Jews ponder Moses [ Encyclopaedia Judaica ]

North County Times ^ | Thursday, December 14, 2006 | Richard Ostling

[SunkenCiv]

Rabbi S. David Sperling, isn't certain that Moses even existed or, if he did, whether the Bible provides much reliable information about him. Sperling contends that if traditional accounts of the origins of Judaism had not recorded a founder, "analogy would have required postulating him; and that is probably what happened" when ancients wrote the Bible... The introduction to Moses' life from another writer says "we cannot really reconstruct a biography of Moses. We cannot even be sure that Moses was a historical character." ...Conservative Judaism's official Torah commentary (2001) states that what should concern Jews is "not when, or even if, Moses lived, but what his life conveys in Israel's saga." It calls Moses a "folkloristic, national hero." This fading Moses, of course, departs radically from long-standing tradition. The "13 Principles" of the revered 12th-century sage Maimonides, for example, insisted that Moses lived as Judaism's supreme prophet through whom God gave the Torah. And the Book of Exodus, of course, recounts Moses' career in considerable detail... Orthodox Rabbi Shalom Carmy of New York's Yeshiva University... observes that liberals hold the biblical text "doubted until independently proven true," while for fellow traditionalists "it is true unless conclusively disproved."

[SunkenCiv]

[SunkenCiv]

"Doubting the Story of Exodus."
Source: Jewish World Review
Published: April 23, 2001 Author: Dennis Prager
Posted on 04/23/2001 12:15:31 PDT by jasowas
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ae47f533d21.htm

[SunkenCiv]

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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[RightWhale]

We can wonder if there was an actual historical person Moses, and we can hear all kinds of strange speculations about who he actually was and what actually happened. But, we'll never know anything except they apparently didn't have a decent usable map.

[SunkenCiv]

Old Testament Dispute Continues
Decaur Daily | Richard N Ostling
Posted on 08/05/2006 3:35:23 PM EDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1678394/posts

[Fred Nerks]

'Summarizing the Jewish divide, Carmy observes that liberals hold the biblical text "doubted until independently proven true," while for fellow traditionalists "it is true unless conclusively disproved."'

See? Like I tried to tell you once before, in the Electric Universe, when babies are born, they are either positively or negatively charged...and we know which the liberals are, don't we? ha ha ha

[blam]

Moses' Comet

[Fred Nerks]

thanks for the link, blam

Desert of Wandering

The desert of the forty-year wandering was not the Sinai. Peninsula, but a much larger area. The inclination of the historians is generally to deny the ancients long itineraries; Midian being the Medina of Moslem times, actually deep in the Arabian Peninsula, all indications in the Old Testament are for a deep penetration of the Arab Peninsula by the wandering Israelites who escaped the land of Egypt destroyed by the catastrophe in the mid-fifteenth century before the present era.

There are autochthonous Arab traditions about the wandering tribes led by Mosaikaia, his brother Arnran, and his sister Zeripha. These traditions have not been borrowed from the Old Testament or rabbinical tradition. From the Bible and Midrashim, the Arabs culled much of the content of the Koran, but they did not realize that their traditions about Mosaikaia (and the catastrophe that took place in his time) are of independent origin, though referring to the same persons and events.

All together indicates that the Israelites under Moses did not spend forty years in the small triangular Sinai Peninsula, but in the western regions of Arabia.

http://www.varchive.org/ce/baalbek/deswan.htm

[Fairview]

So basically the whole Saudi peninsula and its oil reserves belong to the Jews? How interesting.

[blam]

I read before that 40 is a miss translation and that it really means 'many'. For example: Rained 40 days and 40 nights...Ali Baba and the 40 thieves...etc.

[sageb1]

bookmark

[tarheelswamprat]

I have no doubt Moses existed. However, what I'd really like to know is what his real name was. "Moses" was not really an authentic Hebrew name, at least in those ancient times. It is of Egyptian derivation and literally means "born of the Nile". There were variations in spelling (moses, meses, mosis, mose, etc.) as is common even in today's languages, but it was a tradition of the Egyptian naming protocol for Pharoahs and other royalty.

Thus we had "Rameses" (Ra, meses - Ra, born of the Nile), "Thutmosis - Thutmose" (Thut, or Thoth - Thoth, born of the Nile), and others. The tradition of Moses as a "Prince of Egypt" may have been more literal than we know.

[Fred Nerks]

Looking for the vents of 3-km-long Hil Lava Tube.

Harrat Kishb is one of Arabia's 12 large lava fields covering 85,000 sq kms.

Salt lake in two-km-wide Wahbah Crater.

http://www.saudicaves.com/gallery2002.html

[Fred Nerks]

There are autochthonous Arab traditions about the wandering tribes led by Mosaikaia, his brother Arnran, and his sister Zeripha.

[Fred Nerks]

"...the whole Saudi peninsula and its oil reserves belong to the Jews?..."

I wish that were true.

http://www.specialtyinterests.net/hyksos.html

[hlmencken3]

Jewish tradition records ten different names by which Moses was known: Moshe, Yered, Chaver, Yekutiel, Avigdor, Avi Socho, Avi Zanuach, Tuvia, Shemaya, Halevi.

[Fedora]

The Hebrew in the relevant passages (Exodus 16:35 and Numbers 14:34) is the number for 40, "arbahim" ("forty - arba׳eem - 40 אַרְבָּעִים": http://www.hebrewonline.com/Hebrew_Words/166.htm). "40" is a correct translation. Some scholars proposed that this might be a symbolic number after the Late Date theory of the Exodus was proposed, but there is nothing in the Hebrew language or the text of the Torah to support this.

[Fred Nerks]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1499609/posts

like in #26 here? Bit too deep for me...

But 40 for 'many' I can believe. Just how many objects or days/nights can an illiterate 'slave' count?

In Oz, the aboriginals used a word signifying 'mob' for anything over five...

[Fred Nerks]

"40" is a correct translation. Some scholars proposed that this might be a symbolic number after the Late Date theory of the Exodus was proposed, but there is nothing in the Hebrew language or the text of the Torah to support this...

-----

many thanks for that.

[ApplegateRanch]

Sperling contends that if traditional accounts of the origins of Judaism had not recorded a founder, "analogy would have required postulating him; and that is probably what happened" when ancients wrote the Bible.

That's one of the more important assertions in the newly issued second edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica (Macmillan Reference, 22 volumes, $1,995). Of the monumental work's 21,000-plus articles, 2,600 are brand new and nearly half were updated from the 1972 original. Sperling was the editor for revisions regarding the Bible.

Guess I can save myself $1995 + tax, shipping, and handling.

I can read more than enough Bible-bashing debunking "scholarship" for free, on-line.