Did Moses Exist? Quotes

“Allegorical Fall As we know from the remarks at the beginning of this present work and spread throughout, even in antiquity not all believers thought the Bible was entirely historical. Speaking of Philo’s allegorical interpretation of the fall of mankind as found in Genesis, for example, Geddes recounted a list of others in antiquity who understood biblical tales as cosmological and allegorical, not literal:”
― D.M. Murdock, Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver

“IT HAS BEEN SHOWN that the story of Moses and the Exodus can be understood not as literal history or history mythologized but as myth historicized. The lawgiver motif ranks as solar and allegorical, reflecting an ancient archetype extant also in the myth of Dionysus, god of vine and wine, who shares numerous significant attributes with Moses.”
― D.M. Murdock, Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver

“Tempest Stele sounds more like the archetypal battle between the sun/storm god and the sea, resembling also the mythical control of a meteorological phenomenon.”
― D.M. Murdock, Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver

“Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves....”
― D.M. Murdock, Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver

“According to the Exodus story, millions of escaped slaves were traumatized and tortured in the desert for four decades by Yahweh playing all manner of scary tricks and mind games on them. If the tale were true, such behavior would be condemnable as the practice of a bizarre and anti-human cult with an evil god. If the “chosen people” were so “stiff-necked” that they needed 40 years of being terrorized and abused in the desert, while alternately astonished by mind-bending miracles, one wonders why the all-powerful God would choose them in the first place.”
― D.M. Murdock, Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver

“The final answer to the question of “Did Moses exist?” is no and yes: No, the character of Moses in the Bible is not a historical person; and, yes, Moses exists—as a mythical figure. In the end, the biblical story of Moses should be understood as folklore, not literal history, similar to the legends of other cultures, and not given divine status. In an age of transparency and information, this suppressed and hidden knowledge needs to be known widely with alacrity.”
― D.M. Murdock, Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver

“Regarding the biblical account as put forth in the Hexateuch or first six books of the Bible, including the Pentateuch and Joshua, Redford next remarks: There is no mention of an Egyptian empire encompassing the eastern Mediterranean, no marching Egyptian armies bent on punitive campaigns, no countermarching Hittite forces, no resident governors, no Egyptianized kinglets ruling Canaanite cities, no burdensome tribute or cultural exchange.”
― D.M. Murdock, Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver

“Almost all the acts of Moses correspond to those of the Sun-gods.”1797 Rather than serving as a historical individual with an actual exodus, in the widespread tradition of the Great God Sun, Moses himself has the earmarks of a solar deity, with the attributes of various gods, goddesses, lawgivers and heroes from antiquity rolled into one.”
― D.M. Murdock, Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver

“To summarize, in the Gilgamesh tale, we have a hero or leader (mašu?) climbing the holy mountain (Mashu) in order to emulate the path of the solar legislator (Shamash), much like the Moses (Mosheh) myth.”
― D.M. Murdock, Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver

“The variances between the Gilgamesh and Moses stories are explained by the era and location, reflecting also the values of the people, as well as the agendas of the wealthy elite and ruling class of the time. These differences are germane in establishing the various influences, mores and other important aspects of a particular culture. As we can see, however, there are many details in common that indicate a shared archetype, some of which we will examine further.”
― D.M. Murdock, Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver

“The commonalities include the following, in the order of the Moses myth as in the Bible. For the exact book or tablet in which these themes appear, please consult the epic itself.”
― D.M. Murdock, Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver

“In this regard, professor of Islamic Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Washington Dr. Brannon M. Wheeler states, “The Muslim exegetical image of Moses in the Quran is linked with ancient Sumerian stories of Gilgamesh...”1678 Wheeler further says: In Muslim exegesis on the episode of Moses at the well of Midian there are several allusions to elements from the Epic of Gilgamesh....”
― D.M. Murdock, Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver

“After an exhaustive exposition of the epic of Gilgamesh, Jensen sets out to demonstrate that Moses is the Gilgamesh of Exodus who saves the children of Israel from precisely the same situation faced by the inhabitants of Erech at the beginning of the Babylonian epic (125–58). He goes on for a thousand pages to depict parallels between Gilgamesh and Abraham, Isaac, Samson, David and various other biblical figures and arrives inevitably at Jesus, who turns out to be “nothing but an Israelite Gilgamesh....”1674”
― D.M. Murdock, Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver

“As part of the great solar tradition that can be found in many places globally, the peoples of the ancient Near and Middle East revered a wide variety of sun deities, including the Babylonian Shamash and “god of the fathers,” as well as the Canaanite goddess Shapash. These deities possessed numerous divine epithets and attributes adopted by biblical figures such as Yahweh, Samson and Jesus.”
― D.M. Murdock, Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver

“These solar poems sound very monotheistic, with the high god in his heaven; here we can see whence our traditional concepts of God come. These numinous notions are repeated in the Bible and are clearly related to, if not derived from, Babylonian, Canaanite, Egyptian and other sources, not arising as a result of unique “divine revelation” to the “chosen people.”
― D.M. Murdock, Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver

“As noted, in ancient mythology, the Code of Hammurabi was provided to the Babylonian lawgiver by Shamash, in a similar manner in which Moses/Mosheh was said to receive the 10 Commandments from the solar Yahweh.”
― D.M. Murdock, Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver

“The Code of Hammurabi Detailed legal pronouncements for numerous situations can be found also in the Code of Hammurabi, which dates to the 18th century BCE and in which four of the 10 biblical commandments appear repeatedly. For example, the ninth of the Ten Commandments or Decalogue is, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor,” whereas in the Code of Hammurabi, we read: “1. If a man bring an accusation against a man, and charge him with a (capital) crime, but cannot prove it, he, the accuser, shall be put to death…. 3. If a man, in a case (pending judgment), bear false (threatening) witness, or do not establish the testimony that he has given, if that case be a case involving life, that man shall be put to death.”833”
― D.M. Murdock, Did Moses Exist?: The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver