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by Janet Tyson (Author)
The last King of Babylon, Nabonidus, did not fade into obscurity after the fall of his kingdom in 539 BCE. He led a small contingent of Israelites, along with his own family and supporters, to Jerusalem. He did not remain there but continued on, first into Egypt on a personal mission, then "home," to Tayma.
From his oasis base the ex-king attempted to launch a new religion based on a chimeric deity, the "I AM," which was a blend of the familiar Sun, Moon, and Stars deities he favored, and the Egyptian Sun-god, Re, who was represented by a unique acquisition hidden in the ark.
From an etymological analysis of personal names and toponyms in the exodus narratives, it is shown that the characters of Abraham and Moses are representations of Nabonidus; that the events in the book of Exodus took place primarily in Northwestern Arabia; and that Mount Sinai is not a great mountain but a small, nondescript mesa about 300 km from Tayma.
The exodus tales continue from the Song of Solomon, which tells of Nabonidus' stormy marriage to the Egyptian princess, Nitocris. The author of the Song, as claimed in Tyson's She Brought the Art of Women, is a woman very close to Nabonidus; she is on the exodus with him. Belshazzar, Nabonidus' son, also has a role to play.
The result of shifting the paradigm to embrace a wholly postexilic exodus is that everything suddenly 'makes sense'. Names, places, actions, across several books of the Bible, suddenly become connected and plausible as history as never before. There is a fascinating subtext to the exodus narratives that tells a remarkable, very different story. Its time has come.
