Summary in seconds: the mythical nature of Biblical stories and their types, influence of ancient Egyptian monotheism on Biblical mythology, who wrote the five books of Moses, Yahweh vs Elohim, and what to expect in my upcoming article.
Gary Greenberg1, the author of “101 Myths of the Bible2,” concluded that most Old Testament stories are mythical in nature and are not real. To support his claims, he selected 101 biblical stories and closely examined them. Mr. Greenberg compared each one of these stories with its original source, which he called “the reality” of that myth. Meanwhile, Mr. Greenberg recounts the arguments on which he builds his refutation of the current version of that myth. Mr. Greenberg divided the novels he chose for this book into three categories:
The first category includes biblical stories with narrative inconsistencies. In reviewing these stories, the author not only showed the contradictions between these narrations but also explained how these contradictions arose. Among the examples that represent this category are the stories of Creation and the Flood.
The second category includes biblical stories that closely paralleled earlier myths from neighboring cultures. Mr. Greenberg mentioned that the influence of neighboring cultures was not always obvious because of changes implemented by authors of the Torah to emphasize monotheism. The author chose the biblical story of the Babylonian Flood as an example of this category.
The third category involved biblical stories that are simply not true. The author compared biblical mythical stories with documented historical information based on solid archaeological research. Mr. Greenberg cited several biblical stories describing Israel’s destruction of enemy cities during the Transjordan and Canaan campaigns. The archaeological evidence, however, showed that many of those cities did not exist in the time of Moses and Joshua.
Mr. Greenberg points out that both Jewish theologians and Egyptologists ignore the obvious influences of ancient Egyptian civilization in the narratives of the Old Testament, despite the existence of a long and strong relationship between Pharaonic Egypt and the Children of Israel. After all, Moses grew up inside the palace of the Pharaoh. In addition, Ancient Egypt had a strong cultural influence on Palestine while the Jews were still in Egypt. The author believes that Ancient Egyptian mythology deeply influenced the myths and narratives of the Israelites.
The idea of an all-powerful Creator who is responsible for the creation of all existence, including other supernatural beings, did not exist in any other religion of the Near East. On the other hand, most religious cults in Ancient Egypt had a single Creator responsible for all existence, including the appearance of other deities. These are the same beliefs that the Hebrews attributed to themselves and were adopted by the Jewish faith throughout its history.
With the passage of time, these theological beliefs changed. While the ancient Egyptians worshiped many other gods besides the One God, the Creator of all beings, the Children of Israel emphasized the worship of this one God. The other deities have been obliterated in the form of angels and devils. They are creatures made by God, but the Israelites did not worship them.
The author points out that Ancient Egyptians experienced a form of monotheistic belief system during the rule of Akhenaten, the pharaoh who ruled Egypt for a short period of time in the mid-fourteenth century BC. The author reminds us that the Israelites were still in Egypt. There are questions about the influence of Akhenaten’s monotheistic ideas on educated Hebrew elites during his reign. The author concludes that the oneness of God was not part of the Hebrew religion at its early times.
In the time period that followed the fifth century BC, the Jewish redactors compiled the main sources of the Torah and issued the first version of the biblical history in the form that we have today. In this revised version of the Torah, the inconsistencies between the earlier pagan beliefs and the present-day monotheistic doctrine have been eliminated.
According to the author, myths are often literary artifacts made from erroneous history or fictitious imagination, and the legends of the Torah do not contradict that. The literary artifacts mentioned in the Torah went through stages of manufacturing that we can trace through the ages until they reached us in their current form. In this book, Gary Greenberg examined the temporal layers that the Torah myths passed through until they reached their current form.
In the book “101 Myths of the Bible,” the author arranged biblical stories into three sections: “Myths of the Beginning,” “Myths of the Founders,” and “Myths of the Heroes.”
The main concern of this book, “101 Myths of the Bible,” is to study the development of the first five books of the Old Testament—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These books are collectively referred to as the Pentateuch (a Greek word meaning “five scrolls”) or the Torah (a Hebrew word meaning teachings). These books follow the story of the Children of Israel from the beginning of Creation until the wandering in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt. These five books describe the development of the relationship between God and the Israelites. In the beginning, the focus of the story is on the covenant that God made with the early patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Later on, the story describes the relationship between God and Moses, and then the story focuses on the relationship between God and the Children of Israel. The history in these five books ends with the death of Moses as Israel remains poised to cross over into the Promised Land.
Although the first five books of the Old Testament do not claim that the Prophet Moses was the one who wrote them, theologians, for more than two thousand years, unanimously agreed that Moses was the only author of them. Despite fierce opposition from the churches, a number of theologians were able to highlight a number of logical inconsistencies in the idea that Moses was the author of these five books. For example, Deuteronomy 6:43 says: “And he buried him (meaning Moses) in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor: but no man knoweth of his sepulcher unto this day.” This verse not only describes the burial of Moses but states that the location of his tomb is unknown to this day. This indicates that this chapter was written sometime after the death of Moses, meaning that it is impossible for Moses to be the one who wrote this chapter.
Beginning in the eighteenth century, many theologians began to pay increasing attention to the problem of “doublets,” or two contradictory stories about the same event within the biblical text. There are many examples of these doublets, like two different versions of Creation, two contradictory claims about the number of animals that were brought onto Noah’s Ark, two different explanations for why Jacob converted his name to Israel, and many others. As these doublets came under scrutiny, scholars found some unusual characteristics. They found that one set of stories always used the Hebrew word “Yahweh” for the name of the Hebrew God, while the other set used “Elohim.”
The scholars then sorted out biblical stories according to which name of God was used. They discovered that stories that used one particular name for God had different themes and literary styles from other stories that used the other name for God. This split in theme, style, and in the name of God used led to the idea that there were, at least, two different literary strands of biblical stories combined into a single document, and at least one of these documents was written by someone other than and later than Moses.
In the next article of this book review, I will address the “documentary hypothesis,” the “four sources to the Torah,” the “Assyrian Flood Tablet,” and the “Biblical Footnotes.”
References:
1. Gary Greenberg is the author of several highly-praised books on biblical history, including the popular biblical classic “101 Myths of the Bible: How Ancient Scribes Invented Biblical History.” His works have been translated into many languages.
2. Greenberg, Gary (2000). 101 Myths of the Bible, How Ancient Scribes Invented Biblical History. Sourcebooks, Inc. ISBN 1-57071-842-3.