What Goethe couldn’t know

 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832) had a wide scope of interests and invested into his education, according to his own testimony, some $ 6,000,000 in modern money. Widely known for his poetry, for one very famous drama – "Faust" – and especially one early novel – The Sorrows of Young Werther – his more substantial work has never became very popular. Goethe wrote and directed a number of plays, dictated lengthy novels which should never have seen the light, and he excelled in fresh  observations on botany, paleontology, and especially geology. He never carried it all together into one system, but with some justification Goethe can be seen as a forerunner of Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882). Unfortunately Goethe thought he had to challenge Newton's (1643 – 1727) authority and despite some valuable insight into the physiology of color-vision, it didn't do much for Goethe's reputation in the scientific community ever since. This is a shame.

His travel diaries are still a good read and his autobiography Poetry & Truth is a monument of his mother  tongue. Throughout his life Goethe produced essays of biblical interpretation which antedate by half a century the "higher  criticism" of a later period. The essay on Moses is from the Essays and Notes to the West-Eastern Divan (1819). The curious introduction into the merits of "faith," of course, can only be interpreted as the squid squirting ink.

Goethe was not exactly a freedom fighter; not even once during his long life did he pull his considerable weight as prime minister of a German principality, or raised his voice on behalf of less fortunate colleagues in their daily struggle with censorship. Only among trusted friends Goethe dropped his guard and expressed his disgust with the two things that displeased him most: garlic and "the cross."  He was quite capable to recognize religious faith for what it is: a kind of desperate tunnel vision; but he also thought this to be a necessary evil, keeping "the mob" busy. Democracy was not exactly Goethe's thing.

In his essay about Moses, the wide panoramic view and political understanding are admirable. He presents a mythological figure as a child of the real world, a man who found support by a warlike nomadic nation to which he established dynastic bonds.

Outside of the Bible, there is no direct evidence for Moses or the Israelite exodus. The real Moses probably was a polytheist – as everybody else in his time – who struck a treaty with Jethro's Mideanite deity (Ex.  3:1) without refraining from recourse to a forerunner of Asclepius the Healer (Num. 21:9). There is not a shred of archaeological evidence in the Sinai, which is strange, if the census figures given in Exodus and Leviticus were even remotely correct. Such a huge mass of people does leave traces of their migratory activities. One doesn’t need to read Bishop Colenso to realize that there would be not enough ground to stand on if indeed all the people gathered at the entrance to the tent of the tabernacle. As Colenso had put it: "How many would the whole court have contained? Its area – 60 yards by 30 yards – was 1,800 square yards, and the area of the tabernacle itself – 18 yards by 6 yards—was 108 square yards. Hence the area of the court outside the tabernacle was 1,692 square yards. But the 'whole congregation' would have made a body of people nearly 20 miles – or, more accurately, 33,530 yards – long, and 18 feet wide; that is to say, packed closely together, they would have covered an area of 201,180 square yards. In fact, the court, when thronged, could only have held 5,000 people; whereas the able-bodied men alone exceeded 600,000. Even the ministering Levites, 'from thirty to fifty years old,' were 8,580 in number, (Num. 4:48) only 504 of these could have stood within the court in front of the tabernacle, and not two-thirds of them could have entered the court, if they had filled it from one end to the other. It is inconceivable how, under such circumstances, ' all the assembly,' the ' whole congregation,' could have been summoned to attend 'at the door of the tabernacle,' by the express command of Almighty God." So if the biblical census figures have nothing to do with Exodus itself, then what is the meaning of these numbers?

The Pentateuch in its present form is a concoction done in Exile (580 – 538 BC). The exilic author extrapolated his census figures probably from the Babylonian census of taxpaying Jews living in the Diaspora. An other question is the date for the exodus.

The Bible-scholars’ favorite pharaoh of the exodus seems to be Rameses II, (1184 – 1153 BC. or if David M. Rohl's redating is correct, between 940 – 920 BC.), which doesn’t make any sense at all. Secular archeologists and Biblical scholars agree on 1410 BC. as the date for Joshua's campaign, apparently without ever considering that it is by at least two centuries preceding Rameses II. Besides Rameses the Great was completely in control of the Sinai and Palestine and would not have allowed a tribal chief to piss into his backyard. So the “actual” Pharaoh can only have been a member of the 15th dynasty – perhaps Khamudi or rather his assailant Ahmose I (1552 – 1527 BC) which tallies well with reported migratory patterns and military actions in the Sinai, but not with great building projects, as Egypt was just recuperating from a century of foreign occupation.

Goethe already pointed out the confused geography in the narrative. Even now, in the age of satellite tracking, scholars admit that they have not a clue where some of the most crucial places are located. The maps in my Oxford Bible indicate two different locations for Mount Sinai: 400 miles apart!  On the other hand, for a relatively small group of people, the prolonged sojourn over a period of say eight to ten years would make perfect sense: in the real world the actual exodus may have been a local  incident involving barely more than a few hundred individuals.

Perhaps Moses' and Caleb's band of guerrilla fighters were in the habit of provocatively patrolling the Egyptian border as an invitation to the tribesmen who still remained in Egypt. Gradually this demonstration may have swelled the ranks of the terrorists and this eventually caused the pharaoh to take notice and send a brigade of chariots after them. The expedition turned out to be disastrous, which could have drawn even more lost souls to Moses' colors and ultimately have enabled the Israelite avant-garde to take possession of territories beyond the Jordan. All this is making perfect sense, once we dismiss the fantastic census figures. If only the archeology could confirm it! As it is, the novelistic exercise in Deuteronomy seems to have nothing to do with history at all! Instead the archaeologist will point out that there is nothing that seems to indicate an ethnic or cultural difference between the indigenous population of Canaan and the Hebrew “invaders” – the same DNA, the same pottery, the same architecture – except for one thing: the absence of pig bones in the garbage dumps of presumably Hebrew settlements, confirming a dietary taboo. This taboo, however, is going back way before the advent of Yahweh’s religion.

So the whole story may very well be a fantasy, a scheme dreamed up by the exilic author, to blueprint a possible escape from the Babylonian overlord, suggesting a rather chilling course of action. No matter how we look at it: Exodus (12:29; 12:35) tells the grim story of the earliest act of sheer terrorism on record. Goethe draws a comparison to the Sicilian Vesper and one really has to ask, what is the feast of atonement meant to atone for? Surely, if Passover commemorates the escape from Egyptian bondage, it also commemorates how this was accomplished. The blood of the lambs on the lintel was meant to be a sign for the Angel of Death to leave this house alone. Angels, however, know their own, it is terrorists who need directions.

Goethe presents Moses as a captain of his people and criticizes the man for his lack of leadership. I wonder. The exilic author clearly intended to depict Moses more as a charismatic shaman than a politician and strategist. He has him figure in Caleb's and Joshua's band as the tribe’s medicine man, feared for his magic powers and shunned as a fugitive murderer and terrorist by his own people (Ex.  2:12; 12:29; 12:35). From a distance casting evil spells on the enemy while Joshua and Caleb do the fighting (Ex. 17:8-11), Moses would instill in his followers a killing frenzy against their own people (Ex. 32:27), when he descended from his mountain. Of course I am speculating here. There is simply no evidence for any of the incidents reported. So what is left of the "historical kernel" if we strip the literature to its bare bone of oral traditions? 

I have a strong suspicion that we are dealing here with a folktale, a cycle of terse little stories and pithy sayings concerning Moses the fox, who defied kings and even made the gods dance to his tune, as in Exodus (4:24), which is quite different from the picture the exilic editors later developed in order to meet the demands by a different readership living in different circumstances.

© – 5/26/2009 – by michael sympson, 1,600 words, all rights reserved