Moses scholarship has long held that the name “Moses” is one of the irreducible elements of the Moses narrative and would be an essential link to the exodus tradition, if it indeed is derived from the Egyptian root mśy, “to be born”.
In Manetho, Moses is identified with a rebellious Egyptian priest Osarseph as the leader of lepers, maybe in an Anti-Semitic motivation (see Schäfer, 1997; Assmann, 2002; Römer, 2008; Thonhauser, 2009; Moore, 2015). Among the very few elements of the textual tradition that are widely seen as irreducible elements of an original, historically genuine layer, the name “Moses” (הׁ ֶשֹמ, mōšǽ) itself figures most prominently. Jörg Jeremias has emphasized that the Egyptian name is one of the fundamentals of the Moses narrative (Jeremias, 2015: 85–86; also Blum, 2012: 49). Most scholars agree that this name has an Egyptian origin and goes back to a form of the Egyptian root mśy, “to be born” (e.g., Hoffmeier, 1999: 140–141; Dijkstra, 2006: 18–20; Frevel, 2018: 59). The personal name would thus represent an essential piece of historical information and implicitly also link Moses to the Exodus tradition. Rudolf Smend: ‘We can most likely exclude later invention [of the name] because how could Israel possibly have given the man whom it regarded as its founder a name precisely in the language of those from whose oppression he had saved the people?’ (“Spätere Erfindung dürfte auszuschließen sein; wie sollte Israel dem Mann, den es als seinen Begründer ansah, einen Namen gerade in der Sprache derer beilegen, aus deren Hand er das Volk gerettet hatte?” Smend, 1995: 15–16). The consensus among Biblical scholars has reached such a degree that Thomas Römer goes as far as to say that the name is ‘undisputably of Egyptian origin’ (‘indiscutablement d’origine égyptienne’; Römer, 2015: 75). This is certainly not true; doubts about the name have indeed often been raised. However, as Erhard Blum has concluded, the wide-spread acceptance of the derivation of the name from the root mśy is due to the simple fact that no convincing alternative has ever been proposed (Blum, 2012: 38).
The Egyptian Name Forms: Meanings and Phonology
Names of the Type “Thutmose” (Divine Name + Stative):
Names like “Thutmose” or “Ramose” need to be kept separate from names such as “Ramses”. The name “Moses” cannot be an abbreviation of either of these names, as Jenni, 2016: 158 states (with an incorrect identification and translation of the name forms).
One-Word Name with the Noun mśw, “Child”:
The other suggested Egyptian form is the noun mśw, “child”, preserved in Coptic as SB mas mas and S mase mase, 8 used in this late phase primarily for young animals and birds. This late form goes back to a form *mès (Schenkel, 1983: 185; Osing, 1976: 228). è itself in stressed syllables is the successor to either Paleo-Coptic ì or ù; the shift to è occurred between the time of Ramses II and the Neo-Assyrian conquest (Schenkel, 1990: 87). In consequence, the noun was either *mìs or *mùs under Ramses II. This reconstruction of the vocalization of the suggested verbal or nominal forms that are believed to be reflected in the name “Moses” leads to the first, not fully acknowledged (Griffiths, 1953: 228–229; Görg, 2000: 23) problem presented by this equation: the vocalization pattern.
The Phonological Problems: Vocalization and Sibilants
The different vocalization adds to the second problem on which so far most scholarly attention has focused: the different sibilants.In this respect it is important to underline that the precise phonological nature of Egyptian <È> is unclear; in transcriptions of the New Kingdom (1530–1070 BCE) it is mostly used to render Semitic /È/ and /t/ (while Egyptian /š/ is the regular equivalent of Semitic /š/ (Hoch, 1994: 402–405; 409–410). The reverse situation is not clear, due to the lack of Egyptian-Semitic transcriptions.9 Scholars advocating for the Egyptian derivation of the name Moses posit that Egyptian <È> would have been rendered by the voiceless interdental /t/ in Semitic, and that this would have produced /š/ as a result of the regular internal phonetic shift in Hebrew (Quack, 2000; reiterated by Breyer, 2019: 65–66). However, other scholars have maintained that the transcription of Egyptian /ś/ by Hebrew /š/ is not regular. Yoshiyuki Muchiki has for this very reason ruled out that the name “Moses” could be Egyptian (Muchiki, 1999: 217; criticized by Noonan, 2019, 277 with n. 13 who considers the equivalence possible), and scholars like Kenneth Kitchen (2003: 296–297) and James Hoffmeier (2016: 19–20) have again expressed doubts. Alternatively, a rendering of Egyptian <È> by Semitic /È/ appears possible in principle and is suggested by a borrowed term for ship, Hebr.* È e kiyyā (or *È e kît; only the plural form is attested in Isa 2:16) < Eg. Èk.tÏ (as opposed to > Ugaritic tkt) (Muchiki, 1999: 255; 315; Breyer, 2019: 165; Noonan 2019: 205–6).10 In this case (and disregarding the vocalization pattern), the Hebrew name should thus be *mōśǽ and not mōšǽ, with Hebrew Sin and not Shin.
In the first millennium BCE, the Semitic equivalent of Egyptian /ś/ is Samek, as shown by the rendering of “Ramses” as רעמסס in Ex 1:11 – a clear indication that this cannot be a historical reminiscence from the New Kingdom (according to Redford, 2009: 175, not earlier than end of the eighth c. BCE).
A number of attempts have been made to explain the different sibilants, on the assumption that the Hebrew-Egyptian identification is valid. John Gwyn Griffiths postulated a difference between a temporary borrowing and a permanent adoption of a name (Griffiths, 1953: 229–230). Manfred Görg suggested that the explanation of the name by the root mšy in Exodus 2 could have induced a sibilant change in the Biblical text (Görg, 2000: 23). Other scholars (e.g., James Hoffmeier) claimed dialectal differences for the rendering of /ś/ by /š/, maintaining that “these considerations show that we cannot always expect sibilants going between Egyptian and Semitic languages conform to rigid rules set by modern linguists” (Hoffmeier, 1999: 141).
- Exodus 2.10 Speculations: e מְ שִ ׁיתִ הּ îtihû
Interpretations Relating to the Idea of “Drawing (A Child) from the Water”:
**On the assumption that mōšǽ is a transcription of an Egyptian verbal form or noun derived from the root mśy, many authors have advanced the hypothesis according to which the author of Exodus 2 (to some scholars, also the readers) knew of this etymology of the name. E.g., Andrzej Strus (1978: 64) and I. Willi-Plein (1991) have surmised that the root ילד” to give birth; child” which appears often in Exod 1:15–2:10, is a covert allusion to the Egyptian meaning of the name; an idea reiterated in many recent commentaries (Albertz, 2012: 60; Dozeman, 2009: 81–82; cf. also Jenni, 2016: 158). **
However, in a birth narrative, the omnipresence of the root ילד seems evident without the additional motivation of a covert explication of a name. In this respect, it is conspicuous to observe that no single Jewish or Christian author in the reception history of Exodus in antiquity – when the forms (Egyptian) mÐse and (Hebrew) mōšǽ had at last almost fully converged phonetically – actually associated the two name forms with each other. In a detailed study, Heinz-Josef Thissen reviewed the antique speculation about the name Moses which focused on the Greek variants of the name, Μωσης, Μωυσης and Μουσης (Thissen, 2004). The ancient etymologists12 interpreted the Greek forms as “saved from the water”, identifying the first element with Egyptian mw (in Komposita, μου-), and the second most likely with –σης < T#y, ‘taken’ (thus = ‘water-taken’). Some scholars skeptical of the derivation of the Moses name from Eg. mśy have וַתִ ּקְ רָ א שְ ׁמֹו מֹשֶ ׁה וַּתאֹמֶ ר כִ ּי מִ ן- ) 2:10 Ex in provided explanation the to pointed instead וּה ִיתׁ ִש ְמ םִיּ ַמַה:’ And she called his name “Moses” and said: because from the water I have drawn him’. In their view, the root mšy ‘to draw’ would not be a folk etymology but instead provide the correct root underlying the name mōšǽ (Muchiki, 1999: 217; Kitchen, 2003: 296–297). However, from a Hebrew perspective, the name is an active and not a passive participle (Hoffmeier, 1999: 142; Jenni, 2016: 158). Given that the root appears only once more in the Hebrew Bible in a psalm ascribed to David (2 Sam 22:17 = Ps 18:17) where it denotes drawing from water as a metaphor for saving, could one possibly argue that the name is an abbreviated form of a theophoric personal name, “(DN) is a saviour”? Or does the name anticipate Moses’ saving of his people from bondage through the waters of the Red Sea (Jenni, 2016: 158)?
Hanna Jenni’s 2016 Proposal:
Hanna Jenni advances an ingenious new explanation. She regards not only the name “Moses” but also the verbal form as derived from the Egyptian root mśy; me מְ שִ ׁיתִ הּו šîtihû would thus be an inflected Hebrew form of the Egyptian verb mśy. This means that the author, knowledgeable of the derivation of the name הׁ ֶשֹמ “Moses” from (purportedly) the root mśy “to give birth, engender”, would have used the same Egyptian root to explain the personal name. For the sake of demonstration, we can use a French equivalent in English to exemplify this strategy: “And she called his name enfant and said: because from the water I have enfanted him”.
Summary
In summary, there are two alternatives we face in assessing the name mōšǽ:
- (1) The name represents a borrowing of the Egyptian stative form mþÈ+y from the period of Iron Age I/II but underwent in its new (Israelite) linguistic context the shift of vowel qualities a-i > o-e like the similar Northwest Semitic active participle, in addition to a change of the vowel quantity (short to long /a/), the sibilant (/ś/ > /š/; alternatively adopted into Hebrew as /t/ and then undergoing the internal shift > /š/) and the position of the stress (first syllable to second syllable). The question arises whether such a scenario is likely for a borrowed name, and whether the name of a legendary hero would be modified rather than retained unchanged?13 If we assume a takeover of the name after the vowel shift occurred in ancient Egypt (c. sixth century BCE), we can avoid the secondary vocalization change although the sibilant rendering and the stress position would still be incorrect. This would implicate a similarly late date for the figure of Moses and appears too late with regard to currently proposed dates for the origins of the Moses tradition.14
- (2) Alternatively, the name reflects an active participle of a Northwest Semitic root mšy; however, such a root is no longer attested in Northwest Semitic onomastics. Since the Canaanite vowel shift ā > ō occurred gradually after the fifteenth century BCE (Gzella, 2011: 434), the name הׁ ֶשֹמ Mōšǽ could be the genuine form of a name originating in the Iron Age I period – or later. This hypothesis avoids the complex assumptions necessary in scenario 1 (see the end of this paragraph for a proposal).
Given this situation of the linguistic evidence, the conclusion is all but inescapable that the name “Moses” is not likely of Egyptian origin. Instead, the name “Moses” would most probably constitute a Northwest Semitic personal name, of uncertain etymology. Thus, it will be mandatory to reopen the debate on its meaning and the significance of the root שהׁמ in Exod 2:10 and 2Sam 22:17 = Ps 18:17.
https://youtu.be/RWZLR0vtWOg?t=141 Richard Elliot Friedman, “it is more probable than not that Moses existed”.