An investigation of how Moses was deceived and murdered by his father-in-law, Reuel • Shows how the magician Reuel staged the Burning Bush that spoke to Moses and assumed Moses’ identity after his murder • Explains how early scribes edited the Exodus story to cover Moses’ assassination and replacement and fabricated Moses’ origin story • Builds upon the Moses research of Goethe, Christopher Marlowe, and Sigmund Freud--who spent the last 40 years of his life obsessed with solving Moses’ murder The life of Moses, the greatest prophet of the Old Testament, has always been shrouded in mystery. The Bible mentions no witnesses to Moses’ death, no funeral, and no indication of his burial place, and the story of Exodus paints a very contradictory picture of this man so important to both Judaism and Christianity. At times, he is depicted as a meek, stuttering figure and at others his tyrannical commands and fits of rage terrorize the children of Israel. And, for the last years of his life, he chose to hide behind a veil. What is the explanation for these extreme shifts in character? Was Moses mentally ill? As Rand and Rose Flem-Ath reveal, the evidence points to something much more sinister: Moses was murdered and replaced by an impostor. The result of a decade-long investigation, this book continues and builds upon the research of Goethe, Christopher Marlowe, and Sigmund Freud--who spent the last 40 years of his life obsessed with solving Moses’ murder--and reaches a startling but well-evidenced conclusion that Moses was deceived and murdered by his father-in-law, Reuel. The authors show how Reuel was a skilled magician trained at Egypt’s prestigious House of Life and they reveal his motive: He was the son of Esau, from whom Jacob stole his birthright, the leadership of the Hebrew people, a role that Moses was now assuming. The authors explain how the magician Reuel used his sophisticated skills of manipulation and illusion to fake the Burning Bush that spoke to Moses as well as conceal his assumption of Moses’ identity after the murder. They reveal how the early scribes of the Old Testament inserted lags of time into the Exodus story to cover Moses’ assassination and replacement, fabricated Moses’ origin story, and changed the location of the “Mountain of God” from Edom, where Reuel was a prince, to Sinai. Unveiling the enigma of Moses’ real story--and his murder and replacement--the Flem-Aths dramatically challenge the time line and details of biblical history, exposing a cover-up at the very origins of Western religion.

One man’s quest to find the oldest Bible scrolls in the world and uncover the story of the brilliant, doomed antiquarian accused of forging them. In the summer of 1883, Moses Wilhelm Shapira—archaeological treasure hunter and inveterate social climber—showed up unannounced in London claiming to have discovered the oldest copy of the Bible in the world. But before the museum could pony up his £1 million asking price for the scrolls—which discovery called into question the divine authorship of the scriptures—Shapira’s nemesis, the French archaeologist Charles Clermont-Ganneau, denounced the manuscripts, turning the public against him. Distraught over this humiliating public rebuke, Shapira fled to the Netherlands and committed suicide. Then, in 1947 the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. Noting the similarities between these and Shapira’s scrolls, scholars made efforts to re-examine Shapira’s case, but it was too late: the primary piece of evidence, the parchment scrolls themselves had mysteriously vanished. Tigay, journalist and son of a renowned Biblical scholar, was galvanized by this peculiar story and this indecipherable man, and became determined to find the scrolls. He sets out on a quest that takes him to Australia, England, Holland, Germany where he meets Shapira’s still aggrieved descendants and Jerusalem where Shapira is still referred to in the present tense as a “Naughty boy”. He wades into museum storerooms, musty English attics, and even the Jordanian gorge where the scrolls were said to have been found all in a tireless effort to uncover the truth about the scrolls and about Shapira, himself. At once historical drama and modern-day mystery, The Lost Book of Moses explores the nineteenth-century disappearance of Shapira’s scrolls and Tigay's globetrotting hunt for the ancient manuscript. As it follows Tigay’s trail to the truth, the book brings to light a flamboyant, romantic, devious, and ultimately tragic personality in a story that vibrates with the suspense of a classic detective tale.

The book consists of three essays and is an extension of Freud’s work on psychoanalytic theory as a means of generating hypotheses about historical events. Freud hypothesizes that Moses was not Hebrew, but actually born into Ancient Egyptian nobility and was probably a follower of Akhenaten, an ancient Egyptian monotheist. Freud contradicts the biblical story of Moses with his own retelling of events, claiming that Moses only led his close followers into freedom during an unstable period in Egyptian history after Akhenaten (ca. 1350 BCE) and that they subsequently killed Moses in rebellion and later combined with another monotheistic tribe in Midian based on a volcanic God, Jahweh. Freud explains that years after the murder of Moses, the rebels regretted their action, thus forming the concept of the Messiah as a hope for the return of Moses as the Saviour of the Israelites. Freud said that the guilt from the murder of Moses is inherited through the generations; this guilt then drives the Jews to religion to make them feel better.

This overture provides the interested reader with a fresh approach to commentary writing, one that engages all the traditional concern with total coverage of the text in question, but with the added feature of uniting that commentary under a single set of larger working concerns. The first-time reader of Deuteronomy is introduced both to the standard critical issues and to the text itself, but within the context of a concern to understand the book's abiding theological legacy. Christopher R. Seitz, from the Editor's Foreword

There is a subterranean story within the Bible that has been repressed for centuries. It is a tale of greed, betrayal and revenge. It is the story of the hijacking of the Exodus by a perfect impostor. Why is so little known about the death of Moses - the greatest prophet of the Old Testament? There are no witnesses - no body - no funeral - and ..".no one knows to this day where his burial place is." The clues to this ancient enigma lie in the disturbing circumstances surrounding his disappearance. The truth about this powerful man remains elusive, as his life has always been shrouded in mystery. The isolated details of the biblical story and the contradictory accounts of his behavior have mystified and frustrated scholars and devotees alike. For the last years of his life he chose to hide behind a mask. At times he is depicted as a meek, stuttering figure; pleading with God that he's unfit for a sacred mission. At other times his tyrannical commands terrorize the children of Israel. What is the explanation for these extreme shifts in the prophet's character? Was Moses mentally ill? The evidence suggests something much more sinister: he was assassinated and replaced by an impostor. The idea that the prophet had been murdered obsessed Sigmund Freud for forty years. But despite devoting his last book to the subject he could not identify the man who had stolen the prophet's identity. KILLING MOSES exposes a prime suspect, the Magician Reuel; a charismatic character whose influence molded the development of both Judaism and Christianity. Far from being a minor biblical character - Reuel was Moses father-in-law. He was deeply embedded in the lives of the tribal leaders; a perfect position from which to pursue his brutal agenda of vengeance. Trained in the elite art of magic at Egypt's prestigious House of Life he had learned how his sophisticated skills could serve him well in manipulating and dominating the political game. The story of Osiris (a critical tale in the education of any Egyptian magician) in which a righteous son slays his uncle in retaliation for the murder of his father provided Reuel with a blueprint for murder. His motive for murdering Moses was as old as humankind. A born actor, his commanding voice and sense of drama eventually paved the way for him to seize control over a naive and often terrified populace. To this end he concealed his face behind a mesmerizing mask. But it was his unique talent for impersonation that hid his crimes for more than 3000 years. Using time-honoured detection methods to crack this ultimate cold case file KILLING MOSES uncovers the motive, the means and the opportunity of the prime suspect in this enduring, unsolved homicide.

The present volume contains essays dealing with the Second Temple Jewish traditions and documents preserved solely in their Slavonic translations. It examines these Slavonic pseudepigraphical materials in the context of their mediating role in the development of early Jewish mystical traditions from Second Temple apocalypticism to Merkabah mysticism attested in rabbinic and Hekhalot materials. The book represents the first attempt to study Slavonic pseudepigrapha collectively as a unique group of texts that share common theophanic and mediatorial imagery crucial for the development of early Jewish mysticism. The study demonstrates that mediatorial traditions of the exalted patriarchs and prophets played an important role in facilitating the transition from apocalypticism to early Jewish mysticism.

Painfully aware of their sin and confronted by the Bible's warnings about falling away, people can sometimes be tempted to think that they are no longer Christians. In this booklet, Dr. R.C. Sproul looks at the Scriptures to see if a true Christian can ever fall away from the faith. He addresses topics such as the unforgivable sin, false converts, and the presence of sin in the lives of believers in this world. When Christians rely on God's promise to preserve them to the end, they gain assurance of their salvation. The Crucial Questions booklet series by Dr. R.C. Sproul offers succinct answers to important questions often asked by Christians and thoughtful inquirers.

A serial killer stalks Chicago. A gorgeous cop is on his trail. And someone else is watching, someone who will decide who lives... and who dies. The Angel of Death in Chicago oversees all people in the city, making sure their deaths fit their lives. But when a gruesome serial killer strikes, the Angel must make a startling choice. He falls in love with the cop on the killer's trail, and has to choose between divinity and humanity. But to do that he must face the biggest terror of all - who he really is. File Under: Horror [ Serial Killer | Angel Made Flesh | Crime Scene Panic | Dark Terror ]

Many people today think of Satan as a little red demon with a pointy tail and a pitchfork—but this vision of the devil developed over many centuries and would be foreign to the writers of the Old Testament, where this figure makes his first appearances. The earliest texts that mention the Satan—it is always “the Satan” in the Old Testament—portray him as an agent of Yahweh, serving as an executioner of evildoers. But over the course of time, the Satan came to be regarded more as God’s enemy than God’s agent and was blamed for a host of problems. Biblical scholar Ryan E. Stokes explains the development of the Satan tradition in the Hebrew scriptures and the writings of early Judaism, describing the interpretive and creative processes that transformed an agent of Yahweh into the archenemy of good. He explores how the idea of a heavenly Satan figure factored into the problem of evil and received the blame for all that is wrong in the world.