God's prophet, spymaster, murderer? Did he even exist at all? What details have
been glossed over when it comes to telling the real story of Moses?
The story of Moses is gripping. According to the account of his birth in Exodus,
Moses is born the son of Hebrew slaves. Hoping to spare her baby's life, his mother puts him
in a reed basket and sets him afloat on the river Nile. Miraculously, he is recovered by Pharaoh's
daughter and raised by the Egyptian royal family. Eventually, he runs into trouble and is forced
to flee Egypt to begin a new life as a sheep herder. God confronts him, however, and orders
him to go straight back to the Egyptian pharaoh and demand the release of the enslaved Hebrews.
This story has been adapted to the screen multiple times, but if you think you've got the saga
of Moses memorized just because you watched "The Prince of Egypt" recently, think again.
As the entertainment industry tends to do, the real story is often glossed over,
editing out the awkward, confusing elements while skipping over uncomfortable vital episodes.
For example, the Torah and Bible are full of angry people, especially prophets like Elisha and Jonah,
who struggled with rage. Likewise, Moses apparently had a severe anger management
problem. In his young adulthood, Moses even killed a man, an Egyptian, who was beating a Hebrew
slave. Moses couldn't stand for such an injustice, but what's chilling is how he goes about making
sure his murder of the Egyptian wasn't witnessed, then flees from justice as soon as he's found out.
Even after Moses becomes a prophet, he still experiences serious rage.
When he returns from the sacred mountain with the Ten Commandments,
Moses is enraged when he witnesses the Hebrews worshiping the idol of a
golden calf they created in his absence and furiously breaks the stone tablets.
"Those who will not live by The Law… Shall die by The Law!"
Few movies, however, show what happened next. Scripture goes on to describe how Moses orders
the execution of thousands of these worshippers, putting the kill count at about 3,000.
If you're a fan of Mesopotamian literature, then you probably noticed that whoever wrote
Exodus may have cribbed part of the story. As for everyone else,
let's introduce you to Sargon of Akkad, an ancient Mesopotamian ruler whose story is
strikingly similar. Sargon claimed to have been placed in a tar-coated basket by his mother,
a priestess, who set it afloat upon the Euphrates River. Baby Sargon was later
found by a royal gardener and eventually grew up to become the ruler of the country.
Sargon rose to prominence around 2334 B.C.E., and though the legend was probably hyped up for
political purposes and was not actually inscribed until long after the ruler's death, he probably
told the tale during his lifetime. Still, it definitely predates Exodus. Most scholars maintain
the liberation of the Hebrews occurred around 1300 B.C.E., but the text was written centuries later.
Other rulers have also keyed into this compelling story structure. In 1990,
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein celebrated his birthday at the International Babylon
Festival by depicting a scene where his baby self floated down a river in a basket. Though
some reporters mistakenly thought Hussein was referencing Moses, it is now believed he
was actually drawing parallels to the much older and more homegrown story of Sargon.
From a storytelling perspective, a reluctant prophet can be deeply compelling, providing
a more approachable figure, an imperfect leader rather than an all-knowing prophet. While Moses
fits the bill in that regard, there are still times he seems downright determined to back out.
Moses' reluctance starts early. Having fled Egypt and married into the sheep-herding
Midianite tribe, he encounters a talking, burning bush in the desert. Realizing he is addressing an
actuarial manifestation of the Hebrew God, Moses starts in on the questions. How is he
supposed to address this divine being? What if no one believes him? What if the Egyptians give
him trouble? God gives Moses answers to his questions, but Moses still digs in his heels,
arguing that he doesn't speak well, and implores God to send someone else to be his messenger.
At this point, any scriptwriter or film editor could be forgiven for cutting the sequence
short. The impertinent line of questioning finally seems to get under The Diety's metaphorical skin,
with God effectively telling Moses to "get over it" because
he is going to be a prophet, and that's that. Did Moses stammer? After all, when speaking with
the burning bush, he says that he is "...of slow speech…" suggesting to some that he may have had
some sort of physical problem speaking that went beyond mere bashfulness. Later interpretations of
Moses' story go even further, suggesting that just growing up in the Egyptian royal household may
have led to the development of a stammer. This explanation, however, remains highly debated.
Other explanations for the "slow of speech" line abound, including Moses forgetting how to speak
Egyptian or just hating the prospect of public speaking. In the end, changes in both ancient
Hebrew and more modern translations of the Bible keep this potentially critical detail a mystery.
From the beginning, Moses knew the task God had given him would be tough. Naturally,
the Egyptian ruler would resist letting the Hebrew people go, especially in the face of
the ten devastating plagues sent by God that would culminate in the death of all Egyptian firstborns.
"He's dead"
But was it fair that God put his divine finger on the scales? Biblical scholars throughout the
centuries have grappled with this very question. Some have argued it was a just punishment for all
of the pharaoh's past sins. Martin Luther, for example, argued that it was all necessary to
show how powerful the God of the Hebrews really was. So, was Pharaoh set up? Maybe. But what is
clear is just how few people agree on this point and how often they try to avoid talking about it.
The retelling of the Exodus story would hardly be complete without the part where Moses ascends
Mount Sinai, communes with God, and returns with the Ten Commandments. What is often glossed over,
however, is just how long he was actually gone. In fact, according to scripture,
Moses went up Mount Sinai not once but twice, with each trip lasting around 40 days.
Clearly, this was no day hike. Moses apparently disappeared into the backcountry,
with little word on when he would return. Imagine the growing sense
of unease the Hebrews must have felt when their prophet did not come back,
day after day. Was it possible he had gone off into the wilderness and died? An especially
sympathetic reader might start to understand why the worship of the golden calf could have
started in the interim, but few adaptations of scripture dare to advance that interpretation.
Much has been made of the Israelite's 40-year trek through the harsh landscape
of the Sinai Peninsula, but how did they get there? In part,
it's because of a bit of spycraft gone wrong. According to scripture, God tells Moses to
send out representatives from each tribe to take a look at the land of Canaan.
"Joshua, select twelve men, one from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Lead them across the
plain into Canaan. Look closely at everything you see and then return with your news."
He is directed to select twelve men to survey various parts of the region while gaining some
sense of the area's agricultural capability. The men are also ordered to gather information
regarding fortifications, as well as the general strength of the people. The implication is that
these "scouts" are to assess whether the land could resist an invasion,
an invasion that would actually take place under Moses' successor, Joshua.
However, when only two of the men return, Joshua and Caleb, and deliver good reports; the others
tell the Israelites that trying to settle in the land would be folly. Because ten of these "advance
scouts" sowed doubt and set the people against Moses and Aaron, they were considered to have
"rebelled against God," and The Almighty condemned everyone to wander in the wilderness for 40 years.
After decades of wandering in the desert, the Israelites were finally allowed to cross the
Jordan River and enter "The Promised Land," but Moses wasn't permitted to lead them in. Instead,
God tells him to go to the top of nearby Mount Nebo, where he is shown a grand sweep of land,
the territory God has promised to the descendants of Abraham. Moses, however, is told he can't go
any further. Aged about 120 years at this point, the prophet dies soon afterward and is buried in
a now-forgotten grave. This sad detail is often skipped in some retellings of the Exodus story,
though the 1956 biblical epic "The Ten Commandments" does end on this note.
"Go. Proclaim liberty throughout all the lands… Unto all the inhabitants thereof."
So, why, after years of leading his people, is Moses denied entrance to "The Promised Land?"
According to scripture, years before, when the wandering Israelites ran out of water in the
desert, God told Moses to gather his people before a particular rock and command it in the name
of God to produce water. At a critical moment, however, Moses apparently loses his temper and
strikes the rock with his staff. The water still flows out, but God, angry that Moses didn't follow
his instructions to the letter, tells him that he will not be allowed to enter the Promised Land.
Outside of religious texts filtered down through many generations, actual evidence for the Exodus
is sketchy at best. Historically, there is no evidence of a massive movement of
formerly enslaved people out of ancient Egypt. However, people from Canaan did move into Egypt,
sometimes as refugees fleeing environmental pressures and sometimes as slaves delivered
by their local rulers. It's certainly possible a charismatic leader could
have persuaded a group of those Canaanites to make the dangerous journey back to their home,
which they might have nostalgically referred to as the "promised land."
There may be some archaeological evidence that hints at such a migration, though it's not exactly
proof of the mass enslavement of Semitic peoples or grand miracles like the parting of the Red Sea.
Egyptian inscriptions from the 13th century B.C.E. refer to places mentioned in Exodus,
and excavated dwellings mirror that of an Iron Age worker's cottage typical of
Israelite buildings found in Canaan from the same time period. Some historians even note
that the Semitic forebears of the Israelites might have been in Egypt at the right time,
and some could have been enslaved. No one, however, has uncovered clear
non-Biblical evidence of a mass exodus led by a charismatic Hebrew prophet.
Although this is a very controversial point, there is an ongoing debate between historians
and religious scholars as to whether or not Moses was actually Jewish at all.
The general theory goes that Moses was actually an Egyptian priest who
rebelled against polytheism to create a monotheistic belief in just one god.
Eyebrow-raising as this may sound, this does reference an actual historical figure:
Akhenaten. Originally named Amenhotep IV, he was an Egyptian pharaoh who reigned in the
14th century B.C.E. During his reign, Akhenaten effectively abolished polytheism in favor of
worshiping only the sun deity Aten. Soon after his death, however, Egyptian society reverted
back to its original reverence of multiple gods, partially because priests wanted to regain power.
As a towering figure in the scriptures, a lot of myth-making surrounds Moses, making it very
difficult to determine if he actually existed. To date, there appears to be little archaeological
evidence supporting the existence of Moses, and no mention of him in the historical record,
apart from the Bible. In addition to that, it seems strange there is no mention of a mass
exodus of former slaves out of Egypt, even if the unnamed Pharaoh at the time tried to cover it up.
Of course, for many people, the tale of Moses remains powerful even if the literal truth of
his story is impossible to prove. In the end, it may no longer matter to some that
there is no historical record or archaeological evidence to support that Moses existed at all.