Amon-Re, the most famous god with a compound name, was a deity that resulted from the Egyptian conquest under the 18th dynasty. Amon was the god of the city of Thebes where the political power existed, while Re was the universal sun god. These two gods were combined because of the political leadership in Thebes and the universalism of Re. But Amon-Re is one god. This sheds light on the combination of Yehovah-Elohim. Yehovah refers to the specifics of the deity, while Elohim is more of a general or universal designation of the deity. This consolidation of Yehovah-Elohim demonstrates that Yehovah equals Elohim, which can be restated "Yehovah is God." Yet the documentarians tell us that Yehovah-Elohim is the result of combining the two documents J and E. This is as unfounded as using an A document and R document to explain the compound deity Amon-Re.

Documentarians assume that the evolution of moral laws was not high enough in Moses day for him to have written the moral laws in the Torah. Our modern day witnesses to the fact that when man does not have God’s revealed moral law as given in the Bible, he does not progress to higher moral law, but does away with it all together.  However, concerning this argument of Moses’ time, Millar Burrows in his book, What Mean These Stones?, documents that the standards in ancient law codes of the Babylonians, Assyrians, and Hittites, as well as the high ideals found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the early Wisdom Literature of the Egyptians, completely refute these arguments.^305/46 It was not Israel’s moral standards that were raised by the surrounding cultures, but rather Israel who when they entered Canaan and encountered their pagan worship replaced it with their One God, Yehovah, and with Yehovah’s severe codes of ethics.

Concerning "The Priestly code," of the Torah the Documentarian Pfeiffer postulates: "Like all legislation, notwithstanding its deliberate timelessness and fictitious Mosaic background, bears the earmarks of its age, the first half of the Persian period (538-331 BC)."^306/257 The science of Archaeology, however, again completely refutes this argument. Archaeology has shown that there is no valid reason for dating the Levitical sacrificial laws late. Many of these laws appear in the Ugaritic material from the fourteenth century BC^307/33 The Israelites before the Exodus lived amongst the most advanced civilization in the world at that time: Egypt. Therefore they would naturally show forth more advanced concepts of jurisprudence than tribes they encountered in the desert.

The Code of Hammurabi, that was written between 2000-1700 BC, was found by a French archaeological expedition (1901-1902) under M. Jacques de Morgans direction at an ancient Susa site to the east of the region of Mesopotamia This code was written on a piece of black diorite. It stood eight feet high and contained two hundred and eighty two paragraphs. This was written several hundred years before Moses (1450 BC) yet contains some laws which are similar to those recorded by Moses.^308/121 This completely refutes the Documentarians hypothesis that the laws of the Torah were too advanced for Moses to have written them.

Some try to argue that because their are similar laws in the Code of Hammurabi to the laws in the Torah that Moses did not receive them from Yehovah but actually borrowed them from this code. Concerning this, J.P. Free in his book, Archaeology and Bible History, states the following:

"No real connection between the Mosaic laws and the Code of Hammurabi. Such an acknowledgment was made by G.A. Barton, liberal professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who said, ‘a comparison of the Code of Hammurabi as a whole with the Torah laws as a whole, while it reveals certain similarities, convinces the student that the laws of the Old Testament are in no essential way dependent upon the Babylonian laws. . . .’ The Code contains many laws peculiar to itself, including those relating to soldiers, tax-collectors, and wine-merchants."^308/121

The Ugarit, another archaeological find dating back to 1400 BC, also shows several similarities in their laws to the book of Leviticus. These tablets came from Ras Shamra a Canaanite city located on the Syro-Palestinian coast just opposite of the tip of Cyprus.^{305/234, 308/112}

Another archaeological discovery is the Lipit-Ishtar Code which date back to 1850 BC which extends the history of codified law by more than three centuries.^309/164 It also antedates the Hammurabi Code by more than a century and a half.^310/1

The same can be said of the Eshnunna Law Code of the Old Babylon period (1830-1550 BC). Hammurabi apparently incorporated some of this code into his own system. Two tablets found in 1945 and 1947 near Baghdad contain these ancient laws. Reunen Yaron points out that archaeology confirms that these tablets could not be dated after the reign of King Dadusha. The last year of Dadusha’s reign is set in the seventh year of Hammurabi. However, archaeology cannot set the date of its composition. The usual date given to the Eshnunna Law Codes is about 200 years before Hammurabi.^311/1-2

The kingdom of Eshnunna was a victim to expansionist policies that were also pursued with success by Hammurabi of Babylon during the fourth decade of his reign.^311/1 The discovery of the above two tablets adds additional evidence that the Hammurabi Codes were not the only source of an early codified law. The Laws of Eshnunna, written during the twentieth century BC in the Akkadian language, contains sixty paragraphs of law dealing with topics like the price of commodities, the hire of wagons and boats, the wages of laborers, marriage, divorce and adultery, assault and battery, and the placing of responsibility for the ox that gores a man and the mad dog that bites a man.^310/1

Then there is the Egyptian Execration Texts which date back to 2,000 BC These documents are statuettes and vases inscribed in Egyptian hieratic script with the names of potential enemies of the Pharaoh. If Pharaoh felt threatened by a rebellion, he would break the vase or statuette with the names of those involved in the rebellion written on it with a magical ceremony and as a result would somehow bring grief upon them. The group of vases from Berlin, published by Kurt Sethe (1926), date from the end of the twentieth century BC, while the collection of statuettes from Brussels, published by G. Posener (1940), date from the late nineteenth century.^312/127

Next there is the Nuzi Tablets dating back to 1500 BC In Nuzi, located in the northeastern part of Iraq and southeast of Nineveh. These tablets contained a whole archive of legal and social texts. What they found in these texts showed that the recorded details of the social and legal background of the patriarchs in the Old Testament was reflected accurately to the times in which they lived.^313/14 The Nuzians were formerly thought to be Hurrians, Biblical Horites, cave dwellers; but are now understood as Armenoid, non-Indo-Europeans of North Mesopotamia who prospered in the 1500-1400's BC. Though the patriarchs were not Nuzians, both cultures had many similarities due to the fact that they were contemporary and located in the same area geographically. for this reason the Nuzi Tablets help us to understand Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.^314/2 The Nuzi Tablets clarified many customs typical of the patriarchal age in the second millennium, but not of the Israelites in the first millennium BC.^315/87 These facts confirm to us the historical accuracy and authenticity of the Torah written in 1450 BC, not the social customs of 700 BC.^314/9

An example of how the Nuzi Tablets help us to understand Genesis are like the account in Genesis 16 where Sarah, Abraham’s wife, because she was seemingly unable to have children, gave Hagar her servant to Abraham to have children through. Later Jacob’s two wives, Rachel and Leah, did the same. Because of finds like the Nuzi Tablets, we now realize this was a common practice of that time and is mentioned in the laws and marriage contracts of that time. This custom is not found practiced in any other time other than the patriarchal period.^313/14

These many Historical documents and Archaeological facts show that the social institutions of the patriarchs are not made up but are genuine and definitely before Moses time, not after. They cannot possibly have taken place after Moses time because historical documents and archaeological discoveries after Moses time show completely different laws and customs. Also historical documents after Moses time do not support in any way the presuppositions of the Documentary Hypothesis.

Archaeologists have found and verified the remains of the Tower of Babel.¹⁸⁹ A Professor by the name of Oppert was sent by the French Government to study the inscriptions discovered in the ruins of ancient Babylon. In one of the inscriptions that was recorded by King Nebuchadnezzar, in which he calls the Tower of Babel Barzippa meaning "tongue-tower", he describes the ruins of the Tower of Babel and the king’s intent to rebuild the tower originally built by Nimrod sixteen centuries earlier. He describes that the original tower had been reduced from its original height until only a huge base of the tower, 460 ft. by 690 ft., standing some two hundred and seventy-five feet high remained. Nebuchadnezzar rebuilt the city of Babylon with gold and silver. He also resurfaced the base of the Tower of Babel with Gold, silver, cedar, and fir on top of a hard surface of baked clay bricks. These bricks were engraved with the seal of Nebuchadnezzar and an inscription in Nebuchadnezzar’s words which, translated by Professor Oppert, stated the following:

". . . the most ancient monument of Babylon; I built and finished it. . . . The former king [Nimrod] built it, but he did not complete its head. Since a remote time, people had abandoned it, without order expressing their words. . . . Merodach, the great god, excited my mind to repair this building."^288/40-41

In the Nineteenth century an inscription was discovered on a marble tablet in a ruined fortress on the seashore of Hadramaut in present-day Democratic Yemen which confirmed the reign of Jospeh and the seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine (Genesis 41). It was written around the eighteenth century BC which was the time the Biblical account took place. The inscription was translated into Arabic by Professor Schultens and later translated into English by Rev. Charles Forster. A part of the inscription stated the following:

"We dwelt in this castle seven years of good life—how difficult for memory its description! Then came years barren and burnt up: when one evil year had passed away, then came another to succeed it. And we became as though we had never seen a glimpse of good."^288/42-43

Further evidence was found in Yemen in a rich woman’s tomb. It was discovered in 1850 after being exposed due to a flood. it was later shown to a Mr. Cruttenden by Ebn Hesham, an Arab from Yemen.

In the tomb was contained a woman’s corpse that was covered in jewels and a coffer filled with treasure. Also found was an engraved stone tablet confirming the seven years of famine in Egypt and Joseph’s supervision over the graineries of Egypt. The inscription said some of the following:

"In your name O God, the God of Hamyar, I Tajah, the daughter of Dzu Shefar, sent my steward to Joseph, and he delaying to return to me, I sent my hand maid with a measure of silver, to bring me back a measure of flour: and not being able to procure it, I sent her with a measure of gold: and not being able to procure it, I sent her with a measure of pearls: And not being able to procure it, I commanded them to be ground: and finding no profit in them, I am shut up here."^318/44-45

Josephus in Josephus Against Apion. I, 26, 27, 32 mentions two Egyptian priest-scholars: Manetho and Cheremon who in their histories of Egypt specifically named Joseph and Moses as leaders of the Jewish race. Josephus states that Manetho and Cheremon stated that the Jews rejected Egypt’s customs and gods. They noted that the Jews practiced animal sacrifices which they witnessed on the first Passover. These historians also confirmed that the Israelites migrated to "southern Syria" which was the Egyptian name for Palestine. They also mentioned that Israel’s exodus occured during the reign of Amenophis who was the son of Rameses and the father of Sethos who reigned toward the close of the 18th dynasty which places the Israelites exodus between 1500 and 1400 BC. This confirms the Old Testament’s chronology for the exodus occuring in 1491 BC.

*Historical Confirmation of the
    Exodus of Israel Out of Egypt

The Greek historian Herodotus discussed the Exodus in his book Polymnia, section c. 89: "This people [the Israelites], by their own account, inhabited the coasts of the Red Sea, but migrated thence to the maritime parts of Syria, all which district, as far as Egypt, is denominated Palestine."^288/36 Strabo, a pagan historian and geographer born in 54 BC also confirmed the history of the Jews and their escape from Egypt under the leadership of Moses. He wrote,

"Among many things believed respecting the temple and inhabitants of Jerusalem, the report most credited is that the Egyptians were the ancestors of the present Jews. An Egyptian priest named Moses, who possessed a portion of the country called lower Egypt, being dissatisfied with the institutions there, left it and came to Judea with a large body of people who worshiped the Divinity"³²²

*Ancient Sinai Inscriptions
    Concerning The Exodus

Discovered in the Wadi Mukatteb (the Valley of the Writing) in the Sinai Peninsula was a set of inscriptions which describe and confirm Moses’ leadership in leading the Israelites out of Egypt and the miraculous events that followed.^288/48 It is believed that these inscriptions were made by Jews who took part in the exodus or by people alive in the time of the exodus.

These inscriptions were first described by a historian by the name of Diodorus Siculus, who lived before the birth of Christ (10 BC), in his Library of History.³¹⁸ So ancient were the writings that no one in Christ’s day could translate them.

In 518 A.D. Cosmas Indicopleustes, a Byzantine Christian writer, also mentions the ancient inscriptions. Concerning them he stated that they appeared "at all halting places, all the stones in that region which were broken off from the mountains, written with carved Hebrew characters."^288/49 Cosmos came to the conclusion that they were made by the Israelites fleeing Egypt.

Other explorers which confirmed these inscriptions were Bishop Robert Clayton of Ireland (1753) and Rev. Charles Forster who published these findings in a book in 1862. He came to the conclusion that these inscriptions were a combination of both Hebrew and Egyptian alphabets describing Israel’s exodus out of Egypt.

One of the reasons it is believed that these inscriptions were made by Israelites at the time of the exodus, rather than a copy of the book of Exodus from the Torah, is because they appear to be an original account of the exodus. These inscriptions in rock give account of many of the miracles talked about in the Book of Exodus but have no familiarity with the description accounts given in the book of Exodus.