Note 45 — Chapter X
Reading edition
Moses, for instance, is peculiarly a deliverer and the inaugurator of a new age in Israel's history; the traditions about him thus bristle with astral motifs. When he is persecuted by Pharaoh in Egypt, Pharaoh is the Dragon; when he is rescued as a babe from the Nile, Pharaoh's daughter is Ishtar, Queen of heaven, and we have a Tammuz-Ishtar motif. When he leads Israel out of Egypt, we have the motif of victory over the Dragon. The crossing of the Red Sea is the cleaving of the Dragon in half, and so too is Joshua's passage of the Jordan. In short, Joshua in his character of deliverer rivals Moses in the number of motifs which are said to cluster round him.