MOSES

flourished 14th13th century BC Hebrew Moshe Hebrew prophet, teacher, and leader who, in the 13th century BCE (before the Common Era, or BC), delivered his people from Egyptian slavery. In the Covenant ceremony at Mt. Sinai, where the Ten Commandments were promulgated, he founded the religious community known as Israel. As the interpreter of these Covenant stipulations, he was the organizer of the community's religious and civil traditions. In the Judaic tradition, he is revered as the greatest prophet and teacher, and Judaism has sometimes loosely been called Mosaism, or the Mosaic faith, in Western Christendom. His influence continues to be felt in the religious life, moral concerns, and social ethics of Western civilization, and therein lies his undying significance. flourished 13th century BC Hebrew Moshe Hebrew prophet, teacher, and leader who delivered his people from Egyptian slavery and founded the religious community known as Israel, based on a Covenant relationship with God. As the vehicle and interpreter of these Covenant stipulations, including the Ten Commandments, he exerted a lasting influence on the religious life, moral concerns, and social ethics of Western civilization. According to the biblical account, in Exodus and Numbers, Moses, a Hebrew foundling adopted and reared in the Egyptian court, somehow learned that he was a Hebrew and killed an Egyptian taskmaster who was beating a Hebrew slave. He fled to Midian (mostly in northwest Arabia), where he became the shepherd and eventually the son-in-law of a Midianite priest, Jethro. While tending his flocks he had the experience of seeing a burning bush that remained unconsumed and of a call there from the Godthereafter to be called Yahwehof Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to deliver his people, the Hebrews, from their bondage in Egypt. Because Moses was a stammerer, his brother Aaron was to be his spokesman, but Moses would be Yahweh's representative. Ramses II (reigned 127913 BC) was probably the pharaoh of Egypt at the time. Regarding himself as divine, he rejected the demand of this unknown God through Moses and Aaron and responded by increasing the oppression of the Hebrews. During the ensuing contest, Moses used plagues sent by Yahweh to bend Ramses' will. Whether the Hebrews were finally permitted to leave Egypt or simply fled is not clear; but in any case, according to the biblical account, the pharaoh's forces pursued them eastward to the Sea of Reeds, a papyrus lake (not the Red Sea), which the Hebrews crossed safely but in which the Egyptians were engulfed. Moses then led the people to Mount Sinai (Horeb) at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. In the biblical narrative, the appearance of Yahweh in a terrific storm there was a revelatory experience for Moses, as the burning bush had been. Out of this came the Covenant between Yahweh and the people of Israel, including the Ten Commandments; and Moses began issuing ordinances for specific situations, instituted a system of judges and hearings in civil cases, and regulated the cult. After leaving Mount Sinai and continuing the journey toward Canaan, Moses faced increasing resistance and frustration and once got so angry at the people that, according to tradition, Yahweh accounted it a lack of faith and denied him entrance into Canaan. As his last official act, Moses renewed the Sinai Covenant with the survivors of the wanderings and then climbed Mount Pisgah to look over the land that he would not enter. The Hebrews never saw him again, and the circumstances of his death and burial remain shrouded in mystery. Additional reading Studies treating Moses both in particular and in the larger historical context include William Foxwell Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity, 2nd ed. with a new introduction (1957, reissued 1967), pp. 1117, 200272, a classic synthesis of Israel's history and religion in the setting of the ancient Middle East, The Biblical Period from Abraham to Ezra (1963), pp. 123, a popular historical survey, and Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan (1968, reissued 1990), pp. 64109, 153182, a technical analysis contrasting Israelite and Canaanite religion; Elias Auerbach, Moses (1975; originally published in German, 1953), a search for the historic Moses; Albrecht Alt, The God of the Fathers, in his Essays on Old Testament History and Religion (1966, reissued 1989; originally published in German, 195359), pp. 186, a classic article; Dewey M. Beegle, Moses, the Servant of Yahweh (1972), a wide-ranging account both for the general reader and for students; Walter Beyerlin, Origins and History of the Oldest Sinaitic Traditions (1965; originally published in German, 1961), a technical study of biblical sources in Exodus 1920, 24, 3234; John Bright, A History of Israel, 3rd ed. (1981), a standard work mediating scholarly extremes; Martin Buber, Moses (1946, reissued as Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant, 1988), a sympathetic treatment with philosophical emphasis but weak in details of the ancient Middle East; Daniel Jeremy Silver, Images of Moses (1982), an examination of literary, artistic, and historical treatments of Moses; George W. Coats, Rebellion in the Wilderness (1968), a detailed critical study of the murmuring motif in the wilderness traditions; Frank Moore Cross, Jr., Yahweh and the God of Patriarchs, Harvard Theological Review, 55:225259 (1962), a scholarly treatment of issues raised by Alt's classic article cited above; Delbert R. Hillers, Covenant: The History of a Biblical Idea (1969), an excellent popular study; Greta Hort, The Plagues of Egypt, Zeitschrift fr die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 69:84103 (1957) and 70:4859 (1958), the historical basis of the plagues; Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, trans. and abridged by Moshe Greenberg (1960, reissued 1972; originally published in Hebrew, 8 vol. in 4, 193852), which considers Moses to be the founder of Israel and its religion but doubts details of the historical tradition and neglects much modern archaeological and linguistic research; George E. Mendenhall, The Mask of Yahweh, in his The Tenth Generation: Essays in Early Biblical History (1972); Murray Lee Newmann, The People of the Covenant (1962), pp. 13101, a popular study of Israel from Moses to the monarchy; Martin Noth, The History of Israel, 2nd ed. (1960; originally published in German, 1950), pp. 110138, a basic study but with radical treatment of Hebrew history prior to the conquest, and A History of Pentateuchal Traditions (1972, reprinted 1981; originally published in German, 1948), pp. 156188, a technical study of the biblical sources in the Pentateuch that doubts its accuracy; Harold H. Rowley, From Joseph to Joshua (1950, reissued 1964), an attempt to relate the data of biblical traditions to the findings of archaeology; Mary Rose D'Angelo, Moses in the Letter to the Hebrews (1979), a study of how Christology has influenced the interpretation of Moses; Johann J. Stamm and M.E. Andrew, The Ten Commandments in Recent Research, 2nd ed. rev. and enlarged (1967; originally published in German, 1958); Aaron Wildavsky, The Nursing Father: Moses as a Political Leader (1984), exploring Moses' role as leader; Dorothy F. Zeligs, Moses: A Psychodynamic Study (1986), interpreting the influence of Moses' important relationships on his activity as a religious figure; and George W. Coats, Moses: Heroic Man, Man of God (1988), a discussion of the life of Moses. Dewey M. Beegle The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica