Major funding for "The Bible's Buried Secrets" is provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, and the Righteous Persons Foundation.





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Transcript

NARRATOR: The search for the origins of Yahweh leads scholars back to ancient Egypt. Here in the royal city of Karnak, for over a thousand years, Pharaohs celebrated their power with statues, obelisks and carved murals on temple walls.

DONALD REDFORD: Here on the north wall of Karnak, we have scenes depicting the victories and battles of Seti the First, the father of Ramesses the Great.

Seti, here, commemorates one of his greatest victories over the Shasu.

NARRATOR: The Shasu were a people who lived in the deserts of southern Canaan, now Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia, around the same time as the Israelites emerged.

Egyptian texts say one of the places where the Shasu lived is called "Y.H.W.," probably pronounced Yahu, likely the name of their patron god. That name Yahu is strangely similar to Yahweh, the name of the Israelite god.

In the Bible, the place where the Shasu lived is referred to as Midian. It is here, before the Exodus, the Bible tells us, Moses first encounters Yahweh, in the form of a burning bush.

VOICEOVER (Reading from the Bible "Revised Standard Version," Exodus 3:5 and 15): Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. God also said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, YHWH the God of your ancestors...has sent me to you: This is My name forever, and this My title for all generations."

MICHAEL COOGAN: So we have, in Egyptian sources, something that appears to be a name like Yahweh in the vicinity of Midian. Here is Moses in Midian, and there a deity appears to him and reveals his name to Moses as Yahweh.

NARRATOR: These tantalizing connections are leading biblical scholars to re-examine the Exodus story. While there is no evidence to support a mass migration, some now believe that a small group did escape from Egypt; however, they were not Israelites but, rather, Canaanite slaves. On their journey back to Canaan they pass through Midian, where they are inspired by stories of the Shasu's god, Yahu.

AVRAHAM FAUST: There was probably a group of people who fled from Egypt and had some divine experience. It was probably small, a small group demographically, but it was important at least in ideology.

NARRATOR: They find their way to the central hill country, where they encounter the tribes who had fled the Canaanite city-states. Their story of deliverance resonates in this emerging egalitarian society. The liberated slaves attribute their freedom to the god they met in Midian, who they now call Yahweh.

CAROL MEYERS: They spread the word to the highlanders, who themselves, perhaps, had escaped from the tyranny of the Canaanite city-states. They spread the idea of a god who represented freedom, freedom for people to keep the fruits of their own labor. This was a message that was so powerful that it brought people together and gave them a new kind of identity.

NARRATOR: The identity of "Israelites." They are a combination of disenfranchised Canaanites, runaway slaves from Egypt and even nomads, settling down. The Bible calls them a "mixed multitude."

WILLIAM DEVER: According to the Hebrew Bible, early Israel is a motley crew. And we know that's the case, now. But these people are bound together by a new vision, and I think the revolutionary spirit is probably there from the beginning.

NARRATOR: The chosen people may actually be people who chose to be free. Their story of escape, first told by word of mouth and poetry, helps forge a collective identity among the tribes. Later, when written down, it will become a central theme of the Bible: Exodus and divine deliverance, deliverance by a God who comes from Midian—exactly where the Bible says—adopted by the Israelites to represent their exodus from slavery to freedom.

So is this the birth of monotheism?

MICHAEL COOGAN: The common understanding of what differentiated the ancient Israelites from their neighbors was that their neighbors worshipped many different gods and goddesses, and the Israelites worshipped only the one true god. But that is not the case.

NARRATOR: This bull figurine, likely representing El, the chief god of the Canaanite deities, is one of thousands of idols discovered in Israelite sites.

MICHAEL COOGAN: The Israelites frequently worshipped other gods. Now, maybe they weren't supposed to, but they did. So at least on a practical level, many, if not most, Israelites were not monotheists.

NARRATOR: The Bible's ideal of the Israelite worship of one god will have to wait.