Interesting!
I remember listening to the Rest is History series on the American Revolution. Dominic Sandbrook remarked with some puzzlement that the American Revolution does not seem to loom near as large in English consciousness as it does in American minds and Tom Holland drily replied that it is mysterious the way the English don’t talk a lot about wars they lost. I often think of that when people seem to think it astonishing that Moses (or Jesus, for that matter) don’t seem to be noticed by what they call “contemporary historical sources” (by which they mean “contemporary non-biblical sources”). But then, why would they be?
Moses has been described as a figure of memory, but not of history. I don’t find that especially troubling since I don’t expect anybody but Israel to remember him and I certainly don’t expect Egypt to keep a record of a humiliating defeat. Same for the conquest of Canaan. In the context of the larger world, the tribal skirmishes of a bunch of trivial little groups in Canaan would barely make a ripple. Particularly, since the records from antiquity are already famously spotty. We still don’t have the slightest idea who the Sea Peoples were and they actually caused whole civilizations to collapse. Why would Moses be recorded by anybody but the people who cared about him and what he did for them? If this particular story turns out to show that Moses is indeed mentioned outside the records of the only people who ever care about him, I would actually be surprised.
Indeed, one of the paradoxes of history is that the only reason Moses (or Israel) ever came to loom so large in the consciousness of the nations of the world is precisely because of the spread of the gospel to the Gentiles. Sure, there were a few Gentile converts to Judaism in antiquity. But for the most part, it was a small minority in the swirling maelstrom of peoples and religions in the Mediterranean. What made Moses a global figure whose authority towered over Gentiles across the face of the earth was his connection to Jesus, whom those Gentiles came to believe was his God and theirs. Moses mattered to Israel and a handful of Gentile converts for the first thousand years after he lived. But with the spread of the gospel, he inevitably came to matter to every people who came to accept the gospel–and to every people impacted by the gospel whether or not they believed it. There is not a reason in the world any of Israel’s neighbors for the first thousand years after Moses should know or care about him. It’s only when the Church started announcing to the surging ocean of peoples in Asia, Europe, and Africa that Jesus had fulfilled the law of Moses that Gentiles slowly started cottoning to the question, “Who is Moses and why should I care?”
The tragedy of this paradox, of course, is that the ties that will forever bind the fortunes of the Church to the people of Israel would also result in Christians inflicting terrible sufferings on Israel. Why God has willed this strange, terrible, and sometimes deeply beautiful relationship to continue down to the end of time is one of the strangest mysteries of our shared destinies.
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My freshman Religion teacher Brother Lawrence said that Judaism is the foundation that the house of Christianity is built on. You don’t separate them. Perhaps this is an oversimplification but I think it’s pretty accurate and easy to understand. Brother Lawrence also half seriously described Anglicans as “junior varsity Catholics.” Again, some truth in humor.
I find it shocking that here in the United Stares in 2025, we are still dealing with Anti Semitism. If any so-called Christian “leader” spouts Anti Semitism, run, don’t walk to the nearest exit.