“Could it not be that Moses and/or the Levites just came to it on their own?! Scholars have a tendency to take any parallel between ancient Israel's culture and assume that Israel took it from the others. Why? I see no good reason at all. Did Moses get this religion from the Midianites? All right then, where did the Midianites get it? Did Moses get if from Akhenaten? All right then, where did Akhenaten get it? If Ahkenaten thought of it on his own, why could an Israelite not have done it on his (or her) own as well? Is it a far-out thought that sometimes more than one person thinks of an idea--without influencing each other, without knowing each other? And we have another crucial consideration. The difference between Israel's monotheism and whatever preceded it is more than arithmetic. It is not just one god versus many. Biblical religion involves a different conception of what this one God is. In pagan religion, the gods and goddesses were identified with forces in nature: the sun, the sky, the sea, death, fertility, the storm wind. Even in Akhenaten's religion, whether it was fully monotheistic or not, Aten was identified closely with the sun. In Israelite religion, no force in nature can tell you more about God than any other.” MosesMonotheismAkhenaten Book:The Exodus Source: The Exodus
“... P doth protest to much. It would be one thing if P were merely silent about Midian. But P is hostile to Midian. Its author tells a story of a complete massacre of the Midianites. He wants no Midianites around. And he especially wants no Midianite women around. This author buried the Moses-Midian connection. We can know why he did this. Practically all critical scholars ascribe this Priestly work to the established priesthood at Jerusalem. For most of the biblical period, that priesthood traced its ancestry to Aaron, the first high priest. It was a priesthood of Levites, but not the same Levites who gave us the E text. Some, including me, ascribe the E text to Levites who traced their ancestry to Moses. These two Levite priestly houses, the Aaronids and the Mushites, were engaged in struggles for leadership and in polemic against each other. The E (Mushite) source took pains, as we have seen to connect Moses' Midianite family back to Abraham. That is understandable. E was justifying the Mushite Levites' line in Israel's history. And it is equally understandable why their opponents, the Aaronids, cast aspersions on any Midianite background. That put a cloud over any Levites, or any text, that claimed a Midianite genealogy. We all could easily think of parallel examples in politics and religion in history and today.” MosesPAaronEHigh Priest Book:The Exodus Source: The Exodus