Moses

Thutmose II

Because of his name and the dating in 1 Kings of 1441, some researchers have surmised that the pharaoh who ruled previous to that time, Thutmose II (fl. 1500/1493–1489/79 BCE), was Moses himself. For example, after attempting to locate various places cited in the Mosaic account, Christian physician Dr. Lennart Möller tries to identify the “historical Moses” with Thutmose II, whose Egyptian name dhwty-ms is transliterated also as Thutmosis, Tuthmose, Tutmosis, Thothmes, Tuthmosis, Djhutmose and so on.

Land Flowing with Milk and Honey

As seen above, in his commentary on Exodus 3.8, Clarke remarks: “A land flowing with milk and honey... The poets feign that Bacchus, the fable of whom they have taken from the history of Moses, produced rivers of milk and honey, of water and wine...” He then reproduces the Greek of Euripides (“Bacch., Εποδ., ver. 8”), after which he further comments:

God-Given Legislators

Like the divine birth, another ubiquitous tradition was that of civilizing laws and texts passed from a deity to a prophet or holy man, as demonstrated in the quote by Diodorus at the head of this chapter. The common divine lawgiver myth is summarized likewise by Dr. Henricus Oort, a Dutch theologian and professor of Hebrew Antiquities at the University of Leiden:

The Super-Hero Births

“But we must make mention of the lawgivers who arose in Egypt and who ordained some strange and marvelous customs. For in primitive Egypt, after life had become settled (which according to myth took place in the era of gods and heroes), they say that the first person who convinced the people to use written laws was Mneves, a man both lofty in spirit and the most altruistic in his way of life of any lawgiver in memory.

An Egyptian Priest or Pharaoh?

“An Egyptian priest named Moses, who possessed a portion of the country called the Lower [Egypt]…, being dissatisfied with the established institutions there, left it and came to Judæa with a large body of people who worshipped the Divinity. He declared and taught that the Egyptians and Africans entertained erroneous sentiments, in representing the Divinity under the likeness of wild beasts and cattle of the field; that the Greeks also were in error in making images of their gods after the human form.

Dionysus

“The only gods the Arabs recognize are Dionysus and Urania; the way they cut their hair—all round in a circle, with the temples shaved—is, they say, in imitation of Dionysus. Dionysus in their language is Orotalt, and Urania Alilat.”

Herodotus, The Histories (3.8.3)

“...the time and manner of the greatest and most holy solemnity of the Jews is exactly agreeable to the holy rites of Bacchus; for that which they call the Fast they celebrate in the midst of the vintage…”

Plutarch, Symposiacs (4.6.2)

Dionysus' Life

“The Bacchus story also contained remarkable similarities to Mosaic attributes and legends. For, as Bochart pointed out, both Bacchus and Moses were born in Egypt, shut up in an ‘ark,’ and put on the waters. Both fled from Egypt toward the Red Sea and had serpents (in Moses’ case, a bronze serpent). For both, water flowed from a rock and milk and honey were provided. Both were called legislators, turned sticks into snakes, saw light in the darkness, and had unknown tombs...”

Dr. Gerald R. McDermott, Jonathan Edwards Confronts the Gods (91)