Part Of: History sequence
Related To: Yahweh, god of metallurgy
Content Summary: 2200 words, 11 min read

Context

Last time, we explored the following:

• The Israelite origin story is largely a patriotic fiction.
• The Israelite people were indigenous Canaanites.
• The first Israelites worshiped the pantheon of El.
• The original Yahweh cult was a Shasu religion located in southern Edom
• Yahweh was first worshiped as a god of metallurgy
• The founder of Judaism, Moses, was said to be a Midianite
• Yahweh was introduced to Israel as a second tier deity (a member of El’s family)

But how was Yahwism transmitted to Israel? One obvious explanation involves trade; economic transactions often serve as a vehicle for transmission of religious ideas.

But then there’s the matter of the Exodus narrative. The absence of evidence for such a massive event gravitates against a massive exodus. But it is silent on the question of an exodus on a small scale.

There was no mass exodus. But I will argue there was a mini-exodus of a group of Levite priests from Egypt. The Biblical evidence suggests that Moses was a Midianite, and his encounter with Yahweh occurred in Midian.

Textual Evidence for a Levite Mini-Exodus

The Bible was written by four authors: J, E, P and D. Of these, E, P and D are traced to Levite priestly authors. There exist startling differences across Levite and non-Levite texts.

First, the two oldest texts in the Bible are the Song of the Sea, and the Song of Deborah. The Song of the Sea is a Levite text that does not mention Israel. The Song of Deborah, meanwhile, lists all ten tribes of Israel (Judah and Simeon were a separate community at this time and not part of Israel) but doesn’t mention Levi. Similarly, all twelve tribes are mentioned in the Blessings of Moses, but it is the only tribe associated with the exodus.

Second, only the Levite sources tell the entire story of the plagues and exodus from Egypt.  J, the non-Levite source, doesn’t tell it. If you read J, it jumps from Moses’ saying “Let my people go” in Exodus 5:1f to the people’s already having departed Egypt in Exodus 13:21.

Third, if the Levites brought Yahweh into Israel, they should be keen to describe the relationship between Yahweh and El. And only our Levite sources do this: J presumes the name is Yahweh from the beginning of her document.

Fourth, It is likewise the Levite sources that concentrate on the Tabernacle.  E mentions it a little; P treats it a lot. There is more about the Tabernacle than about anything else in the Torah.  But the non-Levite source J never mentions it at all.

Archaelogical Evidence

Egypt was known to host many Semitic peoples over the years. It is not unthinkable to imagine some small group escaping. The Shasu people were allowed by Mernepteh to bring their herds into Egyptian territory. 

• Names of the Levites. Hophni, Hur, Phinehas, Merari, Pashhur and above all Moses are Egyptian names. No one else, in all the names mentioned in the Bible, has an Egyptian name. If Egyptian names were invented, why only attribute them to the Levites? Further, the story of Moses’ name suggests the Biblical redactors did not know these names were Egyptian).
• Cultural derivatives. There are strong parallels between the Levite priests’ description of the Ark and Egyptian barks. Likewise, the Seraphim that occupy the First Temple come from Egypt (the uraeus) IG.151. The serpent on Aaron’s staff mirrors Egyptian mythology. Professor Michael Homan showed that the Tabernacle has architectural parallels with the battle tent of Pharaoh Ramses II.
• Exodus 24:8 features Moses splashing blood on his followers in a ritual ceremony. This kind of blood covenant was unknown to Canaan, but common in pre-Islamic Arabia.
• Circumcision. Only texts written by Levites (11/11)  give the requirement to practice circumcision — which was a known practice in Egypt.  So Egyptian cultural influences are present, but only in the Levite texts!

The Levites came into contact with the Shasu cult, and brought Yahwism to Israel

We have seen that Yahweh was first worshiped as a god of metallurgy in Edom.

We have seen evidence that a mini-exodus of the Levites may be historical.

As far as I know, neither advocates of the Levite mini-exodus nor advocates of the Midianite-Kenite hypothesis see an obvious synergy between their theories:

The Levites left Egypt and encountered Yahweh in Midian.

We can see the overlap in these theories in Mount Sinai. Religious thinking in that era strongly associated gods with locations. Mount Sinai (aka Mount Horeb) was the house of Yahweh. This mountain was located in southern Edom, and the Levites regularly traveled to that location to worship him.

We can also see overlap in Moses’ home town. Moses was a Midianite:

Moses is described as having settled down with the Midianite people (the Shasu). His wife Zipporah and two sons were Midianite. What’s more: Moses’ father-in-law Jethro is called a priest. A priest of what god? Well, in Exodus 18:12, Jethro (and not Moses) is portrayed initiating a sacrifice to Yahweh. The Biblical editors seem uncomfortable with this tradition, for they later interjected a confession of faith on Jethro’s lips, which very much mirrors other such confessions. All of this suggests that Moses’ Midianite father-in-law was a priest of Yahweh. In fact, he seems to have spiritual authority over Moses in this passage.

The E source is replete with this kind of claim. We first meet Moses in Midian (no claims of him being born in Egypt, in this document). Moses’ response to Yahweh’s call, “Who am I that I should bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” would be a fair question for a man in Midian. E also claims he cannot go to Egypt because he is “heavy of tongue”. Traditionally interpreted as a speech defect, this phrase only occurs in one other place in the Hebrew Bible, where it means cannot speak the language. Finally, E also claims that the Midianites are direct descendents of Abraham.

While two Levite sources admit Moses’ Midianite connection, P actively tried to hide it. In the P source, has absolutely nothing about his ever being in Midian. Nothing about a Midianite wife, a priest father-in-law, nothing about his sons. Two books later, the P source injects a (blood-curdling) story designed to vilify the Midianites. Moses himself gives the order to kill all of the Midianite women. And this source does not include the little fact that Moses has a wife who happens to be a Midianite woman. The fact that the P source tries to deny the Midianite connection suggests the underlying claim is historical.

It is difficult to reverse-engineer the role of Moses

Three hypotheses seem possible:

1. Levites in Egypt, Moses in Midian. The Levites were enslaved Egyptians, who fled to the East, and fell under the influence of Moses, a Midianite Yahwist.
   • Pro: Moses not speaking Egyptian language.
   • Con: Hard to explain why Moses has an Egyptian name.
2. Levites in Egypt, Moses in Egypt. The “people” were enslaved in Egypt, and fled to the East, where their leader Moses converted to Yahwism.
   • Pro: Moses has an Egyptian name
   • Con: Hard to explain why Moses didn’t speak the Egyptian language.
3. Levites in Egypt, Moses in transit.
   • Pro: explains both Moses’ Egyptian and Midianite stories.
   • Con: Hard to explain why a Midianite would come to Egypt.

Of these hypotheses, the first seems most plausible to me. By the criterion of embarrassment, the evidence of Moses’ Midianite heritage strikes me as more persuasive than his alleged exploits in Egypt.

However, there seems to be inadequate evidence to fully resolve this question. Fortunately, the Levite-Kenite connection can survive this ambiguity. The key point is, once the Levites left Egypt, came into contact with the Shasu cult, and brought Yahwism to Israel.

The Levites “attached” themselves as priestly class

The Levites claim responsibility for the massacres in Genesis 34, Exodus 32:26-29, and Numbers 25:6-15 and Jacob’s blessing “Levi’s knives are vicious weapons. May I never enter their council. For in their anger they kill men, and on a whim they hamstring oxen. Their anger is cursed, for it is strong,and their fury, for it is cruel!” While the bloody purges specified in the conquest narrative are non-historical, they too speak towards the bloody zeal of the Levite people. All of this is to say: when they did arrive in Israel asking for refuge, they were not a people the Israelites could easily say no to.

In the book of Exodus, there are myriad references to “the people” and very few (retro-fitted) references to the Israelites. It is very plausible that “the people” referred exclusively to militant Levites. Deut 33:2-5 seems to support this distinction: “his people assembled with the tribes of Israel”.

On arrival, the Levites are not given territory. Instead, they are given a 10% tithe as priests. This fits into William Propp’s commentary on Exodus, which makes a strong case on the etymology of the very word “Levi” that its most probable meaning is an “attached person” in the sense of resident alien.

Over and over, the Levite sources command that one must not mistreat an alien. Why? “Because we were aliens in Egypt”. In the three Levite sources, the command to treat aliens fairly comes up 52 time! And how many times in the non-Levite source, J? None. Compared to legal texts of surrounding nations, this aspect is unique to the Israelite law code.

The Levites wrote the national history.

Those who accept that a mass exodus is non-historical still need to explain how the story of the Exodus made it into the Bible. But we are not being asked to explain how it was invented whole-cloth. Rather, we must explain why and how memory of the mini-exodus became stretched and aggrandized over time.

Why did the Levites invent the mass-exodus narrative?

1. Promoting worship of Yahweh. The Levites were convinced that Yahweh had saved them from Egypt. What better way to have Israel worship Yahweh, than create a new history?
2. Simple power politics. Political influence is easier to hold & retain if your group is the only “outsider”.
3. Political unification. Iron age Israel was theocratic. The priests and kings shared (and sometimes competed for) power. A common origin story is a powerful tool for unification and shared identity. Similarly, the demonization on lowland city states (cultural & ethic siblings) as “Canaanite” served to support campaigns against them.

How did they accomplish this? By the production and dissemination of an origin story.  

While we are investigating the historicity of the Biblical narrative, we should also consider: why do these texts exist at all? The Hebrew Bible is humanity’s first attempt at prose, and of history. This intermingling of religion and history was unique to the ancient world. Instead of cyclic episodes of mythological combat, the Israelite religious imagination was fixated on events of their material past. Its structure is entirely unique, and cries out for an explanation. The Bible was written to create a written tradition (much more stable than oral traditions) of national identity.

In addition to violence, the Levites also had a reputation for teaching. We can see this in verses like Deuteronomy 6:20-23:

When your children ask you later on, “What are these laws that Yahweh commanded you?” you must say to them, “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt in a powerful way. And he brought signs and great, devastating wonders on Egypt, on Pharaoh, and on his whole family before our very eyes. He delivered us from there so that he could give us the land he had promised our ancestors.

What specifically did the Levites fabricate?

They started with their own experience (an actual event), and added the following:

First, to make a mini-exodus massive, you need large numbers. You can actually “watch” the estimates grow as we move from earlier to later sources. J doesn’t mention numbers at all. E estimates a total of around 600,000, and P estimates of total of 600,000 fighting-age males (for a total of two million).

Second, the Exodus, without the conquest, would never have survived as a story. You need to explain how a nomadic nation came to reside in someone else’s territory. The conquest does this (and also stokes political sentiment of a later time period).

Why did the Israelites believe this story?

Don’t we all evaluate our personal origin stories with a bit too much credulity? Many Romans literally believed a wolf raised their patriarchs. Even in American culture, many people I’ve spoken with conceive of the Founding Fathers in mythic, rather than human, terms.

But why didn’t the first recipients of the mass exodus story reject it? Imagine the Levites waited ten or twenty generations before telling the story, and the mini-exodus narrative expansion happened only gradually. Israelites would only have distant inklings of the remembered past to go on. It is true that, for the exodus story to take root in early Israel it was necessary for it to pertain to the remembered past of settlers who did not emigrate from Egypt. And this is in fact the case. Egypt did control and oppress Canaan, during the mini-Exodus.