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Moses, Moses

Also called Moshe Rabbeinu in Hebrew (Hebrew: , Lit. "Moses our Teacher"), he is the most important prophet in Judaism, Maimonides, 13 principles of faith, 7th principle and also an important prophet of Islam, , Christianity, the Bah' Faith, Rastafari, and many other faiths.

Moses' Hebrew mother, Jochebed, hid him when the Pharaoh ordered all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed, and he ended up being adopted into the Egyptian royal family. After killing an Egyptian slave-master, Moses fled across the Red Sea to Midian where he tended the flocks of Jethro, a priest of Midian on the slopes of Mt. Horeb. After the Ten Plagues were unleashed on Egypt, Moses led the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt, across the Red Sea, where they based themselves at Horeb and compassed the borders of Edom. It was at this time, that according to the Bible, Moses received the Ten Commandments. Despite living to 120, Moses died before reaching the Land of Israel.

The Book of Exodus takes up the narrative 230 years after the arrival of Jacob in Egypt. According to the Book of Exodus, Moses was a son of Amram, a member of the Levite tribe of Israel, having descended from Jacob, and his wife Jochebed.

Moses had one older (by seven years) sister, Miriam, and one older (by three years) brother, Aaron.

Moses would not be able to become Pharaoh because he was not the 'blood' son of Bithiah, and he was the youngest.

Flavius Josephus does not mention this incident in his account, so it is uncertain as to its chronological relationship to Moses' expedition against the Ethiopians.

If Rameses II is the Pharaoh of the Oppression, then this new Pharaoh would be Merneptah. Because the story the book of Exodus describes is catastrophic for the Egyptians involving horrible plagues, the loss of thousands of slaves, and many deaths (possibly including the death of Pharaoh himself, although that matter is unclear in Exodus) it is conspicuous that no Egyptian records speaking of Israelites in Egypt have ever been found. However, Merneptah is indeed historically known to have been a mediocre ruler, and certainly one weaker than Rameses II. Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and told him that the Lord God of Israel wanted Pharaoh to permit the Israelites to celebrate a feast in the wilderness. Pharaoh replied that he did not know their God and would not permit them to go celebrate the feast. Pharaoh upbraided Moses and Aaron, however they gained a second hearing with Pharaoh and changed Moses' rod into a serpent, but Pharaoh's magicians did the same with their rods.

Apparently Pharaoh eventually got annoyed by the frogs and asked Moses to remove the frogs and promised to let the Israelites go observe their feast in the wilderness in return. The next day all the frogs died leaving a horrible stench and an enormous mess. This angered Pharaoh and he decided against letting the Israelites leave to observe the feast.

After Aaron had received golden earrings from the people, he made a golden calf and said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt." A "solemnity of the Lord" was proclaimed for the following day, which began in the morning with sacrifices and was followed by revelry. According to Quran the one who made for them the golden calf was another man called in Quran "Alsameri". After Moses had persuaded the Lord not to destroy the people of Israel, he went down from the mountain and was met by Joshua. Moses destroyed the calf and rebuked Aaron for the sin he had brought upon the people. Seeing that the people were uncontrollable, Moses went to the entry of the camp and said, "Who is on the Lord's side? Let him come unto me." All the sons of Levi rallied around Moses, who ordered them to go from gate to gate slaying the idolators.

Moses was given eight prayer laws that were to be carried out in regards to the Tabernacle. These laws included light, incense and sacrifice.

After forty days, they returned to the Israelite camp, bringing back grapes and other produce as samples of the regions fertility. Although all the spies agreed that the land's resources were spectacular, only two of the twelve spies (Joshua and Caleb) were willing to try to conquer it, and are nearly stoned for their unpopular opinion. The people began weeping and wanted to return to Egypt. Moses turned down the opportunity to have the Israelites completely destroyed and a great nation made from his own offspring, and instead he told the people that they would wander the wilderness for forty years until all those twenty years or older who had refused to enter Canaan had died, and that their children would then enter and possess Canaan. Early the next morning, the Israelites said they had sinned and now wanted to take possession of Canaan. Moses told them not to attempt it, but the Israelites chose to disobey Moses and invade Canaan, but were repulsed by the Amalekites and Canaanites.

Moses responds by pleading to Allah that he and his brother Aaron be separated from the rebellious Israelites.

This required that they pass through Edom, Moab, and Ammon. These three tribes are considered Hebrews by the Israelites as descendants of Lot, and therefore cannot be attacked. However they are also rivals, and are therefore not permissive in allowing the Israelites to openly pass through their territory. So Moses leads his people carefully along the eastern border of Edom, the southernmost of these territories. While the Israelites were making their journey around Edom, they complained about the manna . After many of the people had been bitten by serpents and died, Moses made the brass serpent and mounted it on a pole, and if those who were bitten looked at it, they did not die.

The Amorites were a non-Hebrew Canaanic people who once held power in the Fertile Crescent. When Moses asks the Amorites for passage and it is refused, Moses attacks the Amorites (as non-Hebrews, the Israelites have no reservations in attacking them), presumably weakened by conflict with the Moabites, and defeats them.

He has the status of being one of the Ulu al-azm Messengers, that is those Messengers who were endowed with special determination, constancy and forbearance in obeying the commands of God. Among prophets, Moses has been described as the one whose career as a messenger of God, lawgiver and leader of his community most closely parallels and foreshadows that of Muhammad.

Later Christians found numerous other parallels between the life of Moses and Jesus to the extent that Jesus was likened to a "second Moses." For instance, Jesus' escape from the slaughter by Herod in Bethlehem is compared to Moses' escape from Pharaoh's designs to kill Hebrew infants.

However, Noth holds that two different groups experienced the Exodus and Sinai events, and each group transmitted its own stories independently of the other one, writing that "The biblical story tracing the Hebrews from Egypt to Canaan resulted from an editor's weaving separate themes and traditions around a main character Moses, actually an obscure person from Moab." "Moses." Encyclopdia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopdia Britannica Online Other scholars such as William Albright have a more favorable view towards the traditional views regarding Moses, and accept the essence of the biblical story, as narrated between Exodus 1:8 and Deuteronomy 34:12, but recognize the impact that centuries of oral and written transmission have had on the account, causing it to acquire layers of accretions.

Moses also appears in other religious texts such as the Midrash, Mishnah and Qur'an No other surviving written records from Egypt, Assyria, etc., indisputably referring to the stories of the Bible or its main characters before ca. 850s BC have been found, Who Were the Early Israelites.

He agreed to do so if she would procure the deliverance of the city into his power. She did so immediately, and Moses promptly married her.

The account of this expedition is also mentioned by Irenaeus, and the event would explain why St. Stephen refers to Moses as "mighty in his words and in his deeds" before Moses slew the Egyptian. Acts 7:22 Flavius Josephus also gives significantly detailed accounts of the aftermath of Baalam's blessings and the events that lead to the slaying of Zimri.

Freud postulated that Moses was an Egyptian nobleman who adhered to the monotheism of Akhenaten. Following a theory proposed by a contemporary biblical critic, Freud, a committed atheist, believed that Moses was murdered in the wilderness, producing a collective sense of patricidal guilt that 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. The possible Egyptian origin of Moses and of his message has received significant scholarly attention.

The root (qoph, resh, nun) may be read as either "horn" or "ray of light", depending on context. As a noun, this word turns up some ninety times within the Hebrew Bible, and always means "horn". The alternative meaning, "ray of light", turns up only in the post-Biblical Hebrew literature. As a verb, the three verses describing Moses' appearance are the only three examples in the Biblical and post-Biblical literature of this verb ever being translated as "shine". Aside from the references to Moses, the verb is always understood to mean "have horns" (cf: Ps 69:32, for the one other Biblical occurrence).

DeMille got the casting idea from the statue of Moses shown on this page as the director felt the famous statue actually looked like Heston.

He joins Helikaon's crew under the name Gershom and becomes one of his closest friends after the death of Zidantas/Ox. He considers his grandfather, the pharaoh, a very wise man. Priam's daughter Kassandra shows him the truth: He was taken from his parents to replace pharaoh's stillborn son. He then goes to Egypt to free his people. When Thera volcano erupts, the sun is blotted out and because it happens right after Ramesses refuses to let them go, Jews believe that Moses did that.

Source: Wikipedia > Moses