Begotten One

Defending the historicity of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt and the exodus, GE Wright pointed to the prevalence of non-Semitic Egyptian names in the early history of Israel: “Moses, an abbreviation of a longer name, is from an Egyptian verb meaning ‘to bear, beget.’ The same verbal element occurs in such Egyptian names as Thutmose and Rameses, the first syllables of which are god-names while the remainder indicates that the god is the begetter of the person named. Other Levite names apparently acquired from the Egyptian language are Phinehas, Hophni, Pashuer, and perhaps Hur and Merari.”

This is important historical evidence, but it is also theologically significant. In life, Moses may well have been named “Begotten-by-Nile.” In the Bible, he is simply Moses – the begotten one, the true son of Yahweh, the true Israelite, type of the Only-Begotten. Also Moses is simply Moses, not Moses/begotten of Thoth or Ram or Horus, but Moses/begotten of the unnamed.

And, once again, it seems that in the early story of Moses, Yahweh already mocks Egypt and her gods.