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For the Bible, in sum, Moses is indeed a man apart—apart not only from the people he guides and the land to which he directs them, but apart also, in many fundamental ways, from the kinds of leaders the previous generations of patriarchal figures had been. He remains the permanent outsider, a unique and towering figure.
Rembrandt, Moses with the Tablets of the Law, public domain Moses, pictured here in a painting by 17th-century Baroque artist Guido Reni, is one of the most iconic figures in the Hebrew Bible. Despite Moses’ obvious Semitic heritage, the name “Moses” is actually Egyptian, like that of other Biblical figures (Phinehas, Hophni, Hur, Merari).
There was no Exodus. Most scholars agrees Moses never existed. He is the personification of the birth of the Israel. If Moses and such an event would have occurred not only there would be a plethora of archaeological evidence but the Israelite would have talk about it for generations afterwards. Moses is only present in the first books of the ...
The monastic complex atop Mt. Nebo grew in the fourth–sixth centuries around where Moses was buried according to the Bible. From Davide Bianchi, “A Shrine to Moses” (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2021), p. 174; Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License.
Third, in Exodus 4:4 God commands Moses, atop Mt. Horeb, to hold the staff-turned-snake by the tail, an action to be compared with the many portrayals of the young Horus holding snakes (and other animals) by the tail. Once again, so Horus, so Moses, as the latter becomes the equal to the former (and by extension to Pharaoh).
Michelangelo’s Moses, perhaps the most famous statue of Moses with horns, was created in the 16th century for the tomb of Pope Julius II, who likely did not see Moses’s status as ignoble. And more modern artists, such as Marc Chagall, depicted Moses with two ray-like beams on the top of his head rather than physical horns.
The Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32:8) in the Masoretic Text describes the Most High dividing the nations according to number of “the sons [children?] of Israel.”
In Micah 6, we find an oracle that mentions not one great leader of the Exodus but three—Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. In light of the aforementioned passages, this declaration seems a bit strange. Moses and Aaron are synonymous with the events of the Exodus and play primary roles in the narrative (e.g., Exodus 6:25–27).
Moses is the first prominent adoptee in the Bible; the details are very different, but these conflicts share some parallels with the experiences of adopted children from ancient history to today. In the story of the burning bush, God says, “I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”
Moses has in the meantime become powerful and famous, and Jethro gives him useful advice on how to govern (Exodus 18:17ff). Invited by Moses to join the newly created nation, Jethro gracefully declines by invoking his obligations to his own family and tribe in the land of Midian (Numbers 10:29–30).