Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [54]
Other intriguing questions surface, the foremost of which involve Moses. In spite of his exalted status in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—Moses is referred to fifty times in the Koran, which credits him with negotiating God down to Islam’s five prayers a day—Moses is a mystery man. There is no evidence of his existence in any historical documents outside the Bible or Koran. Extensive Egyptian records contain no reference to a Moses—an Egyptian name; it is Moshe in Hebrew—raised in the house of a pharaoh, as the biblical account and the Hollywood version of The Ten Commandments have it. There is also no reference in Egypt’s ancient monuments of bureaucratic records to “the children of Israel” working as slaves and then escaping en masse. There is a single reference to a battle with the Hebrews in a victory column—or stela—erected by Pharaoh Merneptah.
This lack of historical records has led many scholars over centuries to doubt the existence of Moses. That is, of course, a radical idea to many believers, since the story of Moses leading the captive Hebrews out of Egypt, miraculously crossing the “Red Sea”—a mistranslation of the Hebrew words for “Sea of Reeds”—and entering the wilderness, where they spent forty years before entering the Promised Land, is the essence of Judaism. It also provides important symbolic connections to the life of Jesus.
The biblical account of the sojourn of the Hebrews in Egypt goes back to the story of Joseph, one of twelve sons of the patriarch Jacob (son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham). The favorite son, Joseph was famed for his “coat of many colors,” but was envied by his brothers, who sold him into slavery and told their father that Joseph was killed while tending sheep. Taken to Egypt, Joseph eventually rose to become a counselor to the Egyptian throne because of his uncanny ability to interpret dreams. One biblical account tells the story of how the wife of Potiphar, Joseph’s Egyptian master, accused Joseph of attempting to rape her after he had actually rejected the woman’s advances. This story, told in Genesis, echoes an old Egyptian folktale called “The Tale of Two Brothers,” which contains all of the details that were presumably “sampled,” in modern terms, by the authors of Genesis.
The Joseph story continues as, years later, his brothers come to Egypt in the midst of a drought in their land and are brought before Joseph, now a highly placed adviser to the pharaoh. The brothers do not realize who Joseph is, but he recognizes them, and in an act of forgiveness, Joseph is reconciled with the brothers who had sold him. Joseph’s father, Jacob—or Israel, as he is called—and all his descendants make the trip to Egypt, where they are welcomed by Joseph.
After hundreds of years in Egypt, in the biblical version, the Hebrews are eventually viewed as a threat by a new pharaoh—unidentified in the Bible—and they are enslaved, put to work building cities and fortifications. Eventually the pharaoh is so worried about these Israelites that he orders the killing of their firstborn. A Jewish woman places her child in a basket of reeds to save his life. Found floating in the Nile by the daughter of the pharaoh, the child—Moses—is raised as a prince in the royal house. Moses later sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew worker and he kills the Egyptian. Frightened, Moses leaves Egypt, has a divine encounter with God in the form of a burning bush, and returns to Egypt to set his people free. After the ten plagues are visited upon the Egyptians, the pharaoh—usually identified as Ramses II, but there is considerable disagreement over that—consents to let Moses leave with his people, who cross into the Sinai Desert and receive the Ten Commandments; then, after more tribulations, they eventually enter Canaan, the Promised Land. Moses, however, does not go with them. He dies before entering the Promised Land, his final resting place a complete mystery.*
Does Egyptian myth matter?
What difference do all these