Anyone who carefully reads the first and second chapters of the book of Genesis will immediately notice that in the third verse of the second chapter one story about the creation of man ends and a completely different story begins on the same topic, differing from the first in basic details. In the first story, God creates a man and a woman on the sixth day at the same time. In the second legend, God created man from the dust of the earth, settled him in the garden of Eden, gave him animals and birds for the company, and only in the end created a woman from his rib. It is striking that we are dealing here with two completely independent sources, connected mechanically, without even trying to coordinate their plots. By analyzing the text, it has been established that throughout the Pentateuch we are faced with four separate sources, originating from different eras. Hence,there is no reason to attribute its authorship to one person, that is, to Moses.
As for the alleged miracles of Moses, scientists have established that in many cases these could be completely natural phenomena. How, then, were they able to rise to the rank of a miracle? The answer is simple. During his exile, Moses allegedly spent forty years on the Sinai Peninsula and learned from local residents how to preserve life in the harsh conditions of the desert, steppe and mountainous regions. He then used his knowledge gained through experience during the exodus. Already his fellow wanderers, who for several generations had become accustomed to a sedentary life in Egypt and were newcomers to the Sinai Peninsula, had to take some of Moses's actions for supernatural. What to say about the Israeliteswho then lived for centuries in Canaan and did not come into contact with the nature of the Sinai Peninsula at all? Subsequent generations for the most part tended to make of Moses a figure endowed with supernatural powers from God. By the time of the description of the activities of Moses, the process of mythologization was already completely completed, and, since he answered the priests and compilers of the Pentateuch, the miracles allegedly performed by Moses became the dogma of the faith of Judaism.
For example, in the Bible, Moses told the Israelites how Yahweh spoke to him through a burning, but not burning bush. Now we already know that such a bush exists, and in our days on the Sinai Peninsula it is called diptam, or the bush of Moses. This distinctive plant produces a volatile essential oil that is highly flammable in the sun. A copy of this bush was even brought to Poland and planted in the mountain-steppe reserve in Skorotitsy. In 1960, newspapers reported that, to the surprise of the locals, Moses' bush caught fire on a hot day with a bluish-red fire.
Research on the notorious biblical manna has yielded sensational results. In 1927, a zoologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Boden-Heimer, discovered a species of tamarisk on the Sinai Peninsula, which in springtime emits a sweetish liquid that quickly solidifies in the air in the form of white balls, similar to hail. Local Bedouins - big lovers of this delicacy - with the onset of spring, crowds go to the steppe to collect white sticky balls, as we collect berries. One person can collect one and a half kilograms in a day - an amount that is quite enough to satisfy hunger. Curiously, small street vendors in Baghdad to this day put up for sale a sweet tamarisk resin called Man. In light of these discoveries, biblical manna ceases to be a miracle. Moses, apparentlyknew its nutritional value from the time of the exile, and thanks to this could feed the Israelites.
The episode with quails is presented in the same light. Modern residents of the Sinai Peninsula would be very surprised if they were told that the arrival of these birds should be considered a miracle. In spring, huge flocks of quails stretch from the depths of Africa to Europe. Exhausted by long journeys, they tend to land along the seashore, weakened to the point that the inhabitants there catch them with their bare hands. The Israelis, in all likelihood, could have encountered just such a bloom of quails and, of course, took the pleasant opportunity to hunt them.
The Bible says that at the foot of Mount Horeb, Moses struck a rock with his staff, and spring water spurted out from there. This miracle he certainly learned from the Midianites. Bedouins know it to this day. They know that, despite prolonged droughts, rainwater usually collects at the foot of the mountains under a fragile film of sand and lime. It is enough to break this shell to get to the water and quench your thirst. The Bible tells how the Israelites, after a three-day wandering in the desert of Sin, came to Marah, where they were deeply disappointed: it turned out that the spring water was bitter and undrinkable. Then Moses threw a twig into the water, and - lo and behold! - the water became sweet. In connection with this episode, we note that a bitter spring still exists in the vicinity of Merra. The British made a chemical analysis of its water and foundthat it contains a certain percentage of calcium sulfate. When oxalic acid is added to this water, calcium sulfate settles to the bottom, the water loses its bitterness. Bedouins sweeten the bitter spring with twigs of a shrub called elvah, whose juices contain a fair amount of oxalic acid.
And here is another episode from the Bible. On the way from Mount Sinai to Kadesh, the Israelites again ran out of food and complaints began again. Then the quails flew in for the second time, and the hungry wanderers eagerly rushed to catch them. But as an example of the previous case, poultry meat proved to be extremely unhealthy, almost all Israelites became seriously ill, and many paid with their lives for their greed. In the Pentateuch, this dramatic episode is presented as a moral parable that teaches that God does not forgive those who rebel against his will. Everything indicated that this is how this fragment of the legend should be understood. It manifested the typical features of a didactic folk parable. All the more surprising was the fact that the described case was by no means the creation of exuberant fantasy.
The director of the Pasteur Institute in Algeria, Professor Serzhan, discovered that poisonous quails do sometimes appear on the Sinai Peninsula. These are birds that stop in Sudan before leaving for Europe and feed on grains with toxic properties. The meat of such birds is harmful and even dangerous for human life. The Israelis were apparently out of luck. They hunted just such quails, and their unfortunate adventure was reflected in the biblical legend. The plague of poisonous snakes that befell the pilgrims halfway between the city of Cadet and the Gulf of Aqaba should be included in the same category. The Swiss traveler Burckhardt visited the Sinai Peninsula in 1809-1816, and on the route of the Israelites mentioned in the Bible, he came across a valley that was teeming with poisonous snakes. They have settled it since time immemorial,so the Bedouins are diligent in going round the area. Consequently, this fragment of the legend could also rely on true facts.
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It has long been known that the so-called Egyptian executions (with the exception of the tenth) were quite common in the land of the pharaohs. During floods, the Nile often turns brownish red as a result of sediment from Ethiopian lakes. In addition, every few years during spills, mosquitoes and other harmful insects multiplied to such an extent that Egyptian peasants viewed them as a true disaster. As for the hail, then, in truth, it rarely fell over the Nile, but, nevertheless, it sometimes fell, and then the losses caused by it were very tangible. But much more often in Egypt there was another misfortune - the invasion of locusts. And the culprit of the "Egyptian darkness" was the swift whirlwind of the sirocco; he picked up huge clouds of sand from the desert and carried them to Egypt, covering the Sun with such a thick curtain that complete darkness fell.
According to the Bible, all these executions were caused by Moses in order to put pressure on the stubborn Pharaoh. How could such a legend have arisen? If the aforementioned catastrophes had occurred in Egypt during the reign of Pharaoh Mernept and, therefore, during the period when Moses acted there, it would have been easy to answer. The Israelites, simple and prone to prejudice, could gain confidence that Moses, the great wizard and representative of Yahweh, punished the persecutors in this way. Moreover, even the Egyptians could believe it, as long as they believed in the existence of magicians at all. Indeed, as we know from the documents and from the Bible, some of their priests were credited with the same supernatural knowledge that Moses demonstrated before the throne of Pharaoh.
In this case, we would be dealing with the usual temporal sequence of phenomena, which people tend to elevate into a causal relationship. Moses, in the opinion of the Israelites, was a mighty miracle worker who, with his miracles, repeatedly aroused admiration and fear among his relatives; consequently, he could have sent ten plagues to Egypt, one after the other. We find an interesting example of just such an illusion in the famous play Chauntecleer by E. Rostand. A rooster appears there, who noticed that every time he sings, the sun rises, and came to the deep conviction that it is he who brings the sun to the sky …
V. Prisyazhnyuk. “Interesting newspaper. Incredible"