Did Moses Exist?

Before we begin, I just want to make note of a few posts that I made in the past. I do realize how bad the argument from intentionality is, I only posted it early because I felt like the project was going nowhere due to a lack of time and sources on the subject. I will be taking my time in the next argument in Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments post.  You can expect to see it at the end of June or mid July. I will be updating and revising the argument from intentionality in between then and now.

You’ll will see me focus all my posts on historical topics for a time, as I mentioned a few months ago, I don’t think that classical apologetics is a good method any more and I’m looking for a new way of arguing. Plus I’m just flat out bored with philosophy at the moment and would much rather deal with historical topics as a lot of people are telling me I’m good at history.

Anyways…

Moses is the central figure of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Tradition even says that it was Moses wrote these books along with the book of Genesis. Moses was, according to the story, the greatest and most loved of any leader in the entire history of the Jewish people. His life marks the entrance of the law, the covenant with God, the Exodus and many more wonderful things. But when evidence do we have that any of it ever happened?

Wasn’t his birth story is ripped right from the myth of King Sargon?  Like Moses, Sargon was also sent down the river in a basket by his mother? And what about the 10 commandments — don’t they have parallels in the Egyptian book of the dead? There’s no archaeological evidence of the Exodus is there or that the Hebrews even existed at the time.

These are all common questions and have simple answers that people don’t often know. Sargon and Moses were both sent down the river in a basket in their stories, yes, but that doesn’t mean that one story necessarily copied the narrative from another, now does it? In ancient times, mothers sent their babies down the river in baskets, today they leave them on church door steps in baskets it’s the same thing and a common occurrence. Funny enough the law that protects mothers who do this is called the Baby Moses law.

On the point about parallels between the Mosaic law and other ancient codes of ethics, this means nothing. If there were literary evidence showing that the Bible pulls chunks of the other texts out and uses it as its own, then this would be a problem.  To the best of my knowledge, no such evidence exists. All this means is that the book of Romans is right when it tells us God has made right and wrong obvious to everyone.

And lastly there may be no evidence of Israel’s presence in Egypt at the time (though some have pointed to this or that find in support) there is a few obscure pieces of support that make it overall reasonable to believe in the story. One such example is an inscription on an Egyptian column referring to a people called the Habiru who were captured by the Egyptians. Now whether or not the Habiru are the Hebrews is debatable, the point is that it’s plausible.

I will be doing a bigger study later on this month.

Tags: historcity, moses