Moses

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Moses or Móshe (מֹשֶׁה, Hebrew), son of Amram and his wife, Jochebed, a Levite. Legendary Hebrew liberator, revelator, leader, lawgiver, prophet, and historian.

According to scriptural account, Moses freed a group of nearly two million Hebrew slaves and organized them in the desert in preparation for their conquest of the land of Canaan. He is portrayed as one of history's greatest miracle-workers, and his dramatic exploits are better known than any other pre-Christian biblical figure. He brought mankind the Ten Commandments and provided the Mosaic Law to the Jews. In the Bible, Moses is portrayed as the first person to learn the true name of God and is seen in Jewish tradition as a person of unequalled spiritual character. Traditionally, he is credited with writing the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, which are also know as the Pentateuch or the Books of Moses.

Unknown to history outside of the Bible, the existence of the historical Moses has been questioned by modern scholars. He is revered as a great prophet in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

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Moses receives the Ten Commandments from God.

Biography

In the Bible, Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and received the Torah of Judaism from God on Mount Sinai. The Torah contains the life story of Moses and his people until his death at the age of 120 years in the year 2488 (Jewish calendar), or 1272 B.C.E.

Early Life

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Pharoah's daughter finds the baby Moses.

The birth of Moses occurred at a time when the current Egyptian monarch had commanded that all male children born to Hebrew captives should be killed by drowning in the Nile River (Ex. 3). The Torah leaves the identity of this Pharaoh unstated. Many believe him to be Ramses II, although this has been increasingly disputed in recent years (see below).

Jochebed, the wife of Amram, bore a son and kept him concealed for three months. When she could keep him hidden no longer, rather than deliver him to be killed, she set him adrift on the Nilein a small craft of bulrushes coated in pitch. The daughter of the Pharaoh discovered the baby and adopted him as her son, and named him "Moses." (The name is related to the term "to draw out" in Hebrew and "son" in Egyptian.) Moses' sister Miriam observed the progress of the boat. She then asked Pharoah's daughter if she would like a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby. Thereafter, Jochebed was employed as the child's nurse. After being weaned he was brought to Pharaoh's daughter and became her son, a prince of Egypt.

When Moses grew to manhood, he left the palane and witnessed an Egyptian mistreating a Hebrew slave. He grew enraged and killed the Egyptian, hiding his body in the sand. The next day, seeing two Hebrews quarreling, he endeavored to separate them, whereupon the aggressor complained: "Who put you in charge of us and made you our judge? Are you planning to kill me, just as you killed that Egyptian?" (Ex. 2:14) The king now sought his life, and Moses fled to the Sinai peninsula where he settled with Hobab, or Jethro, a priest of Midian, whose daughter Zipporah he in due time married. There he sojourned forty years, following the occupation of a shepherd, during which time his son Gershom was born.

According to the Exodus 3, one day as Moses led his flock to Mount Horeb, (Mount Sinai in the Greek text), he saw a burning bush which was not consumed.

God speaks to Moses in the burning bush.

When he turned aside to look more closely at the marvel, God spoke to him from the bush, revealing his previously unknown name, Yahweh, to Moses. In one of literature's most memorable scenes, God then commissioned Moses as his prophet and the liberator of the people of Israel:

The Lord said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt." (Ex. 3:7-10)

'Let My People Go'

He also felt commissioned by God to go to Egypt and deliver his Hebrew brethren from their bondage. He then returned to Egypt. Moses was met on his arrival in Egypt by his elder brother, Aaron, and gained a hearing with his oppressed brethren. It was a more difficult matter, however, to persuade Pharaoh to let the Hebrews depart. This was not accomplished until God sent ten plagues upon the Egyptians. These plagues culminated in the slaying of the Egyptian first-borns, whereupon such terror seized the Egyptians that they ordered the Hebrews to leave.

The long procession moved slowly, and found it necessary to encamp three times before passing the Egyptian frontier, some believe at the Great Bitter Lake while others propose as far south as the northern tip of the Red Sea. Meanwhile, Pharaoh had a change of heart and was in pursuit of them with a large army. Shut in between this army and the Red Sea, the Israelites despaired, but instructed by God to walk across it, the waters of the sea miraculously divided so that they passed safely across on dry ground. When the Egyptians attempted to follow, God permitted the waters to return upon them and drown them.

It is probable that the Pharaoh did not have a change of heart because the Hebrews only asked to be allowed to worship their God on a religious pilgrimage in the desert. It took a while for the Pharaoh to let them do this but he pursued them not actually because he wanted them back due to a change of heart (as is widely believed) but because they violated the agreement to return to Egypt because they were lost.

40 Years in the Wilderness

As a result of this the Tabernacle, according to the last chapters of Exodus, was constructed, the priestly law ordained, the plan of encampment arranged both for the Levites and the non-priestly tribes and the Tabernacle consecrated.

The Promised Land

A wealth of stories and additional information about Moses can be found in the Jewish genre of rabbinical exegesis known as Midrash, as well as in the primary works of the Jewish oral law, the Mishnah and the Talmud. No evidence outside of religious sources supports any of these stories.

Moses in Christianity

For Christians, Moses – mentioned more often in the New Testament than any other Old Testament figure – is often a symbol of the contrast between traditional Judaism and the teachings of Jesus. New Testament writers often made comparison of Jesus' words and deeds with Moses' in order to explain Jesus' mission. In the book of Acts, for example, the rejection of Moses by the Jews when they worshipped the golden calf is likened to the rejection of Jesus, also by the Jews.

Moses also figures into several of Jesus' messages. When he met the Pharisee Nicodemus at night in the third chapter of John, he compares Moses' lifting up of the bronze serpent in the wilderness, which any Israelite could look upon and be healed, to his own lifting up (by his death and resurrection) for the people to look upon and be healed. In the sixth chapter, Jesus responds to the people's claim that Moses provided them manna in the wilderness by saying that it was not Moses, but God, who provided. Calling himself the "bread of life", Jesus states that he is now provided to feed God's people.

Moses is also regarded as a symbol of the law, and so he is presented in all three Synoptic Gospel accounts of the Transfiguration in Matthew 17, Mark 9, and Luke 9.

Moses in Islam

In the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, the life of Moses is narrated and recounted more than any other prophet recognized in Islam. Although the Qur'an reiterates much of what is present in Jewish scripture, slight differences can be found. He is one of the 25 major prophets specifically names in the Qur'an and is known as Musa, (the Arabic name). See the article Musa (prophet).

Textual origin of the Torah

It has been traditionally assumed that Moses received from God and subsequently transcribed all, or almost all, of the Torah, and this is still the view of much of Christianity and most of Orthodox Judaism. However, advances in textual criticism have convinced many Bible scholars and historians that this work, in the form we know it today, was edited together from several earlier sources. This idea is discussed in the entry on the documentary hypothesis. Others, especially Biblical literalists, still hold the traditional viewpoint that it is authored by Moses. It is, of course, uncertain objectively speaking which of these views is correct, but later verses in the Old Testament (Such as 2 Chronicles 25:4, Ezra 6:18, and Nehemiah 13:1) refer to the Torah as the "Book of Moses," and thus seem to support the latter of the two views over the former.

Moses in history

Template:Sectfact Historians who require contemporary extra-biblical evidence, also called Biblical minimalists, reject Moses and the Exodus as uncorroborated. However, historical records of the region from the 2nd millennium B.C.E. are so fragmentary that any extra-biblical records of Moses might have been long lost. For example, a few scholars have proposed that the Exodus occurred during the end of the Hyksos era in Egypt (16th century B.C.E.), when records would have been deliberately destroyed by victorious Egyptians driving the Hyksos out of Egypt. Destruction of unfavorable records by unsympathetic Pharoahs, and even mass obliteration of cartouches from monuments, is known to have occurred at several epochs in Ancient Egyptian history.

Known extra-biblical references to Moses date from many centuries after his supposed lifetime. Whether or not they are reliant on Jewish tradition or also have access to additional sources is unknown. Polyhistor, Josephus, Philo, and Manetho refer to him, as do others. Also, of course, there are the above-mentioned stories in the Mishna and Qur'an. See the article on the Bible and history. In the 3rd century B.C.E., Manetho, a Hellenistic Egyptian chronicler and priest, alleged that Moses was not a Jew, but an Egyptian renegade priest called Osarseph, and portrayed the Exodus as the expulsion of a leper colony. A similar assertion is made by the Roman historian Tacitus.

Even if Moses is accepted as a historical figure, various aspects of the Biblical tale can be re-interpreted. Manetho's claim that Moses was an Egyptian is quite plausible. It has been suggested that he may have been an Egyptian nobleman or prince influenced by the religion of Aten (see Freud's theory below), or simply sympathetic to Hebrew culture. Moses is an Egyptian name meaning "son" and was often used in pharaohs' names (as in Tut-moses). The Hebrews might have fabricated the "bulrushes" story along the lines of the tales of Sargon of Akkad (Mesopotamian) or Oedipus (Greek) to legitimize his position. On the other hand, infants were sometimes abandoned by the lower classes in ancient times, and "Moshe" is a Hebrew word (meaning "one who draws water").

Dating the Exodus has also proved challenging. Views include:

it occurred around the end of the Hyksos era, as expressed above;
it occurred about 1420 B.C.E., since records exist of "Habiru" invasions of Canaan forty years later - this theory fits well the modern idea that the historical persona of Moses was the early 15th century B.C.E. Crown Prince of Egypt called Ramoses (i.e. Rameses, "son of Ra"), who also disappeared from Egyptian records around the time of Queen Hatshepsut's death ^{[citation needed]};
or it occurred during the 13th century B.C.E., as the pharaoh during most of that time, Rameses II, is commonly considered to be a pharaoh with whom Moses squabbled - either as the 'Pharaoh of the Exodus' himself, or the preceding 'Pharoah of the Oppression' who is said to have commissioned the Hebrews to "(build) for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses." These cities are known to have been built under both Seti I and Rameses II, possibly making his successor Merneptah 'Pharaoh of the Exodus.' This is considered plausible by those who view the famed stela of Merneptah's 5th year (ca. 1208 B.C.E.), claiming that "Israel is wasted, bare of seed", as propaganda covering up his own loss of an army in the sea.
A more recent and controversial view places Moses as a noble in the court of the Pharaoh Akhenaten (See below). Many scholars from Sigmund Freud to Joseph Campbell suggest that Moses may have fled Egypt after Akhenaten's death (ca. 1358 B.C.E.) when much of the pharaoh's monotheistic reforms were being violently reversed. The principal ideas behind this theory are: the monotheistic religion of Akhenaten being a possible predecessor to Moses' monotheism, and a contemporaneous collection of "Amarna Letters" written by nobles to Akhenaten (Amarna was Akhenaten's capital city) which describe raiding bands of "Habiru" attacking the Egyptian territories in Mesopotamia. (Transformations of Myth Through Time, Joseph Campbell, p. 87-90, Harper & Row)

Finally, there is the challenge of interpreting the many miracles in the Moses story. Most of them are simply dismissed by scholars as legends, but some can be explained. For example, some of the plagues strongly resemble exaggerated versions of actual pestilences common in the ancient world (see The Ten Plagues), the famous Red Sea crossing may have been a marsh (the "Reed Sea") through which the Egyptian chariots could not penetrate, the manna which God bestowed on the hungry Israelites may have been the secretion of the hammada shrub, and the swallowing of Korah (Numbers 16) could have been an earthquake.

According to tsunami experts, the massive volcanic eruption on the Greek island of Santorini in 1600 B.C.E. could have generated a giant tidal wave or tsunami that struck the Nile Delta, parting the sea, and triggering the ten plagues. [1]

There is also a psychoanalytical interpretation of Moses' life, put forward by Sigmund Freud in his last book, Moses and Monotheism, in 1937. Freud postulated that Moses was an Egyptian nobleman who adhered to the monotheism of Akhenaten. Freud also believed that Moses was murdered in the wilderness, producing what he believed to be a collective sense of patricidal guilt which has been at the heart of Judaism ever since. "Judaism had been a religion of the father, Christianity became a religion of the son," he wrote. A recent alternative suggestion resulting from interpreting Biblical and Egyptian history (by Egyptologist Ahmed Osman) proposes that Moses and Akhenaten are the same person (Moses and Akhenaten, Dec. 2002). Opponents of this view point to the fact that the religion of the Torah seems very different to Atenism in everything except the central feature of devotion to a single god.

Several professors of archaeology claim that many stories in the Old Testament, including important chronicles about Moses, Solomon, and others, were actually made up for the first time by scribes hired by King Josiah (7th century B.C.E.) in order to rationalize monotheistic belief in Yahweh; and that no surviving written records from Egypt, Assyria, etc., refer to the stories of the Bible or its main characters before 650 B.C.E. Such claims are detailed in Who Were the Early Israelites? by William G. Dever (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 2003). Another such book by Neil A. Silberman and colleagues is The Bible Unearthed (Simon and Schuster, New York, 2001).

Traditionalists point out that many of the details of the Pentateuch are consistent with the time period, such as the price of a slave (30 shekels as opposed to around 60 at the time of the Babylonian captivity), the practice of blood covenants and the discovery of what appear to be chariot wheels on the bottom of the Red Sea. Skeptics view most of these as inconclusive or otherwise consequential.

It is important to note that to date there is no historical mention outside the Bible and ancient historians of the enslavement of Jews by Egypt or of their rescue in any capacity by any person. There is no archaeological evidence that any group of people, much less about 600,000 people, wandered a desert for 40 years. Biblical purists chalk this up to the fact that Egypt eliminated failures from their history and did not make records of such events. The events as described in Exodus would have been viewed as a failure. Alternatively the Egyptians could have recorded the story as a successful expulsion from their lands of an unwanted element, as implied by Manetho and Tacitus.

Ethical dilemmas

If the Bible gives an accurate description of Moses' views, then by "modern standards" some of his commands might amount to calls for murder, war crimes or slavery. For instance, according to Numbers 31:15-18, he called for the massacre of boys and the enslavement of female children to Israelite veterans of the Midian war ("kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the little girls among the women, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves"). It is important to note, however, that such ethical dilemmas can be cited without an adequate understanding of the historical context. In contrast, believers in the accuracy of the Bible can use assumptions to discourage exploration. But religion's opponents can also discourage further exploration by making debatable assumptions about a text, classifying the intent of the text as immoral, and thereby dismissing the text as unreliable. In the above example some readers may infer an implied equality between slavery under Mosaic law and "slavery" as understood in the New World. An apparent ethical contradiction should not be casually dismissed, but neither should it be casually assumed.

For both Jews and Christians, the five books of Moses are holy books revealed by God, and the message within them is eternal. For Unitarian Universalists, and other liberal movements, it is regarded as a sacred text, but not as a divinely revealed work. Adherents of all these faiths understand the serious ethical dilemmas that arise when reading certain parts of the Bible. As such, Jews and Christians have developed a number of responses to understanding such texts. There are two basic positions that one can assume when approaching such texts, both of which offer a variety of responses.

One using the traditional approach was originally called a fundamentalist. The fundamentalist term has evolved to reflect other meanings however, including that of "a person with an unthinking devotion to an agenda without regard to reason." The traditional approach assumes that Biblical characters, the situations described, and the words said took place as the Bible says. The Bible is believed to be divinely revealed truth, unique among historical texts. This view does not exempt humans from a carefully reasoned examination of the scriptures, however, and in fact requires it. Translation, historical context and assumptions, and the definition and applicability of terms used in the original text not only affect what the Bible "says," they define it.

A fundamentalist may believe there is one valid source (organization, person, etc.) for the interpretation of the "truths" of the Bible. The traditional Christian view implies however that a "literal interpretation of the Bible" is an oxymoron. The important characteristic of the traditional Christian view comes from the Bible itself—that scripture is useful in the context of personal applicability (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Thus, blind adherence to an organization's or one's own static interpretation is rejected in this view, as devotion to the "living" God prohibits devotion to a static ideology. The traditional Christian view implies that the Bible is unique among texts in its truthful nature (lack of falsehood), while simultaneously implying that truth is meaningful only in living application through a personal relationship to God - attempting to adhere to a static set of moral laws is believed to lead to death (see, ie, Romans 7). The traditional Christian believes one arrives at this view by "answering the call of God," who speaks to all mankind through revelation, where revelation is never contradictory and consists of both the Bible and experience gained through life. When faced with an ethical dilemma in Moses's writings, a traditional Christian might employ critical examination of available historical context, critical examination of how the writing should be translated, and critical examination of his or her understanding of God's nature to determine what the passage means, all the while believing the Bible contains no falsehood. For an example of this process applied to the Midian war, see this exploration of Moses's writing from a traditional Christian point of view: Moses and the Midianites. Moses, in the traditional Christian view, was considered a good man not because of his ethics, but because of his trust in God. In this view, only Jesus was a good man for what he did, the rest of mankind (including Moses and his contemporaries) can only become good by believing and trusting God. Traditional Christianity believes that one who honestly looks for God will find God, as this is stated in the Bible, and that honest, rational exploration yields the Bible as the most rational explanation for human experience.

Liberal Christian denominations and congregations reject this view. They hold that the texts of the Bible were edited together from a number of sources over a long period of time, and the authorship and timing of the Torah is debated. In this view, the situations described in the Bible do not necessarily represent divinely inspired truth but instead represent the views of the editors of the Bible.

The Horned Moses

Moses with horns, by Michaelangelo

Due to a statement towards the end of the book of Exodus (at 34:29-35), in which Moses is depicted as having been disfigured due to his direct encounter with God, various traditions grew up as to what the disfigurement was. Jonathan Kirsch, in his book Moses: A Life, thought that, since Moses subsequently had to wear a veil to hide it, the disfigurement was a sort of "divine radiation burn".

There is one longstanding and possibly pagan tradition that Moses grew horns. This is derived from a mistranslation of the Hebrew phrase "karnu panav" קרנו פניו. The root קרן may be read as either "horn" or "ray", as in "ray of light". "Panav" פניו translates as "his face". If interpreted correctly those two words form an expression which means that he was enlightened, and many rabbinical studies explain that the knowledge that was revealed to him made his face metaphorically shine with enlightenment, and not that it suddenly sported a pair of horns. The Septuagint properly translates the Hebrew word קרן as δεδοξασται, 'was glorified', but Jerome translated it as cornuta, 'horned', and it was the latter image that became the more popular. This tradition survived from the first centuries AD well into the Renaissance. Many artists, including Michelangelo in a famed sculpture, depicted Moses with horns.

Moses in media

Moses appears as the central character in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille movie, The Ten Commandments. He is played by Charlton Heston.

DeMille's introduction to the movie is timeless in its own right, and well illustrates the primary ethical dilemma confronting men in Moses' lifetime:

"...The theme of this picture is whether man ought to be ruled by God’s law or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator like Ramesses. Are men the property of the state or are they free souls under God? This same battle continues thoughout the world today."

He also featured in the Dreamworks SKG animated film The Prince of Egypt, in which Val Kilmer voiced the title part (Moses).

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