Parashat Shemot: An Undeniably Mosaic Prosaic

Some Say "Mosaic," Others... "not so Archaic"

In a world where truth has come to be regarded as relative, it is no surprise that Mosaic authorship of the Torah has been questioned by liberal scholarship (as well as by the general public) from the 18th century forward. What may be surprising is that Moshe's claim as author (Shemot 17:14; 24:4; 34:27; Bamidbar 33:1–2; D'varim 31:9–11) represents a position which was challenged much earlier - as early, in fact, as the 2nd century CE by the early Christian Netzari (Nazarene) sect.¹

The Rambam firmly opposed the Netzari position, affirming Mosaic authorship in two of his 13 Principles of Faith, i.e. the 7th and 8th:

So central to Medieval Judaism was the belief in Mosaic authorship that the 17th century Amsterdam crypto-Jew Bento (Baruch) de Spinoza was issued a writ of cherem formally cutting him off from the Jewish community on account of his denial in chapters 7 to 10 of his Theological-Political Treatise (ca. 1670). The pronouncement of cherem against him has never been reversed or repealed, remaining in force even to this day.

The accepted Jewish positions, from which Spinoza grievously departs, are stated as early as the Talmudic text as follows:

A Not-Entirely Hebraic Prosaic

In addition to the insights presented by the rabbinical Sages, another intratextual evidence for Mosaic authorship is the Torah's vast use of Egyptian loanwords. In the opening parasha of the book of Shemot (Exodus), we find several Egyptian loanwords which attest to the author being someone who was fluent in the Egyptian language (pre-Arabic) as well as evidence of his intimate knowledge with practices undertaken by the royal family within the walls of the palace, away from public view - indicators that support the internal record that Moshe is the human author. Even Moshe's name may possibly be Egyptian rather than Hebrew.³

It is worthy of note that most of the Egyptian loanwords found in the Torah are not used by another other canonical author; they occur only in the Mosaic corpus (Torah), and primarily in the autobiographical portion (Shemot). Noonan asserts that 26 unique Egyptian loanwords are found in Shemot alone, with a total number of occurrences being counted at 333!⁴ Besides the obvious Paroh (Pharaoh), Egyptian scholar Thomas O. Lambdin also identifies the following:⁵

1. Evyon: “poor, needy, wretched.”
2. Avnet: girdle or sash. Lambdin writes that it is possibly connected to Egyptian “bnd.”
3. Avrech: This word appears only at Gen. 41:43. Lambdin allows for the possibility that the word is Egyptian. The suggestion that he takes most seriously is that it means “attention.”
4. Achu: grass or reed (as food for cattle).
5. Achlamah: This word only appears at Shemot 28:19 and 39:12. In Egyptian, it is the name of a precious stone. The suggested Egyptian origin is based on the assumption that the Egyptian “N” can sometimes be equated with Hebrew “L.” See also “Leshem” below.
6. Eifah: measure.
7. Butz: linen. We all know this word from its appearance twice in the book of Esther. It appears six other times in Tanach. Lambdin discusses this word at length. He believes that an Egyptian origin is possible but very questionable.
8. Gome: reeds. We all know this word from Ex. 2:3. But it also appears twice in Isaiah and once in Job.
9. Hin: a liquid measure.
10. Zeret: a unit of measure. Based on the Egyptian, it seems to be related to “hand” or “handful.” Translated to Hebrew, the equivalent would be khaf (כף).
11. Chanichav: We all know this word from Gen. 14:14. Avraham took these type of men with him when he went to rescue Lot. Based on Egyptian, the meaning seems to be “armed” men. (If the word would be Hebrew/Semitic, the meaning would be something like “trainees,” from chet-nun-caf.)
12. Chartumim: This word is found in Genesis, Exodus and Daniel. It is always in the plural. Lambdin views it as very likely that this word is of Egyptian origin, but he still cannot prove it. The Egyptian words that have been suggested are not sufficiently close to the Hebrew.
13. Chotam: seal, signet ring. We all know the Hebrew verb chet-tav-mem, which means “to seal.” But since the noun chotam is Egyptian, this means that the Hebrew verb derived from the noun. Typically in Hebrew, the verb precedes the noun; the noun is formed by taking the three-letter root of the verb and adding a mem or a tav as the initial letter.
14. Taba’at: signet ring, seal. The Egyptian word is something like “gbt,” but Lambdin believes that this is a sufficient match. It is also possible that taba’at comes from the Hebrew/Semitic tav-bet-ayin, which means “press down.”
15. Ye’or: Originally, this was the word for “the Nile.” Later, the meaning became “a river.” Hebrew equivalent: nahar (נהר).
16. Ketem: valuable type of gold. Lambdin believes that the word is foreign to both Hebrew and Egyptian and originally came from Sumerian.
17. Leshem: a type of precious stone. It is mentioned only at Ex. 28:19 and 39:12. It derives from the Egyptian N-Sh-M.
18. Nofek and Puk: Each appear a few times. The meaning is “turquoise” or “malachite stone.”
19. Suf: fresh-water reed, seaweed. The Hebrew equivalent is agam (אגם).
20. Pach: Sometimes this word means a trap used to trap chickens. Other times it is a thin sheet of metal. Both of these are of Egyptian origin.
21. Kof: ape, monkey. This word only appears two times in Tanach (in the plural).
22. Kalachat: pot, kettle. This word only appears two times in Tanach. The Egyptian original is K-R-Ch-T.
23. Shitah (almost always in the plural, Shitim): acacia.
24. Shasah: to plunder. We should all know this root from Lecha Dodi: ve-hayu le-meshisah shosayich—“they who spoil thee shall become spoil.” The original Egyptian term is “shasu,” which means nomads or marauders.
25. Sha’atnez: Lambdin suggests an Egyptian origin for this difficult word, related to an Egyptian word that means “weave.”
26. Tachra: This word appears at Ex. 28:32 and 39:23. It is a type of garment. Lambdin mentions a scholar who suggested an Egyptian origin but he doubts that the suggestion is correct.

In the pericope of Moshe being floated down the river to avoid slaughter, the word for the vessel in which he was placed is Egyptian, i.e. תבה ("box"), as are the words for papyrus, pitch, reed, and river (see Shemot 2:3 below, with Egyptian loanwords in orange). Though the same word is used here for Moshe's "box-boat" as is used for Noah's "ark" (used nowhere in Scripture except in these two contexts), the word for pitch is different. In Bereshit 6:14, the word is kopher (כפר), from the Hebrew root meaning "to cover," but here it is zaphet (זפת), an Egyptian root. The word "reeds" in Bereshit 6:14 is the Hebrew kanim (כנים),⁶ versus the Egyptian suf (סוף)⁷ here (note that it is in the singular).

Between the internal claims by the author that it was Moshe who penned the words and the evidence presented above that the author was someone who had a solid working knowledge of the Egyptian language of the time, all factors support that not only the biographical prosaic of Shemot is Mosaic, but that the whole of the Torah (with the possible exception of the final eulogy) was penned by the great Prophet Moshe.

Notes

1. A Christian work called The Clementine Homilies (2nd century CE) claimed that a school of seventy sages authored the Torah some time after Moshe's death, i.e. that Moshe had no role in the text. The denial of Mosaic authorship of the Torah, to varying degrees, reemerges in Christian thought in the Reformation period; see Martin Luther, “Preface to the Old Testament” (1523), in his translation of the Hebrew Bible; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Book III, chapter 33; Isaac de la Peyrère (French Calvinist), Praeadamitae, published in 1655; and Samuel Fisher (Quaker), The Rustick’s Alarm to the Rabbies (1660).
2. English translation from Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise (transl. Samuel Shirley, 2nd edition; Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2001), 121.
3. See David J. Zucker, "Did Pharaoh's Daughter Name Moses? In Hebrew?" ​​​​​​​TheTorah.com (online: https://www.thetorah.com/article/did-pharaohs-daughter-name-moses-in-hebrew).
4. Robert Dick Wilson, “Foreign Words in the Old Testament as an Evidence of Historicity,” PTR 26 (1928): 177–247; see also Benjamin J. Noonan, "Egyptian Loanwords as Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus and Wilderness Traditions," pp. 49-68 (chapt. 3) in “Did I Not Bring Israel Out of Egypt?”: Biblical, Archaeological, and Egyptological Perspectives on the Exodus Narratives (James K. Hoffmeier, Alan R. Millard, and Gary A. Rendsburg, eds.; University Park, Penn.: Penn State University Press, 2021; online: https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/sites/bibleinterp.arizona.edu/files/docs/Noonan.pdf); Yoshiyuki Muchiki, Egyptian Proper Names and Loanwords in North-West Semitic (SBLDS 173; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1999); Aaron D. Rubin, “Egyptian Loanwords,” in Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics (ed. Geoffrey Khan; 4 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 1.793– 94.
5. Thomas O. Lambdin, "Egyptian Loan Words in the Old Testament," Journal of the American Oriental Society 73(3): 145-155 (Jul 1953).
6. Typically read as kinnim (compartments) rather than kanim (reeds), but see Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses (The Schocken Bible, Volume I; New York, N.Y.: Schocken Books, 1995), 35n14.
7. Everett Fox, op. cit., 263n3: "The word suf (reeds) appears to be a loanword from Egyptian."