Author’s Description
Why does the archaeological record show no evidence for the origins
of biblical Israel? That is the question Gary Greenberg tackles in
“The Moses Mystery: the African Origins of the Jewish
People.” Based on a detailed study of the archaeological and
literary evidence, he proposes a new model for the study of biblical
Israel, one that places its origin in fourteenth century BC Egypt, in
the aftermath of Pharaoh Akhenaten’s monotheistic religious revolution.
According to Greenberg, Moses served as Chief Priest to Pharaoh
Akhenaten, whose religious changes provoked a major social and
governmental crisis in Egypt. Shortly after Akhenaten’s death,
the religious establishment regained control over the government and
under Pharaoh Horemheb the government launched a full scale effort to
purge the Egyptian record of any reference to Akhenaten’s
existence, an effort that included the persecution of Akhenaten’s
associates and followers. Moses fled Egypt at this time but returned
on Horemheb’s death, claiming the throne as the only legitimate
blood heir. This resulted in a civil war between the allies of Moses
and Ramesses I, Horemheb’s co-regent at the time. Moses lost and
led his followers out of Egypt, an event remembered in the bible as
the Exodus.
As Greenberg places the emergence of Israel after the patriarchal
history, the Genesis stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he also
sets out to analyze the origins of these biblical accounts. His study
shows that the patriarchal history was actually based on Egyptian
mythology about the family of the god Osiris and in The Moses Mystery
he shows the many parallels between the biblical and Egyptian stories.
In order to make the case for a connection between Moses and
Akhenaten, it was necessary to provide a reasonable and likely date
for the Exodus, a problem complicated by both contradictory evidence
in the bible and the lack of archaeological evidence for the event.
Greenberg proceeds by examining the birth-death chronology in Genesis
5 and 11, a very puzzling set of verses, and shows that it was
derived from the Egyptian chronology of Egyptian kings. Once he shows
the direct connection between biblical and Egyptian chronology, it
became possible to date the Exodus to the beginning of the reign of
Ramesses I, confirming the hypothesis of a relationship between Moses
and Akhenaten.
Greenberg also analyzes the biblical and archaeological evidence
concerning the existence of the Twelve Tribes and the settlement of
Canaan. The evidence shows that the Twelve Tribes never existed and
that the original core of biblical Israel consisted only of the
Rachel grouping. In subsequent years the Rachel coalition merged with
Canaanite and Greek settlers to form a new nation.
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