Dryad
The question over these dual personalities has bothered many people. In the early Church, there was speculation of two gods, that of the Jews and that of Jesus. Marcionism, for example.
If I may, I would like to offer this perspective here.
This is partly based upon what is recorded in the Bible, partly on what we know of the ancient history of the period, Egypt especially, partly on human behaviour and to be honest, partly my own faith.
We know that ancient Egypt was an enormously powerful nation and continued as such for almost 2000 years. The ancient monuments that exist today represent a few hints of what would have been there.
Imagine if, 4000 years from now, people began to dig America. They might find a few statues and such, but most of what is there now, would have long since disappeared.
So, we have a wealthy society and a huge society.
The notion that everyone was in slavery, oppressed, beaten and exploited, is clearly a nonsense. Humans don't function properly when they are firghtened. They become ill. They develop a number of serious diseases any of which would make them unsuitable to do any work at all.
Taking the ancient monuments in isolation. Based upon what we know of the technology that existed at the time, the work was very labour intensive. It has been estimated that it would have taken hundreds of thousands of workers.
Those that built the monuments, for example, would have needed enormous amounts of food. They would need periods of rest and recuperation. They would have needed reasonably decent places to live. They would have had families, not least to produce the next generation of workers. (Unless they all lived for 2000 years!!).The food would have needed to be produced by farming. It would have needed to be transported and distributed.
So, what we already have, just based around the monuments, is a complex society that involved, farming, transport, trade, banking, health care, child care, social welfare, policing and law, recretation and enterainment.
Not quite the reluctant slaves being beaten to death.
To build the monuments, this society would have needed to be enormously wealthy. There is ample evidence that ancient Egypt was. Basic economics tells us that wealth isn't a matter of accumulation, it is generation of wealth. To generate the levels of wealth that allowed surpluses to be poured into these monuments clearly indicates that the relative wealth of ancient Egypt surpassed even that of modern America. And this continued for most of a 2000 year period.
Such a land would have been a Mecca for people from far and wide. People must have traveled from many parts of the known world to live and work there.
This indicates enormous multicultural cities. This in turn, indicates government based upon consensus. It is concievable that efforts would have been made to integrate people. But with such huge numbers from so many different cultures, even the most determined indoctrination would have needed to compormise in the face of some particularly ingrained cultures. This indicates that the nature of the society continually changed, as has happend in the short period that America has existed, for example.
Another basic rule of economics is that periods of growth are always followed by periods of recession. So, we can assume that there were periods of poverty, just as there were periods of wealth.
We know from many of the ancient monuments that the name Moses was not uncommon among the Egyptian aristocricy. The claim that the Moses of the Book of Exodus was a baby in a basket is almost certainly fanciful. It is more likely that Moses was an Egyptian aristocrat, possibly a governer of a provence.
During periods of serious economic down turn, there would be serious discontent among people. Moses may have taken the opportnity to establish himself as something more than a governor. Perhaps the rest of Egypt decided to blame the people of this provance for their woes, not uncommon in any complex society.
For reasons we can only speculate, Moses eventually lead his people out of Egypt.
What can we assume, with reasonable safety, about these people?
Exodus 12:37 tells us that there were 600,000 men of foot at the start of their journey. These represent able bodied men, presumably young.
From this we can reasonably extrapolate a total.
Most of these men would have had wives. Some several. So we can resonably add at least another 600,000 to that figure.
Many of these men would have had realtives, parents, grandparents, uncles aunts. We can reasonably add another million.
Most of these men would have had children. If we take a minimal figure, we can assume two for each man, that adds over a million.
In total, that comes to about three million people.
Now we know that figures can be exagerated in ancient texts. But even reducing this figure by a third, comes to about a million people.
If we want to be really drastic, we can reduce it even more. But any reasonable estimate stil puts us into the hundreds of thousands.
This is a lot of people. To suggest that, after several generations, living in a multicultural society like Egypt, that all of these people were decended from one family is unlikely to say the least. So, it is a reasonable assumption that this was a multicultural group, from many different back grounds.
Many of the stories of the wandering of these people are most likely fanciful. But managing such a huge group would have been an enormous task.
It is an article of our faith that God gave Moses the 10 Commandments. Even if you reject this, these commandments would have formed the basis for a legal system.
The Commandments are: 1 Don't worship any other god, 2 Don't worship any idol, 3 Don't abuse the name of God, 4 Rest one day in seven, 5 Honor your father and mother, 6 Don't kill, 7 Don't commit adultery, 8 Don't steal, 9 Don't lie about other people, 10 Don't covet others goods or relationships.
The immediate problem here is the 6th commandment. Removing the authority to kill removes from governments a central point of their power. They cannot wage war. They cannot kill those that don't conform to their authority.
So, what we have is a huge number of people of diverse backgounds, nominally under the authorty of a legal code based upon 10 Commandments.
One of the first tasks would have been to create social cohesion. To establish they they need a common history and herritage. They all had come from Egypt, but had rejected it. It is concievable that they would have accumulated their traditions and stories. This explains the Book of Genesis. It explains why the story of Lot, for example, is so out of keeping with the themes of other stories.
In the 1500 or so years between Moses and Jesus, the laws were clearly adapted, especially to allow for killing in defiance of the 6th Commandment.
However, when we read the teachings of Jesus we find that He repeatedly emphasised the absolute nature of these laws. He expanded them and clarified others. The 3rd for example, has been clarified to forbid us from judgeing each other.
The teachings of Jesus indicate that the various laws in the interviening period, for the most part, are invalid. Many involve killing while most involved judging each other. But the intent of the original Commandments, as clarificed by Jesus, suggests that none of us have the authority to judge and each of us is responsible for our own souls.
What this demonstrates is that God did not change from being vengful to being kind. God is what He is. The interpertation of the nature of God and the imposition of His supposed will changed and does so continuously.
Those that, even today, claim authority to kil, to judge and condemn are not following Jesus teachings at all.
They are either politically motivated or are being misled.
