Many scholars today believe that the
bulk of Genesis was first written either during the reign of Solomon (970-930
B.C.) or near the beginning of the Babylonian exile around 586 B.C. On the
whole, secular scholars reject the traditional Mosaic authorship of the first
five books of the Bible. However, arguments from tradition aside, Moses seems
to be a good candidate as author because of his unique position as a man raised
in the court of Pharaoh and educated in Egyptian learning. In one of my history
courses in college, we talked about the unusual wording in the Tower of Babel story in Genesis. The author writes that they used bitumen
instead of mortar and bricks instead of stone. This comment only makes sense if
it is being written to people who have lived in Egypt and are used to the Egyptian methods of architecture. Most of the Ancient Near East did build with bricks and
bitumen, unlike Egypt where at least monumental architecture was usually built
with stone.
Anyway, I recently finished listening
to a fascinating lecture series on the history of Ancient Egypt by Egyptologist
Bob Brier. One of his more interesting rabbit trail lectures involved the Book
of Genesis as it relates to Egypt. From the lecture it was apparent that there are many
details of the story of Joseph in Egypt that could only have been known and written by someone who
was intimately familiar with Egyptian culture: details that wouldn’t be known
by Jewish scholars in Babylon or by members of Solomon’s court. Let’s look at a few of
these.
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| It's Egyptology Time! |
First of all, when Joseph is taken to Egypt, he is sold to Potiphar. “Potiphar” is in fact a genuine
Egyptian name, “Padi-Ra”, which means “that given by Ra”. This name actually
pops up twice, as the captain of Pharaoh’s guard to whom Joseph is sold as well
as to the Priest of On whose daughter Joseph marries. Bible scholars disagree
about whether these two are the same man or simply different men with the same
name.
When Pharaoh has a dream later in the story, his magicians
are unable to interpret it for him, and so Joseph is remembered and brought out
of prison to interpret Pharaoh’s dream. This too shows knowledge of Egyptian
religious customs. In the Coptic translation of the Old Testament, the word for
magician is “sesperonch” and means “Scribe in the House of Life” The House of
Life was a religious school/seminary in ancient Egypt. The scribes had dream books which contained all the images
one might have in a dream and how to interpret them. If an image did not appear
in the dream book, then the scribes would be incapable of interpreting the
dream. This is why Pharaoh’s magicians could not interpret the dream. Apparently the scribes didn't know what to do with skinny cows.
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| Egyptian Dream Book from the 13th century B.C. |
The idea that a famine could hit Egypt, a place which
requires no rain because the Nile River floods every year, may seem to be
farfetched. However, a stela on Sehel Island tells of a seven-year famine brought about by the Nile’s
failure to rise. This is almost certainly not the famine from Joseph’s time,
but it does show that such famines were possible.
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| The famine stela from Sehel Island |
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| Signet Ring from the 18th Dynasty |
Other things that connect the Joseph story genuinely to Egypt include Joseph’s signet ring. The giving of a signet ring
to the vizier so that he could act in Pharaoh’s name was a common practice in Egypt. Genesis says that people followed Joseph around
crying out “Abrek”. Now scholars are not agreed even to this day what Abrek
means. Many believe that the word has an Assyrian root, which would support a
later date for Genesis. However, “abrek” may very well be a corrupted from of the
Egyptian expression “ab–r–k”, literally “heart to you”, and understood to mean
something along the lines of “god go with you”. Likewise the fact that priests
in Egypt accumulated most of the land fits with the very same event occurring
in the story of Joseph.
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| An Egyptian Vizier |
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Mummy of Seti I
c. 1290 - 1279 B.C. |
Finally, there is the issue of mummification. The exact process
of mummy-making was a closely guarded secret of the guild of mummifiers in Ancient Egypt. Trade secrets and whatnot. So the fact that the book of
Genesis states that Jacob’s embalming took 40 days and that he was mourned for
70 days total is intriguing. This matches up with what we now know today to be the Egyptian process of mummification during
which the body spent 40 days in natron being dried and preserved. The other 30
days were broken into two 15 day periods: one period for cleansing and
purification and one for wrapping and final rituals. Once again, this is not
the sort of thing likely to be known in Solomon’s court or in Babylon at the time.
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