The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran

by Robert Feather

  Why would Moses have fled to Midian, and married into a family of priests who worshipped the contaminating, idolatrous god Baal? The cumulative evidence, in my view, is that he didn’t, and that this proposition was not the complete story.

  Could it be that Moses actually fled South, and married into a ‘priestly family’ of another religious following?

  An alternative destination is relayed to us in the Midrash,*13 where we are told Moses takes a wife from the land of Cush, a land to the South of Egypt, beginning in the region of Elephantine Island, and equating to Nubia and the Northern part of modern day Ethiopia. The Bible, in Numbers 12:1, confirms the story: ‘…and Moses took a “kush” (Ethiopian) woman for his wife.’

  Josephus, the authoritative Jewish/Roman historian, writing shortly after the time of Jesus, is even more specific about Moses’ presence in Ethiopia, and his marriage to ‘Tharbis, daughter of the King of Ethiopia.’

  The Ethiopians pursued their advantage so closely, that they overran the whole country as far as Memphis, and from thence to the sea.19

  Themuthis (the Greek name for Ramses), the King persuades Moses to lead a force of Hebrews against the Ethiopians. Josephus continues:

  The joy of the Egyptians [priests] arose, first, from the hopes of subduing their enemies under his conduct; and, next, from the prospect of being able, after having obtained the ends for which he was advanced to the above post, to effect the destruction of Moses. The Hebrews, on the other hand, were happy in the idea, that, under the direction of so expert a leader, they might probably, in a course of time, be enabled to throw off the yoke of the Egyptians.20

  Josephus cannot find confirmation in the ‘sacred records’ of Moses being appointed to the post as a military leader, nor do we have any record of a substantial Ethiopian invasion during this period. The only definite record of an Ethiopian invasion is on a stela fragment (an inscribed stone slab) at the British Museum, which dates an invasion back to c.1680 BCE. Whilst the timing of the military aspects are therefore suspect, the substance of Josephus is that Moses is forced by hostility from the priests of Amun-Ra to flee to Cush, accompanied by a number of Hebrews, where he takes a Nubian wife. The Hebrew word for Nubia (Ethiopia) is ‘Cush’, which is sometimes spelled as ‘Kush’, and significantly this is the same word as used in the Egyptian. The office of ‘Prince of Cush’21 is first mentioned in the reign of Tutmoses I, son of Amenhotep I. It is quite feasible to consider that Moses was banished to the furthest limits of the Kingdom, as Manetho’s evidence implies, and given the title of ‘Prince of Cush’ to keep him quiet and out of the way.

  The works of Josephus are probably one of the best sources we have to compare historical evidence with the Old Testament and the events surroundings its evolution. He also gives us a wealth of background fabric to the New Testament. Undoubtedly he wrote with a bias towards the authenticity of Judaism and, although he seems to have got some of the timing of events he wrote about out of phase, the content of the events he discusses appear to be relatively secure. Josephus had access to unique sources. As a Roman citizen he was a confidant of Titus Caesar, the son of the Emperor Vespasian, and from his own writings it is apparent that he witnessed the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE. From his statement that Titus gave him the opportunity to remove whatever he wanted from the doomed city, and his claim: ‘I also had the holy books by his [Titus’] concession’, it can be deduced that Josephus may have had direct access to the Holy Scrolls of the Temple. He also appears to have visited Nehemiah’s fifth century BCE library of documents held in the Herodian Temple.

  There is another ‘physical’ skein of evidence that indicates that Moses was not an Hebrew, and, therefore, might play a part in linking pharaonic Egypt to the Hebrews.

  Circumcision

  The first mention of circumcision in the Torah occurs in Genesis 17:9–27, as part of God’s covenant with Abraham. The ceremony was to be performed on the eighth day after the birth of every Hebrew boy – and is still the custom today.

  The Old Testament is ambiguous as to whether Moses was circumcised. In Exodus 4, we are told that Gershom, his first-born son, was circumcised as a matter of urgency.22

  Some commentators have taken this passage on circumcision to refer to Moses, citing later references to his ‘uncircumcised lips’; these references, however, occur after the event, in Exodus 6:12, 30. The verses immediately preceding give more of a clue. They are about Moses’ warning to Pharaoh that God will slay the first-born of Egypt if he does not free the Hebrews. The immediate need for Gershom, Moses’ first-born, to be circumcised so that he will be ‘passed over’ on that fateful day, seems more to indicate that the passage refers to Moses’ son. But most commentators, for various other reasons, conclude that Moses was not at this stage circumcised.23

  This conclusion, from the Biblical evidence, seems to support the case that Moses was an Egyptian.

  So, how does the practice of circumcision relate Moses to Egypt? The practice of circumcision had long been customary in Egypt, but not mandatory – a fact confirmed by examination of relics and tomb inscriptions.24 Amongst objects found at the Royal Tomb of El-Amarna is a clay model of a circumcised penis,25 and inscriptions (see Plate 4) on the tombs of Nefer-Seshem-Ptah and Ankh-Ma-Hor, at Saqqara, show circumcised Egyptians at work.26 Other Middle Eastern peoples, such as the Semites, Babylonians, Philistines and Sumerians, did not practise circumcision.

  It is likely that many of the Hebrews were circumcised, through assimilation of the Egyptian custom and, later on, compulsorily as slaves – a common practice. Whether Moses, after the Children of Israel left Egypt, decided to adopt the practice for everyone, including himself, to distinguish his people from the surrounding idolaters, is conjecture.

  The Bible relates, in Joshua 5:2–8, that all the male Hebrews who came out of Egypt were circumcised, but that those born during the wanderings were not. A mass circumcision was therefore performed on all the males at Gilgal, in the plains of Jericho.

  A further clue comes from the passage describing events after the mass circumcision had been performed:

  And the Lord said unto Joshua. ‘This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you. Wherefore the name of the place is called Gilgal to this day.’

  Joshua 5:9

  Now, in a snub to Egypt and as free men, circumcision was entered into voluntarily, and any stigma previously attached to it was henceforth negated.

  The Biblical account supports the case that Moses was a Prince of Egypt when it, apparently, says that for much of his life Moses was uncircumcised: in Biblical terms this would indicate he was not an Hebrew. However as the Hebrews were supposed to have been circumcised, the Biblical writers would have wanted to equate Moses with the Hebrews, rather than as an Egyptian – especially as circumcision was later taken as a unique sign of the Covenant.

  There is, to put it mildly, a wealth of circumstantial exegetic detail derived from the Bible, together with numerous cogent ‘handed-down’ historical anecdotes, which suggest that Moses was a high-born ‘Prince of Egypt’. Here is a summary of the evidence so far:

  a) the testimony of four historical authorities – Manetho, Philo, Josephus and Justin Martyr

  b) the tenuous story of his being cast into the Nile as an infant – which I relate to a story closely paralleling an Egyptian fable about the Egyptian god Horus, who was placed in a reed basket and set adrift in the River Nile by his mother Isis to save him from his enemies

  c) his Egyptian name – probably meaning ‘child of Amon’ – which alludes to an Egyptian god known as ‘the hidden one’. ‘Mose’ was a known suffix to pharaonic names, such as Ahmose and Tutmoses

  d) the Egyptian names of his ‘parents’, Amram and Jochebed

  e) the Bible’s claim that he was raised by an un-named Egyptian princess in the Court of Pharaoh

  f) his marrying a non-Hebrew named Zipporah, daughter of a Midianite priest (the Talmud also records Moses m
arrying a second, un-named, Kushite wife he acquired from lands to the south of Egypt)

  g) his apparent speech impediment, which the Bible explains as the reason he needed a spokesman when talking to others. I take this as an ‘excuse’ for Moses needing an interpreter to talk to the Hebrews, whose language he would not have been familiar with

  h) evidence that he was uncircumcised, unlike the Hebrews.

  As a Prince of Egypt, Moses was a second Biblical character, in addition to Joseph, who would have had access to great wealth and valuable possessions.

  OTHER POSSIBLE INFLUENCES ON THE HEBREWS

  Mesopotamia, Babylonia and Canaan

  What about Mesopotamia and Babylonia and all those other countries mentioned in the Bible that surrounded Canaan? What were their influences?

  There were, of course, connections between Canaan and Mesopotamia and Babylonia to the north, but these were relatively minor compared to those with Egypt and largely reflect the very earliest Biblical experience of the Hebrews.

  Received wisdom does indeed assign an expected larger background influence on the roots of the three great world religions to Mesopotamia and Sumerian cultures. If one looks at relatively recent treatises, for example the Atlas of the Jewish World by Nicholas de Lange,27 The Oxford Companion to the Bible, edited by Metzger and Coogan,28 The Lion Encyclopedia of the Bible by Pat Alexander,29 or Ancient Judaism by Irving Zeitlin,30 the army of scholars represented in these works barely consider Egyptian influences and talk largely of Babylonian and Mesopotamian antecedents. (I give more detail on the effects of Mesopotamia and Babylonia, or relative lack of it, on the Hebrews in the Glossary.)

  Yes, there are many similarities in the biblical ‘lifestyles’ of the Patriarchs to those of the region bounded by the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, but very little connection to their religious innovations. There are few references to Northern Mesopotamia (Assyria), and little to indicate the writers of the Old Testament had much knowledge of its geography. As John Rogerson, Emeritus Professor of Biblical Studies at Sheffield University, points out:

  This is all the more surprising in view of the traditions that indicate that the forebears of the Hebrews came from Northern Mesopotamia.31

  Genesis 11:27–30

  Siegfried Morenz, Director of the Institute of Egyptology at the University of Leipzig, Germany, in his study on Egyptian religion, is more convinced and even amazed:

  hardly any consideration has been given to the fact that the religious forms of the land of the Nile also had an effect upon the New Testament (in addition to the Old Testament) and so upon early Christianity…

  scholars have failed to appreciate the influence which Egypt has exerted upon the entire Hellenistic world in which Christianity was destined to take shape.32

  What about Canaan itself? Weren’t the Canaanites just as influential as Egypt? What do other scholars say on the subject? The influence of Canaan on the Hebrews only starts to become apparent well after their entry from Egypt in about 1200–1180 BCE, and even then it is remarkably limited in its effects. Irving Zeitlin, Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, succinctly analyses the position and concludes: ‘…the Israelite cult was her own, and shows no signs of having been acquired in Canaan.’33 Two other eminent historians, Yehezkel Kaufman and John Gray, reiterate Zeitlin’s findings.34

  Orthodox religions and their ‘spin doctrinaires’ are the main reasons why conventional Hebrew, and, by induction, Christian and Muslim philosophies downgrade, or even ignore, early Egyptian influences. But by reading ‘on the lines’ and ‘between the lines’ of the holy scriptures, a multiplicity of parallels can be found. When we look at ritual and religious practices there are numerous commonalities. When we examine the early evolutionary development of the ‘core’ religions, we find remarkable linkages to Egypt. (Some of these Egyptian influences have also found their way into fundamental Vedic, Hindu and Buddhist ideas.)

  However, no self-respecting Rabbi, or Priest, or Imam wishes to examine in any detail an era that is instinctively considered idolatrous. Few Jewish scholars would be seen dead reading the Book of the Dead (see Glossary).

  Let me tread here on rather contentious ground. For Orthodox/Fundamentalist Jews, Christians and Muslims, the Torah – the Five Books of Moses – were handed down by God to Moses on Mount Sinai in the same Hebrew version we have today. It is immutable, right down to each single 792,077 of the letters. It is ‘Torah min Hashamayim’ – ‘Torah from Heaven’. The same rigidity does not apply for Progressive Jews, Christians or Muslims. For them the Bible is divinely inspired by God, but it is not to be taken literally word-for-word.

  Not surprisingly the barriers that fundamentalist religions have erected and maintained have increasingly marginalized them from academic institutions and biblical research. I quote one example from an acquaintance of mine, who specializes in book translations. At the first lecture she attended for a degree course in Jewish Studies at the University of London, the lecturer commenced with words to the effect that, anyone on the course who believed in ‘Torah min Hashamayim’ might as well leave then, as they would fail their degree.

  A similar attitude to Old Testament studies can be seen at almost every academic university throughout the world. From Wellhausen to Friedman35 there is a pile of evidence as high as Mount Sinai demonstrating that, whilst the Bible may have been ‘inspired’ by God, it was written by numerous different hands at different periods in history. To their credit, Progressive Judaism, founded in the mid-nineteenth century, some ‘enlightened’ sectors of orthodoxy, and the Catholic Church, following Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Divinio Afflante Spiritu of 1943,36 have taken on board this ‘truth’.

  For ‘unenlightened’ Biblical research, much of which was, in earlier times, dominated by devout religious expertise, I describe this phenomenon, which still pervades beyond the walls of academia as follows: All religions have a vested interest in minimizing, and in some instances distorting, the acknowledgeable influences of their antecedents and surrounding cultures, to preserve and maximize the uniqueness of the particular religion and the divine nature of its revelation.

  I do not want to get bogged down here in a morass of examples of scholarly bickering that support the above statement. Two examples will suffice.

  For nearly fifty years after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, religious personalities and historians continued scandalously to suppress their content (and probably still do). People like Father Roland de Vaux, Father Jozef Milik, Frank Moore Cross and others at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem, as well as trustees of some of the scrolls at the Rockefeller Museum, Jerusalem, eked out the results of their researches in an agonizingly slow process, as they sought to maximize their own international kudos and support their inbuilt prejudices.

  In another example I have already mentioned, John Allegro, one of the foremost historians working in the field, who was instrumental in bringing the Copper Scroll to Manchester College of Science and Technology and deciphering the engraved text, was literally shunned by his so-called authoritative colleagues because his ideas did not comply with their beliefs.

  As part of the original team that worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls at the École Biblique in Jerusalem, a Dominican Institution, he found himself the only religious sceptic, who would later become an agnostic, amongst four Catholics, one Anglican, one Presbyterian, and one other Protestant. Frustrated by the delays in publishing an English translation of the Copper Scroll he went ahead and published his own version.37 He soon became embittered as his senior colleagues attacked him for jumping the gun, maintaining that the contents of the Copper Scroll were a ‘fairy-tale’. Disillusioned and depressed Allegro eventually withdrew from academia and, in a gesture of defiance, wrote a best-selling book to the effect that the early Christians had come to their faith through eating Amanita Muscaria – hallucinatory mushrooms!38

  As I proceed it will become abundantly clear that my maxi
m, that religions tend to distance themselves from their origins, is no more apparent for the ‘core’ religions than in their relationship with early Egyptian culture. However, the really interesting questions are why should ancient Egyptian religion/philosophy feature so strongly as the basis of Western equivalents, as I claim, and how?

  Having identified two Biblical Hebrews—Joseph as second-in-command to a Pharaoh, and Moses as a Prince of Egypt – who had obtained or inherited enormous wealth from Egypt, and one character, Abraham, who had been rich in silver and gold, I now looked to see if there was any link between their wealth and the treasures of the Copper Scroll of the Qumran-Essenes.

  A simple piece of detective work. Just find a connection between one of the three suspects and the Qumran-Essenes and…‘case solved’! Not so easy, of course. I was dealing with events that took place, at the outside, 3,500 years ago. Even the very existence of Abraham as a person has never been historically proven. And there were surprising twists in the trail ahead, which I could never have foreseen.

  The first step was to examine in detail the nature of Egyptian religion, particularly that existing at the times of Joseph and Moses, to see if its influence could be traced down through the ages to the Qumran-Essenes.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE COCOONED CAULDRON OF EGYPT – HOTBED OF CIVILIZATION

  The story of Egypt starts back in the grey mists of time in the baking glare of a hostile sun. A sun that, for many months of the year, beats down everything in its path, parches the land, withers the plants and turns the land into an arid desert. At the same time, without the sun nothing grows, nothing ripens, nothing lives.