60 Fun Facts About Moses

As a baby, Moses was hidden by his mother in a basket among the bulrushes of which river?

Pharaoh had ordered every newborn Hebrew boy drowned; the princess who found the child adopted him as a foundling.

Who found the infant Moses in the river and raised him?

Exodus never names her; Josephus and the Book of Jubilees call her Thermouthis, and Jewish tradition Bithiah.

Moses' birth mother, who was later hired to nurse her own son, was named what?

She was a daughter of Levi and, by one reckoning in Numbers, the aunt of her own husband Amram.

Moses fled Egypt after killing an Egyptian who was doing what?

He escaped to Midian, where he met his future wife at a well.

Moses' wife Zipporah was one of the seven daughters of which Midianite priest?

Exodus also calls him Reuel and Judges calls him Hobab, a puzzle that has kept commentators busy for centuries.

On the road back to Egypt, Zipporah saves Moses' life by doing what?

The strange 'incident at the inn' has God trying to kill Moses for neglecting the rite.

What were the names of Moses' two sons?

Their grandsons Shebuel and Rehabiah get a passing mention in Chronicles.

God first spoke to Moses from a burning bush on which mountain?

The Hebrew word for the bush, seneh, appears nowhere else in the Bible and may be a pun on Sinai.

What did God tell Moses to do before approaching the burning bush?

Visitors to the Chapel of the Burning Bush at Saint Catherine's Monastery must still take off their shoes.

What reason did Moses give for not wanting to be God's spokesman before Pharaoh?

A rabbinic legend blames a childhood injury to his tongue for the stammer.

Which sign was Moses given at the burning bush involving his staff?

Before Pharaoh, a Hebrew rod later swallowed the rods of the Egyptian sorcerers.

What was the first of the ten plagues of Egypt?

Even water stored in jars turned to blood, and it was a week before the plague lifted.

Which plague came second, with Pharaoh's magicians conjuring a second wave of their own?

Three days passed before all of them died, and even Pharaoh's private quarters were infested.

The tenth and final plague was what?

The plagues are still recited every year at the Passover Seder.

The Hebrew name of the sea the Israelites crossed, Yam Suph, is often translated as what?

The Greek Septuagint rendered it Erythra Thalassa, the Red Sea, and the name stuck.

Where does the Bible say Pharaoh's chariots overtook the Israelites before the sea parted?

The camp lay between Migdol and the sea, opposite Baal-zephon.

In the oldest layer of the crossing story, what does God use to push the sea back?

Scholars see four layers in the account; the two walls of water belong to a later one.

Which sister of Moses leads the women in song and dance after the crossing of the sea?

The Torah calls her a prophetess, and the Talmud lists her among the seven major female prophets of Israel.

The Song of the Sea in Exodus 15 is regarded by some scholars as what?

The Sabbath on which it is read is called Shabbat Shirah, the Sabbath of Song.

What did the Israelites call the food that appeared each morning in the wilderness?

The name is said to come from the question 'man hu?', roughly 'what is it?'.

Exodus says the raw wilderness food tasted like wafers made with what?

One modern theory identifies it with the crystallised honeydew of scale insects living on Sinai tamarisk trees.

The Israelites defeated which people at Rephidim while Moses held up his hands?

Two companions held his arms up until sunset, according to Exodus 17.

The Hebrew name for the Ten Commandments literally means what?

The Greek dekalogos is a straight translation, which is why they are also called the Decalogue.

How long was Moses on Mount Sinai before coming down with the tablets?

The mountain had been covered by cloud for six days before he went up on the seventh.

Who fashioned the golden calf while Moses was on the mountain?

He told the people to bring their golden earrings, then claimed the calf simply came out of the fire.

What did Moses do with the golden calf after burning it?

Some three thousand people were killed by the Levites that day.

What did Moses do with the first set of stone tablets when he saw the calf?

God then told him to hew two new tablets and rewrote the words on them.

Moses' brother and sister criticised him for marrying a woman described as what?

His sister was struck with a skin disease for a week as punishment; midrash insists the 'Cushite' was really Zipporah.

Who led a revolt against Moses' leadership and was punished for it?

The rebels were swallowed up by the earth, and the priest Eleazar was told to collect the censers of the dead.

Moses made a bronze serpent on a pole to cure Israelites bitten by what?

A later reforming king smashed the object, by then called Nehushtan, because people were sacrificing to it.

Which prophet was hired to curse Israel but blessed them instead during the wilderness years?

He is best remembered for the talking donkey that saw an angel before he did.

To whom did Moses pass his authority before he died?

He also sang a song of praise and pronounced a blessing on the people, as told in Deuteronomy.

According to Deuteronomy, how old was Moses when he died?

The Jewish blessing 'may you live to 120' comes from this, along with the note that his eye had not dimmed.

From which mountain did Moses view the Promised Land before he died?

The ridge is in modern Jordan; Jericho is usually visible from the top and Jerusalem on a very clear day.

What does Deuteronomy 34 say about the location of Moses' grave?

Islamic tradition nonetheless venerates a tomb at Maqam El-Nabi Musa near Jericho.

Rabbinic Judaism traditionally dates Moses' life to which span?

Jerome preferred 1592 BCE for his birth and Archbishop Ussher 1571 BCE.

The name Moses is linked to an Egyptian element meaning 'child of', seen in which pharaoh's name?

Josephus and Philo already recognised the name as Egyptian, though Exodus explains it as 'drawn out' of the water.

Which two Old Testament figures appear with Jesus at the Transfiguration in the Gospels?

Moses is mentioned more often in the New Testament than any other Old Testament figure.

How many times is Moses named in the Quran, more than any other individual?

Muslims honour him as Kalim Allah, 'the one who talks with God'.

In the Quran, who finds the baby Moses floating on the river?

She is known as Asiya, and is honoured as one of the greatest women in Islamic tradition.

In the Quran, who builds the golden calf in Moses' absence?

He is exiled and the calf burned to ashes and scattered on the sea.

Islamic tradition has Moses journey to meet a mysterious wise servant of God named what?

The story in Surah Al-Kahf has no biblical parallel; a fish slipping out of a basket marks the meeting place.

In the Night Journey, Moses gets the daily prayers reduced from fifty to what?

He repeatedly sends Muhammad back to ask for a further reduction.

Why did Michelangelo give his famous statue of Moses a pair of horns?

The Hebrew keren can mean horn or beam of light; Jerome chose 'horned', and Western artists followed for centuries.

Michelangelo's Moses was commissioned in 1505 for the tomb of which pope?

The tomb was not finished until 1545, decades after the pope's death.

Michelangelo's Moses stands in which Roman church?

Sigmund Freud spent three weeks in 1913 studying it, and published an essay on it in 1916.

Who played Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 epic The Ten Commandments?

He was noted for resembling Michelangelo's statue; the film has aired on US network TV every Passover-Easter season since 1973.

Which actor played Rameses opposite Heston in The Ten Commandments (1956)?

The film won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and was the top-grossing movie of 1956.

Which studio's first traditionally animated film was The Prince of Egypt (1998)?

Jeffrey Katzenberg had pitched an animated Ten Commandments while still at Disney.

Who voiced Moses, and also uncredited the voice of God, in The Prince of Egypt?

The filmmakers wanted God to sound like the voice Moses would hear inside his own head.

Which song from The Prince of Egypt won the Academy Award for Best Original Song?

Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey recorded the hit pop version.

Sigmund Freud's last book, Moses and Monotheism (1939), argued that Moses was what?

Freud tied him to the sun-worship of Akhenaten and claimed he was murdered in the wilderness; historians regard the theory as pseudohistory.

A rabbinic legend explains Moses' speech impediment by saying that as a child he put what in his mouth?

Offered gold or coal to test whether he had grabbed Pharaoh's crown on purpose, he was guided to the coal by the angel Gabriel.

The bronze serpent Moses made was destroyed by which reforming king of Judah?

People had been offering sacrifices to the object, which had come to be called Nehushtan.

How many times does Moses appear in the carvings ringing the US Supreme Court's Great Hall?

He also holds two tablets on the building's east pediment, and the courtroom frieze shows a tablet marked I to X.

What was the name of Moses' father, a descendant of Kehath the Levite?

His family had entered Egypt with Jacob's household and settled in Goshen before a new Pharaoh began oppressing the Israelites.

The story of baby Moses in the basket echoes the origin legend of which Mesopotamian ruler?

The motif of a ruler rising from humble origins was common in the ancient Near East; Sargon's tale dates to the 23rd century BCE.

Which fourth-century BCE Greek writer gives the earliest reference to Moses in Greek literature?

Only two quotations survive, via Diodorus Siculus, describing Moses as a wise leader who left Egypt and colonised Judaea.

Which 1872 theory held that Yahweh was originally a Midianite god introduced to Israel by Moses?

It rests on Moses' father-in-law Jethro being a Midianite priest, though modern consensus holds most Israelites were native to Canaan.

Alexandrian Jewish historians such as Eupolemus credited Moses with teaching which people their alphabet?

Artapanus went further, identifying Moses with Thoth and with Musaeus, the legendary teacher of Orpheus.