Scholar's Research: Israeli Origin Story A Lie

The Israeli people have always believed the Old Testament story that they are a "chosen people" and that their God YHWH gave them the "Holy Land" which they occupy today as the State of Israel. It is an ancient story accepted by Jews and Christians because it is documented by the scriptures.

But what if the story is wrong? What if this tale, like so many fables found in the Bible, is no more than a pure fabrication by angelic intervention designed to generate warfare and hatred among humans?

An Israeli scholar, Professor Ze'ev Herzog of Tel Aviv University, shocked the Jewish Nation to its very roots in 1999 when he claimed evidence that the Old Testament stories are wrong.

A story recently posted in Rumormillnews gives extensive details.

Herzog maintains the Israelites were never captives in Egypt, they never wandered the desert, they never conquered the land, nor did they pass it on to the 12 tribes. He claims the Jews did not adopt monotheism until the 7^th Century BC, long after Moses was supposed to have received the tablets from God at Mount Sinai. Herzog concludes that the kingdom of David and Solomon was at best a small tribal monarchy and possibly even a total myth.

He tends to give the God YHWH physical form since it had a female consort in the goddess Asherah.

And Herzog believes the ancient historian Josephus was right in identifying the origins of the Jews with the Hyksos, who were expelled from Egypt because of leprosy. If correct, it means that the Israelites are of Asian origin.

Herzog is not alone in projecting this theory. Donald P. Redford of Toronto University, in his book "Egypt, Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times," presents evidence that the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt was changed into the story of the Hebrew exodus story in the Torah and Old Testament. Redford's book won the 1993 award for Best Scholarly Book in Archaeology by the Biblical Archaeological Society.

Also there is strong evidence that the Hyksos, a mixed Semitic-Asiatic group that infiltrated the Nile valley, came to brief power in Lower Egypt in the 17^th Century BC.

During the 18^th Dynasty in Egypt, ThotMoses IV directed conquests that extended into Palestine, Syria and into Babylonia and Canaan. By the time this expanded ended under Amenophis III in 1380 BC, the empire reached as far north as Turkey, and included the regions where the Hyksos lived.

According to Herzog, Amenophis IV, who came to power in 1353 BC, established a new monotheism cult naming Aten as the one supreme god. Amenophis changed his name to Akhenaton, declared himself a god on earth and an intermediary between Aten, or Ra, and humanity. His wife, Nefertiti, in a sense displaced Isis.

This Egyptian pharaoh declared all men to be the children of Aten. He banned all idolatry, the use of images to represent god, and banned belief in anything more than one supreme god. All of this is reflected in the Old Testament and Torah stories handed down to the Jewish and Christian faiths.

It was not until Joshua became king of Judah in 693 BC that this small nation, through an expansion of its own, established boundaries for the place now called Israel. And it was during this time that there was a bringing together of a religious and political unity.

The writer of this text concludes: "It is Herzogs discovery of Yehwehs consort Asherah in Jewish texts, and his declaration of an archaeological absence of Solomon or David that is the scalpel with which to slice through all the fictions of the biblical Exodus and its suggestion of divine right and supremacy.

"Israel, modern, needs to face up the fact that it has no divine right to the land it occupies. Israel must rely instead upon an equitable settlement in light of its undeniable modern day colonization and conquest a reality its opponents must accept but without straying outside the boundaries defined by international law."