Darrell W. Conder's

Things You've Never Heard In Church Series:

The Real Israelite Exodus
(It's not quite the way Charlton Heston told us!)

As we crack our bibles to Exodus chapter one, keep in mind that (as with Genesis) we don't have the foggiest idea who wrote the book—no hint of the author's identity or how he knew the things he relates as God's truth. Perhaps this is just as well since archaeology proves beyond doubt that the extraordinary tales of Exodus NEVER HAPPENED! However, not letting a little thing like "truth" stand in our way, what do you say we follow the herd and treat Exodus as a serious work?

We begin Exodus by noting the sons of Israel: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Zebulun, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Joseph, and Benjamin, which is the same list found in Genesis 49. No problem in this portion of God's word, except that whoever wrote the book of Revelation doesn't seem to have ever read the Old Testament. Revelation's composer doesn't know anything about Dan; instead he gives us Manasseh as one of the twelve tribes/sons of Israel—Manasseh being one of Joseph's twin boys. Okay. A slight discrepancy you might say, which it would be if not for the fact that a hell of a lot of MAJOR PROPHECY is tied up with the twelve tribes of Israel! In the framework of biblical prophecy a missing tribe of Israel is like a missing vital organ in the human body, meaning that it could prove deadly!

Right! Well in time all the "good" that Joseph had done in Egypt was forgotten and a new pharaoh arose who feared the Israelites—with good reason since they had "waxed exceedingly mighty" inside his nation. One must also rightly assume that the Israelites weren't the most popular people in Egypt since Joseph and his brethren had used the great famine to plunder Egypt of virtually all its wealth. This means that by the time a new pharaoh arose "who knew not Joseph" the majority of native Egyptians were likely toiling as tenants for Israelite landlords. As history amply demonstrates native populations will hate and finally turn on foreign plunderers, which American President George W. Bush and his murderous cabinet are now learning in Iraq. Anyway, in short order this new pharaoh stripped the Israelites of their wealth and power and enslaved the lot of them. It was pay back time!

None of this should have been a surprise to the Israelites since none other than Yahweh himself had told their ancestor Abraham that he would toss the lot of them into slavery. You'll find that dismal prediction in Genesis 15:13-14, wherein Yahweh gave the additional detail that this enslavement would last for a hellish 400 years! Now, let's get real here; if anyone had planned such a fate for someone he professed to dearly love, you'd have to assume that he must have had some just reason. But search every single page in the Genesis tale and you'll not find any rhyme or reason for the Good Lord's deciding to enslave his chosen, beloved children! Of course, from his own perspective, Yahweh offered a godly olive branch to Abe when he promised that his beloved children would be well paid for their living hell—as if all the gold on earth could make up for four centuries of slavery. God, talk about adding insult to injury—this has to be the first recorded example of that rule!

The lot of the Israelite slaves was a hard one—never-ending toil and doubtless every humiliation and abuse known by a slave at the hands of his or her master. In fact, it must have been doubly so since the Egyptians undoubtedly felt it was pay back time for the way the foreign Israelites had taken over Egypt. But up there in heaven, a trillion light years from the scene, for once Yahweh was true to his prophecy and left the miserable, wretched Israelites alone in their despair, as years stretched into decades and decades into centuries. Well, the Lord wasn't exactly true to his prophecy, since bible scholars and bible thumpers of every stripe have vainly tried to work out a 400-year enslavement within the time frame various verses of Genesis and Exodus muddily spell out. No matter how they toss the numbers, or cook the books, bible apologists still can't quite squeeze 400 years into the tale, which is made worse when whoever wrote Exodus declares in 12:40-41 that the time was 430 years. Worse still is information in 1 Chronicles 6:1, 1 Chronicles 23:6-13 and Exodus 6:16-20 allowing for a maximum time period of 352 years; or Acts 7:6 which backs the 400 year claim in Genesis 15. Being in a lenient mood here, I'll let this one slide with the afterthought that the Lord, dealing with all the problems of the Universe, might have been tossing out a rough estimate when he uttered his prophecy to old Abe back in Genesis 15; or perhaps he lost track of time up there in his isolated kingdom. After all, what's 30 years more or less when one is eternal? (For those of you who'd like a bit more insight on the question, here's just one link on the Internet: http://ggreenberg.tripod.com/ancientne/dating.html)

Whatever the actual number of years in Egypt, the biblical narrative presents any logically-thinking believing Christian or Jew with a real headache. That's because the 400-some-odd-years sojourn in Egypt supposedly would encompass only four generations—the reason for which harkens back to God's prophecy in Genesis 15, where, in verse 16, he promises that Abe's descendants will return to Canaan in only four generations. Well now, perhaps isolated up there in heaven Yahweh had forgotten that humans no longer lived for eight or nine centuries, as they had before he drowned the whole planet in Noah's time; so maybe when the Omnipotent One uttered his prophecy he honestly thought four generations would do the trick. This supposition notwithstanding, humans, who have habitually squeeze five generations into just a hundred years, simply lacked the self control to wait one hundred years before procreating to help Yahweh with his prophecy.

Without doubt the Genesis 15 prophecy is why we find the bible offering only four generations from Jacob's son Levi to the birth of Moses, which we are to believe happened within a 400 year time span. Certainly the "how-it-could-have-happened" crowd have their excuses for this prophecy, such as the excuse that there are generations missing from Moses' genealogy. But their usual rhetoric doesn't even come close to explaining the obvious contradictions here. Exodus 12:40 plainly states that the Israelites sojourned in Egypt for 430 years. Genesis 46:11 tells us that Levi accompanied his father Jacob into Egypt, and that Levi's sons Gershon, Kohath and Merari had already been born at this time and were in the group that went with Jacob into Egypt. Kohath was the father of Amram, who was the father of Moses—who was born in the fourth generation! Let's read this blunt summery in God's infallible word: "Exodus 6:18 The sons of Kohath: Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel, and the length of Kohath's life was one hundred thirty-three years. 19 The sons of Merari: Mahli and Mushi. These are the families of the Levites according to their genealogies. 20 Amram married Jochebed his father's sister and she bore him Aaron and Moses, and the length of Amram's life was one hundred thirty-seven years." (More insight on this aspect of the Exodus can be found at this web address: http://www.theskepticalreview.com/jftill/egypt/howlong.html)

The above outline is perfectly clear: Four generations had passed by the time of Moses's birth, which fulfills Yahweh's prophecy to Abraham, but creates a hell of a mess for the rest of Exodus, which we shall see when the Israelites leave Egypt. Also, I don't know if the reader caught the little tidbit about Moses' mother in the above verse. If not, read it again and focus on the fact that Amram's wife, Jochebed, was the sister of Amram's father, which means that Amram married his own aunt, making Moses both Jochebed's son and great-nephew. It also makes Amram and Moses both father and son and first cousins!

Marrying one's aunt is incest. Yahweh says so in Leviticus 20:19. Of course, Moses' family tree is one long record of incest, starting with Abe and his sister Sarah, but one must wonder why Yahweh would choose a product of incest to become one of the biggies of the bible? Why the double standard? But, let's leave family skeletons in the closet for now and note that by using a little simple math we discover that Moses' mother had to be 130 years old when he was born—she being born while Jacob and his family were entering Egypt. Certainly we encounter the "miracle of God" excuse when questioning Jochebed's extreme child-bearing age (such as in the case of Abe and Sarah), but more rational apologists get around the problem by simply ignoring it—a convenient and oft used device in religion. However, a few believers have taken the matter a bit more seriously, which has prompted some elaborate tale-spinning. Here's a Jewish take on the problem:

At this point, according to a tradition of Tannaitic provenance, Amram, one of the leaders of his generation, divorces his wife, Yokheved, reasoning that it is useless to chance having children if all male-children are to be killed. Other Israelite men follow Amram's course of action, but his daughter, Miriam, rises to reproach her father. 'Father,' she says, 'your decree is worse than that of Pharaoh—Pharaoh has decreed only against the male-children, but you decree against both males and females . . .' In response to this reproach, Amram retakes his wife.

The concept of a remarriage of Amram and Yokheved helps explain the presence of an older sister in the birth story. At the same time it explains why the birth of Moses is presented as if it were the birth of a first child. The reason is that Moses is the first child born after the remarriage of his parents. The ceremony of remarriage in which Amram retook Yokheved was no ordinary one. According to Rabbi Judah ben Zevina in the Babylonian Talmud (Sotah 12a), Amram placed Yokheved in a palanquin. Aaron and Miriam danced before her, while ministering angels sang a verse from Psalm 113, "The mother of the children is happy." . . . Extraordinary things happened to Yokheved at that time. The rabbis took bat Levi, daughter of Levi, literally. If Yokheved was the daughter of Levi, she would have been 130 years old at the time of her remarriage, having been born upon the entry of the Israelites into Egypt. So why is she called daughter, signifying a young woman? Because, according to Rabbi Judah ben Zabida (or Zevina), signs of youth were reborn in her: her flesh became smooth, her wrinkles straightened out, and her beauty was restored (B. Baba Batra 120a). Both the conception and childbirth of Moses were painless, for Yokheved was excluded from the decree placed on Eve (Sotah 12a, cf. Josephus Antiquities II, 1.220)—according to a gloss, by virtue of her righteousness. (Source: Moses and Jesus: the birth of the Savior from the quarterly publication Judaism, Winter, 1993 by Allan Kensky. Published by the American Jewish Congress, this magazine examines issues related to Judaism and Israel.

Whether or not you choose to believe that Moses and his mom were some kind of miracle folks, it will take more than faith to work out the four generation thing—even if it does come from the mouth of Yahweh—as we will see a bit later!

Surely most people have heard or read in Exodus chapter 2 the tale of Moses being put afloat in a bitumen-covered reed basket on the Nile to save him from Pharaoh's command that all Israelite infant males be killed. Exodus 2:1: "Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a daughter of Levi. 2 The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was beautiful, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got him a wicker basket and covered it over with tar and pitch. Then she put the child into it and set it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile."

Are we to understand that if Moses' mother had borne an ugly baby she'd have let Pharaoh's soldiers have him? That's the implication of 2:2! But realistically let me ask what parent would seek to "save" their infant son's life by placing him in a basket and floating him off down the crocodile-infested Nile River? If the crocs didn't lunch on him, then he'd likely float into a deserted bank and starve to death, or perhaps be eaten alive by wild foraging animals! Getting past this hole-in-logic start, let's get to the real reason the infant Moses-in-a-basket tale is to be found in Exodus.

What most don't know is that mythology is full of ancient god/kings who were saved in like or similar circumstances. The most striking of these is the tale of King Sargon of Akkad, who was put on a river in a reed basket, covered with bitumen, to save his life, has seen the "how-it-could-have-happened" bible apologists scurrying to find answers.

Supposedly relating an account from 2360 BC, a seventh-century BC neo-Assyrian text tells us: "My mother was a high priestess, my father I knew not. The brothers of my father loved the hills. My city is Azupiranu, which is situated on the banks of the Euphrates. My high priestess mother conceived me, in secret she bore me. She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid. She cast me into the river which rose over me. The river bore me up and carried me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of water, took me as his son and reared me. Akki, the drawer of water, appointed me as his gardener. While I was a gardener, Ishtar granted me her love, and for four and [...] years I exercised kingship."

Now Moses and Sargon weren't the only two ancient heros who sported this miraculous basket-on-the-water tale. Some dozen or so gods and heros could line up for that one. However, it is not be the purpose of this study to debate with the bible-thumpers about who borrowed from whom, that old "which came first the chicken or the egg" debate. The fact is that one might be disposed to believer that the Sargon tale was borrowed from the Hebrews if it weren't for the fact that history proves beyond doubt that the Babylonian Jews heavily borrowed from ancient legend to compose their bible, which was done a long time after the Sargon account was recorded. (See this author's Where Christianity Really Got Its Old Testament for the details of this.) To these facts we must add the overwhelming evidence (such as is found in Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman's book, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts) that the Israelites were never outside of Canaan! In other words, there was no baby Moses to cast on the waters of the Nile!

Exodus gives us very little detail of Moses' life in Egypt, except that he was reared by the daughter of Pharaoh. However, Jewish legend isn't slack on the details, even if it is all total fabrication. The Babylonian Talmud and the later Midrashic collections, including Exodus Rabbah, Midrash ha-Gadol, Yalkut Shimoni, and Sefer ha-Yashar, spin some very tall tales of Moses, all of which actually backs the evidence that the Jews were particularly prone to borrowing and exaggerating to enhance their "history" and legend. Indeed, when it comes to Moses, the ancient rabbis toss out some of the most absurd nonsense ever penned—not unlike what the early Christian Church did when creating legends of their infant Jesus. (To read some of these tales, go to the Jewish Encyclopedia online.

Whatever. Skipping right along the Yellow Brick Road, we next spy Moses murdering an Egyptian taskmaster for smiting an Israelite worker—a sin about which Yahweh was apparently unconcerned. The circumstances surrounding the murder and Pharaoh's determination to execute Moses for his crime, strongly indicates that Moses was not as powerful and respected in the house of Pharaoh as we are led to believe in Josephus and other ancient Jewish writings. Anyway, Exodus 2:14-15 says that Moses "feared" Pharaoh and fled to Midian, whereas Hebrews 11:27 tells us that by faith Moses ". . . forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king." Well, did Moses or did he not fear Pharaoh? Both accounts in God's infallible word can't be right. But let's not get hung up on trivia.

One thing we can be sure of is that Yahweh had respect for Israel, which is clearly stated in Exodus 2:25: "And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them." The Israelites were in good company, since Genesis 4:4, Leviticus 26:9, 2 Kings 13:23 and Psalm 138:6 also report that Yahweh was a respecter of persons. Even though such a trait is not exactly good when one is in the god business, we could overlook it in a deity if it weren't for the fact that God's infallible word assures us that Yahweh, who never changes, has no respect for anyone's person: Deuteronomy 10:17 (For the Lord your God ... regardeth not persons."), 2 Chronicles 19:7: "For there is no iniquity with the Lord our God, nor respect of persons." Acts 10:34: "God is no respecter of persons." Romans 2:11: "For there is no respect of persons with God." Galatians 2:6: "God accepteth no man's person." Ephesians 6:9: "Neither is there respect of persons with him." Colossians 3:25: "There is no respect of persons." 1 Peter 1:17: "And if ye call upon the Father, who without respect of persons, jugeth according to every man's work." Okay. Both assurances can't be right. One or the other is wrong! But . . . let's not get hung up here either, since there are rougher waters ahead (so-to-speak).

Winding up in Midian, Moses settled down to shepherding, marriage and children, where he remained content for the next forty years, or until he was around 80 years old. The problem is that we don't know in whose tent he found this contentment, since Exodus 3:1 tells us that Moses' father-in-law was Jethro, but Numbers 10:29 contradicts this by offering Hobab as Moses' father-in-law. Even worse, Exodus 2:18-21 tells us his name was Reuel. It seems that bible-thumpers could care less who Moses' father-in-law was or was not, and it wouldn't bother me either if the contradictions were found in anything but God's infallible word. Whoever, or whatever the circumstances of Moses' domestic tranquility, things radically changed when he chanced to look up on Mt Horeb and spy a bush that burned but wasn't consumed by the flames—kind of like Christian sinners roasting forever in hell! It was at the burning bush that Moses first makes the acquaintance of the god of his fathers.

Apparently the Israelites had been toiling under the taskmaster's whip for some 400 years without knowing which god had abandoned them to their torture. Although he'd been working his way through Moses' family under different names (usually Yahweh, or LORD, and/or Elohim, or God), in this instance Yahweh tells Moses that his name was "Ehyeh", or in King James English "I AM THAT I AM". Of course we can't really blame Yahweh for hiding behind yet another nom de plume since he was the one who had cast the Israelites into their misery for no discernable reason. I mean, who in their right mind would want to own up to that? Anyway, a new persona is likely why Yahweh had the bold-faced temerity to tell Moses in 3:7 that "I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows."

Come on here "I AM" (or whatever your name is)! Cut the crap! Whoever or whatever, it was YOU that dumped the yet-to-be-born children of Israel into bondage! And I ask this again: why? What on earth had these unborns done to deserve such a cruel predestination? I don't know about you, but that line in Cecil B. DeMille's film "The Ten Commandments" comes to mind here—the one wherein Charlton Heston/Moses asks John Derek/Joshua if his god requires a scarred back as the price of his favor?

After going through all the "I AM" nonsense, in verse 15 the Lord turns it all into mush when he tells Moses "Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, the LORD God [in Hebrew Yahweh Elohim] of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations." Let's look at this again: Instead of "I AM," Yahweh is telling Moses to tell the Israelites that his name is really Yahweh Elohim, the same Yahweh Elohim of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and would be forever! Now in case you don't know it folks, here's one of the big lies of the bible.

Over in the New Testament, John 1:1 tells us this: "1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made." In other words, Jesus Christ was the same Yahweh Elohim who created the universe, drowned the world in the time of Noah, and was talking to Moses in the burning bush tale. So, his forever keeping Yahweh Elohim as a name was a bunch of malarkey since he readily dumped it when he was born human, converted from Judaism to Christianity and went into the Messiah business! But this name game gets worse, as Exodus 6:2-3 spells out: "And God [Hebrew Elohim] spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the LORD [Hebrew Yahweh]: 3 And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty [Hebrew El Shadday], but by my name JEHOVAH [Hebrew Yahweh] was I not known to them." Did you get this? The Lord is saying that Abe & family didn't know his name was Yahweh.

But in Genesis 14:22 Abraham uses the name Jehovah (Yahweh), as did Sarah in Genesis 16:2. In fact in Genesis 22:14 we read that "Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen." How could Abraham have named a mountain after Yahweh (Jehovah or the "LORD" as the KJV translators render Yahweh) if he didn't know his name? In other words, the "LORD" was lying to Moses in Exodus 6:3 when he declared that Abe and his boys didn't know his real name—which is, all-in-all, quite apparent since the name Yahweh/Jehovah appears 141 times in the book of Genesis!

You know, Yahweh would have been a good contestant on the old t.v. game show "To Tell the Truth" since someone could have asked him "will the real god please stand up!"

Well, whoever it was in that burning bush ordered Moses back into Egypt to free the Israelites from their slavery and with a set of instructions. Perhaps some of those instructions explains why Moses wasn't exactly raring to go. One thing he meekly protested was that the Israelites wouldn't believe his tale that he talked to God in a burning bush—at least showing that old Moses had a lot more common sense than do most fundamentalist Christians and Orthodox Jews! After Yahweh shows Moses some conjuring tricks with which to convince the simple-minded Israelites of his bona-fides, Moses still tries to worm his way out of the task by protesting in Exodus 4:10 that he was "slow of speech" and "slow of tongue", by which he presumably meant that he stuttered. This is when Yahweh slips and makes one of the most disgusting admissions in the bible.

To read the rest of the booklet, click the "donate" button below and contribute $2.99—it's fast, easy and cheap!