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1 The story of Joseph was the bridge, at the end of Genesis, between the age of the Patriarchs in Canaan and the story of Moses in Exodus, in Egypt. Exodus is the real foundation book of the OT in which GOD is the main character, so again we are dealing with ‘sacred history’, rather than Real History which would be constructed from hard evidence and contemporary documents. The storytellers have condensed, modified and simplified their material to tell what matters, rather than how events really happened.

2 Like the patriarchal stories, the stories of Exodus also sit comfortably into the known history of Egypt in the 2nd mill. BCE. It was hoped during the last, 20th century CE, that real historical evidence for Moses and Aaron, and the escape of the Hebrew slaves would be discovered by scholars, but sadly, No! They have, however, given us much information about ancient Egyptian culture and life. We know that ‘foreign rulers’ prevailed with their new military technology, horse-drawn chariots, and were known as the Hyksos,. They abandoned the ancient capital city of Thebes in favour of a new city near the frontier, called Avaris, but were so disliked that little was written about them. It is possible that Jacob's family was made welcome in Egypt during their era, and a wall-painting in a tomb at Beni Hasan shows that this could happen.

3 Pharaoh Ahmose I, (the Napoleonic Pharaoh), overthrew the Hyksos and established the strong 18th dynasty. Avaris was destroyed and its builders forgotten, while Egyptian influence became dominant again through Canaan. At the end of this dynasty the monotheistic, reforming Pharaoh Akhnaton reversed the situation, leaving in the ruins of his capital, El Amarna, much diplomatic correspondence from Canaanite vassal kings appealing for help as the Hittites reasserted their dominance. The 19^th dynasty put all that right again! Seti I continued to reassert Egyptian nationalism by oppressing all foreigners who posed a potential threat to security. This could be the setting for the stories we find at the beginning of Exodus; the time would also 'fit', in the 13th cent.BCE. Possibly, then, Moses was a playmate of young Rameses, whose reign followed Seti’s. The two cities mentioned in Ex.1, Pithom and Rameses tally with evidence on the walls and columns of Karnak in the huge temple that was being restored to the glory of the Egyptian pantheon of gods.

4 Unlike Mesopotamia where the gods were thought to meet in council with the chief god, and kings on earth imitated them in ritual drama, the Egyptian religion conferred absolute authority on the Pharaoh to rule divinely on their behalf. This gave Egyptian society a stability unknown elsewhere and indeed made the Pharaoh very powerful.

5 Moses was born, according to Exodus, into the tribe of Levi, the key family in the OT story. Moses was the originator of the prophetic line of development which survived the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD/CE, and produced the Rabbis who decided which of their many books should finally become ‘Scripture’, ie. our ‘Old Testament'. His brother, Aaron, was the originator of the priestly line of development which can be traced through to the Sadducees who were exterminated by the Romans. The story of the hiding of Moses in a basket of reeds covered with bitumen in the River Nile is delightful. It is, though, an old legend, first told about the birth of King Sargon III of Akkad (later Assyria), long before the time of Abraham. Enjoy the story. It accounts for the tradition that Moses appeared to all who knew him as an Egyptian, in appearance, and in his royal upbringing, and education which prepared him to be a great leader of people in his later years. He would also be au fait with all the court etiquette, and take part in all Egyptian religious activities.

6 The Hebrew people, now part of Pharaoh's workforce, had no liking for Moses, and showed no loyalty when he killed their cruel taskmaster. Moses had to leave Egypt very quickly indeed to avoid arrest, and fled with no luggage, out of Egypt and into the land of Midian, in the Sinai peninsular.

7 In the wilderness area of Midian Moses may well not have survived the change from place life had he not been invited home by the family of young girls whom he met at a well. Their father, Jethro/Reuel, a Kenite, and a priest of the God of Midian, absorbed Moses into his family, taught him how to live simply, and as a shepherd, and allowed him to marry his eldest daughter, Zipporah. Moses would also have learnt to honour the God of Midian and his sacred mountain in Sinai, sometimes known as Horeb.

8 Ex.3 records the religious event which changed Moses's life for evermore. It is a theophany story - the human experience of holiness that is almost too powerful to contemplate, and certainly almost impossible to describe without using picture-language. Moses’s attention was caught by a burning bush that was not burning away. His first instinct was a very ancient one, to remove his shoes in acknowledgement of his submission to "the Holy One", before he received a big surprise: he became aware that this God, the God of Midian, was none other than the God of his own shepherd ancestors, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. Then he was commanded to return to Egypt in order to bring all his fellow-countrymen to meet their God at this sacred mountain.

9 Moses was terrified, as is common after such an experience of the presence of God, and also afraid to return to Egypt. He made many excuses but to no avail. Eventually he complained that he did not even know the NAME of the God who had commissioned him. The E-code story tells of the revelation of this God's personal name, YHWH, a name still so enigmatic that it remains a mystery.

10 YHWH These four letters of the sacred name are known as the Tetragrammeton. The pronunciation has been long forgotten, but possibly YaHWeH is the nearest we can now get. This name appears nearly 8,000 times in the Hebrew OT text, and can be recognised in our English translations as LORD, printed in capital letters. Unfortunately a mis-translation in the 16th cent AD/Ce has left us with the incorrect Jehovah. Its importance, however, lies not in what it was originally, but in what it became in the OT, which is sometimes described as a whole as the description of the character of God.

11 All four of the contributing codes to our story include the revelation of the name YHWH: J at the beginning in Gen.4.26, E at the Call of Moses at Sinai, the D-code of Deuteronomy in Ex.20.1, and the P code in Ex.6.2-3. So it was YHWH who had issued the command to Moses and "put his signature at the bottom!"

12 The story continues, with YHWH telling what would happen next, and the storytellers describing how it did. Moses ran out of excuses and asked YHWH to send someone else. YHWH ran out of patience, and (into the P code), told Moses to take Aaron for help and support. Moses returned to Jethro for permission to go, and we read that his son, Gershom, was hurriedly circumcised before he left.

13 Moses returned to Egypt and found his way back to court to meet Rameses (his former playmate?), who was not amused! He gave a resounding NO to the request of Moses's new God, the God of his brickmakers, and gave orders to make their work much more difficult. They in turn resented Moses and Aaron's interference in their lives. The scene was set for YHWH to show his might and to rescue them from their slavery, and lead them to freedom in the land promised to their ancestor, Abraham, the theme of the whole OT.