The historian of ancient religion typically lives in a
patchwork world. The dearth of
ancient evidence is a daily reality to which one submits oneself. The study of Moses in antiquity,
however, oddly presents itself as an embarrassment of riches. In addition to the Hebrew Bible and
Jewish sources, Christian, Muslim, and even “pagan” writers repeatedly retold stories of Moses,
sometimes presenting an entire “life,” sometimes focusing on specific episodes
or events, and sometimes referring to a general quality or ability of Moses. Second Temple Jews revisited Sinai over
and again, retelling how Moses received the Torah in new circumstances. He was alternatively invoked as
absolutely unique and a model for emulation. Several events, tropes, roles, and images caught the ancient
imagination: the birth story; the
burning bush revelation of the divine name; the signs and wonders he performed
in Egypt; the Passover; the Exodus; standing on Sinai; meeting God at the Tent;
holding hands up high in battle.
He was liberator, lawgiver, king, priest, magician, visionary, and, dare I say it, a "god." Moses was and is central for Judaism,
but also for Christianity and Islam.
As one historian, C. Umhau Wolf, noted, no other figure from the Hebrew Bible receives
as much attention in both the New Testament and the Quran as Moses—outnumbering
references even to Abraham!
There is currently an upsurge in
interest in early Christian mobilizations of Moses. There is a recent monograph by John Lierman on Moses in the
New Testament. The Catholic
University of America has recently held a conference featuring Moses in ancient
and medieval Christian representation with a promised conference volume
forthcoming. With so much terrain
to cover, what paths should one take?
Follow beaten paths, worn-questions and answers from other
scholars—often an inevitable occurrence when faced with documents as
over-scrutinized as the New Testament? Seek new paths and questions, but risk being overwhelmed by the
unknown? How does one organize
one’s evidence: by author, corpus,
historical period, or topic? One
must choose a path carefully: one
that is one’s own, but that crisscrosses others; one that is
original but representative, related to others but coherent in scope.
One such path, I believe, is how ancient Christians represented Moses’ visionary
abilities: What exactly, if
anything, did Moses see on the Mountain?
And why does it matter?
Different early Christians would
answer differently: God, angels
(because no one can see God and live!), darkness, the “pattern” of ultimate
heavenly realities, and, yes, he saw Jesus. New Testament writers, while making Jesus a prophet like (or
greater than) Moses, tended to claim Moses did not see God (except in
Hebrews 11). Especially moving into
the second through the fourth centuries, sometimes he “foresaw” Jesus (these
are the “hindparts” Moses was vouchsafed); sometimes the eternal Christ was the
being who met with him directly on the mountain; or, my personal favorite, when
Jesus was on the Mount of Transfiguration with Moses and Elijah was when they
ascended their mounts, making the mountain a trans-temporal hub of some sort as
if early Christians were watching Doctor Who.
Early Christian alternatively affirm and deny Moses' divine visions, and whether they demote or exalt Moses has an important social context: the authority of Christ and authority
of Christian leaders, especially bishops, as mediators of divine
realities. There are many subtle
variations to explore on this theme of “who benefits?” by affirming and/or denying
Moses’ abilities. Overall,
however, denying Moses’ visions of God was often used to claim Christ as
ultimate mediator, even as Christ was a prophet like Moses; affirmations of
Moses’ visions affirmed his place in society as analogous to
Christian leadership, which, as Andrea Sterk has emphasized, reaches its apogee
in the writings of Basil of Caesarea:
as Moses stood between God and the people, so does the bishop. As bishops aligned themselves with
Moses, they tended to emphasize his positive visionary abilities and references to Exod 33:20 (no one can see God and live) fall away to passages like Num. 12:8 (Moses sees the very form of God whereas no one else can). This will start out as my operating hypothesis. This project, therefore, dovetails
quite nicely with the questions that generated my work on the Sabbath and the
Tabernacle in Hebrews: who can
access and mediate access to the divine?
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