Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Steve Franklin" <criptozoid AT lordbalto.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: <tladatsi AT charter.net>
To: <peterkirk AT qaya.org>; <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Cc: <mattfeld12 AT charter.net>
Sent: Friday, December 30, 2005 8:54 PM
Subject: [b-hebrew] Oxen & Oxcarts in the Exodus


| Peter,
|
| I am confused by your response.  You seem to be suggesting
| that you are disagreeing with me that the Exodus was a
| series of miracles.  Your explanations for the appearance
| of oxen and carts seems to me to suggest that divine agency
| is not at work in the story of the Exodus.  The text of
| Genesis (and Numbers) make it quite clear that the author
| intended for the reader to understand the events to be
| miracles, i.e. events impossible to explain except by the
| direct intervention of Yahweh.  As such, things that would
| not normally occur, do.  Oxen in the desert would be a
| miracle but that would not really be out of place in the
| story of Exodus.
|
| So, are you sayig that the story as told in Exodus was not
| miraculous or did I mis-understand your posting.
|
Yes, I am saying that in its original form, it was not miraculous, just as the
birth of Isaac when Sarah was 90 was not miraculous, but, in that particular
case, the result of a doubling of the timeline sometime after the story was
written. These folks were not idiots and their accounts were not written for
idiots. They did not expect anyone to believe that these events were the 
result
of miracles, which I distinguish from instances of divine intervention; Sarah,
after all, had reached menopause at the time. The two are not the same. A
similar doubling of the timeline can be demonstrated, at least I am in the
process of demonstrating it, over an almost 800-year period from Shem until
Solomon. One of the consequences of this realization is that Moses turns out 
to
have been Ramesses Khamenteru, Chancellor Beya, of the 19th Dynasty. See 
Abraham
Malamat and particularly J.C. de Moor, who recognized the connection on purely
historical grounds, for further details. Everybody is there, even Aaron whom 
de
Moor failed to recognize: Moses, Miriam, and Aaron, as well as a cast of 1000s
including Seti II who sailed off with his fleet into the eastern Mediterranean
leaving Moses in charge. By this timescale, the Exodus occurred in 1185 BCE, 
240
years before the ascension of Shoshenq I (Shishak) to the throne of Egypt, 
half
of the biblical figure.

The point is, these were intelligent, cunning, even cynical people. Their
actions were coldly calculated and they were not about to wait for the
intervention of Yahweh to get them out of the mess they had gotten themselves
into. Beya, in particular, is painted, at least by his enemies, as a schemer, 
a
manipulator, the power behind the throne, the brains behind the high priest.
This perfectly real person would not have stood at the Red Sea, or the Sea of
Reeds, or wherever, and waved a magic stick in the air imploring the
intervention God. If this isn't simply a leftover from earlier religious 
stories
associated with the full moon at the Vernal Equinox, which it could certainly
be, then I would have to imagine that Moses had ships prepositioned for just
such an eventuality, or he was just lucky enough to have maintained the 
loyality
of a segment of the Egyptian navy who happened to arrive in time. Again, this
may all be an elaboration of what happened, or Malamat may be correct in
suggesting a telescoping of events that began as early as the death of Seti's
son and the contracting of polio by Siptah.

I am not a fundamentalist. I am not even an observant Jew. But as I look at 
the
various accounts in the bible and compare them with the accounts of Manetho 
and
the accounts of the archaeologists, I am becoming more and more convinced that
if it says that there were ox-carts in the desert, there were probably 
ox-carts.
Keep in mind that the wandering would have been 20 years and not 40, according
to the shortened timeline. Also keep in mind that Moses and his brother had
forged a series of alliances before their flight from Egypt. A letter was 
found
from Beya to the last king of Ugarit before they were overrun by the Sea 
People.
He also requested aid, according to a stele of King Setnakhte of the 20th
Dynasty, from Canaan. He had a Cushite wife that Manetho and Jasher both
associate with a war and intermarriage with the "Ethiopians," and if I am 
right
and Irsu/Aaron is actually Osarsiph, who Manetho has sitting on the throne of
Egypt before being driven into Syria, then he had Syrian allies as well; it is
commonly believed that the name Beya was in fact Syrian. Not to even get into
his flight to Midian and his connections there. No, these people, whatever 
their
actual numbers, were far from alone, and they were far from outcasts, except
from Egypt. It is therefore not surprising that they would have had any number
of manufactured goods, either brought from Egypt or acquired locally. And, to 
go
dangerously far out on a limb here, they were part of an alliance that 
extended
from Troy to Assyria to Canaan that had stood for more than 10 years against 
the
combined power of the Greeks, the Sea People, and the Egyptians and their
Danauna mercenaries.

Steve Franklin
http://neros.lordbalto.com