Download No Proof for the Exodus?

EXTRA-BIBLICAL EXODUS EVIDENCE
By Dr. Reeve Robert Brenner, Rabbi Bet Chesed Congregation – Bethesda Md.
Ever increasingly a plague of scholars bears down upon the historicity of the Exodus. Jewish and
non-Jewish alike, they are comrades in intellectual arms marching shoulder to shoulder to the
refrain: “The Exodus never-never happened,” rendered in the rousing rhythm of “eelu hotzi hotzianu.”
They might admit that there were perhaps modest waves of Hebrew nomadic wanderers
seeking a better life in the land of milk and honey. A few may have even filtered through out of
Africa. But nothing like the biblical report of miraculous signs and wonders, upheaval and disaster,
plagues and death - and liberation. “Never-never happened!”
One of the latest authorities numbering himself among those challenging the biblical testimony
of the Exodus and rejecting the “scriptural myths” is Rabbi Burton L. Visotsky. His Passover article of
doubt in the Washington Jewish Week of April 14, 2005 entitled “Pondering the Riddle of the
Sphinx,” assumes the scriptural account to be a fabulous fabrication; he takes for granted and as
self-evident that it is a myth. But don’t feel that all is lost in celebrating our origination. After all, we
are post-modern-day sophisticates. We all should know, Rabbi Visotsky gratuitously suggests, that
“some of the most important truths in life we learn from reading great fiction.
“The story of Exodus, the story of Israelite slavery, their redemption and their journey to Mt.
Sinai, are extremely important truths whether they happened exactly the way the Bible says they did
is beside the point.” Didn’t happen “exactly” as related in the Exodus account or didn’t happen at
all? A dramatic story made up fully or an event differently perceived by those experiencing it? Who
is to know? After all, there is only the testimony of the Exodus written by the Israelites. Right?
Wrong!
It is one thing - and not surprising or unexpected - to have the view expressed by dilettantes and
amateurish non-scholars with superficial learning in the branches of knowledge related to the
seminally defining event of the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egyptian bondage that there is no
Egyptian evidence for the sojourn in Egypt, no relevant extra-biblical texts of yetziat mitzraim, nor
for the Exodus-centered wholesale drowning, nor for the plagues. It is quite another thing when a
scholar such as Rabbi Burton L. Visotsky (Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at the
Jewish Theological Seminary, in New York), re-affirms and perpetuates that regnant mythology. He
writes that “Nowhere in the ubiquitous hieroglyphic records on Egyptian monuments is there any
evidence of Israelites even having been captive in Egypt … (or of) the crossing of the Red Sea.” He
means Yam Suf – the Reed Sea (or alternatively but unlikely, the “endpoint of the landmass sea”, as
in ‘sof,’ in Hebrew). Suf, “reeds,” is of Egyptian etymology.
[Visotsky is hardly alone convinced of the absolute absence of extra-biblical evidence of the sojourn
in and the unusual departure of a slave community from Egypt. THIS SKEPTICISM is in fashion at this
time primarily because little evidence of battle and conquest and the collateral destruction of
biblical Canaanite cities as reported in the book of Joshua has come to light. Archeological - and
linguistic - evidence for disbelief and rejection of the historicity of the biblical account of conquest,
on the other hand, is abundant. And the one rises and falls with the other, we are informed, no
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conquest, no need for an exodus. No sojourn, no departure, no conquest. There is no denying: the
absence of evidence in this matter is evidence. But the evidence requiring a reverse domino effect –
no Conquest no Exodus is unsustainable, even if it can be shown by archeology that the stories of
subduing the Canaanite inhabitants of the land in the book of Joshua are inflated – as are all
accounts from the ancient Egypt and the ancient near east. But the Exodus cannot be thought of as
true or false reporting by judgments about Joshua and Judges.
In fact, we learn from the same conference reviewing the significance of the missing archeological
evidence, in the words of William Ward, that upheaval of Velikovskian proportions characterized the
background defining that period of time, the time of the Exodus, the time of catastrophe as reported
in biblical and extra-biblical literature, including Egyptian sources. Ward writes........]
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William A. Ward’s summary and conclusion to Exodus: the Egyptian Evidence offers a
final statement appended to the published papers of a conference of deservedly
respected multi-discipline scholars including William Dever…(Chapter 6, pgs. 105-106).
Ward writes that ”There is no Egyptian evidence that offers direct testimony to the
Exodus as described in the Old Testament. There are hints here and there to indicate
that something like an Exodus could have happened, though on a vastly smaller scale,
but there is not a word in a text or an archeological artifact that lends credence to the
biblical narrative as it now stands. Egypt remains silent (my italics), as it always has.
From the Egyptian viewpoint, the Old Testament narrative records a series of earth
shaking episodes that never happened.”
But we have shown that there is, and Velikovsky persuasively argues and marshals
credible documentation to substantiate, indeed considerable first hand reportorial
Egyptian evidence as well as – that is, to be added to - internal convincing biblical
grounds (personal names, place names, other credible reports) of support, offering
undeniable verification for the Exodus and the Flash Flood that destroyed a pharaoh
and his host.
In the same timeframe of the Exodus event – and the synchronicity draws further
attention to Velikovsky’s thesis of global catastrophe – Ward recounts what was going
on in that region of civilization (if not everywhere on Earth)unintentionally supporting
a Velikovskian catastrophic event and its aftermath. Ward informs us that, “In the late
13th and 12th century B.C.E, the entire east Mediterranean world was shaken to its
core. Migrations and a massive social and economic breakdown brought on
significant major changes, heralding the end of Late Bronze Age civilization and the
dawn of the New Iron Age. The Hittite empire in Anatolia collapsed; the Egyptian
empire drew to a close; the Mycenaean citadels of Greece fell into ruin; cities on the
capital Levantine coast were destroyed. The great palace economies of the Late
Bronze Age had grown tired, too unyielding and economically bankrupt to survive.
The so-called Sea Peoples, spreading their own brand of destruction, moved by land
and water from the Aegean into the eastern states and empires already weakened by
eternal decay.
“Out of this time of international troubles came a new political, social and
economic units: the Phoenician city-states of the Levantine coast, the Aramaean
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kingdoms of inland Syria, the late Hittites cities of northwest Syria, Philistine rule in
coastal Palestine, and so on. The whole Mediterranean world had undergone a vast
permanent watershed of history – the crisis of the 12th century B.C.E. (pg.106)
Velikovsky would press the case that the “migrations and massive social and
economic breakdown” which “brought on significant major changes,” came about by
the earth in upheaval. This was a time when the entire globe, was sustaining a mortal
extraterrestrial blow, as Velikovsky argues in Worlds in Collision and Ages in Chaos.
William Ward observes and it is without question that "The Exodus and Conquest
were recorded by Hebrew scholars because these events were significant to them and
to their children."
But (pg. 109, paragraph two) if the events “significant” to the Hebrews were in
fact recorded by Egyptian eyewitnesses, in papyri and in engraved inscriptions, then
by this logic, these happenings: plagues, upheaval, destruction, were not minor or
insignificant at all. Hardly so if a Velikovskian global catastrophe was experienced in
accord with the “significant" major changes - which played the backdrop for the
Exodus experience - which Ward describes. The region witnessed earthquakes,
volcanic eruptions (Thera – Santorini?) tsunamis of vast destructive power and the
subsequent panic-driven migration of peoples, as reported also by the prophet Amos.
But in the spirit of Visotsky and other minimalists we should all take heart that,
within the several rather insignificant migrations, there may have been "an historical
kernel" of an Exodus - upper case E. One particular “escape!” Most other times the
departing Hebrews in serial stages were peacefully migrating from Egypt. That’s
about the best that can be offered.
In fact (pg. 110) to Ward, "the Exodus remains a mystery. All except the most
ardent defenders of a divine dictation of the narrative agree that it could have not
have happened the way it is set down. But for this event, there is no archaeological
context to which it can be placed, no hint from Egypt (my italics) from whence such
hints would have to come. We still even have a problem with when it happened. The
panel has suggested somewhere from the 15th to 12th century B.C.E. or that it was a
series of movements throughout that period, or that it didn’t happen at all. All we can
currently produce are minor parallels here and there that show that foreigners did
wander into Egypt and wander out again, that a much toned-down version of the
biblical narrative could have happened, that the possibility of some historical kernel is
there. But there is not a single iota of proof. Basically, Egypt remains uninterested
and silent on the matter, as it always has.” In short, there is a “total absence of direct
Egyptian evidence to support the Exodus story.” (pg. 111).
Because the archeologists and other visitors to the prehistoric caves in Lascaux
France did not know how or where to look, decades went by before the simple act of
looking up (by a child, it is reported) revealed the ancient drawings high on the walls.
And because archeologists did know where to look, a young Arab boy named
Muhammed el Dhib, and not they, accidently discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. Because
the Shrine of el-Arish, the testimony of Ipuwer and other such papyri are off the radar
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of most biblical and Egyptian scholars and Velikovsky has been relegated to the
shelves of science fiction, such views continue to be perpetuated.
Moreover, the Exodus event does not rise or fall on the Joshua account of
Conquest. A case can be more easily made for a Wandering rejection as being more
serious than the rejection of the Conquest but there cannot be linguistic or
archeological evidence brought forward to prove or disprove wandering in the
wilderness on the outskirts of the centers of civilization.
BIBLICAL AND EXTRA-BIBLICAL ACCORD
First in the line-up, the biblical and extra-biblical evidence of the Egyptian names
of our Hebrew ancestors should be cited. They show that we were there. When the
Egyptian pharaoh king names are examined, such as Ka-Mose, Ah-Mose, Thut-Mose,
Ra-Meses (also rendered as Amesis, Thutmois, Raamses) it can be seen that the
name/title of the leader of the Hebrews, -Mose/-Moshe is not coincidental. He
changed gods did he not? Egyptians would also say so. The first half of his name has
dropped out and been eliminated - with good reason. It should not be therefore
assumed that the “min hamayim mishitihu” (“snatched from the waters”) derivation –
as in the (mostly dissimilar and written later) Sargon story – cannot be complemented
or augmented by the linguistic analysis suggesting that Moses’ name is also Egyptian
in origin. And so are many other Jewish ancestral names such as Miriam and Pinchas.
And not to be overlooked is that archeology has excavated the “store-cities” (for grain
storage – remember Joseph? Ex:1v8), Pithom (House of the god Thom or Tum) and
Rameses (incarnation of the sun god – one of several other kindred translations).
Among these pharaohs are several candidates vying for the glory of the titles,
Pharaoh-of-the-Oppression and Pharaoh-of-the-Pursuit, depending upon which school
of historians is most persuasive.
Egypt’s Name
The name of the country Egypt is a Greek name. In truth, modern Egypt has lost its
original name. Other nations across the world have similar unhappy experiences with
their name and often with their histories, lost but not necessarily beyond recovery even
if no reclamations of the cultures are possible. Certain nations feel impoverished
without a heroic provenance and some are moved to invent greatness of their past.
Many people claim extraordinary paranormal origins like Rome’s Romulus and Remus
saga and the patriarch Jacob wrestling with the divine and becoming Israel.
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One also has to think about personal “culture names” that have disappeared wholesale
among many peoples especially those that are of African origin.
The first reference to Egypt in the bible is Mitzraim. It appears in the book of Genesis
taking the reader back to perhaps the earliest dawn of recorded humankind. We are
informed by the biblical writers that Ham the brother of Shem and Yiftah is identified as
the father of Mitzraim, or Metsr and Musur, to the peoples of the lands of the Tigris and
Euphrates.
Later minds took note of the Hebrew root of the word Mitzraim and related it to “tzar,”
“the straights”, that is, “confining,” “restricting”, “concentrated,” “constricting.” It was
taken to mean confined to labor under near slave conditions obviously comparable in
certain ways to the concentration camp confinement of their descendents centuries
later. And homiletically mitzraim can be taken to mean narrow-mindedness, constraint,
oppression.
THE NAME MOSES
Mose is a common name in Egyptian papyri. Raised in the palace,
Moses’ name is likely the second half of an Egyptian royal god-king name – meaning “son of” or
“follower of” or “personification/incarnation of” - acquired in Egypt, disclosing its geographical
source, regardless of whether Hebrew in derivation as well. (See poem in adjoining box.) My own
name derives from Reuven (“behold: a son”) in Hebrew, morphs into (Reb)Reeven in Yiddish and
Reeve in English. Moses is likewise a “son” name but of Egyptian origination.
Although an Egyptian God name may have preceded – Mose, may have been cast as the first
syllable of his birth’s intended calling, that he walked in the ways of Yah/El is certainly the
foundation of his greatness. And Scripture and subsequent traditions distinctly accentuate that he
never saw himself as the embodiment of his god. It bears repeating that the name Moshe, Moses
(whether or not the name also suggests the word play in Hebrew of deliverer or redeemer),
constitutes sufficient evidence of the sojourn in Egypt just as Persian names like Esther (Ishtar) and
Mordecai (Marduk) show that our ancestors sojourned in, or were subjects of, Persian hegemony no
matter how the Book of Esther is to be regarded.
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The point is that Egyptian-Biblical names are convincing evidence of the sojourn in Egypt of our
ancestors. But there is also considerable persuasive extra-biblical grounds for affirming the sojourn
in Egypt as historical fact in addition to the one Visotsky brings up in passing, that a people inventing
their past prefers nobility, descent from gods, heroes and heroic, courageous ancestors and not from
slaves or bondsmen– the view suggested by the late great HUC-JIR scholar and editor-in- chief of the
JPS (and RSV, a Christian-sponsored translation), Professor Harry Orlinsky.
ON HUMILIATING ORIGINS
K.A. Kitchen in his “On the Reliability of the Old Testament” (Eerdmans Publishing Co. Cambridge,
U.K. 2006) asks: “If there never was an escape from Egyptian servitude by any of Israel’s ancestors,
why on earth invent such a tale about such humiliating origins? Nobody else in the Near Eastern
antiquity descended to that kind of tale of community beginnings….but if the fact of some Hebrews
escaping from Egypt be granted, it does not, of course, follow that everything said about the Exodus
in our data is automatically original, part of the actual event. Large plants can grow from very small
seeds. Without other clear indications the authenticity or originality of the features attributed to
the event in Egypt and Sinai cannot be objectively verified or judged, but merely discussed endlessly
and mainly fruitlessly without definitely established results until the cow come home (as scholars
have done this last two hundred years or so, down to the present). Therefore, recourse to
independent sources is indispensable.”
EXTRA-BIBLICAL
Now for a small sample of the avalanche of the independent, indispensible and entirely extrabiblical evidence which Visotsky and his fellow minimalists ignore, principally my two favorites, the
Ipuwer Papyrus document and the el-Arish Shrine of Shu inscription in late hieroglyphics. And then
perhaps most important and convincing of all is the remarkable one-of-a-kind place-name
“coincidence” in the biblical scroll text reappearing in the Egyptian inscription text - and nowhere
else. For me, the biblical needle in the historical haystack, or bulrushes (sturdy Papyrus reeds which
gave its name to paper - or “reeds to read.”)
Further along we will submit a portion of all the voluminous, even mountainous, evidence of the
plagues. It will be show that they were not a local or regional but a universal episode of destruction
that brought about the displacement of peoples everywhere (see the prophet Amos) resulting from
the global catastrophe. The Hebrews were not the only people to make a dash for freedom then. A
veritable avalanche of data from the four corners of the planet reveals the extent of the catastrophe.
According to certain reconstructions of ancient history, it may have brought about the end of the
Middle Kingdom in Egypt. It is of note that contrary to the usual reading of the scriptural narrative,
the Targum Yerushalmi on Exodus records that during the plagues the vast majority of the Israelites
also perished and that only an unknown, perhaps only a minuscule percentage of the Hebrews
escaped and fled, as indeed only small populations of humanity elsewhere on earth survived the
devastation – likely, according to Velikovsky, of extraterrestrial origin. Would fiction writers of
marvelous, miraculous escape stories torpedo their own myth-making?
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It is also not entirely irrelevant to wonder how, if a fable, the Sojourn and the Exodus journey –
its power and imagery - took hold of the people to this day and, through the centuries, of over half
the world’s population. It’s not dayenu to merely take note that it has.
1. The Ipuwer Papyrus
The re-discovery by Immanuel Velikovsky of the Ipuwer Papyrus (Admonitions of An Egyptian
Sage) supporting and augmenting the biblical narrative may not be ignored by any serious scholar
even should that scholar care to debunk the finding. Ipuwer was a survivor of the catastrophe and
his testimony parallels the biblical report.
Ipuwer records his eyewitness report on papyrus. His lament testifies to the intensity, immediacy,
and immensity of the catastrophes sustained in Egypt. And enormous tidal waves also engulfed
entire tribes inhabiting the thousand mile coastal regions, bringing to mind the Katrina hurricane and
the tsunami devastations of our day and age. Ipuwer speaks for people from all the four corners of
the Earth who in different degrees experienced the same catastrophe. The words destruction,
disaster, catastrophe, all signify extra-terrestrial, “star-related,” originations. One result of the
disaster was the displacement of people everywhere. Furthermore, Ipuwer writes, “The river is
blood…plague is throughout the land. Blood is everywhere,” corresponding to Exodus, chapter
seven, “there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt.” Ipuwer describes further the allconsuming fire, corresponding to the eighth plague barad, “meteorites,” "brimstone, “as “very
grievous such as there was none like it in all the land” as in Exodus (9:23), “…and the fire ran along
the ground,” which, according to Ipuwer, all but “exterminated mankind.”
Even the Midrash discloses details of the (cosmic, sun or star-produced?) disturbances on the
Day of Passage. The Midrash Psikta Raboti, echoing Ipuwer, also says “the land is without light” as
does the Papyrus Anastasi IV reporting that “the sun does not rise”.
"THE PLAGUES" BY IPUWER
Velikovsky presents a careful analysis of the Ipuwer biblical parallels describing the
plagues of Egypt. His catalogue of parallel reports can be seen as difficult to dismiss out
of hand:
Velikovsky writes, (Pg. 17 Ages) “…the scriptural tradition persists that before the
Israelites left Egypt this land was visited by plagues, forerunners of a great holocaust
caused by frenzied elements. When the Israelites departed from the country they
witnessed gigantic tidal waves on the sea; farther off, in the desert, they experienced
spasmodic movements of the earth’s surface and volcanic activity on a great scale, with
lava gushing out of the cleft ground, suddenly yawning chasms, and springs disappearing
or becoming bitter.”
Ages (pg.19) “In 1909 the (Ipuwer) text, translated anew, was published by Alan H.
Gardiner under the title, The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage from a hieratic papyrus in
Leiden. Gardiner argued that all the internal evidence of the text points to the historical
character of the situation. Egypt was in distress; the social system had become
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disorganized; violence filled the land. Invaders preyed upon the defenseless population;
the rich were stripped of everything and slept in the open, and the poor took their
possession. 'It is no merely local disturbance that is here described, but a great and
overwhelming national disaster.' It is an Egyptian account of a terrible catastrophe, 'a
description of ruin and horror.'”
IPUWER- SCRIPTURAL IDENTIFICATIONS AND CORRESPONDENCE
BASED ON VELIKOVSKI’S RESEARCH;
THE PLAGUES: A BRIEF SURVEY
Blood: Ipuwer writes: “A plague throughout the land. Blood is everywhere. The river is
blood.” In the Jewish tradition, blood is the very first plague.
Water: Is contaminated in both the papyrus description and in Exodus. "Men shrink
from tasting...human beings thirst after water," reports Ipuwer. And the bible relates
that the Egyptians dug for water but could no longer drink from the river..."and the river
stank."
Trees: Are specifically mentioned as destroyed in both Biblical and Ipuwer accounts.
Fire: Which ran along the ground in the biblical account, consumed the buildings in the
Ipuwer account. Fire was everywhere burning uncontrolled and uncontrollable.
Hail or meteorites: ...and fire frightens the cattle into panic in both accounts as it ran
along the ground. Brimstone literally means burning stone or meteorites.
Fields: Of grains and barley are destroyed in both accounts in a single day.
Cattle: And other animals in the fields are in pitiful condition in both accounts. They are
left to stray unattended.
Darkness: Most significantly, a thick darkness, like the shadow of death (Velikovsky), a
blackness in which one could not see one's neighbor, is reported at both Ipuwer and the
biblical narrative. Ipuwer writes, "all the land is without light." In the biblical account we
are told, "...there was a thick darkness in all the land."
Earthquake: At this point Velikovsky interrupts his analysis of the parallels in the two
accounts to write (pg. 24) “Testimony from Egyptian sources about an earthquake was
sought, with the purpose of establishing a synchronic moment in Egyptian and Jewish
history. The evidence, when found, brought forth more analogies and showed greater
resemblance to the scriptural narrative than I had expected. Apparently we have before
us the testimony of an Egyptian witness of the plagues.” (Pg. 24) And “only an
earthquake could have overturned and ruined the royal residence in a minute. Sudden
and simultaneous death could be inflicted on many only by a natural catastrophe.”
Houses: are destroyed (by an earthquake) in both accounts and death visited
everywhere: (pg. 25) Ipuwer writes "He who places his brother in the ground is
everywhere. To it, Velikovsky finds correspondence with Exodus (12:30): "…there was
not a house where there was not one dead.”
Crying and Groaning: in both accounts. the shifting earth itself moaned and bewailed.
Mutiny: Ipuwer writes that “men ventured to rebel against royal authority.” The
Israelites were indeed revolting against the tyranny of enslavement. In both accounts!
Valuables: Both the biblical and Ipuwer accounts discuss jewelry and gold seized by the
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slaves.
God's Role: In the book of Exodus (12:33), Velikovsky points out, the Egyptians looked
upon their disaster as acts of the powerful God of the Asiatics (pg. 30): “The collapse of
stone structures, the dead and wounded in the debris, the fall of many statues of the
gods, inspired dread and horror; all these were looked upon as the acts of the God of
the slaves."
Haste: The Egyptian people, as opposed to the masters and palace rulers urged the
slaves to leave, and fast! Haste was critical as related in the Passover story. To this day
matzah is eaten as a reminder of the accelerated dash, the rush towards freedom and
the speed of the fleeing Hebrews tearing in the direction of "deliverance" – “meavdut
l’herut”- from bondage to freedom. And Ipuwer writes, "men flee” (they move with
haste) and “set up primitive tents” – as would survivors of earthquakes and other
catastrophes.
Storehouse: The papyrus also laments the takeover by “everyone” of the “storehouses”.
The storehouses which the slaves built, Pithom and Ramses come at once to mind.
After the plagues and the departure of the slaves, Ipuwer relates, “a foreign tribe (the
Hyksos/Amalake, which Velikovsky convincingly identifies) from abroad has come to
Egypt,” which was prostrate, flattened, defenseless. “To all the previous plagues this
was added: pillagers did complete the destruction, killing and raping” (pg. 32). By far
the worst plague of all for Egypt was the takeover of their country and royal house by
these Amalek/Hyksos. The Amalakites continued to plague the escapees as well. But
what went on back there in devastated Egypt after the Exodus was no longer of special
concern to the Hebrews or to the Biblical Narrator.
Velikovsky writes (Pg. 30): “No doubt flight and living in makeshift tents was shared by
the majority of the survivors, as has happened many times since then whenever a
violent shock has occurred, devastating cities; a new shock is feared by those who have
escaped with their lives. A 'mixed multitude' of Egyptians joined the Israelite slaves, and
with them hastily made toward the desert (Exodus 12:38). Their first brief stop was at
Succoth (13:20)-which in Hebrew means “huts”.
A certain unusual, even "strange", fire plays a huge and prominent part in both
accounts. A "pillar of fire", according to Exodus 13:21 “to give them light to go by
night.” Ipuwer reports that “fire has mounted up on high. Its burning goes forth against
(opposing, facing, fronting, into, counter to?) the enemies of the land.” (pg. 31)
The Psalm asks “what’s with you O sea that you fled, the Jordan that reverses itself in its
flow?” Velikovsky describes the hurricane that "blew all night and the sea fled:” (Pg. 31)
"In a great avalanche of water 'the sea returned to his strength', and 'the Egyptians fled
against it'. The sea engulfed the chariots and the horsemen, the pharaoh and his entire
host.
"The Papyrus Ipuwer (7:1-2) records only that the pharaoh was lost under unusual
circumstances ‘that have never happened before’. The Egyptian wrote his lamentations,
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and even in the broken lines they are perceptible…weep…the earth is…on every
side…weep…).”
2. The el-Arish Shrine of Shu
As for Egyptian records, the el-Arish shrine of black granite discovered on the borders between
Egypt and modern Israel bearing a lengthy hieroglyphic inscription employing the same description
of the plagues as Exodus 10:22 (with negligible differences) reads, in Immanuel Velikovsky’s
translation (Worlds In Collision, Dell Publishing Inc. New York, NY. 1950 p. 59), “…the land was in
great affliction. Evil fell on this earth…there was a great upheaval in the residence (of the
pharaoh)…nobody could leave the palace during nine days, and during these nine days of upheaval,
neither men nor gods (i.e., the royal family) could see the faces of those beside them.” The same
description of the darkness as Exodus 10:22.
The most significant evidence, as far as I am concerned, derives from this el-Arish Shrine referring
to the Pharaoh’s pursuit of fleeing slaves whom he followed to Pi-hiroti, the biblical Pi-ha-hirot,
whereupon he was swept up and then plunged in the “whirlpool.” We are informed in Exodus (14:2,
9 and Nu 33:7, 8) of its location, “between Migdol and the sea, before Baal-Zephon.”
What a piece of evidence is that name! Apparently found nowhere else in historical records. If
no other extra-biblical evidence were to be found, that reference alone identifying the very place a
pharaoh drowned in pursuit of “evil doers” would be convincing to any objective and non-prejudiced
researcher of the historicity of the Exodus.
In the town of el-Arish between Egypt and Palestine this black granite ancient shrine was
accidentally discovered. It proved to be a copy in late hieroglyphics of an earlier inscription according to Egyptologists.
The shrine had been used as a trough, a portion of a water cistern. Specific details mentioning
places and kings are cited and references made of a murderous alien invasion as having crossed
the borders into Egypt the Hyksos/Amalek hardly the Hebrews who were already leaving while
the plundering invaders were arriving. Because deities are named, the inscription was thought
mythological and unhistorical. But the names of real individuals are also mentioned, including
the Pharaoh, Thom, for whom the store city, Pi-Thom, was named. A translation of the text was
attempted when the shrine was finally taken to the Ismailia Museum.
Mention of the Egyptian kings, especially the Pharaoh Thom, “points,” according to Velikovsky,
“to the historical background of the text.” “In the mutilated text there are these lines.
“’The land was in great affliction. Evil fell on this earth…It was a great upheaval in the
residence…Nobody left the palace during nine days, and during these nine days of upheaval
there was such a tempest that neither the men nor the Gods could see the faces of their
next…’” The ninth plague!
An additional source to be placed alongside the Ipuwer papyrus, the el-Arish shrine and the
scriptural narrative Velikovsky unearths and relegates to a footnote (Ages pg. 50, #87). It is here
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reprinted in full: “In A.S. Yahuda, The Accuracy of the Bible (London, 1934), on p. 84, we find
the following passage: 'In the Myth of the God-Kings; which is as old as Egypt itself it is said that
the world was filled with darkness and the text proceeds literally, 'and no one of the men and
the gods could see the face of the other eight days'. The Hebrew author was less fantastic and
excessive than his Egyptian predecessor and therefore reduced the eight days to only three.'
With this remark the author of The Accuracy of the Bible contented himself."
The Exodus narrative tells the same story despite the discrepancy of the exact number of days
the sun could not be seen.
In the Midrash the darkness lasted seven days, in stages of differing intensity of darkness and in
various perceptions of the thickness obscuring light from the sun. At its worst, no one could
“stir from his place.”
Velikovsky also cites numerous rabbinic sources although they are clearly later oral traditions,
“describing the calamity of darkness,” as well as Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus.
The inscription on the shrine at el-Arish reveals that the name of the pharaoh who perished in
the whirlpool was Thom or Thoum. It is of interest that Pi-Thom means "the abode of Thom".
Pithom was one of the two cities built by the Israelite slaves for the Pharaoh of the Oppression.
According to Manetho, the pharaoh in whose days the "blast of heavenly displeasure" fell upon
Egypt, preceding the invasion of the Hyksos, is called Tutimaeus or Timaios.
The question, centuries or even millennia old, as to where the Sea of Passage was, can be
solved with the help of the inscription on the shrine. On the basis of clear indications in the
text, Pi-ha-Hirot, where the events took place, was on the way from Memphis to Pisoped. (V,
pg. 38 Ages in Chaos...footnotes 100-102)
3. The Canal
More than 10 centuries ago, in Mesopotamia, the nomadic wandering hunter gatherers, having
domesticated goats and sheep and having learned to cultivate crops of wheat and barley,
evolved to become the first farmers to establish agricultural villages in the hilly regions where
rain was abundant. Agriculture spread rapidly. Farmers also began to develop irrigation
methods to conserve rainfall and grow crops.
These Sumerians whose origins are still mysterious settled in the deep south of the Tigress
Euphrates valley in a region resembling the later Egyptian earliest villages alongside “reedchoked swamps” spread out over much of the Delta.
Slaves and workers began to excavate canals to channel water flow to the farmers’ advantage,
often bringing controlled water flow to cultivate fields of crops great distances from the rivers.
The construction of networks of canals – man-made inland passages or ducts built to channel
water for purposes of irrigation, navigation, drainage and controlled flooding -might have been
11
based on know-how brought to Egypt (as well as to the Indus valley) from Summer, the first
civilization.
Building a channel which conveys or conducts water requires the combined efforts of numerous
workers, slaves and hired men banding together for digging and maintaining complex irrigation
systems.
Engineering specialists, managers and planners of large building projects emerged who made
decisions on laying out the canals, dykes and dams and took responsibility that the flow of
water would be controlled for the maximum benefit to the surrounding village dwellers.
Military might also played an important role in canal building and operation. A canal
constructed up river reduced the water level down stream. To this day, wars erupted over the
diversion of water. The greatness of certain kings of Ur was trumpeted and measured by
building ziggurats and temples upwards to the heavens and - just as important or the more so
because of economic advancements - irrigation canals downward into the earth. Without
question, Egypt was influenced by the best of Mesopotamian technical innovations. Egyptian
law assessed the value of the ownership of land for tax purposes by its canals, wells and
waterways.
For thousands of years major movements of people and goods depended primarily and
upon inland waterways and upon sea lanes for transport and trade.
The significance of the findings in the early 1970’s, by a team of geological survey
scientists of Israel, is relevant in several ways. They discovered the remains of a canal whose
embankments were confirmed by aerial photography. These images show a canal exactly
where expected from reading the exodus account (and explaining the backtracking of the
Israelites to avoid the garrison station at the canal.) Now we know the likely location of this
partly man-made partly nature-created waterway – with near certainty but not pinpoint
accuracy - given the shifting of the terrain of a canal. The precise footprint in the marshes for
the location of the drowning pool may never be known with exactitude. But other methods
may yet reveal, with even greater precision, the one place identified in both Egyptian and
Israelite records as the location of the drowning of a pharaoh at the watery mouth of the
canal Pi-ha-hirot/Pi-hiroti, the very place appearing in both the biblical Exodus and Egyptian
el Arish records. The discovery of the remains of the canal elevates the importance of the
toponym Pi-ha-hirot and its location; it requires a reconsideration of the dates, now
necessitating an alignment with the biblical narrative. That alignment requires Ipuwer, an
eyewitness to the account from the Egyptian side, to coincide with the Exodus account. And
the shrine report must refer to the same occurrence regardless of when it was inscribed in
stone, perhaps as an account of a recent and still raw incident. The place name of the
Egyptian king’s plunge in a whirlpool, chasing evil doers - even if pharaohs chased evil-doers
12
every Monday and Thursday- refers to where only one such pursuit came to submersion.
Corroborative reporting, therefore, originating from biblical and extra-biblical sources relate
an account of a pharaoh’s drowning on such a chase at Pi-ha-hirot/Pi-hiroti and that unhappy
incident – from an Egyptian perspective -or momentous occurrence – from another
persuasion - happened only once in history.
One can be certain that the craftsmen or craftsman chiseling data on granite narrating the
drowning of a pharaoh did not make up the story and arbitrarily chose Pi-ha-hirot/Pi-hiroti
for local color as back-drop for fiction. Or, having attended the same writers’ workshop as
the Egyptian inscription-maker, did the biblical scribe then compose a made up story about a
king’s drowning and chose the same story as his African fellow student’s location and setting
for the fictional telling, perhaps as a homework assignment? Fanciful accounting by a
dedicated creative minimalist could reconcile even this unlikely coincidence (it’s not
impossible that pharaohs kept drowning there) but it will nevertheless remain fanciful.
James Hoffmeier, in his excellent “Israel and Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the
Exodus Tradition”, may be too cautious in failing to cite the el-Arish/biblical parallels at Pi-hahirot. Another student of the Exodus/Egyptian account might view the canal, the verses in
the biblical account and the shrine reference to Pi-hiroti as disclosures convincing enough to
warrant closing the lid upon, or propelling and compelling a conclusion to, the argument of
whether the Exodus is history or fiction.
Pi-ha-hirot may reveal itself to be the serendipitous needle in history’s haystack sticking
Egyptologists, biblical scholars, minimalist and maximalist with a prick of authenticity and
synchronicity such that any reasonable, objective, neutral person will necessarily emit a cry of
“ouch” or “eureka” as the case may be. This evidence of synchronicity (Ipuwer as eyewitness;
the el Arish shrine, for corroboration of the pharaoh’s engulfment - or en-canal-ment - and
the whereabouts of the toponym cited in both the biblical and extra-biblical account of an
Egyptian king swallowed up in a Yam Suf canal Exodus occurrence) requires a realignment of
history as Velikovsky has suggested over a half century ago in the context of a cosmic
catastrophe.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Hoffmeier writes that it is profitably revealing to trace the terrain of the canal, a “23
kilometer stretch between the Suez Canal and Pelusium. The width of the Pelusiac
branch (the Pelusiac branch of the Nile is in the area east of the Suez Canal - rrb)
varied in width from 80 to 100 meters, whereas the canal displayed a constant width
of 70 meters. The former is what would be expected from a river, while the latter is
consistent with the man-made feature. Moreover, one should expect to find an
embankment dump from the excavation and dredging of a canal; the reason the line
of the canal is visible in the aerial photographs is because of the embankments, whose
presence was confirmed after on-ground examination of the canal traces.” (Hoffmeier
on pg. 165 credits Israelis Sneh and Weissbord with the discovery of traces of the
canal).
13
The “growing consensus” concerning the place name or toponym, Pi-ha-hirot, according to
James Hoffmeier, is that it derives from the Hebrew letters chet, resh and tof. Accordingly the
word retains the same meaning to this day, namely, “to cut into or engrave”: “Engraved,” as
in an inscription in the black granite of the shrine or “cut out” as excavating earth for
diverting the waterways of a canal. Whether it is Egyptian and translated as “Canal City” or
Semitic as “the place at the mouth (“peh”) of the canal,” James Hoffmeier writes that the
toponym “describes a point where a canal opens or empties into a larger body of water…Now
that there is evidence for a canal from Pharaonic times, the reading of Pi-ha-hirot as the
juncture between the canal and one of the lakes in the Isthmus of Suez takes on credibility.”
We might add, “regardless of its precise pin-point location,” perhaps unknowable, given the
shifting terrain alongside the canal and human canal building interventions. Strategically, the
“Eastern Frontier Canal” was meant primarily as a defensive safeguard against attack and to
impede escape. Migdol, in close proximity, means (watch) tower, a fortress where an
Egyptian garrison was stationed.
THE DROWNING POOL
James Hoffmeier does not make the connection or draw the conclusion that el-Arish’s Pihiroti must be aligned with Shemot 14:2 and Bamidbar 33:7 as descriptions of the same
location and the same event. Velikovsky takes note of the matter in passing but not as a
“gotcha” proving his point. Nevertheless the Pharaoh drowning pool in both accounts
identifies the canal as the location of his watery grave. More important, a pharaoh’s death
by drowning really happened and Pi-hiroti/Pi-ha-hirot is where it happened and it is reported
as having happened there in both an extra-biblical account and in the Tanach as well, that is,
by both sides. This was therefore an historical event, not myth-making (that too, really), but
essentially contemporaneous or near contemporaneous testimony, raw data and trustworthy
“documents”.
===============================================================
It can now be reasonably argued that as trustworthy evidence - proven by this
serendipitous correspondence of a pharaoh’s immersion in both the ancient Hebrew and
Egyptian records at Pi-hiroti/Pi-ha-hirot - the minimalist can no longer question the
authenticity and reliability of the biblical texts. Minimalists have been insisting that the
biblical text requires extra-biblical documentary corroboration and that the biblical reports
are suspect without it. Never mind that these same extra-biblical documents are themselves
suspect for the same reasons invoked by them of hyperbola and exaggeration. Pi-hiroti/Piha-hirot shifts the burden again from off the back of the traditional/maximalists – perhaps
even reproachfully according to the extent of the particular minimalist’s hidden agenda. Now
minimalists and skeptics must pick up the burden to “dis-authenticate” and disprove biblical
testimonies and reportage. Not the other way around.
Moreover, if the events of both books of the bible, the book of Exodus and the book of
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Joshua, “rise and fall together,” as many biblical critics pro and con trustworthiness maintain
(a subject to which we will return to refute), then the Joshua narrative is also to be deemed
largely reliable. And the “peaceful infiltration” thesis and the “indigenous immigration”
hypothesis – and various other creative minimalist views are to be expanded, modified or
rejected outright in favor of the biblical text-based model of “conquest,” whatever that
means in its broadest definitions – by war, treaty, take-over, absorption or any number of
ways and combinations of ways one people “conquers” another (and a region) forcefully
and/or otherwise– an account which, in turn, supports and strengthens the moorings of the
sojourn-exodus tradition. And the books of Joshua and Judges, principally the reports in
Joshua 1-11, are more than important ideological and etiological sagas. Certain core elements
in the biblical traditions, including the catastrophe behind the departure/Exodus and Israel’s
arrival by conquest – however understood - to the land of Canaan from Egypt are likely
basically sound interpretations of a factual report.
As for the splitting Sea of Reeds departure which proceeded the wandering
generation, Nahum M. Sarna in Exploring Exodus (pg. 109) writes:
"Of course, the idiosyncratic use of yam suf in the Bible complicates the problem of
retracing the route of the Exodus. One scholar has noted that the yam suf that the
Israelites crossed has been variously identified as no fewer than nine different bodies
of water in locations that are to be found along the Mediterranean coast, the Suez
Canal, and the Gulfs of Suez and Aqaba, while thirteen distinct sites have been
suggested for Mount Sinai in widely separated regions of the Sinai Peninsula and even
in Moab and Edom."
However, that was reported before the discovery of the canal. Confusion of candidates for
yam suf now can no longer be sustained now that the canal has been identified from above.
With regard to the Sea of Passage, contemporary aerial photographs taken of Lake Timsah at
“the mouth” of which is Pi-ha-hiroth, that is, just north of the lake, but opening to the south,
show marshes of reed-choked swamps surrounding the lake such that the location’s
name/designation qualifies as yam suf to this day. As has been argued, that is likely the very
place or as close as we can get to where “the watershed,” core historical event, literally and
figuratively, took place. And with good objective reasoning we should say of the Israelite
leadership then, today looking back: “good intelligence gathering; good plan of an escape
route; good tactics taking opportunistic advantage wisely of the terrain while faking being
trapped and seizing the opportunity presented by the suddenness and extent of the natural
catastrophic conditions;” and later, reflected in the espionage report in the book of Joshua,
leading to prudent and effective strategies for overcoming impediments to their settlement
objectives in the land of Canaan, and given all the factors of which we know too few, we
should also add, “well done.”
4. DNA, the Lemba and the Cohen
Another extra-biblical source for evidence of the Exodus may at first glance appear
exotic if not doubtful. But it can also be regarded as one of many data which, taken
together, may be thought of as constituting and contributing to the preponderance of
15
“extraneous” extra-biblical evidence for the authentication of the Exodus tradition.
The Lemba, a Bantu-speaking people composed of 12 groups, claim an ancient
tradition that they originate in Judea. They say they are descendant from the 12 tribes
of the book of Genesis. They practice circumcision, avoid eating pig and pig-like
animals such as the hippopotamus. [It is common knowledge that for decades the
Lemba tribe in southern Africa of some 50,000 members proclaimed their Jewish
identity. DNA testing disclosed that indeed tribe members have Jewish genetic
markers and over half of the males in the tribes priestly plan (the Buba) carry markers
of the Kohanim, the priest dating back to Aaron, the brother of Moses. The conclusion
was reached that “the Lemba’s roots go back more than 3,000 years to the time of the
founding of the Jewish population in biblical Israel.” (Reform Judaism, Spring
2008/5768, pg. 94)
Karl Skorecki, a Canadian nefrologist, among other Jewish geneticists, “designed an
ingenious experiment to find out whether the Kohanim (descendants of the ancient
Jewish priests class – a distinct heritage that originated with Moses’ brother Aaron but
is now past down orally from father to son) could in fact be verified by genetics…
“The male or Y chromosome doesn’t change from father to son…, except for random
mistakes/mutation, which occur at a fairly regular rate and which offer geneticists
what amounts to a date stamped.” That is, geneticists are able to identify mutations
and determine when they first came about.
“The researchers gathered saliva from 200 Jewish males, a third of whom identified
themselves as kohanim, at the Western Wall during the High Holidays. Remarkable,
no matter whether they were Sephardic, Ashkenazic, or Oriental Jews, 98.5% of those
who said they were kohanim shared a genetic marker for a common ancestor, a
signature mutation pattern found in only 3% of the general Jewish population.
(Reform Judaism, Spring 2008/5768 pg. 30)
“Study found a set of marker mutations common to approximately 60% of selfproclaimed kohanim. Using complex mathematical calculations the now expanded
research team identified what they dubbed the Cohan Modal Haplotype (CHM), a
series of six genetic markers common to the kohanim, which, to their astonishment,
originated more than 3,000 years ago-approximately the time of the biblical Aaron,
the first kohan.” (Reform Judaism, Spring 2008/5768 pg. 30-31)
A number of tribes of peoples make similar claims of attachment by descent to the
biblical people of Israel and Judea. But the Lemba tradition, as reported by Nicholas
Wade in the NY Times, 5/9/99 (page 1), “may be exactly right.” A team of geneticists
has found that many Lemba men carry in their male chromosome a set of DNA
sequences that is distinctive of the cohanim, the Jewish priests believed to be the
descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses.
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THE COHEN
“Geneticists in the US, Israel and England…wondered what truth there might be to the
Jewish tradition that priests are descendants of Aaron, the older brother of Moses.”
Dr. Michael F. Hammer of the Univ. of AZ who studies the genetics of human
populations through the male or Y chromosome, bequeathed only from father to son.
“The Cohen-associated genetic signature…is highly diagnostic of …Jewish ancestry.”
The timeline taking us back to the period of the lives of Moses and Aaron may provide
genetic data although they do not provide corroborating testimony for an Exodus,
obviously. But DNA information of Aaronide descent supports the authenticity of the
narrative.
“Dr. David B. Goldstein, a population geneticist at Oxford University in England, finds
that 45% of Ashkenazi priests and 50% of Sephardic priests have the Cohen genetic
signature, while in Jewish populations in general, the frequency is three to five
percent.”
Some of his subjects had the Cohen genetic signature but with slight variations caused
by mutations. From the pattern and number of mutations, Dr. Goldstein was able to
calculate when the present-day bearers of the Cohen genetic signature and its
variations last shared a common ancestor. This date, when all the branches of the
family tree coalesce into a single trunk, has a wide range of uncertainty and depends
on several assumptions, like the number of years in a human generation and the rate
of mutation. But assuming 25 years to a generation n average, Dr. Goldstein
calculated the coalescence time 2,650 years ago, or 3,180 years with a 30 year
generation time.
“Though they are only rough, these dates make an evocative match with the Jewish
tradition that Moses assigned the priesthood to the male descendants of his brother
Aaron after the Exodus from Egypt, believed to have occurred some 3,000 years ago.”
5. Swept Up-Uplifted-Elevated-Raised Above
One or all of these constitute appropriate translations of the biblical word “ramah” which
was the image chosen in describing and reporting the fate of the pharaoh of the Sea of Reeds
passage point Pi-Ha-hirot/PiHiroti moments before his drowning in pursuit of the Exodus
fugitive community.
“Sus Vrochvo Ramah Bayam”: “horse and chariot did He lift upward in (or into) the sea”. It
does not say b’gal that is, on a wave or sweep of the water as in a tsunami. I have watched
the footage of film of unfortunate victims swept along by a tsunami and “swept up” appears
to fit the description of a tsunami or flash flood event. A flash flood/tsunami should not be
ruled out as a possible source of the episode of the destruction of the King and his hosts.
17
Elsewhere, the word ramah is invariably translated as “lifted" rather than "hurled" (except
when a deliberate allusion to the exodus drowning episode is invoked). But hipil, hiphil,
hishlich, he'ef, haitil and even zarak, not ramah, would yield thrown, tossed, hurled or flung.
Because images are uncertain, then perhaps as an historical reference, they are far too
imprecise to be of much use. Particularly when it is a descriptive image. But a pictorialization
portraying an actual occurrence in words - a kind of snapshot in discourse - may not be
dismissed as merely a metaphor. Also, when isolated and without context an image may not
be used as evidence on the same convincing level as other more specific evidence cited
above. But this portrait both sides have painted in reportage of a Pharaoh's drowning is
hardly out of context. Besides, how much of a coincidence could it be that two drowning
events would be illustrated in description by both sides as having the victim, in sequence,
elevated, that is, uplifted first - that is, preliminarily - before! - his submergence, in a
whirlwind tsunami flashflood? Another piece of evidence of accurate reportage from both
escapees and victims?
That the word ramah should be translated “upraised” or “elevated” and not hurled or flung
can be verified at once in chapter 14, verse 8 which concludes that the “children of Israel
were departing ‘b’Yad Ramah,’ with an ‘upraised arm’” – not a hurled, thrown, tossed or
flung arm. Yad ramah is a metaphor for: “the Israelites were departing boldly.” (JPS
translation -year?) But it means "uplifted."
Precisely the images employed in the Egyptian documents! The reporting of an unusual
drowning preceded by an even more unusual "uplift" of the Pharaoh followed by his
submergence is reported in both accounts. By both accounts the episode did not entail a
direct plunge into Neptune’s deep; rather the king was swept up high first - in full sight of
survivors on both sides. The description of the drowning episode inscribed on the el-Arish
shrine records that the pharaoh “leaped into the place of the whirlpool and was lifted by a
great force.”
Velikovsky, in his Ages in Chaos informs his readers that the parallels found in Egyptian and
biblical text were not pre-cooked to resemble each other. The comparisons in terminology
Velikovsky makes between the book of Exodus and the Papyrus Ipuwer were based on
translations published prior to the publication of Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision and Ages in
Chaos. The translations of Egyptian documents “could not have been influenced by a desire
to make his (A.H. Gardiner’s) translation resemble the biblical text.” (pg. 21-Ages in Chaos).
No one had connected the two testimonies before Velikovsky in 1950. Details of the Pharaoh
drowning on the el Arish Shrine were not seen for what they really were – a construct of the
same Exodus incident – by any Egyptologist or biblical scholars. Not until Velikovsky’s
representation and reconstruction of a global catastrophe accounting for the background or
setting of the Exodus. One wonders how could there not be records of such a calamity. A
huge catastrophe struck with many despairing witnesses among literate survivors which
explains the discovery of a number of corresponding papyri and at least a single inscribed
shrine thus far recounting the plagues, the fleeing evil doers and the drowning of a pharaoh.
18
It would have been extraordinary had there been no corroborative extra biblical Egyptian
evidence ever found.
But the hard evidence that both sides of a disaster equation pointedly recorded the fact that
a Pharaoh was physically and unceremoniously lifted up before his downward plunge is far
too significant to be overlooked or seen merely as coincidental – especially given the place
name PiHaroti/PiHirot in both documents revealing the whereabouts of this most unusual
drowning – preceded by an upward sweep - a raising and plunging of a Pharaoh chasing
escapees.
THE DROWNING
A drowning entails a descent, a downward submerging. It is not normally preceded by an
upward thrust of the victim, propelled by some unknown force, preliminarily throwing the
victim skyward. Leaving aside for now what force may have propelled the pharaoh upward,
the very fact of reporting such a phenomenon must be seen as extraordinary.
Drowning
of human beings do not come about ordinarily by first being lifted in some manner skyward
before being plunged into the sea unless perhaps by flash flood tsunamis. We know that the
translators of the Egyptian documents did not render their translations with the biblical
account in mind. That is, the translations were not influenced by the biblical narrative but by
an understanding of what actually transpired – what was being reported. The several
translators of the hieratic text had no notion that the text they were translating had been
composed under the influence of, or their being any correspondence to, the biblical text.
However, the song of the sea in the book of Exodus begins with “sus v’rochvo rama b’yam”
(“horse and chariot were uplifted in the sea.”) The reportage of this extraordinary and most
unusual incident of a pharaoh’s drowning which was proceeded by his being first raised or
lifted up, cannot be seen as a coincidence.
The two accounts must be of the same event. Both accounts took special note of the fact
that those within eyesight of the catastrophe, on both sides, saw and reported the identical
occurrence, that the pharaoh, his horse and chariot were upward swept – and that lift-off
was of considerable height to take note of it from a distance.
It can be assumed that the escapees on the bank of the canal, the “Sea of Passage,” had a
good view by being in close proximity to the historical event. Now we know there were
accurate reports from both sides corroborating the incident.
6. TRUSTWORTHY REPORTING
Another huge piece of extra-biblical information alluded to in the biblical narrative may be
introduced for possible relevance to the historicity of the biblical narrative’s authenticity. It is widely
acknowledged that there are no ancient Egyptian texts or hieroglyphic tablets of defeat of a
Pharaoh. How could their god suffer defeat? No such notion ever applied to Jewish leadership as
evidenced in the biblical texts (perhaps unconsciously rejecting an alien Egyptian creed). By contrast,
Egyptian documents were not generated by a free press or by faithful reporting of the facts on the
ground. One must read then between the lines. Jews have always done so with their own sacred
script which is how Midrash, commentary, feminist literature in our day and thousands of Aggadot
and Haggadot have come about. Judaism has always maintained a free press. How else can you
19
explain Moses’ faults recounted in the bible and, despite his rejection by the Jewish Establishment,
Spinoza’s cherished place in the Jewish pantheon of thinkers?
The bible can be seen as reporting things - through the Writer's eyes and
understanding/interpretation to be sure- as they were and not in miraculous supernatural fairy tales
as in various Egyptian narratives which require winning every skirmish even when being devoured by
“the whirlpool into which the pharaoh leapt.” But proceeding forward into the bleak wilderness
safeguarding their families, guided by rather practical intelligence-gathering scouts/spies and
pursuing sober strategies for survival in their trek through the wilderness - not with a refrain on their
lips that god will defeat our enemies and that we therefore can march right down the killing fields
without harm. No, they skirted the strongly held cities and byways. Circled around, feinted and
darted. Not always successfully as their experience with attacks by Amalek - whom Velikovsky
identifies with the Hyksos - testifies.
But this is merely the introduction to the quintessential core of the testimony of history
sustaining the authenticity of the narrative and contributing further support for taking the narrative
as the report of the very real events following the exodus of the Moses led congregation.
When one turns to consider the testimony of archeology’s dating of the end of the Bronze
Age and the beginning of the Iron Age we may safely suppose that the destruction terminating the
18th Egyptian dynasty and Israel’s slavery may have taken place at this juncture. It seems likely that
the Hebrews had not the means to acquire the weaponry or were not able in a short time to train in
the new technology of the iron age which might have enabled them to take on in battle the tribes
and Canaanite nations that had (already some time before) developed and knew how to use iron
weaponry in battle. Iron cuts bronze to shreds. An approximate time for the Exodus may be teased
out of the fact that the Hebrews avoided the area of the Philistine domain simply because, as we
know from archeology, the Philistines had iron weaponry. The Hebrews could not and wisely would
not, take them on. Why would the report of this sage military strategy be convincing and the report
of the preceding upheaval and bolt to freedom deemed mythology?
7. Thera/Santorini
No Proof for the Exodus?
The potential role of Thera and 14C dating of the destruction of Jericho
by Rich Deem
Is there any physical evidence for the Exodus described in the Bible? If you were to read the
popular press, you would come to the conclusion that not only was there no evidence, but the
evidence actually contradicted known archaeology. One such article recently appeared in Time
Magazine. The usual complaints surround the lack of archaeological evidence of the Hebrews'
wanderings through the desert. However, nomadic people seldom, if ever, leave any evidence of
their presence. The Bible tells us that throughout the Exodus, the people never planted crops,
built cities or did anything that would be expected to be found in thousands of square miles of
desert. The Bible says that even their clothing did not wear out. The chances of finding any
physical evidence of the Exodus itself seems extremely unlikely. However, the events
surrounding the Exodus (both before and after) are testable and datable.
Unfortunately, extremely strong evidence for the validity of the Exodus has been published only
in the scientific journals and never made it to the popular press. These studies examined one of
the Egyptian plagues (before the Exodus) and demise of Jericho (after the Exodus). Drs. Hendrik
J. Bruins and Johannes van der Plicht reported in the prestigious British journal, Nature,1 that the
20
destruction of Jericho was dated to 1580 (± 13 years) B.C. (using 14C dating). This date is
significant, since several archeologists have insisted that Jericho was destroyed by the Egyptians
between 1550 and 1300 B.C. The recent study discredits the Egyptian theory, since the date is
much too old.
What is even more interesting is that scientists, using 14C dating and tree rings, have found
evidence of a volcanic eruption from the Aegean island of Thera, which has been dated to 1628
B.C.2 This would place the eruption at 45 years prior to the destruction of Jericho, at a time
which coincidentally corresponds to the time of the plagues the Lord unleashed upon Egypt.
Check out Exodus 10:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward the sky, that there may be darkness
over the land of Egypt, even a darkness which may be felt.” So Moses stretched out his hand
toward the sky, and there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days. (Exodus
10:21-22)
======================================================
The eruption of Thera/Santorini may have had nothing to do with the cataclysms of the
exodus event/experience. Or it may have everything to do with it. Or it may have, to a
certain extent, been incidentally connected as an important but one of many
catastrophic episodes arising from a regional or global event of which the eruption was
perhaps the most predominant and most conspicuous of numerous volcanic eruptions.
It is also the best documented. (Except for the Sinaitic one).
“Having nothing to do with it” is an argument of merit for those who hold to
conventional dating of Thera at about 1400 and the Exodus at about 1300 or 1200. But
these dates are not infallible as Velikovsky and others have shown. They are tentative at
best. He submits that cataclysms are indeed the best way to attempt synchronization,
that is, to identify as concurrent historical events which occur in different parts of the
world. As these natural cataclysms pinpoint history’s synchronisms best – far better
then other criteria historians judge to be accurate in establishing timelines. When
necessary, the rungs of the ladder of history have to be brought down or raised up in
accordance with simultaneous catastrophic occurrences documented over the globe.
==============================
Minimalists almost in one voice proclaim not only that the biblical account is fiction.
They insist that the documents are pious fictions written much later, not earlier than the
Persian period and more likely even later during Hellenistic times, that is, very much
later than traditional dating established.
The interest of this set of facts is that, if the Exodus-Numbers-Deuteronomy and Judges
narratives had only been first invented many centuries later (e.g., in the sixth to third
centuries), nobody would ever have heard of Midianites, to be able to write stories about them.
(On the Reliability of the Old Testament – pg. 214)
And significantly, the Hebrew bible, including the Exodus narrative, fails to reflect any
Persian or Greek culture, language, idiom, place names or any evidence whatsoever
convincing, or even suggesting, that the biblical writers knew of the culture or life of
later historical times. The Exodus story had to be written long before the minimalist
21
dating. There are simply no clues, no proof of influences from Persian or Greek periods,
not a single trace of evidence from these times and therefore no warrant to date the
documents as recent. Instead the documents must be tied to the times as reflected in
the biblical text. And to what extent the writers were propagandists; were
disseminating required ideologies with a pronounced political perspective; were
advocating specific policies and ideologies; were salesmen, zealots, catechizers and
missionaries; or were merely passionate Yahwists, must be discussed elsewhere.
Undoubtedly, this is not the place to repudiate or uphold the von Ranke 19 th century
idea that there is one truth to be told. Most people today understand that there is no
such thing as a single reality or only one objective truth for all to apprehend. Our
modern or post modern mind is quite prepared to affirm that there are different
versions of the facts/experience presented according to the viewpoints perceived by the
historian who does not come to that professional role from a vacuum and without longheld attitudes and values coloring his/her conclusions or way of interpreting an incident.
For one reporter the calamity resulting in the drowning is seen as a glorious moment
featuring the king who is submerged and then miraculously lifted up to meet his maker.
And for another observer/author, the pharaoh going down into the depths of the waters
at the mouth of the canal is an ingloriously dishonorable and unpleasant death. At PiHiroti each side scored a victory according to the narrator: The Egyptians chased away
the evildoers and the god/pharaoh ascended to his deserved place on high. The
Israelites fled. For the Hebrews, they had escaped. On the Egyptian side, the other side,
“good riddance”. (And mitzrayim, understood in contemporary times as “the straights,”
from tzar, meaning, rejecting the narrow-minded thinking, reflects contemporary winwin thinking). For the Hebrews: herut – liberty.
========================================================
7. EXODUS EVIDENCE - DAYENU
Were it only for the Psalms recording that “b’tzet, when Israel ‘Exodus-ed’ Egypt…the sea
fled…the (far off) Jordan reversed direction, the mountains danced like rams….,” it would be dayenu.
Were it only for the Papyrus Ipuwer, Papyri Harris and Anastasi IV and Papyri Leningrad and
Leiden, and the Ermitage Papyrus, all in their different ways relevant to ancient accounts of
earthquakes, upheaval, plagues, panic and flight– it would have been dayenu.
Were it only for the fact that to this day the calendar date of the Passage is celebrated joyously
every year as the birthday of our people and as a day of mourning and bad luck in Egypt, it would
have been dayenu.
Were it only for the testimony of all the Egyptian-derived Hebrew names of the biblical
participants and the many place names in the Exodus epic, it would have been dayenu.
Were it only for the global evidence of the plagues or only of the reports of the universality of
the blood everywhere in the waters of the world, gathered and collated by Israeli scholars such as
Aharon Sharif and especially Immanuel Velikovsky (not to mention Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the
Beagle) - it would have been dayenu.
22
Were it only for the fact that nations create noble origins and do not invent stories of their birth
pangs out of the debased conditions of servitude, slavery or bondage which Israel experienced as
divinely determined, it would have been dayenu.
And above all, had there been only the shrine in el-Arish telling of hurricanes, darkness, and the
pursuit by the Egyptians of the fleeing slaves - whereupon “his majesty leaped into the place of the
whirlpool… (and was then) lifted by a great force,” it would have been dayenu.
And had nothing else but that drowning-pool place been identified on the shrine as Pi-hiroti
corresponding to the biblical Pi-ha-hirot – it would have been more than enough. Dayenu!
Herbert Spencer said: “There is a principle, which is a bar against all information, which is proof
against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a person in everlasting ignorance – that principle
is contempt prior to investigation.” And Karl Giberson adds, “Our imaginations pose curious
limitations on our search for truth. Often it seems impossible that something could be the case, not
because the evidence is not there, but because the intellectual machinery to get our minds around
the problem seems to be missing.”
Moses
Your nomenclature lacks patrimony
Moses
Son of an innominate deity
Apocalyptic apocopated, truncated God
You sacrifice half your name to the people
And to Adonai.
Pseudonym, assume a name
Denominate
the people must be brought to their
mountain
and you to yours
where you remain.
The people must have
their awesome utterances,
divine letters,
their visionary images
and you must hear
the Voice speaking
from the thornbush
23
calling out your summons
from the blaze of ur-lightenment.
The people must see
the radiant signal
and solve the mystery
of sacred writ.
Ra-moses, Thut-moses, Ka-moses, Ah-moses
hearken to your El, -Moses
The people must have you Moses
The fervor of your glowing eyes
and your laying on
of the power and warmth of your hands.
By Reeve Robert Brenner
BRENNER’S VELIKOVSKIAN CATASTROPHIST HAGGADAH COMPANION.
7. The Fifth Son and A Fifth Question
For some thoughtful Jews the fifth son might be the son who denies the events of the Exodus as
portrayed in the Bible. And the fifth question might be “Is there extra-biblical evidence for the
Exodus?” The Haggadah provides an answer to the question, how do you treat the Jew who denies the
historicity of the Exodus. It is said in the Haggadah concerning the denying Jew, “ot ptach lo” which
can be translated as “you slap him across the face hard.”
For other thoughtful Jews, the fifth question might be presented as follows: If the cataclysm was
universal and not regional, why did the Hebrew/Israelite/Jewish version of the event/story become the
authoritative one? How did over half of humanity buy into the story as told by the Hebrews and not by
any one of the many other peoples, nations or populations the world over who also sustained the
destruction and also departed for distant lands? Was it because the children of Israel - by dint of the
literary power of their story-telling/haggadah capacities- retained the memory of their own distant
land? Were there not other peoples who preserved comparable recollections of ancient homelands
beckoning them home? Or were the children of Israel simply better storytellers such that their version
of shared catastrophe won out over all others in the competition for the consciousness of humanity?
Is the explanation to be traced to the Jewish ‘way with words’ which accounts for the Jewish pantheon
of 20th century authors including Mailer, Bellow, Roth, Malamud, Wiesel, Ozik, Singer in our time as
well as then and since? Do these authors constitute essentially a modern contemporary version of
Jewish story tellers reflective of the ancient creative gifts which crafted the biblical Exodus story and all
other towering, soaring, scriptural narratives capturing the consciousness of the western world?
24
Jews have often wondered why their family album relating the foundational stories of their
ancestors (unfortunately without photographs or portraiture ), namely the Hebrew bible also called the
Old Testament, managed to find its way onto the mantle piece of so many millions who from the
Jewish perspective should revere their own family albums not those of others. Jews are often wryly
amused to see their family tree grafted upon by so many diverse non-family members who apparently
have no early ancestral narratives of their own. Is it because, Jews wonder, they don’t have or have
forgotten their own early stories and therefore reach out to take on another people’s tribal
origination? The Germans of the 20th century were made so uncomfortable by their lack of patrimony
they adopted Teutonic myths so as not to fall under the sway of Judaism’s intellectual “plague” on
civilization. Wagner, Fichte, Hegel and Kant sought to point Germany in a different direction, one
which, intentionally or purposefully, turned its back on Judaic-Christian morality in favor of Nordic,
Aryan, values - and world conquest. Egypt redux!
Desert ethics
THE PESACH STRADDLE
Challenging the mythos/allegory/pious-fiction/legend classification which tosses the scripture account
of the exodus into the myth-bin of history should not be taken to mean there is no mythology in the
epic. There is no denying the power of myth. Many thinkers have observed that a myth to a people is
as a dream to an individual. And without understanding a person’s dreams there can hardly be an
understanding of the person. Like a dream, a myth is “true.” There are no untrue dreams. They serve
the function of revealing truths however obscure and mysterious its delivery system. Myths and
dreams do not lie. They both, in similar ways, have been regarded as “messages from the gods.” But
both myths and dreams are difficult to decipher. Take the matter of the tenth plague. And the various
possible meanings of the very term “Pesach”! Consult the prevailing image artists and classical
painters and sculptures conceived as representations of the angel of death “passing over” the homes
of the children of Israel and slaying the first born (or if the chet was originally a chof, the “Chosen” of
Egypt, that is, those who were wealthy and well-born and lived in the vicinity of the palace.) We would
do well to remember that the Hebrews lived apart from the Egyptians in their own community.
Perhaps the plagues following on the heels of the catastrophe never got there to the extent that they
had reached other neighborhoods. But that does not break the myth (as in Paul Tillich's concept of the
Broken Myth).
The image of the angel of death is portrayed as having alighted upon the portal of the door, stretching
across or “straddling”! – as some scholars translate the word Pesach in that context in preference to
“skipping” along and “passing” over. But in any event, the angel comes to rest above and astride the
top of the entrance-way. Death’s legs spread across and spanning or vaulting the doorway. Death
pauses. Bends forward and downward to scrutinize the portal to be certain of the markings of symbolic
blood from the killing of the Egyptian God-cattle/bull and, depending upon the sign's marking the
25
participant in revolt, kills or passes over and then on to the front door of the next home.
======================================================
[Charles Darwin, in The Voyage of the Beagle, reports his observation of blood red seas around Tierra
del Fuego. (p17, L. Engel, ed. Anchor Press, Doubleday edition 1962)…and off the coast of Chile:]
Universal/Regional/Local - the Bible per Buber
Justly celebrated, the luminous scholarly study “Moses” by Martin Buber suggests to the reader a
“local” classification for the Exodus drama seeing that for him the focal source of the catastrophes –
the entire range of the trysting place – is confined to the Nile.
Buber writes, “In the name of ‘the God of the Hebrews' he demands of Pharaoh to let God’s
people go in order that they 'may serve Him in the wilderness'; in accordance with that 'sign'
which YHVH had given Moses at the Burning Bush. Moses proclaims the catastrophe which will
occur in case of refusal, possibly pointing in sign as he does so to the river; which was red, as
was frequently the case, particularly before the Nile begins to rise.
“And the catastrophe does not fail to come. Some time later it begins to announce its arrival,
seemingly through abnormal phenomena originating in the same Nile. This is presumably the
place for the story of the masses of small frogs which come out of the river (it is summer and
the season for the flood); and which, impudent as never before, penetrate everywhere. It is
here that we find, in the account of the Plagues, a passage showing the same youthfully
intensive power of vision as those already quoted; ‘Frogs shall swarm from the river; and they
shall go up and come into thy house, into thy bedchamber, upon thy bed…into thy ovens, into
thy kneading-troughs; upon thee, upon thy people, upon all thy servants shall the frogs go up.’
This, however, is no more than a grotesque prologue. At Court it is reported that those
disgusting Asiatics are standing around again and fitting interpretation of their own to the
incident. That the Levites, who promote the state of unrest, are not interfered with is
apparently due to the uncanny air of power which the Egyptians scent as emanating from
Moses.
Many doubtless still have tales to tell of his singularities at the time he was associated with the
Court: he had indeed absorbed all the 'wisdom of the Egyptians.' (Ex...vii, 22) But that he has,
apart from this, foretold the incident and, unlike the usual magician, has done so without any
magical conjurations (which I assume to be the historical truth); and that he further knows how
to interpret the signs of the incident; these facts have a somewhat weird atmosphere not
inviting any too close contact. The unwieldy words, with which a strange God jerkily moves his
throat, only serve to enhance the weirdness.
And now things move further. In one winter there comes the hailstorm; in the same one (or
the next) comes a swarm of locusts; between them they devastate the agriculture and thereby
the life of Egypt. While ever and again the uncanny man appears and speaks his words,
occasionally standing in the way of Pharaoh himself. He is mocked at more and more; and he is
feared more and more.
And then, one spring, a sandstorm of hitherto unknown fury bursts out. The air is black for days
on end. The sun becomes invisible. The darkness can be felt. All and sundry are paralyzed and
26
lose their senses. In the middle of all this, however, while a pestilence, a children’s epidemic,
begins to rage and do its work, the voice of the mighty man sounds through the streets of the
Royal City; unaffected by the driving masses of sand. The signs have persuaded his people.
Massed around him, their hope is stronger than the darkness; they see light. Ex x, 23.
And then, after three days of the furious storm, the first-born son of the young king perishes in
the night. Disconsolate in his innermost chamber, bowed over the little corpse, no longer a god
but the very man that he is, he suddenly see the hated one standing before him; and, 'Go
forth'! he cries".
In this retelling, Buber, following the biblical book of Exodus, focuses attention to the Nile River
and not beyond Egyptian borders. For Buber, the catastrophes are bound up with certain terrains
and locales that are quite concentrated in Egypt and the point of concentration within Egypt
obviously is the Nile as any historian of ancient Egypt down to our own day will concur. But a second
reading of Moses suggests that Buber’s catastrophe narration requires a deflation of biblical events.
For Buber there was no Catastrophe requiring capitalization. What occurred were misfortunes,
conventional calamities, mishaps, blows to a kingdom’s population and to the pharaoh’s esteem – a
series of catastrophes – lower case – over the course of several seasons, even years. Buber actually
heads the parade of it-never-happened-nay-sayers to the biblical account while Velikovsky upholds it
as reliable reportage.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------====================================================
Morality, however defined, begins with “yich” or visceral revulsion, develops into a
community wide taboo, a thou-shalt-not. Morality is finally made up of antipathies.
Consuming blood, shedding blood unnecessarily and blood rituals of every variety are all
Jewish antipathies disclosed in, if not grounded in, the blood of a bull/god posted as a
sign on the doorpost. And eventually the blood symbol was replaced by the mezuzah
(even as the biblical text does not identify what is to be written on the doorposts of
Jewish homes.)
==========================================
Should the reader turn to Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision he will find an
abundance of evidence for sudden and violent changes in the order of nature. For
example, sundials of Egyptian antiquity do not show proper time in the latitudes in
which they were found; water clocks are not functional either, though intact; the
Babylonian and Egyptian inscriptions alike refer to a time when the longest day in the
year was three times as long as the shortest day, a ratio which changed in various
periods; the North Celestial Pole was once in the Great Bear, but since the eighth
century the North Celestial Pole has been in the Little Bear – the change was sudden;
the vernal and autumnal equinoxes were transferred once by 30.4 days and on another
occasion by 9 days; the orientation of the temples in Greece, in Palestine (Shechem), in
Egypt, and the Sudan was altered; the length of the month repeatedly changed, as did
the number of days in the year (the Palermo Stone refers to a year of 320 days during
the Old Kingdom), as well as the length of the day; the calendars were again and again
27
reformed and the beginning of the year was transferred in most civilizations of
antiquity, always following great global upheavals.”
Velikovsky writes, “In the face of all this and the cumulative evidence of sudden
natural changes as presented in Earth in Upheaval, what structural strength is there in
the edifice of astronomical chronology founded on the assumption that none of the
natural elements changed in the least since the earliest time? But purposely I
undertook to probe the validity of the Sothic period chronology without recourse to the
arguments rooted in my other books.”
============================================================
As is clearly evident throughout this presentation, Velikovsky’s theses of a natural
catastrophe which occurred in the second millennium before the Common Era, that
triggered the Exodus of many peoples, is the one most favored - as reflected in the title
of this Haggadah narrative and commentary.
Velikovsky’s reconstruction and presentation may be reduced to two parts: the
universality of the disaster and its provenance or origin in an extra-terrestrial
phenomenon he identifies as a proto-planetary comet which when finally – after
becoming the agent of solar system cataclysms - laying claim to a benign and subdued
orbit among the planets, became Venus.
For our purposes, the universality – the planetary scale - of the event and not
necessarily its agent, renders this Haggadah Velikovskian.
In discussing the importance of the symbol of the bull, however, Velikovsky's thesis, that
the source of the disaster was extra-terrestrial and cosmic, requires a digression to
identify the culprit responsible for the upending of the natural order and the destruction
of much of humanity along with other God’s creatures on earth. The bull’s symbolic
representation according to Velikovsky originates with the breakaway of a huge chunk
of the planet Jupiter which, after treating the inner solar system as a billiard table by
bumping and nudging the planetary balls into new and different positions, carved out its
own orbit around the sun.
Velikovsky propounds and documents the proposition that the human race was
decimated several times in history one of which was the time of the exodus of the
Israelites from Egypt and which triggered exoduses everywhere on earth. The order of
the solar system was changed forever in the midst of the global catastrophe when “the
earth became a primeval chaos lashed by tornadoes of cinders; the sky darkened; land
masses were destroyed and large portions of the human race perished.” (Back cover,
Worlds In Collision) Velikovsky writes that “a change in the position of the equator and
the displacement of matter inside the globe (was) caused by the direct attraction of a
cosmic body when in close contact. Pull, torsion, and displacement were responsible for
mountain building, too.” (p.278).
“The word shaog, used by Amos and Joel is explained by the Talmud as an
earthshock, the field of action of which is the entire world, whereas a regular
earthquake is of local character. Such a shaking of the earth, disturbed in its
rotation, is visualized also as a ‘shaking of the sky,’ an expression found in the
Prophets, in Babylonian texts, and in other literary sources.” (p215)
28
========================================================
The orthodox or literalist biblical reader may prefer to view catastrophes in Egypt as
surgical strikes limited to Egypt, perhaps even further limited to the Delta region where
the palace and the Israelites resided. (Moses and Aaron appeared regularly and
frequently at the palace. They traveled by foot and not great distances for their
interviews with the Pharaoh.) But Velikovsky shows convincingly that there is no
justification to think regionally or locally or to follow Buber’s more limited and modest
retelling of events. The catastrophes were planetary in their magnitude.
================================================================
HAGGADAH
The Background to the Exodus Story
The exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt is without question a foundational pillar of the Jewish
faith. The exodus story is crucial, mentioned more often than any other event including Sinai
(another piece of evidence showing that Jews are a history people far more than a theological
or religious people).
There are four stages of the history of the early Israelites:
Sojourn/Bondage,
Exodus
The Sinaitic revelation
Wandering, arrival and conquest of the Promised Land
It starts with the Israelites living in the Delta area and they are described as numerous and are
prospering. The king becomes fearful of their strength, enslaves them and undertakes efforts
to keep their numbers down thereby keeping them in check. They work in bricks, not stone,
and since the pyramids are of stone and not brick, that was not their task despite Hollywood.
Moses comes suddenly into the scene having been granted divine powers (not of speech,
however) at the burning bush. Pharaoh, meaning the person who lives in the great house, that
is, the king - is a pharaoh whose identity we do not know for certain.
The basic story is recounted in the biblical book of Exodus, chapters 1-14.
THE PLAGUES: A NATURAL PHENOMENON
Scholars of the exodus experience often point out that the plagues can be explained by natural
phenomenon. Some scholars divide the first nine from the tenth. The tenth plague, the
Passover of the Israelites homes and the death of the first born Velikovsky points out may also
have been a natural phenomenon, a plague – in actuality, an earthquake - focused primarily on
areas outside the Delta where the Israelites resided. In which case Velikovsky’s emendation of
a chet for a chof means not the first born at all but “the choicest,” that is, Egyptians who
resided in the wealthiest precincts of the land, may be considered. The tenth plague may have
been the consequences of an earthquake bringing down houses and crushing the well to do in
29
greatest numbers.
The biblical text makes it clear that among other things God's challenge of the Israelites was a
test of their resolve. They leave on the Exodus with gold and silver (back wages, some
commentators maintain) given to them by Egyptians. They marched through the marshes; the
Israelites tramped through the bog by foot. They had been slaves; they were not charioteers.
Egyptian chariots were used only for hunting and in warfare. The Egyptians followed the
Hebrews in chariots convinced “the evil ones” were trapped.
Robert Brier says in a lecture on the evidence for the story that “there is no straight-forward
archeological evidence for a wholesale drowning". What would one expect to find in the
marshes? Submerged chariots and human remains?
Brier further reminds us in his lecture that there was no sense of objective history by the
Egyptians. They always won even as the “winning” battles were being fought closer and closer
to home in retreat. “What happened to a small number of people was not important to the
Egyptians”. But to this day in Egypt, the anniversary date of the Exodus is a bad luck day.
“That day” was a day of catastrophe for many people and many papyri reflect first hand
knowledge of the catastrophe which brought about or inspired revolts, panic and departures
the world over. The catastrophe was hardly unimportant.
Brier tells us “no records means nobody cared.” But papyri and ancient records - including
scripture-of disasters of this and other catastrophes abound. And each people, some fleeing in
panic, others fleeing with leaders and plans of action, took opportunistic advantage of the
natural phenomenon (natural can also be understood, of course, as coming from God as creator
of nature and the catastrophes behind it all) and departed for a more accommodating
homeland.
The Biblical Prophet Amos makes the case for God having brought about a global phenomenon
affecting people everywhere. And clearly each people “cared” about their record keeping,
especially if the episode gave birth to the people itself, related their story of origin, as was the
case for the Israelites. Rather, the question centers on how over centuries only one people,
one narrative, one foundational “myth,” one retelling -Haggadah - took hold of so many others
by way of the consciousness of the people and then most of humanity. Indeed, why does one
people’s family album become seized upon by over half the worlds population as the ur-symbol
of liberty, as in throwing off the shackles of bondage and slavery, what Jews call "redemption":
from bondage to freedom, slavery to deliverance – meavdut l’cherut - and then, as later
related, from Egypt to Sinai to the Promised Land, a narrative retaining its power to this day.
Robert Brier tells us that the story also “holds together internally.” Pithom and Ramses of the
bible existed in the Delta precisely where the Israelites labored. Bricks made with straw are
used for storehouses, not stone, an excellent instance of biblical and extra- biblical data
offering another detail of corroboration. Brier points out “the biblical authors got that right. In
Canaan bricks were not made with straw; in Egypt they were”. This detail of the narration also
30
reflects the Narrator’s familiarity with Egyptian conditions.
Concerning the names of the places in the biblical narrative, the Narrator did not use the later
names for these locations, names which had replaced the biblical names during that time
period such as Tanis. Therefore, the names reflect the time period in question.
Moses and Aaron come and go frequently at the palace for conferences with the Pharaoh.
“Daily”, as Brier points out, after each plague, not as Martin Buber who writes that the
misfortunes occurred over relatively long periods of time. The proximity of the palace to the
Delta area lends further credibility to ongoing face to face meetings as the Narrator describes.
Brier points out that “the issue of the logistics works.” The palace was not a long trek from the
residences of Moses, Aaron and the Israelites.
Moreover, as Brier points out, in ancient Egypt, women gave birth in a seating position allowing
gravity to assist in the birth. The birthing stool was often two blocks of stone and the birthing
woman sat astride them. In the narrative, the midwives are commanded to guard the two
stones. That detail reflects Egyptian cultural practices and offers telling, internal consistency
within an Egyptian setting.
Brier also comments regarding God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. He says it is very Egyptian.
The idea has troubled Jewish biblical commentators but “Egyptians believed you thought with
your heart,” as did other peoples to this day because “when you get excited of course it’s your
heart that beats quickly, not your brain…the heart was viewed as the seat of all emotions”
within Egyptian culture.
===============================================================
THROUGH VELIKOVSKIAN EYES
Velikovsky's thesis consists of two parts. One, that a catastrophe sustained by
the earth which covered the entire face of the globe in all lands is the origin, the
agency and back drop for the Exodus and for the displacements of peoples all over the
world. The second piece of the puzzle of the past reconstructed by Velikovsky concerns
his thesis and the evidence he brings forward on what brought about the catastrophe,
resulting in the uprooting of populations. For the agency of the catastrophe he identifies
31
as an extraterrestrial body – Venus before establishing its post-catastrophic, more
benign, orbit. For this Haggadah-telling, we may set aside speculations about the body
which caused this catastrophe and probably others in more ancient times still. The first
Velikovskian thesis rests upon on the universality of the catastrophe which propelled the
Hebrews out of Egypt. Its universality is the pivotal piece of the Velikovsky catastrophe
thesis as it pertains to the Exodus and the Haggadah.
Regionality or Universality of the Catastrophe
Undoubtedly, among the most important verses in the prophets concerning the
universality of the catastrophe are the verses in the Book of Amos which, although
intended to rebuke the people that they do not think of themselves overly special, and
that they should acknowledge God’s presence in all matters and for all peoples, are the
verses from the Book of Amos, which incidental to the censure, informs us that it was
well known to everyone at the time of the hearing of the prophet that many of the
other peoples of the world were also ushered by god from place-to-place, and were
displaced from homelands of long standing. God was juggling homelands the world
over. Some people were brought to a totally new land after the catastrophe. Amos
writes…did I not bring you the Cushites from Cush and, etc.
But was this catastrophe which led peoples from and to different places, regional
or universal? Firstly, these peoples that Amos mentions were not local but were of
great distance from Egypt. Still, how universal was the catastrophe such that one can
attribute it as does Velikovsky to encircling the earth? Here is where Velikovsky is at his
most helpful bringing texts from the world over reflecting the catastrophe that was also
32
sustained by the Egyptian lands and its vicinity and beyond.
It is appropriate and
necessary therefore to call upon one of the first citations from Velikovsky concerning
the universality of the catastrophe. Velikovsky writes (Worlds in Collision by Immanuel
Velikovsky) as follows:
“The hurricane that brought to an end the Middle Kingdom of Egypt - “The blast
of heavenly displeasure” in the language of Manetho – swept through every corner of
the world.” (pp. 84)
Velikovsky goes on to answer the question, how are we to distinguish between a
local, regional or a global catastrophe?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------Martin Buber is representative of those scholars who would question the very
word catastrophe in connection with the Exodus.
Buber portrays an interaction
between Moses and Pharaoh over a relatively long period of time before the Pharaoh
was convinced - finally - to let the people go - and then changed his mind, took up the
chase and was swallowed by the waters with his heavy chariots. There were many
encounters between Moses and the Pharaoh and many unpleasant events occurred over
many, many months before the Pharaoh relented.
But there was no sudden
catastrophe and certainly no indication of universality. These were regional quirks of
nature all the more miraculous in that they were confined to a regional, more properly,
a local series of misfortunes.
Velikovsky writes that what is required to identify a global catastrophe and “to
distinguish, in the traditions of the peoples, this diluvium venti of cosmic dimensions
33
from local disastrous storms, other cosmic disturbances like the disappearance of the
sun or change of the sky must be found accompanied the hurricane.”
Velikovsky searches out the traditions from all parts of the world beginning with
the Japanese cosmogonical myth, “the sun goddess hid herself for a long time in a
heavenly cave in fear of the storm god. ‘The source of light disappeared, the whole
world became dark,’ and the storm god caused monstrous destructions. Gods made
terrible noise so that the sun should reappear, and from their tumult the earth quaked.”
(pp. 85, Velikovsky). (fn: The Velikovsky citation comes from Nihongi, “Clanicals of
Japan from the earliest times.”)
The next citation Velikovsky offers relates to the Polynesians of Takaofo Island.
The Buddhist text on “World Cycles,” from which references abound, such as “The wind
turns the ground upside down, throws it into the sky.” Interestingly, the quotation from
a Buddhist text tells us how universal the catastrophe was experienced: “Areas of 100
leagues in extent, 200, 300, 500 leagues in extent, crack and are thrown upward by the
force of the wind,” and do not fall again, but are “blown to powder in the sky and
annihilated.” “And the wind throws up also into the sky, the mountains which encircle
the earth.”
Velikovsky’s thesis is that, “a body larger than the moon, one nearer to the earth
would act with greater effect. A comet with the head as large as the earth, passing
sufficiently close, would raise the waters of oceans miles high. Velikovsky quotes a
1795 scientist who computed that a comet “with a head as large as the earth, at a
distance of about four diameters of the earth, would raise ocean tides four kilometers
34
high.”
Velikovsky speculates that “the slowing down, or stasis of the earth, its rotation
would cause a tidal recession of water towards the poles, but the celestial body nearby
would disturb this poleward recession, drawing the water toward itself.” Velikovsky
provides the evidence for the global catastrophe as being an extraterrestrial event.
What is critical is that even without the extraterrestrial perspective or ideology, the
global extent of the catastrophe and its universality affecting all peoples is the main
thesis that we address in a Velikovskian catastrophist Haggadah.
Velikovsky affirms the universality of the catastrophe by pointing out that “the
traditions of many peoples persist that seas were torn apart and their water heaped
high and thrown upon the continents… The great tide followed a disturbance in the
motion of the earth.” (page 86).
========================================================
Explicit or directly related to the event may be strengthened by implicit or
indirect evidence. Both offer different levels of authenticity. Both can be
convincing especially when both support the facts each presents.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Basic Story
The basic source for the exodus is Exod. 1-14. More so than Exodus 15 and
Psalms 78 & 105. The second book of the Chumash/Five/Pentatuch was
first referred to as "the Book of the Exodus from Egypt." But because all
five books of the Torah are named for the first prominent term in the first
sentence of the book, the second book of the Bible became known as
Shemot - "(These are) the names."
35
Exodus, (of the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage), from the Greek Exodos,
was the term applied to "The Departure" by the Greek translation, the
Septuagint.
The book of Exodus, continuing the Genesis narrative, records the
origination of the people.
The descent into Egypt is followed by enslavement - of a certain type -at
the hands of a regime that "did not know Joseph" - whose death is noted in
the 6th verse of the book. It is understood by students of biblical history
that, "not knowing Joseph" means that the regime had a new pharaoh on
the throne and likely a new dynasty initiated. Deliverance from the house
of bondage is the core of the narrative. That escape and the Sinaitic
experience taken together are the foundation upon which Jewish life has
been built ever since.
The first chapter of the book of Exodus, provides the names ("Shemot") of
the tribal leaders who went down the Egypt. The chapter relates how they
are conscripted to build the store cities of Pithom and Rameses; they live in
the Delta region not far from the palace, in “the land of Goshen.” And the
Semites, Asiatics, Hebrews/habiru were somehow intimidating and feared for good reason as later developments proved. We learn of Pharaoh's
scheme in council with his advisers to oppress the Hebrews. He tries to
break their spirit (verse x). We learn from an inscription about Semitic
slaves by Eduard Neville (cited by Herz) that Rameses II - although an
unlikely candidate for the Pharaoh of the Pursuit according to Velikovsky
and others - boasts that "he built the city called after his name with Semitic
slaves."
In this setting, Moses, brother to Aaron and Miriam of the House of Levi is
born, saved from an early watery grave and raised and educated in the
palace. He is, in the future, destined to deliver his people from slavery to
freedom – me’avdut le’herut – which is the theme of the Passover Seder.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Throughout the Hebrew Bible, there is no single event (or theme, if the
status of "event" be denied) to which its various writers hark back so
36
pervasively as the tradition of the ancestral Israelites being liberated from
servitude in Egypt, then forming a community under their deliverer deity
YHWH, before undertaking their long (and prolonged) journey to the banks
of the Jordan to enter Canaan. The pendant to leaving Egypt was the Sinai
covenant, with its renewals in the plains of Moab and in Canaan." Kitchen
pg. 241
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Disgust is a powerful trigger for moral condemnation - being grossed out
makes us mean.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"For those readers who were raised as Jews and are used to the rhythms and contents
of the Jewish liturgical calendar, Exodus 12 contains much that is familiar. It is the
biblical founding text for the festival of Passover, celebrating Israel’s escape from
Egyptian oppression and slavery. God’s command to Moses relayed to the Israelites
was to prepare a special Passover meal, to eat bitter herbs and unleavened bread, to
keep the custom of eating unleavened bread for a week, the first and last days being
special holy days when one is to refrain from work, the emphasis on family and the
group, the remembrance of God’s rescue, and the need to teach one’s children about
these saving events (24-27) are all rooted in the traditions preserved in Exodus 12.
Within the biblical narrative, Exodus 12 is the first Passover to be revisited and
recreated each spring". Niditch pg. 102
------------------------------------------------------------The blood, this multivocal symbol, sanctifies and purifies the house, a boundary
marker between Egyptians and Israelites, between those who will suffer a death in
their families, the disruption of the male line of descent, and those who will be given
life. Blood is the life force, but it also connotes the loss of life and sacrifice. Niditch
pg. 105
"It seems possible that Exodus 12 is a very early ritual that served to bond the
Israelites, to define them as a whole, sharing and reenacting a foundation myth that
perhaps reflects a historical memory of some elements of the group that would
become Israel." Niditch pg. 105
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Descent into Egypt
The arrival of diverse, famine driven foreigners from the neighboring Asiatic
lands to the eastern frontier border of the Delta was a frequent and
common occurrence. The Nile valley did not depend on uncertain rainfall
but on the river itself which provided sustenance for the Egyptian
population.
37
Hardly "duty-free", they arrived at the border expecting to be granted
entree to save their lives from hunger, often in exchange for grueling
oppressive labor, and they were not turned away. Reports from Egyptian
frontier officials as, for example, in the Papyrus Anastasi VI, of incidents on
the frontier concerning various Bedouin tribes who, as Martin Noth takes
note, were "small cattle breeders with their flocks...from the steppe
beyond the Sinaitic desert, like the Israelite tribes before their occupation
of Palestine; lack of food had persuaded them to try to 'preserve their life'
in Egypt."
Referred to as Hebrews, or apiru, granted "inferior rights", they settled in
the land of Goshen in the wadi Tumelot, "a tract of cultivable land on the
eastern border of the Egyptian Nile delta immediately adjacent to the
Sinaitic desert." (Noth pgs. 111-112)
"In almost every respect, what the Old Testament tradition says about the
reasons for and the circumstances surrounding the Israelites' sojourn in
Egypt; and the date of the incident mentioned in the report cannot be very
far from what is reported in the Old Testament... the frontier official's
report shows that the Old Testament tradition refers to the kind of incident
that was often taking place and illustrates the sort of motive which led the
Israelites into Egypt." (Noth pg. 112)
"...the fact that the Old Testament often uses the word ‘Hebrews’ when referring to the
Israelites in Egypt (Exod. i, 19; ii, 7, 11, 13; v, 3 and elsewhere) is entirely in accordance with the
actual situation. The Egyptians were quite familiar with this foreign term which they
transliterated as ‘pr. ‘These ‘pr undertook or were compelled to undertake all kinds of services,
and in ‘Egypt all service was directly or indirectly for the State. (Noth pg. 112)
"...this is entirely in accordance with the tradition of the compulsory labour to which the
Israelites were subjected in Egypt and, in particular, with the strikingly concrete information in
Exod. i, II that the Israelites were used in the building of the cities of Pithom and Ramses in the
eastern delta¹. (Noth pg.113) (Near the old mouth of one of the eastern arms of the Nile." (Noth
pg. 113
"...forms the concrete background to the truth contained in the reference to the ‘bringing forth
out of Egypt’." (Noth pg. 113)
38
"That the Israelites, who had probably gone to Egypt in the first place only under the pressure
of dire distress and had been forced to submit to compulsory labour amid conditions of slavery,
finally longed to recover their old freedom is understandable². That the Egyptians-in a period
of assiduous building activity, as under Ramses II, whose The Israelites therefore tried to escape
against the will of the Egyptians." (Noth pg. 113)
==============================================================
2/19/08
He was thrown by the whirlpool high in the air. (V, pg. 37 Ages)
==============================================================
V advances the theses, in “Mankind in Amnesia”, that humanity has expelled from
consciousness the memory of a great many natural traumas sustained on Earth. This is
undoubtedly the case judging from historians who cite early 20 th century raging floods in New
England with great loss of lives and property as utterly ignored after one day’s news coverage
and never brought up again.. Nevertheless, the stunning images and heartbreaking headlines
of recent natural catastrophes - including the powerfully destructive earthquake in Pakistan,
the tsunami in Thailand, Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and nearby precincts in the United
States –are still memorable and well recorded. When the Asian tsunami hit on the day after
Christmas 2004, over 200 thousand people lost their lives and many more were seriously hurt
and millions lost everything they owned.
=================================================================
V writes that the starting point of this research was this: “the Exodus from Egypt took place at
the time of a great natural catastrophe. In order to find the time of the Exodus in Egyptian
history, we had to search for some record of catastrophe in the physical world. This record is
contained in the papyrus Ipuwer.
“Many parts of the papyrus are missing. The beginning and the end, doubtless containing
details, possibly names, are destroyed. But what is preserved is sufficient to impress us with
this fact: before us is not merely the story of a catastrophe, but an Egyptian version of the
plagues. (Velikovsky, pg. 33 Ages in Chaos)
=============================================================
Velikovsky recalls that it was surprising to find in the papyrus, which, in addition to the story of
"dwellers in marshes" and "poor men" fleeing the land in haste - a land scourged by plagues laments about the invaders, who came from the desert of Asia, and preyed on the disorganized
country. (Velikovsky, pg. 33 Ages in Chaos)
=============================================================
The Hebrew sources tell that cities were devastated in the darkness and that many Israelites
were among the dead from the ninth plague. The land fell into distress and ruin. (Velikovsky,
pg. 36 Ages in Chaos...footnote 95).
==============================================================
==============================================================
The Israelites roamed in the desert, under a cloudy sky, in "the land of shadow, shadow of
death". Jeremiah centuries later complained: "Neither said they, Where is the Lord that
39
brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a land of
deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death...?" (2:6) In
numerous other passages in the Scriptures this "shadow of death" is mentioned: during the
years of wandering in the desert the sky was veiled, clouds hung over the desert, all life
processes were impaired, and for this reason the gloom was called "shadow of death". The
plague of darkness, of which, I maintain, the "shadow of death" was a lasting remainder. (V, pg.
39-40 Ages...footnotes 104-105)
===============================================================
------------------------------------------------------------------Velikovsky takes note of the time when Atlantis, as heard and described by Plato, “perished in
the ocean, the people of Greece were destroyed: The catastrophe was ubiquitous.”
“The history of Greece knows of two great natural catastrophes;” the floods known as
Deucalion and Ogyges – which “brought overwhelming destruction to the mainland of Greece
and to the islands around and caused changes in the geographical profile of the area. That of
Deucalion was most devastating: Water covered the land and annihilated the population.”
The Fathers of the church identified the one flood or the other as “contemporaneous with the
Exodus.”
Velikovsky quotes Julius Africanos that when “the Passover and the Exodus of the Hebrews
from Egypt took place,” the flood overwhelmed Attica (Greece). “And that is according to
reason. For when the Egyptians were being smitten in the anger of God with hail and storms, it
was only to be expected that certain parts of the earth should suffer with them.”
It was believed that the destructions were connected in origination somehow to the Hebrews
and the Exodus. And the catastrophe extended over great distances. Velikovsky's
"reconstruction of Earth's past" in the words of the reviews printed on the book's back cover, is
"based on the theory that cosmic disturbances involving our planet have more than once
profoundly influenced the course of civilization in historical times."
Our world found itself "in the grip of cosmic forces" as recounted in the "annals of the ancients
in many lands,"...from the texts of Taoism to the records of the Maya, from Nordic epics to
Polynesian folklore." A major series of catastrophes took place in the second millennium B.C.,
followed by another in the 8th century B.C."
For Velikovsky the starting point is the "simultaneous physical catastrophe described in the
book of Exodus and in Egyptian documents..."
Velikovsky writes that “it was on the 13th day of the spring month (Aviv) that the great
planetary contact occurred which preceded by a few hours the Exodus of the Israelites from
Egypt.” Velikovsky concludes that the Greek traditions of floods “can be traced to the two
great upheavals in the middle of the second millennium before the present era.”
40
"A sequence of earthquakes and other natural phenomena occurred in Egypt, accompanied by
plagues bringing destruction to men, animals, plants and sources of water." (V, pg. 29 Ages in
Chaos)
"My endeavor has been to find in Egyptian sources some mention of a natural catastrophe. The
description of disturbances in the Papyrus Ipuwer, when compared with the scriptural
narrative, gives a strong impression that both sources relate the very same events. It is
therefore only natural to look for mention of revolt among the population, of a flight of
wretched slaves from this country visited by disaster, and of a cataclysm in which the pharaoh
perished.
Although in the mutilated papyrus there is no explicit reference to the Israelites or their
leaders, three facts are clearly described as consequences of the upheaval: the population
revolted; the wretched or the poor men fled; the king perished under unusual circumstances."
(V, pg. 29 Ages in Chaos)
"Testimony from Egyptian sources about an earthquake was sought, with the purpose of
establishing a synchronic moment in Egyptian and Jewish history. The evidence, when found,
brought forth more analogies and showed greater resemblance to the scriptural narrative than
I had expected. Apparently we have before us the testimony of an Egyptian witness of the
plagues. (V, pg. 24 Ages in Chaos)
“The Israelites left Egypt amid the outbreak of a great natural catastrophe. The Amu, who
invaded Egypt and became the masters of the land immediately afterward, were obviously not
the Israelites. The tradition of the Israelites definitely connects their departure from Egypt with
the days when earth, sky, and sea excelled in wrath and destruction, but knows nothing of their
arrival in Egypt in the days of a cataclysm.
"’The dwellers of the marshes’ or ‘the poor men’ left the country under these very
circumstances; they must have been the Israelites and the multitude of the Egyptians who
accompanied them in the Exodus (footnote 120) The Amu-Hyksos reached the land of Egypt,
upon which they came to prey, a short time after the catastrophe.
“If the above parallels and these conclusions are correct, then: the Exodus of the Israelites
preceded by a few days or weeks the invasion of the Hyksos.” (V, pg. 44-45 Ages in Chaos)
===============================================================
This Haggadah commentary calls attention to Velikovskian evidence for a catastrophe planetary
in scope. He makes the case for a disaster which was experienced everywhere. Other peoples,
besides the Hebrews, recorded their own experience of the disaster as did Israel primarily in
the psalms and the book of Exodus and thereafter in the evolution of the Haggadah which itself
cites the psalms repeatedly (but hardly exhaustively). Much of the prophetic writings reflect
the experience of the disaster. Their narrations are not all gathered in the Haggadah but these
writings also abounded in references to the seizures which rocked the earth. The el-Arish wadi
shrine provides Pi-Hirot as the place of the disaster suffered by Egypt and a large portion of the
Israelite fugitives corresponding to and supporting the biblical Exodus narrative. Another
41
extremely important piece of information supporting the facts on the ground – or in the waters
- as reported in the biblical text. (V. adds:)
About Ancient Egypt and the Nile
For more than 7,000 years, Egyptians farmed along the banks of the Nile and built their homes
on the high ground close by. The fertile Nile valley around which centered Egyptian life
constituted only about 10% of the otherwise hot, dry desert covering the largest area of the
land. The desert was known as the Red Land because of the sun’s effect on the burning sand.
The Nile valley was referred to as the Black Land for its rich, dark fertile soil. The Egyptian
agricultural economy depended upon the overflow of the Nile river banks regularly in July.
Farmers harnessed oxen to plow their fields and seeds were hand scattered while the earth was
well soaked. These planted crops grew well in the rich soil.
The Nile is the longest river in the world, over 4,000 miles in length running, counter intuitively,
south to north. Lake Victoria in modern day Uganda is its principle point of origin, its source. It
empties into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile separates the Egyptian Eastern from the
Western deserts.
The Plagues Sorted.
It may not be intuitive given the centuries since its composition – or counter intuitive for that
matter – to regard the account of the plagues as having been presented by the Narrator in an
organized format for the sake of mnemonics, that is, as a memory aid conceived as a formulaic
grouping. Scholars have taken note of literary devices such as rhythm and rhyme not only for
the aesthetics of the work but as an aid to recollection as well. In fact, the aesthetic succors and
services recall. Historical scriptural narratives tell their stories more forthrightly and accurately,
Kitchen argues, but poetry in scripture is the older of the two. The reader must extract truth
and fact from both narrative and poetry to properly reconstruct an historical event.
Biblical students and researchers have discerned a paradigm in the biblical account. Leaving
aside the 10th plague – (the earthquake, perhaps, which took the lives of so many when houses
fell upon “the chosen” or the firstborn, best born, wealthiest…) – are three sets of three
plagues of repeating patterns and sequences.
K. A. Kitchen credits Sarna and Hoffmeier for the “tabular form” of the composition. Kitchen
observes (pg. 252 “On the Reliability of the Old Testament” K.A. Kitchen): “the account of the
plagues in Exod. 7-12 is a well-formulated unity; and (as some traditional critics already admit)
it cannot meaningfully be split up between imaginary sources such J, E, or P (for which no
physical MSS actually exist!), without making a nonsense of the account of the plagues that only
works as a unity. The patterning also speaks for an original compositional unity, as may now be
set out in tabular form (see table 19, adapted from Sarna and Hoffmeier). The grouping in
three threes shows up very clearly in the organizing of which warnings are given when and in
the commands to Moses/Aaron on where to be.”
42
The set of plagues can be sorted as follows: One-three, four-six, seven-nine. They all follow the
formula in which the first two of the set, i.e. one, two; four, five; seven, eight are “forewarned,”
that is, predicted, foretold or warned about in advance of its arrival. There had been no
forewarning for plagues three, six and nine, the third plague of each set: fleas or lice or gnats –
Kinim; boils – Shechin; darkness – Choshech.
The biblical narrative describes “the dust of the earth became kinim.” Luzzato writes, “That’s
how it appeared to the people.”
The first plague of each three set: blood, beetles, hail/meteorites, we are informed, took place
in the morning. The other six plagues did not identify the time of day. The other plague sets of
three include identical commandments to “go to pharaoh,” that is, to make representation to
the king. These are plagues number two, five and eight.
Turning our attention to the festival of Pesach, it is certainly the case that the festive Seder
rituals are at its core. And the commandments concerning the eating of matzah, unleavened
bread – and refraining from consuming any and all leavening – constitute(s) the center-most
motif and symbol for the observance of the sanctity and special character of the Seder and the
sacredness of the day. Matzah may very well be thought of as the ultimate Passover symbol,
even more so than the bitter herbs commandment which, by contrast with the matzah
commandment, is not even a biblical commandment. Adin Steinsaltz in his Guide to Jewish
Prayer writes [p.156]…”in the laws of Pesah, the most prominent feature is the Unleavened
Bread-the prohibition against the presence and eating of all forms of leavening, and the
obligation to eat unleavened bread or Matzah. It is a specific Torah commandment to eat
Matzah on Pesah eve. The Seder night highlights the aspect of the Passover-the miraculous
salvation of Israel from Egyptian bondage. The festival prayers emphasize the aspect of
Liberation-the time when Israel became a nation…”
Gershom Scholem (The Messianic Idea in Judaism, p.257) writes that “A symbol must be
directly comprehensible. Research and examination must not be necessary in order to
understand it. It is precisely the fact that this meaning appears through the symbol, in the most
compact form and yet in its totality, that makes it a symbol. Despite all their profundity,
symbols may not pose riddles. A symbol is not worthy of its name if it appears to a person,
especially one within the community, who participates in its emotional life, as a riddle which
must be solved and commented on. Such a symbol does not fulfill its function of transmitting
to the beholder an entire world or an entire tradition in the language of intuition and
metaphor. A symbol which possesses some of the qualities of a secret code, which becomes
comprehensible only to those who delve into it with the tools of research, may be of interest to
antiquarians and lovers of complex allegories; but it is doubtful whether it can speak to a living
group and awaken within it that impulse which is released neither by logical interpretations nor
assiduous meditation, but by lightning-like illumination”.
The symbol of the matzah represents the haste, the speed, the alacrity of the mobilization of
the slave community for their dash towards freedom - an escape made possible by a natural
43
disaster and an uncertain tomorrow. Bitter was the slavery of yesterday; heads up fast action is
called for to save our skins from nature’s calamities and pharaoh’s forces - today. A symbol such
as matzah according to Scholem’s criteria also “contain(s) emotional force even when they
crystallize and encompass a world view which is essentially and basically rational…”
The Pesach Seder was “organized” (the word seder means “organized” or “order”) according to
the Haggadah (meaning, “story-telling of the Exodus from Egyptian slavery”). The required
procedures of the shared family meal constituted its original biblical fundamental observance.
Steinsaltz writes, [ p.157] “The Pesah Seder (the festive meal) and the Haggadah are among the
earliest commandments, originating in Israel’s exodus from Egypt, and they have been
observed ever since by all the succeeding generations. The Pesah Seder is essentially a
commemoration and perpetuation of the paschal sacrifice observed by the Israelites, from the
eve before they left Egypt until the end of the Second Temple era. It is described in the Torah
as “a lamb for a household” (Exodus 12:3), a sacrifice eaten within the home and in the
company of friends, and is therefore a “family sacrifice” (I Samuel 20:29) in every respect. The
eating and drinking at the Seder is not merely a festive meal but a religious commandment.
Eating unleavened bread is a Torah-based obligation; eating bitter herbs is a scribal injunction,
and the drinking of four cups of wine was instituted by the sages. The entire order of the
paschal sacrifice is a composite unit of ceremony and ritual performed with a sense of close
intimacy and love among family members or close friends. The paschal sacrifice is the only one
that is eaten only by those who have joined together, in advance, for the purpose of sharing the
same sacrifice. For this reason, the Seder has an atmosphere of both serious solemnity in its
ritual performance, and the pleasurable freedom of a family reunion.”
He tells us further that [p. 159] “The main commandment of the day is telling the story of the
exodus from Egypt - performed in reading the Haggadah - as stated explicitly in the biblical
verse, “And you shall tell your son on that day, saying, ‘it is because of that which the Lord did
unto me when I came forth out of Egypt’” (Exodus 13:8). The basic order of the Haggadah was
already laid down in the Mishnah,* and reflects the arrangement followed during Temple times
(and therefore some changes had to be made after the Temple was destroyed). This includes
the “four questions” that the son asks the father, as it is written, “And it shall be when your son
asks you in time to come”…
=================
Passover is identified as z’man heruteynu, the season of our freedom. In the Haggadah, God is
praised for bringing Israel mi’avdut le’herut, “from slavery to freedom.” The most passionate
Jewish prayer rooted in the people’s very origination is Liberation, that is, the aspiration to
achieve the status of b’nei-horin, free beings.
Taking serious issue with biblical minimalists need not be seen as rejecting “biblical scrutiny”
even as many reject – given recent scholarship – biblical “criticism.” Centuries before the
advent of modern Biblical criticism, Ibn Ezra and Bonfils, two Jewish Bible scholars, questioned
biblical authorship. Baruch Spinoza in 1670 put forth the idea that Scripture is a composite work
edited in the days of Ezra the Scribe. Orthodox Rabbi Louis Jacobs denounces “outright
rejection of the whole critical position or an attempt to prejudge the issue in the name of faith
[P237-Principles of the Jewish Faith-Louis Jacobs]… It should be seen that many modern Bible
44
scholars approached their task with a wholly admirable blending of objectivity and reverence
for the Bible and that the pioneering work was done by Jewish scholars in the Middle Ages.” …
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------RESEARCHING THE PLAGUES
We are not here researching texts to find proof, only evidence – explanations for an apocalypse
of disease and natural disasters unleashed upon the Egyptians.
There exists a long history of researchers and investigative scientists seeking scientific
explanations to determine if these reports of events might be reliable concerning the Egyptian
pharaoh who was forced to free the slaves to save Egypt.
Scholars ask, “Could this ancient epic be shown to be historically accurate?” Could the miracles
be grounded in reality however understood? Finding natural causes for the plagues which fell
upon Egypt and her people has been undertaken by a considerable number of worthy scholars.
Plagues epidemiologists point out that the biblical description of the red blood waters and
massive fish deaths are often encountered. It is conventionally called, “red tide” and
microscopic algae are known to be responsible. The individual microbes of algae are too small
to be seen except when seen collectively as a wave of red blood. Darwin too wrote of this
phenomenon.
In recent times, the micro-organism named Fisteria has been identified as the culprit. It kills
millions of fish as in North Carolina in the 1980’s.
The blood red pandemic killing fish, fouling the waters, which both Ipuwer and the bible
describe, may be understood as a natural occurrence or seen as a miracle and therefore
understood as both by both the Israelites and the Egyptians. And Martin Buber captures the
fear, more like awe, the Egyptians attributed to the God of the slaves. (Buber quote.)
A population explosion of frogs infesting even into the homes and ovens of the Egyptians
comes next. Clearly the fish could not leave the waters of the Nile to escape the poisoned river.
But frogs, amphibians, breathe air and could escape the deadly river. Does radiation, according
the Velikovskian understanding, lead to mutations, spawning and then the disease that catches
up to them and offering no body of water to return to, to be a frog? “The frogs were
everywhere and then they perished…They gathered into piles and the air turned foul.”
Clearly, nature had launched a domino effect of misfortunes with one disaster bringing about
another. And they get worse.
The plagues are not isolates; they follow one another by causation: from bloody, fetid water to
dead fish and escaping, invading frogs which then die on dry land fouling the very earth. Insects
spreading disease soon follow. Is this not the meaning of plagues?
45
Popular television has portrayed this phenomenon scientifically and made this point graphically
and regularly. Then the livestock are infected and then humans: boils break out on their
bodies. These eruptions can be traced to an infestation such as anthrax, among other bacteria
infestations triggered by an earlier or preceding horrific epidemic.
Popular educational TV programs in a laboratory experiment before the camera arranged a
“competition” to determine which species of flies is the likely culprit for the plague. In one
popular presentation, the narrator asks, “can you imagine how the Egyptians would be
suffering when covered by these flies?” The scientists ask. The stable flies appeared to win
over the houseflies. The program concludes with, “What we have here is an ecological domino
effect.”
Egyptian and Israelites were witnessing and experiencing an environmental disaster. The
popular TV producers get it; the minimalists do not. There was no refuge from the devastation.
The plagues are popularly portrayed as containing a series of interconnecting outbreaks of
misfortune, “a chain of devastation” which is how popular TV convincingly presents the biblical
events as do many biblical scholars: meteorites, conflagrations of fire, radiation, mutation
swarming; locusts devouring everything that grows on the land; swarms of them proliferating in
great numbers (abetted by radiation, V. would propose).
The narrator of the made-for-TV disasters describes swarms of locusts blackening the sky and
observes that “the hail gave way to ravenous locusts,” and quoting the scriptural account,
“locusts went upon the land and ate everything of the land.” There would have been more
locusts then human beings on the face of the earth, at the time of the Exodus, the
commentator declares and they would have devoured anything organic even the leather
sandals and
after crop destroying hail, the grasshoppers devour everything in sight – “they consumed all the
growth of the land all the wheat, leather goods, baskets of straw, materials, clothing. Anything
organic and stationary was lunch for them. The cloud of locusts descends and these insects,
explains the narrator, “devour the countryside of Egypt.”
“The locusts consumed the last of the food supply, starvation looms” (think of Darfur in our
generation). The plagues of darkness – perhaps a severe sand storm, perhaps the TheraSantorini volcanic dust, a “cosmic catastrophe during which the sun did not shine.” (V. Worlds
in Collision, pg. 71: “in some parts of the world the traditions maintain that the sun did not set
for a period of time equal to a few days.”)
The ninth plague is darkness. Here Velikovsky’s remarkable thesis ought to be presented in the
fullest detail (pg. 70-71 Worlds).
V. surmises and advances the view that “’the Egyptian darkness’ was caused by the earth’s tilt
in its axis brought about by a close comet fly-by and ‘aggravated’, he explains, ‘by a thin cinder
dust from the comet.’” He gathers evidence showing that just as parts of the earth experienced
a period during which the sun did not shine, other parts of the earth report, “the sun did not set
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for a period of time equal to a few days.”
There are many tales of a time “when the night would not come to an end.” And there are
other tales of a “very extended gloomy day”.
THE TENTH PLAGUE
The death of a first-born in Egyptian households defies scientific interpretation because the
angel of death would have his work so onerous. The death agent (“angel” is the same word in
Hebrew) would have to do a great deal of research to determine which son was born first.
Selective killing cannot be attributed to an epidemic. What destructive influence might
otherwise offer explanation for the deaths? If an pandemic then bubonic plague may account
for it, say certain medical historians. Some disaster, a force of nature, struck but bubonic
plague, suggested by many commentators or any plague does not kill selectively.
The tenth plague appears to be inexplicable, explains the program’s narrator, doubting a
selective killer of only the firstborn sons. But if Velikovsky is correct and the chof and chet must
be interchanged then the “select” were the wealthy and highborn living in certain sections of
Egypt at a distance from the Eastern Delta and from Goshen where the Israelites lived then an
earthquake could very well account for the destruction of houses crushing the wealthiest
Egyptians.
Another theory offered perhaps as a desperate attempt of some scientific explanation suggest
that the firstborn of Egyptian children might have been favored with extra rations during the
famine and this food source may have been contaminated leading to the death of those who
over indulged in it.
WHY MINIMALISTS WON’T READ THIS
The truth is that the reason minimalists – those who reject rather than accept biblical historicity
in connection with the Exodus and the plagues – will in no way pick up this book is the reason
the book was written in the first place.
It needs to be borne in mind why minimalists will not even glance at this book.
A. They would dismiss it saying the date is all wrong.
B. Velikovsky cannot be trusted because he is not one of us.
Regarding dating. If minimalists were to be asked whether all scholars are in agreement on
dating and are there not theories of ancient dating at variance with each other, they would
most assuredly agree that there has been and continues to be disagreement. They would agree
that certain scholars suggest that whole centuries, particularly of Egypt and the ancient Near
East, have been debating the issue of the absence or presence of more than 700 years of
ancient history and whether or not up to 700 years should be excised; that the book of Judges
and Kings were not in sequence but were simultaneous; and all manner of disagreements on
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issues of ancient history.
Velikovsky says align disasters. Move the ladder of history up or down as necessary so that
catastrophes correspond and watch to see what gets eliminated: duplicate kings frequently
resurrected and non-existent nations and the like. Scholars will agree there is no agreement on
any of these. They will not propose that the Hebrew bible is the best teacher of history. It will
not be persuasive to them that the Jewish people alone constitute a continuum of chronology;
the Jews kept and keep records, and pass them along. The records are not perfect but they are
reliable as documents if you make an effort to understand today what was written then and
what was meant then by the Writer. The same is true of other ancient peoples. The Egyptians,
for example, wrote their histories by turning ignominious retreats as victories at war. But the
el-Arish shrine and poor Mr. Ipuwer, as can be seen, told the truth in their dismay. Other
documents, biblical and extra-biblical do the same if read properly. Minimalists do not have a
monopoly on proper readings of history. Events of the past happened or did not happen by
their very happening and not as determined by maximalists or minimalists.
2. And Velikovsky himself? Anything associated with his name gets relegated to the shelves of
science fiction. But he got it right. The Israelites/Hebrews were in fact opportunists – as were
other peoples – the world over. And they fled! They had smarts as well as good fortune and
bad fortune, not surprisingly. The plagues and the crossing of the Sea of Reeds are events
which cry out for symbolism and allegory, epics, myths, dreams and poetry. The symbolism of
parturition - birthing canal and canal birthing - is a symbol difficult to overlook. Disasters and
catastrophes have a way of doing that. They are written about. And they are suppressed.
Mankind reports experiences and mankind also suffers from collective amnesia (as Velikovsky
the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst has convincingly shown.) Humanity has testified to both and
has recorded testimony to all of the above. At some point we must look at and evaluate the
evidence advanced by all participants.
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How nature could have split the waters into two walls with a path between is an occasional
theme for experimentation and computer simulation in the laboratory shown on television
stations regularly particularly and appropriately before Easter and Passover.
Blink of the eye tsunamis, disappearing lagoons, great under-water eruptions, volcanoes
(particularly Thera-Santorini, gale force winds are all different theories of how the Israelites
managed to cross the Red/Reed Sea depending as well on the root favored and presented as to
the natural scientific cause/source of the disaster.
What was Yam Suf where the waters parted? A marine lagoon, shallow reefs, a lake bed, a
stream or swamp? An underwater land bridge exposed and then reconcealed? James
Hoffmeier whose views are never to be taken lightly suggests the possibility that Lake Balah is
the whereabouts of the Sea of Passage. Traces of this ancient body of water a possible
candidate. There is no evidence yet discovered of a canal at the mouth of the ancient lake but
one may yet be found with manmade features. Testing soil samples and thoughtfully presented
evidence to attempt to discover the whereabouts of “a road way through the sea” (Isaiah)
Nevertheless, these TV shows on the exodus, the plagues, and bush burning invariably
conclude, in the exact words of one of them, one of them generally evenhanded and balanced:
The Burning Bush, the plagues, the Exodus, if they all happened, “there is no way to confirm
even that the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. There is only one source to the story of the
Exodus: The Bible…”
There is research that shows that when under stress hidden faults can release built up energy in
unanticipated ways. In addition the devastating earthquakes, at times this force is emitted
gradually almost imperceptible bringing about a chain reaction in the surrounding atmosphere.
Balls of glowing energy can than ride on magnetic currents which the planet generates. (UFO
Crash Landing? Jenny Randles pg. 202) At some point, it becomes a killer earthquake.
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When put under stress by large bodies of moving waters, energy and matter buried within the
faults can be released of a sudden. A geological fault line produces a steady stream of lights in
the sky. It also produces the awesome power of killer earthquakes. It has been pointed out
that there are naturally occurring events on the fringes of known science. Often they involve
atmospheric processes that are potentially devastating.
Haggadah (book)
The Four Questions
There are four questions, two answers, and one answer to a question not asked. What
question is answered but not asked? Which two are asked but not answered? And what are
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the answers to the questions asked but not answered? What is the question not asked but
answered?
We will save the analysis of the most difficult and interesting for last: Pesach
Researching Pesach discloses various translations and understandings. But each one fits the
narration’s image. These include the image of the Angel of Death “skipping over”, “passing by”,
“alighting” as in “to straddle” or, as in “spread-out,” legs apart, half bent over-stooped, the
sword of death at the ready, held menacingly overhead in a posture intending to strike lethally
and move on.
It has often been pointed out in so many texts that the Haggadah was written to teach, that is,
its very intention was to educate children and youngsters in a history lesson. And the questions
that begin the Haggadah, which is a narration of the answers, are intended to teach children
the history lesson of their own origins and the origins of the people, Israel. However oriented
towards children are questions, the answers are by no means childish or easy. So much history
has come attached to the original layers over the course of centuries and historical themes
keep reappearing and replicating. Adults with some measure of knowledge and scholarship
need to be around to provide answers to the questions.
Perhaps the most difficult question of all to answer is not asked by the Haggadah. That is, how
of all the stories that all humankind must have told or remembered if not recorded-how is it
that the story of the Exodus from Egypt by the Hebrews - later known or also known as Israel became the standard paradigm of the storytelling of all the Exoduses that took place all over
the world at that time – and other times. The biblical book of Amos teaches that god declares
to the people Israel that “you are just like the Ethiopians…I brought Israel from the land of
Egypt. But also the Philistines from Caphtor. And the Arameans from Kir” (Amos 9:7,8). Many
peoples broke away from their places of residence and fled to different parts - in a universal
cataclysm according to Immanuel Velikovsky.
Put differently, how is it that of all the peoples who established new homes or returned to
their previous places of origin as did the Israelites, the only story we have is this one? In fact,
another amazing question that does not get asked or answered in the Haggadah is why half the
peoples of the world have taken over or laid claim to being the heirs of the Israeli people that
left Egypt then. We will return to this subject more than once.
The Four Questions: Which are Answered?
We are always taught that there are four questions asked by the Haggadah. It is clear that one
cannot claim there is one question of four parts. The question “why is this night different” is
really the prologue not the question. Put another way, we may list the issues concerning the
questions in the following manner:
There are four questions asked, how many are answered?
Why we eat matzah and maror as symbolic foods are questions answered by the Haggadah.
Question 2 – Is there not an answer provided by the Haggadah for a question it does not ask?
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Which is that answer provided by the Haggadah to the question which got dropped and the
Haggadah does not ask but the Haggadah nevertheless answers the question?
The Haggadah answers the question what is Pesach which is a question not asked in the
traditional – or contemporary – editions of the Haggadah. It undoubtedly was a question
printed in the earliest no longer extant Haggadot. The early Haggadists both answered as well
as asked “What is Pesach.” When, where and how the question was inadvertently dropped
from the text are also questions the Haggadah does not answer.
Question 3 – What are the answers to the questions not answered by the Haggadah? Which
are they?
Why we lean and why we “dip” twice are questions asked but not answered by the traditional
Haggadah.
Why we lean? Because there were no dining room tables in Roman times. Nor were there any
dining room chairs or stools or kitchen benchs. Romans reclined on a recliner: a sofa, a divan,
pillows of various types. And their meals were brought to them by others – slaves, wives,
employees, servants – on trays or large plates (the kearah) while they leaned forward or back
choosing their feasts at their pleasure. A free person was the one who did the leaning; whoever
executed the fetching was not free.
The most important question is the question not asked but which is provided as an answer in
the Haggadah. That is, “what is Pesach? The Haggadah tells us “Pesach mahy? Or, what is
Pesach? Here is the quote …And several observations must be made.
1. The celebration of Pesach preceded the Exodus. This is hard to imagine but we know
that the springtime festival goes back long before history. Agriculture precedes history
without question. All three Jewish festivals-pilgrimage festivals-are agriculturally
oriented and history became superimposed upon them later when it became necessary
to keep the people together in a cohesive way. So Passover became springtime and
liberation from Egypt. Shubout remained agriculture and the giving of the torah which
is history or meta-history and Sukkot-the festival of the gathering of final fruit became
connected with the wandering through the wilderness-experience of the Jewish people.
It may be best to portray a metaphor to understand the word Pesach. The artist’s eye captured
the image best through the centuries when various painters and muralists, mostly non-Jewish,
conceived of the Angel of Death skipping from house to house and landing upon the lentil of
the next house. Right above the doorway the mythic figure of death alights upon the portal.
Right foot and left foot are straddling (Pesach) the door post. Then the angel peers downward,
stoops bending over to take note of and to stress the importance of the covenantal
conspiratorial sign on the doorpost. Once seeing the sign on the doorpost the “Angel of Death
springs off the two sides of the portal on to the next house to alight on the portal for examining
who is and who is not of the revolutionary uprising fleeing oppression and the Egyptian
bondage. The sign was the blood of perhaps a symbol of an Egyptian god. Gods were
represented as animals by the early Nile dwellers of Egypt. The god Horus appears as a falcon,
the God Thoth as a sacred ibis, the god Khnum as a ram. The god of the Thebes was Amun who
might appear in the earthly form of a ram or a goose.
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That sign, the blood on the door, was a mark of no return. That is to say if the revolution
failed in someway they knew they would be singled out for severe punishment. You don’t just
kill the God emblem, the symbol of the deity and expect to get away with it. That statement on
the doorpost clearly identifies the Exodus community and participants in the revolt. Every
miracle comes with the price of risk. The blood on the door meant that the uprising was on its
way. It had begun.
There has been speculation that the original three symbolic foods, namely the Pesach, the
Matzah and Marror were increased to four lest some ill-informed Jewish celebrants might be
persuaded that the three represented the Christian trinity. This view is partly based on the fact
that two of the questions – dipping and leaning – originated during the Roman period – but
before Christianity took on official government sanctions and endorsement.
It cannot be suggested that the Pesach dropped from the list of questions because Jesus was
being represented as the Pascal lamb made sacrificial flesh.
The truth is we do not know why Pesach was dropped as a question and retained as an answer
or why three questions became four. We take note, however, that the number four fits well
with four sons and four cups of wine. Therefore, four questions!
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