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Comment by dschn_dstryr | Hacker News Reader

There is no historic evidence for the jews ever being in egypt.

There is a lot of evidence for large parts of the early bible stories beeing copyied from the egyption sun god movement.

Not really, no. It has been speculated that Akhenatens elevation of Aten above other Gods inspired the monotheism of Moses. But AFAIK this is pure speculation without a shred of evidence. Moses might not even be historical anyway, and the chronology is off. It is much more likely the later monotheism was inspired by Persian religion.

>monotheism of Moses

Was Moses a monotheist, though? I thought that at the time depicted in the Pentateuch, the Israelites were henotheists - they believed that there were many gods but that YHWH was the only one worthy of worship.

Indeed, and Akhenatens was heneotheist also, since he elevated Aten to the primary god, but still allowed the other gods.

On could argue that even jesus did allow for xeno-theism, given that he argued for giving the roman emperor what the roman emperor was due- and the roman emperors at that time considered themselves basically gods or god decendants.

I don't think you can argue that. Jesus argued it was acceptable for Jews to pay taxes, but certainly not that it was acceptable for Jews to worship the emperor. In any case, only some emperors where proclaimed divine, and it only happened after their death. Tiberius (the emperor at the time of Jesus) was never proclaimed divine. Caligula was the first to be proclaimed divine while still living, and this was after Jesus.

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