Moses. Moses was a prophet according to the teachings of the Abrahamic religions. Scholarly consensus sees Moses as a legendary figure and not a historical person, while retaining the possibility that a Moses-like figure existed. According to the Hebrew Bible, he was adopted by an Egyptian princess, and later in life became the leader of the Israelites and lawgiver, to whom the authorship of the Torah, or acquisition of the Torah from Heaven, is traditionally attributed. Also called Moshe Rabbenu in Hebrew, he is the most important prophet in Judaism. He is also an important prophet in Christianity, Islam, the Bahá'í Faith, and a number of other Abrahamic religions. According to the Book of Exodus, Moses was born in a time when his people, the Israelites, an enslaved minority, were increasing in numbers and the Egyptian Pharaoh was worried that they might ally themselves with Egypt's enemies. Moses' Hebrew mother, Jochebed, secretly hid him when the Pharaoh ordered all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed in order to reduce the population of the Israelites. Through the Pharaoh's daughter, the child was adopted as a foundling from the Nile river and grew up with the Egyptian royal family. After killing an Egyptian slavemaster who was smiting a Hebrew, Moses fled across the Red Sea to Midian, where he encountered The Angel of the Lord, speaking to him from within a burning bush on Mount Horeb, which he regarded as the Mountain of God. God sent Moses back to Egypt to demand the release of the Israelites from slavery. Moses said that he could not speak eloquently, so God allowed Aaron, his brother, to become his spokesperson. After the Ten Plagues, Moses led the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, after which they based themselves at Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments. After 40 years of wandering in the desert, Moses died within sight of the Promised Land on Mount Nebo. Rabbinical Judaism calculated a lifespan of Moses corresponding to 1391-1271 BCE; Jerome gives 1592 BCE, and James Ussher 1571 BCE as his birth year. Several etymologies have been proposed. An Egyptian root msy, child of, has been considered as a possible etymology, arguably an abbreviation of a theophoric name, as for example in Egyptian names like Thutmoses and Ramesses, with the god's name omitted. Abraham Yahuda, based on the spelling given in the Tanakh, argues that it combines water or seed and pond, expanse of water, thus yielding the sense of child of the Nile. The Biblical account of Moses' birth provides him with a folk etymology to explain the ostensible meaning of his name. He is said to have received it from the Pharaoh's daughter: he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, 'I drew him out of the water. This explanation links it to a verb mashah, meaning to draw out, which makes the Pharaoh's daughter's declaration a play on words. The princess made a grammatical mistake which is prophetic of his future role in legend, as someone who will draw the people of Israel out of Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea. The Hebrew etymology in the Biblical story may reflect an attempt to cancel out traces of Moses' Egyptian origins. The Egyptian character of his name was recognized as such by ancient Jewish writers like Philo of Alexandria and Josephus. Philo linked Moeses to the Egyptian word for water, while Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, claimed that the second element,-esês, meant 'those who are saved'. The problem of how an Egyptian princess, known to Josephus as Thermutis and in later Jewish tradition as Bithiah, could have known Hebrew puzzled medieval Jewish commentators like Abraham ibn Ezra and Hezekiah ben Manoah. Hezekiah suggested she either converted or took a tip from Jochebed. Further information: The Exodus The Israelites had settled in the Land of Goshen in the time of Joseph and Jacob, but a new Pharaoh arose who oppressed the children of Israel. At this time Moses was born to his father Amram, son of Kehath the Levite, who entered Egypt with Jacob's household; his mother was Jochebed, who was kin to Kehath. Moses had one older sister, Miriam, and one older brother, Aaron.The Pharaoh had commanded that all male Hebrew children born would be drowned in the river Nile, but Moses' mother placed him in an ark and concealed the ark in the bulrushes by the riverbank, where the baby was discovered and adopted by Pharaoh's daughter, and raised as an Egyptian. One day after Moses had reached adulthood he killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew.