A History of the Mosaic Faith

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BEING AN INTRODUCTION, AND A NOTE ON SKEPTICS

No people has gripped the imagination or affected the destiny of the world as surely as the Hebrews. From their lowly origin as a race of slaves, they have given the world its morals and its laws.

It is my design in this history to trace the Mosaic faith from its humble but pure origins, as the faith of a desert people, to the Dominion of the Worlds. Many of history's heroes and peoples, as familiar to the bar mitzvah as to the talmud chacham, will appear in these pages.

Yet recent scholarship has questioned their origins and disdained their achievements. It is suggested that Moshe (or in Greek, Moses), the man who gave his name to the faith of half of mankind, is a mythical figure or a half-forgotten heretical Pharaoh. It is claimed that the race of Israelites was half-pagan until after the Second Egyptian Slavery.

In defense of this theory, scholars like Shapor Daricus (whose name may alone give some hint as to his bias) cull phrases from the Tehillim (psalms) of the mighty David, such as "Who is like you, o Lord, among the gods?" and allege that this pious king, progenitor of that famous line which bears his name, recognized many gods. Our Lord, whom we would not casually name, is named in defiance of the Third Commandment and cited as only the first among the gods of the old East.

Yet, these same Tehillim make clear that David was a monotheist. Of the other gods, whom Shapor and his ilk would have us believe the Hebrews worshipped below the Almighty, David says "For they have eyes but see not, ears but hear not". In that distant day three millennia ago, the great David already knew with certainty that there was but one Lord, and that the gods of the nations were no more than lumps of clay.

Other purported scholars, like Huang Peng, refuse even to cite most of the Tanakh of the prophets as historical works. These suggest that we look only to archaeology, and the records of other peoples, in studying the ancient kingdom and the tribe that proceeded it. The claim that the Tanakh is not an account of history is insulting to any man of faith; no doubt a Serican would be insensible to such cautions, but the similar views of such authors as Avraham ben Moshe Gallicus are less forgiveable.

Nevertheless, in this account I shall attempt to rely not only on the accounts of the Tanakh but, where possible, also on the archaeological evidence and the accounts of the other peoples who so often appear as oppressors or enemies of the Hebrews in our sacred texts. I shall not hesitate to make a reasonable reliance on conjecture based on the recieved wisdom of our ancestors.

There will be those who may feel that these pages, in their reliance on philosophy and history, thus depart too far from our ancient teachings. To them, I reply that the arts of philosophy and science have long been found consistent with our faith; and those of history, should be as well. It is even possible, if our Lord wills it, that the skeptics may find in this work the tools to resist their Yetzer HaRah (evil inclination) and embrace the knowledge of our Lord and Moshe, His servant.

Betzalel ben Alexander Valentianus, Kohen Gadol of Lutetia
13th Av, 5770 since the Creation of the Worlds
 
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Zioneer

Banned
Interesting concept; I'm actually thinking of doing a Khazar TL, and following your Hebrew TL might help. Will follow this.
 
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IN THE BEGINNING

The Scholars of the Academy in Athens centuries ago confronted an increasingly skeptical intellegentsia in the West, who demanded to know how the world may have been created in six days, when all of the arts of our science insist that it took many thousands of years? Paleontology, indeed, insisted on a figure in the millions; and astronomy, in the billions.

The philosophers of Athens entered into a long correspondence with the prodigious religious and legal scholars of Tverya (Tiberias) on the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), and of Sura and Pumbedita in Shinar (Mesopotamia). The collected Sages determined that each yom, or day, of creation, took considerably more than 24 hours - indeed, before the Fourth Day there was no sun, and therefore a figure of 24 hours would be meaningless. Instead, each yom spanned a vast period of time, and equated to an era of formation in the cosmos or the earth reported by more modern, and more mundane, scholars.

The Torah next tells us of a flood, in the days of Noach. Skeptical meteorologists tell us that this sounds like no event of their experience, and it seems that this is quite as one might expect, since the Lord did promise the Earth that it would never flood again.

The meteorologists doubt the event, but no ancient race did. From the Sumerians of Shinar to the Anasazi of the Thulean deserts, every ancient people records a terrible flood that brought devastation and then rebirth. The Armenians still report the remains of a great ark on their beloved Mount of Ararat. The modern scholar, informed by science, understands that the Mabul, the great flood, was the result of a change in Earth's climate that accompanied the receding glaciers of the last Ice Age. We know that entire races of mankind, for their sins, did not survive that terrible transition.

The scholar of the ancient world thus understands that the first divine yomim, which were cosmological, then geological, then merely biological epics, were reduced into the short period of Earth's rotation with the advent of civilization. Thus, it is not the Earth, by our reckoning, but civilization, which is 5,770 years old at this writing.

5,770 years ago, what skeptics reckon as a mere happy coincidence between archaeology and theology occurred, with the rise of the first civilization of Sumer, between the Euphrates and Tigris in the land of Shinar, which the Greeks called Mesopotamia, and which today consists of the provinces of Assyria and Babylonia after two of her ancient cities.

At almost the same time, the first civilizations began to organize themselves on the Nile, eventually growing into the mighty Two Kingdoms of Egypt, so loathesome to our ancestors. Scholars sketch a "Fertile Crescent" in the ancient East. One may follow the Persian gulf up through the fertile land of Shinar, the rich and marshy valley between the two great rivers. That land was so rich that the Torah tells us that, by its ancient name of Eden, it was a veritable garden for the first of mankind. Much later, after the Mabul, the Shinarim, or Sumerians, accosted the Lord with their great ziggurats, including the awesome Etemankia of Babylon.

North of Sumer but still within rich Shinar were the cities of the Akkadians, a people whose dialect and appearance indicates that they came from the House of Shem, and were thus cousins of the Hebrews, Canaanites, and Arabs. Akkadian was the first mother tongue of the fertile crescent; Aramaic, which would surpass her in a later but still ancient era, was at that time only the tongue of a primitive tribe of nomads.

East of Shinar, mighty Susa was already reputable as the capital of the Kingdom of Elam; but the other Iranic peoples still lived in a primitive state. Northwards, the plateau of Anatolia was still ruled by primitive pastoralists; but following the Mediterranean coast southwards led to mighty Egypt. The Shinarim traded with the Egyptians, the only other people they could consider as their civilized equals; and since the best trade routes passed through Canaan the local folk developed their civilization in imitation of their Shinari neighbors. East of Canaan and west of Shinar was the great Arabian desert; and Egypt was bounded on almost all sides by the trackless Sahara.

Egypt featured a cultural stability at the time of earliest civilization equalled only, in later years, by Serica. Sometimes it fell to barbarians, or decayed into warring factions; but until the time of the Ptolemies it would always rise again, more powerful than ever before. The Nile was conducive to a mighty and united realm. In contrast, shinarologists record a dizzying series of ancient nations, from the antique Sumer and Akkad to the mysterious Mari and Mitanni, and at the most advanced period, the Assyrians and Babylonians. Shinar produced feuding cities and mighty empires; and their kings, who considered themselves priests or avatars of the gods, were constantly at war. Thus, to the ancient Shinarim, the wars of cities and kings were also the wars of the gods.

In this world, at about 1900-2000 years from the Creation (1800-1700 BCE), Avraham Avinu (Abraham, our forefather) was born in Ur, one of Shinar's oldest and most storied cities, to an idolater called Terakh. It was to Avraham that the Lord unveiled his earliest covenant; although we know that the Lord had attempted to bring his message to mankind in the past. The ancient Shinarim had frequently rejected the Lord and, during the Mabul and the dispersal following the building of the Etemankia, had suffered greatly for it. An odd thing occurred with Avraham. The Lord realized that neither Terakh nor the local king, who the people of Ur considered an avatar of the god Nimrod, would accept Avraham, and bade him to venture far away to Canaan, almost to the ends of the world.

The historian of the earliest Hebrews is forced to admit that the tribe of Avraham lacked the refinement or civilized arts of the Shinarim. The literary and architectural accomplishments of David and his wise son, Shlomo, were not to come for centuries; but neither did Avraham and the shepherds who learned from and accompanied him practice the horrific faith of Shinar. The modern Mosaic man is as offended by the human sacrifices some gods demanded as by the ritual prostitution promoted by others. Yet it was always when settling into the cities and imitating the goyim, the other nations of the Earth, that the Israelites fell into such inhuman sin.

The records of the Hebrews indicate that the Lord, to truly reveal Himself to His chosen people, demanded that they evacuate the seat of civilization to learn from him in a pastoral, or even wilderness, setting. So it was when Avraham was led out of Ur, and Moshe into Midian; so too it was when the Bene Yisroel (Children of Israel) were liberated from the First Egyptian Slavery, and when Eliyahu HaNavi (Elijah the Prophet) entered the wilderness to commune with the Lord. There are many modern kohanim (priests) and chachamim (sages) who make pilgrimage into the Wilderness to similarly understand the Lord as our prophets did in a more primitive state.

In our modern condition, we have ample evidence that the progress of civilization is the key method of Tikkun Olam (completing the world), doing our duty as the Lord's partners in Creation. The advancement of the technology of medicine, of transportation, and of communication, to name but a few, could never have been accomplished by shepherds in Canaan, much less by nomads in the Sinai. Yet the Lord led us and our prophets into these more primitive conditions that, in a purer state, they could come to understand His will. It is certain that the civilized but corrupted lands of Egypt and Shinar were not yet ready for this message. But for many centuries, a stronger faith than is prevalent today was required for our Forefathers, since the sinful but civilized people who dominated their world looked on us and our One Lord with only a haughty contempt.
 
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THE COVENANT

The original tribe of the Hebrews were the linear descendants of Avraham and his disciples; yet the religion of their heirs is quite rightly termed Mosaic and not Abrahamaic. Avraham was taught only the faith, not the laws and rituals the Lord would give to his descendants. The later brit at Sinai, with its 613 laws to the Bnei Yisroel, was not yet introduced. Avraham's brit -a word which can only poorly be transalated as a Covenant, was personal and later familial, and specific commandments were given individually, some of which survive in modern Mosaism.

In the main, Avraham followed the laws of Noach, which are given to all the nations of mankind: not to worship idols, not to blaspheme, to murder or steal or commit the sexually licentious sins; not to consume the limb of a living animal, and to form courts to penalize those who violate these basic laws, as repugnant to the conscience as to reason. The Greeks and Romans, more enlightened than the ancients, considered only the prohibition against idolatry as a distinguishing mark of the Bnei Yisroel; but the primitives of Shinar and Canaan wantonly slaughtered the innocent, engaged in carnal realations with their own family, and otherwise gave in to the most base and perverse temptations of mankind, in worship of their false gods.

Throughout the history of the Bnei Yisroel, the chachamim (sages) have struggled with the question of how strenuously to apply these laws. Does a Serican's worship of his ancestors, or an Indian of the myriad avatars of Creation or Destruction, constitute idolatry? Certain it is that the faith of Moshe is a voluntary covenant, not lightly entered into; and that while the Lord honors His chosen people as a light unto the nations, they are held to a more stringent code of conduct than the goyim.

The example of Avraham should be a guide. Avraham welcomed the stranger into his camp, and gained many followers to his brit with the Holy One, Blessed be He, even bringing these converts to share the painful ritual of an adult circumcision. However, Avraham dealt humanely even with those who did not follow the basic laws of Noach; pleading with the Lord even to show mercy to the licentious cities of Sdom and Amora on the Yam HaMelach (Salt Sea - OTL's Dead Sea). We may thus weep over those of our ancestors who were less liberal in their zeal to spread the faith and brit of our Lord.

Avraham and his heirs, Yitzchak and Yaakov, sojourned in the Land of Canaan for generations. As a pastoral tribe at the fringes of that civilization, they migrated from place to place with their herds.They were not unique in this; other Semtic tribes, like the Amorites and Aramaeans, lived in the same Canaanite hinterlands and interacted with the early Hebrews. Avraham was on friendly terms with both the city dwellers and the other wanderers; with the Aramaeans, he engaged in a crucial marriage alliance between his heir Yitzchak and the virtuous Rivka.

This land of Canaan was bounded, according to the Torah, by the Mediteranean and the River Yarden; by the Euphrates in the north and the River of Egypt to the south. The rich lands on the far side of the Jordan later called Gil'ad were not strictly part of early Canaan. The question of the location of the River of Egypt afterward was to provoke much sorrow and bloodshed; but there is little evidence as to the radical view of the false moshiach Bar Kochba that it was the great Nile. Were Egypt and the Sinai part of the promised land, why would the First Slavery and the 40 years in the Sinai precede entry into the Land? The better view is that which was held by Akiva and the moderates, that the River of Egypt was the now long-dry riverbed by Arish at the northern edge of the Sinai.

The nations which later possessed this land are yet unrecognizable. Aram, which in later times was used to describe the nothern interior of Canaan between Har Chermon (Mt. Hermon) and the Euphrates was still a wandering tribe, led at one point by the notorious Lavan, who fooled Yaakov Avinu into 14 years of heard labor for the hands fo his daughters, Le'ah and Rachel. The Philistines had not yet arrived in the land, though the city of Gaza which was later their most powerful fortress already had risen to prominence under a certain Avimelech. The traders across Harei HaLvanon, which our ancestors called Sidonians after one of their cities and the Greeks Phoenicians after the purple dye they traded, were still largely indistinguishable from the general mass of the Canaanim.

Two cities which still deserve the reverence of all mankind must be mentioned in this period. The first is the city that would become glorious Yerushalayim, then still a bastion of idolatry for the Jebusite nation. It was at a hill of that city - Har HaMoryah (Mt. Moriah), today better known as Har HaBayit (the Temple Mount) that Avraham was tested by the Lord and did not sacrifice his beloved Yitzchak. We may understand that he passed the test of the Lord not by his willingness to imitate the Canaani worshipers of the terrible Moloch, but by his humane resistance to the idea, even at the urging of the Most High. Instead, Avraham was allowed to offer the much more fitting sacrifice of a ram; and to this day, sacrifices from that hill are offered daily to the Lord of Mercy.

The other city which we must mention is Chevron. Avraham purchased a property there from a Hittite called Ephron. From this we may learn that the Hittites of Anatolia had already begun extending southward by commerce the dominion they would later exercise over Canaan by force of arms. The property Avraham acquired was the famed Ma'arat HaMachpelah (Cave of Doubles), the burial place of Adam and Chavah, the first human couple to be created. Buried beside them to this day are Avraham and Sarah, Yitzchok and Rivka, and Yaakov and Leah; daily, floods of pilgrims arrive to worship at their graveside to the Most High. No doubt the short ride by bullet rail through the Judaean Hills increases the happy accessibility of this shrine to the worshippers at Yerushalayim.

While in Canaan, Avraham and his heirs were promised slavery in a distant land, followed by the inheritance of the Promised Land and their growth into a mighty and numerous nation. This terrible and wonderful prophecy may have haunted the dreams of our Forefathers, but they trusted in the Lord. The fear of slavery was less pressing to them than the fear of hunger; and occasional droughts in southern Canaan, which modern meteorology still records, sometimes led the Hebrews down to the delta of the Nile, which yearly recedes to reveal the rich soil of its banks, leading in most years to a very fertile harvest. Even in Avraham's time a drought forced him to the Nile, where the Pharaoh himself lusted after the beauteous Sarah Imenu (our Mother), the ancestress of Dvorah, Bat Sheva, Ester, and the women of the Israelite race who are still reckoned as great beauties today.

The final descent into slavery, however, was prompted by the sin of the sons of Yaakov, who betrayed their own brother into the same fate the prophecy had allotted to them. Yosef, showing the brilliance and ingenuity the Ages have always revealed in the Hebrew race, rose from a mere slave (and one condemned to die, at that) to the chief advisor of the Pharaoh! Egypt was then ruled by the Hyksos, a tribe of Semitic shepherds not unlike the Hebrews and Arameans which was fortunate enough to hold by conquest the dominion of the Nile. As famine again threatened Canaan, Yosef convinced the Pharaoh to grant the Hebrew tribe the land of Goshen as a temporary settlement.

Goshen was a district of the Nile delta, near the Hyksos capitol of Avaris; the Hyksos likely viewed the tribe of Yosef as a powerful ally. The native Egyptians, though, greatly resented the Hebrews, or in their tongue Apiru, allies of their oppressors. Yosef, tearfully reunited with his father Yaakov and his clan, did not understand that his present generosity would lead to future disaster. Yaakov may never have intended to settle in Goshen for long; but he was growing old. While his sons kept the brit, they also embraced elements of the culture of Egypt; Yosef himself was embalmed. As it was with Lot and as it would happen again many times, the settlement of the Hebrews among a foreign people, surrounded by temptations and false gods, would lead to sin and disaster.

Indeed, before the passage of many generations, the nomarchs of Thebes founded an Eighteenth Dynasty of Egyptian Pharaohs, and expelled their Hyksos overlords. The Apiru no longer had a worthy leader like Yaakov or his mightiest son, Yehuda; nor did they have an advocate at the court of the god-king like the clever Yosef. The Pharaoh Ahmose, on capturing Goshen, determined that their paradise should become the place of their misery, and cast the Bnei Yisroel into the terrible lot of hard slavery, which would be theirs for centuries.

Avraham's clan was vast, and not all of his heirs went down to Egypt with Yaakov Avinu - though surely more than 70 lineal descendants alone. It is not for nothing that Avraham is called the Father of Many Nations. Yishmael, his first heir, is still revered among the Arabs, whom he joined or sired. Avraham's nephew Lot, who had sojourned too long in the foul city of Sdom, learned little from that city's inglorious destruction and sired the nations of Ammon and Moav upon his own virgin daughters. Esav, Yitzchak Avinu's beloved firstborn, was better known for his prowess as a warrior and hunter than for his virtue; he sired the southerly kingdom of Edom which formed around Har Seir.

All of these nations forgot or abandoned the brit, but the line of faith remained true and strong through our three great Forefathers. In the years of the First Slavery, however, faith remained the only bulwark against despair. The rivals of the Forefathers became fathers and princes of mighty nations; while the chosen of the Lord languished in Egypt.
 
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I really think that you need to give more than a couple of hours before you start with the "No comments?" thing. It doesn't give a particularly good impression. Rather, give it a few days. You don't even know if anyone has even read the bloody thing.

Well, okay, now you do, because I responded, but honestly. Maybe everyone was at work, for example. It was the work period no matter where you were in the US, and either even further into the work period or else really early in the morning, for most of the rest of the world.

So, you know, give it some time.
 
I'm starting to get confused about the POD. Some of the Graeco-Roman terms made me think it was a POD where Judaism became more or less the official religion of the Roman world, which is very plausible. But then some of the rabbinical Jewish terms make that less plausible--rabbinical Judaism is in large part a response or reaction to the rise of Christianity and is less likely to win converts, IMHO.

Also, Bar Kochba? If the Jewish revolts are still happening in TTL, its hard to see how Judaism becomes more widespread and less distrusted and feared.
 
I'm starting to get confused about the POD. Some of the Graeco-Roman terms made me think it was a POD where Judaism became more or less the official religion of the Roman world, which is very plausible. But then some of the rabbinical Jewish terms make that less plausible--rabbinical Judaism is in large part a response or reaction to the rise of Christianity and is less likely to win converts, IMHO.

Also, Bar Kochba? If the Jewish revolts are still happening in TTL, its hard to see how Judaism becomes more widespread and less distrusted and feared.


You've got part of the idea with the Graeco-Roman connection. Admittedly there haven't really been enough hints to really figure it out yet...

Actually, there should be a minimum of rabbinical terms. If you see any that are egregious, feel free to point them out; but others, like Tikkun Olam, will survive, as the Mishna wasn't built from scratch and they may well have existed as part of the oral tradition from an earlier period.

I'd also dispute that Rabbinic Judaism was primarily in response to Christianity; the origins of the Mishna are in pre-Christian Palestine and the Babylonian Gemara was written in Sassanid Persia. I'd list the most important origins as a popular criticism of the Temple elite and monarchy in the Hasmonean and Herodian periods; a response, later, to the destruction of the Temple and the impossibility of the traditional worship as a result; and as an rather conservative/traditionalist intellectual backlash against the end-times messianism of both the Zealots and the new movements, like the Christians and Essenes, who borrowed from Zoroastrianism and other Eastern faiths.

Obviously all of these pressures will be different in this TL, and the resulting *Judaism* will be as well.
 
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Meh, it's written in such a dense in-universe style I can't really get into it. I just don't have the context to understand it properly. As you hinted at, in actual history true monotheism and the torah weren't around until Ezra. Also kind of disappointing really as I am a big fan of the Hyksos as Hebrews theory which of course, has some problems.

Oh well. It seems you have put a lot of work into it.
 
Meh, it's written in such a dense in-universe style I can't really get into it. I just don't have the context to understand it properly. As you hinted at, in actual history true monotheism and the torah weren't around until Ezra. Also kind of disappointing really as I am a big fan of the Hyksos as Hebrews theory which of course, has some problems.

Oh well. It seems you have put a lot of work into it.

At some point, I'd be very interested in a collaborator helping me draw up a straight timeline with maps, to help readers like yourself get into it.

I didn't exactly follow a Hyksos as Hebrews theory, but they are a related people; a little more on them in the next update.
 
Yes, please do: we need more Alternate Ancient Israel AH. :)

And do give us a few more hints as to the world in which this history is being written...

Bruce
 
I've been searching for good ancient Israel ATL, and this is certainly one of the best I've seen. I haven't really seen a distinct POD yet, except for the occasional references to the modern world. Still, even if we haven't diverged from OTL yet, this is still an excellently written summary view of the history of Israel, and a promising beginning to wherever to plan to take it.

Bumpity bump bump.
 
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