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Leading off a scientific paper with a mythological quote doesn't instill confidence. "Survival in hot deserts has always posed a problem for man; Moses had to solve it in order to lead the children of Israel through the wilderness of the Sinai"

"The majority of scholars see the biblical Moses as a legendary figure, while retaining the possibility that Moses or a Moses-like figure existed in the 13th century BCE" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses

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Some relevant context here is that this paper was published in 1980 by the Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. I would expect such references to be pretty common in such works.

Religious bs comming from an university make it worse. Can't you see it?

Yeah, I don’t think I follow, just because the university is in Tel Aviv means they have to conflict mythology with science? Seems very condescending.

No worries. Just context to help with why they did it. Similar situation would be that we would expect ancient Roman writings to refer to their gods as matter of fact.

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