Was Moses Really Amenhotep Iv?

[Neon Genesis]

In page 41 of his book, Rescuing The Bible From Fundamentalism, Bishop Spong argues that Moses is really a fictional character based on the Egyptian Pharaoh, Amenhotep IV.

Was Moses an Egyptian? His name certainly was. Mose was the Egyptian word for child. Most of his religious ideas can be linked with the dawning universalism of a most unusual pharoah named Amenhotep IV, who ruled Egypt from 1375 to 1358 BCE and who later changed his name to Ikhnaton. Yet some of the ideas attributed to Moses are anything but universal, caught as they are in tribal patterns. Were there really two persons who have been subsumed under the name Moses in the history of Israel? Was the God of the original Moses a broad God whose ideas gave rise to approaching universality while the God of the second Moses was a tribal deity who embodied the prejudices of his people? Could this explanation account for the tension between the lofty idea that "God is creator of all and all are in God's image" and the barbaric orders to "kill every man, woman and child of the Amalekites" both of which are said to emanate from the God of Moses?

 

Is the story about Moses needing someone to speak for him, which resulted in bringing one identified as Aaron the brother of Moses into the drama, a vestigial remnant of the memory that Moses was a foreigner, perhaps an Egyptian, who did not speak Hebrew? Was the original Moses killed in the wilderness in one of the many rebellions against this leader that the biblical narrative speaks of? And was he then replaced with a Hebrew whose warlike tribal experience reflected a God who was conceived as a tribal deity? In time were these two figures merged into a single person with a continuous although not always compatible, narrative in the folklore around the camp fires?

I've heard many scholars doubt the historicity of Moses, but then where these stories came from still has to be explained, so could this be an explanation for the origins of the Moses character?

[qadeshet]

The Exodus, as told in the Bible, never occured. I believe the story is based on the expulsion of the Hyksos, by Ahmose I. Even the name is similar to Moses. The Hyksos were expelled around 1500 BC.

 

Dating the Exodus, The Hyksos Expulsion of 1540/1530 B.C.E.?

[dagnarus]

Personally, from reading that, all I got was the impression that Spong is desperate to find reasons for why the sublime revelations from his own personal God, are mixed in with the foul savagery of the bible.

 

Might the religion which Amenhotep developed have influenced the early Hebrews concept of God, probably, most religions are influenced by other religions. Is there any reason to believe that their was some kind of Exodus around the time of Amenhotep, no, I, don't believe so.

[Neon Genesis]

Wasn't this theory originally proposed by Sigmund Freud?

[OpheliaGinger]

I've heard this theory before somewhere. Makes more sense then half the bible.

[Vixentrox]

I too have heard that the Moses character may have had something to do with Amenhotep IV but not actually being him, rather a noblemen or a priest of the Aten cult. Moses and his followers fled after the death of the Amenhotep IV as the cult of Aten fell out of favor. The story of the plagues god sent to Egypt may have had roots in a pandemic suffered during this time period.

[Shyone]

I too have heard that the Moses character may have had something to do with Amenhotep IV but not actually being him, rather a noblemen or a priest of the Aten cult. Moses and his followers fled after the death of the Amenhotep IV as the cult of Aten fell out of favor. The story of the plagues god sent to Egypt may have had roots in a pandemic suffered during this time period.

The thing that bothers me is that this makes so much sense, but it can't be proven, and we will never "know". Will we?

 

The cult of one god, Aten, and a man that stood essentially alone, Akenaten (Amenhotep IV) with his priests of Aten. Their god was rejected and they became outcasts and criminals.

 

But then, there were the Hyksos. Another candidate for Moses origin or maybe even some tribal beginnings.

 

I dunno. It all fits better than Hebrew prisoners numbering in the thousands.

 

Just as a side point, the "Song of the Sea" sounds a lot different from the narrative story of the fleeing from Pharoh. No "parting of the waters"; just drowning.

 

Oh well.