The Baby in the Basket

Parshat Shmot

Before we get started, some self-congratulations are due.  This blog has successfully made it through one book of the Torah (and the longest one too). We are beginning the second book Shmot (Exodus) this week.  If you've been following along since then, you deserve some congratulations too. Especially if you come from a religious background!

How to Save a Child

Anyway, now that that's out of the way, today we will look at one of the more famous stories in this week's parsha.  That is the story of the birth of Moshe (Moses).  The basic storyline is probably familiar to you, but I'll repeat it anyway.  The Egyptian Pharaoh orders that all male children born to the Israelites should be thrown into the river or killed by midwives.  In order to save her baby, Moshe, Yocheved puts him in a basket and places him in a river, presumably a branch of the Nile.  The baby is found by an Egyptian princess, who recognizes that it's an Israelite, but decides to raise it herself.

Looking at this story in the actual text (Exod 2:1-5):

1 And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. 2 And the woman conceived, and bore a son; and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. 3 And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch; and she put the child therein, and laid it in the flags by the river's brink. 4 And his sister stood afar off, to know what would be done to him. 5 And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the river; and her maidens walked along by the river-side; and she saw the ark among the flags, and sent her handmaid to fetch it.

Chances are you are familiar with this story even if you only have a passing familiarity with the Torah.  It's one of those stories that spawned countless depictions and is deeply embedded in Western culture.  The motif, of a child of consequence who is supposed to be killed but survives, somewhat miraculously, is fairly common.  One of the more famous stories is that of Oedipus.  It was prophesied that Oedipus would kill the king, so he is left on a mountainside to die.  However, he is rescued by a shepherd and raised.  Sophocles recorded the myth in Oedipus Rex, but it's likely that the myth goes back further.

However, there is another less well known myth, that is much closer in the actual details to the story of Moshe.  It is the myth of the Babylonian King Sargon of Akkad, who ruled all the way back in the 3rd millennim BCE.  The birth legend of Sargon is known from tablets from the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal dating to the 7th century BCE.  A translation is repeated here:

Sargon the Mighty King, the King of Agade (Akkad) am I. My mother was lowly, my father I knew not, and the brother of my father dwelleth in the mountains. My city is Azupiranu, which lieth on the bank of the Euphrates. My lowly mother conceived me, in secret she brought me forth. She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she closed my door. She cast me into the river, which rose not over me. The river bore me up, unto Akki, the irrigator, it carried me. Akki the irrigator with [missing] lifted me out. Akki, the irrigator, as his own son [missing] reared me [footnote]... [1]

The similarities to the story of Moshe are undeniable.  The only question is which one cribbed off the other.

The Problems of Chronology

Moshe is claimed to have lived during the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE.  Sargon of Akkad, in the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE, so Sargon is older by about 1000 years.  However, that's not proof that this story of Sargon dates back that far.  We know the story of Sargon existed by about the 8th century BCE, but that's the latest possible date.  From my knowledge, we cannot limit the formulation of the story any more than it was between ~2300 BCE and ~800 BCE.

It is similarly difficult to date the story of Moshe.  The earliest date for Moshe's life, by the biblical account, is about 1500 BCE [2].  For the latest date of composition, the conventional biblical analysis has this story as pre-Exilic, and appearing probably sometime around 800 and 700 BCE.  Minimalists would place it much later.  But this is only when it was written, the story could have survived in oral form for a long time previously.

So there's no smoking gun from timelines that can allow us to chronologically reconstruct which one came first.  Instead, we need to look at what was more likely.  The Babylonians borrowed from the Israelites, or the Israelites borrowed from the Babylonians.

There is a long list of things that we know went from Assyria and Babylon to Israel.  These include the block alphabet that we are all familiar with (k'tav ashuri), which replaced the older Israelite alphabet (k'tav ivri).  It also includes the Babylonian law codes, which we'll look at in a couple week's time.  The law code in Exodus appears to be based off of other similar law codes.  Here the Babylonian code, made by Hammurabi, is clearly earlier than any attested date of the Israelite one.  There also is, famously, the story of Utnapishtim, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is remarkably similar to the story of Noach (Noah) down to the fact that both sent out birds to determine if it was safe to exit their boats.  The Epic of Gilgamesh dates back to the 18th century BCE, at least, and definitely predates the composition of the Noach story. 

On the flipside, we know of no wholly Israelite, or even Canaanite, practices that were adopted by the Babylonians.  (If you know of any, I'd love to know.)  Therefore, it seems to me that it's much more likely that the Israelites copied the story from the Babylonians than the opposite.  There is a third option, that there was a third story about a third figure, now lost to time, that was the source for both, but I don't see a good reason to hypothesize a third story without any evidence.

Conclusion

This is the first instance we've seen of a biblical story having, if not an origin, at least a cognate in another nearby culture.  In the past we've talked about the possible cognates of the creation stories and the Exodus story of the Hyksos, but neither have the level of similarity as the stories of Sargon and Moshe.  There are many other similar things, including other stories, laws and traditions, that have versions in the other, larger cultures, nearby.  I often wonder, how many of the biblical stories are retellings and rehashings of other stories, that are now lost to time, and how many are entirely Israelite.  

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1. Source from W. L. King: Chronicles Concerning Early Babylonian Kings. ^

2. This assumes that there were 400 years between the building of Solomon's temple and the Exodus. You get this number from 1 Kings 6:1 where it states 480 years passed between the completion of the temple and the Exodus. Taking that number literally, you arrive at a date around 1450 BCE for the Exodus. Moses was 80 at the time of the Exodus, so that sets this story around 1530 BCE.^