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Jubilees

About this book

The Birth and Rescue of Moses

Chapter 47

1 And in the seventh week, in the seventh year, in the forty-seventh jubilee [2303], your father went out from the land of Canaan, and you were born in the fourth week, in the sixth year of it, in the forty-eighth jubilee [2330]; this was the time of oppression of the children of Israel. 2 And Pharaoh, king of Egypt, issued a command regarding them that they should cast all their male children which were born into the river.⁠ 3 And they cast them in for seven months until the day that you were born. And your mother hid you for three months, and she was reported. 4 And she made an ark for you, and covered it with pitch and asphalt, and placed it in the reeds on the bank of the river, and she placed you in it seven days, and your mother came by night and nursed you, and by day Miriam, your sister, guarded you from the birds.⁠ 5 And in those days Tharmuth, the daughter of Pharaoh, came to bathe in the river, and she heard your voice crying, and she told her female attendants to bring you out, and they brought you to her. 6 And she took you out of the ark, and she had compassion on you. 7 And your sister said to her: 'Shall I go and call for you one of the Hebrew women to care for and breastfeed this baby for you?' 8 And she said to her: 'Go.' And she went and called your mother Jochebed, and she gave her wages, and she nursed you. 9 And afterwards, when you were grown up, they brought you to the daughter of Pharaoh, and you became her son, and Amram your father taught you writing,⁠ and after you had completed three weeks they brought you into the royal court. 10 And you were three weeks of years at court [2351-2372] until the time when you went out from the royal court and saw an Egyptian striking your friend who was of the children of Israel, and you killed him and hid him in the sand.

Moses Flees from Egypt

11 And on the second day you found two of the children of Israel fighting with one another, and you said to him who was doing the wrong: 'Why do you strike your brother?' 12 And he was angry and indignant, and said: 'Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you think to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?' And you feared and fled on account of these words.

Texts in conversation

Compare Jubilees 47:9 and Acts 7:22

Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions · New Testament

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Summary

Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 says Moses was taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians. Jubilees similarly tries to fill in this narrative gap but says instead that his father Amram taught him to write, so his education stayed inside his own family.

Passages

Jubilees 47:9

Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
8 And she said to her: 'Go.' And she went and called your mother Jochebed, and she gave her wages, and she nursed you. 9 And afterwards, when you were grown up, they brought you to the daughter of Pharaoh, and you became her son, and Amram your father taught you writing, and after you had completed three weeks they brought you into the royal court. 10 And you were three weeks of years at court [2351-2372] until the time when you went out from the royal court and saw an Egyptian striking your friend who was of the children of Israel, and you killed him and hid him in the sand.
170–125 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Jubilees

Acts 7:22

New Testament
20 At that time Moses was born, and he was beautiful to God. For three months he was brought up in his father’s house, 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.
70–90 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Acts

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). ...
Luke Timothy Johnson, Septuagintal Midrash in the Speeches of Acts, The Père Marquette Lecture in Theology 2002 (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2002), 28.
... So, the writer explains that, far from spending most of his early years in the royal court and being surrounded by its influences, Amram served as Moses’s teacher and, like a good father in Jubilees, he instructed him in writing. The father–son pair Amram and Moses repeat the practice attested for Terah and Abram (11:16), and Moses joins the line of illustrious ancestors who were literate and contributed to a written tradition: Enoch (4:17-18), Noah (10:13-14), Abraham (11:16; 12:25-27; 21:10), and Jacob (19:14; 32:24-26; 45:16). It was after twenty-one years—not after he was weaned—that Amram brought Moses to the court for a more lasting stay; as a result Moses’s upbringing and education came from his own family, not from Tarmuth or any other Egyptian. He was a mature and fully educated man when he arrived in Tarmuth’s world. Moses then spent the next twenty-one-years in the palace. ...
James C. VanderKam, Jubilees 2: A Commentary on the Book of Jubilees Chapters 22-50 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2018), 1144.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Jubilees 47:9 and Acts 7:22

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