Patterns of Evidence: Moses Controversy (2019) - full transcript

- I grew up hearing stories
from the pages of the Bible,

but did they really happen?

This question led me to the
ancient lands of the Middle East

searching for
patterns of evidence

that matched the
Biblical events.

I wasn't prepared for
what would be revealed.

I had been interviewing people
all over the world for years.

Now, it was time
to tell my story.

As a filmmaker,
investigating the Exodus

and the writings of Moses,

I was confronted by
a new controversy.



Most scholars don't think
Moses could have written

the early books of the Bible;

but that is exactly what
the Bible is claiming.

These scholars think that Hebrew,
the language of the Bible,

wasn't even in existence
at the time of Moses.

This is the Moses controversy.

But that is not where
my journey began.

I started this
investigation back in 2002

searching for the path that
Moses and the Israelites

would have taken in their
Exodus out of Egypt.

Either he was
something like that.

- Do what?

What interested me
in the beginning

was that I had heard
of Exodus explorers



claiming to have found
remarkable evidence

of a miraculous sea crossing
where the Bible says

God split the waters to
allow the Israelites to pass.

But brought the water back
down on the Egyptians,

destroying their
chariots and army.

These explorers claim to
have found the remains

of coral-encrusted
chariot wheels

on the bottom of the Red Sea.

There were other Exodus
explorers claiming to have found

the real location of Mount Sinai

with the remains of
altars from the time

when the Israelites
met with God,

and where Moses began to write
the first books of the Bible.

Could it be that after
thousands of years,

the real Exodus story was
finally being discovered;

one of the greatest
stories of the Bible.

- I think the Exodus
story is fundamental

because when you to
understand the Bible,

it's the history of Israel.

Israel has no history
apart from the Exodus.

The Exodus defines
the Jewish people.

It's their self-identity.

The whole understanding
of the Passover,

which throughout
the Old Testament,

you see that the Exodus is
repeated over and over again.

- Who would combine
Passover offering matza.

It's the God who
brought you out of Egypt.

Remember, go back to,
these events happened.

But I also
interviewed scholars

who dismissed the books
of Moses as fanciful tales

about the origins
of the Israelites

not written until
long after the events.

This caused me to put my investigation of the sea crossing

and the journey to
Mount Sinai on hold.

I knew I could not
investigate these events

until I first
determined whether Moses

even had the ability to
write down the details

of the Exodus journey.

This investigation would
reveal one of the most profound

discoveries I have
ever encountered.

- Another one going
along in this direction.

I traveled to some

of today's leading
universities to understand why

mainstream scholars don't
consider these early events

of the Bible to be historical.

Professor William Dever
is one of America's

premier archeologists
who specializes

in the history of Israel
during Biblical times.

Early in his 50 year career,

he witnessed and
actually participated

in a revolutionary change of
attitudes towards the Bible

in the field of archeology.

- I made my early
reputation warring against

traditional Biblical archeology.

People say Dever's the man who
killed Biblical archeology.

No, I only observed its
passing and wrote its obituary.

The fact is that
sort of archeology,

tryin God to prove the
Bible, wasn't working.

I rebelled against my
teachers when I was young

because I thought there
was much more to learn

with different
approaches to archeology.

Today no one does that kind
of prove the Bible archeology.

Remember the Biblical
writers exaggerate.

Solomon was not quite that great

and David didn't do
all those things.

I don't see Moses as the
founder of Israelite religion

and most scholars don't today.

Professor
Donald Redford has long been

one of the world's most
respected Egyptologists.

He was given the award for Best
Scholarly Book in archeology

for his work Egypt, Canaan,
and Israel in Ancient Times.

He too is very critical of
the early Bible stories,

including the Exodus.

- I would subject the
Biblical one to 15 of Exodus

to the same kind of
historical probing

that any historian will do.

Who wrote this stuff?

For whom did he write it?

When did he write it?

Very important, what
did he know of the topic

he was writing about?

Boy in my research,
Exodus one to 15

comes off very negatively.

- What does negatively mean?

- It does not reflect
almost anything

to do with the
original incident.

Retired university
professor Doug Knight

taught at Vanderbilt's
Divinity School.

He co-wrote The
Meaning of the Bible,

which is used in numerous
colleges and seminaries.

- Did Moses write the Torah?

Frankly I don't think so.

I think it was a product
of a lot of other people

much later than his time.

- Interestingly, these
three leading voices

in the world of archeology,
Egyptology, and Biblical studies

have something in common:

All were raised on conservative
Bible-believing homes

just as I was.

Over time, these
scholars became agnostic;

at least in part because
of the challenges they saw

against the Bible, such as the
lack of supporting evidence.

Was that sort of the
beginning of going from

maybe a fundamentalist
believer to an agnostic?

- Yes, very much so.

This is very personal
that something had been

put over on me and there
was fraudulence involved.

I still feel that way.

- By exploring this topic,

would I follow their same path?

Or would I find answers to my
questions and keep my faith?

My parents met at a Bible
college in Minneapolis.

My mother got her degree
in music and my father,

a decorated Korean war vet,
was studying to be a pastor.

They married and I
was their first child.

On weekends we would
travel to a country church

in Wisconsin to
help with services.

My father, with his
military background,

ended up becoming
a police officer.

My family grew to include
two sisters and a brother.

Every week we attended
Sunday School at church

and would hear a different
story from the Bible.

That would have
been the first time

I learned about
Moses and the Exodus.

I would come to believe that
these stories were true.

As I grew older, I was taught
that Moses was the author

of the first books of the Bible,

also known as the Torah
or the Pentateuch.

That is why what
Professor Doug Knight said

about the Bible not
being written by Moses,

but by multiple authors
hundreds of years later

was troubling to me.

I asked Professor
Dever about this.

Let's talk about how
common the view is

that Moses wrote the Torah
among scholars today.

- I don't think any scholars
would hold that view today.

Even evangelical scholars

make use of the documentary
hypothesis for instance.

Laypeople of course
will believe that

and orthodox Jews will
believe that, orthodox rabbis.

But I don't think any
mainstream scholars

would any longer hold that view.

- Did the skepticism
of Dever and the others

come from a previous
generation's paradigm?

Because there are scholars
with a different view.

I traveled to
Louisville, Kentucky.

I wanted to ask some of the
top evangelical scholars

whether they have abandoned
the thinking that Moses

wrote the Torah.

The question about Moses'
authorship is a question

that I've been investigating.

Do you think Moses authored
the first five books?

- I think it comes
from Moses himself.

- And it comes from the time
period he would have lived?

That's right.

- Professor Peter Gentry
is a leading expert

in the ancient Near East,

working in a dozen
ancient languages

while specializing in Greek
and the Semitic family.

He spent 17 years at the
University of Toronto

in the same department
where Donald Redford taught.

- Many scholars today
are just unaware

of the latest advances in
research on archeology, history,

how the Hebrews
did their writing,

how Hebrew literature works.

All of these things uphold
the claims in the text

and show that the
criteria used to establish

the documentary hypothesis
is completely false.

- Why haven't people
acknowledged that?

- I think if you're going
to be a real scholar,

if you're going to open
yourself to the truth,

we can't just copy what we're
taught by our professors.

We have to investigate
the evidence.

- Could there be evidence

that the majority of
scholars are missing?

The more I thought about
it, the more I realized

that the attack on the credibility of the Bible starts here

with the questions of
who wrote the Bible

and when was it written?

The Exodus includes a series
of fantastic miracles.

It's an account
that tells of God

leading the Israelites
out of Egypt

across a vast wilderness.

Pharaoh's army of
chariots pursues them,

trapping them at the sea.

Then the sea parted, allowing
the Israelites to pass through

but destroying the Egyptians.

The Israelites then went on to
Mount Sinai to meet with God

and receive the 10 Commandments.

All this was said to
be recorded by Moses

as an eyewitness
account that had details

of the route out of Egypt,
including camp sites.

To investigate this route,
I would need to look at

the geographical descriptions
and identifications

given in the text
for the journey

because some of these sites
might still be locatable.

But if Moses didn't record this

and it was just a
later invention,

then what would be the point
of searching for evidence

of the route taken
by the Israelites?

Since the rest of the Bible

is based on the
writings of Moses,

the credibility of the
Exodus and the entire Bible

is directly connected to the
question of Moses' authorship.

Can any of it be trusted?

So it's clear that the big
question in this investigation

needs to be this:

Did Moses have the ability
to write the book of Exodus

as an eyewitness account?

If Moses began writing the
first five books of the Bible

during the Exodus,
when did that occur?

That's a dating question
that brings us back to Egypt

because it supplies all
the archeological dates

for that region of the world.

In a previous film called Patterns of
- The Exodus,

I created a wall of
time to help visualize

the different time periods
I was investigating.

The wall of time allowed
me to simply compare

the events of Egypt's
history on the first level

with events recorded in the
Bible on the second level.

At the bottom was a
timeline of absolute dates

and a movable base to gauge
the events of history,

with great pylons marking
every thousand years.

Over the last century, the
dominant view among scholars

has been the assumption
that if the six steps

of the Exodus happened,
it must have been

during Egypt's new
kingdom at the time

of its most famous Pharaoh,
Ramesses II around 1250 B.C.

This is known as the
Ramesses Exodus Theory.

However, my previous
investigation

highlighted clear Biblical
evidence pointing to

an earlier Exodus state
closer to 1450 B.C.,

rather than 1250 B.C.

The kind of writing
system Moses used

must have been in
place by 1450 B.C.

Throughout history,
all known Torah scrolls

were written in Hebrew, the
language of the Israelites.

One reason mainstream
scholars doubt that

Moses could write the
Torah is that they say

there was no form of
writing like Hebrew

in existence at the
time of the Exodus.

So to establish the
possibility that Moses

could have written the
first books of the Bible,

I would have to identify
a writing system

that Moses could've used
that had these components.

It would need to exist
by the time of the Exodus

because that's when the
Bible says Moses was living

and writing the early books.

It would have to be available
in the region of Egypt

because that is where
the Bible places Moses

and the Israelites in the
centuries before the Exodus.

It would need to be a form
of writing like Hebrew

that Moses could have
used to write the Torah

because that was the language
of the early Israelites.

Patterns are powerful tools
because they demonstrate

a sequence of information.

A sequence is much stronger
than one random piece of data.

I have learned that to
find a pattern in history,

you would need all the
pieces to fit together.

One reason there
is a debate over

whether Moses could
have written the Torah

is because the original
documents have not survived

the many centuries
down to today.

So what are the
oldest copies we have

and how close are they
to the time of Moses?

I traveled to the
Dead Sea in Israel,

where in the 1940s and 50s,
the oldest known copies

of books from the
Bible were discovered.

They were called
the Dead Sea Scrolls

and they were written in Hebrew,

the language of the
early Israelites.

Dr. Randall Price was the
director of excavations

at Qumran for 10 years.

In January of 2017, he was
a part of the discovery

of a new cave at Qumran;

the first new cave
in over 60 years.

- Here we also found
part of a top of a juglet

and of a cooking pot,
indication this cave was used.

They found
the remains of jars,

placed in niches, but the
scrolls had been taken.

They hoped to find more
caves with new evidence

in the years ahead.

I asked him about the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

- Now with the Dead Sea
Scrolls, not only do we have

this history brought to life

with all these
various documents,

but we have every copy,

every book of the Old
Testament except for Esther.

But Esther is mentioned
in some of the texts,

so we know they must've
had it represented.

We have the oldest copies
of the Bible that we know.

The discovery
of the Dead Sea Scrolls

puts the date at around 200
B.C. for the oldest copies

of books from the Bible
that have been found.

If the story of the Exodus
originated earlier than this,

the question is
how much earlier?

If mainstream scholars
don't think Moses

wrote the first five
books of the Bible,

when do they think
they were written?

- My thinking is it was written
during the Persian period,

which would put it probably

at the fifth to
fourth centuries B.C.

So not back
as an eyewitness account.

I don't think so;
there's no evidence for that.

- If the early books of
the Bible weren't written

until this time, then
that's a big problem

for the validity of
the Bible's claims.

A colleague of
Professor Peter Gentry

is Professor Duane Garrett.

He is the distinguished
John R. Sampey

Professor of Old Testament
at Southern Baptist

Theological Seminary.

Professor Garrett authored
Rethinking Genesis

and has written
commentaries in other books

on the development of the Bible.

Do you think that
Moses wrote the Torah?

- Moses did write it.

There are things
in the Pentateuch

such as the death of Moses.

The Pentateuch doesn't claim
that Moses wrote his own death.

I don't think that's a problem.

But if you look at the fact
that the laws are crucial

and are central
to the Pentateuch

and that those come from Moses,

then certainly it is fair to
say that Moses is the author

or the source of the Pentateuch.

- When I was filming William
Dever, he was very adamant

that really no one believes that

Moses wrote the first
books of the Bible.

What would you say to that?

- When you speak of
mainstream scholarship,

it depends upon how
you define the term.

If you define it by a
fairly exclusive club

of university scholars,
basically they're right.

But of course, there are
plenty of evangelicals

who have looked into the
issue and continue to hold to

Mosaic origin for
the Pentateuch.

It just depends on how
you define the term.

In 1979, southwest
of the old city of Jerusalem,

an archeological team
headed by Gabriel Barkay

uncovered two tiny
scrolls made of silver.

They fit into an ancient amulet

that was hung around the neck.

When the scrolls were
carefully unrolled,

they revealed Hebrew
writing, including a passage

from the Book of Numbers.

It was the famous blessing
Moses gave to the priest.

The Lord bless
you and keep you.

The Lord make his
face to shine upon you

and be gracious to you.

The Lord lift up his
countenance upon you

and give you peace.

The
wording exactly matched

what is found in modern Bibles.

After testing, it was found to
be the oldest surviving text

of a Biblical passage and
it was dated to 600 B.B.,

which is 400 years earlier than

the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran

and more than 200
years earlier than

when Professor Knight thinks
the first Torah was written.

So I asked him why
he thought Moses

couldn't have written the Torah

back at the time of the Exodus.

- Even though
writing was possible,

most people were illiterate.

Who would have written
it and for whom?

There is no reading public
that's out there waiting

for the next installment.

It was
clear that this issue

of when widespread literacy
was possible is important.

- The context in
which this literature

first came into existence
was in oral traditions

that were being passed on from
one generation to the next.

Stories that you would
tell your children.

They would then
tell their children.

These stories are not unchanging
as they pass on in time.

You embellish, you
enhance, you connect.

Pretty soon you might end up

with a larger saga of materials.

These oral traditions
really are the seed bed

for later on what
became written text.

- The thinking is that
if Moses didn't write

at the time of the Exodus,
then this part of the Bible

and its account of god-given
revelation to mankind

was an oral tradition
and more vulnerable

to changes and exaggerations
with each telling of the story.

If that happened,
it would no longer

be a trustworthy account.

But surely widespread
literacy wasn't required

for Moses to write
the Pentateuch,

since scribes in Egypt
and ancient Mesopotamia

wrote all the time without
a large-reading audience.

However, as I read the
book of Deuteronomy,

I saw that a wider
literacy was essential

for the Israelites to understand
and preserve the revelation

given to them in
the books of Moses.

It recorded that
Moses told the heads

of Israelite households to
write the words of the law

on the doorposts of their
homes and on their gates,

so they could teach
them to their children.

What I know so far
is that the Bible

is claiming that Moses wrote

and that there was literacy
among the Israelites.

We may never know how
widespread it was.

But because of the
perishable nature

of the writing material,
it's not surprising

that we haven't found
much evidence of writing,

including books of the Bible

from the early part
of Israel's history.

If Moses wrote the Torah,

was there a suitable writing
system as early as 1450 BC?

I went to Egypt to meet
Egyptologist David Rohl.

Myth or History,

in which he lays out
evidence for the Sojourn,

Exodus and Conquest
at the earlier date.

I asked David to
help me understand

how writing developed
in the ancient world.

Wow, look at these.

These reliefs are
absolutely perfect.

They're
gorgeous, aren't they?

Yeah, is it a
tomb or a temple writing?

- This is actually a
chapel above a tomb.

The tomb is actually
below us down here.

But what we're standing in
is the chapel above the tomb

and it's covered in hieroglyphs.

This is the cartouche
of the God's Wife,

Amenirdis, A-men-irdis.

You always read hieroglyphs
looking into the animals.

You face towards the
animal like the snake here

and the vulture here so you're
reading from left to right

in this case and then
from top to bottom.

- Is this a story, a narrative

or what does all this mean?

- No, they're spells,
incantations and things like that.

They mention the person
and what she must do

to enter the underworld, to
pass into that other life.

David went
onto explain to me

that writing actually existed
long before the Exodus

in forms such as
hieroglyphics in Egypt

and cuneiform in
ancient Mesopotamia,

which was in the area
of modern day Iraq.

But were hieroglyphics
or cuneiform

a suitable writing system,

that Moses could've
used to write the Torah?

As I thought about
it, the writing system

also had to be simple
enough for the Israelites

to read what was written
as Moses commanded.

Unlike the alphabet, cuneiform
and Egyptian hieroglyphics

had nearly 1,000 signs.

They were so
complicated to learn

that only the scribes, priests
and kings could use them.

In contrast, our alphabet
today has 26 letters.

Imagine how much
harder it would be

to have to learn four of our
alphabets rather than one.

But to learn hieroglyphics,
one would have to learn

the equivalent of 40 alphabets.

That's one thing that made
the alphabet so revolutionary.

With a simple-to-learn
yet powerful alphabet,

it would've been possible
to teach large numbers

of Israelites to read and write.

With a non-alphabetic system,
this would've been impossible.

- In Egyptian scrolls,
they had a list of names

on a and that sort
of thing that went on forever;

hundreds and hundreds of things

that the kid would
have to memorize.

But not with an alphabet,

you can simply use the
26 signs and that's it.

But it
was worse than that.

Hieroglyphics had
symbols for whole words,

parts of words and determinatives that were not pronounced

but were visual
cues for the reader.

I could see how these symbols

would be hard to
learn and hard to use.

In contrast, the alphabet
was based entirely

on the sounds that
each letter stood for.

Suddenly writing
became simple enough

for common people to learn
and this is how we continue

to teach reading
and writing today.

Cat.

- For the writer and the reader,

it simplified things greatly.

These were entirely phonetic

and he could actually take
and make his own words.

The ornate
artwork of hieroglyphs

were specially
designed to be used

on grandiose monuments,
not on scrolls.

This is another advantage
for using an alphabet.

- In fact if you're
writing something

like the book of Exodus
or the book of Genesis,

it takes less room to write it.

If it was tried
to be written down

with something
like hieroglyphics,

it would've taken
miles of Papyrus

to write that particular book.

The complex
pictograms of hieroglyphs

were replaced by the
simplified strokes of letters.

The genius of the alphabet
would revolutionize history.

With only a handful of letters,

the alphabet was powerful enough

to express an infinite
number of words;

words for every idea on
every page of every book

found in libraries
around the western world

from children's books to
scientific journals to Bibles.

When I examined the relationship

between the Bible and the
alphabet through history,

I saw that no other
book in the world

was translated
into more languages

than the books of the Bible.

I went to see Hebrew
scholar, Brian Rickett.

He showed me amazingly
complex structures and nuances

in the Torah text that
would require the power

and flexibility of the alphabet.

This is an extremely

well-written, complex document.

It reflects mastery of the
language, linguistic mastery.

A remarkable uniformity
from beginning to end.

It reflects sophistication,
elegance, artistry.

All the kinds of things
you might look for

in a piece of
world-class literature.

The Torah itself has it.

- Every Torah scroll
that has been found

was written in a
Hebrew alphabet.

It was clear that this
would require another step

to look for in my investigation.

If Moses wrote the Torah
and just as importantly

the Israelites were
able to read it,

they would've needed the
power of an alphabet.

The question is was there
an alphabet available

at the time of the Exodus?

I went to George
Washington University

to see a professor of
northwest Semitic languages.

I wanted to know more about
why mainstream scholars

doubt that Moses
could've written

the early books of the Bible.

Professor Christopher Rollston

is an expert in the ancient
Semitic family of languages;

one of which is Hebrew.

Do you think that the
Hebrews were in Egypt,

that there was really the story,

the narrative of the Bible
that places them there?

- I believe that
there was an Exodus,

but I think the narratives
grew through time

to become stories almost if
from Homeric proportions.

- Homeric meaning Homer?

- Yes, indeed.
- Okay, alright.

A meaning that there
was some exaggeration?

- That's a term we could use.

I'm a practical
person and ultimately,

I know just as you
do that stories

are told and retold
and told again.

Sometimes the stories grow
and the details change

through the telling in different
times in different places.

The narratives in the Bible
I find to be beautiful,

the narratives about the Exodus.

But the details, I think,
are not always so precise.

But if it's not
accurate, can I really trust it?

Is there a god who
saves the oppressed

or is this more or
less a fairytale?

Some say more and some say less.

When does an evidence for
the earliest keeper alphabet

or script first appear?

- We know the Hebrew
scripture very well

begins about 900 BCE and
it's very distinctive;

it's different from Venetian,
it developed from Venetian.

The Hebrew script is
a distinctive script

and we know it
well from hundreds

and hundreds of inscriptions.

- If the Hebrew script

wasn't available until 900 BC,

some see this as a big
problem for Moses writing

the first books of the Bible
at the time of the Exodus.

This is the first
step of the pattern

that I'm looking for.

What could be the
answer to this problem?

Do you think that it was
an earlier form of it?

A Hebrew form that
Moses could have used

that evolved over time?

- The problem...

The script certainly evolved
during the course of time,

but its evolution
begins around 900 BCE.

- We don't know what he wrote

and he would have written
in Egyptian probably

if he had written, not Hebrew.

- The logic makes sense.

In the standard view, there's
no Hebrew alphabet available

at the time of the Exodus.

So Moses couldn't write the
early books of the Bible.

If that's the case, can
the Bible's accounts,

God acting in history,
really be trusted?

For example, when
the Book of Exodus

says that the sea
miraculously parted

and the people of Israel
went into the midst

of the sea on dry ground,

the waters being a wall to them

on their right hand
and on their left.

Was that something Moses
actually saw with his own eyes?

Or was it just the invention

of somebody writing
centuries later?

These thoughts were
troubling to me.

The reason I cared so much

goes back to how I was raised.

My parents' marriage broke
up when I was really young.

It was extremely painful.

Being the eldest
of four siblings,

I had the responsibility to
watch my brother and sisters

'cause my mom couldn't
be there all the time.

So when we went to the
park or we went sliding,

I was on duty.

That's what happens when
your folks break up.

You end up becoming,
if you're the eldest,

sort of responsible.

I became the man of the house.

My mother, as a single parent,

would read Bible stories to us

every night before
we went to bed.

She put a lot of
faith into the idea

that they were true.

She believed that if God
helped people in the past,

he could help her make it

as a single parent
with four kids.

It was very important to her.

The Bible gave her hope.

She wanted it to be important
to her family as well.

Growing up hearing these
stories from the Bible,

I'd always assumed
they really happened.

They really intrigued me.

But the question is
did I believe this

just because it was
the way I was raised?

If I'd been raised in
another part of the world,

wouldn't I have believed
something altogether different?

Did I believe the Bible
because it was true

or because it's just
what we believed?

While visiting Brian Rickett,

I asked him how emphatic
the Bible's claims are

for Moses writing
its first books

around the time of the Exodus.

- Exodus 17:14.

It says the Lord said to
Moses, "Write in a book.

"Write this in a
book," then it goes on.

When Moses produces the tablets,

God tells him to do that too.

We have references in the Torah

and all throughout the Bible

that describe Mosaic
authorship to the texts

and it claims for itself
that it is the product

of Moses' writing as a result
of what God told him to do.

- I remembered that almost
all of the books of the Bible

reference back to the
writings of Moses.

Jesus talks about Moses
and references Moses.

If Moses didn't exist,
then what does that do

to really the
credibility of Jesus?

- Yes, John 5 provides five
witnesses to Jesus' divinity.

He concludes his argument
by saying this in John 5.

"If you believed Moses,
you would believe me;

"for he wrote of me.

"But if you do not
believe his writings,

"how will you believe my words?"

So there it looks like you
have a definitive statement

from Jesus that Moses
produced the Torah

and he's staking an awful
lot on that reality.

- What Moses himself says

that these things were
given to him by God.

God told me.

God spoke to me.

God commanded this.

- He clearly says that
what he is writing

is what God revealed.

On the other hand, we see that
he undoubtedly had sources.

Moses didn't live in a vacuum.

The traditions and things,

whether passed on orally or
in writing, were given to him

probably by the
Israelites in Egypt;

part of the history
he was given.

This formed part of the
basis on which he wrote.

The rest revealed by God.

- If the Bible's
claims are true,

then Moses must have been

at least the primary
person responsible

for writing major
parts of the Torah,

which is the common
assumption of early Judaism

and of Jesus and his followers
in the New Testament.

Once again, Moses
would have needed

a form of writing like
Hebrew by 1450 BC.

Yet this is exactly what most
scholars say doesn't exist.

I was raised in a home that
took the Bible literally,

and you probably--
- I was too.

- Yeah, so the question
is is the Bible

a literal story of
God acting in history?

- It purports to be.

But whether it is or not
is a question of belief.

That's not something
that can be proven.

Proven
is a hard task;

but I'm just asking if there's
good reasons to believe it.

The text is claiming
not only that Moses

wrote these things,
but that God inspired

the very words
that were written.

But if as some scholars
are suggesting,

there are parts in the
Bible that are true

and others that are not,

how could you ever know
which parts to trust?

Believing in the
God of the Bible,

has been the foundation for
my own family for generations.

But what does that faith mean

if it's based on a
mixture of real history

along with legends
and fairytales?

That thought left
me very unsettled.

I knew that if I
was going to deal

with this skepticism concerning
the Bible's integrity

and not live in a conflicted
way, I would need answers.

I couldn't give up.

I would have to continue
with the original question:

Is there any evidence
outside the Bible

demonstrating that Moses
could have written the Torah?

According to the Torah, this
is an eye witness account

of Moses bringing the
Israelites out of Egypt

to Mount Sinai to meet with God.

- It's an amazing experience
that we can't even imagine.

But look at what happens.

God comes down to Mount Sinai.

The people are expecting this.

They were told before
they left Egypt,

Come, God is waiting
for us at Mount Sinai.

He's got something to tell us.

On the morning of the third day,

there was thunder
and lightening,

a thick cloud on the mountain,

and a very loud trumpet blast.

So that all the people
in the camp trembled.

Then Moses brought the people
out of the camp to meet God

and they took their stand
at the foot of the mountain.

Now Mount Sinai was
wrapped in smoke

because the Lord had
descended on it in fire.

The smoke of it went up
like the smoke of

and the whole mountain
trembled greatly.

As the sound of the trumpet
grew louder and louder,

Moses spoke and God
answered him in thunder.

- If you think of it,
Sinai is truly awesome.

Os Guinness is
an author and social critic.

I met him at his office
surrounded by the signed photos

of some of his writing heroes.

He had researched a number
of significant features

having to do with the
events at Mount Sinai.

- At the heart of Sinai,

not just the Great
Constitution, the Covenant.

Not just the great liberation
coming out of Egypt,

but the heart of them all
is the Great Revelation,

whether it's the Lord revealing
himself to Moses alone

at the burning bush or
the Lord revealing himself

to the entire nation
in chapter 19.

Many people don't realize
how extraordinary that is.

You take atheism.

It's humans figuring it all out.

You take Buddhism.

It's humans figuring it all out.

The great difference
in the scriptures,

it's not the ascent of humans

through their thinking to
God, if there is a God;

it's the descent,
the Revelation,

the disclosure of God to us.

That's what's unique about Sinai

and the Jewish and
Christian scriptures.

- Moses came and told the people

all the words of the
Lord and all the laws.

All the people
answered with one voice

and said all the words
that the Lord has spoken

we will do.

Moses wrote down all
the words of the Lord.

- After 3300 years,
an important discovery

shed light on Moses's
ability to write the Torah.

In 1905, the great
pioneer of archeology,

Sir William Matthew
Flinders Petrie,

and his wife, Hilda, went
to the Sinai Peninsula

searching for evidence of
ancient Egyptian activity.

Petrie had already found

the famous Merneptah
Stele, near Thebes.

At the time, it contained
the oldest known reference

to the people of Israel.

It boasted that they had
been subdued by the Pharaohs.

Just 50 miles north west of
the traditional Mount Sinai,

ancient Egypt worked major
copper and turquoise mines.

One of these sites is known
today as Serabit El-Khadim.

The Petries began to discover

many hieroglyphic inscriptions;

then on the walls
of one of the mines,

they saw writing that appeared
different from the rest.

To learn more about
Petrie and his discovery,

I went to the Petrie museum
at University College, London.

Egyptologist Chris Naunton
is the former director

of the Egypt Exploration Society
and the current president

of the International
Association of Egyptologists.

What was unique about Flanders?

- Petrie has a far more
rigorous scientific approach

to the material that
he was excavating

really than anyone had before.

Previously, archeologists
had been drawn to,

treasure is probably
as good a word,

objects which were
very beautiful.

Museum quality was a
phrase that was often used.

Those things were prioritized.

More or less, everything
else, the non beautiful,

non inscribed, disregarded.

Petrie is the first
person really to realize

that there was a huge amount

to be learned from those things.

He is the man to
invent techniques

for gathering that material,

documenting it, and
interpreting it.

Let's just
talk about inscriptions

that he found in Sinai.

- Petrie's work in the Sinai
is incredibly important.

He uncovered a group
of inscribed objects

inscribed with a script

which was unknown
elsewhere in Egypt.

This is the
Proto-Sinaitic script.

Of course, textural material
which Petrie and others

were uncovering in
Egypt was abundant,

but written in scripts which
we're very familiar with.

This was something
very different.

- Wasn't Egyptian.
- Not Egyptian.

This was a new script,
a new language.

Something that would have
very much sat outside

what was well
established as something

Egyptologists knew
about in that valley.

- In 1999, more
inscriptions were found

by Egyptologists John
and Deborah Darnell.

This time in Egypt,
northwest of the ancient city

of Thebes at a place
called Wadi El-Hol.

They were in the same style
as those found in the Sinai.

What date were the
inscriptions at the Sinai mines

and how do we know?

- Both the inscriptions
from Serabit El-Khadim

and those from Wadi
El-Hol are in essence

argued to be Middle Kingdom.

One of the reasons we
do that is because,

for example, at Wadi El-Hol,

the inscriptions
that are closest

are actually Middle
Kingdom texts

and the same is true for
the Serabit inscriptions.

- In the search for a
pattern of evidence,

what I know so far is that
the Petries and others

discovered a new type of script.

It developed during
the Middle Kingdom,

so it would have existed
by the time of the Exodus

and should have been
available to Moses.

This script was found
in the region of Egypt.

It was not Egyptian hieroglyphs;

it was something very different.

These finds match the
first two criteria

of the investigation.

But what about the last two?

Could this new writing

be a type of alphabet
and like Hebrew?

The Sinai mining district
where the Petries

had discovered
this unusual script

was off limits to filming

due to ISIS activity
in the area.

I recreated the setting and
asked Egyptologist David Rohl

to join me and explain the
significance of the inscriptions

that the Petries had found.

- They couldn't read it

'cause it looks like
Egyptian hieroglyphs;

but when you read it,

it doesn't actually
become Egyptian.

It's something quite different.

So they brought an
expert along later on

to read it and it
turned out to be

what we call Northwest Semitic.

- How do you read
something like this?

- This inscription here
you see coming down,

vertical column.

Then the other one going
along in this direction.

So it's like a letter L.

But it's two separate
inscriptions.

The first one is
really important.

The second one is the message

to say please read
the first one.

To learn more
about these inscriptions,

I traveled to Oxford, England,

home to the oldest university

in the English-speaking world.

The Griffith Institute holds
the handwritten archives

of the man responsible
for identifying the source

of these inscriptions.

His name was Sir Alan Gardiner

and he was one of the
world's pre-eminent experts

in ancient languages.

He determined that not
only was this script

made by Semitic people; it was
made up of individual letters

that formed the world's
oldest known alphabet.

The case for
the alphabetic character

of the unknown script
is overwhelming.

The meanings of these names,
translated as Semitic words,

are plain or
plausible in 17 cases.

- There are several languages

in the Northwest Semitic family;

one of which is the Hebrew
spoken by the Israelites.

All of them are very similar.

Since they are all so similar,

some scholars have suggested

that Moses didn't actually
need a Hebrew alphabet.

He could have used one of
the other Semitic scripts

to write the Torah.

The writing could later
have transitioned to Hebrew

around 900 BC when the
Hebrew script developed.

This early alphabetic
script has been given

several names by scholars.

One is Proto-Sinaitic.

Proto meaning first

and Sinaitic meaning
from the Sinai.

Another is Proto-Canaanite

because it later shows
up in the land of Canaan.

Did those inscriptions
give you an idea

of the types of people that
were scratching on these walls?

- They were definitely Semites.

We know that because of
the words that they wrote.

Many of them can be deciphered
and have been deciphered.

Those are Semitic words.

- It seemed this was just
what I was looking for.

But one challenge against
Moses writing the Torah

is the common view
that the Phoenicians,

who lived next to
the land of Israel,

invented the alphabet
around 1100 BC,

long after the time of
Moses and the Exodus.

If this were true,
it would mean that

there was no alphabet
for Moses to use.

The Petries' discovery of
this early Semitic alphabet,

now dated by scholars to the
era of the Middle Kingdom,

clearly challenges that claim.

For many years, the popular
claim in school textbooks

has been that the Phoenicians

basically invented the alphabet.

What's your thoughts?

- In essence, I
think what we can say

based on the
evidence that we have

is the Phoenicians didn't
invent the alphabet.

We certainly know
that's the case.

The Phoenicians didn't
invent the alphabet.

The Phoenicians did
though standardize

the early alphabetic
writing system;

but the alphabet itself
was an innovation

and it was definitely
Semites who invented it.

This would mean
that the world's oldest alphabet

is not Phoenician,
but is actually the Proto-Sinaitic script

found by the Petries.

- What the evidence suggests

is that we have wonderful
Northwest Semitic inscriptions.,

evidence for the Semites
inventing the alphabet.

Evidence for the first alphabet,

a grand of technology that
will from that point on

transform so many things.

- Transforms the world.
- We use it today.

- I am asking the questions
from my own faith.

I wanna know if Moses wrote.

- It's not just a matter
of historical curiosity.

Well Moses wrote these books

and not some anonymous figure.

It is that Moses is
the chosen man of God.

He is the man who spoke God

as a man speaks to his friend.

Moses has great authority.

That is why I think
Jesus and the apostles

when they spoke of
the books of Moses,

they refer to him by name
because he was Moses.

He was this chosen man of God.

- In my search for a
pattern of evidence

showing that Moses
could have written

the first books of the Bible,

the inscriptions found
by the Petries and others

confirm that the
Proto-Sinaitic script

is the earliest known alphabet

and it appeared centuries
earlier than even Phoenician.

An alphabet would make learning
to read and write easy,

allowing the Israelites
to teach their children

the words of God as
Moses instructed.

This alphabet was Semitic,

which means that it was in
the same family as Hebrew.

Therefore, it was a form
of writing like Hebrew.

This writing existing by
the time of the Exodus

and in the region of
Egypt could have provided

the tool needed for
Moses to express

the nuance and detail found in
the early books of the Bible.

I was excited to
actually find evidence

matching all four
steps of the criteria.

But this brings
up a new question

about the fourth
step of the pattern;

an even bigger and
more profound question

that goes beyond whether
it was like Hebrew.

What if these inscriptions
weren't just like Hebrew?

What if they
actually were Hebrew?

If that were true, it
would be a slam dunk

for Moses' ability to
write the Torah in Hebrew,

the language of all
known Torah scrolls.

Not only that, if it was Hebrew,

it would show that the
source of the script

was the Israelites.

I couldn't get this
idea out of my head.

Was this script actually
the earliest written Hebrew?

As I set off to investigate,

little did I realize
how controversial

that question would be.

Could this script actually be

the earliest form
of written Hebrew?

This might seems like
a logical question,

but I was very puzzled to find

just how controversial
this idea is

in the world of academia today.

I went to Israel to meet
with the chair of Egyptology

at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem.

Professor Orly Goldwasser

is one of Israel's
leading experts

on the formation of
the early alphabet.

There are some people suggesting

that this Proto-Sinaitic script

was early form of Hebrew.

Have you ever heard that before?

- Yeah, yeah, this is sad.

- Sad?

This is sad?

- It's not science.

This is, excuse me for using
the very blunt words here.

This is disseminating
fake knowledge

and fake science to people.

It's not their field.

You can tell me for example,
any stories in biology,

mathematics and I will
believe because I don't know.

Really if my great teacher
Joseph Naveh would be alive,

I think he would die
again if he moved here.

- You could hear that?

- He invented this theory.

It has nothing to do.

Hebrew is a kind of dialect

that developed
Canaanite dialect.

It developed much later.

To call this old
Canaanite dialect

which cannot be identified,

maybe because the
inscriptions are too short.

Hebrew, it's opportunism.

Professor Gentry

experienced something
different with his professors.

- Frequently when
we're taught things,

there's a consensus
among scholars

that this is the way things are.

But when you get
out the microscope

and examine the evidence,
sometimes it doesn't add up

so it's important
to check things out.

- Yeah 'cause I
know a lot of people

can say my professor told me.
- Yeah, that's right.

- Then his professor
told him, correct?

- That's right.

- Then there's the real
question of is it correct?

- That's right.

- What would be one example
of a problem you had

that through diligence
and investigation,

you were able to
solve for yourself?

- I think the documentary
hypothesis is one.

I went to a school
where they taught it

every day for 17 years.

I read a book by an Italian
Jew called Umberto Cassuto.

He wrote a very good book

criticizing the
documentary hypothesis.

One day I was at the
University of Toronto

and my professor was teaching
the documentary hypothesis.

All I did was very politely say,

"Have you ever looked at the
book by Umberto Cassuto?"

The answer I was given was,

"We don't read books
like that around here."

That was when I
clued in and realized

for them it's a faith stance.

It's not as if

this is perfect science.

- In other words,
there was a sense

that they didn't wanna
hear other information.

- That's right.

For me, they were
the fundamentalists

because their minds were closed

and they were not
interested in evidence

that would call their
consensus into question.

- The issue of this
script being Hebrew

directly connects
to whether Moses

could've used it
to write the Torah.

If one believes that Moses
didn't write the Torah,

then where does that
thinking naturally lead?

We both grew up in
families that both believed

the Bible was a
historical document.

- My father was a minister,
very conservative,

southern, small-town churches.

- Tell me about that.

You were raised in
a conservative home.

- We read the Bible literally
and thought that was adequate.

Then I went to a Bible college
and nothing changed there.

Then I went to a liberal/protestant theological seminary

and that was quite
a shock I remember.

Then I went onto Harvard
and by that time,

I was moving away from theology

and into history,
thus into archeology.

- You were actually a minister.

- I was a clergyman for 13
years, United Church of Christ.

- I'm gonna ask you a
theological question

'cause you have had
quite an arc of a life.

- I've had an
adventuresome life.

- You have, you have.

I'm gonna ask you the most obvious question,
is there a god?

- I am not an atheist.

I think that's an
arrogant position.

I'm an agnostic, which
means I do not know

and I think that's the only
honest position I can take.

I'm not going to say
there is or there is not,

that's a theological issue.

I'm not a theologian.

- In these interviews
it was clear to me

that the more these
scholars doubted

that Moses wrote the Torah,
the less sure they were

of even the existence of God.

I remember going to
church on Sunday mornings

and hearing the Bible
called the Word of God.

I was taught that Moses
and other Biblical writers

were divinely inspired.

They were chosen
people who wrote

what they saw and
heard from God,

so others in the
future could read it.

Was there a connection
between the Bible

and the world's first alphabet?

Early in his career, David
Rohl had uncovered problems

with the dates given to the
reigns of Egyptian Pharaohs.

He concluded that Egypt's
dating had been over-exaggerated

and needed to be revised.

When this was done, he
began to see evidence

for the Biblical Exodus emerging
in an entirely new period.

While most scholars
put the six steps

of the Exodus in
Egypt's New Kingdom,

this evidence was in the
earlier middle kingdom

at a time where most
weren't looking.

The unexpected result
of David's revision

of Egyptian history was
that the early evidence

shifted forward aligning
with the Biblical dates.

To further explore his theories,

he traveled into the Sinai area

were the Petries made
their discoveries.

He had quickly come to realize

that placing the early
Israelites in the Middle Kingdom

could connect them and
their Hebrew language

with the Proto-Sinaitic
script, which was invented

in the same time period
and in the same area.

But the idea of Moses
writing the Torah

and a Biblical Exodus is
inconceivable to most scholars.

Yet I had been faced with
this challenge before

and the solution was
found in a pattern.

In the search for whether
the Sinai inscriptions

were actually written in
an early form of Hebrew,

I would need to answer the
following three questions.

Do the letters of the
Proto-Sinaitic script

match the look of Hebrew?

Is there a connection
and are the inscriptions

readable as Hebrew,
do they make sense?

Does the history of
the early alphabet

match the history
of the Israelites?

Because if it does,
it would indicate

they were the ones
responsible for it.

The first question of
the Hebrew pattern is

do the letters of the
Proto-Sinaitic script

match the look of Hebrew?

Dr. Douglas Petrovich
has long studied

inscriptions and their meanings.

He is yet another scholar I met

who believes Moses
wrote the Torah.

It appears that
Professor Dever's claim

that scholars no longer hold
this view was overstated.

Just like David Rohl,
Dr. Petrovich proposes

that the early Sinaitic script
is actually the earliest form

of written Hebrew developed
by the Israelites.

However unlike Rohl, Petrovich
doesn't see a problem

with Egypt's dating system,
so he uses the standard dates.

Petrovich recently
outlined his case

in his book, The
World's Oldest Alphabet.

He thinks a key link between
the Sinai inscriptions

and the early
Israelites is the fact

that whoever invented the
alphabet borrowed symbols

from Egyptian hieroglyphs
to make the letters.

Here's the Egyptian gallery
and we have an artifact here.

Tell me about this.

- That's right, this
is from ancient Egypt.

It's from the Old Kingdom,

maybe about 400 years
before Abraham lived.

- It's very old then.
- It's very old.

- What is the connection
with Egyptian hieroglyphs

and the oldest alphabet?

- This is the very
writing script

that's the basis of the
world's oldest alphabet.

They were formed from 22 of
these hieroglyphic signs.

- Are there any of those
examples here on this?

- Yes, in fact here
is a wave of water.

When you convert this
into a proto-continental

alphabetical letter in Hebrew,

this becomes the M

because for Hebrews,
water is mayim.

They see the wave of water,

they're thinking mayim

and they pronounce muh.

- This is were the
alphabet came from,

but how did it
develop over time?

When you look at the family tree

for the beginning
of the alphabet,

it starts with the
Proto-Sinaitic script

which when found in Canaan
is called Proto-Canaanite.

Then in the standard view,

the alphabet is believed
to have developed

into Phoenician
hundreds of years later.

In this view, Phoenician
branches into other scripts

such as Old Hebrew,
Aramaic and Greek

continuing on to numerous
alphabets over the centuries.

But was the first alphabet
related to Hebrew?

Professor Petrovich
has argued that

the Proto-Siniatic inscriptions

were actually an
early form of Hebrew

and the world's first alphabet.

What are your thoughts?

- I wish that it were true.

I wish that were correct.

It would be absolutely
fascinating.

The difficulty with that
is first and foremost

the script of the
Proto-Canaanite inscriptions

or the early alphabetic
inscriptions;

the script is definitely
not the Hebrew script,

so that's a problem.

- I could see why it's difficult

to link Old Hebrew with the
world's oldest alphabet,

the Proto-Sinaitic script.

Old Hebrew or Paleo Hebrew,
as it's sometimes called,

is thought to have
emerged 1,000 years later

and to have developed
from Phoenician.

The consensus of scholars holds

that the very first Hebrew text

starts with Old
Hebrew by definition.

- We know the Hebrew
inscriptions well.

We know the Hebrew script
well beginning around 900 BCE.

The script of those inscriptions

is dramatically different
from the Hebrew script,

dramatically different.

However, scripts
can look dramatically different

and still be a part
of the same family.

One example can
be seen by looking

at the first verse in
the book of Genesis

as seen in the Wycliffe Bible.

It was written in
the English of 1385

from about 600 years ago.

Here is the same verse today.

I was surprised how much
English has changed.

Furthermore, even
Professor Rollston

acknowledged that
the Hebrew script

changed over time
in a later period.

But if Old Hebrew
evolved over time,

why couldn't it
have evolved earlier

from the script that is known
today as Proto-Sinaitic.

I needed to go back to Israel

and to the important
Biblical city of Gezer,

20 miles northwest of Jerusalem.

It was here that Irish
archeologist Stuart McAllister

discovered what many
considered to be

one of the earliest Old Hebrew
inscriptions found to date.

It was a calendar inscribed
on a limestone tablet

that included monthly
information about crops.

I looked at the Gezer calendar

to compare it to
the inscriptions

the Petries discovered
in the Sinai mines

which are from
centuries earlier.

For many of the letters, you
can see a clear resemblance.

Some of the letters of the two
scripts are also different.

But according to Doug Petrovich,

they aren't as different as
Professor Rollston claims.

He showed me how each
letter changed over time

starting with the fifth
letter of the Hebrew alphabet,

the letter.

- It starts out as a full
man here, here and here.

Usually he has both arms up
with right angles at his elbows

in a pose that we who
live in the United States

would call the Touchdown Pose.

This is the touchdown letter.

This letter makes the H
sound in Hebrew like huh

and it comes from the
Hebrew world halal.

That's the word that's
connected to the pictograph.

Halal means praise.

- Or hallelujah?

- The word hallelujah is
based on this very word.

It's the arms raised
in praise toward God.

The head is insignificant,
the legs are insignificant.

Oddly enough, what happens over
time as the letter evolves?

Here's one leg missing.

Here's a head that's
been reduced greatly.

Reduced greatly,
reduced greatly.

No legs at all here
on Sinai 374, why?

Because all you need
is the hands raised.

Eventually they realized we
don't really need the head

and we don't really
need the legs,

so that morphs into
what looks like an E.

If you were to take this
from the Sartah Ostracon

and turn it 90
degrees to the left,

it would be the neck of a
person, the left arm of a person

and the right arm of a
person all pointing up.

- While the
Proto-Sinaitic letter

of a man praising may
look quite different

than the corresponding
Hebrew letter,

once you understand
how it developed,

you can see how they relate.

David Rohl also showed me
how this development happened

with our modern letter A.

- I'll give you a good example.

The bull's head, Aleph.

It starts life as
an ordinary drawing

of a bull with two horns.

As it comes through
Proto-Canaanite into Phoenician,

it turns to that
shape at right angles

from the original bull
and it's now become lines

rather than a very careful
drawing, it's very angularized.

Then it comes into Greek

and to our English
language like this.

It's rotating and it's
changing its shape,

but you can still see
the original bull's head,

in the letter A but
it's now upside down.

But can
these two related scripts

be considered different
versions of Hebrew?

It appears that Phoenician
is the one thing

standing in the way
of making that link.

How dramatic are the differences

between Old Hebrew
and Phoenician?

When compared to Phoenician,
the character of the letters

looks very similar
to the Old Hebrew

found by Stuart
McAllister to the point

where most of the letters
are basically identical.

It could almost boil down

to individual styles
of handwriting.

Israel's preeminent authority
on ancient inscriptions

was the late Joseph Naveh.

Dr. Goldwasser was one
of Naveh's students.

- He was the great
expert of the script.

- 'Cause I wanna find
out what the truth is

'cause I've
interviewed some people

who are saying they
think there's a link.

I know that Joseph
Naveh, he said something.

He wrote, "In inscriptions
of the 10th century."

- 10th century,
remember the 10th.

In inscriptions
of the 10th century,

Phoenician, Hebrew
and Aramaic scripts

are indistinguishable.

- If Old Hebrew,
Aramaic and Phoenician

were indistinguishable
in the 10th century,

is it really proper
to call the script

Phoenician at that time?

According to Naveh, it's
only later that this script

branches into the more
distinct versions.

In that case, the actual
model for the early alphabet

would look more like this
with this mystery script

being the predecessor
of the other three.

Today, some call this mystery
script early Phoenician.

Others call it a late
form of Proto-Canaanite,

but could it actually be
an early form of Hebrew?

To be clear, Joseph Naveh
held to the same standard view

as professors Rollston
and Goldwasser,

that we can't call the early
phase of this script Hebrew

because Old Hebrew did not
become a distinct script

until after the 10th century BC.

- This is worse for your theory

because Naveh believes the
Hebrew was born even later.

- Okay, what is called
Old Hebrew came later.

But the question remains,

what really was
this mystery script?

Professor Naveh did
an extensive study

of six letters from this script

as it evolved into Phoenician,
Old Hebrew and Aramaic.

Surprisingly he
said that over time,

"The Hebrew script preserved
the basic forms of the letters

"to a greater extent
than the other two."

Now that is curious.

Why would Old Hebrew be the one

to maintain the characteristics

of the mystery script
better than the others?

Naveh believed it was
because the Israelites

were isolated in a mountainous
land steeped in tradition,

so they didn't change things.

But if Old Hebrew is the most
similar to the mystery script,

maybe it's because both
were forms of Hebrew.

Based on the
thinking of scholars

like Petrovich and Rohl,
this opens up the possibility

that Proto-Sinaitic
was merely Hebrew 1.0

as the earliest form
of written Hebrew

that later developed into
Hebrew 2.0, the mystery script.

It was then picked up
by Israel's neighbors,

the Phoenicians, before
spreading throughout the region.

It would later develop into
Old Hebrew or Hebrew 3.0.

Interesting though,

the idea that some form of
Hebrew writing came first

is supported by one of the
earliest Jewish historians.

Eupolemus around 150
BC wrote in his book

titled On the Kings of Judea.

Moses
was the first wise man

and the first that imparted
grammar to the Jews.

The Phoenicians received
it from the Jews

and the Greeks from
the Phoenicians.

- For Rohl and Petrovich,
Moses was the wise man

who had the ability to
write the book of Exodus

as an eyewitness account.

When investigating
the first step,

does Proto-Sinaitic
match the look of Hebrew?

I discovered that
there are many letters

in Proto-Sinaitic
that closely resemble

those of the mystery
script in Old Hebrew.

The development of those
letters that aren't different

can be traced in a logical way

showing that these
scripts are related.

Over time as the
script transition

to the distinct Phoenician,
Aramaic and Old Hebrew styles,

it was the Old Hebrew
that maintained the style

of the mystery script
better than the others.

This supports the idea that
the original Proto-Sinaitic

was Hebrew 1.0, which then
evolved into Hebrew 2.0 and 3.0.

I can now move on to the
second step of the pattern

investigating whether the
inscriptions are readable

as Hebrew, an idea that is
extremely controversial.

Rollston says that the words
found in the inscriptions

are not specific to Hebrew,

but are common to all
Semitic languages.

- In other words,
it's not evidence

for those texts being Hebrew.

It's evidence for those
texts being Semitic

and that's all that we can say.

- But if all the Semitic
languages are so similar,

then doesn't that also mean
that we can't really say

that it isn't Hebrew?

Obviously, some Semitic group
invented the first alphabet

and why not the Israelites?

For more than 100 years,

other scholars have suspected
the Hebrew connection,

but their ideas never took hold.

- In the wall.
- David Rohl has worked

with the Sinai inscriptions

and disagrees with
Rollston's position.

He believes they can be
read as uniquely Hebrew.

Rohl used recognized
letter identifications

made by previous
scholars for the signs.

He then sent those
letter interpretations

to Rabbi Michael Shelomo
Bar-Ron in Jerusalem

to see if the inscriptions could
be read as Biblical Hebrew.

- One day David Rohl
just sends me an email

with a string of letter names.

I scratch out this
string of letters

in the modern human characters
that we make use of.

I look at it for a minute
and I clearly make out

what the word roots
are; I'm blown away.

I can read it.

In other words this is
not the northwest Semitic

that you're talking about,

this is the Hebrew
of our ancestors.

This etching, this inscription
somewhere in the Sinai Desert

is actual plain Biblical Hebrew.

- What were some of the things
that were written there?

- There are things like
instructions, how to use mana.

In the Bible there's a big thing
about you mustn't store it.

You have to eat it
when it's given to you.

This thing says pay attention
to the way you use mana.

Follow the Father
and his instructions.

Dr.
Petrovich also agrees

that these inscriptions are
an early form of Hebrew.

However, he has arrived at
different interpretations

than David Rohl.

Petrovich identifies
words and names

he believes are uniquely Hebrew,

as well as Biblical characters.

One such character had
a son who participated

in the building of the
tabernacle at Mount Sinai.

In another inscription from
the minds of Serabit el-Khadim

he even reads the name Moses.

What makes interpreting these
inscriptions so difficult

is that there are only
consonants, no vowels.

Many of them have no
spaces between words.

They can be written either
left to right or right to left.

The true identification
of several of the letters

are disputed and many are damaged,
making them hard to read.

That is why many scholars state,

"We can't read these
inscriptions as Hebrew."

- Someone's attempt
to state that

they can not only read
these inscriptions,

but read names that
we know from the Bible

or positive that we
have people present

in these inscriptions
from the Bible.

It's a difficult thing indeed.

You have to have evidence
for these proposals

and it's just not there.

- Some of my critics such
as Christopher Rollston

are saying that this could
be any Semitic language.

There's no way of identifying
as clearly being Hebrew.

There are several
distinctively Hebrew words

that are not found in any
other Semitic language

that are contained in the
15 Hebrew inscriptions

I've translated.

The key to
Petrovich's approach

was to test different
letter identifications

for those Proto-Sinaitic
letters that are disputed.

- I was able to try
the different options

of what all the scholars
have been proposing

for 100 years or so.

Through that process,

I was able to answer
which were correct.

Because in certain contexts,

if you took it one
way, it wouldn't work.

If you took it another
way, it definitely worked.

In fact, it always worked.

- When Rohl and
Petrovich assigned

equivalent Hebrew letters
to these inscriptions,

they claim they make
sense when read as Hebrew.

They state they are finding
uniquely-Hebrew words.

They also claim that
some of the inscriptions

reference Biblical
characters and events.

What complicates this issue

is that there are
different approaches

in reading the letters produce
different interpretations.

But the end of the day,

it's encouraging that there
are at least two possibilities

that result in meaningful
phrases for these inscriptions

when Hebrew letters are applied.

What these inscriptions
might say is something

I will continue to
investigate in future films.

People such as
Professor Rollston

say that it can't be Hebrew
because the Hebrew writing

didn't exist until
much later in time.

- That's true.

He calls this language
northwest Semitic.

These scriptures are
northwest Semitic.

But I say it's a matter of history,
not so much of language.

You could interpret
them as Hebrew

only if you have the
history to back it up.

- Because we have a script
that looks similar to Hebrew,

yet has some uncertainties
with the interpretations,

the final step becomes
the key to determining

which Semitic group invented it.

Does the history of
the early alphabet

match the history
of the Israelites?

The hieroglyphic roots
of the first alphabet

along with the locations
of the inscriptions

point to Egypt being the source.

Most scholars believe
that this first alphabet

developed outta the
elite class of scribes

who would've been familiar with
using Egyptian hieroglyphs.

But Professor Goldwasser
has a different idea.

Your theory is that common
people invented the alphabet.

- Yeah, my theory is that
I take this great invention

that change history from the
intelligence of the old world

to the so-called simple people

and say my inventor or inventors

were just people that were
illiterate in any script.

This gave them the freedom
to invent, you see,

because their mind was free.

Nothing was told them you
should do this with this picture

and that with the other pic;

they could prepare a new theory.

People hate it.

The scholars today even hate it.

- They hate it?
- Yeah.

- How dare they.

- They still write against me.

It's impossible
that simple people

invented this very
complex, phonetical.

It's common sense.

It's fantastic common sense.

- Everyone agrees that
whether they were elite

or from the common class,

whoever invented
this Semitic alphabet

had to have been a genius.

But who would've had the motive

to write their Semitic
language in this unique script?

- The book of Genesis tells us

that the first descendant of
Abraham to arrive in Egypt

was his great-grandson
Joseph, the son of Jacob.

Joseph's brothers had
sold him as a slave

to a caravan of traders, who
brought him down to Egypt.

With God's help, Joseph
was able to save Egypt

by warning of a coming calamity.

Seven years of plenty

would be followed by seven
years of terrible famine.

Pharaoh was so impressed
that he puts Joseph in charge

of preparing for the
famine and makes him

second in command over
the entire country.

"Since God has
shown you all this,

"there is none so discerning
and wise as you are."

- Joseph was an administrator
over all of Egypt,

a position that would
have required him

to read and write hieroglyphics.

Could your distant relatives,

the Israelites or
let's say Joseph,

could they have been involved
with any of this writing?

- I can write another story
about somebody called--

- Benny.
- Benny,

who was also in Egypt and
he was also very clever.

He sold the hieroglyphs.

He might have
invented the alphabet.

This is endless, you see.

First of all, it's a
little too late already.

Then how come the inscriptions
in earlier?

It's not your time
of Joseph or Benny

or whoever it could be.
- Whoever, yeah.

Professor Goldwasser is
assuming that these inscriptions

are earlier than
the time of Joseph

because she holds
to the standard view

of the Ramesses Exodus.

However, my previous
investigation

had uncovered impressive
archeological finds

matching Joseph and his
family in the Middle Kingdom.

These all came from a location

called Avaris, the
city beneath Ramesses,

where the Bible places
the early Israelites.

It was David Rohl
who had first come up

with these connections.

Joseph saved the
country from a terrible famine,

enables his father Jacob
and his entire family

to settle in the best
part of the land,

a place called Goshen.

- Is there any indication
of famines in Egypt?

- Of course there is, in
many different periods.

But there's one key period
when we get this massive famine

which lasts about
seven to 10 years.

It's the time of the
end of the 12th dynasty

in the reign of Amenemhat III;

he's the Pharaoh
of this big famine.

The reign
of Amenemhat III

exactly matches the time of
Joseph in the early pattern.

It was amazing to see how
specific the connection was

between Amenemhat,
Joseph and the dates

of the two oldest alphabetic
inscriptions in Sinai.

- This is the image of the
oldest fully Hebrew inscription.

There are the letters,
here they are drawn in.

Here's another image
showing you Sinai 377 here

in the form of a stellaform.

It's like a tombstone;
it's rounded at the top

and goes down straight
on either side.

It's intricately connected
to another inscription.

This is Sinai 46 to its left.

- Are these both?

In other words, this
is one inscription

and this is a second one
on the same rock face?

- On the same rock face.

We have Sinai 377 and Sinai 46.

Sinai 377 being in
Hebrew very short,

very trite inscription.

Sinai 46, middle
Egyptian inscription

with the year date at the top.

Then it reads right to
left in these two rows,

then in all of these
columns goin' down.

The date on here is year
20 of Amenemhat III.

840 BC, 12th dynasty.

That connects these two
inscriptions in time.

- To the time of
Joseph and his family.

- Yes, the time of Joseph.

What this indicates

is that the five oldest

alphabetic inscriptions
that can be dated

all emerge in the Middle Kingdom

during the reign
of Amenemhat III

in a narrow 11 year window
exactly where the pattern

that David Rohl identified
places Joseph and his family.

Who do you think actually
was the inspiration

for this alphabet?

- I think it has to be Joseph.

That would be my guess
because of what he was.

He was the of Egypt.

He was the most important man
in Egypt after the Pharaoh.

He was educated, he
worked in the palace.

He was running the
country virtually,

so what better person to
invent the Hebrew alphabet

than the person who was
familiar with the hieroglyphs,

who knew the Semite people,
who was administering the land?

He's the the guy
who's most likely

to be able to come
up with this idea.

- So who invented
the first alphabet?

His scholars suggest it may
have been an elite scribe

or a common miner like Benny.

But whoever it was, they
would've needed to be

a Semite familiar
with hieroglyphics,

motivated to create a new script

while living in Egypt
at the same time

as Pharaoh, Amenemhat
III and Joseph.

- If Joseph for
instance was the person

who invented this
method of writing

the Semitic language
as a script,

Moses would've learnt
not very easily

and that would've been the
form of writing he would use

to write the narrative
of the Exodus oourney.

- With Moses' background
as both Prince of Egypt

and an Israelite, he
would've most likely known

about the Proto-Sinaitic script

that the Petries
later discovered.

But there's another
piece of information

that both Rohl and Petrovich see

connecting the history of
the Proto-Sinaitic script

and the history
of the Israelites.

They note that these
types of inscriptions

end in Egypt around
the time of the Exodus

and are never seen there again.

However, inscriptions in
the Proto-Sinaitic style

do show up afterwards in Canaan;

that is why one of the names

of the script is
Proto-Canaanite.

This just happens to match

the Bible's account
of the Israelites

who grew into a nation in Egypt

and later moved to Canaan,
conquering the Promised Land.

- Supporting the idea
that the mystery script

is actually Hebrew and not
Phoenician is the fact that

when the inscriptions first
show up in the area of Canaan,

they are actually found in
Israel for several hundred years

before showing up in Phoenicia.

The Bible records that
the greatest interaction

between Israel and Phoenicia,
which is the area of Lebanon,

was during the rain of King
Solomon in the 10th century BC.

Solomon was given
the responsibility

of building Israel's
first temple in Jerusalem.

To help with this task,
Solomon wrote to King Hiram

obtaining cedar trees of
Lebanon and craftsmen.

Intriguingly the oldest
known alphabetic inscription

from the land of Phoenicia
is found on the lid

of a sarcophagus named Ahiram.

Many date this artifact
to the 10th century BC.

I took note that the
Bible's King Hiram

at the time of Solomon is
virtually the same name

as Ahiram on the sarcophagus.

Could it be that the writing
system of the Israelites

was shared with Phoenicians
at this very time

when the scripts were
indistinguishable

and we find the first
inscriptions in Phoenician.

Just as Eupolemus
has stated that

"Moses imparted grammar
to the Jews" and that

"the Phoenicians received
it from the Jews."

When looking at the final step

for whether these
inscriptions could be Hebrew,

the history of this
script does match

the history of the Israelites,

but only if you use the
earlier Exodus date.

The inventor of the script
was a Semitic genius

who was familiar with
Egyptian hieroglyphs

matching the Bible's account

of Joseph's rise
to power in Egypt.

This script first shows up in
a very narrow window of time

during the reign
of Amenemhat III,

exactly where the early pattern
puts Joseph and his family.

The script migrates to Canaan,

matching the Israelites'
journey to the promised land.

The first inscriptions are
found in Ancient Israel,

not Phoenicia and curiously,
the first inscriptions

to show up in Phoenicia are
found on the sarcophagus

of the king called Ahiram
at the time of Solomon.

If one considers that
the Bible might actually

be giving a true account, can
there be any better candidates

for the ones responsible
for this script

than the early Israelites?

They would have had the motive
and ability to develop it

in time to write the
first books of the Bible.

So when people see a connection
between the Proto-Sinaitic

or the Proto-Canaanite
scripts and Hebrew,

what do you say?

- I say that what I call science

and what my teacher taught me--

- Professor Naveh?

- Naveh would say that it's
a very bad misleading mistake

and that the person that writes
it has of course an agenda.

- On the surface,
mainstream scholars use

linguistic arguments
to dismiss this idea.

But there may be a
deeper reason involved.

What time do you think that
the Exodus would have happened?

- Most people put the Exodus
in the 13th Century BCE

from my perspective based
on the data at hand.

This continues to be the
most convincing proposal.

- If you want to believe
in historical Moses,

he would have to have
lived in the 13th Century.

Whatever it was that happened
in the Exodus period,

it happened in the 13th
Century, not the 15th.

- Something that
strikes me as ironic

is that many
mainstream scholars say

that the Exodus
that didn't happen

had to have happened
in the 13th Century BC,

at the time of Pharaoh Ramesses,

where there's little
to no evidence.

I was stumped by this problem
while making my earlier film

until I was shown the
earlier pattern of evidence.

It seems this same issue is at
play with the early alphabet.

- If you're saying basically
that Moses and Joseph

were actually later in time

than when this script was
invented for the first time,

then somebody other than
Hebrews or Israelites

must've invented it; it
couldn't have been them.

- The late Thomas Kuhn was
a physicist, historician,

and philosopher of science.

He talked about paradigms
in the world of science.

A paradigm is a pattern
of thinking, a model,

or school of thought
that everyone

in a particular field
of study holds to.

The world of archeology
has its paradigms.

A paradigm is based on a
set of presuppositions,

things that are assumed to be
true, and we all have them.

In the case of
mainstream scholarship,

their paradigm for the
early books of the Bible

not being purely historical
seems to be largely based

on the key presupposition
that an Exodus happened

at the time of Ramesses.

It puts the Israelites
too late in time

to be connected
with the invention

of the Proto-Sinaitic script,

which results in the
conclusion that the Bible

is an untrustworthy
oral tradition.

Paradigms can blind all of us
from seeing the possibility

of something new or different.

But what if the presuppositions

on which those paradigms
are based are faulty.

In fact, Thomas Kuhn says
that science doesn't progress

with a gradual
accumulation of knowledge,

but instead undergoes
periodic revolutions

or paradigm shifts
when some new idea

abruptly transforms the views
of that particular field.

If it was established that

the world's oldest
alphabet was Hebrew

and that Moses did in fact
use it to write the Torah,

that would change how the
world views the Exodus,

the Bible, and world history.

But to do so would require
a major paradigm shift.

This brings me back
to Flinders Petrie.

- Petrie is often known as
the father of archeology.

The techniques he introduced
and his understanding

and recognition of the importance of gathering all objects,

that applies to
archeology anywhere.

Petrie also
had a startling realization

of what this mysterious
script in the Sinai meant

for the writing of the Bible.

Here
we have the result

at a date some five centuries

before the oldest Phoenician
writing that is known.

It finally disproves
the hypothesis

that the early Israelites,
who came through this region

into Egypt and
passed back again,

could not have used writing.

- If the father of
Egyptian archeology

is telling us that the
Israelites have the ability

to write 500 years
before the Phoenicians,

what has changed since then?

Is the main change the
paradigm of a generation

that became skeptical
of the Bible

because the Ramesses
Exodus Theory

placed the Exodus at a time

when there was little to
no evidence to support it.

I have now found evidence

for all the steps of
the original pattern.

This script appears by
the time of the Exodus.

It did not arise in
antoher part of the world

like Greece, Persia,
India or China.

It originated in the region
of Egypt and the Sinai

where the Bible places
the early Israelites.

The script is the
earliest known alphabet

which was needed
to write the Torah.

Because it was a
Semitic alphabet,

it was a form of
writing like Hebrew.

This is all Moses
would've needed

to write the basic form
of the Exodus account.

In fact I emailed Professor
Rollston and asked him,

"For the sake of argument,
if Moses was responsible

"for writing at least
part of the Torah,

"in your view could the
Proto-Sinaitic script

"have been used to
perform this task?"

Rollston replied, "Yes,
the script that Moses

"could've used or would've used,

"would have been Early
Alphabetic, not Old Hebrew.

"By the way, I believe
that Moses was historical

"and that he was literate."

Speaking of literacy, the
use of a simple alphabet

would've allowed the Israelite
people, young and old,

to read it, understand
it and preserve the words

given by God at Mount Sinai
for generation to come.

Finally the evidence
from all three steps

of the Hebrew pattern also show

that it could
actually be Hebrew.

The letters match
the look of Hebrew.

Some have interpreted the
inscriptions as readable Hebrew

and the history of the script

matches the history
of the Israelites.

There seems to be no
reason to doubt that Moses

could have written the Exodus
account as the Bible claims.

Egyptologist Alan Gardiner,

the man who determined
these inscriptions

were the oldest-known alphabet,

came to an insightful
observation about its origin.

It has been
universally recognized

that so simple and
therefore so perfect

an instrument for the
visible recording of language

could not conceivably
have resulted

from one spontaneous
effort of genius.

The alphabet
certainly was genius.

Yet as a person
of faith, I wonder

what if the invention
of the alphabet

did not ultimately
have a human source?

Because with no alphabet,
you would have no Bible.

The evidence appears to
show that this script

did emerge suddenly in a
very narrow window of time.

The Bible states that it was
itself divinely inspired.

Could it be that the
genius of the alphabet

was also a divinely
inspired gift from God

given to a particular
people at a particular time

in preparation for
what was to come?

The prime purpose
of communicating

the words of God to mankind

beginning at Mount Sinai.

- There Israel encamped
before the mountain

while Moses went up to God.

The Lord called him out
of the mountain saying,

"Thus shall you say
to the house of Jacob

"and tell the people of Israel.

"You yourselves have seen
what I did to the Egyptians,

"how I bore you on eagles' wings

and brought you to myself.

"Now therefore if you
will indeed obey my voice

"and keep my covenant, you
shall be my treasured possession

"among all peoples;

"for all the earth is mine

"and you shall be to
me a kingdom of priests

"and a holy nation."

God spoke all
these words saying,

"I am the Lord; I am your God

"who brought you out
of the land of Egypt

"out of the house of slavery.

"You shall have no
other gods besides me.

"You shall not make for
yourself a carved image.

"You shall not bow to
them or serve them.

"You shall not take the name
of the Lord your God in vain.

"Remember the Sabbath
day to keep it holy.

"Honor your father
and your mother.

"You shall not murder.

"You shall not commit adultery.

"You shall not steal.

"You shall not bear false
witness against your neighbor.

"You shall not covet anything
that is your neighbors'."

And he gave to Moses the
two tablets of the testimony

written with the finger of God.

In the second year,
the cloud lifted

from over the tabernacle
of the testimony

and the people of Israel set out

by stages from the
wilderness of Sinai.

The law was given to instruct
them how they were to live.

When the people
repeatedly rebelled,

it took 40 years before
they could enter the land

that had been promised to Abraham hundreds of years earlier.

During this time,
Moses had written down

all the instructions from God

as well as the
history of his people

beginning with the
creation of the word.

When Moses had finished
writing the words of this law

in a scroll to its very end,
Moses commanded the Levites

who carried the Ark of
the Covenant of the Lord.

He said, "Take this
book of the law

"and put it by the side
of the Ark of the Covenant

"of the Lord your God."

I started
to think about the fact

that words have meaning.

In order to preserve
their meaning over time,

some form of writing was needed.

We all take it
for granted today,

but where did it come from?

Before the alphabet,
only the elite

had this gift of knowledge,
but then all that changed.

Now everyone had the ability

to read with this
simple alphabet.

This technology hasn't been
replaced in nearly 4,000 years,

so I continued to wonder.

Was the alphabet's arrival

at this time in history
just a coincidence

or was it the gift necessary
to retain the knowledge of God?

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