In November the taxpayer funded PBS will be setting Bible Believers straight concerning the historical literalness of the Torah. Nova has produced a documentary entitled "The Bible's Buried Secrets." This program will espouse that the Torah was put together piece-meal during the 500's BC. This is not, at all, a new theory, but you got to hand it to the enlightened ones for their A Priori 'courage-to-be-new'...at taxpayers expense.

 

This 500's BC date for the compilation of Torah is, of course, centuries after the events it seems to describe and report. Nova will argue, with the aid of PhD's, such things as 'the Hebrews were Canaanites', 'there's no evidence for the Exodus' and 'monotheism was a process that took 100's of years'. (This last one is a Strawman, because the Bible itself shows that many Israelites continued to serve other gods right up to the Babylonian Exile!)

Correct Monotheism is a matter of the heart; as in the Abraham/King of Sodom Story.

 

Nova, PhD's and Strawmen aside, the Torah, from its Gevil to Mount Nebo, is a record that overwhelmingly reflects an Egyptian Milieu and Antithesis. I spent my pre-Christian time as an aficionado of things 'Ancient Egyptian', and never cease to be amazed at how the Torah speaks to and reflects an Egyptian background. Further, this reflection is NOT forced, but subtle and organic, and, therefore, is the REAL buried secret found in the Torah. (I thank You HaShem for hiding this thing from PhD's and revealing it to the Mr. Magoo's of the world.)

 

The real buried secret in the first 5 Books of the Bible is that from ideograms like Pey, Mem and Bet to names like Merari and Moshe it is a pentateuch shot-through with Egyptianisms. The loan-words and concepts shared by the Egyptians and Genesis are abundant, from important things like an 'ark' to important ideas like 'understanding'. These things-Egyptian would have been useless (and unknown) to a people now centuries removed and living in the Neo-Babylonian Empire.

 

These aforementioned facts are just the icing on the cake, and pale in comparison to what the Torah does NOT mention. This is where Carol Meyers PhD., one of the contributors to the Nova documentary, can help us while she gives away the candy store. She claims that the Torah probably doesn't contain real events, but freely expanded accounts (read: made-up history) that give the Israelites living in Babylon an identity. This is known as Etiological Pressure; it gives, retrospectively, a reason for being. This is found in all Ancient Near Eastern cosmological and cultic accounts...except in the Torah. You will not believe this, but the smartest people in the world got together in Babylon to talk-up their heritage and culture...and left out the most important things!

 

I will now name some of the things that the people of Judah forgot to mention: They forgot to mention the Class of Servants that were given to the Levites to do the 'heavy work' in the Temple service. These were often made up of captured groups such as the Gibeonites, but the Class known as Nethinim originate in King David's time. The Israelites talked-up their heritage in Babylon, but forgot to mention that they once actually had a whole class of people to do their bidding.

 

The hypothetical group of people who Nova claims pieced together the Torah in Babylon would have had to have been scribes. These, however, could not have been the sharpest-knifes-in-the-draw because they forgot to mention in the Torah the very group to which they belonged! The Office of Scribe went back to, at least, King David's time. Having a class of writers who hold an office in the Royal and Temple Precincts is quite a cultural high-point. The Scribes themselves would have been sure to mention their group, unless there were no Royal or Temple Precincts in existence, which would have been the case only in the time of Moses and Joshua.

 

Speaking of the Temple Precincts, it seems that in this quest for identity, of which, according to Nova, the Torah is the supposed outgrowth, the Scribes of Judah FORGOT to mention their Temple! Can we even be sure, at this point, that these were 'Jews' in Babylon and not just a group of cavones? They not only forgot to mention their Temple in the Torah, but they left out their Capitol of Jerusalem also. Who in the ancient world ever heard of such-a-thing? Not the Sumerians, Assyrians or Babylonians; only PBS and Nova think such-a-thing happened.

 

Yet, I've saved the best for last. From Hannah's time in around 1140 BC until the Babylonian Exile, the Israelites entitled their God as 'LORD of Hosts'. (YHWHTSEBA'OT) Yes, you've guessed it, the Scribes of Judah, in their quest to talk-up their heritage FORGOT to mention the Title of their God in the Torah! No wonder the Israelites sat by the canal and wept...their Scribes were meshugana. Etiological Pressure demands that, at least, some of these things be mentioned.

 

Well, really, the Judahites and their Scribes were not cavones or meshugana; just a people who could not stop serving other gods. One of their group was named Daniel, and he fought with the Babylonians in their language (Aramaic), and IN THE TEXT; known to us as the Book of Daniel. The Torah fights with the Egyptians and their world-view, using Egyptian loan-words and Egyptian concepts. The whole of the Torah comes out of a Late Bronze Age Egyptian milieu which was totally foreign, useless and unknown to Judah in the 500's BC.

 

Egyptian Cosmology is the Antithesis to the Genesis Thesis, and the Canaanite-Delta names found in the Torah are Pre-1500 BC. The Pentateuch was written before Jerusalem was the Capitol, before the Temple and its System were in place, and before Egyptian terminology had stopped being used.

 

If I wrote about my American heritage by citing events in Colonial America, but placed it in a Mezzo-American milieu, you would have to conclude that I had no heritage to write of, or I was nuts. Go ahead PBS and Nova, jump right into the trap of A Priori reasoning, and show us who's really meshugana...but can taxpayers have their money back?

 

(This article is dedicated to C.N. of Center Moriches, my latest fan. Happy Birthday C.N.)