Moses, man or myth?

Archaeologists can find no evidence that in about 1200 BC Palestine suffered a massive invasion and the ethnic cleansing of itsinhabitants, as described in the book of Joshua. Nor is there any sign of foreign occupation.

The actual events that may or may not lie behind the obviously mythological account of the Exodus in the Pentateuch are lost beyond recall. The problem is that our scientific modernity makes it difficult for us to understand the concept of myth, which was the mainstay of premodern religion, but which in popular parlance today means quot;something that did not really happenquot;. If the Moses story is a myth8217;, therefore, it is simply not true and can have no religious or moral value.

The practice of reading the biblical stories as strictly factual is itself modern; the doctrine of the literal truth of scripture was first developed by American Protestants in the late nineteenth century. Hitherto, Jews, Christians and Muslims had all encouraged and even relished highly symbolic or allegorical exegesis; they did not share our concern for historical accuracy. Like the biblical writers, they were more interested in what anevent had meant than in what actually took place.

One could say that until an event has been mythologised liberated from its historical setting by means of ritual and stylised narrative, it cannot be religious. St Paul mythologised the historical Jesus and created Christianity: whatever happened in Jerusalem in 30 AD, Jesus has been a timeless presence in the spiritual lives of millions of Christians. Jews have long been instructed to regard Moses in precisely this way.

Thus, well-meaning scholars who have tried to explain the miraculous crossing of the Sea of Reeds by pointing to the frequency of flash-flooding in the religion have missed the point. The biblical writers deliberately described this event as a myth. Other Near Eastern gods had created the world by battling with the Sea-God. The myth has been effective. It has provided millions of people with the spiritual energy to fight oppression. Moses the liberator has been an inspiration for Martin Luther King and to Christian liberation theologiansin South America, as well as to Jews.

How is the myth likely to fare in the hands of DreamWorks Pictures? It seems that the producers were, understandably, obsessed with political correctness: how to portray the Egyptians without offending the Arabs? How to recreate the voice of God male or 8212; God forbid 8212; female? Early reviews note the contrast between the cool, elegant and pallid colours of the Egyptian palaces, and the earth-toned, curvaceous dwellings of the Hebrews 8212; a symbol of their warmer and more humane religious vision. The trouble is that there is nothing politically correct about the biblical Moses and it is difficult to see his religion as wholly humanitarian.

If there is a biblical story that demonstrates the undesirability 8212; indeed, the impossibility 8212; of reading scripture literally, it is the Moses saga. We can all relate to Moses the Liberator, who bravely commands Pharaoh to let my people go!8217; We can also respond to DreamWorks8217; vision of a man8217;s principled search for authenticityand his readiness to leave his privileged life in Pharaoh8217;s court in order to identify with his oppressed people. But all these readings are selective. The biblical story provides us with many different portraits of Moses, some of them morally dubious 8212; even wicked. Yet for the biblical literalist, every word of scripture is divinely inspired, so all these portraits are equally authoritative and worthy of veneration.

What, for example, are we to make of Moses the Grand Inquisitor, who permits the Levites to massacre 3,000 of the Israelites who worshipped the Golden Calf? According to the Bible, Moses introduced an intolerance that has, since his time, been one of the besetting sins of monotheism. In the pagan world, religious persecution was almost unheard of: another deity could always be accommodated within any pantheon. But Moses8217;s jealous God commands: You shall not have any other gods before me.8217; The inquisitions, persecutions and crusades that have scarred Jewish, Christian and Muslim history showthe human cost of such an exclusive theological vision.

Some scholars believe that the bad press Moses gets in the Bible reflects a later conflict between rival priestly dynasties. Moses remained a controversial figure for centuries after his death, before he finally achieved the reputation of being the greatest of all the prophets, since he alone had spoken with God face to face.

Later prophets and rabbis would reform this early Mosaic faith, and insist that compassion was the prime religious duty. Like most of us, Moses was often deficient in this respect. He reminds us of the difficulty of the religious quest and that our most sacred traditions can be deeply flawed. But this is, perhaps, too complex a vision for a cartoon.

Karen Armstrong is the author of A History of God.
The Observer News Service