Texts in Conversation
In Acts 7, Stephen says Moses was taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians but gives no details. Philo also shares this haggadic tradition, describing Egyptian teachers who taught him hieroglyphs, Greek, and Chaldean astronomy.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Philo On the Life of Moses 1.23
Classical
23 Accordingly he speedily learnt arithmetic, and geometry, and the whole science of rhythm and harmony and metre, and the whole of music, by means of the use of musical instruments, and by lectures on the different arts, and by explanations of each topic; and lessons on these subjects were given him by Egyptian philosophers, who also taught him the philosophy which is contained in symbols, which they exhibit in those sacred characters of hieroglyphics, as they are called, and also that philosophy which is conversant about that respect which they pay to animals which they invest with the honours due to God. And all the other branches of the encyclical education he learnt from Greeks; and the philosophers from the adjacent countries taught him Assyrian literature and the knowledge of the heavenly bodies so much studied by the Chaldaeans.
Date: 40 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Acts 7:22
New Testament
21 and when he had been abandoned, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. 22 So Moses was trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his words and deeds. 23 But when he was about forty years old, it entered his mind to visit his fellow countrymen the Israelites.
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Notes and References
... Josephus provides a sketch of a childhood challenge to Moses, says that “he was educated with the utmost care” (Jewish Antiquities 2.233-35), and provides an extensive recital of Moses’ adult activities before his encounter with his countrymen (Jewish Antiquities 2.238-53). Philo pays particular attention, as we might expect, to Moses’ education, stressing that he was instructed by Greek, Assyrian, Chaldean, and Egyptian teachers, and that he progressed especially in moral virtue (Life of Moses 1.21-31). Such cultural assimilation is opposed by Jubilees 47.9, which insists that “Amran, [his] father, taught [him] writing” and says nothing further of Moses’ education at Pharaoh’s court. Similarly, Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities 9.16 says that Moses’ mother maintained his Hebrew name of Melchiel. Cultural competition reaches a climax in Artapanus’s On the Jews (fragment 3 Charlesworth), which makes Moses himself the teacher of Orpheus and the source of everything worthwhile in Egyptian culture. Stephen’s version again hits a middle point between these extremes: “he was educated in all Egyptian wisdom” (7:22). ...
Johnson, Luke Timothy
Septuagintal Midrash in the Speeches of Acts
(p. 28) Marquette University Press, 2002
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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