101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

188 101 Myths of the Bible
returned with her mother, into whose care the princess placed the child. The pharaoh’s
daughter loved the child and raised him as her own. She named him Moses, which
meaning I will explain later.
The child grew to adulthood in the royal court, but the Bible tells us nothing about
these early years. Instead, it flashes forward to an encounter between Moses and one
of the king’s overseers. Moses had seen this official abuse one of the Hebrew slaves and
he grew angry. He killed the Egyptian and hid the body, hoping that no one saw
what he did.
The next day, he witnessed an argument between two Hebrews and tried to break
it up. One of them asked if he was going to do to them what he had done to the Egyptian.
When Moses realized that people knew what had happened, he decided that the
safest course of action was to flee the country before he was caught and put to death.
The Bible doesn’t say how old Moses was when he fled the country, but rabbinical
tradition holds that he was about forty. Moses remained abroad until about the age of
eighty, at which time he learned that the king of Egypt had died.
With God’s guidance and the assistance of his brother Aaron, Moses returned to
Egypt and confronted the new pharaoh, demanding that he let the Hebrews leave
Egypt. After a magic contest between Moses and the royal magicians, the pharaoh
agreed to let the Hebrews depart but then changed his mind. This resulted in a series
of magical escalations known as the Ten Plagues, culminating in the death of all
Egypt’s firstborn children. Finally, the pharaoh yielded and allowed the House of Israel
to leave the country.
As Israel made ready, the Egyptian king had another change of heart and ordered
his army to bring back the Hebrews. As the fleeing Israelites reached the Red Sea with
the pharaoh’s army in hot pursuit, God split the waters in two so that Moses could lead
the people across. When the pharaoh’s army entered into the same breach, the waters
reunited over them and they drowned. The Bible doesn’t explicitly say the pharaoh
drowned with them, but it is implied, as the pharaoh would have been at the head
of his troops.
With the Egyptian experience behind him, Moses set out to forge a new nation
and lead his people towards Canaan, the land promised by God to his forebears. In the