Stray notes on what Judaism owes to Egypt.
It is a bitter historical irony that Jesus was a Jew, (as were all the founding Christians), yet his religion was taken up by non-Jewish communities who turned its stories against its originators, casting Jews as the betrayers, stubborn heretics, and generally the other, with disastrous consequences. Well, something similar may have happened at the origin of Judaism, as there is a fascinating thread of historical scholarship and speculation that suggests that Moses was Egyptian, and that much of the religion of Judaism was generated as a mixture of inheritances from, or inversions of, the religion and cults of Egypt.
While the Bible is full of Moses stories, no other historical, let alone archeological, attestation exists. Thus the many authors who have striven to unearth the truth of what happened have had to be creative. The whole thing may be an out and out myth, or unrecognizably reworked. Freud wrote "Moses and Monotheism" as an exercise in retro-psychoanalysis, cutting his totemic father figure down in an imagined Oedipal paroxysm of murder, followed by remorse. Jan Assmann more recently, in "Moses the Egyptian", wrote an eliptical tale of cultural hints and suppressed memories and trauma continually expressed and re-interpreted over time in the "othering", adoption, and inversion of cultural patterns. Manetho, a third century BCE Egyptian priest, wrote a history that puts Moses, originally an Egyptian priest named Osarseph, at the head of a renegade (and leper, for good measure) army which terrorized Egypt sometime in the 1300-1500 BCE period, ending in their expulsion and exile.
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| The Hyksos, a semitic people, had a distinctive look, in Egypt of ~1900 BC. |
Ever since the reign of Akhenaten was unearthed in the late 1800's, it has been tempting to tie his monotheistic revolution (1353-1336 BCE) to that of Judaism, which was putatively founded in the same general time period, when Egypt was at its height of power and regional influence. In both cases, monotheism was a tough sell, and created antagonism that characterized both episodes. The Amarna period ended with complete reversal- Akhanaten being erased from his monuments and records, and Egypt returning to its traditional ways. Judaism, according to its own documents, and despite Moses's teaching, endured a lengthy period of conflict and consolidation before the monotheistic faction gained ascendence in the post-Babylonian exile period. It also generated the enduring enmity of neighboring polytheists, ultimately resulting in the military defeat and dispersal of the Jewish nation.
So what is the evidence? Moses is an Egyptian name. Like Tutmosis, Ahmose, Ramses, and many others, it means "is born", or "is child of". While there are both Hebrew and Egyptian etymologies possible, Moses is also described as practiced in all the arts of Egypt, including various forms of magic and the secret symbols, i.e. hieroglyphs. Egyptians practiced circumcision, which Judaism obviously adopted with gusto. Egyptians worshipped the ram (representing the leading god, Amun) and the bull (Osiris), which the Jews turned around and sacrificed in their rituals. Cooking meat in milk was an Egyptian practice, which may have been the source of the contrary interdiction in Kosher law. Judaism was anti-iconic, completely contrary to the abundant icons of, frankly, all the other polytheistic religions, though new icons have been snuck in, in the form of the ark of the covenant, the Torah scrolls, wailing wall, etc. The Thummim is a judicial badge and device for divination, taken from the Egyptians. It is indeed likely that originators of Judaism were assimilated Egyptians who left, whether by choice or not. The historian Tacitus noted the inverted character of Judaism vs the Egyptian religion. And Maimonides argued that the laws were a form of treatment for withdrawal from idol-addiction, in his case against the "Sabians", which in reality were the Egyptians, if they were any actual culture at all. But it served other purposes as well, such as cultural glue, which continues to be functional even when all other reasons have become irrelevant and many of the less convenient laws have been cast aside.
Whichever pharoh was the one described in Exodus, its Egyptological details, though accurate, come from a substantially later time, the 600's BC, when it was written, not from the time of the events. And Assmann argues that Manetho, for one, conflated several historical episodes to come up with his account. One was a Hyksos colony of semitic peoples that occupied northern (lower) Egypt through the second intermediate period (~1800 BC) to their defeat, about 1540 BC, by Kamose and his successor Ahmose, who were based in the south. There may have, however, been other incursions of semitic peoples from time to time, especially as records through the less organized periods of Egyptian history are sparse. A second episode was the Amarna period, which was officially suppressed, but which Assmann argues remained vivid as a traumatic memory of religious and existential revolution, informing an Egyptian official's view of "pollution" of the Egyptian culture by outsiders.
Similarly, one can imagine that the idea of monotheism, so suddenly sprung upon the Egyptians, is something that was knocking around for longer periods of time, both before and since. Assmann goes through a long argument by Ralph Cudworth (who wrote long before the hieroglyphs were deciphered) about a possible "esoteric" theology of the Egyptians, which was monotheistic, while the cult for public consumption was polytheistic. That makes little sense, as all royal tombs and decorations hew (religiously!) to the standard story, and so clearly embody a full cast of characters, and their belief in the Osiris story and hope of continued life in the land of the un-dead. Nevertheless, even without such an esoteric/demotic split, it is natural to wonder about origins, such as where this family of gods arose from, which in turn would send thoughts in the direction of possible monotheism. Perhaps the incredible conservatism of Egyptian culture caused such thoughts to be ruthlessly stamped out, but also prone to occasional eruption in incovenient forms. We in our own time are experiencing the thrill of normative inversion, when a subculture decides that black is white, that all norms should be trampled, and a new god worshipped.
Even if the Amarna period did not directly foster Moses and the Jewish form of monotheism, the latter owes a great deal to Egyptian culture, likely including some glimmer of the monotheistic idea. Within Judaism, it took a second (and certainly real) exile, in Babylon, to bring the monotheistic idea to fuller fruition, as the last set of prophets called for purification and repentance, the Torah was written down, and the second temple built.
