Guide
A Hellenized Moses in the Early Jewish Imagination
1st–4th Centuries
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Moses, the great leader, lawgiver, and champion of justice in the Bible, fascinated ancient authors, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. Moses’ story, like Joseph’s, has the motif of a Hebrew in a non-Jewish court, but Moses’ trajectory is the inverse of Joseph’s. Whereas Joseph is raised as a Hebrew and ascends to power in the Egyptian court, Moses is raised in the Pharaoh’s house and only later comes to champion the cause of the Israelite slaves.
Artapanus’ account of Moses, which is preserved in the writings of Eusebius, is notable for its presentation of Moses as resembling a Greco-Roman teacher and political leader. Philo, too, depicts Moses as an intellectual as well as a man of tremendous integrity.
Related Primary Sources
Primary Source
Artapanus on Moses
After Joseph and his son Mempsasthenoth died, the king of Egypt also died, and he was succeeded on the throne by his son Palmonothes, who constantly mistreated the Jews. It was he who constructed the…
Primary Source
Philo on Moses
I will begin with what is necessarily the right place to begin. Moses was by race a Chaldean, but was born and reared in Egypt, as his ancestors had migrated thither to seek food with their whole…