Moses
From the Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can change
Moses was a leader in the Bible. He was born in Egypt at a time the Egyptians were ill-treating the Israelites, whom they treated as slaves. He later led the Israelites out of Egypt to the land promised to them by God.
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[change] Early Life
Moses was born of the Levi tribe. Although his mother had him, she is scared because the Pharaoh wanted to kill every male Israelite son in Egypt. So she floated him down a river. A princess of the Pharaoh saw him and decided to bring him up. Moses' mother was asked to be the baby's wet nurse.
When Moses grew up, he found a Egyptian beating an Israelite. He killed the Egyptian, and hid the body, but still people got to know about this. Moses had to run to the land of Midian. A priest called Jethro there gave him a place to stay and gave his daughter to him as a wife too. Moses had a son called Gershom.
[change] The Burning Bush
One day Moses was tending his father-in-law's sheep and came to Mount Horeb. God's angel made a bush burn with fire, but it did not burn up. When he came nearer, God spoke to him. God commanded him to be a leader for the Israelites and bring them out of Egypt. At first Moses did not want to do it and said that he was not good with words, but God commanded him and gave Aaron, his brother, to speak for him.
Moses return to Egypt and told the elders what happened. He brought his family along with him back to Egypt.
[change] Moses and the Pharaoh
Moses then went to the Pharaoh and asked him to let the Israelites go. However God made Pharaoh's heart very hard. Moses performed many great signs with his staff, but Pharaoh did not let them go. Finally he sent ten plagues on the Egyptians. The last plague is the killing of all first-born, both human and animals. However the Israelites' firstborns were spared.
Finally the Pharaoh decide to let the Israelites go. The Israelites go in great numbers. But later God made the Pharaoh changed his mind and he came down with an army to attack them. God made Moses part the Red Sea with his staff. The Israelites were safe but the Pharaoh's army was destroyed.
[change] Journey in the Wilderness
Moses led the Israelites through the wilderness, and God gave them manna and quails to eat, and water from rocks to drink. He also caused the Amalekites to lose in a battle. When Moses came to Mount Sinai, he went up to receive the Ten Commandments and other laws from God. The Ten Commandments were written by God on two tablets. God also told him the instructions of the priests' duties. Moses was up the mountain for forty days and forty nights.
When the people waited for Moses and did not find him, they made Aaron, his brother, make a calf out of gold and worshipped it. God warned Moses about it, and when Moses came down and saw what they did, he was so angry that the tablets fell and they smashed into pieces. The people of Levi tribes are commanded to kill people who worshipped the calf.
Later on Moses asked God to forgive the people. God wrote for Moses two more tablets, and put them in the Ark. Moses also asked craftsmen to make the Tabernacle as God wanted.
[change] Later Life
While the Israelites were wandering around the wilderness, Moses was the one whom God spoke to. However, the people kept complaining about the hardships. God instructed Moses to send twelve spies to scout the land God is giving to them; however some of them became afraid because the people living there looked stronger and more powerful than they. They told the others not to go there. Only Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh reported the truth as God wanted. God decided because of this that the Israelites would wander forty years in the wilderness, and every one except Joshua and Caleb from that generation would die without seeing the promised land.
God gave many laws to the Israelites through Moses. Moses made Joshua take over him before he died.
Moses died before he reached Canaan, the land God was leading his people to. He was 120 years old when he died.
Today Jews around the world follow the laws of the Ten Commandments and the Torah that God gave to them through Moses. He is also believed to be a prophet by Muslims.
[change] The Historical Moses
The Bible, the Torah, and the Quran have references to a person called Moses in them. The name they give to the person, varies. Other people also have written about Moses. These include Tacitus and Strabo. It is not know how much these descriptions have taken from earlier sources, that may now have been lost.
No other written records from countries such as Egypt or Assyria have been found, that are from before about 850 BCE and that tell about the stories of the Bible or its main characters.[1][2] There is no known physical evidence (such as pottery shards or stone tablets) to say that Moses' really existed.[3][4] Pharaohs have ordered the destruction of records that put them into a bad light. Several cartouches from monuments have also been destroyed in different epochs of Ancient Egyptian history.[5]
It looks like the story written about Moses in the Bible has two different sources. There were two groups of people who told the story. The two stories were passed on separately. Only later were they combined into the version that can now be found in the Bible. Passing on the stories from one generation to the next has perhaps also introduced inaccuracies. Some people added things to the story when they told it. They also omitted other things.
[change] References
- ↑ Who Were the Early Israelites? by William G. Dever (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 2003
- ↑ The Bible Unearthed by Neil A. Silberman and Israel Finkelstein (Simon and Schuster, New York, 2001
- ↑ False Testamentby Daniel Lazare (Harper's Magazine, New York, May 2002)
- ↑ Archaeology and the Hebrew Scriptures
- ↑ Two of the more famous examples are the attempted obliteration of all occurrences of the names of Hatshepsut and Akhenaten following their respective reigns, a sort of damnatio memoriae.
