THE EARLY HIDDEN LIFE OF MOSHEH

Scriptural historians view Mosheh' early life

Section 2

In the last quarter of a century, excavators, epigraphists and orientalists, have considerably enlarged the scope of our knowledge of the first period that Mosheh spent on the banks of the Nile, and we are beginning to acquire ample information about the social, political and spiritual environment in which Yisrael’s future lawgiver was brought up. The story at the beginning of Shemoth (Exodus) emerges with remarkably new life and is authenticated at least in the basic elements of its composition.

This arrival of a Hebrew child in a papyrus cradle floating in one of the canals issuing from the Nile has troubled some Scriptural historians; what are their objections, or rather, their critical observations? The first concerns Mosheh’ basket. The second bears upon his name, and here also some unexpected conclusions will be found.

‘A papyrus basket, coated with bitumen and pitch’
(Shemoth (Exodus) 2:3)

A basket made of papyrus, says the text; and this is quite reasonable. The papyrus belongs to the natural flora of the Delta; from the stems of this plant the Egyptian peasants constructed light boats which carried them between the little islands during the months of the annual flooding of the Nile Delta (July to October).

The cradle, adds the text, was coated with pitch and with bitumen, a material that did not originate in Egypt, but may have been imported from the banks of the Dead Sea, which in fact was given the name of the Lake of Asphalt by the ancients. So far, all the essential elements of the narrative seem to be perfectly acceptable. But orientalists point out that this story of a child, exposed, abandoned and later rescued, formed an integral part of the age-old oriental folklore until it later came to be adopted by the epic cycles of the West.

Long before Mosheh there are many examples of these new-born, abandoned infants, seemingly destined to die, and saved in an unforeseen manner. In the mythology of the Nile valley a son of Nephtys is taken by the goddess Isis under her protection. In the mythology of the Mesopotamian valley there is Gilgamesh, the Sumerian king of Uruk. In Greek mythology, Perseus the son of Zeus, who cuts off the Medusa’s head, and there is Bacchus, another son of Zeus. With a little more historical foundation, we find Sargon I, himself also ‘exposed’ on a river (the Euphrates), and unexpectedly picked up.

After Mosheh this moving legend continued to be used to adorn the earliest moments of various eminent persons. Romulus, for example, the founder of Rome (who traditionally flourished from 753 to 715 B.C.) was believed to have been ‘exposed to the beasts’, but on a mountain, and he owed his safety to a wolf who gave him her milk. Similar stories are told of the conqueror Cyrus II (surnamed ‘the Great’) 560-529 B.C., the creator of the Persian Empire; of the pharaoh Ptolemy I, nearer to our own epoch (305-285 B.C.), the founder of the Lagides dynasty in Egypt. And we must not forget Siegfried, the hero of the Niebelungen.

To return to Sargon I (the Elder), a Semite and the founder of the powerful Akkadian dynasty: he lived in about 2350 B.C. and therefore more than a thousand years before Mosheh. A brick found in Babylon gives this account of his origins: ‘I am Syarru-Kin (legitimate king), a strong king, the monarch of Agadu. My mother was a priestess: (1) I did not know my father. My city was Azupirannu, on the bank of the Euphrates. My mother bore me in a hiding place; she put me in a basket of reeds and she closed its entrance with bitumen. She left me on the River (the Euphrates), and it did not drown me. The River brought me to Akki, the water-drawer. (2). Akki took me in the kindliness of his heart. Akki, the water-drawer, brought me up as his own child. Akki, the water-drawer, made me a gardener. Ishtar (one of the most powerful goddesses of the Mesopotamian pantheon) loved me.

This enlightening evidence continues. At the end of the last century (in 1887, to be precise) an archaeological mission brought to light the capital of the famous ‘schismatic pharaoh’, Amenophis IV (1370-1353), who, in order to highlight his religious reformation (the worship of the sun’s disk: Aton) had taken the name Akenaton (the glory of Aton) and had called his new city Aketaton (the horizon of the solar disk). Archaeologists have given this city the name of the tiny Arab village perched on its ruins: Tel el-Amarna. In one of the rooms of Akenaton’s palace, the explorers had the good fortune to discover a great many clay tablets, the famous library of el-Amarna. One of these contained a fresh version of a part of the story of the Akkadian king Sargon: his birth, his abandonment in ‘a reed basket coated with bitumen’, the saving of the child by Akki, the drawer of water, and so on. Obviously this legendary story, two examples of which, at the opposite ends of the Fertile Crescent, have been identified by orientalists, forms an essential element in the folklore of the Middle East. This touching short story of Sargon’s floating cradle must have been a commonplace in Hebrew popular circles; and therefore it is not in any way surprising to find it repeated, adopted and incorporated in the biography of another Semite, called Mosheh.

Moses, an Egyptian word meaning ‘boy’ and other Scriptural names of the same period that are Egyptian

With characteristic eastern astuteness, Miriam, an elder sister of the abandoned child (abandoned in theory, but not in practice) had taken up her post some distance from the bank in order to see what happened. She noticed the stirring of compassion in the young Egyptian women, and came forward to suggest to the princess that she might be allowed to find a nurse who could give her breasts to the infant whose cries proclaimed its hunger. When she was told she might, she hurried off to find the child’s own mother.

Scriptural tradition took care to preserve the name of this woman who brought forth Yisrael’s saviour: she was called Jochebed (Shemoth (Exodus) 6:20). This is a word formed from the root Yo (YAHWEH) and which can be translated ‘Yo (YAHWEH) is important’. The names Yinatan, Yoahaz, etc., belong to the same type: they are in honour of YAHWEH’s existence and HIS protective power. (HE was known by this name, at least in certain circles, even before the great revelation on Sinai. This point is referred to again at the proper time.)

Mosheh’ father’s name was Amram, a son of Oehat and therefore a descendant of Levi. He married a woman of the same tribe (Shemoth (Exodus) 2:1): Jochebed, his aunt, his father’s sister (Bemidbar (Numbers) 26:58-60). This action is in complete harmony with the traditional customs of the nomad shepherds: it was best to marry within one’s clan, or at least one’s tribe, and, in difficult circumstances, with close relations to whom there was connection by ties of cousinship. Some typical examples of such blood relationships were noted earlier in the cases of Abraham, Yitschaq (Isaac) and Yacob.

Amram and Jochebed had three known children: Aaron the eldest; a daughter, Miriam; and Mosheh, the youngest.

Mosheh’ mother came therefore to the daughter of Rameses II who said to her: ‘Take this child away and suckle it for me. I will see you are paid’ (Shemoth (Exodus) 2:7-9). 3 The die was cast. Mosheh was now under the protection of a member of the court, a minimal but not negligible protection. He was allowed a pension from State funds and the government guaranteed his safety. In addition, his earliest education was entrusted to his own mother, and thus, providentially, he was taught the principles of the belief of his ancestors. A better solution can hardly be imagined to the problems besetting this young Hebrew who was born at a time of the gravest persecution. When the child grew up (his mother) brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter who treated him like a son; she named him Mosheh because, she said, ‘I drew him out of the water’ (Shemoth (Exodus) 2:10).

The Hebrew word for Moses is Mosheh. Jewish popular etymology connected the name of its national hero with the verb mashah (to draw out, extract), or, more specifically, from its active participle Mosheh (the one who draws), and by extension, the one who draws his people from exile. But, grammatically, ‘the one who draws out of the water’ would demand a passive, not an active form. We need not pursue this inquiry further; it is no longer accepted today. The interpretation of Philo and Josephus must also be rejected. This was based on Coptis expressions which call water mo, and ousha, he who has been saved from drowning. Orientalists now seem to agree that the word Moses is a phonetic transposition of the Egyptian word mosu, mosis, meaning son, or boy. This is clear in the titles of some of the Egyptiam dynasties, for example Thutmosis (son of Thut): Amosis, Rameses, etc. (cf. in English, Johnson, Richardson, etc.).

So, Mosheh, the great lawgiver of Yisrael, the saviour and leader of the chosen people bore as his name one common in Egypt (the land hated by the Hebrews). It may be properly observed at this point that in the Old Covenant no one else is called Mosheh. Nor was he alone in a philological confusion of this kind. The name of Phineas, one of the heroes of the Shemoth (Exodus), means, in Egyptian, a Nubian, a southern black African. And other Scriptural names of the same period are likewise Egyptian: Hur, Hopni, and perhaps even Aaron, Mosheh’ brother.

Notes

1 In Babylonian, evitu, the wife of a god. Some orientalist translate the word as ‘vestal’, that is, a priestess who has taken a vow of virginity. It is a detail that fits the context perfectly

2 A drawer of water In Sumeria and in Egypt an agricultural labourer responsible for the exhausting work at the shadoof, a machine for raising the river water so that it could be distributed along irrigation channels to the fields In the East this occupation was regarded as the lowest rung in the social ladder.

3 Modern historians have been eager to discover the exact name of this princess. But, Rameses II, whose harem was well furnished, had about a hundred male descendants. As for his daughters, that somewhat negligible family element In the East, the palace scribes did not bother to count them, although their number might probably be put at another hundred, if not more This would considerably diminish the value of the recommendation and protection from which Mosheh might benefit at Pharoah’s court The princess, the heroine of this story, is called by the historian Josephus, Termuthis, that is, nurse. (De Vita   Moysls, 1, IX, 5) Eusebius calls her Meoris The early rabbis gave her the name of Bithiah (1 Divre Hayamim (Chronicles) 4:78)

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