MOSER, JOHANN JAKOB, 1701-85; b. Germany; made professor extraordinary of law at the university of Tubingen in 1720. Six years later he became councilor at Stuttgart, and 1727 lie became ordinary professor of law at Tubingen. He resigned this chair on account of a quarrel with his colleagues, and for the same cause left the directorship of the university at Frankfort-on-the-Oder. He was engaged for many years in the preparation of his most important work, on the Public Law of Germany, and other legal books. He afterwards opened an academy in Hanover, where the sons of the nobility were taught public affairs.
1110'SES (Heb. Mosheh ; LXX. and Vulg. Mores; ? Egypt. Me* or Messou ; Copt. i.e., drawn out of the water), prophet and legislator of the Israelites, born about 1600 B.O. in Egypt (? Heliopolis), during the period of their hard bondage. His father was Amram, his mother Jochebed, both of the tribe of Levi. The tale a his birth and early education has, by tradition (Manetho, Philo, Josephus, Midrash, etc.), received a much more extraordinary legendary character than is found in Exodus; while the main features are, on the whole, the same in them all. And there is no reason to doubt the truthfulness of an account which shows us Moses, like many other supreme benefactors and "suns" of mankind, struggling against an apparently adverse fate, any for very life, from the instant of his birth. The well-known narrative, to which late traditions (contained in Philo, Josephus, the Fathers, etc.) have supplied questionable names and dates, is that Moses's mother, unable to hide the child—which was to have been drowned at its birth— longer than for the space of three months, put it into a basket of papyrus, and bid it among the Nile rushes, Miriam, his sister, watching it from afar. The king's daughter (Thermuthis, or. Nerds?), coming down to the river, observed the weeping child, and was so struck with its beauty that she: :allowed Miriam to fetch a Hebrew nurse, Jodie bed. Grown up, he was sent to the king's palace (Heliopolis) as the adopted son of the princess, and here seems to have enjoyed•not only princely rank, but also a princely edu cation. lie is also said to have become a priest, under the name of Osarsiph or Tisithen, and to have been a mighty adept in all the sciences of "Egypt, Assyria, and Chaldea;" to have led Egyptian armies against the Ethiopians, defeated them, and pursued them to their stronghold, Saba (Meroe); this place being delivered into his hands by Tharhis, the king's daughter, whom he subsequently married. The Bible contains nothing what
ever about the time of his youth. He first reappears there as the avenger of a Ilebrew slave, ill-treated by an Egyptian overseer. Threatened by the discovery of this bloody act, he escapes into Midian, where he is hospitably received by Jethro, the priest, and married his daughter, Zipporah. He stayed for many years in Midian, tending the flocks of his father-in-law. This most sudden transition from the brilliant and refined life of an Egyptian court, of which he had been brought up a prince, to the state of a poor, proscribed, exiled shepherd, together with the influences of the vast desert around him, must in Moses's mind have produced a singular revolution. The two names which he gave to his sons, strikingly express part of what filled his soul—a feeling of gratitude for his salvation from the avenging hand of justice, and the deep woe of his exile. The fate of his brethren went now to his heart with greater force than when he was a prince and near them. There rushed upon his memory the ancient traditions of his family, the promises of Jehovah to the mighty sheikhs, his forefathers, that they should become a great and a free nation, and possess the ancient heritage of Canaan; why should not he be the instrument to carry out this promise? The Eh ye asleep- Eh ye (I am that I am) appeared to him while his mind was occupied with such thoughts, and himself put the office upon his shoulders. A new king had succeeded in Egypt, his old enemies were either dead or had forgotten him, and Moses returned to Egypt. Together with Aaron, his brother, the man of small energy but of fine tongue, he consulted about the first steps to be taken with the king as well as with their own people—both of whom treated them at first with suspicion, nay, with contempt.