Kittel, in his Hist. of the Hebrews (Eng. tr.), which oe Dillmann’s critical views to the history, writes: ‘Not only the Song (at the Red Sea), but all three main sources (J E P) have historic ground beneath them. The Passage rat te the sea is a historical fact, but this is a link of a chain which implies others, earlier as well as later. The abode in Egypt, the Exodus thence, the continued journeying in the Desert towards Sinai, are thereby all made certain,’ i. p. 227f. Similarly he accepts connexion with Midian and the sojourns at Sinai and Kadesh, pp. 220-234, and finds a Mosaic kernel in the Decalogue and the
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Book of the Covenant. Further: ‘If the events of that period are, as a whole, beyond dispute, they demand for their ex- Sec such a personality as the sources give us in Moses P Cornill, Hist. of the People of 187. pp. 41-43, writes : ‘ Moses, a Hebrew of the tribe of Levi, had by favourable providence had access to the learning and civilization of Egypt,’ and led the Israel- ites out of Egypt. They were overtaken by the Egyptians at the Red Sea, but ‘a mighty north-east wind lays dry the shallow strait, and they go through on the bottom of the sea, into the desert, into freedom.’ . . . ‘In Sinai. . . tradi- tion locates the capital achievement of Moses, his religious reorganization of the people. It is one of the most remarkable moments in the history of mankind, the birth-hour of the religion of the spirit. In the thunderstorms of Sinai the God of revelation Himself comes down upon the earth: here we have the dawn of the day which was to break upon the whole human race, and among the greatest mortals who ever walked this earth Moses will always remain one of the greatest.’
Passing to details: Moses’ connexion with the Levites is vouched for not only by the statements as to his birth, Ex 2? E, 6” P, but also from the fact that the Levites of the sanctuary at Dan claimed to be descended from Moses;* and also by the designation of the Levites in Dt 33° as ‘the people of thy holy one,’ 7von wx,t i.e. Moses. Perhaps Mushi (Ex 615 [P]), as the name of a divi- sion of the Levitical clan Merari, denotes another group of Levites, who at one time claimed descent
om Moses. 1 Ch 23'*!7, where it is stated that the sons of Moses were reckoned (3x7) to the tribe of Levi, is ῬΌΞΕΙ͂ΡΙΣ a trace of some arrangement by which the Mosaic Levites were placed on the same level as the other Levites; the genealogical statement of the transaction would be that Ger- an was a son of Levi and not of Moses. Cf.
EVI.
The E statement (Ex 910), that Moses grew up in Egyptian surroundings, is supported by the apparent identity of his name with the Egyptian mesu ; but it is not likely, as Renan (Hist. Se Peuple d’Isr. i. 142 ff.) supposes, that he was greatly influenced in his work as the medium of divine revelation to Israel, by any Egyptian training. The pre- prophetic religion of Israel has little in common with that of Egypt. Moreover, the early narra- tives make it clear that the scene of what we may call his religious education was the desert between Egypt and Palestine. It was at Horeb or in Midian that God appeared to him; and the only human being by ee advice he was guided alike in re- ligious and secular matters was his father-in-law, variously styled Jethro, the priest of Midian, Reuel, Hobab ben-Reuel, the Kenite. See HoBas, JETHRO. It was at Horeb or Sinai that Moses re- ceived his fuller revelation; and throughout the earlier history J” is specially connected with Sinai. Thus it appears that Moses, as an exile from Egypt, found among the Bedawin of the wilderness of Sinai} the human influences which helped to shape his subsequent teaching,§ cf. art. Gop in vol. ii. p. 200*; there, too, he received the divine inspiration, which sent him back to Egypt to rescue his people. In that rescue and for the rest of his life, Moses was the mediator between J” and Israel alike in things material and spiritual. Israel, in its better moments, recognized that J” guided, protected, and championed His people through the leading and yovernance of Moses, and instructed them through fis teaching. The tradition is equally clear that Israel had its evil moods in which it strove to
* Jg 1830 (J ἢ, where the true reading is Moses, not Manasseh. The suggestion (Addis, Hex. p. 190 n.) that 1S 227 implies that a similar claim was made by the priesthood of Shiloh is not supported by the general sense of the passige, which, more- over, was probably not written till after the destruction of Shiloh.
+ So Dillmann, Addis, etc.; Driver prefers to render, ‘the man, thy godly one,’ i.e. the tribe of Levi.
t Cf. the exile of the Egyptian Sanehat amongst the Bedawin, Petrie, Egypt, i. 153.
§ The occurrence of J" in Jochebed suggests that the name J” was known in the tribe of Levi before the time of Moses; but this name is found only in P.
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shake itself free from the control of Moses, and that there were times when even he despaired of accomplishing the task which J” had laid upon him. The repeated offers of J” to annihilate Israel and make Moses the ancestor of a new nation, are probably a faithful reminiscence of importunate doubts as to whether Israel was worthy to be ‘the eople of J”,’ i.e. to receive and entertain the Jivine Presence by which Moses felt himself possessed and inspired. For then a nation was a necessary correlative of a religion. Would it not be better to leave Israel to its fate and to gather round himself some new community, just as cen- turies later Paul turned from the Wee to the Gentiles? But Moses’ intense patriotism made such a course impossible. “1 fied wilt forgive their sin —; if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.’ Again and again he returned to the task of keeping the people true to their high vocation, alike by per- suasion and chastisement; while he as constantl besought J” to pardon their sin and bear with their frailty.