No direct relationship, since Samuel lived about 400 years after Moses and was not a descendant of his. However, they are connected in that both were major Prophets and leaders of their respective generations, both were Levites, and both were among those who transmitted the Israelite traditions to the following generation (Maimonides, introduction to the Yad). See also:

More about Moses

More about Samuel

The Egyptian pharaoh, Rameses II lived approximately 1290 to 1224 BCE.

The only information we have on Moses is from the Bible, which provides two quite distinct ways of estimating when Moses would have lived, neither of which coincides with the life of Rameses II.

According to the Bible, Moses was the grandson of Kohath, who was alive at the time of the migration from Canaan and lived 133 years, while his son Amran lived 137 years. At the extremes of biological possibility, and assuming the patriarchs really lived to improbably great ages, Moses was born sometime between 15 years and 270 years after the arrival in Egypt and, living to the age of 120 years, died between 135 and 390 years after the arrival. On these calculations, Moses was born between about 1850 and 1600 BCE, and died between about 1730 and 1480 BCE.

According to the Bible, Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, around 1440 BCE, and died about 40 years later, having lived 120 years. On these calculations, Moses was born about 1520 BCE and died about 1400 BCE.

On this evidence, Rameses II and Moses could not have grown up together, as Ramesis lived centuries after the time attributed to Moses. Moreover, over ninety per cent of scholars are reported as believing the Exodus did not really happen, thus casting doubt on the very existence of Moses.

Other answers from our community:

>>It is said, "Most historians believe that Ramesses II was the Pharoh during the Exodus."<< However, it was most definitely NOT Ramses II.

We know for a fact that Ramses II died when he was 90 years old. How? Not only because Pharoah's birthdays, coronations and deaths are well documented but also because he built the Temple at Abu Simbel.

The most spectacular engineering achievement of Abu Simbel is that sunlight shines directly into the temple twice a year. Once on Ramses II's birthday and once on his coronation. (Even though the temple was moved due to the construction of the High Dam, the dates the sun illuminates the chambers are only off by one day.)

And we know how old he was when he died. This is confirmed by the obscure fact that Pharoah's burial chambers are a specific height. The age of the Pharoah at death x Pi = the height of the chamber.

Now Moses, according to the Bible, was 80 years old when he first approached the Pharoah with the demand to "let my people go.". If Pharaoh died right after the Exodus he was a maximum of ten years older then Moses. The problem?

The Bible says that Pharoah's daughter found Moses in the reeds and kept him and raised him as her own child. Ramses could not have had a daughter old enough to pass for Moses' mother when he himself was only ten years old.

Some possible answers:

1) The Jewish scribes who wrote the Bible made up the whole story about Moses being found by Pharoah's daughter. There are many reasons why they might have done this. Also, you would have to believe that Moses never passed for Ramses II's grandson but possibly his son.

2) The Egyptians not only incorrectly documented Ramses' age but the architects of both Abu Simbel and Ramses II's burial chamber were buffoons.

3) The Jewish scribes who wrote the Bible were incorrect about Moses' age by around 26 years. (Assuming Ramses II had a daughter at the age of 13 and she was at least 13 herself when she found Moses.)

4) The Jewish scribes were incorrect about Moses being 80 years old when he approached Pharaoh.

5) The whole thing is fiction.

Why do some people believe Ramses was the Pharaoh during the exodus? Because the Bible tells of the Jews building the cities of "Pithom" and "PiRamses" aka "Ramesses." However, archeologists have found evidence of Egyptian settlements long before PiRamses was built by the Jews making it much older then originally thought. Since Pithom was built, as the Bible accurately describes, of mud brick there are few remains of this city.

For this reason scholars consider that the earlier name was updated to make it recognizable to those who read the account. It is thus not an anachronism or has no direct bearing on the age of the city. There are many examples of this kind of thing. In referring to Russian cities we would no longer use St. Petersburg but the current name. It is also worth noting that a number of scholars consider that the hole Egyptian chronology is in need of revision by several centuries and so it is difficult to state categorically who the Pharaoh was.

Answer

Acording to Wikipedia: In the Bible, the name of the Pharaoh of the Exodus is not given. He is simply called "Pharaoh." Muslims also believe in the exodus, as the story is told in the Muslim holy book the Qur'an (Koran), although some details of the story are different. Candidates for the identity of the King of Egypt at the time of the Exodus include

clude:

• Amenemhat IV (1815 BC to 1806 BC)
• Tutimaios (circa 1690 BC)- also known as Dudimose
• A Hyksos king (circa 1648 BC to 1540 BC)
• Ahmose I (1550 BC to 1525 BC)
• Thutmose I
• Thutmose III (1479 BC to 1425 BC)
• Amenhotep II (1427 BC to 1401 BC)
• Amenhotep IV, also known as Akhenaten (1352 BC - 1336 BC)
• Horemheb (circa 1319 BC to 1292 BC)
• Ramesses I (circa 1292 BC to 1290 BC)
• Ramesses II (1279 BC to 1213 BC)
• Merneptah (1213 BC to 1203 BC)
• Amenmesse (1203 BC to 1199 BC)
• Setnakhte (1190 BC to 1186 BC)

Answer:

The Bible very clearly places the Exodus from Egypt around 1440 BCE, but we now know from archaeology that Egypt was at that time very much in control of Canaan and remained so until the thirteenth century, which brings us to the time of Ramesses II, or Ramses II, pharaoh from around 1290 to 1224 BCE. No earlier pharaoh could have been the the biblical pharaoh who drowned in pursuit of the fleeing Israelites as the crossed the Red Sea. Moreover, it was he who built the city of Ramses (Pi-Ramesses), mentioned in the story of the Exodus, thus ruling out his predecessors.

Unlike the biblical pharoah, who was drowned in the Red Sea, Ramses II was buried in a tomb in the Valley of Kings. His body was later moved to a royal cache. Assuming there really was an Exodus from Egypt, which few scholars now accept, Ramses II could not have been that pharaoh, regardless of popular tradition.

God sent ten plagues upon Egypt (Exodus ch.7-12), not only the plague of frogs. The purpose of the plagues was to impress upon Pharaoh and the Egyptians that God is the Boss (Exodus 7:5) and that the Israelites must be freed in order to serve Him (Exodus 7:26).

The K'li Yakar commentary writes that, since the Egyptians worshiped the Nile, God symbolically trounced their false belief by making the Nile a source of anguish in the first two plagues. Also, since Pharaoh refused to recognize the voice of God (Exodus 5:2), He forced Pharaoh to listen to the constant croaking of the frogs (and later the unnaturally loud thunder during the hailstorms (Exodus 9:28) (K'li Yakar).

Previous post stated:

We are not certain which pharaoh was contemporaneous with the Moses and the exodus. Alot of people say Rameses II is the Pharaoh of the Oppression but at the moment it is not possible to tie the history of the book of Exodus to that of the Egyptian writings. If you think about it while the Israelites find the episode of key importance, seen form the Egyptian viewpoint it may not have been seen (or recorded) as an event of importance (human nature is not usually to make big of defeats!)

According to Wikipedia Pharaohs of Exodus there are 14 candidates;

• Amenemhat IV (1815 BC to 1806 BC)
• Tutimaios (circa 1690 BC)- also known as Dudimose
• A Hyksos king (circa 1648 BC to 1540 BC)
• Ahmose I (1550 BC to 1525 BC)
• Thutmose I
• Thutmose III (1479 BC to 1425 BC)
• Amenhotep II (1427 BC to 1401 BC)
• Amenhotep IV, also known as Akhenaten (1352 BC - 1336 BC)
• Horemheb (circa 1319 BC to 1292 BC)
• Ramesses I (circa 1292 BC to 1290 BC)
• Ramesses II (1279 BC to 1213 BC)
• Merneptah (1213 BC to 1203 BC)
• Amenmesse (1203 BC to 1199 BC)
• Setnakhte (1190 BC to 1186 BC)

(The following was added on 3/20/2015):

Increasing evidence points to Thutmose II as being the most likely pharaoh of the Exodus. For the past several years, more people have been suggesting he was the likely candidate, and the fact that his cause of death is unknown leads additional credence to this possibility. Most recently, studies of the mummy of Thutmose II have given even further cause to accept him as the most likely Pharaoh of the Exodus. Since links are not allowed in answers, please do a Google search for an article on release wire entitled "Archaeologist: Reign of Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose II Suggests Crisis" which quotes HarvardUniversity educated archaeologist and president of the Paleontological Research Corporation, Dr. Joel Klenck.

Note that if the Bible account in the Book of Exodus is true, then the "crises" mentioned in the above article make perfect sense. Note that the article does not mention Moses or the Exodus, but the timing of Thutmose II fits well with the understood timeline of the Bible, and the article states the following:

- An inscription by the succeeding Pharaoh Hatshepsut (ca. 1,479-1,457 B.C.) in her Underground Temple at Speos Artemidos states that Egypt was "ruined" and "had gone to pieces" before the beginning of her reign. This makes perfect sense if the previous Pharaoh, Thutmose II, and his entire army were killed in the Red Sea.

- Further, there is evidence that disease affected the royal court before the reign of Hatshepsut. The mummy of Thutmose II is the only corpse of a pharaoh during the Eighteenth Dynasty covered with cysts from an unknown malady.... In addition, Hatshepsut and her successor, Thutmose III (ca. 1,457-1,425 B.C.), bear traces of the disease suggesting their skin healed after a period of time. Recent DNA evidence suggests that Thutmose III might not be related to Thutmose II. That Sitre-In and Thutmose III show evidence of this disease suggests the disease was not hereditary but widely affected Thutmose II and his court. If the plague of the boils in Exodus 9 affected even the Pharaoh, you would expect to find evidence of these boils on his corpse as noted here. Note that commoners were not normally embalmed, so the few mummies of Thutmose II's court would be the only ones we would be able to see today with evidence of the boils... and all of them have such evidence.

- Klenck remarks "From the end of the rule of Thutmose II and throughout the reign of Hatshepsut, Egyptian armies did not leave their country for a period of at least twenty-two years, until the reign of Thutmose III." If the entire Egyptian army was destroyed in the Red Sea, it would have taken several years, or perhaps even a couple of decades to rebuild it.

- Klenck states, "After the reign of Thutmose II, the Egyptian court seems to have had a crisis of faith in their principal deity Amun-Re." If the Egyptians witnessed the plagues of Exodus and the incredible power of the true God, it stands to reason their faith in their previous deities would have been shaken. The Bible even indicates in Exodus 12:38 that some of the Egyptians may have had their faith so thoroughly shaken they decided to join the Israelites.

Answer:

According to the Documentary Hypothesis he was an anonymous writer who around 621 BC supposedly wrote Deuteronomy. We know very little about him (or her). What we do know is that, even though he claimed 40 times in Deuteronomy that Moses wrote Deuteronomy to give it credibility, he actually was the author. Some call this literary fraud, others call it writing pseudonymously. I believe the consensus has swung back towards Mosaic authorship.

• Answer:

Unlike the Bible-Critics who possess no early source, the Hebrew Bible has been handed down since its beginning, in an unbroken chain of tradition for which we possess the names, biography and dates of the leading sages in every single generation. Every verse is elucidated in the Talmud and midrashim.

No parchment, scroll, or inscription has ever been found that would support the Bible-critics' JEPD (different sources) hypothesis, which remains a theory. And those ancient writers who mention, describe, summarize or translate the Torah (Josephus, Samaritans, Targum, Septuagint etc.), describe it in its complete form.

God gave Moses prophecy; so after the incident at the rock (Numbers ch.20), Moses wrote down the whole Torah, even events that didn't yet happen (such as his death).

The first four books of the Torah were dictated word for word by God. The last, Devarim (Deuteronomy), was written by Moses in his own words, although God provided Divine inspiration (Talmud, Megillah 31b and Tosfot commentary, ibid).

Some JEPD theorists question the very existence of Moses. In so doing, they not only ignore the continuous tradition of the entire Jewish nation, but also the statements of ancient writers including Hecataeus, Strabo, Alexander Polyhistor, Manetho, Apion, Chaeremon, Tacitus, Porphyry, Artapanus, Eupolemus, Ben Sira, the Greek Septuagint, the Samaritans, Josephus and Philo, all of whom testify that Moses was an actual person.

Archaeological finds, such as the Ugarit documents and those of Nuzu, Mari, Susa, Ebla, and Tel el-Amarna, have repeatedly caused the critics to retract specific claims. The entire social milieu portrayed in the Torah, once criticized as anachronistic, has been shown to be historically accurate, including customs of marriage, adoption, contracts, inheritance, purchases, utensils, modes of travel, people's names and titles, etc. Professor Gleason Archer Ph.D of Harvard University states: "In case after case where historical inaccuracy was alleged as proof of late and spurious authorship of the biblical documents, the Hebrew record has been vindicated by the results of excavations, and the condemnatory judgment of the Documentary theorists have been proved to be without foundation."

To lead the Exodus and to receive the Torah.

Moses was an Israelite, a great-great grandson of Jacob. He was born 245 years after the death of Abraham. The time when Moses was born was when the Pharaoh had ordered his people to kill all Israelite male infants because he (Pharaoh) was afraid that the Israelites would become too strong for him (Exodus ch.1-2).

Moses' mother didn't want him to die. So she made a basket for him and put him in it to float in the Nile reeds. He was found by Pharaoh's daughter, who took pity on him (Exodus ch.2) and raised him as her own son.

Moses was forced to flee after killing a cruel Egyptian taskmaster, and went to Midian, where he wedded the daughter of Jethro.

He eventually achieved the highest level of prophecy (Deuteronomy ch.34) and was called upon by God (Exodus ch.3). He brought the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery (Exodus ch.12). He received the Torah from God (Exodus 24:12) and later recorded it in writing (Deuteronomy 31:24). He went up on Mount Sinai for 40 days and nights (Deuteronomy ch.9-10) and brought down the Two Stone Tablets with the Ten Commandments (Exodus 31:18). He brought the Israelites into the covenant with God (Exodus ch.19 and ch.24), and he oversaw the building of the Tabernacle (Exodus ch.35-40). He was the humblest of men and the greatest of prophets (Numbers ch.12).

See also:

What problems did Moses face and overcome?

Moses did not write prophetically about Jesus. However, Burton L. Mack (Who Wrote the New Testament) says that there is a trick that seems to come naturally when studying the Bible. One can ask any question of the Bible and get some kind of answer. If the first answer does not appear to be helpful, one can look for another answer to the same question, until the right answer appears. So, some say that Deuteronomy 18:15-18 is a prophecy of Jesus:

The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken; According to all that thou desiredst of the LORD thy God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I die not. And the LORD said unto me, They have well spoken that which they have spoken. I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.

This passage does not mention Jesus and does not say anything that identifies the prophet as Jesus, nor does it describe him as the Son of God or anything more than a prophet. It could refer to any of the major prophets to come, or any one of the many other Jews who claimed to be the Messiah. By itself itself it is meaningless. However, the author of Matthew's Gospel did draw some parallels between Jesus and Moses. He said that the (step) grandfather of Jesus was called Jacob, parallelling Jacob in the old Testament. In both cases, the king ordered the slaughter of all the infants, and in both cases there was a flight to Egypt. The problem with this is that the author of Luke's Gospel knew nothing of this. He said that the (step) grandfather of Jesus was called Heli; the king did not order the slaughter of the infants and there was no flight to Egypt - the family returned peacefully to Galilee. So, did the author of Matthew know about Deuteronomy 18:15-18 and seek to identify with it?

More evidence that Deuteronomy 18:15-18 could not have been about Jesus is found in the verses that follow it. Here (Deuteronomy 18:19-22), the Deuteronomist seems to be explaining how to know a real prophet from a pretender, rather than actually prophesying Jesus:

And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him. But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.

So, Deuteronomy 18:15-22, taken as a whole, was really a promise that there would be prophets to come, and an explanation of how to know if someone was a real prophet. Moses did not write prophetically about Jesus.