MOSHEH Growing Up Into Leadership
Mosheh’ hidden, long and profitable stay in Egyptian intellectual circles
So the woman took the child and suckled it. Miriam’s trick had succeeded. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, who treated him like a son (Shemoth (Exodus) 2:9,10). Does this mean that we may expect some details of the education that Mosheh would have received at court? Archaeology has shown that in Egyptian official and court circles education was well advanced. But the Scriptural writer refrains from providing us with the slightest information on this point. His silence is complete and doubtless intentional and understandable. For in Yisrael, Mosheh’ long and profitable stay in Egyptian intellectual circles -so wholeheartedly and continuously loathed by the Hebrews -was never mentioned in detail.
‘Pharaoh’s daughter treated him like a son’ is the brief summary (all too brief for our interest) given in the Scriptures. And it passes at once to another subject: Mosheh, a man by now, set out to visit his countrymen (Shemoth (Exodus) 2:11). This abrupt transition is subtle; the curriculum which he may (indeed must) have pursued in the educational institutions is thereby relegated to obscurity.
In the ancient world several writers tried to remedy the silence of the Old Covenant on the subject of the years of Mosheh’ intellectual formation. For instance, Manetho, the keeper of the Egyptian archives (third century B.C.) states that Mosheh was a priest of Heliopolis, with a revolutionary turn of mind, and the apostle of a new theology. This is hard to accept, for it is in complete contradiction with the essential spirit of the Shemoth (Exodus) itself. It is difficult to see in this man of burning faith in YAHWEH, in this ardent soul who spoke ‘to YAHWEH face to face’, a convert, a former polytheist. In any case, Manetho is careful to add that his explanation was only something ‘that had been reported’.
Clement of Alexandria and Josephus, in their turn, supply a highly coloured, but somewhat fanciful portrait of Mosheh. Thanks to the princess’ protection he became, they say, general of the Egyptian armies and advanced against the Ethiopian forces. Naturally he crushed this formidable army. He also knew how to protect his troops from being bitten by the serpents that abound in the desert. Inevitably in such circumstances, the daughter of the conquered king fell in love with the hero. Mosheh married her and returned to Egypt in triumph. It is all very like a romantic novel.
Too much should not be expected from the Renewed Covenant in the way of more detailed information. Stephen, the first saint martyr, in his speech to the Sanhedrin, declared that Mosheh was taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians (Ma’aseh Shilichim (Acts) 7:22). It is a large claim, but his subsequent career in the desert shows that he must, in fact, have possessed considerable literary and scientific knowledge. How was he taught and by whom? No information is provided on these points. The author of the Epistle to the Ivrims (Hebrews) (11:24-26), is content to refer to Mosheh’ renunciation of the enchantments of Egypt, ‘the pleasures of sin’.
Some interesting details of scholastic life have been recorded on papyri
This tantalizing question of Mosheh’ hidden early years looked as though it would remain unsolved. Quite recently, however, Fr Cazelles, a professor in the Institut Catholique in Paris, has put forward an explanation which seems at last to provide the key to the problem. He suggests that the young Mosheh was a Hebrew of the Delta area who had been enlisted, in the traditional way, in a school for ‘scribes’.
In parenthesis, we may take a brief look at the position held by these scribes in the internal economy of the Egyptian State, which was the prey of a fearful bureaucracy. The complicated machinery of officialdom existed everywhere. Officials (called scribes, for usually they were the only people who could write) were to be found in each locality. Their work was to attend to the royal commands, transmit them and see that they were carried out. Some had to work out the basic facts and figures for the architects; others were responsible for information about the army and the quantity of war material; and still others drew up official documents and balance sheets. Scribes were everywhere, in government circles, in the most important civil and military organizations and in more obscure positions. These specialists 4 needed training to equip them for the various tasks that normally required serious technical knowledge. For this purpose schools were set up near the tabernacles; centres of instruction run by kohen who, in the Nile valley, as elsewhere in the East, held the monopoly of scientific and literary teaching.
We have ample information about the educational methods used in these centres. Daily life was harsh; there was frequent corporal punishment, and the whip was regarded as the necessary complement to sound instruction. ‘The ears of a pupil are at the bottom of his back,’ says a teachers’ guide, with evident relish, ‘he listens when he is beaten.’ And a scribe who had completed his course thanks his former masters for the care they had bestowed on him when he was still on the school benches: ‘You beat my behind, and as a result your teaching entered my head !’
Some interesting details of scholastic life have been recorded on papyri. At dawn, the boy left home, taking a basket containing bread and a flask of beer. On reaching school he took his place on a bench. Beginners wrote their lessons on a slate which could be erased or corrected as necessary. Later on, the best pupils were allowed to write on papyrus rolls. The curriculum is well known; mathematics and traditional texts formed the groundwork; then came law, history, geography and various technical matters. A good scribe had to have some ability as a draughtsman, because the hieroglyphs were made up of all kinds of pictorial signs and figures.
At first sight it may seem surprising that Mosheh should have become a member of one of these schools essentially intended for the sons of officials or of highly placed persons. In fact, however, he may have belonged to a very special class of scribe. The truth of this statement is shown by the discovery at el-Amarna of some diplomatic notes written in Akkadian with cuneiform characters and sent by the Canaanite princelings to the pharaohs whose vassals they were at that time. It is true that these documents, dating from c. 1400, were written two centuries before the time of Mosheh. But even in the days of Rameses II, Mosheh’ contemporary, the court kept up a close relationship with these petty sovereigns who formed a buffer between Egypt and the ever-present menace of the Hittite power. There continued to be an active correspondence between the pharaohs and the Palestinian rulers. Diplomatic exchanges were written in Akkadian, the international language, so both in Egypt and Canaan there had to be secretaries who could translate it into the native language.
A team of scribes, therefore, who could perform this delicate task, worked by pharaoh’s side. We also know that the Egyptians, with only a mediocre gift of tongues, preferred to employ multilingual Asiatics who, in order to explain a difficult Akkadian word to their colleagues, found little trouble in putting a Canaanite equivalent in the margin. Both could understand this perfectly, since it was their ordinary language. In Egypt, these official translators, usually of foreign origin, were allowed to retain their national belief and traditions. The Egyptians disliked foreigners intensely, and we can guess the repugnance with which they made use of the services of these aliens.
Mosheh, the Asiatic, we may well believe, was early recognized as a promising future scribe-translator, and was consequently educated in one of the temple schools somewhat special school, however, containing pupils of Canaanite race and language, but not native Egyptians. This is the probable origin of Manetho’s mistake when he called Mosheh ‘a former priest of Heliopolis’, and it explains Stephen’s statement to the Sanhedrin that Mosheh had acquired all the wisdom of the Egyptians.
4 At the time of the Babylonian captivity (586-538) the learned scribes provided an explanation of the SET APART books already committed to writing at the period Thus they became doctors of the Law
Anger and murder: a moment of fearful anguish in Mosheh’ soul
Mosheh, a man by now, set out at this time to visit his countrymen, and he saw what a hard life they were having (Shemoth (Exodus) 2:11).
If we accept Fr Cazelles’ explanation of the administrative functions that the scribe Mosheh may have performed, then the “way things happened becomes perfectly clear. After a number of years spent, since his earliest days, in some special service of a great city -Heliopolis on Manetho’s suggestion, or perhaps Thebes, the southern capital of the dynasty of Rameses -Mosheh made a pilgrimage to visit his countrymen in the Delta area. He cannot, of course, have failed to have heard of the Yisraelites’ enslavement in Goshen while he was still far from them in Egypt. And wherever his official residence was, he would have been in a position to observe the cruel conditions to which the Egyptians were subjected, for it was a time when the Nile valley had been transformed into what may be called an immense building site. Even so, when he actually saw the descendants of Yacob toiling under the whip, compelled to work under inhuman conditions, and plunged morally and physically into an abyss of despair, it produced a moment of fearful anguish in his soul. It might even be that he felt a kind of remorse for having in no way shared the pain of his brethren in belief.
One day he witnessed a scene, common enough, but to “which he had not yet grown accustomed. He saw an Egyptian strike a Hebrew, one of his countrymen. Looking round he could see no one in sight, so he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand (Shemoth (Exodus) 2:11-12). The following day he felt bound to intervene when he came across two Yisraelites quarrelling; he tried to reason with them, What do you mean by hitting your fellow countryman?’ he asked one of them. The man replied sharply: ‘And who appointed you to be prince over us, and judge? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?’ There could be no further doubt; the man whom he had rescued from the foreman’s stick the day before had spoken without thought, and now the whole clan knew of the killing. Mosheh had been denounced by one of his people, anxious to curry favour with the authorities, and he was warned that the Egyptian police were on his track. If he was caught, his account would be quickly settled.
He decided to flee without further delay. But where could he go? He made up his mind to leave Egyptian territory and seek shelter in Midian, one of the Semitic clans related to Abraham through his concubine Keturah.
The compelling psychological motive for Mosheh’ stay in Midian, a pastoral society
Exegetes do not seem to have stressed or explained the compelling motive for Mosheh’ stay in the tents of Midian among the nomads of the steppe. What in fact was Mosheh’ position at the time of the murder? He was a scribe, a scholar, a kind of technician. Since his early years he had probably been confined, first in an Egyptian temple school, and then in the office of a chancellory where he spent his days translating diplomatic notes, editing Akkadian texts with Canaanite explanations, and classifying tablets or papyri with hieroglyphic reference numbers in the margin. Some of these documents still exist and give a good idea of this delicate and very specialized work.
Mosheh was still a bachelor, who did not marry until much later; and so at that time he had no family. His sole companions were a few members of his own race, solitaries like himself. He was out of touch with the difficulties of daily life, and cut off from contact with ordinary people.
Thus he was far from being prepared for the imposing and onerous mission that lay ahead. But in Midian where he went he was in a pastoral society in which men are not always easily led. His destiny was to be Yisrael’s leader and yet he was entirely lacking in social experience. He was introduced to it and began on it in the setting of a nomad encampment which offered human problems enough. A new life was beginning for him that was to fashion his character as a leader.
Jethro was the prudent and wise chieftain of the Midianite tribe and his fatherly advice was at Mosheh’ service. But Mosheh’ work as a shepherd meant that from time to time he had long periods of solitude which were favourable to meditation on spiritual matters.
So with his cloak over his arm and carrying the traditional shepherd’s crook, he set out for the tents of Jethro in Midian, close to the Sinai range, just as, long ago, Yacob had taken the road to Haran.
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