manu/mldr-zoomed-100char-total-queries-documents

chunk_id stringlengths 3 9	chunk stringlengths 1 100
9847_205	"state ideology" for the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The northern psalms 80 and 81 state that God
9847_206	"brought a vine out of Egypt" (Psalm 80:8) and record ritual observances of Israel's deliverance
9847_207	from Egypt as well as a version of part of the Ten Commandments (Psalm 81:10-11). The Books of
9847_208	Kings records the dedication of two golden calves in Bethel and Dan by the Israelite king Jeroboam
9847_209	I, who uses the words "Here are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt"
9847_210	(1 Kings 12:28). Scholars relate Jeroboam's calves to the golden calf made by Aaron of Exodus 32.
9847_211	Both include a nearly identical dedication formula ("These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you
9847_212	up out of the land of Egypt;" Exodus 32:8). This episode in Exodus is "widely regarded as a
9847_213	tendentious narrative against the Bethel calves". Egyptologist Jan Assmann suggests that event,
9847_214	which would have taken place around 931 BCE, may be partially historical due to its association
9847_215	with the historical pharaoh Sheshonq I (the biblical Shishak). Stephen Russell dates this tradition
9847_216	to "the eighth century BCE or earlier," and argues that it preserves a genuine Exodus tradition
9847_217	from the Northern Kingdom, but in a Judahite recension. Russell and Frank Moore Cross argue that
9847_218	the Israelites of the Northern Kingdom may have believed that the calves at Bethel and Dan were
9847_219	made by Aaron. Russell suggests that the connection to Jeroboam may have been later, possibly
9847_220	coming from a Judahite redactor. Pauline Viviano, however, concludes that neither the references to
9847_221	Jeroboam's calves in Hosea (Hosea 8:6 and 10:5) nor the frequent prohibitions of idol worship in
9847_222	the seventh-century southern prophet Jeremiah show any knowledge of a tradition of a golden calf
9847_223	having been created in Sinai.
9847_224	Some of the earliest evidence for Judahite traditions of the exodus is found in Psalm 78, which
9847_225	portrays the Exodus as beginning a history culminating in the building of the temple at Jerusalem.
9847_226	Pamela Barmash argues that the psalm is a polemic against the Northern Kingdom; as it fails to
9847_227	mention that kingdom's destruction in 722 BCE, she concludes that it must have been written before
9847_228	then. The psalm's version of the Exodus contains some important differences from what is found in
9847_229	the Pentateuch: there is no mention of Moses, there are only seven plagues in Egypt, and the manna
9847_230	is described as "food of the mighty" rather than as bread in the wilderness. Nadav Na'aman argues
9847_231	for other signs that the Exodus was a tradition in Judah before the destruction of the northern
9847_232	kingdom, including the Song of the Sea and Psalm 114, as well as the great political importance
9847_233	that the narrative came to assume there.
9847_234	A Judahite cultic object associated with the exodus was the brazen serpent or nehushtan: according
9847_235	to 2 Kings 18:4, the brazen serpent had been made by Moses and was worshiped in the temple in
9847_236	Jerusalem until the time of king Hezekiah of Judah, who destroyed it as part of a religious reform,
9847_237	possibly around 727 BCE. In the Pentateuch, Moses creates the brazen serpent in Numbers 21:4-9.
9847_238	Meindert Dijkstra writes that while the historicity of the Mosaic origin of the Nehushtan is
9847_239	unlikely, its association with Moses appears genuine rather than the work of a later redactor. Mark
9847_240	Walter Bartusch notes that the nehushtan is not mentioned at any prior point in Kings, and suggests
9847_241	that the brazen serpent was brought to Jerusalem from the Northern Kingdom after its destruction in
9847_242	722 BCE.
9847_243	The revelation of God on Sinai appears to have originally been a tradition unrelated to the Exodus.
9847_244	Joel S. Baden notes that "[t]he seams [between the Exodus and Wilderness traditions] still show: in
9847_245	the narrative of Israel's rescue from Egypt there is little hint that they will be brought anywhere
9847_246	other than Canaan—yet they find themselves heading first, unexpectedly, and in no obvious
9847_247	geographical order, to an obscure mountain." In addition, there is widespread agreement that the
9847_248	revelation of the law in Deuteronomy was originally separate from the Exodus: the original version
9847_249	of Deuteronomy is generally dated to the 7th century BCE. The contents of the books of Leviticus
9847_250	and Numbers are late additions to the narrative by priestly sources.
9847_251	Scholars broadly agree that the publication of the Torah (or Pentateuch) took place in the
9847_252	mid-Persian period (the 5th century BCE), echoing a traditional Jewish view which gives Ezra, the
9847_253	leader of the Jewish community on its return from Babylon, a pivotal role in its promulgation. Many
9847_254	theories have been advanced to explain the composition of the first five books of the Bible, but
9847_255	two have been especially influential. The first of these, Persian Imperial authorisation, advanced
9847_256	by Peter Frei in 1985, holds that the Persian authorities required the Jews of Jerusalem to present
9847_257	a single body of law as the price of local autonomy. Frei's theory was demolished at an
9847_258	interdisciplinary symposium held in 2000, but the relationship between the Persian authorities and
9847_259	Jerusalem remains a crucial question. The second theory, associated with Joel P. Weinberg and
9847_260	called the "Citizen-Temple Community", proposes that the Exodus story was composed to serve the
9847_261	needs of a post-exilic Jewish community organized around the Temple, which acted in effect as a
9847_262	bank for those who belonged to it. The books containing the Exodus story served as an "identity
9847_263	card" defining who belonged to this community (i.e., to Israel), thus reinforcing Israel's unity
9847_264	through its new institutions.
9847_265	Hellenistic Egyptian parallel narratives
9847_266	Writers in Greek and Latin record several Egyptian tales of the expulsion of a group of foreigners
9847_267	that were connected to the Exodus in the Ptolemaic period. These tales often include elements of
9847_268	the Hyksos period and most are extremely anti-Jewish. The earliest non-biblical account is that of
9847_269	Hecataeus of Abdera (c. 320 BCE), as preserved in the first century CE Jewish historian Josephus in
9847_270	his work Against Apion and in a variant version by the first-century BCE Greek historian Diodorus.
9847_271	Hecataeus tells how the Egyptians blamed a plague on foreigners and expelled them from the country,
9847_272	whereupon Moses, their leader, took them to Canaan. In this version, Moses is portrayed extremely
9847_273	positively. Manetho, as preserved in Josephus's Against Apion, tells how 80,000 lepers and other
9847_274	"impure people", led by a priest named Osarseph, join forces with the former Hyksos, now living in
9847_275	Jerusalem, to take over Egypt. They wreak havoc until the pharaoh and his son chase them out to the
9847_276	borders of Syria, where Osarseph gives the lepers a law-code and changes his name to Moses. The
9847_277	identification of Osarseph with Moses in Manetho's account may be an interpolation or may come from
9847_278	Manetho. Other versions of the story are recorded by first-century BCE Egyptian grammarian
9847_279	Lysimachus of Alexandria, who sets the story in the time of Pharaoh Bakenranef (Bocchoris), the
9847_280	first-century CE Egyptian historian Chaeremon of Alexandria, and the first-century BCE Gallo-Roman
9847_281	historian Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus. The first century CE Roman historian Tacitus includes a version
9847_282	of the story that claims that the Hebrews worshiped a donkey as their god in order to ridicule
9847_283	Egyptian religion, while the Roman biographer Plutarch claims that the Egyptian god Seth was
9847_284	expelled from Egypt and had two sons named Juda and Hierosolyma.
9847_285	It is possible that the stories represent a polemical Egyptian response to the Exodus narrative.
9847_286	Egyptologist Jan Assmann proposes that the story comes from oral sources that "must [...] predate
9847_287	the first possible acquaintance of an Egyptian writer with the Hebrew Bible." Assmann suggests that
9847_288	the story has no single origin but rather combines numerous historical experiences, notably the
9847_289	Amarna and Hyksos periods, into a folk memory. There is general agreement that the stories
9847_290	originally had nothing to do with the Jews. Erich S. Gruen suggests that it may have been the Jews
9847_291	themselves that inserted themselves into Manetho's narrative, in which various negative actions
9847_292	from the point of view of the Egyptians, such as desecrating temples, are interpreted positively.
9847_293	Religious and cultural significance In Judaism
9847_294	Commemoration of the Exodus is central to Judaism, and Jewish culture. In the Bible, the Exodus is
9847_295	frequently mentioned as the event that created the Israelite people and forged their bond with God,
9847_296	being described as such by the prophets Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. The Exodus is invoked daily
9847_297	in Jewish prayers and celebrated each year during the Jewish holidays of Passover, Shavuot, and
9847_298	Sukkot. The fringes worn at the corners of traditional Jewish prayer shawls are described as a
9847_299	physical reminder of the obligation to observe the laws given at the climax of Exodus: "Look at it
9847_300	and recall all the commandments of the Lord" (Numbers). The festivals associated with the Exodus
9847_301	began as agricultural and seasonal feasts but became completely subsumed into the Exodus narrative
9847_302	of Israel's deliverance from oppression at the hands of God.
9847_303	For Jews, Passover celebrates the freedom of the Israelites from captivity in Egypt, the settling
9847_304	of Canaan by the Israelites and the "passing over" of the angel of death during the death of the

9847_205

"state ideology" for the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The northern psalms 80 and 81 state that God

9847_206

"brought a vine out of Egypt" (Psalm 80:8) and record ritual observances of Israel's deliverance

9847_207

from Egypt as well as a version of part of the Ten Commandments (Psalm 81:10-11). The Books of

9847_208

Kings records the dedication of two golden calves in Bethel and Dan by the Israelite king Jeroboam

9847_209

I, who uses the words "Here are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt"

9847_210

(1 Kings 12:28). Scholars relate Jeroboam's calves to the golden calf made by Aaron of Exodus 32.

9847_211

Both include a nearly identical dedication formula ("These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you

9847_212

up out of the land of Egypt;" Exodus 32:8). This episode in Exodus is "widely regarded as a

9847_213

tendentious narrative against the Bethel calves". Egyptologist Jan Assmann suggests that event,

9847_214

which would have taken place around 931 BCE, may be partially historical due to its association

9847_215

with the historical pharaoh Sheshonq I (the biblical Shishak). Stephen Russell dates this tradition

9847_216

to "the eighth century BCE or earlier," and argues that it preserves a genuine Exodus tradition

9847_217

from the Northern Kingdom, but in a Judahite recension. Russell and Frank Moore Cross argue that

9847_218

the Israelites of the Northern Kingdom may have believed that the calves at Bethel and Dan were

9847_219

made by Aaron. Russell suggests that the connection to Jeroboam may have been later, possibly

9847_220

coming from a Judahite redactor. Pauline Viviano, however, concludes that neither the references to

9847_221

Jeroboam's calves in Hosea (Hosea 8:6 and 10:5) nor the frequent prohibitions of idol worship in

9847_222

the seventh-century southern prophet Jeremiah show any knowledge of a tradition of a golden calf

9847_223

having been created in Sinai.

9847_224

Some of the earliest evidence for Judahite traditions of the exodus is found in Psalm 78, which

9847_225

portrays the Exodus as beginning a history culminating in the building of the temple at Jerusalem.

9847_226

Pamela Barmash argues that the psalm is a polemic against the Northern Kingdom; as it fails to

9847_227

mention that kingdom's destruction in 722 BCE, she concludes that it must have been written before

9847_228

then. The psalm's version of the Exodus contains some important differences from what is found in

9847_229

the Pentateuch: there is no mention of Moses, there are only seven plagues in Egypt, and the manna

9847_230

is described as "food of the mighty" rather than as bread in the wilderness. Nadav Na'aman argues

9847_231

for other signs that the Exodus was a tradition in Judah before the destruction of the northern

9847_232

kingdom, including the Song of the Sea and Psalm 114, as well as the great political importance

9847_233

that the narrative came to assume there.

9847_234

A Judahite cultic object associated with the exodus was the brazen serpent or nehushtan: according

9847_235

to 2 Kings 18:4, the brazen serpent had been made by Moses and was worshiped in the temple in

9847_236

Jerusalem until the time of king Hezekiah of Judah, who destroyed it as part of a religious reform,

9847_237

possibly around 727 BCE. In the Pentateuch, Moses creates the brazen serpent in Numbers 21:4-9.

9847_238

Meindert Dijkstra writes that while the historicity of the Mosaic origin of the Nehushtan is

9847_239

unlikely, its association with Moses appears genuine rather than the work of a later redactor. Mark

9847_240

Walter Bartusch notes that the nehushtan is not mentioned at any prior point in Kings, and suggests

9847_241

that the brazen serpent was brought to Jerusalem from the Northern Kingdom after its destruction in

9847_242

722 BCE.

9847_243

The revelation of God on Sinai appears to have originally been a tradition unrelated to the Exodus.

9847_244

Joel S. Baden notes that "[t]he seams [between the Exodus and Wilderness traditions] still show: in

9847_245

the narrative of Israel's rescue from Egypt there is little hint that they will be brought anywhere

9847_246

other than Canaan—yet they find themselves heading first, unexpectedly, and in no obvious

9847_247

geographical order, to an obscure mountain." In addition, there is widespread agreement that the

9847_248

revelation of the law in Deuteronomy was originally separate from the Exodus: the original version

9847_249

of Deuteronomy is generally dated to the 7th century BCE. The contents of the books of Leviticus

9847_250

and Numbers are late additions to the narrative by priestly sources.

9847_251

Scholars broadly agree that the publication of the Torah (or Pentateuch) took place in the

9847_252

mid-Persian period (the 5th century BCE), echoing a traditional Jewish view which gives Ezra, the

9847_253

leader of the Jewish community on its return from Babylon, a pivotal role in its promulgation. Many

9847_254

theories have been advanced to explain the composition of the first five books of the Bible, but

9847_255

two have been especially influential. The first of these, Persian Imperial authorisation, advanced

9847_256

by Peter Frei in 1985, holds that the Persian authorities required the Jews of Jerusalem to present

9847_257

a single body of law as the price of local autonomy. Frei's theory was demolished at an

9847_258

interdisciplinary symposium held in 2000, but the relationship between the Persian authorities and

9847_259

Jerusalem remains a crucial question. The second theory, associated with Joel P. Weinberg and

9847_260

called the "Citizen-Temple Community", proposes that the Exodus story was composed to serve the

9847_261

needs of a post-exilic Jewish community organized around the Temple, which acted in effect as a

9847_262

bank for those who belonged to it. The books containing the Exodus story served as an "identity

9847_263

card" defining who belonged to this community (i.e., to Israel), thus reinforcing Israel's unity

9847_264

through its new institutions.

9847_265

Hellenistic Egyptian parallel narratives

9847_266

Writers in Greek and Latin record several Egyptian tales of the expulsion of a group of foreigners

9847_267

that were connected to the Exodus in the Ptolemaic period. These tales often include elements of

9847_268

the Hyksos period and most are extremely anti-Jewish. The earliest non-biblical account is that of

9847_269

Hecataeus of Abdera (c. 320 BCE), as preserved in the first century CE Jewish historian Josephus in

9847_270

his work Against Apion and in a variant version by the first-century BCE Greek historian Diodorus.

9847_271

Hecataeus tells how the Egyptians blamed a plague on foreigners and expelled them from the country,

9847_272

whereupon Moses, their leader, took them to Canaan. In this version, Moses is portrayed extremely

9847_273

positively. Manetho, as preserved in Josephus's Against Apion, tells how 80,000 lepers and other

9847_274

"impure people", led by a priest named Osarseph, join forces with the former Hyksos, now living in

9847_275

Jerusalem, to take over Egypt. They wreak havoc until the pharaoh and his son chase them out to the

9847_276

borders of Syria, where Osarseph gives the lepers a law-code and changes his name to Moses. The

9847_277

identification of Osarseph with Moses in Manetho's account may be an interpolation or may come from

9847_278

Manetho. Other versions of the story are recorded by first-century BCE Egyptian grammarian

9847_279

Lysimachus of Alexandria, who sets the story in the time of Pharaoh Bakenranef (Bocchoris), the

9847_280

first-century CE Egyptian historian Chaeremon of Alexandria, and the first-century BCE Gallo-Roman

9847_281

historian Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus. The first century CE Roman historian Tacitus includes a version

9847_282

of the story that claims that the Hebrews worshiped a donkey as their god in order to ridicule

9847_283

Egyptian religion, while the Roman biographer Plutarch claims that the Egyptian god Seth was

9847_284

expelled from Egypt and had two sons named Juda and Hierosolyma.

9847_285

It is possible that the stories represent a polemical Egyptian response to the Exodus narrative.

9847_286

Egyptologist Jan Assmann proposes that the story comes from oral sources that "must [...] predate

9847_287

the first possible acquaintance of an Egyptian writer with the Hebrew Bible." Assmann suggests that

9847_288

the story has no single origin but rather combines numerous historical experiences, notably the

9847_289

Amarna and Hyksos periods, into a folk memory. There is general agreement that the stories

9847_290

originally had nothing to do with the Jews. Erich S. Gruen suggests that it may have been the Jews

9847_291

themselves that inserted themselves into Manetho's narrative, in which various negative actions

9847_292

from the point of view of the Egyptians, such as desecrating temples, are interpreted positively.

9847_293

Religious and cultural significance In Judaism

9847_294

Commemoration of the Exodus is central to Judaism, and Jewish culture. In the Bible, the Exodus is

9847_295

frequently mentioned as the event that created the Israelite people and forged their bond with God,

9847_296

being described as such by the prophets Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. The Exodus is invoked daily

9847_297

in Jewish prayers and celebrated each year during the Jewish holidays of Passover, Shavuot, and

9847_298

Sukkot. The fringes worn at the corners of traditional Jewish prayer shawls are described as a

9847_299

physical reminder of the obligation to observe the laws given at the climax of Exodus: "Look at it

9847_300

and recall all the commandments of the Lord" (Numbers). The festivals associated with the Exodus

9847_301

began as agricultural and seasonal feasts but became completely subsumed into the Exodus narrative

9847_302

of Israel's deliverance from oppression at the hands of God.

9847_303

For Jews, Passover celebrates the freedom of the Israelites from captivity in Egypt, the settling

9847_304

of Canaan by the Israelites and the "passing over" of the angel of death during the death of the