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Moses Legacy

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You must read Phillips' earlier book "Act of God" before you read this book. In the first book, Phillips explained how all the 'miracles' as experienced by Moses and the Hebrews (eg parting of the Sea of Reed) could be explained by the volcanic eruption of Thera.

In this book, Phillips traced the origin of Moses. Although his conclusions were slightly different from his earlier book, the whole theory seemed to be self consistent and did not actually contradict the first book.

In the search for the Mountain of God and the Hebrew God, Phillips came to a "frightening" conclusion that the burning bush as witnessed and interpreted by Moses to be God Himself was actually a hallucination resulting from eating the thorn apple. This is frightening because it seems to suggest that the entire western faith was based on the hallucination of one man three thousand five hundred years ago!

Anyway, one may not agree totally with Phillips' conclusions, one should at least praise him for his self-consistency and bold suggestions.

It is a good read - keep an extremely open mind!

Like many other books in this genre, Phillips' 'The Moses legacy' is very poorly researched. References are missing at crucial points in the text. Phillips doesn't check commentaries or compare translations, is not 'au courant' with modern Biblical scholarship, and has no control over the field he is writing on. Just a small selection of the welter of factual errors found in this book:

(1) p. 21: 'Acts of the Apostles' compiled anonymously: it was compiled under the name of Luke, whether true or not;

(2) p. 23: 'The present Old Testament comes from a Greek translation known as the Septuagint ...': makes no sense. The present Old Testament is the traditional Jewish Tenach.

(3) p. 37: consistently spelled 'Esarhaddron' instead of 'Esarhaddon'.

(4) p. 69: Jacob moved to Egypt 470 years before the conquest of Jericho: what is the source?

(5) p. 107: Greek rendition of 'Moses' is 'Mosis': nonsense, it is 'Mousis' or 'Moysis'.

(6) p. 110: 'an Egyptian prince could order a common slave driver executed on the spot if he so desired.': source?

(7) p. 114: monotheism was exclusively invented in Atenism and Judaism. This is not true. Many ancient civilisations developed philosophies akin to monotheism. The ancient Egyptians repeatedly declared that all gods are really one. Simpo Parpola has recently argued that the Assyrians attained monotheism in the Neo-Babylonian period. World mythology offers countless instances.

(8) p. 114 and elsewhere: 'Yahweh' means 'the lord'. It does not. The name was derived from the root 'hyh'/'hwh', 'to be', but its exact meaning remains obscure.

(9) p. 115: 'Elyon' was a form of the name 'El'/'Elohim': It is not. In Hebrew 'Elyon' is formed from a different root than 'Elohim', meaning 'high'.

(10) p. 115: 'Yahweh tsidkenu' means 'lord of hosts': Phillips is confused with 'Yahweh Sebaoth'.

(11) p. 137: There never was a god called Baal: Baal was a prominent god in Ugaritic texts. Although the name meant 'lord', it was certainly conceived as a name in many contexts.

(12) p. 251: The name 'Baal' was both male and female: Not true, the female form was 'Baalat', with the feminine suffix.

(13) p. 259: the Hasmoneans were Greek: they were not, they were Jewish, having descended from the Maccabees.

Despite these and scores of similar errors, Phillips nevertheless hit on a number of reasonable ideas. The possibility that Sinai/Horeb was really Mount Seir seems worth pondering, but needs more evidence. The hypothesis of two prototypes for Moses is unappealing, but some of the parallels drawn between Moses and Tuthmose and Kamose are intriguing. The idea that Beth-El was really in Edom is not convincing, but Phillips' discussion does inspire a renewed examination of the whereabouts of Beth-El. The notion that the ten tribes retained a more archaic form of the Israelite religion than Judah seems very true indeed.

Marinus van der Sluijs

Port Moody, Canada