Moses the Egyptian Sorcerer
Who Became God’s Prophet
Moses the Egyptian Sorcerer
Who Became God’s Prophet
Before he became the law giver of Israel, the ‘smiters’ of plagues, and the best friend to the Almighty, Moses was, if we are to be honest about the textual breadcrumbs, an Egyptian magician. A court-trained initiate, a temple adept.
This was a man who could wield a serpent staff, summon plagues, and “speak with God face to face,” which in ancient Egypt was called heka: divine magic through the spoken word.
The biblical editors couldn’t let that stand, obviously. They needed a clean break between “pagan Egypt” and “holy Israel.” So they did what male theologians have always done with inconvenient truths: they did their best to rewrite, rebrand, and rename.
They turned a magician into a prophet. Mystery teachings from Egypt were recast into Hebrew law. They took Moses’s heritage and replaced it with a sacrosanct borrowed backstory, turning him into a dissident of the empire he was supposed to have run away from. Instead of a regular product of the empire, he was made to look like a divine product.
