Religious texts

In the Bible the narratives of Moses are in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy while the main source for Moses' life is the Book of Exodus. The Book of Exodus takes up the narrative 230 years after the arrival of Jacob in Egypt. According to the Book of Exodus, Moses was a son of Amram, a member of the Levite tribe of Israel, having descended from Jacob, and his wife Jochebed. Jochebed (also Yocheved) was kin to Amram's father Kehath (Exodus 6:20). Moses had one older (by seven years) sister, Miriam, and one older (by three years) brother, Aaron.

According to Genesis 46:11, Amram's father Kehath immigrated to Egypt with 70 of Jacob's household, making Moses part of the second generation of Israelites born during their time in Egypt.

In the Exodus account, the birth of Moses, on 7 Adar (about Feb-Mar 1391 BC), occurred at a time when the current Egyptian Pharaoh had commanded that all male Hebrew children [9] born be killed by drowning in the river Nile. The Torah and Flavius Josephus leave the identity of this Pharaoh unstated. Jochebed, the wife of the Levite Amram, bore a son and kept him concealed for three months. When she could keep him hidden no longer, rather than deliver him to be killed, she set him adrift on the Nile River in a small craft of bulrushes coated in pitch.

According to the Quran, she is commanded by God to place him in an ark and cast him on the waters of the Nile, thus abandoning him completely to God's protection and demonstrating her total trust in God. In the Biblical account, Moses' sister Miriam observed the progress of the tiny boat until it reached a place where Pharaoh's daughter Thermuthis (Bithiah) was bathing with her handmaidens. It is said that she spotted the baby in the basket and had her handmaiden fetch it for her. After several women had unsuccessfully attempted to nurse the child, Miriam came forward and asked Pharaoh's daughter if she would like a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby. Thereafter, Jochebed was employed as the child's nurse, and he grew and was brought to Pharaoh's daughter and became her son, and a younger brother to Rameses II, the future Pharaoh of Egypt. Moses would not be able to become Pharaoh because he was not the 'blood' son of Bithiah, and he was the youngest.

This birth story is in many respects similar to the 7th century BC Neo-Assyrian version of the birth of the king Sargon of Akkad in the 24th century BC who, being born of modest means, was set in the Euphrates river in a basket of bulrushes and discovered by a member of the Akkadian royalty who reared him as their own.

Exodus and Flavius Josephus do not mention whether this daughter of Pharaoh was an only child or, if she was not an only child, whether she was an eldest child or an eldest daughter. Nor do they mention whether Thermuthis later had other natural or adopted children. If Rameses II is the Pharaoh of the Oppression as is traditionally thought, identifying her would be extremely difficult as Rameses II is thought to have fathered over a hundred children. The daughter of Pharaoh named him with the Egyptian name Mes ses, (birth protect) Mosheh, similar to the Hebrew word mashah, "to draw out".

In the Moses story related by the Quran, it was Pharaoh's wife who found Moses floating in the waters of the Nile and not his daughter. She convinced Pharaoh to keep him as their son because they were not blessed with any children.

In Greek translation, Mosheh was Hellenized as Mωυσής (Mousēs or Moses).