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The historian Pliny refers to one of Pharaoh's magicians as Jannes. This tradition, not found in the Hebrew Bible, is also found in Rabbinic texts such as Exodus Rabbah, which names the same magician Yohani. where he taunts Moses.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Pliny Natural History 30.2
Classical
There is another sect, also, of adepts in the magic art, who derive their origin from Moses, Jannes, and Lotapea, Jews by birth, but many thousand years posterior to Zoroaster: and as much more recent, again, is the branch of magic cultivated in Cyprus. In the time, too, of Alexander the Great, this profession received no small accession to its credit from the influence of a second Osthanes, who had the honour of accompanying that prince in his expeditions, and who, evidently, beyond all doubt, travelled over every part of the world.
Date: 77 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Exodus Rabbah 9:7
Aggadah
Rabbinic
“Each man cast his staff, and they became serpents, and Aaron's staff swallowed their staffs” (Exodus 7:12). “Each man cast his staff” – Yoḥani and Mamre said to Moses: ‘Are you taking straw to Ofriyim?’ He said to them: ‘To a city of vegetables take vegetables.’
Date: 1200 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... The conviction that Moses was a magician was wide-spread in antiquity. Pliny the Elder even defines a school of magic related to Moses, namely Jannes, Lotapes and “the” Jews. [...] Nat. 30.2.11 (Pliny, Natural History, W. H. S. Jones, LCL); this passage also mentions Jannes and Lotapes. In regard to Pliny, see, Stephen Gero, “The Enigma of the Magician Lotapes (Pliny, Nat. 30.11),” JStJ 27 (1996) 304-323; Charles C. Torrey, “The Magic of ‘Lotapes,’” JBL 68 (1949) 325-327. In midrash, the chief magicians accompanying Pharaoh are called Yoḥaney and Mamre (Exod. Rab. 9:6; compare b. Menaḥ 85a); Pharaoh’s magicians were among the mixed multitude joining the Israelites (Tanḥ, printed edition, Ki Tissa 19); thus, Egyptian magic followed the Israelites during the Exodus. ...”
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