In the popular culture mediated by the imagination of Hollywood, Moses is associated with the image of Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner in the Cecil B. DeMille classic. Yet consider how authentically significant this story is from the perspective of western history itself.

The Exodus -- from which Jews got the Passover, from which in turn the Christians got our Communion, or the Mass (eucharist in greek) -- and from which all Western Civilization got, directly or indirectly, the Bible (ie, Torah, or penatateuch, in greek)

This is the Moses paradox
Not only are we told that the human race originated in Africa, but we may well declare that the roots of Western Culture, specifically the Bible, also came from that continent. If Africa was known, a century ago, as the DARK continent, it would appear that at least in the time of the patriarchs of Genesis, the Nile civilization was a region of much "light."

Where did we get the Bible of the Jews? Where did the Jews themselves get the Torah?

The Christian Testament tells us in the book of Acts that Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. Indeed, he was accorded the benefits of the highest possible education that Egyptian pre-eminence had to offer. He was surely literate in the priestly language of the sacred literature of the Nile. He may well have been unversed in the Hebrew tongue, since when he received his divine commission, his main objection regarding his own qualifications for leadership was his communication lack vis-a-vis his Hebrew countrymen.

Yet somehow he overcame all that. Though he had others, including his older brother Aaron, to help him, Moses himself was the inspiring soul behind. He was "incontestably he chief personage of the history, in a sense in which no one else is described before or since. He was led into a closer commu[nion with the invisible world than was vouchsafed to any other in the Old Testament."

Among the prophets he was unique. We are told of him that the divine revelations were made "mouth to mouth." Numbers 12:8. Moses is, as it would seem, the only character of the Old Testament to whom Christ expressly likens himself: "Moses wrote of me." John 5:46.

A cynic, looking critically at the precipitating causes of the Exodus, might almost credit the entire affair to a fluke, namely, the overpopulation of a dispised minority (the Hebrew slaves) there in the northeast corner of Africa. The high Hebrew birthrates, combined with the resultant nervousness of the threatened upholders of the status quo, formed the social backdrop against which the exodus led by Moses took place.

The Egyptians hoped to institute a policy of birth control, or barring that, of infanticide, which applied to the Hebrews only. We are told that this policy was not working. The harder they oppressed the Israelite minority, the greater the population explosion among the Israelites. Thus, fearing revolution or upheaval from below, namely, the sexual revolution of a cohesive and reproductively fecund race, the dominant powers instituted deliberate measures to suppress the sexually reproductive Hebrews, and set the world the first example of anti-semitism. Even to the point of infanticide of Jewish babies.

"Mighty hand and a stretched out arm" [Repeated some dozen of times throughout Scriptures, this expression refers to the miraculous intervention recorded in the Mosaic chronicle]

To Moses alone did Christ expressly liken himself. Deuteronomy 18: 15 God had told Moses,
The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him shall ye hearken.

Phrased differently, in Deuteronomy 18: 18 God told Moses "I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him." Christ seemed to transform the approach of Jewish religion. Yet he enjoined his hearers to honor those who "sit in Moses' seat" even when they themselves compromised the high ideals of Moses' message. Christ edenied that he came, in any sense, to destroy the Law of Moses, asserting that he came instead to fulfill. "Not one jot or tittle shall pass from the Law till all be fulfilled."

History tells us that Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. What history does not tell us is pretty much open to speculation. Sigmund Freud supposed that Moses, leader and creator of the Jewish people, was originally an Egyptian, as the etymology of his name suggests. The biblical story of Moses records that, in order to avoid the persecution of the Pharoah [over the high Jewish birthrates], Moses' parents concealed him by the river in an ark of bulrushes, from which he was rescued by the Pharoah's daughter, becoming the most famous foster child in history.

Since the princess brought up Moses as her own son, Freud makes the not unreasonable deduction that Moses was in fact her son, and therefore not Jewish in origin. He goes on the suggest that Moses had accepted the revolution of thought instigated by the Pharoah Akhenaten, who had substituted monotheism for the worship of a multiplicity of gods. When Akhenaten died, a reaction set in threatening monotheistic beliefs.

Moses therefore threw in his lot with the oppressed minority of Jews, reinforced their identity by insisting both on monotheism and the practice of circumcision, and finally instituted the Exodus, leading the Jews out of Egypt to discover the promised land. Although the Bible states that Moses died at the age of 120, Freud preferred to believe that Moses was murdered by his people, relying for evidence on a suggestion made by Ernst Sellin. [Anthony Storr, 1989]

Still further Mosaic controversy: From Édouard Schuré, we learn, going back via both Philo and Strabo, both of whom cite Manetho (Manethon) regarding the real personage of Moses, who (according to Manetho), was Hosarsiph, son of the royal priestess who herself was sister to Pharaoh Rameses II. Hosarsiph was first cousin of Menephtah, whose father was Rameses II. While Memephtah was instructed in the cult of Ammon-Ra at Memphis (Noph), Hosarsiph was dedicated to Isis and Osiris by his mother, and trained in sacred knowledge, He had been dubbed "the silent one," so intense and almost quiet was he. Often he stammered while speaking, he appeared shy till of a sudden, like a sharp thunderbolt, a terrible idea would burst forth, leaving behind it a trail of light (these words are Schuré's). Hosarsiph became an initiate in the religion of Isis, but he was destined for something greater. He became the Deliverer, the Law-Giver, of the children of Israel. We know him as Moses.

Exodus 34:30 says "All the children of Israel saw Moses and the skin of his face shone," translated in the Vulgate, "Cornuta esset facies sua." The explanation of this enigma is as follows. Rays of light were called horns. Hence in Habakkuk (3:4) we read of God, "His brightness was as the light, and He had horns [rays of light] coming out of His hand." Michel Angelo depicted Moses with horns, following the Vulgate. E. Cobham Brewer

The church has a past it does not know. A cruel trick of history, Christianity has been ripped from its Hebraic and Hamitic roots, and turned into a European thing. But being European, it does not know its beginnings. Nietzsche wrote: "Christianity can be understood only in terms of the soil out of which it grew -- it is not counter-movement to the Jewish instinct, it is its very consequence, one inference more in its awe-inspiring logic." See Ripped from its origins web page.

Ripped from his own family and people, thrust into an alien, though privileged, cultural milieu, Moses surely suffered in the way many orphans, or even just foster children, may suffer. Yet often times, God can wring good out of evil {MLK, jr]. There is even an idea which the playwright Thornton Wilder expressed. "I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts."