Did Moses Exist? | Bart D. Ehrman PhD 

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I love that like a true *historian,* Bart doesn't *really care if you believe* the *"narrative"* or not, he just tries to get to the *truth and origins* of the stories ect..

A few weeks ago, I visited the West Bank. Our group went to a Jewish settlement on the West Bank that is considered illegal under international law, because it is on land that belongs to the Palestinians. We listened to one of the settlers tell us that Israel has the right to control all of the land on the West Bank, because God gave it to them (see one of the stories about Moses in Deuteronomy 34:4, for example). The settler said that he believes that the story of the Exodus, in which about 2.5 million people left Egypt for the promised land, is literally true. Never mind the fact that a group of people about 20 times the population of my home town, Rochester MN (the third largest city in MN at 121500 people) wandered across the desert and did not leave the slightest trace of any archeological evidence. This highlights the problem with Biblical literalism. If you believe that the story of Moses and the Exodus is literally true, you can justify stealing land from another group. If you instead believe that the story is a metaphor that highlights the human experience of moving from slavery to freedom (with all of its layers of meaning), you can now reach a completely different conclusion about how to treat your fellow human beings. The important work of Bart Ehrman and others is not just a purely academic matter. It has real consequences for how we treat our fellow human beings. That is why honest Biblical scholarship, that is not prejudiced by any a priori religious bias, is so important.

Even if "Moses" existed, he did not turn the Nile river to blood, he did not turn his staff into a snake, he did not cause plagues on Egypt, and he did not part the Red sea. Interesting fact: Before the movie staring Charlton Heston, approximately 35% of Christians, when asked, said they believed that Moses was real and that he parted the Red sea. After the movie hit the theaters, a survey was done and that number went up to 75%. Amazing what a great acting job can do for a fictional tale.

I just can’t help but think the Egyptian monotheistic Aten cult influenced Israelite religion somehow. Moses is an Egyptian name but also Aaron, Miriam and other Levites.

The Levant was a crossroads that connected a number of ancient cultures. It's not unreasonable that stories known to those other cultures were spread through the area.

If there wasn’t a Moses, can I still beat my slaves- as long as they don’t die within 3 days?

I love Bart's laugh when he is posed a question. Im reading his 'heaven and hell' and its a really good book.

Per Prof Israel Finkelstein, archeological evidence shows the Torah could not have been written before the 7th century. There are too many cites and countries mentioned to have been written before that date. i.e the country of Edom did not exist before 725BCE.

Have any of you heard about Sigmund Freud's book MOSES AND MONOTHEISM? He wasn't a biblical scholar, but he was extremely well-read and he wanted to explore the reason why the Jews consider themselves the "Chosen People," and why they were sure that there was only one "True God," who devoted all of his time to guiding their history, all of which got them into a lot of trouble over the centuries from other peoples whose land they wandered into. Anyway, the book was highly controversial, but Freud had scholarly sources for arguing that "Moses" was an Egyptian priest, who subscribed to the theory of Akhenatan, a pharaoh who established a new cult in the 14th century B.C. arguing there was only one God, a solar God named "Aton." In this act, Pharaoh Akhenatan was able to consolidate power in Egypt by undermining the gods in other cities and the priests who claimed their power through their own brand of gods. Anyway, when Akhenatan died, there was civil war and subsequently the other gods were re-certified. Freud suggested that one particular priest "Moses" remained faithful to the teaching regarding Akhenatan's God - and made his appeal to the Israelite Jewish community living as an underclass in Egypt - convinced them - and then led them out of Egypt. It's a wild card, but Freud published the book in the 1930s when anti-semitism was ratcheting up all over Europe and he took a lot of grief for this book, which he really didn't have to write and publish so late in his own life...

I appreciate your approach to supporting your guests. It is wholesome and humble. Thank you for all of the scholars that you have on sir.

Regarding Egyptian names in a Hebrew story, Egypt occupied Canaan for hundreds of years, It was a vassel kingdom. The cities had Egyptian governors. A lot of them probably had Egyptian names. The Moses story reverses a trope where a person of humble origin is retrojectively given a secret, royal origin (e,g. Sargon, King Arthur). The trope is that a baby of royal heritage is secretly raised by peasants, but the Moses story claims that an Egyptian ruler was really secretly an Israelite.

The Mahabharata, a book out of the Vedas, the oldest continuously practiced religion on the planet which birthed Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikh, Janists, Karna a son of one of the Gods was born of a young unmarried woman who put him in a basket and floated him down the river. He was found by a carriage driver, not a princess. He became great with superhuman talents with no training.

As a child, I questioned, among many questions on the fairie tales we, as children, were commanded to believe under pain of being cast into a pit of fire, WHO it was that witnessed 'Moses' being placed into a basket and set adrift, followed the basket carrying 'Moses' all the way to Pharoah's daughter, observed 'Moses' growing up, committing murder, fleeing, marrying, returning and then spending 40 years to travel 200 miles and lived to write the biography.

Dt. Bart Ehrman is so knowledgable and quite entertaining as well, keep up the good work, Derek

I actually attended one Rabbi Wolpe's events discussing the topic of the historicity of the Exodus. It was fascinating, because on the one hand he says "no, it didn't really happen, at least how it is written" but "nevertheless we all stood there at Sinai." I guess this is a "may not be true mythology but it is OUR mythology" things, but then one has to ask what that means to you.

People may hungry for food but me for books.... i have not finished studies but to much i love to read and hear , histories and religions...

As a mythologist, I see Moses as a conflated culture hero, like Heracles. The Moses who committed murder and ran off to hide with the Kenites was not the same Moses who confronted Pharaoh, and not the same Moses who was inducted into the Midianite family priesthood by Jethro. I see a process similar to the melding of local Heracles legends into one character.

The life of Moses is like a mosaic art,put the pieces together and tell a story

THis sounds like a really great course. I'm glad that MVP made all of us aware of it. Yeah, I've wondered a lot about the history of Moses before, so glad a Course is devoted to it by BDE.

This is not the course video itself, but already there are food for thought from Dr. Erhman. Thank you for this short video

So interesting, I love it when Bart said talking of ancient history, "we just don't know that much." I know it's hard to fathom time, like 10,000 years from now. Heck, they may be someone who claims the United States was just a myth, it never really was a nation. I mean, who's to say this place won't be obliterated in 3,000 years. After another 3,000 years everything destroyed and lost, and another 4,000 years passes and new people start building. Give them 100 years or so to really start populating, opening education, and another 300-500 years the folks around really have come along ways in their 500 year history and start fining ancient artifacts and study those for several generations, and on and on. How do we know anything:) HA!

This is quite an interesting topic for me at the moment. I'm quite glad to see bart ehrman here covering it.

I've read almoat all of Bart's books on Christianity. Extremely enlightening and scholarly. The story of Moses being floated down the Nile to be adopted by a princess has been told before in Sargon of Akkad. So like the story of the flood, the story of Moses has roots in nearby civilizations. The ancient Egyptians were copious writers. They documented everything. The amount of grain harvested year to year, the amount of wheat harvested, the amount of beer made, we have even found graffiti on the walls of the pyramids. But not one mention of the Hebrew slaves. Not one word about the 10 plagues. Especially thr death of thr first male born. That meant every family had lost a father, a son, a brother, an uncle all in one night yet not one person wrote down "WTF! Someone died in every family last night! It was all first born males!" Not one person wrote about the hundreds of thousands of Hebrews who left Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of people more than thr entire population of thr Levant, yet not one shred of archeological evidence of where they lived. It takes a huge amount of food and resources to feed so many people jd they leave a lot of trash. Not one piece of solid evidence. The Pharoah's entire army drowned in the Red Sea, or thr Sea of Reeds, so every family lost a family member in the army. Not one mention of it.

@MythVision Podcast - A interview with Bart and Francesca Stavrakopoulou would be fun.

"And what does the consensus say." How many times in history has the 'consensus' been upended? In reality you shouldn't trust 'consensus' as far as you could kick it.

Moses still exists. That is why Scripture reminds us that "We are compassed about by so great a cloud of witnesses." (Hebrews 12:1) Abraham exists too, and Jesus said that Abraham rejoiced to see His day. The question is; where will you exist when you're done here. Be careful not to blaspheme or you will be leaving us prematurely.

His comment about biblical scholars with faith commitments is surprising. I just don’t understand how any biblical scholar could stay religious after becoming so familiar with the book that it’s abundantly clear that humans wrote it with human agendas in mind, and then a plethora of editors chimed in their their own agendas over thousands of years. That’s the crack that broke my faith in the end.

Dr. Ehrman is very credible in my opinion. He learned the classical languages of biblical literature and gained the academic credentials of theology. His critical thinking and objectivity are respectable.

In the past few months I've read a few semi-scholarly works about Moses, coming from the same group of people. Before they go wack-a-doodle (to use the scientific term) toward the end of their books (and many of them do), they put up a good argument that Moses and his family were in some way closely related to Akhenaten (if not Akhenaten = Moses) and were also exiled from Egypt. One fellow said that Moses' people were incorporated into Israel as the Twelfth Tribe, and their backstory adjusted to fit Israel more comfortably. This puts Akhenaten, the first monotheist, as having had a heavy hand in influencing the Israeli pov. I like to think the Ten Plagues were memories of the eruption of Thera, and I've also seen studies where high prevailing winds swept most of the water out of some largish lake between Egypt and Israel, which has been witnessed many times in historical times, and might have been so remarkable so as to have been incorporated into this story.

This site is so good....intellectual and educational....people with real knowledge and honest enough to admit even they don't know enough to give cast iron opinions...

I'd suggest InspiringPhilosophys video on the Exodus and Moses. Very interesting with some good historical backing.

Cyrus Gordon wrote the book THE COMMON BACKGROUND OF GREEK AND HEBREW CIVILIZATIONS in 1965 in which he uncovers numerous linguist and mythic links between the two.

Yes, we was a center in the NBA in the late 70's and 80's and is a Hall of Fame player

The existence of soda water proves that Moses did exist:"And Moses hitta the rock,and SO DA water came forth"

The smoking gun for me is that no other culture is ever heard of moses, Even after allegedly leading two million people out of egypt to conquer the Levant.

It was written in Alexandria, under Greek rule, having benefitted from Greek intellectual culture, in the shadow of Herodotus and Thucydides et al, and with a desire to produce a similar monument to themselves, probably occurring with the "translation" of the Septuagint. It demonstrates for a Greek readership an allegedly ancient Jewish relationship with the Egyptians (whom the Greeks revered) and, moreover, it serves as an example of how gentile rulers who treat the Jews poorly will face the murderous wrath of YHWH. It's not History. It's ethno-religious propaganda within a very specific historical context and power dynamic, with very particular aims.

Bart is the man! I'm going to be at this course!

I love the way, when faced with biblical contradictions...internal or external...Christians invent explanations that aren't supported by observable evidence, historical record, or the _Bible._ I love it even more when the explanations they invent to _rationalize_ contradictions in _one_ part of the Bible end up _creating more_ contradictions to _other_ parts of the Bible. As for Moses/Sargon, Noah/Gilgamesh, etc. - It's reasonable to conclude that oral tradition...as oral tradition does...kept old stories alive, while updating and modifying them over time. Finaly Note: Rather than, "Take it with a grain of salt," I would love to hear Dr. Ehrman...or an interviewer...present the pun, "Take it with a _pillar_ of salt."

Most respected Dr Ehrman, we cannot thank you for what you have done. You are spreading and sharing your knowledge and information which will indeed change the views of generations. Like myself many Muslims are waiting when you will read and search Quran and then talk about it. 🌻 its always good to hear you 🌻

And Santa is real too!

Great question Derek. I noticed a big commonalities between Greek and Hebrew understanding. For example the Greek concept of miasma and blood guilt in the Hebrew Bible.

In this age of "influencers" competing to see who can be more confident and forceful, Bart's humble, friendly tone is refreshing.

Not many are aware that back in the 1920's scholars, in professional journals, were debating the finding of an ancient inscription at Serabit el Khadim whose name was MS or MS'S, some arguing this was Moses of Sinai fame. See my paper at ACADEMIA on the arguments (of the 1920s-2010).

Did Luke Skywalker exist? Did Fred Flintstone exist? Did Cap'n Crunch exist?

I just wanted to say thank you for this channel. This work is so important. Thank you thank you thank you

Some archaeologists think that Egypt occupied Canaan and Jews were slaves of Egyptians in the log Canaan. During the Passover Seder when the 10 Plagues are chanted we dip our finger into the cup of wine and drop the wine on our plate to decrease the joy of our liberation because Egyptians died to achieve it. There’s a midrash that God told the angels who were celebrating the parting of the Sea of Reeds “ My children have died stop celebrating.” I’m paraphrasing but you get the idea.

Maybe Moses and the Exodus come from various tales involving various people. Considering the closeness, wars and interactions between Egypt and Palestine, I'd assume there was multiple immigration and emigration. The Exodus story had a level of violence and we know wars were fought up and down those lands. Further, I cannot think that the biblical plagues were anything other than what happened when Santorini blew up, but scholars keep insisting the Exodus happened a few hundred years later. Whatever happened when Santorini exploded. many people in the area would have had experiences of biblical proportions.

Check out Ahmose a.k.a. Jah- Moses. He had actually defeated a pharaoh (the last Hyksos), freed his people and led them from the desert into a promised land (the reunited New Kingdom), restored and reformed their religion, brought a new law, claimed Amen "the Father" himself had spoken to him and punished his enemies, made Amen the new most high god of the egyptian state religion, no other gods to be worshipped before him. The last walls of the historical Jericho were destroyed not long before Ahmose sieged and eventually destroyed the last Hyksos in Canaan.

They were goat herders. Understand that. Telling stories was a way of life.

For years I was in complete faith in God and everything in the Bible. I can't count how many times I threw my staff on the ground expecting it to turn into a snake. Hell no, I had to go out and catch my own damned snake. No magic stick no magic snake.😢

"People making sense of their own past..." is how we should regard the Pentateuch. Unfortunately, we have a lot of cultural and institutional inertia which regards it as absolute truth, and therefore it is true as a telling of history too.

He should write a book on this

Two thousand years from now people would make Dan Brown's da vinci code novel part of their bible and call it Da Vinci (naturally)

There was a ancient Chinese philosopher and prophet like Moses, he was called Mozi. He delivered the same message from God to the people.

What do you think of D.M. Murdocks work before she passed, 'Did Moses exist? The myth of the Israelite Lawgiver'?

Every character in the Bible is a fictional character from the talking snake to the talking donkey even the characters that were based on real historic people are fictional. Sort of like when you see the president of the US portrayed in a movie. The author wrote that dialog for the character to help tell a story.

The only similarity between the story of Moses and the legend of Sargon is that they were both found floating down stream. That's all. Moses' mother placed him in the basket to save his life, while Sargon's mother placed him in the basket because she was a priestess and wasn't supposed to have children, but there was no real threat. Otherwise, both legends are completely different from each other. As a realist you have to ask yourself, how common was it for a mother to send her baby down stream?

If we assume that the first two books of the Torah were a rip of earlier literature done in the 3rd Century BC, based largely on Berossus for Genesis and Manetho for Exodus, then the clear answer is YES. Manetho says he was an Osirian priest who took a different name when he led people out of Avaris for Jerusalem. Makes fascinating reading. Especially the part about the Hebrews having been 'slaves' in Egypt for four centuries ... when the shepherd kings had ruled Egypt in the 15th to sometime in the 18th dynasties.

Love Dr. Bart. He's always like, "eat my shorts" when creationist wave their "for the Bible tells me so" flag.

On this topic, I highly recommend reading Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus, by Russell Gmirkin. There is no archeological evidence for the Pentachuch before it appears translated into Greek (the Septuigent or LXX) around 270 BC. Gmirkin shows that the Pentachuch derived from Greek sources in the library of Alexandria and was most likely composed between 273 and 273 BC.

I find it amusing that the Moses story is just a rewriting of more ancient stories. Ancient literature outside the Bible attests to several stories in which a child, perceived as a threat by an enemy, is abandoned and later spared by divine intervention or otherworldly circumstance. Roughly 30 stories like this survive from the literature of ancient Mesopotamia, Canaan, Greece, Egypt, Rome and India. The Mesopotamian work known as the Sargon Birth Legend offers the most striking parallels to the biblical story. It relates the birth story of Sargon the Great, an Akkadian emperor who ruled a number of Sumerian city-states around 2000 bc, centuries before the time of Moses. The infant boy is born into great peril: His mother is a high priestess, and he is illegitimate. Consequently, his mother sets him adrift on a river in a reed basket. The boy is rescued and raised by a gardener named Akki in the town of Kish. He becomes a humble gardener in Akki’s service until the goddess Ishtar takes an interest in him, setting him on the path to kingship.

Short answer: No.

That's interesting cause there is a Pharaoh called Amon-sé that sounds like Moses , and is said that this Pharaoh opened the Nilo River to find his fiance's ring. Can you see the similarities?

I was watching a video on the Sumerians… I was surprised to learn that the the first writing (cuneiform) only emerged around 4000 BCE … which seems to be several thousands of years after the proposed earliest events of the Bible. So, obviously, those early events could not have been written down… Just a bit of context that never previously occurred to me

I recommend Prof. Ehrman's The Triumph of Christianity. It helped me understand how Christianity spread during the first few centuries.

Where and when did the belief in Mosiac authorship originate? I don't believe this comes from the text itself, does it?

Seem like b.ehrman still did not gave a proper answer to me.. He looks very confused & unsure whether moses did lived or really existed..

It could be that during the Babylonian captivity, the Jews could have become familiar with the Sumerian/Mesopotamian Myths generally. Being right on the Med, they would have been in the cultural current of all the empires trading on the sea.

R a r e l y i ve been reading so many comments of a single video. This is the man-kind we like i guess? Sharing, humbly 😊 Thank you all. EmotionaL

It’s the same story in Hindu mythology about the birth of Krishna, who was born to a virgin and was God , his parents were of menial means. Sometimes I wonder the names Christ and Krishna sound similar.

I’ve been curious about this!

In reference to Bart Ehrman’s assertion on there being a contradiction in the biblical text in regards to the livestock all being killed in one verse but later there are livestock present when it begins to hail, here are a few possible solutions that may clear up the confusion: If one or more of these solutions is correct then the alleged contradiction is eliminated. First, Exodus 9:3 states, “Behold, the hand of the Lord will be on your cattle in the field, on the horses, on the donkeys, on the camels, on the oxen, and on the sheep-a very severe pestilence.” Surprisingly, this verse does not mention one of the most important domestic animals at that time-the goat.1 Therefore, it is possible that all of the livestock except goats were killed in the first plague on the livestock (fifth plague overall), and in the second instance it was goats that were affected by the plague of hail. Second, Exodus 9:19-20 mentions that those who “feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh” were told to get their livestock out of the fields. Some scholars mention that these Egyptians may have been warned about the previous plague of pestilence (although it was not recorded), so they still had all of their livestock left. In this scenario, God warned them to put all of their livestock in barns so they wouldn’t be killed by hail. The third possibility is similar to the previous explanation except that the survival of their livestock hinges on the phrase “servants of Pharaoh.” Perhaps this means they were not actually Egyptians, but other vassal subjects who were warned of the plagues so that their animals could be spared. So in Exodus 9:6, where it says that all the livestock of Egypt died, this view suggests that the animals belonging to these foreign vassals were spared if they obeyed God and not Pharaoh. Fourth, the Bible does not reveal how much time passed between the fifth plague and the seventh plague. Following the fifth plague, which wiped out the livestock of Egypt, the Egyptians may have taken some of the livestock belonging to Israel. Another possibility is that they bought (or took) livestock from surrounding areas (Libya, Ethiopia, Canaan, etc). The first option would require very little time to complete while the second would probably require at least a few weeks. But since the Bible does not specify how much time passed, either is possible. The fifth, and perhaps simplest solution, would be to acknowledge the fact that “all” does not always mean exclusively “all.”2 We must use the context to determine its meaning. In the case of Exodus 9:6, it might be best translated that “all manner of livestock of the Egyptians died.” In other words, the plague included all kinds of animals, as clarified in the third verse: “on the horses, on the donkeys, on the camels, on the oxen, and on the sheep-a very severe pestilence.” This is the approach taken in Coverdale’s translation, and the New English Translation includes a footnote with a similar explanation. Conclusion All five possibilities have some merit. Perhaps the truth consists of a combination of these views, or there may be another solution not addressed here. In any event, there is no contradiction. God demonstrated He was more powerful than the gods of Egypt, and He showed His wrath to the Egyptians and His mercy toward the Hebrews (and perhaps some other subjugated peoples). Source: Livestock or “Deadstock” Did the fifth plague kill all of the Egyptian livestock? by Troy Lacey on September 20, 2011 Featured in Demolishing Supposed Bible Contradictions: Volume 2 Did the fifth plague kill all of the Egyptian livestock? Troy Lacey, AiG-U.S., explains.

I am reluctant to say this, but amongst today's young people, without a specifically religious training and background, whether Moses existed or not is a matter of utter indifference to them.

Nice sneaking Dennis in, who bart refuses to acknowledge.

Moses goes up Mt. Sinai to get the Tablets. it is green and lush there unlike the desert. he asks God if he could build a hospital. (first Mt. Sinai) God replies; take two Tablets and call me in the morning.

No, of course not.

Myth Vision's vision is truly MYTHICAL 🤣

Love the laugh Bart. Great opener there.

The fact that Moses was named Moses, an Egyptian name, is unremarkable. It is the type of thing that an author of fiction must do at the bare minimum. He was named by an Egyptian pharaoh, according to the story, and had to blend in as an Egyptian throughout his early life. His name, therefore, doesn't make the story more historically credible.

Thank you for you program. It would be great IMHO to see a program on written accounts vs oral accounts. I think it would be hard to not be bias against oral accounts in this modern age, but perhaps written accounts are suspectable to corruption in ways that oral accounts are not, and vise versa.

Why would there be a Moses if there was no Exodus? And there is no evidence of an Exodus....

Tuthmosis was an Egyptian prince around the time the Volcano that destroyed Crete exploded. However, there is no way the exodus happened.

Very good. Now let us know whether Niel Armstrong really land on the moon. Also did Osama Bi Laden really exist.

Opinion of majority Christian scholars is that the oldest or earliest manuscripts are more reliable than the newest and later one but I think that the message and credibility matters most, everyone knows Paul's letters is earlier than Synoptic Gospels but the Doctrine of Paul is his own make on the other hand if we found 2nd century manuscript transmitted through oral tradition or scattered manuscript among true followers of Jesus and his desciples and then written down in a single well attested document in 2nd century so which one we have to trust upon.

It's ridiculous how those scholars are always proposing the weaker tradition as the original, and the stronger tradition as copy of the weaker one, even though it's most likely that both traditions are coming from the same root-tradition and the stronger one is closer to the original.

You and Gnostic rock

Fun thing, when Bart argues about New Testament details, he regularly uses the logical construct: this episode (e.g. John the Baptist baptizing Jesus) is likely to be true, because if it was invented by early Christians, they would have told it otherwise, because being baptized by someone else, impies being in a subordinate position to the baptizer, therefore they must have inherited this story (and that's why they had probably added the detail of God acknowledging Jesus after the event: to reinforce his being the hihger level being). Now the same logical construct is used quite differently when he suggest, it must have been a clever Israelite giving the Egyptian name, Moses to the protagonist of his story. Oops.

Sargon is mentioned in the bible. Isaiah 20:1

The reason the story has Moses put into a basket, sent down the river and discovered by the Pharaoh's daughter is that it's a retcon that explains how Moses can be a Hebrew man with an Egyptian name. If you were not familiar with the story, but you were familiar with the difference between Hebrews and Egyptians, and then I asked you to conceive of a situation in which a Hebrew man would acquire an Egyptian name, one of your theories would likely be that be was raised by Egyptians. The next obvious question would be, why wasn't he raised by his Hebrew parents? And, voila, there's your basket in the river story.

Yes Moses was real and mentioned in Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Silly question, thought that this is well known by now...

One detail which blows me away is how sketchy is Biblical history with ‘who was Moses’ as simply one example. When I attended Baylor University and their required Religion class I was taught that many of these early religious key figures may have been prefigured in stories taken from earlier Babylonian, etc., tales and great flood and creation stories. Raised as a Fundamentalist Christian child I was taught that you cannot question the veracity of Biblical truth by giving any credence to these earlier “folk” tales even if these stories seem related.

When the trail is millennia cold,we keep coming up short on evidence and long on speculation. I doubt we'll ever know exactly when the history ends and the legend begins. I believe the subjective rather than the objective is where the value of all faiths reside. People have to realize the difference between history and mythos for themselves, otherwise they abandon reason for the sake of faith,and that can't be right..

Please note, Bible stories have SOME truth to them. However, as most word of mouth depictions, they become distorted and many times blown out of proportion. There was a Moses but his name was not Moses. So the story line is probably over-blown or made up. But still, there were persons who led groups of Jews out of Egypt. The Moses story NEVER was written down for many years (1000 years?). We also love fairyrales!

The cognitive dissonance of Bart saying all this about Moses and then not applying it to Jesus is astonishing.

For those unfamiliar with literary criticism, I recommend Dinkler’s “Literary Theory and the New Testament” (Yale Press).

The Noah/Gilgamesh parallels are absolutely not the same as the Moses/Sargon parallel as the former could fundamentally be variants of the same individual/myth whereas the latter looks more like elements of one individual/myth lifted and grafted onto another, otherwise unrelated one.

"When Moses entered the Cloud and was taken up, he found a mighty angel named Quemouel, surrounded by twelve thousand followers. But when the angel tried to approach Moses, he pronounced the Holy Name in its seventy-two letters, which the Holy One had revealed to him in the burning bush. Thereupon the angel went back twelve thousand leagues. Moses continued his passage in the Cloud, and his eyes glowed like red-hot coals." ZOHAR, PAGE 168-169

I realize I'm in a minority, but I just can never finish watching a video featuring Dr. Ehrman. I find his habit of frequently laughing at things I don't find amusing very annoying.