What is the historical evidence to support that Moses was brought up in a Pharaoh's p
- Thread starter C.E.O
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Really, I don't know, :shrug: but that what I've thought, if you have another information then I'll be happy to listen to you.
The Bible says that Moses was raised in the home of an Egyptian princess. As far as i know there where a lot of princes and princesses. The pharaoh would have had many wives and concubines. So many Children. But only the once close to the throne in the line of succession would have lived in the Pharaohs palace.
As for proof I doubt there is any that would be acceptable to you. But the fact that God chose moses to be a messenger to pharaoh makes sense if he was raised in a house of high Egyptian culture. He would have been able to speck to pharaoh in his own elite jargon. Once this sheepherder from the sticks started to talk it would have caught the attention and curiosity of the court and pharaoh.
All Praise The Ancient Of Days
As for proof I doubt there is any that would be acceptable to you. But the fact that God chose moses to be a messenger to pharaoh makes sense if he was raised in a house of high Egyptian culture. He would have been able to speck to pharaoh in his own elite jargon. Once this sheepherder from the sticks started to talk it would have caught the attention and curiosity of the court and pharaoh.
All Praise The Ancient Of Days
I don't know any historical evidence - we don't even have evidence there was a Moses - but I can offer you a linguistic clue that Moses was brought up by Egyptians. His name. Moses is not a Hebrew name but an Egyptian one, Moses meaning "son" in Egyptian
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=moses
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=moses
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
You (and the Urban Dictionary, hardly the most scholarly source for etymologies of anything but slang) are making the classic mistake of all of us arrogant anglophones: assuming that our name for something is the original. "Moses" is simply the Greek grammatical and phonetic normalization of the Hebrew name Mosheh, משה. It's an inflected form of the verb "to draw." Apparently there's a passage in Exodus where a woman says, "I have named him Mosheh because I drew him out of the water." There's also a minority Talmudic opinion that he was so named because he was going to be a savior, i.e., he will draw his people out of bondage.
If you want a definitive analysis of the Torah, especially its language, your best bet is to go into a synagogue and pull one out of the pocket in the back of the seat in front of you. One-fourth of each page is the original Hebrew, another fourth is the English translation, and the whole other half is rabbinical arguments. There are usually at least four disagreeing points of view, and one page I saw had seven.
Bear in mind that Egyptian is a one-member subfamily of the Afroasiatic language family, of which Semitic is another subfamily. (Berber, Chadic, Cushitic and Omotic are the other four subfamilies.) Egyptian is chock-full of cognates with Hebrew, Arabic, and the well-attested extinct Semitic languages. In fact these cognates were a great resource in deciphering the language in the first place. The Rosetta Stone clued us into its status as an Afroasiatic language, but it did not provide a very generous glossary.
From what I recall, the historian Josephus recounts a certain story about Moses which he then proceeds to discount, but it's an interesting story nonetheless. Allegedly, "Mose" was a title for certain elite members of Egypt's priestly caste. The tale alleges that Moses was an Egyptian priest of Hebrew descent and had a falling out with the Pharoah. The Hebrews themselves had recently been kicked out of Egypt as opposed to fleeing, and the Egyptians also had a policy of exiling lepers to go live in special quarantined colonies.
So, the idea is there were lots of disgruntled and recently-exiled Hebrews and lepers, Moses went to them and rounded them up, declared war on Egypt, took over the capital, then ultimately lost after the Pharoah had time to recover and draw armies from the remainder of his ample lands. As for how Moses drew so many recruits to his cause, the story goes that the priests of Egypt had already decided that the Egyptian sun god Ra was in fact the "only god", i.e. they decided to switch to monotheism from within. They couldn't just tell the people outright about the change, as that would destroy the fabric of their society and the priests' privileged positions based on the old religion, so they kept it secret. Then when Moses went down to recruit the Hebrews from whom he himself originally descended, he changed the religion about Ra to more reflect the local traditions of the Hebrews, ultimately giving rise to the Torah.
I don't know much about Josephus, but I don't find it hard to believe that there were ancient equivalents to Peter Popoff, and the ignorant masses would have gone to them like sheep to the slaughter.
Edit: Just in case someone tries to shoot me down over this, I'm fully aware "Mose" would not have been pronounced in ancient Egypt the same way we say it in 21st century English.
So, the idea is there were lots of disgruntled and recently-exiled Hebrews and lepers, Moses went to them and rounded them up, declared war on Egypt, took over the capital, then ultimately lost after the Pharoah had time to recover and draw armies from the remainder of his ample lands. As for how Moses drew so many recruits to his cause, the story goes that the priests of Egypt had already decided that the Egyptian sun god Ra was in fact the "only god", i.e. they decided to switch to monotheism from within. They couldn't just tell the people outright about the change, as that would destroy the fabric of their society and the priests' privileged positions based on the old religion, so they kept it secret. Then when Moses went down to recruit the Hebrews from whom he himself originally descended, he changed the religion about Ra to more reflect the local traditions of the Hebrews, ultimately giving rise to the Torah.
I don't know much about Josephus, but I don't find it hard to believe that there were ancient equivalents to Peter Popoff, and the ignorant masses would have gone to them like sheep to the slaughter.
Edit: Just in case someone tries to shoot me down over this, I'm fully aware "Mose" would not have been pronounced in ancient Egypt the same way we say it in 21st century English.
Well Moses was put into the nile river as a baby and it was a servant of the princess who drew him out of the water.
Exodus 2
10 And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. So she called his name Moses, saying, “Because I drew him out of the water.”
So Moses is probably an Egyptian name.
All Praise The Ancient Of Days
Ah but was THAT his original name?
According to Islamic tradition the name Musa is derived from two Egyptian words mu - meaning water and sha- meaning reeds
http://www.jewfaq.org/moshe.htm
Or, we can just make it up as we go along.
It's not a story from anglophones, it goes all the way back to Josephus. I already made that clear. I don't know how "Mose" would have been pronounced back then, but Josephus obviously believed there was enough of a connection to recount the tale and then discount it.
As far as making the story up as we go along, every religion on Earth could have started that way, including Islam, and you'd have absolutely no way of knowing the difference.
Edit: whoops, thought the last reply was somehow addressed to me since it's about the pronunciation of "Moses". My bad.
As far as making the story up as we go along, every religion on Earth could have started that way, including Islam, and you'd have absolutely no way of knowing the difference.
Edit: whoops, thought the last reply was somehow addressed to me since it's about the pronunciation of "Moses". My bad.
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There is a long history of Egyptian roots to early Jewish beliefs- most obviously circumsicion, the accumulation of gold as tribute and an Arc- equal beliefs between both faiths. And let's not forget the Egyptian belief in Aknaten (SP?): the belief in one sun god, or Yahwey- a belief shortly held them quickly dismissed. Yes- looking at it from the Egyptian POV, Moses fits fight into the equation.
AS far as I know, circumcision is not an Egyptian custom, and the accumulation of gold was never a tenent of Jewish faith.
Where do you get this crap?
Circumcision is an Egyptian custom unlike the Jewish people however, it was performed on adults and on both sexes. Yahweh though was the son of El, a Ugaritic [ancient Canaanite] deity
Circumcision is an Egyptian custom unlike the Jewish people however, it was performed on adults and on both sexes. Yahweh though was the son of El, a Ugaritic [ancient Canaanite] deity
Have you been reading James Michener's The Source?