How is moses

The Pharaoh was afraid of the Israelite slaves because there were so many of them and ordered all the boy babies to be killed. Moses mother protected him. Being unable to nurse him, she hired a Hebrew woman to do the job. He grew up in the palace but knew he was a Hebrew.

We know we deal with fear, but so did Moses. Pharaoh found out what Moses had done and tried to kill him. Moses ran for his life. He lived out in the desert of Midian for 40 years, became a husband to Tharbis and Zipporah, and a father to Gershom and Eliezer.

God wanted Moses to rescue the Israelites from Egypt. He found that key words in the story - bulrushes, papyrus, Nile, riverbank - were all ancient Egyptian words, and not Babylonian. But what about the name 'Moses'? It is an Egyptian name meaning 'One who is born'.

It uses the same root as 'Ramses'. It's hard to believe that a Hebrew scribe, one thousand years later, could have come up with a story using authentic Egyptian words. Well actually there are many stories of babies being put in baskets and exposed or put in water. This was an ancient way of putting a child out to the fate of the gods. Today people put babies in baskets and put them on church doorsteps. The Bible says that when Moses was 80, he was living peacefully as a shepherd in the desert.

One day, as he was tending his flock, he heard the voice of God coming from a burning bush. God ordered Moses to go and force the Pharaoh to let his Hebrew people go. At first Moses was afraid, he didn't think he could do this. Then God gave him special powers. Did Moses hear the voice of God? Clinton Bailey, an expert on Bedouin folklore, believes that such a desert experience is perfectly plausible:.

If you have to survive out here in this heat and in this desolation You're closer to God And I have seen Bedouin praying on their own in the middle of the desert Whatever happened, this was a turning point for Moses and the Hebrew people.

Jews believe that at the moment the Hebrews forged a special and unique relationship with God. In return, God gave them the right to occupy a certain land.

It was the Promised Land: the land we now know as Israel. From that moment on, Moses resolved to lead his people out of Egypt to the land of milk and honey. The Bible claims that Moses was rescued by the Pharaoh's daughter, who adopted him.

He was then educated and brought up in the palace as a prince. Can this possibly be true? The picture we have here is very authentic because the young boys in ancient Egypt were under a tough master.

In fact we have the testimony of some of the scribes who talked about how their scribe master beat them when they were lazy and made sure they wrote their letters right. Of course we have no proof but what's interesting is that during the general period we place Moses, during this time non-royal children were also introduced. The royal children of foreign kings, kings from Canaan, Syria, were entered into this institution to learn how to read and write.

The Pharaohs did keep records, the records show that palaces had nurseries where royal children were educated, and that they did bring foreign children into these nurseries. It may have been easy for the Pharaoh's daughter to introduce a baby she had found into one of these nurseries.

Epidemiologist Dr John Marr believes most of the ten plagues could have been caused by polluted water in the Nile poisoning fish and setting off a tragic chain of events. Meanwhile, Professor Costas Synolakis, a leading tsunami expert, believes a massive volcanic eruption on the Greek island of Santorini in BCE could have generated a giant tidal wave that struck the Nile Delta.

This incredibly powerful wave could be linked to the parting of a 'reed sea' in the delta that could explain how the story of the 'Red Sea' parting into two walls of water was written centuries later. In the Bible, the ten plagues and the parting of the Red Sea are miracles — acts of God working through nature.

Can any of them be explained scientifically? Scientific experts such as climatologists, oceanographers and vulcanologists suggest that there is evidence that a string of natural events triggered phenomena that could explain the story of the plagues and the parting of the sea.

In an environmental catastrophe happened in the town of New Burn, North Carolina. The residents woke up to find the waters of their river - the Neuse - had turned red. More than a billion fish died. People working near the river found that they were covered in sores. The cause of this was found to be pollution. The pollution had come from a pig farm further up the river.

Millions of gallons of pig-waste had found its way into the river, causing a genetic mutation in a marine micro-organism called pfisteria; turning it from harmless into lethal. The river had been poisoned. John Marr, an epidemiologist specialising in environmental disasters, believes pollution in ancient Egypt could have caused the first six plagues. Pfisteria, or something like it, caused the fish to die, thus turning the river red; the pollution would have driven the frogs onto the land, on land the frogs would die, causing an explosion of flies and lice.

The flies could then have transmitted viral diseases to livestock, killing them. Ash columns were ejected into the atmosphere, circling the globe within two weeks and causing complete darkness over a radius of miles.

John Marr, epidemiologist, thinks that fall-out of volcanic ash could have produced a toxic bloom of algae in the River Nile; thus setting off a chain of events similar to those produced by pfisteria. The volcanic theory seems dubious because there is no active volcano in Egypt. But miles to the north of the Nile delta is the Greek island of Santorini. In the 16th century BCE, Santorini was blown apart by a gigantic volcanic eruption that was thousands of times more powerful than a nuclear weapon.

It was one of the biggest explosions of the last 10, years. The ash cloud from the Santorini blast would have been huge and far-reaching. When Santorini erupted, the wind was blowing in a south-easterly direction, towards Egypt.

Samples of Santorini ash have been collected from the sea bed, the heaviest concentrations being in the direction of the Nile Delta. Oceanographer Dr Daniel Stanley, went to the Delta to drill for samples of mud and silt to see if the ash could have reached Egypt. He found volcanic shards that can be firmly related to the explosion.

He says: 'I think it would have been a frightening experience. It would have been heard, the event. The blast ash fall would have been felt. Mike Rampino, a climate modeller from New York University, has run a computer simulation to look at the climatic effects of the Santorini blast.

The ash cloud passing overhead would have completely cut out the sun and plunged the Delta into darkness. This would have been accompanied by the kind of unusual weather seen after volcanic eruptions — lightening and perhaps hail. This would explain two of the 10 plagues — darkness and hail.

With river levels dropping, the water would have begun to stagnate. Combined with the poisonous minerals that were raining down from the ash cloud, the Nile would have become a deadly cocktail and conditions would have been ripe for an outbreak of further plagues.

When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the mind of Pharaoh and his servants was changed toward the people, and they said, "What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us? According to the Bible, as the Hebrews left Egypt, Pharaoh changed his mind and sent chariots to chase the runaway slaves.

Could be a biblical exaggeration? In , on the site of the city of Ramses II, German archeologists unearthed the foundations of an ancient stable. By the end of the dig, they had found enough stables for at least horses and chariots. And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night.

But if the exodus took place in the 16th century BCE, could the pillars of fire and cloud by explained by a column of volcanic ash from Santorini? Santorini is miles away, but the column of smoke would have towered some 40 miles above sea level.

Climatologist Mike Rampino thinks that the ash could have been seen from as far away as Egypt. During the day, the ash would have looked like a column of smoke and by night static electricity in the atmosphere would have caused lightning in this cloud. Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.

If you read the bible in the original Hebrew, the word 'red' is mistranslated. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding.

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Who was Moses? He then flees to Midian, where he marries Zipporah and lives as a shepherd until God appears before him in the form of a burning bush, ordering him to return to Egypt to secure the freedom of the Israelites. Pharaoh refuses, even as God rains down increasingly horrific plagues , until the 10th plague, the killing of the first born. From then on, Moses accompanied by Aaron and their sister Miriam remains the leader of the Israelites until his death, guiding them across the Sea of Reeds, through the desert, bringing down the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai, staving off challenges to his authority and telling the Israelites what God expects of them.

Moses dies before the Israelites enter the Land of Israel, and his hand-appointed successor, Joshua , becomes the new leader. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, there are more legends about Moses than about any other biblical figure. A cycle of legends has been woven around nearly every trait of his character and every event of his life; and groups of different and often contradictory stories have been connected with his career.

For more, visit the summaries and commentaries on the Torah portion pages for each portion from Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.