c. 13th century BCE. *Prophet and lawgiver. The stories of Moses are found in the Books of *Exodus, *Leviticus, *Numbers and *Deuteronomy. After being brought up in the Egyptian court, he fled to Midian, having killed an Egyptian. There he encountered *God in a burning bush.
He was commanded to lead the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt to liberation in the *Promised Land. During the course of the journey, he received God’s revelation of the *Torah on Mount *Sinai. In the tradition, Moses has a unique status. He is described as ‘Moshe Rabbenu’ (Moses, our Master) and the rabbis taught that the whole world owes its existence to the merits of Moses and *Aaron. Besides receiving the written Torah, he was said to have been given the entire *Oral Law. One of *MaimonidesPrinciples of the Jewish Faith was that the *revelation to Moses was superior to that of any other prophet. According to the Christian tradition, he appeared with the prophet *Elijah at the Transfiguration of Jesus and the Muslim Koran teaches that he predicted the coming of the prophet Mohammed. However the rabbis were anxious to avoid a personality cult of Moses; they recognised his faults and the Book of Deuteronomy stresses that because of his sin, he was not himself allowed to reach the Promised Land.
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