Susan Moses Popular Books

Susan Moses Biography & Facts

Moses was a Hebrew teacher and leader considered the most important prophet in Judaism and one of the most important prophets in Christianity, Islam, the Baháʼí Faith, and other Abrahamic religions. According to both the Bible and the Quran, Moses was the leader of the Israelites and lawgiver to whom the prophetic authorship of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) is attributed. According to the Book of Exodus, Moses was born in a time when his people, the Israelites, an enslaved minority, were increasing in population and, as a result, the Egyptian Pharaoh worried that they might ally themselves with Egypt's enemies. Moses' Hebrew mother, Jochebed, secretly hid him when Pharaoh ordered all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed in order to reduce the population of the Israelites. Through Pharaoh's daughter, the child was adopted as a foundling from the Nile and grew up with the Egyptian royal family. After killing an Egyptian slave-master who was beating a Hebrew, Moses fled across the Red Sea to Midian, where he encountered the Angel of the Lord, speaking to him from within a burning bush on Mount Horeb, which he regarded as the Mountain of God. God sent Moses back to Egypt to demand the release of the Israelites from slavery. Moses said that he could not speak eloquently, so God allowed Aaron, his elder brother, to become his spokesperson. After the Ten Plagues, Moses led the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, after which they based themselves at Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments. After 40 years of wandering in the desert, Moses died on Mount Nebo at the age of 120, within sight of the Promised Land. Generally, the majority of scholars see the biblical Moses as a legendary figure, while retaining the possibility that Moses or a Moses-like figure existed in the 13th century BC. Rabbinical Judaism calculated a lifespan of Moses corresponding to 1391–1271 BC; Jerome suggested 1592 BC, and James Ussher suggested 1571 BC as his birth year. The Egyptian name "Moses" is mentioned in ancient Egyptian literature. In the writing of Jewish historian Josephus, ancient Egyptian historian Manetho is quoted writing of a treasonous ancient Egyptian priest, Osarseph, who renamed himself Moses and led a successful coup against the presiding pharaoh, subsequently ruling Egypt for years until the pharaoh regained power and expelled Osarseph and his supporters. Moses has often been portrayed in Christian art and literature, for instance in Michelangelo's Moses and in works at a number of US government buildings. In the medieval and Renaissance period, he is frequently shown as having small horns, as the result of a mistranslation in the Latin Vulgate bible, which nevertheless at times could reflect Christian ambivalence or have overtly antisemitic connotations. Etymology of name The Egyptian root msy ('child of') or mose has been considered as a possible etymology, arguably an abbreviation of a theophoric name with the god’s name omitted. The suffix mose appears in Egyptian pharaohs’ names like Thutmose ('born of Thoth') and Ramose ('born of Ra'). One of the Egyptian names of Ramesses was Ra-mesesu mari-Amon, meaning “born of Ra, beloved of Amon” (he was also called Usermaatre Setepenre, meaning “Keeper of light and harmony, strong in light, elect of Re”). However, the biblical scholar Kenneth Kitchen argued that this – or any Egyptian origin for the name – was unlikely, as the sounds in the Hebrew m-š-h do not correspond to the pronunciation of Egyptian msy in the relevant time period. Linguist Abraham Yahuda, based on the spelling given in the Tanakh, argues that it combines "water" or "seed" and "pond, expanse of water," thus yielding the sense of "child of the Nile" (mw-š). The biblical account of Moses' birth provides him with a folk etymology to explain the ostensible meaning of his name. He is said to have received it from the Pharaoh's daughter: "he became her son. She named him Moses [מֹשֶׁה, Mōše], saying, 'I drew him out [מְשִׁיתִֽהוּ, mǝšīṯīhū] of the water'." This explanation links it to the Semitic root משׁה, m-š-h, meaning "to draw out". The eleventh-century Tosafist Isaac b. Asher haLevi noted that the princess names him the active participle 'drawer-out' (מֹשֶׁה, mōše), not the passive participle 'drawn-out' (נִמְשֶׁה, nīmše), in effect prophesying that Moses would draw others out (of Egypt); this has been accepted by some scholars. The Hebrew etymology in the Biblical story may reflect an attempt to cancel out traces of Moses' Egyptian origins. The Egyptian character of his name was recognized as such by ancient Jewish writers like Philo and Josephus. Philo linked Moses' name (Ancient Greek: Μωϋσῆς, romanized: Mōysēs, lit. 'Mōusḗs') to the Egyptian (Coptic) word for 'water' (möu, μῶυ), in reference to his finding in the Nile and the biblical folk etymology. Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, claims that the second element, -esês, meant 'those who are saved'. The problem of how an Egyptian princess (who, according to the Biblical account found in the book of Exodus, gave him the name "Moses") could have known Hebrew puzzled medieval Jewish commentators like Abraham ibn Ezra and Hezekiah ben Manoah. Hezekiah suggested she either converted to the Jewish religion or took a tip from Jochebed (Moses' mother). The Egyptian princess who named Moses is not named in the book of Exodus. However, she was known to Josephus as Thermutis (identified as Tharmuth), and some within Jewish tradition have tried to identify her with a "daughter of Pharaoh" in 1 Chronicles 4:17 named Bithiah, but others note that this is unlikely since there is no textual indication that this daughter of Pharaoh is the same one who named Moses. Ibn Ezra gave two possibilities for the name of Moses: he believed that it was either a translation of the Egyptian name instead of a transliteration or that the Pharaoh's daughter was able to speak Hebrew. Biblical narrative Prophet and deliverer of Israel The Israelites had settled in the Land of Goshen in the time of Joseph and Jacob, but a new Pharaoh arose who oppressed the children of Israel. At this time Moses was born to his father Amram, son (or descendant) of Kehath the Levite, who entered Egypt with Jacob's household; his mother was Jochebed (also Yocheved), who was kin to Kehath. Moses had one older (by seven years) sister, Miriam, and one older (by three years) brother, Aaron. Pharaoh had commanded that all male Hebrew children born would be drowned in the river Nile, but Moses' mother placed him in an ark and concealed the ark in the bulrushes by the riverbank, where the baby was discovered and adopted by Pharaoh's daughter, and raised as an Egyptian. One day, after Moses had reached adulthood, he killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew. Moses, in order to escape Pharaoh's death penalty, fled to Midian (a desert country south of Judah), where he married Zipporah. There, on Mount H.... Discover the Susan Moses popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Susan Moses books.