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

yth #73:
Jochebed placed the infant Moses in an ark.
The Myth: And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter
of Levi. And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he
was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she could not longer hide
him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch,
and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. And his sister
stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him. And the daughter of Pharaoh came
down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and
when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had
opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on
him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews’ children. (Exod. 2:1–6)
The Reality: This story, invented by allies of Moses, was patterned after an Egyptian
myth about the birth of Horus (the only legitimate ruler of Egypt) in order to give
Moses a valid claim to the throne of Egypt and to challenge the newly installed ruler.
At the time Moses was born, the pharaoh had decreed that all male Hebrews
should be put to death. Moses’ mother, Jochebed, hid him away at first but after three
months placed him in a small ark that floated down the Nile. The pharaoh’s daughter
saw the basket and fetched it. She recognized the infant as one of the Hebrew children,
took pity on him, and raised the boy as if he were her own son. Having now
become a member of the royal family, Moses had a potential future claim to the Egyptian
throne, depending upon the existing line of succession.
It has been frequently pointed out that the story of Moses’ birth resembles the
Mesopotamian legend of the birth of Sargon I, king of Agade (also called Akkad),
who conquered Babylon around 2300 B.C. and established one of the first major
Semitic kingdoms. This legend, preserved in some Assyrian texts written long after
his reign, says that Sargon’s mother was a priestess and his father was unknown. Born
in secret, his mother placed him in a basket of rushes sealed with bitumen and cast
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