The Autobiography of Moses: A Novel

By Michael Bell

What if Moses wrote a sixth book, an addition to Genesis, Exodus, and the rest? Not a history book or a legal code, but something more intimate, something personal. This historical novel is Michael Bell’s vision of what that might look like, Moses’ story of his own life, told in his words, unedited by three thousand years of priests and scholars who have agendas of their own. Mr. Bell presents the prophet in a very different light, as an ambitious man with very mixed motives…and his own agenda. This Moses has different view of himself than that transmitted to us by scripture and religion. Yet he still manages to accomplish all the great works attributed to him. How Moses goes about this – and how, in the end, he comes to see God – is the story told in this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jul 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684707300

Book preview

Weavers

Prologue

Today is certainly a lovely day. It enhances the beauty of this remarkable city. I have a table in a café near the waterfront. Outside, I can hear gulls calling and the waves slapping against the piers, mixed with the babble of voices and the commotion of traffic. I have gotten used to the roar of engines over the past few weeks. My youth was spent in a world powered by wind and water; it was more tranquil and less frantic.

This city is very alive. It is dynamic, and so are its people. Everyone moves at a rapid tempo. Commerce is conducted in sudden and great bursts of energy and with no deliberate pace. I like it; it moves and moves quickly—with a purpose.

I must say I prefer this keyboard to writing by hand, with pen and paper. It took me some time to learn to type, but now my pen stays secured in my pocket while I tap away effortlessly on the computer. The book will be done shortly, and then it will be time to return.

The man approaches my table. He looks very dapper, wearing a white linen suit and shirt, sunglasses, and a panama hat. He takes a seat alongside me.

You’re looking stylish today, I tell him.

Nothing wrong with dressing well, he replies, hooking his thumbs under the lapels of his coat.

No, not at all. Beats wearing a loincloth, a kilt, and a headdress. We share a brief laugh.

Want coffee? I offer.

Please, yes.

At one time, I was a tea drinker. Now I’ve acquired a taste for the heartier beverage. I beckon to the waiter and order two coffees when he approaches. The man and I take note of the waiter’s nametag: Joshua. We look at each other.

He doesn’t seem much like the original, the man observes.

Doesn’t have a beard. That makes all the difference. I look at the waiter’s hands. I don’t think he’s ever lifted a brick in his life.

After a time, the coffee arrives, and we drink unhurriedly while I continue to write.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to do this. It was something left undone that I had to finish.

He nods and says, I promised you could. Anyway, you’re a good writer. You know how to tell a story.

You think they’re ready to know, to hear what really happened? I gesture with my hand broadly, as if to include the entire world.

The man shrugs. They are as ready as they ever will be. Some of them still think the earth is flat or that evil spirits bring disease or black cats are bad luck—and they always will. But we can’t let them hold us back, can we?

No—the only way to make the darkness go away is to shine a light into it.

And that, my friend, is something you do very well.

Thank you, I reply, but I don’t know. Maybe I am a better writer of fairy tales than of history.

Oh no, you manage them both.

Well, it’s almost done. We can leave soon.

Take your time. We have all the time in the world, he says. Now he laughs heartily, loud enough to attract the attention of people sitting at nearby tables. He stops and seems almost sheepish. If they only knew.

We know, and that’s enough, I say. I look at the screen for a moment and draw a deep breath. It’s done.

You sure? he asks.

Yes, I’m sure. It’s time.

I position my index finger over the return key. I pause for just a moment, and then …

GENESIS

Genesis

The Revelation

Who am I? To you, I am Moses, the man who inflicted the ten plagues upon Egypt and freed the Hebrew slaves—the miracle worker who parted the Red Sea and the prophet who brought the law down from Mount Sinai. As you shall discover, all of those things are true, more or less.

I did write the first five books of the Bible, although I am certain that devious scribes and unscrupulous clergy tampered with the text over the course of centuries. No matter; the words are essentially the same.

Scripture says I was the son of a slave woman, a baby boy set adrift upon the Nile in a reed basket. This charming tale has me rescued by the daughter of the pharaoh and taken into the royal household, raised to be a prince of Egypt.

Yes, it is a charming story, but not a bit of it is true. I was a prince of Egypt, fully Egyptian, fathered by Seti the Great and the first of his many wives. I was the younger brother of Ramses II. You should know that I am Egyptian from my name—Moses is an Egyptian word, not Hebrew. But it served my purpose—and, I suppose, God’s—to concoct this fairy tale, and I did so with considerable calculation. You’ll find no trace of me in artwork, in historical records, or carved into monuments. Those who followed Ramses found it expedient to erase my memory. Nevertheless, I was a prince.

All that is past now. Let me tell you the truth. It does not diminish the spiritual resonance of what happened during the exodus, and it is rather more interesting. I tell you this honestly, without guile or dissembling. I will neither hide my accomplishments nor conceal the deceptions.

Do you know what it is to be the son of a great man? Seti had many sons, of course, but only Ramses and I counted for anything. Ramses was the firstborn and I the second, and we were the best of the whole lot. No false modesty; consider history, and you can see it is true. Seti was a great man—a warrior, a lawgiver, and a builder. Seti conquered Canaan and Syria, battled the Hittites, and built magnificent temples at Karnak and elsewhere. He was generous and just, but I cannot say that my father was open-minded.

In religious matters, he was entirely conventional, completely orthodox. Seti accepted the weird and eccentric pantheon of Egyptian gods without question—hawks and cats and half-men and gargoyles of every shape and kind: the odd, the bizarre, and the rather frightening. Seti joined with those who sought to destroy the memory of Akhenaten and his monotheistic cult. Akhenaten, who came closer to revealing spiritual truth than any pharaoh before or after, was a man hated by the elite of the massive religious industry that was created of necessity by extreme polytheism. Every god must have his priest and priestess, his acolytes and choirs, and his scribes and soothsayers. These positions were full employment for a class of dilettantes—spiteful men who resented Akhenaten and who threatened their privileges.

When Akhenaten died, his belief passed with him, and the scurrying rats living in the subterranean spaces of Egyptian religion worked to erase all memory of this spiritual revolutionary. Scholars would later say that Akhenaten inspired my beliefs, but that is not so. I admired Akhenaten and was disappointed by my father’s excessive orthodoxy. My religious beliefs were entirely my own.

Much was expected of Ramses and me. I must say that we both fulfilled those expectations, albeit differently. I am called the conqueror of Ethiopia, though I really do not know why. I visited Ethiopia on behalf of Seti as an ambassador plenipotentiary. I did good work there, but I never lifted a sword and never needed to. My military honors were earned far to the north, in the tels of Syria—amid scrub pines and gnarled hills—fighting ferocious Arab tribesmen and the Hittite vanguard. I was a successful general, almost as good as Ramses, and brought stability to the northern reaches of Seti’s empire. I had some talent for engineering and worked with Seti at Karnak. It was there that I first had contact with the Hebrews, slaves and freemen alike.

I was accounted as something of a scholar, able to read and write from an early age, and much interested in affairs of state, medicine, and science. I spoke several languages, including Hebrew.

I was certainly a worthy successor to Seti and would have ascended to the throne, had Ramses not stood in my path. I could have been an effeminate failure, the mere shadow of Seti, yet I made my own way in Egypt. After leaving, I made something else—something entirely different and remarkably new.

Would I rather have been pharaoh than the great prophet, the beloved of God? No, I suppose not. Taking the throne of Egypt would have meant embracing a degenerate and decadent religion, a religion I knew was false from the day I reached the age of reason. Perhaps I could have succeeded, but most likely, I would have suffered the fate of Akhenaten. Better to have made my way in the wilderness.

Ramses was a different fellow entirely. It is hard to believe he and I had the same lineage. I was a big man for the time, but Ramses was both taller and stronger. I must say he cut a magnificent figure, particularly as a young man when in full panoply for war. Ramses was a great fighting man who delivered impressive victories over the Hittites—a fearsome war machine who came rolling toward Egypt from the hardscrabble soil of Asia Minor. Ramses truly merited his soldierly reputation; I will give him that.

That success, coupled with his status as the firstborn son of Seti, made Crown Prince Ramses insufferably arrogant. There were times when it was difficult even to be in the same room as Ramses, as he strutted and preened and boasted of his considerable prowess. He had no concern for science or mathematics. Building interested him only if the constructs were fortifications—or statues of Ramses, and he erected an uncountable number of those. It was impossible for him to show kindness to a servant—and he counted even the highborn and noble as servants. Seti was capable of magnanimity, but never Ramses.

Ramses was born as Ra-moses—or son of Ra, the sun god—same as our grandfather. It was an unfortunate choice of name. As prince, the name imbued him with a sense of destiny that made him even more obnoxious. My given name was Seti-moses—or son of Seti—though you know me better by the simple suffix. That is what Seti called me, a kind of cognomen. Even after I became enlightened and understood the nature of God, I kept the name Moses and secretly loved my royal father.

My brother and I were not particularly close, not even as children. We were raised in separate households with our own tutors, physicians, servants, and squires. What happened later was very much the product of our personal separation. Yet Ramses and I had one thing in common—our devotion to Seti. However unpleasant Ramses may have been as the crown prince, without kindness or tolerance and obsessed with war, he was unswervingly loyal. So was I. This is why I waited to make my move until after Seti passed over to the afterlife.

And I had to make a move because unless something unforeseen befell Ramses, I would never succeed Seti. Ramses was huge and powerful, and he was overfull of energy and arrogance. It was hard to believe anything could or would harm Ramses. Personal ethics would not allow me to disgrace myself by suborning assassination. Thus, I was the second son of a great and wealthy man. I was able and ambitious, and I wanted more. It also occurred to me that keeping my distance from Ramses would decrease the likelihood that he might remove me as a rival claimant by the violent means I rejected.

Ramses’s oldest son, Amun-her-khepeshef, was the crown prince in waiting, but he was just a boy. I was therefore a real menace to him. If I was consumed by ambition and without scruple, a coup would certainly be possible. It had happened before and would again. Ramses might seek to protect his throne and his son’s ascension by disposing of me before I could do the same to them.

Even if the succession to Seti’s throne was not furthered by treason or fratricide, what would become of me? The boy would eventually replace me as a general of the army when he was old enough to bear the responsibility. Matters of state would be decided by Ramses, of course, without reference to me. I would be wealthy, certainly, and could retire to my estates. Being scholarly in nature, I suppose I could have devoted my time to science or engineering or astronomy. Having been an important part of Seti’s government, an active member of his court, and a successful military commander, I was not keen to lead a sedentary and contemplative life. I wanted to be at the center of events, not on the trailing edge.

Very well, if I could not ascend the throne, I would make one. I did not overly fear Ramses. I was confident, and I had many friends and admirers. The trick was to carve off a realm for myself that would not, by its mere existence, pose a threat to Egypt or to Ramses. I knew the wild northern reaches of Seti’s kingdom very well. There, away from the Nile Delta, I could make my own country.

That explains why I selected Canaan. How I came to choose the Hebrews is another matter. I needed an army—and not just fighters but an army of pioneers. My intention was to build a nation. That was not a one-man job. I knew I could never convince the Egyptians to leave the Nile, with its land of plenty and fertility. True, they would follow me on a military campaign, but they would never stay and settle a place like Canaan, which was poverty-stricken when compared to their homeland.

There were the Arab tribes. I never imagined that, with all my organizational skill, I could mold those wonderful nomads into a nation. Ethiopia was too far removed. The Hittites were excellent, but they had a nation of their own and would sooner slit my Egyptian throat than follow me to a promised land. Anyway, I would not want to deal with the enemies of Seti and Egypt—I was still enough of an Egyptian to reject that notion. It would certainly bring down the wrath of Ramses upon me, and if I did not fear him, I always respected his generalship.

That left the Hebrews. They had been in Egypt for generations, you know, since the days of Joseph, the great vizier. The Hebrews fell into servitude and were nearly seduced into idolatry by their long contact with pagan Egyptians. Yet they never abandoned the single god they called El. The Hebrews were also a desert people, tough, smart, and hardy. Freed slaves or lowborn freemen, with a religion to unite them, led by a capable man—they might be splendid foundation stones for a new nation.

I came to know the Hebrews when working with Seti at Karnak. I became familiar with their culture, language, and religion. Being inclined to scholarship, I welcomed the chance to learn about these interesting people. I examined their religion. It was not well formed, written down, or organized in any meaningful way. Primitive, it was a monotheism centered upon a powerful prime mover or creator with whom they enjoyed a special relationship.

I never accepted the absurd Egyptian beliefs. I could not venerate stone idols of cats and birds and disfigured creatures of all forms. I traveled the length of the Nile and as far north as Armenia. I saw amazing, beautiful, and strange forms of life, plant and animal, all living together and supporting each other, seemingly effortlessly and without obvious direction. Life can be savage or benign, but it was clear to me from youth that this was no accident, nor the work of the mutant circus clowns the Egyptians worshipped. There was an unseen hand. Perhaps the nomadic Hebrews, this simple desert people, were closer to the truth with their unseen god, never to be depicted or addressed by name, who nevertheless determined the destinies of peoples.

All that aside, why should the Hebrews follow me? Well, why shouldn’t they? They were on top of the world as long as Joseph lived, but when he died, they produced no one who could sustain their position in Egyptian society. Their decline was rapid. They could not possibly be happy with their subordinate status. Egypt was much wealthier than Canaan and could offer a better life. But Canaan was their home, a land they believed was promised to them by the creator in exchange for serving as his vanguard, for shunning other gods and cleaving to monotheism. Better to be the owners of Canaan than servants in Egypt.

The Hebrews’ problems were not