Moses and Joshua Parallels

Judging from the treatment of Saul, David and Solomon, the Deuteronomist (D) clearly has an interest in promoting dynastic stability, especially as a vehicle for promoting defense. From my perspective, it also does not look theologically sound for the chosen people of Israel to be in disarray, whether in the way they came to occupy the land as a united force under Joshua, or under a series of fumbling kings.

Reaching back, I’m attracted to the strong parallels between Moses and Joshua and am wondering whether D had a hand in casting them as strikingly similar people. Some of the coincidences seem to create a mythic quality for both leaders.

Some of the parallels between Moses and Joshua include:

·      Sending out spies to scope land prior to invasion;

·      Crossing bodies of water that “heap” up out of the way;

·      Celebrating Passover to mark major events;

·      Having visions prior to major events;

·      Intervening between God and the people on the people’s behalf

·      Obeying divine instructions; and

·      Delivering farewell addresses immediately before they die.

What other parallels would we find with Judah?

If D did have a hand in creating similarities between Moses and Joshua – as it apparently did in smoothing out the rough spots through Samuel and Kings – one wonders for whom he was writing. Why was it so important many centuries after the fact to demonstrate continuity in Jewish history?

Perhaps it has to do with the fundamental human need to explain events in terms of cause and effect. After all, D is fond of the expression “to this very day,” demonstrating he is trying to explain to his contemporaries that the world is not chaotic and the course of history led logically to his present moment. If history looks chaotic, then perhaps there is no guiding hand of YHWH – a simply unimaginable thought.

Moses and Freud(ian) Analysis

While digging through the archives to research my Literature of Ancient Israel term paper I stumbled on some interesting conjecture regarding Moses. This material loosely ties into the subject we currently are studying in class: the emergence of Jews from Egypt.

Near the end of his life, Sigmund Freud in 1939 published a book titled Moses and Monotheism in which he hypothesized Moses was an Egyptian who learned monotheism from then Pharaoh Akhenaten. The controversial book advances a theory that is roughly synchronistic with the Gradual Infiltration theory of Levant settlement.

Although not a great deal is known about his reign, there is evidence Akhenaten attempted to shift Egypt’s polytheism to focus on Aten. In truth, worship of Aten included other gods, thereby creating a henotheism rather than a monotheism.

Freud’s theory is that Moses, an Atenist priest, only led a small tribe out of Egypt and into Canaan after Akhenaten’s death. The story holds that Moses was killed by his own tribe, which later came to regret their decision and introduced the concept of a messiah as a foreshadowing of Moses’s return. The Moses tribe then merged with a volcano-worshiping monotheistic tribe in Midian, Freud says.

Akhenaten was Pharaoh for a relatively long 17 years and died in roughly 1336 B.C.E. As part of his embrace of Aten, Akhenaten is said to have changed his name from Amenhotep IV. It is said traditional polytheism returned to Egypt after Akhenaten’s death. Interestingly, King Tutankhamun is thought to have been one of his sons, although not born to his wife, Nefertiti.

In 1987 Egyptologist Ahmed Osman published Stranger in the Valley of the Kings, in which he claims Joseph of Genesis fame was a man named Yuya, the father-in-law of Amenhotep III, who in turn was the father of Akhenaten. To complicate things, some biblical scholars project that both Akhenaten and Joseph were transgender.