"You don't hear it much today, but it used to be all the rage to compare the birth story of Moses to that of a certain Sargon of Assyria, and claim copying was done. That's not heard much anymore,..." Here is why...."Critics contend that this story is an imitation of an earlier myth about a hero of the ancient Akkadians named Sargon. Sargon recounts his own birth story as follows:
“[My mother] laid me in a vessel made of reeds, closed my door with pitch, and dropped me down into the river, which did not drown me. The river carried me to Akki, the water carrier. Akki the water carrier lifted me up in the kindness of his heart, Akki the water carrier raised me as his own son, Akki the water carrier made of me his gardener. As a gardener, Ishtar, loved me; For 55 years I ruled as king."
1) ....there are differences between the structure and theme of the narratives. While Moses is set in the river because he is of a race suffering genocide, Sargon seems to be set in the river because he is an obstacle to a princess retaining her position. Also, while Moses’s mother has him set gently in the reeds in the hopes of his being found, Sargon’s mother seems to want to kill the child. Sargon even reflects upon her intentions when he says her actions "did not drown me."
2) .... the Exodus account possesses Egyptian vocabulary. This would not be expected if the story had been borrowed from the Akkadians and then set in Egypt. For example, the name Moses shares a root with the Egyptian word mse, which means “to give birth.” The root can be seen in the name of several Pharaohs, including Thutmose and Ramesses. In addition, the Hebrew word for river in the Exodus account is not the usual word nahar, but the word hayeor, which is a Hebrew transliteration of the Egyptian word for Nile.
3) .....the Sargon story may have been composed in the eighth century B.C. to honor the Assyrian king Sargon II, who wanted to embellish his ancestral tradition. If this is true, it would place the story’s composition several hundred years after the book of Exodus was written, thus eliminating it as a source for the Moses story.
4) ....the suggestion that the story was written in the reign of Sargon II, a much later king who was possibly a usurper, to legitimate his own rule. Some similarities to the reign of Sargon II (721-705 BC) may be suggested. For example, Sargon I claims the conquest of Tilmun as a major conquest. But contact with Tilmun seems to have been limited -- it is mentioned only once before Sargon II. Sargon II boasts of Tilmun in his time sending tribute.
5) The recovery and adoption. - The adoption of Sargon itself is not unusual. Mesopotamian practice of adopting a son and heir, including one that was a foundling, was not uncommon [50]. On the other hand, some commentators suggest that Pharaoh's daughter easily took Moses in because her dipping into the river signified a fertility rite -- and she could easily suppose that Moses was an "answer to prayer."
Adoption as a whole was not uncommon in the ancient world, because it served a variety of needs: Perpetrating the family line; providing free labor and care in old age; and sometimes humanitarian considerations.
6) .... Moses' story contains several elements unknown in the other stories: genocide as a motivation for the hiding; the three months of concealment; the sister as a guardian, and the hiring of the infant's own mother as the one to nurse the child."
From TEKTON Apologetics, DA & CA,
And when she could not longer hide him,
she took for him an ark of bulrushes,
and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein;
and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink.
And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.
And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river;
and her maidens walked along by the river's side;
and when she saw the ark among the flags,
she sent her maid to fetch it.
And when she had opened it, she saw the child:
and, behold, the babe wept.
And she had compassion on him,
and said, This is one of the Hebrews' children.
Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter,
Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women,
that she may nurse the child for thee?
And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go.
And the maid went and called the child's mother.
And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her,
Take this child away, and nurse it for me,
and I will give thee thy wages.
And the woman took the child, and nursed it.
Exodus 2:3-9
