The Old Testament Testimonies of the Mosaic Pentateuch on the Law of Ancient Egypt (Part II. Historical and Legal View of the Life of the Righteous Joseph)

Abstract

In this article, the author consistently develops the scientific hypothesis put forward by him in a previous publication about the possibility and necessity of using the Old Testament texts of the Pentateuch of Moses (Torah) as ancient written sources of information about the institutions of law and the state in Ancient Egypt. To do this, following the method of historicism, the biblical biography of the Jewish righteous Joseph, whose entire adult life was spent in Egypt, is studied in detail chronologically through the prism of categories of historical and legal science. The indications found in this story about the existence and content of individual ancient Egyptian legal norms or legal institutions in order to verify their objectivity are compared with archaeological finds related to the civilization of Ancient Egypt (papyrus texts, inscriptions on steles, tomb walls, etc.). The analysis made it possible to draw and substantiate the conclusion about the consistency of the evidence of the Pentateuch of Moses, on the one hand, and authentic ancient Egyptian written sources, on the other hand, about the legal culture of the oldest centralized state on our planet, as well as about the exceptional historical and legal value of information about the state and law of Ancient Egypt and other ancient Eastern states contained in The Old Testament of the Bible.