Was Moses' name Hebrew or Egyptian? Commentators have argued for centuries
Exodus says Pharaoh's daughter named the baby Moses because she drew him out of the water, a Hebrew pun. Yet the name looks strikingly like the Egyptian mose, child of, found in pharaohs such as Thutmose. Medieval rabbis wondered how an Egyptian princess could have made a Hebrew wordplay at all.
The biblical story runs as follows. With the enslaved Israelites multiplying, Pharaoh ordered newborn Hebrew boys killed, so Jochebed hid her son in the Nile bulrushes, where a princess found and adopted him. Raised as Egyptian royalty, Moses fled to Midian after killing an Egyptian he saw beating a Hebrew, married Zipporah, and met God in a burning bush on Mount Horeb. Sent back despite protesting that he spoke poorly, he let his older brother Aaron do the talking, and after ten plagues led the Israelites out across the Red Sea.
At Mount Sinai he received the Ten Commandments on stone tablets, smashed them when the people worshipped a golden calf, and received a second set. Twelve spies reported that Canaan was fertile but full of giants; the frightened people balked, and the generation that refused was condemned to wander for forty years. Moses himself died at 120 on Mount Nebo, able to see the Promised Land but never entering it.
The name debate is old. Philo tied it to the Coptic word for water, and Josephus claimed its second part meant those who are saved. Abraham ibn Ezra suggested either a translation of an Egyptian name or a princess who knew Hebrew, while Hezekiah ben Manoah proposed she converted or took a hint from Jochebed. The eleventh-century scholar Isaac b. Asher haLevi noticed the Hebrew form means one who draws out, not one drawn out, as if foretelling the Exodus. Kenneth Kitchen, however, argues the Hebrew origin is likelier, since the sounds do not match how msy was pronounced then.
Historically, most scholars regard the biblical Moses as legendary, while allowing that he or someone like him might have lived in the 13th century BCE. Ancient reckonings disagree widely: the authors of Seder Olam Rabbah placed his life at 1391–1271 BCE, Jerome proposed a birth in 1592 BCE and James Ussher in 1571 BCE. He remains the foremost prophet of Judaism and Samaritanism and a major figure in Christianity, Islam and the Baháʼí Faith.
Source: Moses
