A Harbinger of the Exodus?
                                       
David Salkeld

   A puzzling aspect of Velikovsky's published works is the scant
   attention he gives to the man known as Moses. This is strange when one
   recalls that he went from Tel Aviv to the USA in 1939 to comb
   reference libraries for data on Moses, Oedipus and Akhenaten, in
   preparation for a book he planned on Freud. These researches
   eventually emerged in the book Oedipus and Akhnaton [1]. But although
   two of his other books - Worlds in Collision and Ages in Chaos - treat
   the Exodus in some detail, they barely mention Moses. Accepting Irving
   Wolfe's thesis [2] that Freud's book Moses and Monotheism angered
   Velikovsky, one might expect that he would use his own writings -
   presenting his catastrophic interpretation of the Exodus - to bolster
   the case for Moses as a Jew, and monotheism as a Jewish concept. But
   his published works contain no such case, and there has been no
   indication of such material in his archives. Why not?

   Velikovsky's reasons are not known and this paper does not speculate
   on them. Instead it starts with a question which his hypothesis
   prompts but which his writings avoid: 'Could any man have led the
   Israelites out of an Egypt reeling from a cosmic disaster'? Now
   Velikovsky's argument was that if the biblical account is based on
   fact, the Exodus must have been a time of great natural disasters.
   From that premise he was led to a hypothesis that: (1) there were
   physical upheavals of global scope in historic times; (2) the
   catastrophes were caused by extra-terrestrial agents; and (3) these
   agents could be identified [3]. But taking his premise as our
   tentative starting point, we see that if the biblical account is based
   on fact, a man did lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Thus the question
   should be re-phrased on the lines: 'What conditions would have to
   pertain for a man to act as Moses is said to have done'? And if such
   conditions are not beyond the bounds of reason: 'Is there any evidence
   that those conditions did in fact obtain'?

   Part 1 of this paper explores the first of these two questions; the
   second is addressed in Part 2.

   Part 1

   The Size of the Exodus

   An important starting point is to reconsider how many Israelites took
   part in the Exodus. The book of Numbers gives two slightly
   contradictory accounts - see Table 1: 603,550 men in chapter 1, and
   601,730 in chapter 26. In both chapters the number of men in each
   tribe (Levites apart) is given; the tribal strengths sum correctly in
   both cases; and each tribal strength is exactly divisible by one
   hundred, except for Gad in chapter 1 (45,650) and Reuben in chapter 26
   (43,730). Such precision is suspect. It seems as though Exodus 12:37 -
   'And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about
   six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children' - may
   have been independently 'interpreted' by two mathematically-minded
   redactors.

   'About six hundred thousand' is itself an almost certainly misleading
   figure. Tribal strengths were 'males of twenty years old and upward,
   all that are able to go forth to war in Israel' [Numbers 1:3]. Old and
   infirm men were probably excluded, so the total of adult males would
   be higher. Males under the age of twenty can only be guessed at, but
   demographic statistics suggest that they would number approximately as
   many again [4]. Egyptian limitations on male births did not apply to
   girls, so female Israelites would probably outnumber males: whence if
   Exodus 12:37 is taken literally, the Israelites would have totalled
   2,000,000 to 2,500,000! In fact the '600,000' figure is a
   mistranslation.

     "The word translated (and indeed understood by the redactor) as
     'thousands' was actually here (and demonstrably elsewhere in the
     Bible) a term for a military unit. This unit averaged ten men" [5].

   Thus the 'about 600,000' of Exodus 12:37 becomes about 6,000; and the
   total leaving Egypt reduces to between 20,000 and 25,000. The Hebrew
   word used for the progress toward the Sea of Passage means 'advancing
   five abreast' - a practical number when marching. Progress would be
   limited by the pace of nursing mothers, and of sheep and cattle: the
   slowest elements could not average more than 1 mph. Had there been
   2,000,000 people, in files of five spaced four feet apart, the column
   would have been almost 400 miles long, and been uncontrollable; while
   the crossing would have taken between two and three weeks, which
   flatly contradicts the biblical record. On the other hand, 25,000
   people would yield a column about 4 miles long, and a crossing time of
   four to six hours, consistent both with the biblical record and with
   common sense.

   In what follows it is assumed that the number of Israelites leaving
   Egypt numbered between twenty and twenty-five thousand men, women, and
   children.

   Leadership Training and Experience

   Accepting this reduction in numbers by a factor of 100 brings the
   problems of command and control from an impossible to a credible
   scale. Typically an army corps numbers 20,000 to 30,000; is commanded
   by a 3-star general with a staff of about 700; and formations have
   their own intrinsic command trees, ensuring that no officer or NCO has
   an immediate 'span of control' over more than about ten subordinates.
   Each formation spends much of its time in training, on its own or with
   others. Even then the amount of work involved in moving a corps into
   the field is enormous. On 6 June 1944 the Americans and British, after
   two years of intensive training and using the largest armada ever
   assembled, managed to put 100,000 men onto the beaches of Normandy. By
   comparison, far fewer than 10,000 British soldiers were put ashore on
   the Falkland Islands during the 1982 campaign.

   Against that background, Moses' task of organising and controlling
   20,000 or more males and females of all age groups, and leading them
   into what is best described as a desert campaign, lies at the outer
   reaches of what is humanly possible. To bring it within the bounds of
   credibility we must assume that Moses had substantial training and
   prior experience in leading large numbers of men in desert
   campaigning, and that the whole company of Israelites had been
   organised and rehearsed for many years along military lines. But is
   either of these essential conditions consistent with the records of
   the life and times of Moses; and are such records believable? Of the
   three extant sources, Jewish legends [6] are too heavily laden with
   embroidery to be of real help. However the Torah and Josephus [7]
   provide rather more sober accounts, and deserve consideration. Table 2
   summarises relevant elements from those two accounts, items from
   Josephus being included only when they are not found in the scriptural
   record.

   Of Moses' military training and experience the Torah says nothing.
   Moreover, Josephus' story of Moses leading the Egyptian army against
   the Ethiopians is usually regarded as a Ptolemaic era invention [8].
   The main grounds for dismissing Josephus are (i) the only Nubian
   invasion as far as Memphis and the Delta was led by Piankhy, dated
   conventionally 751-730 BC [9]; and (ii) the Nubians did not build
   their new capital Meroe (on the 'Isle of Meroe', an area within the
   fork of the Atbara and Nile rivers, south of the 5th cataract, and
   about 200 miles north of Khartoum) until after the last king of the
   25th Dynasty, Tuanatamun, died at Napata in 656 BC [10].

   Tribe strength of each tribe as recorded
   in Numbers 1 in Numbers 26
     _________________________________________________________________

   Reuben 46,500 43,730
   Simeon 59,300 22,200
   Gad 45,650 40,500
   Judah 74,600 76,500
   Issachar 54,400 64,300
   Zebulun 57,400 60,500
   Ephraim 40,500 32,500
   Manasseh   32,200 52,700
   Benjamin 35,400 45,600
   Dan 62,700 64,400
   Asher 41,500 53,400
   Naphtali 53,400 45,400
     _________________________________________________________________

   Totals 603,550 601,730
     _________________________________________________________________

   Levi not given 23,000*

   * the figure for Levi is said to include all males from one month
   upwards.

   Table 1: Tribal Strengths (Males of 20 years and above) as recorded in
   the Book of Numbers

                  Table 2: The Life of Moses According to
                           The Scriptural record
                                  Josephus
     _________________________________________________________________

   Levi and 3 sons (Gerson, Kohath, Merari) into Egypt

   Amram


     -60   [quotations below are from Antiquities of the Jews, book II,
   chapters X & XI.]
   Miriam Aaron Moses


   0
   Moses nursed by own mother; then taken to Pharaoh's daughter: 'and he
   became her son' [Ex. 2:10]
   Under Thermuthis, Pharaoh's daughter, Moses is 'educated with great
   care' [including instruction in military arts, astronomical lore,
   history, etc]. Appointed general for campaign against Ethiopian
   invaders who had 'proceeded as far as Memphis and the sea itself'. Led
   army across Nubian desert, surprising and beating the enemy. Laid
   seige to Meroe which surrendered to him when he married princess
   Tharbis.


   5
   Killed an Egyptian ...

   Hearing of it, Pharaoh 'sought to slay Moses' [Ex. 2:15], who flees to
   Midian, drives shepherds from well to aid Jethro's daughters, meets
   Jethro, marries Zipporah. Leads Jethro's flock 'to the backside of the
   desert ... to

   Horeb' [Ex. 3:1]. Sees burning bush. The sacred name revealed to him.

   Pharaoh dies: new king stricter.

   Returns 'unto my brethren ... in Egypt (to) see whether they are yet
   alive' [Ex.4:18]. By then, 'all the men are dead which sought thy
   life'.

   Meets and briefs Aaron at Horeb. Returns with him to Egypt, his
   mission and 'signs' (rod-serpent, leprous/clean hand) disclosed to
   Israel's elders by Aaron: 'and the people believed' [Ex. 4:31].

   Moses and Aaron confront Pharaoh. Plagues fall on Egypt, followed by
   Exodus of Israelites ...
   25? Egyptians fear Moses could 'raise a sedition and bring innovations
   into Egypt'; and tell king he should be slain. The king, similarly
   minded and urged by the sacred scribes, is ready to have Moses killed.
   Learning of the plots against him, Moses flees through the desert to
   Midian.

   Josephus' writings suggest that he knew Egypt's history from an almost
   exclusively Jewish standpoint; so he may not have known that Piankhy's
   invasion, 800 years before his own time, came long after Moses. Even
   had he suspected this was so, he also knew that Nubians repeatedly
   invaded Egypt, and might have assumed that earlier incursions had
   reached the Delta too; or he may simply have used the 'prophetic
   present'. Antiquities of the Jews is clearly aimed at impressing
   learned Greeks (and Romans) with the primacy of Jewish civilisation
   ('the history of five thousand years') and the superiority of its
   legal code ('the wisdom of Moses, our legislator') [11]. By
   underlining the military prowess of Nubia, Josephus was bolstering the
   greatness of Moses' victory and hence of the Jewish race. That may
   demonstrate Josephus as having been a biased historian (he certainly
   was), but does not mean that his basic story is fictional.

   What of Meroe? Josephus's account of Moses leading an Egyptian army
   across the desert to attack the Nubian capital makes good military
   sense in a late Middle Kingdom setting [12]. Egypt was then on the
   defensive, behind a chain of huge fortresses on both sides of the Nile
   from Semna to north of Aswan: the HQ was at Buhen, by the 2nd cataract
   [*!* Image: Figure 1]. Nubia's forts were grouped around the 3rd
   cataract (HQ at Kerma): her capital Napata lay 180 miles further up
   the Nile, round the Dongola bend. The depth of defences meant that a
   river-borne assault by either side would sustain heavy casualties;
   thus as Josephus says [13], the Egyptian court could anticipate that
   Moses would be killed leading the army by the traditional (Nile)
   route.

   Buhen, impregnable to siege and large enough for an expeditionary
   force of up to 9000 men to assemble and prepare for a trans-desert
   march, would be the natural starting point for such a venture. A
   small, well-trained army could march from Buhen to Napata in less time
   than a boat, even if unhindered, could sail between the two [*!*
   Image: Figure 2]. Since the Egyptian posture was defensive and Napata
   so far behind the front line, the Nubians would be unlikely to deploy
   large screening forces around Napata. An attack from the desert would
   then enjoy military surprise and reach the city well before
   reinforcements could arrive from Kerma; but a siege would have to
   succeed quickly before the main Nubian army could be alerted and sail
   upriver. Thus Josephus': 'Moses was uneasy at the army lying idle'
   [14] is fully consistent with this military appreciation.

   While a cross-desert attack on Napata makes good military sense, to go
   as far as Meroe makes none at all: so why does Josephus write of
   Meroe, and not Napata? Few modern atlases show Meroe, the ancient
   capital on the Isle of Meroe. But Encyclopedia Britannica says:

     "The site of Napata is indicated by the villages of Sanam Abu Dom
     on the left bank of the Nile and Old Merawi on the right bank ...
     New Merawi, 1 mile east of Sanam Abu Dom and on the same side of
     the river, was founded by the Sudan government in 1905 and made the
     capital of the district of Dongola ... Meroe was probably also an
     alternative name for the city of Napata, the ancient capital of
     Ethiopia, built at the foot of the Jebel Barkal." [15]

   New Merawi appears on many maps, often spelled as 'Merowe'.

   Thus Napata was probably the Egyptian name for a city the Nubians
   called Meroe. When Cambyses's invasion prompted the Nubians to found a
   new capital further up the Nile, they again called it Meroe. The
   Egyptians used that name thereafter, so we can understand how
   Josephus, confusing an ancient and largely truthful Jewish tradition
   and later Egyptian usage recorded an attack on Napata as an attack on
   Meroe [Appendix 1]. In this light the Meroe objection actually
   supports Josephus's story; however, his account would still be highly
   contentious were it not for three other pieces of evidence.

   [*!* Image: Figure 1. Locations (where known) of the 17 Egyptian forts
   listed in a late MK papyrus discovered at Thebes by James Quibell in
   1896.
   LABELS: 15, 16, 17. Aswan. Elephantine 14. Biga 13. First Cataract. 12
   Baki. Dakkek. Ikkur. el Alaki. 11 Aneiba. Abu Simbel. Ballana. Qustol.
   Wadi Halfa. 8 Buhen. 7 Iken?. 6 Mirgissa. Dasnarti. Second Cataract. 5
   Shalfak. 4 Uronarti. 2 Semna. Kumma 3. Egypt-Sudan frontier. 1.
   kilometres. 0 50 N]

   [*!* Image: Figure 2. Map of Nubia region showing possible route of
   Moses' trans-desert strike against Napata, and why the later Meroe was
   not his target.
   1st Cataract. Aswan. Aneiba. Buhen. 2nd Cataract. Semna. 3rd Cataract.
   Kerma. Napata. Merowe. 4th Cataract. Abu Hammad. 5th Cataract. Atbara.
   Meroe. 6th Cataract. Khartum.]

   As Josephus has it, the success of Moses owed less to arms than to
   court diplomacy. His marriage to a Nubian princess secured Egypt's
   southern border at no cost in lives, endearing him to the army, but
   not productive of any commemorative stelae. However, although he came
   from Pharaoh's household, Moses was not of royal blood; by wedding
   royalty he usurped the royal prerogative. The court would not wish to
   annul a marriage so vital to Egyptian national security, but at the
   same time might interpret it as the first step in a bid for the crown.
   We can thus understand the court's fear [Table 2] that Moses would
   'raise a sedition'; but what 'innovations' did some Egyptians suspect
   that Moses might introduce?

   Genesis records that during the great famine, when the Egyptians had
   expended all their money and cattle to buy corn:

     "Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh ... the Egyptians
     sold every man his field .. the people, (Joseph) removed them to
     the cities .... Only the land of the priests bought he not, for the
     priests had a portion assigned to them of Pharaoh." [16]

   This land reform probably ensured better crop management, and surely
   ingratiated Joseph with the priests and Pharaoh. But it would have
   aroused great bitterness among dispossessed landowners, downgrading
   them to common citizens. If, as is likely, these men saw lands they
   had owned being granted to Jacob and his household, the Children of
   Israel would become a focus for their abiding resentment. Their
   descendants' hostility towards the Israelites can then be more readily
   understood.

   By ancient custom, kings who win military victories reward their
   officers with grants of land. Moses had no lands to grant; but on his
   return from success in Nubia he would have a unique opportunity to
   propose to Pharaoh that land be restored to nominated officers -
   thereby alleviating a major cause of enmity towards his race. Pharaoh
   would never release crown land as this might boost the young
   pretender's popular standing, but he might have been amenable to a
   proposal that some of the priests' land be shared with former land
   owners. It matters not whether Moses proposed any such plan: the
   episcopacy would have felt threatened by the mere possibility. It is
   therefore interesting that Josephus specifically identifies the
   'sacred scribes' as those who feared that Moses might bring
   'innovations'.

   A second, less speculative point lies in the reasons given for Moses's
   flight from Egypt. His status as a prince and office as a judge over
   the Egyptians would give Moses a high degree of protection against any
   charge of unlawful killing, leaving the biblical account unpersuasive:
   Josephus' story is more credible, and is supported by the biblical
   record. It says that the Lord told Moses in Midian: 'Go, return into
   Egypt: for all the men are dead which sought thy life' [Exodus 4:19].
   If the crime had been murder 'the men' cannot have been the victim's
   relatives, for blood feuds outlast a generation. Nor were they the
   law's representatives: murder enjoys no Statute of Limitations. But if
   the 'crime' was that a youthful, victorious Moses was seen as a threat
   to Pharaoh's throne and the temple lands, then the threat would
   dwindle as Moses grew older, remembered only by men who had felt
   personally threatened. With their deaths, Moses could return to Egypt
   in relative safety.

   A third and strong point in favour of Josephus's version is also to be
   found in the biblical record. After the Exodus, Miriam and Aaron:
   'spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman he had married:
   for he had married an Ethiopian woman' [Numbers 12:1]. Repetition
   argues that the charge was factual, while the pluperfect tense
   suggests that Moses considered himself no longer married to the woman.
   She could not have been Zipporah unless Jethro, priest of Midian, was
   a Nubian: had that been so it would surely have been recorded.
   Manasseh and Ephraim were Joseph's sons by an Egyptian mother, so
   Moses could hardly be charged with miscegenation. But if Moses married
   Zipporah while still married to a Nubian princess, he could have been
   accused of bigamy: only then does the biblical anecdote make sense. It
   is difficult not to conclude that the Torah originally included an
   account of Moses in Nubia similar to that of Josephus. Although the
   redactors later excised it to minimise Egyptian aspects of Moses's
   career, they overlooked this one crucial associated scriptural
   reference.

   The foregoing discussion finds sufficient consistencies between the
   Torah and Josephus to suggest that the latter deserves greater
   credibility than he is usually accorded. On that basis I now assert
   that Moses could well have led a thousands-strong Egyptian army in a
   successful desert campaign; and that this experience, reinforcing the
   military training which he must have received as a member of the royal
   household, would equip him with the know-how to organise the
   Israelites along army lines. That they were so organised is clear from
   Exodus 12:17: 'this selfsame day have I brought forth your armies out
   of the land of Egypt' (see also Exodus 7:4 and Numbers 33:1). But
   though Moses would need such experience to formulate a viable plan for
   moving twenty thousand or more Israelites from Egypt to Canaan through
   the Sinai desert, that would be only one among many essential
   pre-conditions.

   The Time Factor

   It is indisputable that moving even twenty thousand people of all ages
   out of Egypt, with their flocks and household goods, would present a
   huge logistical task. Although Jacob is recorded as following a
   nomadic life in Canaan, the Israelites in Egypt seem to have led a
   more settled existence for at least four generations. In this time
   most of them would inevitably have lost their nomadic expertise at the
   same time as they acquired new skills [17]. In any case the Exodus was
   not just another bi-annual trek between summer and winter pasturage,
   crossing familiar ground from one well-known watering hole to the
   next; but a forced march into mainly waterless, definitely hostile,
   and supposedly unfamiliar terrain, with the added difficulties of
   having first to run the gauntlet of the Egyptian army, and then of
   self defence against powerful desert marauders.

   Safe exit from Egypt would depend critically on the factors of Time
   and Space which beset every military operation. For the entire party
   to be able to quit Egypt before the army could be interposed it would
   have had to be organised and drilled with something approaching
   military precision. Given the serf-like status of the Israelites and
   the tribal factionalism which characterised their society, this degree
   of organisation would have taken years to achieve. Moreover, it would
   be quite impossible unless preceded by unanimity among the tribes to
   coordinate their preparations. In turn, this implies that Moses must
   have previously convinced the tribal elders that their God was going
   to create an opportunity for flight, and that he was God's appointed
   leader in this hazardous, seemingly impossible enterprise.

   In conjunction with Velikovsky's hypothesis, this indicates that
   Moses:

     (a) Had reason to expect a cosmic event, and could predict with
     adequate accuracy when it would occur (in order to draw up a viable
     timetable for Exodus preparations).
     (b) Could persuade the sceptics that despite his Egyptian
     upbringing he was totally devoted to the Israelite cause.
     (c) Was able convincingly to represent himself as being in the line
     (of Abraham, and Jacob) of those to whom God spoke directly.

   This section considers the first of these three propositions. The
   other two will be discussed in the subsequent section.

   In Worlds in Collision Velikovsky introduced his interpretation of
   events surrounding the Exodus by first discussing, in a chapter titled
   'The Most Incredible Story', the Beth-horon event when Joshua is said
   to have commanded the Sun to stand still [18]. Velikovsky posited that
   such a disturbance in the apparent motion of the Sun could only have
   been due to a disturbance in the terrestrial rotation, which might be
   caused by the close passage of a massive cometary body.

   He noted an earlier verse describing great stones falling on
   Beth-horon, consistent with Earth passing through the comet's tail;
   and argued that as the lengthened day and falling-stones phenomena
   'were recorded to have occurred together, it is improbable that the
   records were invented' [19]. He found a pre-Columbian Mexican codex
   relating how during a cosmic catastrophe the night did not end for a
   long time, and that a greater cosmic catastrophe had occurred 52 years
   earlier. A longer day in Canaan requires a lengthened night in Mexico,
   and since about 52 years elapsed between the Exodus and Beth-horon
   events, Velikovsky hypothesised that the natural disasters surrounding
   the Exodus were caused by a large cometary body in a still closer
   brush with Earth.

   If Velikovsky's hypothesis is correct (that a body moving on a
   cometary orbit passed Earth very closely at the time of the Exodus and
   at a greater but still fairly close range 52 years later), it is not
   improbable that the body would also have passed at fairly close range
   52 years before the Exodus. Moreover this pattern - of two or three
   close passages, followed by a long period when at minimum separation
   the body was at a relatively safe distance - would tend to repeat
   itself at an interval probably of hundreds of years. Such a pattern
   would have been detected and established by ancient astronomers; in
   which case Moses's Egyptian education would have included those events
   (though described, no doubt, as the visitations of a God).

   In what follows, Velikovsky's 52-year periodicity for the cosmic
   intruder, and Moses's age as recorded in the Torah, are used. Whether
   these data are correct in terms of current solar years is open to
   question [20]. However, if there were transitions between lunar and
   solar year calendric systems, Moses's lifetime would surely have been
   the period of greatest confusion. It is by no means certain what
   corrections (if any) should be applied to ages given in the Torah:
   moreover similar (but not necessarily identical) corrections may need
   to be applied to the data from which comet periods were deduced. Moses
   is recorded as having been 80 years old at the time of the Exodus. If
   Velikovsky's comet had approached Earth 52 years earlier, Moses would
   have been about 28 years old, probably in the early years of his
   exile. If he then recognised the flyby as the same type of visitation
   described by his Egyptian tutors, he could anticipate at least one
   further visitation 52 years later. Thus a close cometary flyby event
   during the early years of Moses' exile could have acted to him as a
   harbinger of a similar event half a century thereafter. That
   conclusion holds even if Moses's age at Exodus is lowered
   substantially, provided that the period between cometary passages is
   also suitably reduced.

   It must be stressed that as yet this harbinger event - a logical
   extension of Velikovsky's hypothesis - is unproven. But if it actually
   happened, inspiring Moses to conceive of using the next visitation to
   lead the Israelites out of Egypt, he would have had ample time for the
   necessary planning, preparation, and training. Thus the hypothesised
   Harbinger solves the Time Factor problem. But that would still only be
   another essential preliminary. Moses's biggest difficulties were that
   he had first to allay the understandable suspicions of his own people
   - to prove himself 'more Hebrew than the Hebrews' -and then to
   establish dictatorial control over the tribes to achieve command of
   the Exodus enterprise. How he might have tackled these much more
   intractable problems is discussed in the next two sections.

   Winning the Hearts and Minds

   If the Torah and Josephus are broadly correct, Moses was reared within
   the Egyptian court system which would have trained him in disciplines
   essential for a royal prince - such as those listed in Table 2. All
   his training would be directed towards fostering leadership qualities;
   but it would have been an Egyptian education, aimed at developing
   Egyptian youths of suitable character into men who would hold
   positions of legislative and military authority on behalf of the
   Egyptian Pharaoh. An Israelite who from birth had been adopted by an
   Egyptian princess, and was reared within this system from early
   boyhood to young manhood, would emerge groomed as a prince and a judge
   over Egyptians; but among his own people a very different attitude
   would inevitably prevail. The Hebrew man whose taskmaster Moses is
   said to have slain makes this point cuttingly: 'Who made thee a prince
   and a judge over us'? [Exodus 2:14].

   In the scriptural account, this slaying is why Moses fears Pharaoh and
   flees from Egypt - surely an unusual reaction for a prince of the
   royal household, and a judge with powers of life and death over
   Egyptians. He returns to Egypt after 40 years exile in Midian. At
   God's bidding Aaron meets Moses who tells him God's words and reveals
   the magic signs. Moses and Aaron gather together all the elders of
   Israel. Aaron speaks the words of the Lord and shows the signs to the
   people, whereupon they believe that their Lord is visiting them
   through Moses, bow their heads and worship [Exodus 4:30-1]. In other
   words - men who spurned Moses when as a powerful Egyptian prince and
   victorious general he held power which could have alleviated their
   lot, unhesitatingly accept him as their leader when he returns, an
   aging nobody. And all this simply on the strength of a talk and two
   conjuring tricks performed by his brother! If the scriptural account
   is the whole truth, those tribal elders must have been among the most
   credulous men ever entrusted with authority.

   If Moses was out of touch with the Israelites until his return from
   Midian, those old and deeply-nurtured suspicions of him would surely
   have endured, and made his task virtually impossible. But if in
   reality Moses contacted his brother Aaron before or during his flight
   from Egypt, and stayed in touch with Aaron throughout his exile, he
   could have developed via that channel a wider rapport with the tribes
   on which to build his ultimately successful bid for supreme control.
   Although contacts between Moses and Aaron are not recorded prior to
   their meeting at Horeb, the recorder (Moses) had a vested interest in
   representing events as the handiwork of God, not man (i.e. himself).
   It is inherently unlikely that he would leave Egypt without contacting
   his family, and it is easier to credit that the two brothers met at
   Horeb by arrangement than that Aaron went there on God's command after
   fifty years of separation.

   Based on the work of P. J. Wiseman and A. S. Yahuda, Mackey et al.
   argue [21] that the book of Genesis reveals strong Egyptian influences
   and remarkably few Akkadian ones. In particular, Wiseman deduced that
   the earlier parts of the book are Moses's transliterations into
   contemporary Hebrew of ancient tablets preserved by Abraham's
   descendants, whereas sections dealing with the times of Joseph forward
   were compiled by Moses from Israelite and Egyptian archives. Having
   been educated by Egyptian savants, Moses would have been ideally
   equipped for this work: it required a knowledge of Egyptian writing
   and history, access to the tablets of the Israelites (or copies), and
   probably a knowledge of cuneiform. The whole translation and
   compilation task would take considerable time.

   Mackey et al. do not ask when Moses might have done the work: the
   period of his Midian exile seems most likely. Moses might have started
   writing a history of Joseph during his palace years, in Egyptian for
   Egyptian readership: whether he did so or not it is clear that a
   version in Hebrew would have been a major morale-booster for
   Israelites under the Egyptian yoke. Forming chapters 37 to 50 of the
   present book of Genesis, it would have reached the Israelites via
   Aaron, and would have been followed by Moses' compilation in Hebrew of
   the Abraham stories (into which he may have added an account [22] of
   Abraham in Egypt). This second publication included the promise of a
   home in Canaan [23] - a vital spur to the Exodus enterprise, and could
   well have paved the way for the release to Moses of the sacred tablets
   (or copies of the tablets) which he re-wrote into the Hebrew of his
   day and which were in time to become the first eleven chapters of
   Genesis.

   The upbringing of Moses gave him the means to translate, write, and
   edit the Book of Genesis: exile gave him the opportunity. His motives
   would have been complex, but two elements can be inferred with high
   likelihood. A man reared in the royal court would hardly be human if
   he did not aspire to the status traditionally accorded to a prince; so
   if, denied princedom in Egypt, Moses sought to gain leadership of the
   Israelites, that is an understandable reflex. Moreover, in seeking to
   free the Israelites from Egyptian subjugation Moses may consciously or
   otherwise have been initially impelled by desire for vengeance on the
   Egyptian court. Whatever his promptings may have been, there is no
   doubt that by producing one comprehensive account of his race's
   traditions he provided the tribes with a powerful unifying totem,
   encouraging them to accept its assurance that they were the cultural
   equals of their Egyptian masters. At that stage Moses's literacy would
   have been his most powerful asset.

   The Mantle of Leadership

   Any bid for leadership on tribal grounds would have to be based on
   descent (probably involving primogeniture) either from Jacob's eldest
   son Reuben, or from the great Joseph via Manasseh or Ephraim. As the
   second son of a Levite and a fugitive from the Egyptians, Moses was
   severely handicapped. Even with his credibility restored though the
   'Genesis' work, Moses would have needed an extremely powerful argument
   in support of any claim to leadership. Meanwhile Israelite
   recollections of his erstwhile status of Egyptian prince, general, and
   judge, would continue to weigh against him.

   However, it follows from the Harbinger hypothesis that Moses was in a
   position to bid for leadership based on his unique relationship with
   God. By claiming that the Harbinger was Israel's old God by a new name
   (Yahweh), by relating a message of hope from Yahweh to His Children
   the Israelites, and by predicting Yahweh's next visitation, Moses
   could claim to be The One and True Prophet. This claim would be
   irresistible if and when the forecast return proved true, but the need
   to organise and train the Israelites beforehand meant that Moses could
   not wait so long. A factor in circumventing this problem would be to
   focus attention forward to the promised land of Canaan: hence the
   stress placed on the promise in Moses' accounts of the lives of
   Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

   However, those accounts may have produced other problems for Moses.
   Abraham's God may have been Zedek [24], and not El as in the ancient
   tablets. It is probable too that descriptions of El and Zedek could
   not easily be reconciled: a surmise based on the assumption that the
   cometary visitor's previous set of two or three close flybys occurred
   in Abraham's time, perhaps generating the night sky image originally
   underlaying the Covenant of the Pieces story [25], and destroying the
   Cities of the Plain [26]. The cosmic phenomenon behind El seems to
   have been very different [27]. Moreover, the comet would be affected
   by near contact with Earth, and on its re-appearance as Yahweh,
   Harbinger of the Exodus, it probably looked very different from
   descriptions of Zedek.

   If this speculation is right it explains why Moses repeatedly claimed
   that the God who spoke to him was: 'The God of Abraham, the God of
   Isaac, and the God of Jacob' [28]: he had to refute visual evidence to
   the contrary. It may also explain the title: 'I Am' (Exodus 3:14), a
   name so ambivalent that it could equate not only with Zedek but also
   with El, so giving the God of Moses an unchallengeable provenance.
   This assumes that the Harbinger event was a close but not very close
   flyby, involving little change in the visitor's appearance between
   that event and the Exodus. Hence, if Moses 'predicted' what Yahweh
   would look like, the period of the Plagues would reveal his
   description as broadly correct. Fortuitously, this would 'prove' that
   Moses was divinely inspired, and help to ensure full compliance with
   his final pre-Exodus orders.

   I posit that the basis for Moses' control over the Children of Israel
   lay in the special relationship with Yahweh he was able to claim. The
   Torah does not mention an Israelite 'priesthood' before the Exodus:
   any such descriptions originally present would probably have been
   excised - to present an idealised picture of monotheistic continuity
   from Noah through Abraham to Moses. But as in every society, priestly
   organisations must have existed - although the Abrahamic leader/priest
   traditions may have ensured that, prior to Moses, Jewish priests were
   subservient to tribal leaders. When those leaders came under Moses's
   thumb, their now-independent priests might have been opposed to Moses,
   as some were after the Exodus [Numbers 16].

   Moses seems to have allowed for this potential problem in his
   planning. By conducting most of his dealings with the elders through
   Aaron, he prepared the ground for elevating the Levites to a special
   status as a permanent priesthood among the tribes - thus buying the
   allegiance of his own tribe, while making Aaron a scapegoat in case
   the Exodus enterprise went badly wrong. Moreover, with Aaron the
   channel through whom their sacred texts were passed to Moses for
   transliteration into contemporary language, Israel's elders would
   become increasingly dependent upon the two Levite brothers, and less
   able to resist their takeover of the reins of power.

   Nevertheless, among six thousand non-Levite male adults there would
   have been many Israelites who would not accept Moses's diktats. To
   enforce his authority Moses may have needed to take the drastic step
   of removing any such points of resistance. Joshua was called '"cutter
   off of heads", alluding to his office of official executioner and as
   such having cut off his own father's head' [29]. If Joshua led a 'hit
   squad' on Moses' behalf it explains not only his ardent support for
   Moses, but also why he was appointed as Moses' successor. In the
   modern argot, he 'knew where the bodies were buried'.

   Reflections

   If a Harbinger Event of the type hypothesised here actually occurred
   it would be regarded - not by Moses alone - as the visitation of a new
   God. It could have inspired Moses to dream of leading the Israelites
   from Egyptian bondage; and to realise that this depended on finding a
   formula for merging his new God Yahweh with El, God of the patriarchs.
   Interspersion in Genesis of the names El, Elohim, El Adonai, and El
   Shaddai, with the name Yahweh, suggests Moses taking care to
   demonstrate veneration of the patriarchs' God(s) - so avoiding any
   conflict with keepers of the sacred tablets, while accustoming these
   same Israelites to acceptance of a new name, and eventually to the
   worship of a new God. Through his claim to have sole access to this
   new God's mind, Moses was able to gain control of the Exodus
   enterprise. Moses had the knowledge and experience essential to that
   enterprise: the Harbinger Event provided the time needed for him to
   plan - and the Israelites to prepare - to leave Egypt when Yahweh
   re-appeared. Thus a cometary visitor as conjectured by Velikovsky when
   interpreting many catastrophic elements in the Exodus stories is found
   to be no less essential to account for human elements of the story.

   It is again stressed that except for the consideration of the account
   in Josephus of Moses's Nubian expedition, the foregoing discussion is
   wholly speculative. If only Moses, a prolific and versatile writer,
   had recorded the Harbinger Event, he would have removed it from the
   realm of speculation into the world of hard fact. A contemporary
   record would not only establish the Harbinger Event as historical, but
   also provide strong evidence for Velikovsky's thesis that the Exodus
   Event was closely associated with a cosmically-induced catastrophe.

   However, the most cursory consideration shows that if Moses had
   recorded the Harbinger Event in terms showing that he had witnessed
   the cyclical visitation of a cometary body, describing the appearance
   of the body and its effects, and revealing how from this Moses had
   developed the Yahweh concept (the means by which he was to take
   control of Israel), then in all but the safest hands it would be a
   highly dangerous document. Its publication would totally destroy his
   credibility and authority, and almost certainly guarantee his
   immediate death - and not his alone, but also those of his immediate
   kin, Joshua, and many of the Levites, as Moses' co-conspirators in the
   plot. Even an encrypted record would provide little safety, because
   revelation of the existence of 'secret writings' would be likely to
   inflame suspicions.

   Thus if Moses had recorded the hypothesised Harbinger Event, he would
   probably write it in the form of an anonymous, seemingly innocuous
   story, unconnected with him or his associates. Even then, while
   witnesses to the Harbinger and Exodus events remained alive, the risk
   would persist that they might read the story and recognise its true
   import. Thus Moses would have had to entrust his record into 'secure';
   hands - such as Joshua's, already stained with blood and hence
   inextricably implicated. If Moses wrote such a record, his
   arrangements for safeguarding it are unknowable; but an unusually
   secure hiding place would be needed for it to survive till the present
   day.

   Fortunately, Moses did record the Harbinger Event, and his record has
   survived almost intact! We owe its survival to the fact that from
   early times it has lain, visible but unrecognised, in (fortuitously)
   secure custody. Thus we can be certain the record is not a modern
   forgery, but is documentary testimony of great age. It graphically
   describes the event and its immediate consequences; provides a wealth
   of fascinating insights into the circumstances in which the Exodus
   enterprise was first conceived and the Yahweh concept evolved; and in
   spite of Moses' best efforts, reveals him unmistakably as its author.
   
   Part 2
   
   The Hiding Place

   Where was Moses's secret record kept securely for over thirty-four
   centuries? The safest place would be in a collection of broadly
   similar writings, where its unique nature could easily be overlooked.
   The most notable collection of such writings would be the sacred texts
   of the Jews, the Old Testament of the Bible.

   By what criteria were those texts determined as sacred, and so
   admitted to the Jewish canon? This question is not intended to suggest
   that the various books were submitted to a Selection Committee, which
   adjudicated on the basis of an agreed set of rules or standards. But
   even a cursory acquaintance with the Old Testament reveals a set of
   Jewish-oriented characteristics, some of the which are to be found in
   each of the books. [Here and elsewhere in this paper, the term 'Jew'
   will be used to embrace all the Children of Israel, and their
   ancestors: it is not restricted to the peoples of Judah and their
   descendants].

   The Old Testament books handle Jewish themes: Jewish history, Jewish
   religious practises, ethical and moral precepts of the Jews,
   exhortations to and prophesies about Jews. A pervasive theme is
   exaltation of the Jewish God, counterpointed by condemnation of those
   who neglect His Laws. Tables 3 and 4 present a simple analysis: they
   show that Jewish authorship is claimed or inferred for each of the
   books listed: 36 of the books are about and/or addressed to Jews,
   while 33 relate to the Land of Canaan, as a background to the writing
   or as the aspiration of exiles in foreign countries.

   However, one Old Testament book is shown neither on Table 3 nor Table
   4. There are no Jewish characters in the Book of Job. The story is not
   set in, and does not even mention Canaan. It does not touch on any
   obviously Jewish theme and its 'theology', with Job demanding from God
   an explanation for the calamities that have fallen on him, has been
   felt by some to verge on heresy if not blasphemy. This poses two
   important questions. Why was the Book of Job accepted into the Jewish
   canon initially? And secondly, how did so non-Jewish a book retain its
   place throughout several revisions of that canon by the Jews? (At the
   Second Council of Constantinople, Theodore of Mopsuestia denied that
   the book of Job was divinely inspired; but this was a Christian, not a
   Jewish council, and in any case the Abbe Grandvaux refuted Theodore's
   allegation). Before attempting to answer the questions just posed, the
   content and structure of the book will be briefly outlined.

   The Story of Job and Construction of the Book

   The book is the story of a man who is 'perfect and upright, fearing
   Elohim and turning away from evil', offering sacrifices to expiate
   sins that his sons may have committed. Satan gets God's permission to
   test Job's virtue. Disasters rain down striking first Job's property,
   then his family, and lastly his body. Despite this and his wife's
   taunting, Job persists in submission to God. As he is scraping himself
   among the ashes his friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar arrive, see
   his grief, and sit with him in silence. These events are narrated in
   prose, and form the Prologue.

   Job then begins a lament before his friends, expressing himself in
   poetry: his interlocutors respond in poetry. There are three cycles of
   poetic discourse, each friend speaking three times, each time evoking
   a reply from Job (in its present form the third cycle is incomplete:
   the final speeches of Bildad and Zophar are mixed with Job's
   penultimate speech, but the original purport can be recovered). After
   Job's tenth and last speech a new personage named Elihu intervenes,
   who after a short prose introduction makes a series of monologues in
   poetry, emphasising his theories by addressing himself to Job and the
   three friends, and then fading out. Yahweh enters the arena, and in
   sublime poetry answers Job 'from the whirlwind', leaving Job
   stammering words of humility and abasement. In a very short prose
   Epilogue Job recovers his former prosperity: virtue is finally
   rewarded [30].

   Thus the book divides conveniently into a prose narrative (mainly the
   Prologue and Epilogue) and the poetic discourses. As illustrated in
   Figure 3, the discourses form the major proportion of the book. The
   division is sharpened by usage of the Divine Names. In the discourses
   the name of God appears 93 times - as El, Eloah, Shaddai, Elohim, or
   one of the first two in combination with the third; but the
   tetragrammaton YHWH appears only once, in v.12:9 - almost certainly a
   copyist's mistaken repetition of Isaiah 41:20. Yet the sacred name
   Yahweh appears 29 times in the prose narrative, 18 of them in the two
   chapters of the Prologue, and 9 in the eleven verses of the Epilogue.
   This differentiation is remarkable, leading some exegetes to conclude
   that the prose narrative and poetic discourses were written by
   different authors and at different times, though they cannot agree
   which came first. But the unity of the book argues against them:
   without the discourses the narrative is banal, without the narrative
   the discourses would have been meaningless.

   On two points almost all commentators are agreed.Firstly, the Book of
   Job is a literary work of the highest quality, ranking with the finest
   writing found in any of the world's books [31], but secondly, it is
   almost totally enigmatic. Scholars cannot agree whether it is contest
   literature (dialectic), teaching literature (like the Book of
   Proverbs), protest literature (e.g. the Ipuwer papyrus), written
   rhetoric, or even drama: no parallel nor even a convincingly similar
   work is found in any language. The Hebrew text appears to be littered
   with words and phrases unknown in Hebrew: many are translated by
   relating them to roots in other Middle Eastern languages, but
   sufficient remain to suggest that the text is corrupt. The land of Uz
   in which the story is set is thought by most to be in the region of
   Edom, south of Palestine, but some others claim Uz lay in southern
   Syria. Not only are Job and his friends non-Jewish, but no connection
   with any real or fictional Jew is indicated or suggested. Nothing in
   the book seems historical, complicating the issues of when it was
   written and who might have written it. In sum, the Book of Job is
   regarded as a wholly imaginative work, by an unknown literary genius.

   Table 3. Analysis of 'Historical' Books of the Old Testament

   written Canaan- theme: Jewish Total
   by Jews about Jews based aimed history/
   anecdote ritual wisdom prophecy/
   exhortation 'score' each book
   Genesis 1 1 0.5 0.5 1
   4
   Exodus 1 1
   1 1
   4
   Leviticus 1 1 1
   1
   4
   Numbers 1 1
   1 1
   4
   Deuteronomy 1 1
   1 1
   4
   Joshua 1 1 1
   1
   4
   Judges 1 1 1
   1
   4
   Ruth 1 0.5 0.5 0.5 1
   3.5
   I-II Samuel 1 1 1
   1
   4
   I-II Kings 1 1 1
   1
   4
   I-II Chronicles 1 1 1
   1
   4
   Ezra 1 1 0.5 0.5 1
   4
   Nehemiah 1 1 0.5 0.5 1
   4
   Esther 1 1
   1
   3

   Dating the Book of Job

   If the book could be dated with reasonable reliability, some of these
   enigmas could be at least partly resolved. From text analyses it has
   been argued that Job was written after the return from Babylonian
   exile [32], which would make a Mosaic origin impossible. Those
   analyses began with the 'Higher Criticism', the challenge to the
   authenticity of the Jewish bible led by 19th century German scholars
   Karl Heinrich Graf and Julius Wellhausen: but a recent Review article
   provides grounds for suspecting the motivations behind much of that
   German scholarship [33] and, though this does not of itself have any
   direct bearing on the validity or otherwise of the dating of Job, it
   does prompt an examination of the evidence on which a post-exilic date
   is based.

   Edouard Dhorme's Le Livre de Job [34] has been acclaimed as one of the
   finest commentaries ever written on any book of the Bible. His
   217-page introduction comprehensively summarises and discusses the
   critics' arguments. He considers the treatment of Satan as being
   stylistic in Zechariah but stereotyped in Job; concludes that the
   prophesies of Zechariah must have come first, but that the book of Job
   influenced, and therefore preceded, Malachi. From dates assigned to
   those prophetic writings he finds that Job must have been written
   between 500 and 450 BC, a date that 'is singularly well confirmed by
   vocabulary and grammar' [35]. Most of this confirmatory evidence
   actually consists of the number of Aramaic expressions and usages
   identified in Job, especially forty non-Hebrew words which have been
   translated by assuming an Aramaic derivation. Dhorme notes that it was
   in the 5th century BC that Aramaic became the normal language of
   Jewish communities in Egypt, supporting his 500-450 BC dating.

   Faced with this scholarly conclusion - and Dhorme's scholarship is
   impeccable - it might seem pointless to pursue the examination.
   However, it must be said that Dhorme's case is neither overwhelming
   nor even very compelling though in its day it was well-received and
   continues to command a significant consensus. Contrary arguments can
   be proposed on the basis of Dhorme's own evidence. He noted a plethora
   of errors in all the texts, some of which date from only two centuries
   after his supposed date of original writing: it is strange that the
   text should have become so corrupt in so short a time. In addition to
   the 40 non-Hebrew words with supposedly Aramaic roots, he found 48
   with Arabic and 58 with Akkadian roots - languages which did not have
   a strong influence on 5th century BC Hebrew. Thus Dhorme was selective
   in relying on the Aramaisms, and ignoring other foreign intrusions.
   Again, if the book was written in the 5th century BC, it was
   incorporated into the Jewish canon not long afterwards, and most of
   these 'neologisms' - as Dhorme calls them - could have been translated
   into Hebrew with only a little research by the scribes. Why then did
   not one of those words (over 200 in total) enter the Hebrew
   vocabulary?

   Moreover, text criticism is not a static discipline. In his 1984
   Preface to Rowley's translation of Dhorme's book, Andersen states:

     "Two notable discoveries ... have thrown Job studies into new
     perspectives - the Ras Shamra tablets and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The
     first set of documents come from a time when the writing of the Old
     Testament was in its beginning; the second set after it was
     finished. The Canaanite myths from Ugarit provide background for
     the language and literature in Job; the Qumran manuscripts -
     including an actual Targum of Job, to our great surprise! - throw
     light on the text in its later transmission and translation. Yet
     even in these two matters of philology and text-criticism, Dhorme's
     work remains indispensable for the serious student" [36].

   When Andersen wrote that Preface he had already published a commentary
   on Job of his own [37], where he considers that: 'Freedman's study of
   orthography has now ... made any date later than the seventh century
   hard to uphold' [38]. He observes [39] that the author (of Job):

     "... has simulated the pre-Mosaic world of the patriarchs and
     succeeded in concealing his own day and age by avoiding detectable
     anachronisms" [my italics].

   He concludes: 'All we can say is that Job could have been written at
   any time between Moses and Ezra' [40], giving his opinion, which he
   admits he cannot substantiate, that the substance of the book took
   shape during the reign of Solomon, and its form was settled by the
   time of Josiah.

   Andersen's conclusion should be no surprise. Text analysis may be a
   powerful tool where the original text is available but in the case of
   Job (and in the cases of many Old Testament books) it is being applied
   to an nth-hand translation and/or copy of the original. We do not know
   who was involved in the processes that led to the various texts which
   have come down to us, nor their backgrounds and qualifications, nor
   when they performed their work, nor if some of the errors, neologisms,
   and unknown terms in the texts are due to these unknown scribes and
   not to the unknown author. From this it is clear that textual
   criticism alone is unlikely ever to prove a date for the Book of Job -
   the Encyclopedia Britannica's dogmatism notwithstanding. If a better
   dating is to be found, the problem will have to be approached from a
   different direction.

         Table 4. Analysis of Remaining Books of the Old Testament

   written Canaan- theme: Jewish Total
   'score'
   each book
   by Jews about Jews history/
   based aimed prophecy/
   anecdote ritual wisdom exhortation
   Psalms 1 1 1
   1
   4
   Proverbs 1 1 1
   1
   4
   Ecclesiastes 1 1 1
   0.5
   3.5
   Song of Solomon 1 1 1
   0.5 0.5
   4
   Isaiah 1 1 1
   0.5 0.5
   4
   Jeremiah 1 1
   1 0.5
   0.5 4
   Lamentations 1 1 1 1 4
   Ezekiel/Malachi/ 1 1 1
   1 4
   Zechariah
   Daniel 1 1
   0.5
   0.5 3
   Hosea/Joel/Amos/
   Micah/Habakkuk/ 1 1
   1
   1 4
   Nahum/Zephaniah
   Obadiah 1
   1
   1 3
   Jonah 1 0.5 0.5
   1 3
   Haggai 1 1
   0.5
   1 3.5

   The Book and the Canon

   Let us return to the original question. Under what circumstances could
   this unusual book have entered the Jewish canon? If it could be
   attributed to an historically eminent Jew such as King Solomon, the
   conundrum would be solved. Other Old Testament books attributed to
   Solomon reveal him as a competent, though hardly an outstanding
   author, but his prominence within Jewish history accords those
   writings an unchallengeable provenance. But Job is an anonymous book.
   It is not known if it was written by one hand or several: the Poem on
   Wisdom (chap. 28), the Elihu monologues (chaps. 32-37), and the
   speeches of Yahweh (chaps. 40-42), as well as the entire prose
   narrative, have all been ascribed to other pens [41]. And though
   theologians claim that the book's religious themes are Jewish, that is
   at least arguable. In reality, Jewish authorship is inferred almost
   wholly from the fact that the book is found in the Jewish Canon!

   But how could this non-Jewish Book of Job have entered the sacred
   canon in the first place? Jewish tradition has an answer: the
   Babylonian Talmud attributes its composition to Moses [42]. Now if
   that attribution has any credibility, the problem of its entry into
   the canon disappears. As the reputed author of the Torah, Moses was
   the human originator of the canon. Any writings which later guardians
   of the canon held to be by Moses would be sure of a permanent place
   within it. For two reasons however, that is an insufficient answer.
   Firstly, if those guardians had been called on to judge whether the
   Book of Job was the work of Moses, the contrast of its non-Jewish tone
   with the ultra-Jewishness of the Pentateuch (the five books positively
   ascribed to Moses) would have led them to find against it; and
   secondly, in rejecting leadership by prophets and adopting a monarchy,
   the Jews were in effect substituting Jewish nationalism for their
   previous 'sacred nation' status.

   Thus it seems improbable that from the foundation of the monarchy
   onward the nation could have accepted into its sacred canon a book so
   totally un-Jewish as the Book of Job. However, as it formed part of
   the canon from the earliest recorded time, the factors just discussed
   strongly suggest that it must have been attributed to Moses and
   accorded a status approaching that of the books of the Pentateuch
   between the times of Moses and Samuel - so Mosaic authorship becomes
   an interesting possibility. But while it is possible to conceive that
   a post-exilic literary genius might have composed a fictional
   re-creation of the patriarchal epoch, it is almost inconceivable that
   any Jew writing in pre-monarchy days would have wished or been able to
   do so. Hence in re-examining the provenance of the Book of Job, it is
   necessary to allow for the possiblity that it is not a piece of
   imaginative fiction, but a historical narrative. It is from that
   standpoint that we now ask: 'Who wrote the Book of Job'?

   [*!* Image: Figure 3. The Structure of the Book of Job in diagrammatic
   form.
   The vertical height of each 'block' is proportional to the number of
   verses attributed to the speaker.
   Prose narrative. Job. Eliphaz. Bildad. Zophar. Elihu. Yahweh]

   The Recorder in the Shadows

   If the discourse between Job and his three friends as recorded in the
   book is a record of an actual series of dialogues - albeit edited into
   poetic form for purposes unknown - someone must have recorded what was
   said. As the Prologue describes the scene, only Job and his three
   friends were present, and none of them can plausibly be proposed as
   the recorder. But when the dialogues end we suddenly find (v.32:2)
   that another individual is present. Elihu - the son of Barachel the
   Buzite, of the kindred of Ram - announces: 'I am young and ye are very
   old: wherefore I was afraid and durst not show you mine opinion'
   (v.32:6). Evidently, Elihu has been present throughout as a silent
   listener. But could Elihu have been Moses, and have recorded the
   discourse of the older men? This paper has identified several
   characteristics of Moses and his career - on the basis that as a young
   prince exiled from Egypt he witnessed a harbinger of the cosmic event
   around which he was later to weave the Exodus enterprise. Do any of
   Elihu's characteristics as derived from the book of Job coincide with
   those of Moses? Their youth is an obvious coincidence: are there more?

   Elihu's monologues reveal him as a highly educated young man;
   deferential but at ease in the company of his elders; self-confident
   and eloquent in speaking; who addresses Job and replies to his
   arguments - which Job's three friends did not do. When describing
   Elihu's speech both Andersen and Dhorme use the word 'bombastic', i.e.
   high-sounding and inflated, which implies a shallow content. But
   though more prolix than the contributions of the three friends,
   Elihu's monologues are constructed logically; they reveal an
   intelligent, imaginative, and poetic mind; though their quality does
   not attain that of Yahweh's speech, it surpasses those of the earlier
   interlocutors. A more suitable description might be 'imperious' - the
   style of one accustomed to speaking with authority. Such a style of
   speaking and attitude of mind would not be unexpected from a young
   prince recently exiled from the royal court of Egypt. This constitutes
   a second 'coincidence'.

   Elihu tells the group: 'I will fetch my knowledge from afar' (v.36:3).
   Taking this literally, it indicates that Elihu received some or all of
   his education in a distant land. Remembering that Moses was brought up
   in Egypt, this forms a third coincidence. But Egypt was not the only
   centre of learning: might not Elihu have been educated elsewhere? The
   prologue depicts Job as: 'the greatest of all the men of the east'
   (v.1:3). Dhorme explains the phrase 'men (or 'sons') of the east' as a
   general term for orientals and in particular for nomadic Arabs [43].
   Andersen asserts:

     "Whether the land of Uz is located in the north or in the south ...
     Job's homeland is somewhere to the east of Israel proper" [44].

   But Uz/Edom lay south of Canaan, not east [*!* Image: Figure 4]. Job
   is described as living a settled life there and as Abraham came from
   east of Haran, Edomites were no more oriental than the Jews - so the
   explanations fail to explain. But to a scribe from Memphis or Goshen,
   the Edomites lived to the east. Job, who owned the largest flocks and
   herds, could naturally be described as: 'the greatest of all the men
   of the east.' Thus if Elihu was the writer of the Book of Job, he
   probably came to the Edom area from Lower Egypt - a further and strong
   parallel with Moses.

   A digression on Figure 4 is in order here. Teman, the homeland of
   Eliphaz, is believed to have been the triangular area south of Edom
   defined by the modern Ma'an, Aqaba (once Ezion-Geber), and Tebuk. East
   of the Ma'an-Tebuk road lies Wadi el Khush Shuah: as a Shuhite, Bildad
   may have lived in that area. Just south of the road running east from
   Tebuk is Jebel el Na'amah, which may have been the home country of
   Zophar the Naamathite. It is entirely conceivable that travellers from
   these three places would meet during journeys northwards along the
   road which leads ultimately to Damascus. South-east of the Dead Sea
   that road passes between Hasa and Bosrah. Hasa was Hazu, and the area
   around Bosrah was called Bazu, in Assyrian inscriptions: these names
   are redolent of Uz, the land of Job, and Buz, the reputed home of
   Elihu [45]. Thus the account in the Book of Job seems remarkably
   consistent with the geography of Edom and its southern environs.

   Dhorme emphasises that the author of the Book of Job: 'was thoroughly
   at home in the land of the Pharaohs' [46]. Whether behemoth and
   leviathan in Yahweh's speeches indicate an Egyptian background depends
   upon whether one concurs that they represent the hippopotamus and
   crocodile respectively. But from the Poem on Wisdom Dhorme cites
   v.28:10: 'He cutteth out rivers among the rocks', where 'Niles' is
   used poetically for rivers/canals. This suggests familiarity with
   Upper Egypt - in particular with cataracts south of Aswan, as the
   Nile's banks in Lower Egypt are alluvial. Dhorme observes that when
   the writer: 'wishes to describe ephemeral flora, his memory recalls
   papyrus and reed (8:11-12)' and that 9:26 talks of 'vessels of reed'
   like the papyrus canoes used on the Nile. These references are all
   consistent with Mosaic authorship: the Nile, with its bulrushes, was
   prominent in Moses's earliest career (according to his record), and he
   knew the cataracts from his campaigns in Upper Egypt and Nubia.

   Five points of coincidence have been identified between Moses and the
   author of the Book of Job - who could have been the character calling
   himself Elihu. Although these coincidences do not 'prove' that Moses
   wrote the book, they do suggest that this line of enquiry is
   profitable and should be pursued. It is therefore time to ask whether
   there is direct evidence that Elihu is a nom de plume for Moses. It
   has already been said that Moses would have taken pains to conceal his
   involvement in the event which led to the Harbinger record, so if
   evidence exists, it will be in cryptic form. However, the Elihu
   monologues are introduced by prose narrative supplying brief
   biographical details of the speaker - and these may be revealing.

   [*!* Image: Figure 4. Map of the Middle East to show homeland of Job.
   LABELS: Mediterranean Sea. Sea of Galilee. highway to Damascus.
   CANAAN. Jerusalem. PHILISTIA. Dead Sea. MOAB. Bosrah (Buz?). Mount
   Seir. Hasa. EDOM. Sela (Petra). Ma'an. El Jafr. Wadi Araba.
   Ezion-Geber. Wadi el Khush Shuah. Tebuk. Jebel el Na'amah. TEMAN.
   MIDIAN. SINAI. Gulf of Aqaba. Gulf of Suez. Great & Little Bitter
   Lakes. Alexandria. Cairo. River Nile.]

   The Equation of Moses and Elihu

   It was noted earlier that Moses felt safe to return to Egypt when told
   that: 'all the men are dead which sought thy life' [20]. Immediately
   before this he went: 'to Jethro his father in law, and said unto him,
   Let me go, I pray thee, and return unto my brethren which are in Egypt
   ...'. This filial respect shows Moses behaving as much like a son as a
   son-in-law. But when first encountered Jethro is called Reuel [47],
   and at his last meeting with Moses he is called Raguel [48]. Elihu
   says he is: 'the son of Barachel the Buzite' (v.32:2); i.e. the son of
   the son of 'R(ayin) Vov(aleph) Lamed'. If this construction is cognate
   with Reuel or Raguel, Elihu becomes a son of Bar-Reuel. Perhaps this
   is no more than a coincidence.

   Elihu claims to be: 'mishpotek Ram', translated as: 'of the kindred of
   Ram'. 'Mishpotek' implies: 'of the general family'; whereas 'amor'
   means 'our family', and 'Amram', 'of the specific family of Ram'. The
   name Abram means 'father of Ram'. However, Moses was the natural son
   of Amram [50]: so, having been born into the specific family of Ram,
   he could certainly claim to be of the kindred of Ram: that may again
   be simply coincidence. But to find that both elements of the brief
   biography of Elihu are such near-parallels with the genealogy of Moses
   - and are written in words which serve to conceal the similarity -
   gives an impression that this may be more than just coincidental.

   There is a still more direct link between Moses and Elihu. The latter
   is said - by a young man who currently bears the name - to mean: 'Your
   God is my God'. Literally the name means: 'El is Yahweh'. This concept
   - that the traditional God (El) of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was the
   same as Moses' new God (Yahweh) - was one that Moses had to sell to
   the Israelites in order to assert command over the Exodus enterprise
   (see Part 1, 'The Mantle of Leadership'; and [28]). Thus, if Moses,
   writing a book we know as Job, had to choose a name for himself with
   which he could feel wholly comfortable but which would safely conceal
   his identity from Israelite readers, he could not have chosen a more
   appropriate one than Elihu. Over 1300 different male names are
   recorded in the OT; so, if the Book of Job is purely fictional, and
   its unknown author chose at random a name (Elihu) for his youthful
   eavesdropper, the odds were over 1000:1 against this most appropriate
   of choices. In conjunction with the genealogical parallels this third
   coincidence makes it difficult to resist the conviction that Elihu in
   the Book of Job is Moses. This lends support to the presumption that
   the book is historical, and identifies Elihu/Moses as the book's
   likely author.

   In an early issue of SIS Review Martin Sieff argues [51] that because
   the name YHWH, first introduced by Moses, is not used in the
   'cosmological sections' of the Book of Job (i.e. the poetic
   discourses), '... this strongly suggests that the material was first
   compiled before the time of Moses.' He does not discuss the
   possibility that the book and the origination of the YHWH concept
   might be both contemporary and connected, nor mention the ancient
   Jewish tradition of a Mosaic authorship. He does however adduce other
   evidence pointing to an early date of composition [52], all of which
   lends support to the identification here of Moses as the probable
   writer. His attempted identification of Ayish, Khima and Khesil -
   names found in Job - was however abandoned [53] when Cardona gave
   better interpretations [54]: part II of Sieff's article - 'Leviathan'
   - has not appeared in an SIS journal. With Sieff's retirement from the
   fray, Cardona's claim that Job is of much later date - based on
   evidence similar to Dhorme's - has remained unchallenged until now.

   Some Implications of Mosaic Authorship

   Dhorme argued that the Book of Job is post-exilic on account of
   Aramaic forms and roots in the text. Although some recent
   commentators, like Anderson, have given ground on this point, they
   still tend to treat the book as imaginative fiction which draws upon
   other OT books - the Psalms, Proverbs, and especially Isaiah and
   Jeremiah - and so hold it as of later date than the latest of those
   writings. But as Anderson himself admits:

     "... quite apart from such debatable questions as the dates of the
     books which Job is said to quote, the similar material in other
     texts could be quotations from Job, making it earlier than these
     works. Or both could be drawing from a common tradition. Hence such
     arguments are inconclusive" [55].

   Thus, ultimately the non-Hebrew words and phrases in Job remain the
   strongest part of the case for a late origin. Can those usages be
   explained in terms of a Mosaic authorship? To answer this another
   question must first be asked: 'If Moses wrote the book under the
   circumstances outlined in this paper, in what language would he have
   written'? If the book is historical then chapters 3 to 31 (the poetic
   discourse) are essentially a transcript rendered into verse form -
   either because Edomite as spoken by Job and his three friends sounded
   like poetry to Moses, or because Moses felt that this form was best
   suited to the subject and/or to his objective of concealment. No
   matter what the reason for poetry the key fact is that the discourses
   were spoken and originally recorded in the Edomite tongue. As the
   record was extended - by inserting the Poem on Wisdom (chapter 26),
   adding the Elihu monologues (chaps. 32 to 37) and Yahweh speeches
   (chapters 38 to 41), and overlaying the prose narrative - Moses would
   have originally written most or all of those extensions in Edomite
   also. This incidentally explains why some parts of the book appear to
   have been written later than the discourse - they were, yet the whole
   has a unitary character - for it is the work of one man.

   Some time later, quite possibly after the Exodus from Egypt, Moses
   translated his work into Hebrew. A small proportion of words and
   phrases would have had no direct equivalents - and been retained as
   Edomite expressions in the Hebrew version. Some would eventually pass
   into common Jewish use, and their origins would be lost: some others
   would have been adopted by those travelling through Edom from nearby
   countries, and been assimilated eventually into one or more of their
   native languages - Akkadian, Arabic and Aramaic. Thus the neologisms
   which in Dhorme's re-construction were 'imported' (for no obvious
   reason) from foreign languages, become instead ancient Edomite words
   which had been used in Moses's Harbinger record - but which had also,
   through normal trade and travel, been 'exported' from Edomite into the
   non-Hebrew tongues of adjacent lands.

   It was probably while reflecting upon his record of the discourses,
   and on the events leading to Job's misfortunes, that Moses recognised
   a pattern which had been talked about by his Egyptian mentors - a
   recognition marking the birth of the Yahweh concept. That explains why
   the divine name 'Yahweh' is not used in the poetic discourse, for the
   discourse records dialogues between Job and his friends: when they
   were speaking and their words were being recorded, the name Yahweh did
   not exist. It is unlikely that the Elihu monologues are words that
   Moses actually uttered to Job and the other three: if Moses had spoken
   aloud, Job would surely have responded. More probably chapters 32 to
   34 contain ideas which passed through Moses's mind during the
   discourses, and when he reflected afterwards [56], while chapters
   35-37, especially 37, were written to provide a 'terrestrial'
   background, against which the Divine/cosmic elements of chapters 38 to
   41 (the Yahweh speeches) would become enhanced by contrast.

   The assumption that the original book dates from a pre-Exodus period,
   was translated into Hebrew and extended by Moses later, and was kept
   secreted for one or two generations after his death, helps to explain
   why the text contains so many 'corruptions'. When it eventually passed
   into the mainstream of Hebrew sacred literature, some keepers of the
   text would have tried to interpret the unknown Edomite words, removed
   words that might shock the pious, modified words where the Divine name
   was adjacent to or associated with an 'obnoxious' term, failed - when
   copying - to divide passages of text correctly, or even to make
   literal errors [57]. That such corruptions would intrude over a period
   of more than a thousand years is understandable given the book's
   origin and early history as suggested here: that they could have
   arisen during two hundred years of post-exilic history is much less
   credible.

   A Mosaic authorship also helps explain two other small anomalies.
   Though Edom is almost certainly the background to Job, a strong
   tradition associates him with the Hebron and Lake Tiberias areas of
   northern Israel. It is not easy to explain why a fictional story
   emanating presumably from Judea, and relating to inhabitants of lands
   further south, should have captured the hearts and minds of breakaway
   tribes of the northern Kingdom. However, if the story of Job was
   carried by the tribes during their original invasions into north
   Canaan, this potential problem vanishes. It is also slightly odd that
   Genesis 36 carries a genealogy of Esau's descendants and their Edomite
   associates covering four to eight generations and that this record is
   repeated in the first chapter of 1 Chronicles, although Esau's line
   shows no later intermarriage with the Jews. If, however, Moses became
   closely acquainted with some of these people during his Midian exile,
   their presence in the Israelite record is less odd. Moreover, one of
   the kings of Edom was Jobab (son of Zerah of Bosrah) [58], a name
   which may be associated with Job and/or with Hobab (son of Raguel)
   [59].

   Thus, a Mosaic authorship of the Book of Job provides a single,
   straightforward solution to major enigmas of its language, the use of
   the Divine name, and the state of the text: this lends weight to the
   evidence which finds that the book is much older than commonly
   believed, identifies Moses as Elihu, and Elihu as the writer. However,
   it is one thing to identify the author with Moses but a different
   matter to show that the book records a catastrophe - and not just any
   disaster, but specifically the cosmic phenomena which acted as a
   harbinger of the Exodus event. This issue is now addressed.

   Job as a Record of Catastrophes

   Others have noted cosmological themes in the Book of Job. Velikovsky
   equated Mazzaroth (vv. 38:32-33) with a 'hairy star' (a comet) and
   with Lucifer [60] and observed that the author of Job knew the Earth
   hangs 'upon nothing' [61]. Velikovsky [62], Sieff and Cardona
   attribute the names Ayish, Khima, and Khesil to planets. But Sieff
   also notes that in both places where these names appear in Job: 'they
   are directly preceded by vivid accounts of catastrophe on the earth',
   and that a similar juxtaposition occurs in the book of Amos. He also
   finds several cases of catastrophic imagery in the book: notably
   v.9:5, where Job describes a God 'which removeth the mountains and
   they know not: which overturneth them in His anger'; and vv. 9:6-7
   which celebrate a God 'Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and
   the pillars thereof tremble. Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth
   not; and sealeth up the stars.'

   Sieff concluded that the writer of the Book of Job:

     "knew that the earth had suffered great global catastrophes,
     encompassing ice and water deluges ... meteorite bombardments,
     earthquakes and thunderbolts, tidal waves and tides, orbital
     change, spin axis shift and mountain destruction. He further knew
     that these colossal events were connected with the movements of the
     planetary bodies observed in the plane of the ecliptic ..." [63].

   However, Sieff's stance was strongly influenced by reading Worlds in
   Collision: if writing today he might alter parts of his Conclusion,
   though probably quite a lot would remain. Notwithstanding that Sieff
   mis-identified Ayish, Khima and Khesil, his article is well worth
   reading for its wide coverage and wealth of useful references. But
   perhaps because he found that the Book of Job seems to refer to many
   types of catastrophe, Sieff treated it more as a review than a record,
   and failed to recognise that the book is a response to one
   'contemporary' catastrophe. Here I deal only with evidence which Sieff
   used in a different way, or overlooked.

   According to the prose narrative, Job was afflicted by a series of
   misfortunes that parallel some events surrounding the Exodus. Compare
   the fire that fell from heaven consuming Job's sheep and servants, the
   great wind that felled the house of Job's children and killed them,
   and the desert raiders who kill Job's servants and steal his camels
   [Job 1:13-19], with the plagues of hail [64] and of death of Egypt's
   'firstborn' [65], and Amalek's raid on the Israelites as soon as they
   reached the desert [66]. This suggests that the less numerous plagues
   suffered by Job, and those that later fell upon Egypt, could have had
   some commonality of cause.

   There is a further and intriguing parallel. Job was then afflicted by
   'sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. And he took him
   a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat down among the ashes'
   [Job 2:7-8]. This is usually interpreted to mean that Job sat down in
   the 'mazbaleh', 'dunghill', the heap of dust, ashes and dirt found at
   the entrance to small Palestinian towns. But according to Dhorme the
   text of the previous clause means that Job scraped himself, rather
   than scraped the pus [67]. What was Job trying to remove? In Exodus
   9:8-10 the Lord says to Moses: '... Take to you handfuls of ashes of
   the furnace, and ... sprinkle it toward heaven .... And it shall
   become small dust in all the land of Egypt'. Moses does so 'and it
   became a boil breaking forth with blains upon man and upon beast.' If
   similar boil-producing dust fell on Job he would have wanted to scrape
   it off - but wherever he sat he would have been among this ash-like
   dust. Moreover, Exodus records the other plagues as being brought
   about by Moses stretching forth his rod or his hand: uniquely he
   scatters ashes to produce the plague of boils. If Moses had witnessed
   Job's plight and recognised a fall of toxic dust as the cause, then by
   hocus-pocus with ashes he would reinforce his magical prestige with
   the Egyptians, and his status as Yahweh's chosen servant with the
   Israelites. Thus the coincidences of ashes and boils in both the Job
   and Exodus records are doubly remarkable.

   Chapter 37, the last of Elihu's monologues, touches on lightning and
   thunder, snow, whirlwinds from the south and cold winds from the
   north, and 'the bright light which is in the clouds': all these,
   except possibly the last, are easily understood as extreme, but
   natural phenomena. However, in the Yahweh speeches (chapters 38-41),
   Moses moves the debate to a higher plane. It has been noted that
   Mazzaroth, Ayish, Khima and Khesil are names of cosmic bodies: Job
   talks of them in chapter 9 but Yahweh/Moses refers to them in greater
   detail in chapter 38 - after a peroration covering and going beyond
   the Elihu material. The next chapter returns to larger fauna - wild
   goats and asses, peacocks and ostriches, the horse, and also an
   unknown animal (v. 9) translated as unicorn in the AV. Chapter 40 then
   introduces behemoth - 'the chief of the ways of God', which 'eats
   grass as an ox', 'moveth his tail like a cedar', 'can draw up Jordan
   into his mouth', and whose 'nose pierceth through snares'.

   Whether elephant, woolly mammoth, or some other creature, there is no
   question that behemoth is an animal: it is equally certain that
   leviathan of chapter 41 is not. 'Out of his mouth go burning lamps,
   and sparks of fire leap out. Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out
   of a seething pot or cauldron. His breath kindleth coals, and a flame
   goeth out of his mouth' [Job 19-21]. 'He spreadeth sharp pointed
   things upon the mire. He maketh the deep to boil as a pot: he maketh
   the sea like a pot of ointment. He maketh a path to shine after him;
   one would think the deep to be hoary. Upon earth there is not his
   like, ...' [Job 30-33]. Thus while behemoth is 'chief of the ways of
   God' (in the animal kingdom), leviathan is unlike anything on Earth:
   he is a 'creature' of the heavens, the cosmic dragon who features in
   the mythologies of races all round the world. It is when Yahweh
   introduces leviathan that Job ceases to demand an explanation for his
   misfortunes, and instead acknowledges: 'I have heard of thee by the
   hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee' [Job 42:5].

   In verse 42:5, Moses has Job identifying the spectacle of leviathan
   with God. In the leviathan image Moses recognised the return of a
   'God' which had been described in his Egyptian education, realised
   that a second visitation could be predicted, and re-named the 'God'
   Yahweh. Whether Job himself identified leviathan and God cannot be
   known but that Moses made this equation, and on it was to build the
   Exodus enterprise, seems almost certain: for the Prologue to the Book
   of Job provides an astonishing degree of confirmation.

   Verses 1:6-7 read:

     "Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present
     themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. And the
     Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the
     Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth...."

   Velikovsky found that Seth and Lucifer were names equivalent to Satan
   and associated with the beautiful Morning Star [68]. Regardless of
   which particular entity it was to which the ancients applied their
   phrase 'Morning Star', it was unquestionably cosmic. Thus,
   Satan/Lucifer was a cosmic spectacle; and vv.6-7 describe an 'event'
   in the cosmos following something which affected the Earth. Then
   vv.1-2 of chapter 2 recount exactly the same sequence:

     "Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present
     themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them to
     present himself unto the Lord. And the Lord said unto Satan, From
     whence comest thou? And Satan answered the Lord and said, From
     going to and fro in the earth ...."

   Dhorme called this phraseology 'stereotyped' - and hence
   post-Zechariah. But it reads more like a laconic account of a
   short-period comet passing close to Earth before or after becoming a
   brilliant spectacle in the heavens, and then repeating the cycle a
   second time. The writing style is not unlike that used in Joshua 10:11
   for a meteorite fall, (which further supports an early rather than a
   late date of composition). It is surely beyond belief that the author
   of Job could by chance have adopted the one narrative account that
   matches in every respect the concept of two successive near-earth
   passes by a cometary body or meteorite swarm required by the
   Harbinger/Exodus thesis advanced here. Rather it suggests that the
   author witnessed two passages of a cosmic body and up to a point
   understood what he had seen, as Moses must have done. His Lord/Satan
   usage reflects not only an equation of the cosmic and divine -
   inherited from Hebrew learning and Egyptian training - but also his
   need to conceal from the Israelites the cosmic dimension of Yahweh,
   the new God whose catastrophic attributes had underwritten the Exodus
   enterprise.

   [*!* Image: Figure 5. Shapes of comets, as depicted in a Chinese
   painting on silk recovered from a tomb of the Han Dynasty dated 168
   BC.]

   The Appearance of Yahweh

   What did the new God of Moses look like in his Harbinger and Exodus
   manifestations? Comets visible from Earth exhibit an extraordinarily
   wide diversity of pattern - see e.g. Figure 5. Whether the cosmic
   agent of Moses' time was a meteorite swarm of the type described by
   Clube and Napier, a much more massive body with a tail of debris as
   Velikovsky hypothesised, or some quite different entity, it would have
   undergone even more substantial changes in appearance in passing close
   enough to affect the Earth. No one description would then be adequate;
   different observers could retain scrupulously accurate but diverse
   images of the visiting angel or deity.

   However, one image observed in many places during the
   Earth-bombardment phase of a cosmic visitation could be specially
   relevant. Figure 6 reproduces a painting by P. I. Medvedev depicting
   the fall of the Sikhote-Alin meteorite in 1947 [69]. This might seem
   to resemble the conventional image (Figure 7) [70] of a comet, but the
   similarity is illusory. Cometary images form in space whereas, though
   the Sikhote-Alin event originated in space, the phase depicted in the
   painting is endo-atmospheric. In reproduction as Figure 6 much quality
   has been lost, but it appears that the meteorite produced in the
   atmosphere an image with rotational turbulence, strongly resembling
   that of a tornado.

   Meaden has theorised [71] that early religion in Britain may have been
   based on the impression that in a tornado the male god of the sky was
   impregnating the female earth goddess. One illustration in his book
   [72], reproduced as Figure 8, displays a marked similarity to
   Medvedev's painting: in both depictions the phallic appearance is
   evident. Tornadoes are more common than is generally realised, though
   in any one place they are a rare, unforgettable experience: a man
   might possibly witness one such event in his lifetime, hear the
   typical bull-like roar, and after the storm passed examine the
   localised but severe destruction it had caused. But the likelihood of
   seeing a tornado greatly exceeds that of witnessing at close hand the
   fall of a meteorite large enough to cause damage on a similar or
   greater scale. In each case it is implicit that the observers should
   survive the event.

   Thus it is possible that the image of a cosmic God mating
   destructively with Earth at infrequent intervals might have been
   sustained and reinforced by more frequent tornado visitations in the
   interim. This possibility is not further explored here. It is raised
   only because the Book of Job describes Yahweh as answering Job 'out of
   the whirlwind' [73], which could suggest that behind Yahweh lay the
   tornado, a meteorological and not a cosmic phenomenon. However, the
   whirlwind from which Yahweh answers is introduced by Elihu (vv.
   37:21-22):

     "now men see not the bright light which is in the clouds: but the
     wind passeth and cleanseth them. Fair weather cometh out of the
     north: with God is terrible majesty."

   Others developed this theme: 'a fire shall devour before (our God),
   and it shall be very tempestuous round about him' [74]; 'behold, a
   whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding
   itself' [73]. These conjunctions of wind and fire, found also in the
   first two chapters of Job and commented on earlier, prove that the
   whirlwind of Yahweh had cosmic dimensions during at least some of its
   visitations - and perhaps all of them.

   [*!* Image: Figure 6. Fall of the Sikhote-Alin meteorite on 12th
   February 1947.
   D. Salkeld, after the painting by P. I. Medvedev in the USSR Academy
   of Sciences.]

   [*!* Image: Figure 7. The 'classical' comet image; in this case the
   Great Comet of 1843, as drawn by Piazzi Smyth in March 1843 at the
   Cape of Good Hope (the comet was not visible in Europe).]

   [*!* Image: Figure 8. The phallus of the storm god.
   A tornado funnel cloud over Hayling Island on 27th October 1984. D.
   Salkeld, after photo by H. R. Lambie.]

   Summary and Conclusions

   The accounts in the Old Testament and Josephus relating to the time of
   Moses have been examined from a constructive rather than a
   deconstructionist standpoint, and a surprising number of inner
   consistencies revealed. A corrected interpretation of the number of
   Israelites who left Egypt during the Exodus makes it credible that
   Moses could have organised and controlled the operation, provided that
   he had the requisite military experience to supplement his princely
   education in Egypt. Standard objections to the reported desert
   campaign led by Moses are found to be groundless, and Josephus's
   account to be probably true in essence. Thus, there are good grounds
   to think that Moses had the attributes essential to command of the
   enterprise, and hence that aside from its miraculous aspects the
   Exodus could well have been an historical event.

   Velikovsky offered a 'natural' explanation for many apparently
   'supernatural' elements of the Exodus story. Part 1 of this paper
   shows that an exiled Moses would have had to establish his credentials
   with the Israelites, and how he achieved this by transliterating their
   tribal records into contemporary Hebrew and compiling them to form the
   Book of Genesis. It explains why Moses had to foresee the
   circumstances that would allow an escape from Egypt, to predict far in
   advance approximately when such conditions would obtain, and to find a
   way to assume uncontestable command of the Exodus. On a basis of
   Velikovsky's theory that the Exodus coincided with natural disasters
   caused by the close flyby of a cometary body, it conjectures that
   Moses observed the previous passage, identified the body as a 'God'
   from his Egyptian lore, estimated its return date, and represented
   himself as the prophet of Israel's traditional God under a new name -
   Yahweh. However, it recognises too that any overt account of the
   Harbinger would have been lethal for Moses, and suggests the type of
   code he would most likely have used if recording the event.

   It must be emphasised that if one gives credence to the Exodus as a
   historical event, then Part 1 indicates that an explanation of the
   plagues of Egypt based on the fortuitous conjunction of suitable
   environmental conditions (e.g. high flood levels, silting, and
   pollution of the Nile; a consequential explosion of frog, insect, and
   locust populations; gales, and intense electrical storms; an opaque
   sandstorm; and a severe earthquake) becomes highly improbable. Such a
   conjunction could not be forecast, and so would certainly not allow
   the years of essential logistic preparation. Thus, if the event was
   historical it is difficult to escape the conclusion that it must be
   associated with some type of occurrence which could be predicted with
   fair certainty many years ahead. The only candidate so far identified
   is the passage of a short-period comet, as proposed by Velikovsky and,
   in different guise, by Clube and Napier.

   Part 2 then indicates that the Book of Job is a work of great
   antiquity, very different from all other books in the sacred canon and
   of form akin to a coded record. It reveals Elihu in the book as its
   likely author and from numerous parallels confirms Elihu as a nom de
   plume for Moses writing as a young man soon after the Harbinger event
   - thus explaining why this apparently foreign book was welcomed into
   the Jewish canon. It suggests that Moses recorded the discourses
   between Job and three friends before he had recognised the cause of
   Job's misfortune; that with recognition were born both the Exodus and
   Yahweh concepts; and that he added the Elihu monologues, Yahweh's
   speeches, and the prose narrative, at a later (possibly post-Exodus)
   date.

   The paper demonstrates how effects of the harbinger foreshadowed those
   of the Exodus event. It shows that the Book of Job records a
   catastrophe caused by a cosmic body that orbited twice within the
   lifetime of Moses and that as an agent of disaster this body was
   Satan/Leviathan, yet as an agent of deliverance it was also a
   manifestation of Moses' new God, Yahweh. Finally, it speculates on the
   role that whirlwinds, similar in some ways to falling meteorites,
   might have played during long intervals between close visits by this
   cosmic god.

   The arguments of Part 1 stand on their own merits: whereas the case
   presented in Part 2 derives from - and rests partially on - that of
   Part 1. If, however, the Book of Job is not history but fiction, many
   remarkable coincidences have to be explained. As the book's unknown
   author could not have read Worlds in Collision, how did he choose a
   setting in which Satan's visitations match so closely those of a
   periodic comet? Why, when Egypt's plague of boils was said to have
   been triggered by ashes, does he sit his fictional Job afflicted with
   boils in the ashes - a different but redolent association? What are
   the odds against his choice of name and lineage for Elihu (another
   fictional character) all fitting the historical character of Moses as
   deduced here? Above all, how did this fictional work, none of whose
   major characteristics is in any obvious way Jewish, and whose theology
   verges on the heretical, win an unquestioned place in the canon of
   Jewish sacred literature? These are only some of the problems which
   attend a 'fictional Job' stance. If, however, the Book of Job is
   historical and was written by Elihu/Moses, then these problems are
   resolved.

   This paper does not establish any date or period for the Exodus
   (though the military situation when Moses led an Egyptian
   expeditionary force into Nubia seems best to fit a late Middle Kingdom
   setting). Nor does it identify the short-period comet which forms an
   essential ingredient of its thesis. It does however powerfully support
   the case for the Exodus as an historical event, vindicating
   Velikovsky's premise that the Israelites left Egypt in the wake of a
   cometary-type catastrophe. It argues too that the Book of Job is not
   just a well-written if somewhat tedious type of Wisdom literature, but
   an ancient history of an unusual and illuminating kind. And last but
   by no means least, its controversial explanation for the origins of
   Yahweh worship may help to trigger fresh debate on a relatively
   unexplored aspect of catastrophism.

   Did Job see Moses recording his words on a wax tablet or papyrus and
   recall that this young man had come from a land where royal statements
   were carved in granite? If so, there is added richness to his lament
   (vv.19:23-4):

     "Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a
     book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock
     for ever!"

   In Moses's Harbinger record, Job's words have already lasted for three
   and a half millennia. Perhaps this 'greatest of all the men of the
   east' is resting contented at last.

   Notes and References
   1. I. Velikovsky: Oedipus and Akhnaton (London, 1960).
   2. I. Wolfe: 'Velikovsky and Catastrophism: A Hidden Agenda', C & C
   Review XIV (1992), pp. 27-34.
   3. I. Velikovsky: Preface to Worlds in Collision (New York & London,
   1950).
   4. See e.g. S. J. Olshansky et al.: 'The Aging of the Human Species',
   Scientific American April 1993, figure on p. 22.
   5. W. W. Hallo: 'Essay on the Book of Numbers' in the Plaut Commentary
   on the Torah, (Union of American Hebrew Congregations). I am indebted
   to David Roth for this reference.
   6. L. Ginzberg: The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia, 1913).
   7. Flavius Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews (trans. William Whiston,
   Edinburgh & New York, 1861), Book II, chaps. IX-XVI.
   8. Encyclopaedia Biblica: article on 'Moses'.
   9. A. Gardiner: Egypt of the Pharaohs (Oxford, 1961), pp. 335-340.
   10. Ibid.: pp. 349-350.
   11. Josephus: op. cit., Preface.
   12. W. B. Emery: Egypt in Nubia (London, 1965), pp. 141-167.
   13. Josephus: op. cit. chapter 10, section 2, lines 6-7.
   14. Ibid.: chapter 10, section 2, lines 74-75.
   15. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., Vol. 18, p. 172.
   16. Genesis 47:18-23. See also J. J. Bimson: 'A Chronology for the
   Middle Kingdom and Israel's Egyptian Bondage', SIS Review III:3, p.
   66, 'The Land Reform'.
   17. The urbanisation of the Children of Israel in Egypt is indicated
   by Exodus 1:11 '... they built for Pharaoh treasure cities': and by
   accounts of the craftsmanship skills of e.g. Bezaleel and Aholiab
   (Exodus 31:2-6).
   18. I. Velikovsky: Worlds in Collision, p. 51.
   19. Ibid., p. 54
   20. See e.g. H. Wiencke-Lotz: 'On the Length of Reigns of the Sumerian
   Kings', C & C Review XIV (1992), pp. 20-26; also D. Slade: 'Darkness
   over Sinai', C & C Workshop 1992:2, pp. 18-19.
   21. Damien F. Mackey, F. Calneggia, & P. Money: 'A Critical
   Re-Appraisal of the Book of Genesis', C & C Workshop 1987:1 and
   1987:2.
   22. Genesis 12:10-20 tells of Abraham going down to Egypt because of a
   famine in Canaan, and Pharaoh being plagued with great plagues while
   Abraham was there. It reads like an echo of Jacob's journey to Egypt
   and plagues preceding the Exodus.
   23. The promise is repeated to Abraham five times (Genesis 12:1-2,
   13:14-17, 15:18, 17:8, and 22:15-18), and by him to his servant
   (Genesis 24:7). The Lord gives Isaac the same promise (Genesis 24:2-4)
   and reiterates it (v.24). Jacob receives the promise twice (Genesis
   28:13; 35:12) and repeats it to Joseph (Genesis 48:3-4). This 10- or
   11-fold repetition of the theme would have powerfully impressed a
   Hebrew audience.
   24. D. Cardona: 'Jupiter - God of Abraham', Kronos VII:1, p. 72.
   25. Genesis 15: 12-18. The imagery of v.12, and especially of v.17, is
   strongly cosmological.
   26. B. Newgrosh: 'Venus Before Exodus', C & C Workshop 1987:2, pp.
   36-44.
   27. See for instance D. Talbott: 'Reconstructing the Saturn Myth', The
   Cataclysm 1:1 Jan. 1988 (thereafter re-named Aeon).
   28. Exodus 3:6, repeated in v.15, and again in v.16. This triple usage
   may indicate that Moses's hearers did not easily digest his message.
   29. Ginzberg: op. cit., Vol. VI, p. 169, note 2 (and see also note 526
   on p. 95).
   30. E. Dhorme: A Commentary on the Book of Job (translated from the
   French by Harold Knight, 1984). The 2 paragraphs in the text précis
   Dhorme's chapter 2: 'Analysis of the Book of Job'.
   31. e.g. 'Magnificent and sublime, as no other book of Scripture'
   (Martin Luther); 'The greatest poem of ancient or modern times'
   (Alfred Lord Tennyson); 'The Book of Job is not only the finest
   exposition of the Hebrew poetic genius; it must also be accorded a
   place among the greatest masterpieces of world literature'
   (Encyclopaedia Britannica).
   32. e.g. see D. Cardona: 'The Mystery of the Pleiades', Kronos III:4,
   p.37. Cardona thinks Job shows 'indications of literary dependence' on
   the Books of Psalms and Jeremiah, but these books may equally well be
   quoting from Job, or all could be drawing from a common tradition, so
   this - Cardona's strongest argument - is wholly inconclusive.
   33. I. Wolfe: 'Velikovsky and Catastrophism: A Hidden Agenda', C & C
   Review XIV (1992), pp. 27-34.
   34. Dhorme: op. cit. The French original, Le Livre de Job, published
   in 1926, was translated into English in 1967. The 1984 edition
   includes an important Preface by Francis I. Andersen, and a
   Prefaratory Note by H. H. Rowley who modernised and harmonised
   Knight's translation.
   35. Ibid.: p. clxix.
   36. Ibid. Preface by Andersen, p. I.
   37. F. I. Andersen: Job - An Introduction and Commentary (1976).
   38. Ibid.: p. 62. See also p. 57, including footnote 3.
   39. Ibid.: p. 62.
   40. Ibid.: p. 63.
   41. Ibid.: pp. 42-52. See also Dhorme: op. cit., pp. lxxii-cxi.
   42. Baba Bathra, 14b.
   43. Dhorme: op. cit., p. 3 - footnote to v.1:3.
   44. Andersen: op. cit., p. 59.
   45. Dhorme: op. cit., p. xxiii.
   46. Dhorme: op. cit., pp. clxxi/clxxii.
   47. Exodus 2:18-21
   48. Numbers 10:29
   49. Genesis. 22:21.
   50. Exodus 6:20.
   51. M. J. Sieff: 'The Cosmology of Job', SIS Review 1:4, pp. 17-21.
   52. Ibid.: section titled: 'The Historical Context'
   53. Editor's note at top of p. 70 in SIS Review III:4.
   54. Cardona: op. cit. [32], pp. 28-37.
   55. Andersen: op. cit. In a footnote to p. 50, Andersen says S. B.
   Freehof: 'compares Elihu with a stage-struck young man who comes into
   an empty theatre and pretends to take part in the drama after all the
   actors have gone.' This is not altogether unlike my own
   interpretation.
   56. Dhorme: op. cit., pp. cxcii-cxcvi, giving numerous examples of
   these 'corruptions' from the Massoretic text. Subsequent pages give
   still more examples from the Septuagint and other texts.
   57. I. Velikovsky: Worlds in Collision, p. 199.
   58. Genesis 36:33, repeated in 1 Chronicles 1:44.
   59. Numbers 10:29-32.
   60. Ibid.: p. 249.
   61. I. Velikovsky: 'Khima and Kesil', SIS Review III:3, pp. 69-70;
   reprinted from Kronos III:4, pp. 19-23.
   62. Sieff: op. cit., p. 21 - Conclusions
   63. Exodus 9:23-24.
   64. Exodus 12:29-30; and see also Velikovsky in Worlds in Collision,
   pp. 73-76.
   65. Exodus 17:8-13.
   66. Dhorme: op. cit., p. 18; footnote to v.2:8.
   67. I. Velikovsky: Worlds in Collision, p. 200.
   68. The painting is reproduced as Figure 3:4 in Bailey, Clube &
   Napier: The Origin of Comets, from which the figure in this paper is
   copied - and acknowledged with gratitude.
   69. See e.g. Plate 14 in Clube & Napier: The Cosmic Winter.
   70. G. T. Meaden: The Stonehenge Solution (London, 1992), chapter 5.
   71. Ibid.: Plate 7, facing p. 96.
   72. Job 38:1 and 40:6.
   73. Asaph in Psalm 50:3.
   74. Ezekiel 1:4.
                             _________________

   Appendix - Herodotus and Meroe

   In The Histories (translated by David Green, the University of Chicago
   Press, Chicago & London, 1988, pp. 142-3), Herodotus reported that
   four days' journey beyond Elephantine the river Nile ceased to be
   navigable:

     "You will then disembark and travel along the bank for forty days,
     for there are sharp rocks in the Nile and many reefs through which
     you will be unable to sail. Having marched through this country in
     forty days, you will embark again in another boat and sail for
     twelve days, and then you will come to a great city, the name of
     which is Meroe. This city is said to be the mother of all Ethiopia.
     From this city, making a voyage of the same length of sailing as
     you did from Elephantine, you will come to the Land of the
     Deserters .... There were two hundred and forty thousand Egyptians,
     fighter Egyptians, who revolted from the Egyptians and joined the
     Ethiopians ... in the time of King Psammetichus. When these people
     had settled among the Ethiopians, the Ethiopians became more
     civilised, through learning the manner of the Egyptians. For four
     months of travel space then, sailing and road, beyond its course in
     Egypt, the Nile is a known country. If you add all together, you
     will find that it takes four months of journeying from Elephantine
     to these Deserters of whom I spoke."

   This talks of making a voyage of the same length of sailing from Meroe
   to the Land of the Deserters. In The Sign and the Seal (Heinemann,
   London, 1992), Graham Hancock located this Land of the Deserters as
   the Axum region of Ethiopia, reached from Meroe via the Atbara and
   Takazze rivers. Seemingly, it took 12 days to sail from where the Nile
   became navigable beyond the sharp rocks to Meroe; and 56 days to sail
   from Meroe to Axum. Taking the 'sharp rocks' as the 1st Cataract, the
   distance from its southern end to Meroe is three-quarters as far as
   from Meroe to Axum. Why did it take 4-5 times as long to sail 30%
   further? En route to Meroe one had to pass the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th
   Cataracts and traverse the 150 mile Old Dongola to Abu Hammad stretch
   involving sailing ENE against the prevailing north wind, hence surely
   the slowest sailing.

   Possibly the sharp rocks included the 1st and 2nd Cataracts; but if
   so, as the Nile was navigable for 200 miles between the two Cataracts,
   why does Herodotus not note that 35 of the 40 days 'travel along the
   bank' could be covered under sail in 5 days and the comfort of a boat?
   Possibly he did not make the journey nor examine the ground, and his
   report is second or third hand - but that seems evasive. An
   alternative solution is that Meroe meant the old capital (Napata) just
   downstream of the 4th Cataract. From Napata to Axum is over twice as
   far as from south of the 1st Cataract to Napata; each involves passing
   two Cataracts; and most of the ENE sailing comes in the Napata to Axum
   leg. Herodotus's times are then plausible. Josephus may have drawn his
   geographical details of Meroe from Herodotus, explaining their common
   confusion over the city's original whereabouts.
     _________________________________________________________________

   \cdrom\pubs\journals\review\v1993cam\111exod.htm