2015

Unlike Jesus, Moses wasn’t even close to historical.

Legendary Moses

A new Moses movie is out, and, since I’m a great big fan of the historical Jesus, a friend of mine asked about “the historical Moses.” Some of my fellow atheists get upset at me because I say that Jesus was a historical person. Today they might be happy to hear me “get with the program” and say that Moses is a legendary figure. He didn’t exist, nor did anyone like him. The same goes for the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob/Israel, and Joseph. Even King David’s existence is in doubt. When looking at the Bible, it’s important to sort out the history from the legend, the way historians do. It doesn’t make sense to treat the whole thing as the same, either all literally true or all made up. That approach is too simple to be useful. Thanks to archeology, we now have a better idea of Hebrew history, and Moses isn’t there. Neither is the Hebrews’ bondage in Egypt or their conquest of Canaan. That’s good news, since it means that the ethnic cleansing of the Bible is fantasy rather than history.

Modern history of ancient Palestine

The Hebrews were not slaves in Egypt, and Yahweh did not show off by killing Egyptians. Hebrew armies did not ethnically cleanse the Promise Land. Instead, the Hebrews were nomadic pastoralists driving their herds across the hills of Palestine. They looked down on their neighbors, the farmers. In the story of Cain and Abel, Cain, the farmer, sees his offering rejected by Yahweh, while Abel, the shepherd, sees his offering honored.

The nomadic Hebrews presumably traded with the civilized people of the coastal regions, whose economy was based on farming. Suddenly, about 3000 years ago, the Hebrew settlements switched from temporary to permanent, and the shepherds took up farming. This switch was probably the result of the collapse of Bronze Age civilization in the area. No one is sure why civilization fell, but it fell hard in the eastern Mediterranean. For the Hebrews, taking up the plow meant adopting a more laborious lifestyle, and they commemorate the  hated switch in the story of the Garden in Eden. Yahweh curses men to earn their bread by the sweat of their faces. If you want bread. someone's got to farm.

Genocide

Some of the most horrific stories of the Bible come from the conquest of the Promised Land. The mighty Hebrew armies, acting on Yahweh’s orders, massacre men, women, children, and even livestock. None of that ever happened. Nor the wandering for 40 years in the wilderness, nor bondage in Egypt. Those stories were invented because they were a more satisfying history than the truth: “The civilized cities collapsed, so we couldn’t trade with civilized people any more, and if we wanted the products of settled life, we had to become settled ourselves.” Of course, today these ancient stories of plagues, bloodshed, and triumph come across as genocidal, with Yahweh a fearsome megalomaniac. 

In the story of Moses, Yahweh is vindictive in a personal way. His vicious plagues afflict the everyday Egyptians, punishing them for their king’s hard-heartedness. In the olden days, it was considered only natural that people suffered for their king’s misdeeds. What’s worse, however, is that the everyday Egyptians wind up suffering not because their king is hard-hearted but because Yahweh wants to show off. Pharaoh would relent, but Yahweh hardens his heart to prevent him from freeing the Hebrews. With Pharaoh’s heart hardened, Yahweh gets to demonstrate increasingly terrible plagues until finally he kills off all the first-born in the land. The Jewish celebration of Passover commemorates the night when Yahweh slaughtered children in order to show off how bad-ass he was. It’s no wonder that in the 2nd century CE a major Christian reformer, Marcion, advocated ditching the Jewish scriptures altogether. Who could believe that Yahweh was a good guy?  

Moses and Jesus

The differences between Moses and Jesus are instructive. Traditional believers say that Moses and Jesus are equally historical, and Jesus mythicists agree with them. Historians, however, distinguish between these two figures, and here are some reasons why. 

Timing

The story of Moses was written long after he was said to have lived (Deut 34:6), whereas Paul started writing about Jesus while Jesus’ brother, James, and his lead disciple, Peter, were still alive. 

Precedence

Exodus is evidently based on earlier, simpler stories embodied in ceremonial creeds (Deut 26:6-10, Josh 24:2-13), while the stories about Jesus’ life have no clear precedent. Jesus was the historical figure to teach mainly in parables. The earliest written gospel is an innovative literary form, an amateur account pieced together from stories from the oral tradition. Later on Christians copied all sorts of magical elements from other religions, but many mundane details of Jesus’ biography are original and look genuine.

Sources

The story of Moses comes from one source, while we have four independent first-century sources for Jesus: the Q gospel of Jesus’ saying, the gospel attributed to Mark, the gospel attributed to Thomas, and Josephus’ history. 

Embarrassing details

Moses was said to be slow of tongue, needing his brother Aaron to speak for him. Is this the sort of embarrassing detail that authors wouldn't invent about their hero? On the contrary, it's an addition by the Aaronite priests, their way of shoehorning their man Aaron into the story. It's bad storytelling, and so this detail is generally dropped from modern retellings. Jesus' life, on the other hand, is marked by details that were embarrassing to his early followers, so embarrassing that they took pains to paper them over. Prominent among these details are his repentance and baptism under John the Baptist and his shameful, miserable death on the cross. 

Oral style

Moses speaks in long lectures, like Jesus does In “John’s” gospel. In both cases, historians take these lectures to be fictions, possibly pious fictions. Many of Jesus’ sayings, on the other hand, are pithy, memorable phrases. “Turn the other cheek” is the sort of formula that oral histories are able to preserve. The words that Christians falsely attributed to Jesus are noticeably second-rate. Thomas Jefferson said that picking the genuine sayings out of the text was like spotting “diamonds in a dunghill”.  Historians think these memorable phrases were passed down for 20 years or so before being recorded in the Q source and other works. 

Orthodoxy and originality

The laws attributed to Moses look like an expression of orthodox Hebrew patriarchy. They could have been assembled by a committee. Jesus’ teachings, on the other hand, are puzzling and paradoxical. The Kingdom of Heaven is like dirty leaven? Like a tiny seed? We’re supposed to turn the other cheek and go the extra mile? These are original, memorable sayings. The work of the committees was to tame these sayings for general consumption. When Jesus said, for example, that a man had to hate his father to follow him, the editors of “Matthew’s” gospel changed the line to say that one had to love Jesus more than one’s father. 

Legends and history

Christians put Moses and Jesus in the same category (historical), and so do Jesus mythicists (legendary). Mainstream historians, on the other hand, see them as very different. Treating Moses and Jesus as the same is an error, whether it’s literalists who do it or atheists.

PS: More about historical Jesus

I know that some people can't read about Jesus being historical without wanting to raise a heated objection. If that sounds like you, please read what an atheist historian has to say on the matter:

http://bit.ly/atheistjesus1

http://bit.ly/atheistjesus2

Bonus Moses Comment

Follow-up comment on my post about Moses being legendary. 

Q. Why isn’t it reasonable to think that there could have been a historical leader of the Hebrews like Moses, someone on whom the stories are based, however vaguely? 

A. It’s more plausible that the Hebrews never had a ruler like Moses because the Hebrews were nomads, and nomads don’t have rulers. People hate to be told what to do, and we’ll walk away rather than put up with bosses. Bosses arise in places where people can’t leave, such as fertile river valleys or islands. Once people settle into agriculture, it’s easier to get them to submit to rule because they can’t just walk away like nomads can. But having a boss is not natural, and people generally don’t like it. Nomads can unite for war in great masses, and they sometimes acclaim ultimate leaders to serve as commanders-in-chief, but the union of tribes dissipates once the war is over. While nomads don’t have rulers, what they have instead is forefathers. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob/Israel and Joseph are forefathers. Moses is a spiritual forefather for the Hebrews, a heroic authority to put some weight behind the law. 

We are used to seeing nations led by charismatic rulers, and the Moses story sounds like something that could be based on a historical ruler and lawgiver. In fact, what could have gotten a nation of nomads to follow a man like Moses? It would take the sort of miracles described in Exodus. Maybe if someone really could call down the wrath of Yahweh on enemies, then the Hebrews would have followed him. But as for history, the existence of such a ruler is very much in doubt. 

For more about tribal culture, see Francis Fukuyama’s Origin of Political Order. The book is tremendous, summarizing the rise and decay of political order around the world from prehistory to the French Revolution. After reading it, I feel like I understand history for the first time.