Who wrote the Hebrew Bible, when, and why? Why does it contain so many competing perspectives and why do scholars sometimes disagree about what its words originally meant? In Misquoting Moses, Yale professor Joel Baden and co-host Megan Kraege explore the surprising history, authorship, translation, and interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. Each week, they bring the questions and evidence scholars have debated for centuries out of the university and into lively, accessible conversations for anyone curious about the Bible.
Curated by: Bart D. Ehrman (15 videos)
Links Mentioned in this Episode: - https://www.bartehrman.com/pentateuch – Joel’s upcoming course, The Bible by Committee - How the Pentateuch Was Really Written will be recording live over 3 days: October 30th - November 1st. Explore the texts’ inconsistencies and potential origins – Where do these stories come from? Who wrote them? How do we know? – over 10 lectures and 5 Q&A sessions. *Episode Description:* Where Did the Israelites Actually Come From? The Bible tells the story twice and tells it differently. In Numbers and Joshua, Israel sweeps into the land in a lightning campaign and wipes out the Canaanites. In Judges, the land is divided up first and the taking of it is slow, patchy, and incomplete — with major cities, Jerusalem among them, still in Canaanite hands. Scholars don’t think either version happened. Which leaves a better question: who were these people, and why would they tell this story about themselves? Joel Baden joins host Megan Kraege to rebuild Israel’s origins from the ground up. Jericho turns out to have been an abandoned heap of ruins at the moment the Bible says it fell — as was Ai, whose name literally means “ruin.” The earliest mention of Israel outside the Bible comes from a boasting Egyptian pharaoh around 1200 BCE. And when archaeologists finally found the first Israelites, in a sudden scatter of tiny hill-country villages, the pots and houses were almost impossible to tell apart from the Canaanites in the cities below. Along the way: why the Late Bronze Age collapse put whole populations on the move, why anyone would choose to farm bad hills, and why all those biblical warnings about Baal make far more sense as a command to stop doing what your father did. Plus the first-ever Ask Joel, taking listener questions on the language of ancient Israel, the Egyptian name hiding in “Moses,” and the Canaanite god still sitting inside the name Bethel. *Three Key Takeaways from This Episode:* 1. *Israel Emerged from Within Canaan, It Did Not Conquer It:* The overwhelming archaeological evidence points to the Israelites originating as a group of Canaanites who migrated to the central hill country around 1200 BCE. The biblical stories of a unified conquest from the outside are foundational myths, not historical records. 2. *The Bible's "Anti-Canaanite" Stance Reveals Its Own Origins:* The Hebrew Bible is filled with prohibitions against Canaanite culture, religion, and intermarriage. This makes perfect sense not as a warning against a foreign temptation, but as an internal struggle to prevent "backsliding" into their own ancestral traditions. The biblical authors were trying to solidify a new Israelite identity by consciously and deliberately rejecting their Canaanite past. 3. *The Biblical Narrative Is an Exercise in Identity Creation:* Why would the Israelites tell stories that placed their origins outside the Promised Land (in Mesopotamia with Abraham, or in Egypt with Moses)? Dr. Baden argues this was a classic move of cultural identity-building. To become a distinct people, they had to create a narrative that separated them from their neighbors and their own roots, especially the Canaanites. The story of being an "outsider" chosen by God was a powerful way to define who they were by emphasizing who they were not.