Moses and the Burning Bush: A Story of Faith and Obeying God (The Prince of Egypt)

 Moses and the Burning Bush: A Story of Faith and Obeying God
The Prince of Egypt
by Mary Manz Simon
Copyright 1998
Format: Hardcover
Status: Not currently in print, but many used copies are available on ebay
Conclusion: Get Rid of It




Continuing on with our Moses theme, here is another book illustrating an important moment of his life.  This book is taken directly from the Dreamworks film The Prince of Egypt.  The illustrations are straight out of the movie, and I suspect the words and dialogue are too, though it has been so long since I have seen the movie that I don't know for certain.  I'm sure it follows the movie pretty closely, but how closely does it follow the Bible? That's the important question.

The Good Points:
  • The illustrations are beautiful.
  • It is based on a movie, which could also be paired up with the book as a fun activity.
  • The book ends with some deep questions you can discuss with your children. They include questions from the books, but also questions that get your children thinking about their relationship with God.

The Discrepancies:
  • This book says Moses grew up as a prince of Egypt, and later on Moses describes himself as a "Prince of Egypt, the son of the man who killed [the Israelites'] children."  Both are technically correct, but the book never mentions that Moses was originally an Israelite himself.
  • The book states that God showed Moses two miracles to perform for the Hebrews so that they would believe he was from God. It doesn't state what the miracles are.  The Bible, though, describe three miracles: turning his staff into a snake, covering his hand with leprosy, and turning water from the Nile into blood.
  • The key points in the argument between God and Moses are still there, but this book puts them in a slightly different order.
  • In the Bible, after Moses insists that he is not a good speaker, God decided to send Moses's brother Aaron to help him.  In this book, Aaron is never even mentioned.  
I'm sad to say this one should probably be pulled out of our library.  I really love the beautiful graphics in it.  However, I think Aaron is too important of a figure to completely ignore.  Luckily, this has never been a favorite book for either of my kids, so I don't think they will mind if I remove it from our Bible story library. In fact they may not even notice.

Now I get to decide what to do about the movie.  I seem to recall that it has the same problem with Aaron as this book does.  He's in the movie, but I don't believe he is ever in the roll as Moses's assistant. (I'll have to watch it again to be sure.)  But the major question I really want to address is, will I let my kids watch the movie even if I've decided that the book shouldn't be in our Bible library?  And the answer is "yes".  

Why would I have 2 different standards?  It's because I'm using the books and movies for different purposes.  I read these Bible stories to my children every night, and use them as a teaching tool. It is important to me that what they are learning is true and accurate.  This movie, however, will only be watched occasionally, and its main purpose is for entertainment.  If I never let my child watch a movie that wasn't 100% true, I'm not sure there would be anything left for them to watch. But I figure, as long as my children are aware of what the Bible actually teaches about Moses, then I'm fine with them occasionally watching inaccurate movies as entertainment.  It could be used as a good activity for them to compare and contrast this movie with the real story. It could also be a good teaching tool for getting them to think about the need to determine the accuracy of various sources.



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