FOOD FOR THOUGHT: "Ignorance does not vanish with schooling, it is an attitude."
	YOU ARE IN DARKNESS.
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There is a story discovered by Ernst Sellin in Hosea 1:4-5. The "event" described here happened in Jezreel (previously Esdraelon, which is in Palestine, not far from Kadesh). In the story in Hosea 1:4-5 God gives orders to Hosea: "..Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. And it shall come to pass at that day, that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel." Something very important must have happened in Jezreel, because the God YHWH is in rage. What was that terrible "event" in Jezreel? It must also have been a "bloody" event because the God is after an avenge with blood. That "blood of Jezreel" must have been a very important blood. A "blood" the spilling of which necessitated punishment in like. Could that blood have been the blood of Moses? Could he have been killed there? What was this bloody "event" discovered by Ernst Sellin in the Old Testament? Where did it take place? On the slopes of the Mount Sinai/Tur'u Sina/Jebel Musa/El Tur or in Jezreel?

Neither! Ernst Sellin claims that Moses was attacked and killed at Shittim which is to the east of Yordan/Jordan/Erden. Alright, what happened in Shittim? Well, Numbers 25 tells us: "..And Israel abode in Shittim, and the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab. And they called the people unto the sacrifices of their Gods." It is not the attractions of vice that the children of Israel are faced with. That is something that is and always had been universal. It was not professional prostitutes who led Israel astray. It was the daughters of the Moabites and the Midianites, their own viwes and sweethearts. They enticed and seduced the men of Israel to take part in the rites of Baal (the arch enemy of YHWH), the fertility cult of Canaan. What Israel encountered, while still on the other side of Jordan, was the voluptuous worship of the Phoenician Gods. Leaders of Israel struck hard, did not even spare their own men, offenders were slaughtered and hanged. The people of Moab were spared since they were related to Abraham's nephew Lot who was regarded as their ancestor. But against the Midianites a war of extermination was let loose.

First the Numbers 14:26-35 and Deuteronomy 9:6-21. Let us read what is written in Numbers 14:26-35: "..And the Lord spoke unto Moses and unto Aaron saying, How long shall I bear with this evil congregation, which murmur against me. Say unto them (...) Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness (...) Doubtless you shall not come into the land (...) But your little ones, I will bring them in, and they shall know the land which you have despised. But as for you, your carcases, shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall wander in the wilderness for forty years. (...) and you shall know my breach of promise. I the Lord have said, I will surely do it unto all this evil congregation, that are gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die." Here you have the reason why these people wandered in the wilderness, and also the reason why those present at that "event" were banned from the Promised Land. Could this description be related to that ""bloody" event?

Now let us check Deuteronomy 9:6-21: (Moses is speaking) "..Understand therefore, that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess not because of your righteousness; you are a stiffnecked people. Remember and forget not, how you have provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness: (from the day you departed from Egypt until you came to this place) ..you have been rebellious against the Lord. Also in Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath, so that the Lord was angry with you to have destroyed you. (Moses tells them that he went up the Mountain to take the Ten Commandments, stayed up there forty days and forty nights) ..And the Lord said unto me, Arise get yourself down quickly; for your people which you have brought forth out of Egypt have corrupted themselves; they are quickly turned aside out of the way which I commanded them; they have made them a molten image. (...) Let me alone that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven: and I will make of yours a nation mightier and greater than they." (Moses goes on telling his people how he came down the mountain, and seeing that they have made a molten image, how he got very angry and broke the tablets, how he prayed for mercy for his people and Aaron, how he destroyed the molten image). Here the "Moses" being addressed (in bold italics) by the God must be Moses the Midianite. Because God wants to destroy the people that has risen against Moses and consequently against himself (God), those who are said to have risen against Moses must be the ones who were not happy about what this migration brought to them, in other words they must be those yearning for their days in Egypt. Therefore it should not be wrong to say that the nation that God "will make mightier and greater than they," must be the nation of Moses the Midianite. Could this be an acoount of what happened really? Furthermore let us assume that the Midianites were made to accept a "Sole God" - the God of Moses the Egyptian - and his "Law." This belief system must have been perceived as very rigid, strict, formal etc., by the Midianites who were happy with their various local Gods and various practices. In that case the Midianites may have rebelled against this " Sole God" and his "law" brought by Moses the Egyptian from Egypt. Then, the nation which God "will make mightier and greater than they" would be the nation of Moses the Egyptian. Could this be the truth? We are not finished yet! There's a third possibility: Those who rebelled against "Moses" and his "law" may have been the Hebrew tribes coming from Egypt together with their next of kin, the tribes living in the region of Midian. Then the nation which God "will make mightier and greater than they" has to be the Levites, who accompanied Moses as his close companions during the Exodus and on the route to the "Promised Land." Don't forget, Moses, Aaron, Miriam are all belong to the tribe of Levi. The Old Testament says that. Therefore where is the truth

Now we most probably have two persons, Moses the Egyptian and Moses the Midianite. Let us try to find clues as to their different personalities and trace their actions. Moses the Midianite seems to be shadowed by Moses the Egyptian who was the one who took people out of Egypt. "Moses" in the Old Testament is presented as, often autocratic, overruling, nervous, and even a person who likes brute force, and at the same time as the world's most gentle and forbearing person, in a complete contrast (the story in Exodus 32:19-22 is about the Moses the Egyptian; the story in Numbers 12:3 is clearly about another person, Moses the Midianite: "(Now the man called Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth)." Clearly there are two different groups of attributes here. They do not fit. The second description does not fit Moses the Egyptian who had to deal with his people while engaged in such challenging and difficult matters. It would be wise to suppose that the writers of the Old Testament were writing about two different persons: Moses the Egyptian and Moses the Midianite. We can safely say that Moses the Egyptian had never been to Kadesh, never heard of YHWH; and Moses the Midianite had never been to Egypt, and never known anything about "Aton/Aten."

There is also another very important point: "Moses" is described as a person experiencing difficulty in speaking. In fact he admits this himself in Exodus 4:10: "And Moses said to the Lord, O my Lord, i am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since you have spoken unto your servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue." In which language were they conversing? YHWH and Moses.. Most certainly in Hebrew. Remember how YHWH declared himself to Moses: "I AM THAT I AM" which is a Hebrew expression, "Ehyeh asher ehyeh." So God is speaking in Hebrew. Then this complaint by Moses may be taken as having a speech disorder. Since he is a member of the tribe of Levi (as presented in the Old Testament) no one could say that he did not speak Hebrew. If they were conversing in Hebrew then Moses must have meant a difficulty in speaking - a speech disorder. That is why he needed Aaron's help. It could not have been worse! How did he manage to gather all those people around him? How did he manage to explain to them the rules of his belief system? How did he motivate them? How did he become a prophet? Could you imagine a charismatic person, the "greatest prophet in the history of mankind" unable to speak properly because of a disability? Let us take up the other possibility: God and Moses are conversing in Egyptian and Moses is an Egyptian himself. Then this slowness of speech may be a speech disorder as in the first supposition. But let us assume that it is a disability to speak the local language. This is strange. These two brothers, Moses and Aaron, are living in Egypt, but only one of them speaks the local language (Aaron) and the other doesn't. That is why God suggests Moses that Aaron would be the "go-between", the translator between Moses and the Pharaoh. There is another possibility: Moses being a follower of the Aten/Aton religion, with Akh-en-aton and his religion being toppled by the people and the establishment, may have declined meeting the new ruler. This is a story, anything goes! But everything fits, with the invented myth that Moses was a member of the Levi tribe in Egypt, disliked Egyptians, conversed in Hebrew with the God, did not want to speak to Pharaoh, and eventually took his people out of Egypt. This story is written in the Old Testament. If this appoarch is right, then the effort seems to be about breaking all the links between Moses and Egypt (him being an Egyptian) and present him as a "full-blooded" Hebrew.

Which "character" did the various writers of the Old Testament try to give prominence to, Moses the Egyptian or Moses the Midianite? Which is the one we read about in the "Book"? How did he become the "character" we know him today - the greatest prophet in the history of mankind? Anybody venture for an answer?

It is believed that though his life was not short, it was impossible for Moses the Egyptian to have taken part in the events at Kadesh and in order to integrate him and Moses the Midianite into the "Moses" we know today the "Oral tradition" or the "myth" had to move the Egyptian Moses to Midian and implant him into what is said to have happened in Sinai, or Shittim, or Kadesh-Meribah. The effective outcome of this operation was the removing from the records of his murder. Remember? He went on existing(!) until he died(!) and interned supposedly on Mount Nebo.

The story in Exodus 2:15-22 is about Moses fleeing Egypt, and going to Midian. Here the daughters of the Midianite priest (here his name is given as Reuel) say that an "Egyptian" has helped them. Which may be taken as a clue that this "Egyptian" (If he was Moses) did not look like the people of that region; his attire was different from the Semitic tribes living in the Land of Midian; his behaviour was different; that he kept to his traditions etc. If this person was Moses he might have accepted the traditions and attitude of the Midianites after living among them for some time. The "Moses" mentioned in the Old Testament is not like the other Semites who were raised in captivity and slavery; but brought up in the Egyptian palace with all its high life and superior culture. He must have taken up the semi-nomadic life style of the tribe of his father-in-law later, which lasted until Israel settled in Canaan. This meant also that Moses had taken refuge with his forefathers, because this newly adopted tribal life style, the nomadic order and traditions were the exact copy of those of the tribes of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Of course the whole of the story may not be a myth. The following generations have most probably surrounded this "man called Moses" with fiction in order to give him a superior personality. Scholars agree that there must have been a person - his name does not matter - who took Israel out of Egypt, put an end to their slavery; gave them freedom; created the nation of Israel; gave their 'Law' and founded their religion. One cannot help but ask what is left for YHWH to do? What is supposed to have happened at Mount Sinai shows us the transformation attempt of Israel from polytheism to monotheism. Spenta Mainyu calls it an "attempt" because this transformation was not successful for a very very long time. The Old Testament is full of stories related to YHWH's fight with his people, to their unruly behaviour, and to the other Gods. The Old Testament never denies the existence of other Gods, but only this God "YHWH" claimed the ownership of a nation.

Let us continue. In Numbers 26:59 it is written: "..Amram's wife was Jochebed, the daughter of Levi, whom her mother bare to Levi in Egypt: and she bare onto Amram Aaron and Moses, and Miriam their sister." One can read about this tribe of Levi in Numbers 26:57-65: "..And those that were numbered of them were twenty and three thousand, all males from a month upward: for they were not numbered among the children of Israel, because there was no inheritance given them among the children of Israel...These are they that were numbered by Moses and Eleazar the priest, who numbered the children of Israel in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho..But among these there was not a man of them whom Moses and Aaron the priest numbered, when they numbered the children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai." Moses is said to have led the enslaved the tribe of Levi out of Egypt back to the Land of Canaan. We have pointed out many times that the Old Testament is a very unreliable source, but what should we understand from this pronouncement? Moses is a Levite himself? Could this be a possible deliberate attempt to present Moses as one of the members of those Hebrew tribes that went to Egypt back in time? If it is, then the motive behind it should be to "make" Moses a "genuine" Hebrew.

Was there another group in addition to the Levites during the Exodus? We do not know. Some say there was only the tribe of Levi, some say they were a larger group with others as well. It is claimed by some that Moses took them out of Egypt and led them to the Land of Canaan but died before they reached it. As the relevant story in the Old Testament tells us they were almost there, in the "Promised Land". Moses saw the Land from afar and died. He and his contemporaries were not allowed to step on to this "sacred" land. Only the children of Israel were allowed. (This flight from Egypt - Exodus - is celebrated and remembered by the annual festival of "Pesach", Passover.

Let us go back to the hypothesis on the personality of Moses the Egyptian. He was - if he ever existed - most probably an aristocrat, a master. He should not be expected to join this group of foreigners - the Semites - alone. He must have taken with him his closest followers, secretaries, and servants. These people are thought to be the origin of the Levites. No wonder Levites always had a privileged position. They were the closest people to Moses. The fact that only Levites had Egyptian names in later periods is taken as an evidence in support of this assumption. These Levites must have survived the destruction of their religion, grew in numbers, mixed with the society they were living in, but remained loyal to their master all the time, kept his memory alive, and lived according to the traditions established by him. All through the period of integration with the worshippers of YHWH they constituted a culturally superior, and pirivileged minority. Sigmund Freud proposes a period of two generations or a hundred years between the downfall of Moses and the establishment of the new religion in Kadesh, and thinks that these people coming out of Egypt joined the other tribes of their stock after these tribes accepted the religion of YHWH. What we have today, and what is written in the Old Testament lead us to the conclusion that there was an argeement, or better still, a compromise in Kadesh and the people who were with Moses played a great role in it.

Think about the circumcision. This must have been a concession to the followers of Moses or the Levites among them, who rejected giving up this sign. In return this group must have agreed to adopt the new God - YHWH - and what the Midianite priests say about him.

Egyptians are known to have a contemptuous attitude towards other nations. If Moses was an Egyptian then why did he chose to lead a group of immigrant foreigners who were of a lower level of civilization, and left his country with them? It is extremely likely that the writers of the Old Testament invented stories to present the founder of their religion as a Hebrew. They did know that Moses was an Egyptian name, but they had difficulty in accepting that he is an Egyptian. Remember the story about Moses being found in a basket in the river Nile (Exodus 2:10). If he is found in a basket in the river Nile, he must have been born there. The additional motifs of this story tells us that the Hebrews there were being oppressed, and asked to kill their first male child, and that was why the mother of Moses did what she did, and so on.. It is clear even at this point that it is impossible to form a coherent picture of the beginning and early days of his life. When you finish reading his story you will see that it is even more difficult to construct the historical personality of Moses. But let us go on with an educated guess: There is a person named Thutmosis-Thutmose among the followers of Ak-hen-aton. He has an elevated status. He is a fervent and devoted believer of the Aten/Aton religion. But in contrast with the Pharaoh who liked philosophising Thutmosis is energetic and passionate. Death of Akh-en-aton and the abandoning of of his religion means an end to all the expectations of Thutmose. He may have been the governor of one of the border regions. In this capacity he established a relationship with a group of Semitic people who have immigrated there a few generations ago. He tries to make up for what he has lost, and to realize his ideals on this group. He chooses this group as his people. With his entourage (Levites) he takes this "chosen people" and leaves Egypt. He blessed is group with the sign of circumcision. Here let me remind you of the Old Testament sotry where God is angry with Moses because he is not circumcised, and the Midianite wife of Moses Tsippora/Zipporah cuts off the foreskin of Moses with a stone and saves his life - could this be another Moses than the one who came out of Egypt? Because Egyptians attached a great importance to circumcision. In other words circumcision was the usual practice in Egypt. But Moses is not circumcised. Well there are other things which must be considered. Let us start with a basic dilemma: If Moses was an Egyptian; he should have been circumcised. But he was not. If he was an Egyptian and if he imposed on his "chosen people" the monotheism, this monotheism should have been the Akh-en-aton's Aten/Aton religion, or a personal variant of this monotheist belief system. If Moses declared his faith in the "sole creator;" and if Moses was accepted as the founder of Judaism, this "sole creator" of Judaism must have originated in Egypt, or a sequel of the monotheism there. If circumcision which is the sign of the covenant between the God and the children of Israel was the normal practice in Egypt, then what the Jewish people believe in must be a belief system which could be tied to Egypt. The "messenger" is Egyptian, the "sign" is Egyptian, the foundation of the belief system is "monotheism" which originated in Egypt. In other words what the Jews believe in bust be a belief system originating from Egypt. This was and is unacceptable to the children of Israel.

The first reference to the subject of circumcision in the Old Testament is in Genesis 17:10-14 There Rabb - Abraham's God - makes a covenant with him; "Every man child among you shall be circumcised...And you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin...And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you...and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant...the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant." According to Genesis 17:24 Abraham did not carry out immediately this basic necessity of the Covenant with his God, Rabb. He must have been negligent, because he was ninety years old when God made the covenant with him, and according to Genesis 17:24 he was "...ninety years old and nine when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin," in other words, nine years later. Genesis 17:27 ends the story by telling us that all the men in the house of Abraham - born in the house and bought with money - were circumcised with him on the same day.

The so called contract between God and Abraham on circumcision, in effect, means the introduction of this practice to Palestine. Circumcision was originally an Egyptian tradition. Phallus in Egypt was considered sacred as the symbol of fertility. Presentation to the God of a piece of the foreskin showed the respect and loyalty to God. But if a "Book" is written in which the circumcision is tied to a Patriarch purportedly lived in the region ages ago, then it could not be an Egyptian ptactice. Could it be?

The second event related to circumcision is told in Joshua 5:2-7: "At the time the Lord (Rabb) said unto Joshua, make yourselves sharp knives, and circumcise the children of Israel the second time." Joshua did as he was told. He circumcised the Sons of Israel. But what was the reason for this "second" circumcision? Well the men in the group which came out of Egypt were all circumcised but they died on the way. Let's have a pause here: These elders were living in Egypt, and they did not have the Mosaic legislation then. Well they might have known and adopted the Abraham's belief system. Then Abraham's story must have existed in some form before these tribes went to Egypt, or it may have been popular in Egypt and all the Egyptians - having adopted(!) Abraham's belief belief system - were getting circumcised! One could clearly see that the stories about circumcision were written in line with the aims of the myth, when the "Book" was being collected. Back to the story: Those born on the way were not circumcised because they had been on the move for 40 years. Therefore, as ordered(!) by the God Joshua circumcised them. Well, if the elders who came out of Egypt were circumcised, who could refuse to acknowledge that circumcision had its roots in Egypt. If the circumcision was not an Egyptian but a Jewish practice, and as historical records show, Egyptians were doing it, then either the Hebrew tribes that moved to Egypt introduced it, or the story is an invention. How could you believe the chosen people of the God sharing their "sign of covenant" with Abraham's God (Rabb) with the Egyptians - their oppressors? These stories show us that circumcision was practiced in Egypt and those people that came out of Egypt took it with them.

In the story on his journey through Egypt about 450 BC. Herodotus relates the characteristics of the Egyptian people which amazingly resembles the traditions of the later Judaism that we know: According to which, Egyptians are much more religious. They were the first to practice circumcision for hygiene; and pigs were repugnant to them (this undoubtedly is because of Seth wounding Horus in the form of a black boar). They revered cows, never offered one as sacrifice. They did not eat beef. The Egyptians of both sexes never kissed a Greek, never used their knives, skewers and crockery because the Greek did eat beef. An Egyptian would not consume the meat of a cattle if it is killed by a Greek's knife, even if the animal is clean. They despised other people who are not clean or not close to the Gods as they are.

Now back to the subject of circumcision, Exodus 4:22-26 tells us a strange story; Rabb (Rabb is the God of Abraham, and of Moses, and later the God of Islam called "Allah") is speaking to Moses and orders him to go to the Pharaoh, tell him that Israel is his son, even his firstborn, so the Pharaoh should let them go to serve him (Rabb), if the Pharaoh refuses, he (Rabb) will slay his firstborn; then Rabb meets him ("Him?" You immediately want to ask "Pharaoh or the son? " Wait, there is more) the story suddenly takes a strange turn and Zipporah/Tsippora (wife of Moses) enters the scene, takes a sharp stone, cuts off the foreskin of her son, casts it at his feet, and says that he is surely a bloody husband to her. He is a bloody husband because of the circumcision. Here one immediately thinks that Rabb must have met the Pharaoh. The logic of the story told dictates a meeting between God and the Pharaoh. If, so why did Tsippora enter the scene? Tsippora is the wife of Moses, and she has her son with her. If we follow the logic of the story, this boy should have been the one Rabb wanted to kill. If so, why would Rabb want to kill Moses' son? Tsippora calls the one who meets them as her "husband," so that person must be Moses. If so, why would Moses want to kill his son? Tsippora throws the foreskin at the feet of Moses? Why? Woman and child belong to him. And the one who wants to kill the child is not Moses but Rabb, and Rabb wants to kill the son of the Pharaoh not the son of Moses. If we go by what is said in Hosea 2:16: "And it shall be at that day, said the Lord (Rabb) you shall call me Ishi (my husband) and not Baali (God of the Canaanites)," then we can say, by stretching the symbolism, that Tsippora has thrown the foreskin of her son at the feet of the God (Rabb) who self-appointed himself "the husband of Israel." There are those who interpret this strange story, as God being infuriated because Moses was still uncircumcised, God tried to kill him, but the wife of Moses quickly circumcised him and saved his life. What is all this? Another example which shows the ulterior motives and the incompetence of the writers of the Old Testament, and the gullibility of the believers. This whole story is just nonsense. It was felt that this tradition of circumcision should be kept (because it was turned into a sign of identification for the Sons of Israel) but at the same time efforts were made to separate this tradition from Egypt. The confusing and incomprehensible passage in Exodus 4:24-26 could only be explained by the intentional denial which betrays the event. YHWH (Rabb) is cross with Moses because he was not circumcised. Moses took his people out of Egypt the Old Testament tells us. So if he is not circumcised then this tradition could not have originated from Egypt. But the wife of Moses, who is a Midianite, was quick to circumcise him, and this act saved the life of Moses. Secondly, It was Rabb who made the original covennant wirh Abraham. But this YHWH is the God of Abraham as well. So, if YHWH is now insisting on this "sign of identification" then YHWH must be Rabb. There is no break in the line: Circumcision is the sign of the sons of Israel dating back to Abraham. It has nothing to do with Egypt. These are most probably the efforts by the writers of the Old Testament, first to deny openly that YHWH was a new God to the Sons of Israel, and secondly to separate the tradition of circumcision from Egypt.

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