Page 236 - History of The Quranic Text | Kalamullah.Com

216 THE HISTORY OF THE QUR'ANIC TEXT

protection from them, and transferred their property rights to Israel,
who observed His Law.A passage of Habakkuk is quoted as confirming
this claim.24

Number qlIsraelites at the Exodus estimated at 2,000,000
One year after the Exodus, Moses and Aaron counted the total number
of men who were at least twenty years old and of fighting strength. Their
tally yielded 603,550 Israelites.P The Levi tribe was not included in this
figure, and neither were females of all ages, old men, and any young men
under twenty. Taking these groups into account as well, we can infer that
- according to the OT - the total number participating in the Exodus
probably exceeded two millionJews. I willleave it to the imaginative reader
to surmise how a tribe of seventy people, freshly arriving in Egypt, were
able to multiply in excess of two million within a mere 215 years, especially
when their male newborns were being systematically killed for the previous
eight decades. Such is the OT which rests in our hands today.

The stone tablets andthe golden calj
Moses went up to the mount and supplicated there for forty days. ':A.t the
end of that time God gave him 'two tablets of the testimony,tablets of stone,
written with the finger of God' ."26

1 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of
the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and
said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for
this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we
know not what is become of him.
2 And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are
in the ears of your wives,of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring
them unto me.
4 And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving
tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy
gods, 0 Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
6 And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings,
and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to
drink, and rose up to play.27

24 "Gentile", TheJewish Encyclopaedia, Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York/
London, 1901-1912,v:620. Contrastthis with Prophet Muhammad's conduct towards
the verymembersof Quraish who plottedhisassassination, and hisrequestto 'Ali to stay
behind and return allthe valuables they had entrusted him with. See this work p. 30.
25 Numbers 1:20-46.
26 Joan Comay and Ronald Brownrigg, Who's YVlIO inthe Bible: TheOldTestament and
theApocrypha andtheNew Testament, Two volwnes inOne, Bonanza Books,New York, 1980,
p. 283, quoting Exodus 31:18. Cited thereafter as Who's Who.
27 Exodus 32:1-6.