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Moses

servant of the LORD (Deu 34:5) · the meekest man on earth (Num 12:3)

Role
prophet, lawgiver
Era
1400 BC–1200 BC
Passages
784
Named in
Old Testament (19 books), New Testament (12 books)

Depends on which Exodus date is followed.

Led the Israelites out of Egypt and is traditionally credited with the Torah.

The name

More than one form is recorded — a renaming, or the Greek and Hebrew of the same person. They are listed under one entry rather than as separate people.

Family

Veneration

Eastern Orthodox
Venerated — The Holy Prophet Moses Feast: 4 September
Baptist
Not venerated

Honoured as a prophet and example; no cult of saints.

Read as a pattern

Outside scripture

Traditional

Jewish and Christian tradition holds Moses the author of the Torah, a view assumed throughout the New Testament.

Attestation. Referred to as "the book of Moses" in the Gospels and Acts.

Critical

Historical-critical scholarship treats the Pentateuch as composite, edited over a long period, and finds no direct extra-biblical evidence for Moses himself; opinion on a historical figure behind the tradition ranges widely.

Attestation. No contemporary Egyptian record names him. The Merneptah Stele (c. 1208 BC) attests Israel as a people in Canaan, which bears on the period rather than on the man.

This is a question of evidence, not of doctrine, and is kept separate from the disagreements above for that reason.

Places named alongside

Named in

Showing the first 60 of 784 passages, in canonical order.

Passages are linked from the tagged text; the summary and any positions above are written by hand and cited.