety by declaring, “Slay my two sons, if I bring him not to thee.”⁴⁵ But even this gruesome guarantee failed. Israel retorted, “My son shall not go down with you; for his brother is dead, and he is left alone: if mischief befall him by the way in which ye go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.”⁴⁶

Levi would have been devastated by his father’s refusal to try and save his brother. He knew that if Reuben couldn’t persuade Israel to change his mind then his own entreaties would be wasted.

Eventually as the last kernels of corn that the brothers had carried from Egypt were consumed everyone accepted that Simeon must have starved to death. It may have been Levi who persuaded Judah to try once again to change Israel’s mind about taking Benjamin to Egypt as a human bargaining chip even though he had no realistic expectation that Simeon was alive. They could have traveled to Egypt and back again twice in the time that had elapsed: “surely now we had returned this second time.”⁴⁷

It was too late to save him. But now the life-giving corn was used up and the children of Israel again faced starvation. So, armed with a new argument Judah tried to move his father’s cold heart: “And Judah said unto Israel his father, Send the lad with me, and we will arise and go; that we may live, and not die, both we, and thou, and also our little ones. I will be surety for him; of my hand shalt thou require him: if I bring him not unto thee, and set him before thee, then let me bear the blame for ever.”⁴⁸

A desperate Israel was forced to relent. Things had changed for the worse. Now they all faced death from hunger. Once again, the brothers set out for Egypt; this time Benjamin was with them.

Upon arriving in Egypt, they immediately asked for a meeting with the mighty governor. Still unaware that it was Joseph who held this esteemed position they were disturbed when a butler invited them to dine with his Egyptian master. It was unprecedented. Egyptians never dined with foreigners. They were uneasy and suspicious, fearing that they might be poisoned. The story of the brothers’ return to Egypt with Benjamin is an established part of the ancient oral tradition.^*10 But we suspect that one phrase was inserted by the Priests serving the agenda of their ancestor, Levi. It reads, “And he” (meaning Joseph) “brought Simeon out unto them.”⁴⁹

The text is ambiguous. It doesn’t say, “a weak and exhausted Simeon was retrieved from the dungeon.” Nor is there any rejoicing that Simeon was still alive after the brothers’ long “lingering” in Canaan during which time they could have twice traveled the distance to and from Egypt. Instead, we are left with a bare statement. Was Simeon alive? Or was it a corpse that Joseph presented to them?

Circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that Simeon died as a hostage. He is conspicuously absent from any future accounts. Unlike Reuben, Judah, and the other children of Israel who received rich tracts of the Promised Land, his tribe didn’t receive any land. Instead, Simeon’s descendants are forced to live under the protection of Judah. It seems that Simeon must have been dead. This fact, we suggest, was something the Priests^†11 censored from the written record because it revealed Levi’s powerful motive for acting against Joseph.

Joseph was overcome with emotion when he saw Benjamin for the first time. The long delay in his brother’s return may have convinced him that Benjamin had been killed in revenge for Simeon’s fate. Joseph left his brothers and temporarily retreated into another chamber to collect his thoughts. He wept,^‡12 washed his face, and returned to the room where his uneasy siblings waited. Then he astonished them by offering them bread, “because the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews; for that is an abomination unto the Egyptians. And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright, and the youngest according to his youth: and the men marveled one at another. And he took and sent messes unto them from before him: but Benjamin’s mess was five times so much as any of theirs. And they drank, and were merry with him.”⁵⁰

JUDAH’S REDEMPTION

Joseph wasn’t finished with his disguise. Although he had discovered that Reuben felt guilty about abandoning him to a life of slavery, he wanted to further test the brothers by laying a final trap. He gave them the corn they so desperately needed but had his men secretly plant a precious “silver cup” inside the sack of corn carried on Benjamin’s donkey. As they were crossing the Egyptian border Joseph’s men swept down upon the brothers, accusing them of theft. Indignantly, they defended their honor, “With whomsoever of thy servants it be found, both let him die, and we also will be my lord’s bondmen.”⁵¹ When the silver cup was found on Benjamin’s donkey the brothers were rounded up and returned to Egypt.

Once again, the sons of Israel found themselves bowing at the Egyptian governor’s feet in fear for their lives. Joseph demanded, “What deed is this that ye have done?”⁵² As spokesman, a bewildered Judah asked, “How shall we clear ourselves?”⁵³ Joseph remained silent. Judah begged for a private audience, pleading that if Benjamin should die then their father would soon follow him to the grave, “For how shall I go up to my father, and the lad be not with me? Lest peradventure I see the evil that shall come on my father.”⁵⁴ He threw himself on the Egyptian’s mercy, offering to take any punishment if the governor would free Benjamin.

Judah’s courage persuaded Joseph that it was time to reveal his identity. “I am Joseph,” he said, “doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence.”⁵⁵ They had good reason to be troubled, but Joseph assured his brothers that they had been forgiven. He kissed each of them. No doubt Reuben felt released from his shame. We can also imagine Judah’s relief that he would not be sentenced to life as a slave in Egypt for Benjamin’s “crime” of possessing the “stolen” silver cup. But it is difficult to see Levi embracing Joseph. He had shown no remorse or pity for Joseph’s ordeal. And now, with Simeon’s death, he had even more reason to hate Joseph. But Levi was in no position to challenge him. Yet.

Levi’s archenemy had saved the tribe. The Priests subsequently airbrushed any reference to his explosive reaction when he understood that all Joseph’s prophetic dreams of glory had come true. His despised brother, draped in deceit and disguise had risen to the top. These bitter lessons forever doomed Levi’s relationship with Joseph’s son; a man who was to become the most iconic of all the prophets—Moses.

THE FAMILY TREE

In the Torah, the artificial family tree constructed by the Levites contradicts common sense. As shown in table 4.1, Moses’s family tree, according to the Levite scribes, states that he married a woman (Zipporah) from his grandfather’s generation.

According to the Priests, Moses was born six generations after Abraham and married Reuel’s daughter, Zipporah, from the fourth generation. Not likely. Even by biblical standards. Nor can the simple insertion of two additional generations account for the extra 430 years of Egyptian bondage that the Levite scribes claim that their ancestors endured. In their account Moses’s father lived centuries before the prophet was born.

In contrast to this artificial family tree, if Moses was the son of Joseph he would then be a natural contemporary of his wife, Zipporah.

Moses’s family tree, as recorded by ancient Egyptian and Roman sources, reveals that the prophet married a woman (Zipporah) from his own generation.

JOSEPH’S SON

The idea that Moses was the son of Joseph comes with an ancient pedigree.

Apollonius Molon (fl. 70 BCE) was a Greek rhetorician whose pupils included Cicero and Julius Caesar. He claimed that “Moses was third from Joseph, which may mean ‘third son’ or ‘the grandson of Joseph.’”⁵⁶ The Roman historian Marcus Junianus Justinus (third century CE) declares it as a well-known fact that Moses was the third son of Joseph in his Epitome, an abridgment of a lost book written by Pompeius Trogus.^*13 Four centuries earlier (in the first century BCE) Trogus had recorded Joseph’s time in Egypt during which he “gave his mind eagerly to the magic arts of the place”⁵⁷ and “made himself master of the arts of magic.”⁵⁸ And he adds a rare reference to his son’s physical appearance; he was handsome like his father, “His son was Moses, who in addition to the inheritance of his father’s wisdom, received also great beauty of person.”⁵⁹

Where did Trogus get the idea that Moses was Joseph’s son? It seems probable that the Roman scholar had come across the works of Egypt’s most famous historian, Manetho. Writing three centuries before the birth of Christ, Manetho’s book, Aegyptiaca, was a primary source for all ancient scholars studying in Egypt. Unfortunately, only fragments of the document have survived. The short passages relating to Moses come to us from a scholar who was hostile to its contents—the Jewish historian Josephus (c. 37–100 CE).

It seems that Josephus disapproved of elements of the Egyptian story and had no compunction in censoring them. For example, he was hostile to the idea that Moses and Joseph lived at about the same time and criticized the Egyptian librarian Cheremon (fl. first century CE) for holding this belief.⁶⁰ This is a critical point. The entire foundation of the Hebrew Priests’ account of Moses’s life rests upon the assumption that the prophet and Joseph lived in different centuries and were not related to each other. The Priests desperately wished to suppress the truth of Moses’s paternity because they wanted to claim the famous prophet as one of their own: a Levite, a descendant of Levi.

Manetho’s account of Moses is the only Egyptian story about him that survives. The Romans who read it concluded that Moses was Joseph’s son. Unlike us, they had the benefit of access to the entire text of Aegyptiaca. We can dream that the complete text of Aegyptiaca may one day be recovered but for now, we can only rely upon the fragments that Josephus reproduced to understand the Egyptian’s view of Moses. Even these remnants reveal evidence that strongly suggests that the Romans got it right when they concluded that Moses was Joseph’s third son.

Manetho was a priest of Heliopolis (city of the sun) where Joseph’s wife and stepfather had lived centuries earlier. His legacy to Egyptology is his idea of dividing Egyptian history into thirty dynasties beginning with a mythical past full of gods and goddesses and continuing until 323 BCE. These dynastic divisions, with minor modifications, have become the standard time scale used by modern Egyptologists.

Manetho depicted Moses as the leader of a band of lepers who revolted against the Egyptian authorities. If Manetho was fabricating lies about Moses, as Josephus accuses, it seems unlikely that he would claim Moses as a priest of his own order (Heliopolis). If he was creating fiction he would not cast Moses in such an unflattering light. We are confronting a slice of history here, not myth.

Belittling the Egyptian historian, Josephus says that Manetho “introduces incredible narrations, as if he would have the Egyptian multitude, that had the leprosy and other distempers, to have mixed with us, as he says they were, and that they were condemned to fly out of Egypt together.”⁶¹ Manetho relates that Moses led the lepers, who were forced to flee, out of Egypt—a very different scene from the biblical account in which Moses pleads with the pharaoh to let his people go.

At the time the word leper held other connotations besides medical. It also denoted ancient beliefs that were considered corrupted or infected. The charge of leprosy against the followers of Moses could well have been rhetorical: referring to their unacceptable beliefs rather than their health. From Manetho’s Egyptian perspective, the Jewish exodus was not a noble journey of former slaves seeking justice and freedom in a new land but rather an ignoble expulsion of unruly rebels who held dangerous views. One belief was considered particularly dangerous—monotheism. The belief that there was only one God was associated with the unpopular reign of the Pharaoh Akhenaten.

Moses was raised as a priest in his mother’s city of Heliopolis where centuries later Manetho also practiced as a priest and scribe. It was under the influence of the priests of Heliopolis that the Pharaoh Akhenaten developed the idea of a single god who was symbolized by the rays of the sun. Freud believed that Akhenaten’s monotheism had been preserved by the priests of Heliopolis and passed to Moses who in turn became the agent who spread this radical concept to the Jews. Freud wrote that the “kernel” of his thesis was “the dependence of Jewish monotheism on the monotheistic episode in Egyptian history.”⁶² It seems likely to us that Moses adopted monotheism because of his Egyptian education in the very temple where the idea originated—Heliopolis. Freud never recognized that Moses was Asenath’s son. Had he done so then his whole theory about the prophet would have stood on firmer ground.

Conscious of the fact that the Egyptians had repudiated Akhenaten’s monotheism and made every attempt to stamp it out, Freud theorized that the idea was driven underground. Monotheism survived, possibly for centuries, among the “School of Priests at On from which it emanated.”⁶³ In the Egyptian account, Moses was born into this priesthood. His grandfather, Potipherah, was the high priest of On.

The prophet-to-be hadn’t known his father, Joseph, or his paternal grandfather, Israel. This left his maternal grandfather, Potipherah, as his only male role model. Freud thought that his theory that Moses had adopted monotheism from his Egyptian experience would be verified if there were evidence that Moses was a member of the school of On. He never discovered any proof connecting Moses with On. But we have uncovered Egyptian and Roman sources who claim Moses was not only a member of the school of On but was raised by its high priest, his grandfather. This places Moses firmly at the center of the birthplace of monotheism.

The death of Potipherah might have precipitated Moses’s flight from Egypt or a change in leadership could have threatened his status. The Torah informs us, “Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.”⁶⁴ The new king might not have accepted a Hebrew son enjoying the privileges of the Egyptian priesthood. Whatever the reason, Moses no longer felt welcome.

Despite his exalted position, Moses had always sympathized with the common Hebrew workers. His father, after all, was a Hebrew.^*14 In the Egyptian account, the lepers who worked the quarries revolted and “appointed themselves a ruler out of the priests of Heliopolis, whose name was Osarsiph, and they took their oaths that they would be obedient to him in all things.”⁶⁵

Osarsiph was a great lawgiver who “was by birth of Heliopolis, and his name Osarsiph from Osiris, who was the god of Heliopolis; but that when he was gone over to these people, his name was changed, and he was called Moses.”⁶⁶

Osarsiph “was by birth of Heliopolis” just as Moses would be if, as we propose, Asenath was his mother.

The name Osarseph^*15 combined the name of the Egyptian god, Osiris (Osar) and the Hebrew suffix (seph) of Joseph, which could translate to “the Hebrew son of Osiris.” Osiris, in Egyptian mythology, was murdered by his brother. By naming her son after both Osiris and Joseph, Asenath was pointing an accusing finger at Levi—the man who had murdered her husband. She could hope that her son would one day avenge his father’s death.

Manetho wrote that when Osarseph became the leader of the Jews, “his name was changed, and he was called Moses.”⁶⁷Moses meant “son of” in the Egyptian language; much like MacDonald in English means “son of Donald.” Perhaps it was his striking resemblance to his father, Joseph, that inspired the people to call their new leader by the unusual title of “the son.”

The Priests invented the four centuries of bondage in Egypt and perpetuated the myth that Moses and Joseph lived in different eras. They deployed this clever smokescreen to hide a determined agenda. Clear away the smoke and a new timeline emerges that exposes the true character of two powerful men, Reuel and Levi, who both had plenty of opportunity and more than enough willpower to murder Moses.