The 40 Years That Changed Humanity

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

Out of the past 10,000 years, it only took 40 of them to change the course humanity it was set on following.  It took a man who lost control of his temper and killed a man, then got away, escaping punishment for around 60 years to change the course.

Egypt had a great business going on raising their own slaves.  They had success with this enterprise for 400 years from the time the first 70 had entered their land in about 1711 BCE.  They were given land in Goshen, northern Egypt's Nile Delta to live in and raise their sheep, and when their population  increased quickly, it frightened the pharaoh enough to change the good intentions of the previous pharaoh and had them all captured and held as slaves.  

The whole world practiced polytheism including Egypt and the whole Middle East, Greece and Rome for thousands of years.  Each one had their own favorite gods, using a family style with a king, queen, etc.  They even had gods that married into humanity and produced half-gods- half-men.  

Many included human sacrifice to please their gods.  In Hawaii, sacrifices were made by throwing the sacrificial person into a volcano to keep it on even keel and not explode.  The Middle East had a Baal in the form of a bull statue and slaughtered their sacrifices to that.  

  Something like human sacrifice turned a population against Babylon and a group gathered together and traveled from Ur on the Tigris River to navigate to Egypt, and that included the family of Abram and his wife, Sarai and Abram's father and extended family.  Abram, born in about 1948 BCE,  was unusual as he didn't follow polytheism but felt there was a higher power and a good reason to treat people in better ways, sharing his beliefs in his actions  and talks with the children.

When we think of time, it was  247 years ago that the USA became a country.  The Salem witch trials occurred in colonial Massachusetts between early 1692 and mid-1693. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft—the devil's magic—and 20 were executed.  That was only 331 years ago.  1,994 years ago was when Jesus was said to be born.   We can see that the Exodus about to start in this history, took place anywhere from 3,499 to 3,602 years ago, and this was really long long ago.  The slaves, children of slaves for the past 400 years, only knew what they saw in Egypt and what their parents told them. 

Then, 500 years or more later, Moses was born in 1391 BCE, the son of  slaves Amram and Jochebed who was slated to be killed along with all other newborn sons of slaves on orders of the pharaoh of this period.  His mother couldn't bear the thought of losing her son to the midwives under these orders, nor could the midwives even  do it, giving excuses to the pharaoh he couldn't argue with.  Jochebed had placed him in a woven basket and set him in the Nile Delta hoping for the best and putting his older sister, Miriam in charge of watching the basket.  He was found by one of the pharaoh's daughters and her entourage and taken to her quarters. 

From there on he became the son of the princess and raised along with the other sons and grandsons, learning reading, writing, other languages, warfare, and prepared for the life of a general.  But one day he saw an overseer beating to death one of the young slaves, and he was enraged.  Being about 20 years and strong from army training himself, he hit the overseer to stop him, and in the act accidently killed the overseer.  Even then, this was against Egyptian law, and he knew it.

  He fled eastward to Midian, a Beduin tribe related to Abraham  (today's Arabia), a distance of about 300 miles away,  met some Arab women who were being threatened, aided them  and wound up marrying one, Zipporah.  They were daughters of the local priest, Jethro.                                     

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up.

 Moses hadn't forgotten what he had done, and a voice told him to return to Egypt and free those slaves.  He was 80 years old.

Moses had been hearing voices and seeing things.  He saw a bush on fire that wasn't fire he knew about.  To Moses, a highly well educated literate person of that day, this told him  he had his work cut out for him. He was being led by a single power, the voice he heard,  to return to Egypt and take these slaves back to Canaan where had lived and create their own place in this world.  

 

This led to his brother Aaron and himself meeting with the present pharaoh and after dealing with him on 10 different occasions that brought different plagues upon Egypt, was able to leave with 603,550 Israelite slaves and others that were held by the Egyptians.  They had no time to prepare leaving when Moses told them they were leaving within the hour.  

The trek took 40 years.  It's understandable considering the terrain and moving that many people. Distance from Egypt to Jerusalem is 696 kilometers. This air travel distance is equal to 432 miles.  It could have taken on the average of 10 years to move 100 miles or 1 year to move 10 miles.  

Moses wanted to go slowly so he could educate the people. As he received information through the voice, he wrote everything down, which later was called "The 5 Books of Moses.  They were written on sheepskin.  The rolls must have had to be prepared while on the Exodus.  The old population died and he was left with a young and strong  group after losing a total of 1,820 as shown in the 2nd and last census.  They entered Canaan with 601,730.  

They were free of all the stories of gods and were left with one unseen G-d and ways of living with each other peacefully.  These people were to be the example for others.  We see out of this Judaism, Christianity and then Islam arising which involved those around them.   

Resource:

Tanakh, the Stone Edition (old testament)

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia