So we can imagine a nation at that fulcrum of ancient trade routes having a policy of welcome to all those valuable aliens. People of all backgrounds regularly passed through. Israel lay at the point where Africa, Asia and Europe meet. Why this frequent concern for aliens? We might reasonably guess that it was a matter of geography. The first occurrence of the word torah in the Torah is: “There shall be one torah for the citizen and for the alien who resides among you” (Exodus 12:49, from the Levite source P). In these Levite sources, the command to treat aliens fairly comes up 52 times! (How many times does this come up in the non-Levite source, J? Answer: None.) Of the four sources of the Torah or Pentateuch that critical scholars refer to as J, E, P and D, a three-E, P (the Priestly source) and D (the Deuteronomistic source)-are Levite sources. For the whole picture, see my presentation at a recent conference titled Out of Egypt held last year at the University of California, San Diego, which BAR has put online at One more mark of the Levite sources is crucial and will bring us back now to the interpretation of “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Is neighbor exclusive or inclusive? 2 The Levite sources alone require circumcision, which was practiced in Egypt. 1 Their ark has parallels with Egyptian sacred barks. The Levites alone reflect Egyptian material culture: Their Tabernacle has parallels with the battle tent of Pharaoh Rameses II. Note that only Levites have numerous Egyptian names (e.g., Phinehas, Hophni, Hur, Merari, Moses). Moreover, there is good evidence that only the Levites were in Egypt it was they who left and then merged with the rest of Israel. The earliest Biblical sources-the very early Song of Miriam (Exodus 15) and the text known in critical Biblical scholarship as J-don’t mention any numbers. Ninety percent of the arguments against its historicity are not about the event itself but about the size of the event: All of Israel! Two million people (as suggested by Exodus 12:37–38)! Impossible!īut the evidence of a real but smaller exodus is a different matter. We have to start by going all the way back to the Exodus, which the combination of archaeology and text has led me to argue was historical it actually happened. Instead of being inclusive, it’s actually exclusive. One interpretation of this verse that has been making the rounds for years turns this grand idea on its head: The claim is that the verse means to love only one’s fellow Israelites as oneself. A remarkable proposition coming out of ancient Judah, which was embedded in the Near Eastern world of wars, slavery, class and ethnic divisions and discriminations of all kinds. Capable of a thousand interpretations and raising 10,000 questions. It’s one of the most famous lines in the Bible: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). Levites like Moses fled Egypt to form a new nation of Israelites who were to “love your neighbor.” All of them are referred to in the Bible’s Levite sources (E, P and D of the Documentary Hypothesis). Despite Moses’ obvious Semitic heritage, the name “Moses” is actually Egyptian, like that of other Biblical figures (Phinehas, Hophni, Hur, Merari). Moses, pictured here in a painting by 17th-century Baroque artist Guido Reni, is one of the most iconic figures in the Hebrew Bible.
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