The Moses of the Pentateuch is a figure of ancient legend, about whom nothing can be known with any degree of confidence, especially if historical criteria are the primary means by which we seek to learn about him. I will justify this claim and respond to a few arguments whose advocates use intra-biblical evidence to support the historicity of the Moses story based on “historical memory” that is present in the Book of Exodus.

Part 1: The Story
Part 6: Rebutting the “Early Date” of the Exodus (the 480-years of 1 Kings)
Part 8: Rebutting the “Early Date” (The Problem of Edom)

The question of whether Moses existed historically has been debated by historians (Nigosian 1993; Dever 2001, 99; Kratz 2018, 60). It is not inconceivable that the Moses of the Pentateuch might have some basis in objective historical fact, but he is no doubt a legend whose life crystallized in the much later sources developed orally over centuries (Beegle 1999). This presents challenges for historians,

“On the whole, considerable tension exists between the biblical and historical evidence with regard to the history of ancient Israel. This tension is also, and especially true, with respect to the founding figure of biblical religion, the figure of Moses” (Kratz 2018, 60).

Without prejudicing the miraculous and fantastical, one needs to acknowledge the nature of the incredible events in the life of Moses, which one expects since “[i]n any story dealing with a people’s folk hero, we should be prepared to encounter the fantastic” (Eisler 1977, 41).

Readers of the Book of Exodus are exposed to the fantastic throughout. As an infant, Moses escapes slaughter at the hands of Pharaoh and is then rescued from his confinement in a floating basket in the Nile by none other than the Pharaoh’s own daughter. He is later commissioned by the god Yahweh, receiving a numinous encounter with this deity in the form of a burning bush that was miraculously invulnerable to withering, with the task of delivering enslaved Hebrews from Egypt.

Moses appeared before the anonymous Pharaoh of Exodus in the company of his brother Aaron to request this, although the Pharaoh refused. He then defeated Pharaoh’s magicians in a duel, performed miracles, and led the enslaved Hebrews out of Egypt, an event that was preceded and accompanied by some of the most spectacular scenes the Bible offers, such as an array of calamitous plagues Yahweh sent upon the Egyptians and Egypt as punishment for Pharaoh’s obstinacy. Moses guided the Hebrews through a parted ocean and then closed it upon the pursuing army of Pharaoh, later received the Law on Sinai, and maintained the role as an intermediary between Yahweh and the often dissatisfied and “murmuring” Hebrews.

Such events, if they happened, would put Moses’ curriculum vitae right up at the top of any list of ancient history’s most credentialed heroic figures.

The Near Impossibility of Historical Knowledge for Moses

Yet, using historical criteria, nothing can be marshaled in support of any of these descriptions and events in Moses’ life. The skeptical late biblical scholar Philip R. Davies claimed that “Moses himself has about as much historic reality as King Arthur” (quoted by Andrew Brown 2014).

Davies’ might be seen as taking a jibe, but in reality, his is not necessarily a gratuitous comparison when the weak evidence for these two figures is considered together: the earliest written sources being removed by centuries from their time of activity (for Arthur this is about three centuries; for Moses, 700–800 years), no archaeological evidence in their favor, the sources undergoing significant redaction, and the sources offering a plenitude of portraits, some which sit in tension with each other. This has motivated scholars to deliberate regarding how the Moses tradition developed before the canonization of the Book of Exodus much later after the purported events.

As they are handed down over time and told and retold, legends typically produce a diverse range of portrayals of their larger-than-life heroes. Buddha was probably a historical person with legends about growing up in a royal family that he would later spurn and whose persona evolved over centuries, transforming him into a godlike being believed to have undergone countless previous reincarnations, boasted omniscience, could multiply into a million and then return to normal, and make himself as big as a giant and then as small as an ant. King Arthur is many things too: an ideal romance figure, a prototype of the good monarch, an archetype, a chivalric ruler, swine, and saint (Göller 1984, 55–56); Ethiopian emperor Hailie Selassie (1892–1975) was a political figure, an opposer of fascism, the king over the “Holy Land” of Ethiopia, for Rastafaris the divine incarnation of God, a man of prophecy, and a perceived liberator of oppressed black people in Jamaica.

Moses does not lack for diversity either, being portrayed using as many as fifteen legendary and mythological motifs (Mathews 2012), many drawn from other ancient traditions, which often reflect a diverse array of representations from many different periods of Israel’s history. Some of these include an “exalted, even divinized figure,” a prophet, priest, and judge; a lawgiver, whereas several royal motifs applied to him are also common throughout the Ancient Near East (Mathews 2012, ix, 2) and in Ancient Near Eastern figures such as Hammurabi (died c. 1750 BCE), Nabonidus (615-539 BCE), Esarhaddon (flourished seventh century BCE), and Cyrus the Great (flourished seventh century BCE; d. 529 BCE) (Mathews 2012, 3, 43–51).

The story of Moses’s birth and infancy has drawn particular attention for the obvious parallels it has to the legendary Mesopotamian king Sargon of Akkad (Childs 1965, 110; Rendsburg 2006; Kratz 2018, 61; Enns 2021, 39), who reigned around 2300 BCE. The similarities are too striking to be merely coincidental: “Like Moses, Sargon was born in secret, placed in a reed basket, closed with a lid, waterproofed with pitch, carried downriver, rescued by someone drawing water, and raised as an adopted son. The similarities are uncanny” (Enns 2021, 39).

It is impossible to determine with any relative degree of historical certainty if this or any other aspect of Moses’ life is historical. Although this is not inconceivable, it is also not impossible that these parallels could indicate wholesale invention (Enns 2021, 39). What is certain is that the author of Exodus deliberately used Sargon to give Moses importance and did so by following a standard rags-to-riches template. The story of Moses birth “is built on folkloric motifs found throughout the ancient world” and “should not be considered historically based” (Redmount 1998, 61-62). According to Peter Enns, “we are not getting “straight history” in Exodus. An ancient Israelite writer is telling a story of Moses’s greatness, and creating scenes and dialogue that clearly communicate that greatness” (2021, 39).

Upon closer examination, the logic of some details in the infancy story of Moses strikes the reader as confusing, which indeed might indicate that we are not getting “straight history” in Exodus. Early on, Pharaoh, fearing the multiplying numbers of Hebrews in his land, ordered that all their firstborn males be killed (1:15-22), perhaps an irrational decision on his behalf that makes no practical sense: “The motif of the slaying of the children has nothing to do with the story of the hard labor; it bluntly contradicts the logic of the narrative (slave economy naturally aims at an increase in the number of working hands); it has clearly come into being through the motif of the saving of the boy Moses” (Martin Buber quoted by Eisler 1977, 41).

From an objectivist historical approach, whether Moses was really confined to a basket later fished out of the Nile by Pharaoh’s daughter, a Hebrew or an Egyptian, or anything else, is fruitless inquiry. A confident or even relatively comfortable answer to these and other questions of his historicity is impossible.

Reflecting on King Arthur, the medieval historian Thomas Charles-Edwards concluded that “one can only say that there may well have been an historical Arthur… [but ] the historian can as yet say nothing of value about him” (1991, 29). We should conclude similarly regarding Moses. Moses may have existed, but whether or not he did is impossible to answer (Assmann 2009, 12), meaning any “quest for the historical Moses is a futile exercise. He now belongs only to legend” (Van Seters 1987, 116).

Arguments for a “Historical Memory”

Given the perceived theological implications many think these conclusions about Moses may have, they respond by offering scant intra-biblical evidence to offer proof for the accuracy and/or evidence of a “historical memory” in the Book of Exodus. As I mentioned nearer to the beginning of this series, I am not interested in the theological questions of Moses and the exodus unless I explicitly indicate so. With the exception of a section in Part 1, the focus has so far been limited to the historical.

One way of offering said proof is to propose hypotheses naturalizing the fantastical plagues Yahweh sent upon Egypt because of the refusal of Pharaoh to grant Moses permission to lead the Hebrews out of the land. Attempts to portray the plagues as physical meteorological and natural phenomena, therefore ascribing some historicity to the biblical account (Kitchen 2003, 249-253).

Although this might account for some plagues (e.g., the Nile flooded many times throughout Egyptian history, taking with it red soil that gave it the appearance of blood), others seem much less likely to be purely naturalistic (e.g., three days of total darkness over Egypt or the death of every Egyptian’s firstborn son). Possibly, the obsession to stress physical explanations for these plagues is the product of a gratuitous anti-supernaturalism that undermines the theological charge of the text, which is that the Hebrew deity is more powerful than the Pharaoh and Egypt’s gods, which included the frog-headed goddess Heqet, the cattle god Hathor, deities associated with storms like Seth, and so on. In addition, even if it was possible to offer some reasonably plausible naturalistic explanation for these plagues, it yet would not support the historicity of the biblical descriptions.

There is the small detail of the Hebrew slaves building “mud brick” (Exod. 5:7–8) and Moses having a name with an Egyptian “ring” to it, which are also purported evidence for the preservation of a historical memory. These arguments are also unconvincing.

I acknowledged in the postscript of Part 5 that foreign slaves in Egypt making mud brick is a fact of history, since the practice is attested to in numerous sources (e.g., Papyrus Anastasi I, Papyrus Anastasi III, and the tomb of Rekhmire, also called the Theban Tomb TT100, which shows Asiatic slaves making mud bricks). It was therefore common knowledge that Ancient Egypt had slaves who made mud bricks. This detail being known by the author of Exodus centuries later cannot therefore be considered impressive in any way, as if the author demonstrates unique knowledge about a fact only an eyewitness could possibly have.

The name Moses, mosheh, does have an Egyptian ring to it. Pharaoh’s daughter provides a Hebrew explanation for the name, “I drew him out of the water” (Exod. 2:9), which in Hebrew is mashah. This is virtually identical to Moses’s Hebrew name, mosheh. In fact, because ancient Hebrew was written without vowels, mashah and mosheh were spelled the same: m-sh-h. Many consider this to suggest that the Moses story, or that of his infanthood, has some sort of connection to Egypt, however distant and imprecise that connection may be (Enns 2021, 38).

This is also going too far, making too much of too little. An analogy. I know next to nothing about Mexico, little about its history, and have never visited the country. Yet, I still know that Mexico City is the capital and that Carlos is a Mexican name. If I produced a chapter in a book or magazine describing spectacular events occurring in the heart of Mexico City fifty years ago and my protagonist’s name is Carlos, would this suggest that my account has a connection to real historical events in Mexico all those years earlier and that the general outline of my account is authentic and reliable? Of course, not.

To add one further comment about the name of Moses according to the biblical story, it is why the pharaoh’s daughter would give an endangered infant a name that would so plainly single him out, putting a target on his head for those wishing to harm and kill him. The name, tied to the phrase “I drew him out of the water,” is an obvious clue that the infant Moses had been rescued from the wrath of the daughter’s own father, Pharaoh. Biblical scholars are convinced that Exodus 2:10 is not a literal account of the origin of Moses’s name but instead how that name would be understood at a much later time and to underscore Moses’ greater significance for Israelites (Enns 2021, 38–39). This is not strict literal history.

Part 8: Rebutting the “Early Date” (The Problem of Edom)

References

Assmann. Jan. 2009. Moses the Egyptian. Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States: Harvard University Press.

Beegle, Dewey M. 1999. “Moses: Hebrew prophet.” Britannica. Available.

Brown, Andrew. 2014. “Man versus myth: does it matter if the Moses story is based on fact?” The Guardian. Available.

Charles-Edwards, Thomas. 1991. “The Arthur of History.” In The Arthur of the Welsh: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Welsh Literature, edited by Rachel Bromwich, A. O. H. Jarman, and Brynley F. Roberts, 15-32. Cathays Park, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom: University of Wales Press.

Childs, Brevard S. 1965. “The Birth of Moses.” Journal of Biblical Literature 84(2):109-122.

Dever, William G. 2001. What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?: What Archeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel. Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing.

Eisler, Jeremy. 1977. “Moses; Man and Myth.” Senior Thesis, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, United States.

Enns, Peter. 2021. Exodus for Normal People: A Guide to the Story-And History-of the Second Book of the Bible. Lansdale, Pennsylvania, United States: The Bible for Normal People.

Göller, Karl Heinz. 1984. “The Figure of King Arthur as a Mirror of Political and Religious Views.” In Functions of Literature: Essays Presented to Erwin Wolff on His Sixtieth Birthday, edited by Ulrich Broich, 55-79. Germany: Max Niemeyer Verlag GmbH & Co KG.

Kitchen, Kenneth A. 2003. On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Kratz, Reinhard G. 2018. “Moses: Creating a Founding Figure.” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 20(1):59–73.

Mathews, Danny. 2012. Royal Motifs in the Pentateuchal Portrayal of Moses. London, England, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Nigosian, S. A. 1993. “Moses as They Saw Him.” Vetus Testamentum 43(3):339–350.

Van Seters, John. 1985. “Etiology in the Moses Tradition: he Case of Exodus 18.” In Biblical and Other Studies in Memory of S. D. Goitein, edited by Reuben Ahroni, 355–365. Columbus, Ohio, United States: Ohio State University Press.