by
Damien F. Mackey
So many mythological characters,
deities, so-called founders of religion and philosophies, were based upon the immensely
important Hebrew prophet and Lawgiver, Moses.
Even certain real historical kings
were greatly influenced by Moses, and some had Moses-like legends building up
around them in later centuries.
That
is by no means the perspective on Moses, though, as adopted by independent scholar of comparative religion and
mythology, Acharya S, aka D.M. Murdock, according to one of
whose books on Moses he is based on the Greek god, Dionysus/Bacchus.
The book is
reviewed as follows at: http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/moses-dionysus.html
The Moses-Dionysus connection is a 15-page ebook/PDF
highlighting the commonalities between the Hebrew lawgiver and the Greek god,
also known as Bacchus. This ebook represents an adaptation of the forthcoming
book Did Moses Exist? The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver.
Why have scholars since the early 17th
century - many of them Christian theologians - composed studies of
correspondences between Moses and Dionysus/Bacchus?
What are these parallels, and where do
they come from? What are some of the primary sources?
Discover who was really drawn from the
Nile and and tamed the Red Sea!
"The existence of Moses as well as
the veracity of the Exodus story is disputed amongst archaeologists and
Egyptologists, with experts in the field of biblical criticism citing logical
inconsistencies, new archaeological evidence, historical evidence, and related
origin myths in Canaanite culture."
"Moses," Wikipedia.org
"We cannot be sure that Moses ever
lived because there are no traces of his earthly existence outside of
tradition."
Dr. Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian
(2)
"On Moses as the putative 'founder
of the Israelite religion,' …Susan Niditch, [in] Ancient Israelite Religion…,
barely mentions the possibility of a historical Moses..."
Dr. William G. Dever, What Did the
Biblical Writers Known & When Did They Know It? (99)
The Moses-Dionysus Connection includes commentary spanning the centuries from
some of the best minds of Europe and America, such as Vossius, Bochart,
Patrick, Huet, Voltaire, Edwards, Dupuis, Hort, Le Brun, Clarke, Higgins
and Taylor.
Famed French philosopher Voltaire made the
following astounding remarks way back in the 18th century - and he wasn't the
first! Why don't we know these facts? Said Voltaire:
The ancient poets have placed the birth of Bacchus
in Egypt; he is exposed on the Nile and it is from that event that he is named
Mises by the first Orpheus, which, in Egyptian, signifies "saved from the
waters"…
He is brought up near a mountain of Arabia called Nisa
[Nysa], which is believed to be Mount Sinai. It is pretended that a goddess
ordered him to go and destroy a barbarous nation and that he passed through the
Red Sea on foot, with a multitude of men, women, and children. Another time the
river Orontes suspended its waters right and left to let him pass, and the
Hydaspes did the same. He commanded the sun to stand still; two luminous rays
proceeded from his head.
He made a fountain of wine spout up by striking the
ground with his thyrsus, and engraved his laws on two tables of marble. He
wanted only to have afflicted Egypt with ten plagues, to be the perfect copy of
Moses.
Find out more about this
centuries-long scholarship that has been buried and hidden.
[End of quotes]
For my
own Egyptian identifications of Moses as a legal official in Egypt, see e.g. my
article:
Moses a Judge in Egypt
For
Moses the Lawgiver appropriated by the Greeks (Spartans), see my article:
Moses and Lycurgus
Acharya S, aka D.M. Murdock has adopted the typical view according to which the Hebrews
were inevitably the beneficiaries of the wisdom, literature, law, myth and
folklore of the pagans – even if this means subordinating renowned Hebrew
personages to fanciful gods and goddesses.
Thus I would have to share Hans-Georg Lundahl’s lack of enthusiasm for Murdock’s wild thesis: http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2012/11/so-dionysus-was-copy-of-moses-may-one.html
So, Dionysus was a Copy of Moses, may One Presume?
Acharya S (a k a D. M. Murdock) does it again. And so presumable she will be doing for some time, I do not want her to stand uncontradicted though.
Here she quotes Voltaire, so the following is my quote of Voltaire via Acharya:*
The
ancient poets have placed the birth of Bacchus in Egypt; he is exposed on the
Nile and it is from that event that he is named Mises by the first Orpheus,
which, in Egyptian, signifies "saved from the waters"… He is brought
up near a mountain of Arabia called Nisa [Nysa], which is believed to be Mount
Sinai. It is pretended that a goddess ordered him to go and destroy a barbarous
nation and that he passed through the Red Sea on foot, with a multitude of men,
women, and children. Another time the river Orontes suspended its waters right
and left to let him pass, and the Hydaspes did the same. He commanded the sun
to stand still; two luminous rays proceeded from his head. He made a fountain
of wine spout up by striking the ground with his thyrsus, and engraved his laws
on two tables of marble. He wanted only to have afflicted Egypt with ten
plagues, to be the perfect copy of Moses.
OK. Possible. Let us take chronology. Dionysus is a Greek divinity so recent that Homer (c. 800 BC he wrote Iliad and Odyssey) does not know him. That is well after Moses. Time enough for the old Hebrews to remember him correctly and for Pagans to remember him wrong.
I have previously reasoned or guessed that Deukalion and Pyrrha (the Flood surviving childless old couple in Greek Mythology) are based on:
1) Noah and Family (Flood survivors)
2) Abraham and Sarah (a so far childless old couple when visited by three angels who announced also the coming destruction of Sodom)
3) Lot and two daughters (hospitable survivors of a disaster similar to the Flood, though geographically limited, and faced after being saved with some conundrum about how to repeople the world (in Genesis it is only an imagined conundrum, imagined by the two daughters who thought the world had been destroyed but for them: when they soaked their father drunk he made them pregnant with Moab and Ammon).
If Orpheus (supposing Orpheus the husband of Eurydice to be the one to whom Voltaire referred as to "the first Orpheus") said such things about Dionysus, he might have similarily been getting the story of Moses in a distorted fashion.
I think Pagans had a reason to distort the stories. Step one, they leave out things they do not want to believe. Step two, they put in things, preferrably from stories already known and which may well be true ones too, to fill the gaps in the story.
What is left out in the Deukalion and Pyrrha story? The Miracle of Sarah's pregnancy and the fact that Sodomy was the third and final of the Sins leading God to decide the destruction.
The first of these woud to a Pagan, used to judging hopes and fears after how things usually go, as a foolhardy miracle to hope for and a stupidity to believe in.
As to the second, since the time of Hercules (reputed a lover of Iolaus), Greeks had more and more been lenient on sodomy, if not in legislation at least in talking about peopple outside their own jurisdiction.
Now, Voltaire analysed himself that the one thing left out from the story of Dionysus, if a copy from that of Moses, are the ten plagues. Not quite left out though. Pentheus would in such a case echo the Pharao. But in the main yes.
Reason? Well, Moses had argued that the Pharao insulted the law of the one God whose chosen people the Israelites were (as the Catholics are today, by the way, though with other duties to those outside, since that is indeed for all nations).
Would that not have struck a false note with people who believed in many gods and in equal or nicely graduated degrees of favour by the gods?
And furthermore, the Israelites were described as being held as slaves: those being the chosen people might very well have struck a Pagan who believed slaves were such by nature or divine decision as very awkward to believe or accept.
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