Exodus: Shifting Canon

My first observation after reading Exodus is that the movie the Ten Commandments is somewhat misleading, and should not be viewed except only by those who have actually read the Bible first and therefore can actually know exactly how much of the movie is just made up.

Yes, the Jewish people are placed by the pharaoh into slavery (1:8-14), and the pharaoh does order the death of all first born Jews (1: 22), after which time, Moses is born and his mothers sets him adrift in the reeds of the Nile to avoid the pharaoh’s death order when he is found and adopted by the pharaoh’s daughter and introduced into a privileged life apart from his people who toil in bondage, (2:1-10). Up to this point, the movie is faithful to the Script.

But in the Bible, there’s nothing about Moses becoming a powerful official in love with an Egyptian woman before he selflessly decides to join his people in slavery. The Bible says nothing about the specific events of his life after infancy and jumps straight into manhood (2:10-11). We can infer that he is aware of his Jewish blood (2:11), but by the time he kills the Egyptian guard for beating one of his people and then flees to avoid punishment, he had never left the privilege of the station he gained when he was adopted by the pharaoh’s daughter.

Besides this, there are discrepancies in the details. In the bible, the pharaoh is only referred to simply as, “the pharaoh,” but in the movie, the pharaoh is named Rameses. I suspect that this is so because the Rameses dynasty was powerful and long, and it’s always best to have your protagonist overcome really powerful enemies.

When I was a kid growing up, I either never read Exodus or didn’t understand it or pay attention if I did read it. I suspect that this is the same with most Christians today. I suspect that none but a precious few actually read the Bible anymore, but that almost all see the Ten Commandments at some point in their life. By common usage, the derivative has replaced the original as canon.