Bible Studies: What is the Real Deal?[1]

By Dr. Josef Ben Levi

Presented by Omni-U Virtual University 

Most people who know the Bible don't know Egypt. And, most people who know Egypt, don’t know the  Bible. Since I know both fairly well, I try to close some of the knowledge gaps by showing that the claim  that “everything” in the Bible derives from Egypt is not always correct. The Ten Commandments/Book of the Dead is just one example.

The Ten Commandments

You’ve been told that the Ten Commandments are God’s ultimate rules. However, they are far from being unique. Before elaborating on the points to be made, it is important to look at language again. In this case, the Hebrew Language. The texts referred to as the “Ten Commandments” are not stated as such anywhere in the Torah or the Christian Old Testament. The so-called Ten Commandments are divided into two parts.

The first five address the relationship of the community to the deity. The second five speak to the connections between the community within itself.

You will not find, in Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5, any passage that reads, “And the Lord spoke unto Moses saying, speak unto the Children of Israel the “Ten Commandments”!

Sure, you may see some caption at the top of your King James Version of the Bible in Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5, or whatever version/translation with the caption “Ten Commandments” and you look below and there they are- just the way the publishers said they would be.

 However, keep in mind that the original version of the Book of Exodus ἔξοδος in Greek: departure, leaving; does not equate with the original title. The original title is always a part of the first sentence of the text. In this case Exodus is called וְאֵ֗לֶּה שְׁמוֹת֙, Wah Eleh Shemot “And these are the names…”

Whose names are  they ?The names of the children of Israel that are departing from Egypt, that’s who!

The real title of the book called Exodus in the Bible is “Shemot”!

What about the Book of Deuteronomy? In Latin, “Deutero” and “Nomos” mean “second law.” In the Hebrew original, it is called אֵלֶּה הַדְּבָרִים , Eleh Ha Debareem. It means “These are the words.” The book is called Debareem, or ‘Words’, דברים for short. Neither one of these terms implies “commandments”.

But, here are the facts:

They have been called “commandments” because they use the “command”, or Imperative form,as a grammatical rule implying “authoritative command”.

One must read Hebrew to even grasp this. The command form is called Tzwah- צָוָה ‘Command’. That is because the so-called commandments are written in the “Imperative grammatical form”!

For example, it does not say “Thou shalt not kill”, which is from  King James English. [2] This is only  a request; It is an ask!

 However, in Hebrew, it is a command, לא תרצח  - Lo Tirzakah. Don’t you murder! People are murdered; animals are killed.

That is clear in Leviticus 1:5 or WaYiq’rah (ויקרא – And he called…) where it says, “And the priest will kill the bullock before the Lord….” In Hebrew it reads ושחט את בן הבקר, “And he shall kill the bullock…” -Rzak-רצח -is the three-letter root of the verb for “murder” and Shkat – שחט-is the three-letter root of the verb for “kill”.

And he shall kill the bullock before the LORD; and Aaron's sons, the priests, shall present the blood, and dash the blood round about against the altar that is at the door of the tent of meeting.

  וְשָׁחַט אֶת-בֶּן הַבָּקָר, לִפְנֵי יְהוָה; וְהִקְרִיבוּ בְּנֵי אַהֲרֹן הַכֹּהֲנִים, אֶת-הַדָּם, וְזָרְקוּ אֶת-הַדָּם עַל-הַמִּזְבֵּחַ סָבִיב, אֲשֶׁר-פֶּתַח אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד.

These are the facts related to the Hebrew of the Ten Commandments.

And here is the naked truth, the Ten Commandments are not original to the Hebrew text.

Now for the Real Deal!

The Books of Exodus and Deuteronomy say the Ten Commandments were written during the Exodus from Egypt, but that was clearly not true for several reasons. If they were really given to Moses on tablets of stone, the two versions that we have (Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21) should be identical yet that is not the case.

The Book of Deuteronomy is believed to have been written during the seventh century-BCE (although some scholars date it even later). The so-called Ten Commandments are believed to have been added to the Book of Exodus during the sixth-century-BCE Babylonian Exile.

 The Origin of Chapters and Verses

The notion of the 125^th Chapter and the connection to the Ten Commandments in the Bible was an association earlier European antiquarians had made, particularly starting with the Germans in the Eighteenth century.

The division into chapters and verses, used in Bible translations today, were created by Stephen Langton, an Archbishop of Canterbury in 1227 C.E.

 The Wycliffe Bible, produced by John Wycliffe in 1382, was the first English Bible to be divided into chapters and verses.

Since then, all subsequent Bible translations have followed Langton’s pattern.

The Hebrew Old Testament (Tanakh) was divided into verses by   Nathan, a Jewish  Rabbi, in A.D. 1448 .

Robert Estienne, who was also known as Stephanus, was the first to divide the New Testament into standard numbered verses, in 1555.

Stephanus used Nathan’s verse divisions for the Old Testament. Since that time- beginning with the Geneva Bible of 1560- the chapter and verse divisions employed by Stephanus have been accepted into all Bible versions.

 This notion of chapters and verses was the invention of European clergy. However, the traditional Hebrew scriptures are known as the Masoretic Text.

The Masoretic Texts (MT) were primarily compiled and codified by European Rabbinic scholars during the Middle Ages between the 7th and 10th centuries CE.

This became the authoritative version of the Tanakh(תנך) (Torah (Law), Nebeem (Prophets), Khotaveem (Writings).

The most complete manuscript of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Leningrad Codex, is dated to 1009 CE.

The Masoretic Texts  that we know today are a product of this period. Ancient Hebrew (also referred to as Ancient Israelite) was written without vowels, but the Masoretes added vowel markings to the text to ensure their presumption of accuracy.

The original texts had no chapters, verses or vowel notations.

There never was a notion of the “42 Laws or Commandments of Ma’at” in ancient Kemet.

 There are many translations of the “Prt m hrw” or the “Book of going up or Ascending into the Light” or “Procession into the Day, Light, Sun”.

The most popular one is the misnomer Egyptian Book of the Dead (The Book of Going Forth by Day) being The Papyrus of Ani (Royal Scribe of the Divine Offerings) from around 1250 BCE.

None of the many copies written by the hand of a scribe, pronounced sesh,  and placed inside of a coffin- either on papyrus scrolls or inscribed on the outside of a coffin (Coffin Texts)- had a 125th Chapter nor any chapters for that matter in the modern Biblical sense describing the “42 Commandments of Ma’at” .

This is “implied” by the 42 neterw who are sitting in the Judgement scene, at the top of the vignette.

Nor were they viewed as “Negative Confessions” in the Book of Going Forth by Day in ancient times.

The idea that they expressed “negativity” was because in the bottom register each vignette starts with the ancient mDw nTr sign for negation, pronounced nenen.

This symbol of the outstretched arms with the palms up means “no, not and other negations”. It is the starting symbol used at the beginning of each of the so-called ‘Declarations of Innocence’. This phrase, “Declaration of Innocence”, did not exist in ancient Kemet  nor can it be found in any of the other version of this text!

The Papyrus of Ani (Royal Scribe of the Divine Offerings), c. 1250 BCE

Utterances of Truth

I have not done evil.

I have not been a coward. I have not attacked the righteous.

I have not turned away from natural procreation.

I have not become overcome with anguish or grief.

I have not harmed the land or the animals thereon.

I have not spied against the people.

I have not spoken against the sacred teachings.

I have not been undisciplined.

I have not raped or molested.

I have not stolen.

I have not murdered.

I have not defrauded the temple.

I have not been deceitful toward allies, leaders, family or friends.

I have not been sacrilegious in thought or deed.

I have not lied to those who deserve the truth.

I have not deprived the less fortunate.

I have not uttered evil words.

There are, however, many known copies of this texts: Amenhotep, Tayuhenutmut, Irtyuru, Tjenena, Nebqed, Hunefer, Neferrenpet, Userhat, Nakht, and others.

 In 1842, the German Egyptologists, Karl Richard Lepsius published a “Book of the Dead” manuscript in which he numbered each of the utterances or “spells”, as he called them.

 That numbering system is still used today to number those  “utterances”.

The use of the term “spells” by Europeans when referring to African spiritual practices are always a form of negation implying evil or witchcraft, since only witches and warlock “cast” spells!

The notion of the 125th Chapter and the connection to the Ten Commandments in the Bible was an association earlier European antiquarians had made, particularly starting with the Germans in the Eighteenth century. Yet there are lots of issues to unpack with this notion.

As we have observed, previously,most people who know Egypt don’t know the Bible and most people who know the Bible don’t know Egypt. This has been found to be a consistent truism.

The fact that there are significant “borrowings” in the so-called Biblical literature from ancient Kemet is undeniable.

The notion of the 10 commandments are not one of them based on the linguistic evidence.

Conclusion

Since the classical authors like Herodotus, Diodorus, and Plutarch, virtually, little had to nothing to say about the afterlife beliefs, how were these ideas attached to ancient Egypt? These ideas were inspired by modern scholars; about Christian ideas with specific focus on these ideas being projected onto ancient Egypt.

One of the motivations was a need to align ancient Egyptian afterlife beliefs with those of Christianity by arguing that beliefs in monotheism or immortality of the soul derived from ancient Egyptians to Christianity  could prove their universality or innateness.

This universalist position provided strong evidence 0f the ultimate Christian notion of the resurrection at the End of Days.

These creative reinterpretations of the classical authors led to an early 19^th century incorporation that ancient Egyptians had believed in a postmortem judgement leading to eternal bliss or damnation.

The rise of European familiarity with ancient documents, in the early to mid-19^th century, came at a time when Christian thoughts about the afterlife moved,increasingly, to themes such as journeys between different locations and trials leading to spiritual improvement, as seen in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (1302).

Lepsius’ position ended up winning the day- mainly for political reasons, as well as contemporary thoughts on how to explain the Christian idea of the afterlife more generally.

With a few minor changes in his basic interpretation of the Book of Going Forth by Day, his ideas are still found in most works of contemporary Egyptology about the Book of the Dead, whether scholarly or popular.

[1]This is an edited version of the presentation,  made by Dr. Josef Ben Levi, at the 2025 ASCAC Midwest Region Conference

[2]King James English" refers to the specific style of Early Modern English used in the King James Version (KJV) Bible, first published In 1611.

References

Allen, J. P. “Monotheism: The Egyptian roots.” Archaeology Odyssey, Jul/Aug 1999, 44-47, 49, 53-54, 59.

Allen, J.P. (2014). Middle Egyptian: An introduction to the language and culture of hieroglyphs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Alm, B. (2018). Ancient Egypt and the Bible: Influences (?) in the Judeo-Christian Tradition. Academia.edu.

Assman, J. (2002). Moses the Egyptian: The memory of Egypt in Western monotheism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Badham, B.P. (2015). The book of the dead. Vol. I & II. Reading and answering books. London: Arkpublishing.co.uk

Ben Jochannan, Y. (1970). The African origin of the major western religions. Baltimore: Black Classics Press.

Falkner, R.O. (1998). The Egyptian book of the dead: The book of the going forth by day. Being the Complete papyrus of Ani (Royal scribe of the divine offering). San Francisco: Chronicle Books.

Hornung, E. (1999). The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Hornung, E. (2012). The Secret Lore of Egypt: Its Impact on the West. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Huddlestun, J. (2016). Was Moses’s Name Egyptian? Bible Odyssey. Society of Biblical Literature. February 23, 2016.

JPH Hebrew-English TANAKH. (2003). Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.

Nyord, R. (2025). Yearning for immortality: The European invention of the ancient Egyptian afterlife. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Scalf, F. (2017). Book of the dead: Becoming God in ancient Egypt. Chicago: Oriental Institute Museum Publication.

Schipper, B.U. (2017). Egyptian Influences on the Biblical Text. Bible Odyssey. Society of Biblical Literature. June 20, 2017.

Scott, K. (2025). Is the true Bible simply a rewrite of ancient Egyptian stories? MediumDailyDigest.com, June 22, 2025.

Tanner, The H. (2025). 7 Reasons the Ten Commandments Aren’t as Original as You Think: You’ve been told they’re God’s ultimate rules — but they’re not even unique. https://medium.com/@tanner_79717/7-reasons-the-ten-commandments-arent-as-original-as-you-think.

Wells, J.J. (2025). Ancient Egyptian Religion and Christianity a Comparative Analysis. Academia.edu.

42 Declaration of Innocence: https://cushiteforum.com/2011/01/09/42-declarations-of-innocence/