What did the historical Moses actually do?

by captain_coral

Which things that Moses did do historians generally accept as true and which are more likely exaggerated or even fictional? Who was Moses really?

brojangles

There is no historical evidence for Moses outside the Bible.

The archaeological evidence of Egypt, Palestine and the Sinai shows no evidence that the Israelites were ever enslaved in Egypt, that they were ever in the Sinai or that they conquered Canaan. It's become accepted in the relevant fields now that there was no Biblical Exodus or historical Moses, although there are some speculative hypotheses that the story could have been based on some smaller scale, pre-Israelite event of a group of slaves escaping from Egypt to Canaan. This has no evidence either and still has problems of its own.

I think it probably has some kind of origin in garbled memories of the Hyksos expulsion. Moses might be some sort of flipped-script version the Pharaoh Amose 1, who chased the Hyksos out of Egypt.

Searocksandtrees