Moses and Greco-Egyptian Practices: Contextualizing the Christian Moses

In an earlier post, I had noted Moses' importance in Greco-Egyptian magic, riffing off of a statement that John Gager made.  I wrote:

The Moses of the magical papyri provides another piece of the puzzle of what Jews, Christians, and others on the ground thought, what they did, and, again, reasons for his exaltation and, just as often, suppression.  It is a clear example, here, of exaltation.  I wonder, what Christians did with this view of Moses as magician?  Does his exaltation here mirror his exaltation in contemporary Christian sources of the mid-second to fourth centuries?  How does it compare with contemporary Egyptian Christian sources of different opposing parties of the hierarchy, the monks, and the traditions of Nag Hammadi?  Indeed, it is fascinating territory into which the magical Moses takes us.  It is a messy, difficult terrain, but ultimately a fruitful one.

In this post, I would like to delve a little deeper in the Moses of the Greek and Demotic Magical Papyri: a Moses to be emulated; a Moses who belongs to an environment where his name had value and influence even beyond Jewish and Christian circles, and whose experiences upon the mountain provided a model to emulate as you, too, could call upon and see God on the mount.

The Greco-Egyptian Magical Papyri that date from the first four centuries of the common era are prime exemplars of the religious fluidity of borrowing and exchange of religious ideas and practices to the point that one can no longer identify the religious identity of the author, audience, or immediate context of the documents.  One finds native Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian notions mingled and recombined into a religious dynamic that we have, with our paucity of language and imagination, labeled “magic.”  In the Greek and Demotic spells that comprise much of this literature (which have parallels in Hebrew, such as in the “Sword of Moses”), Jewish elements loom quite large. 

For the most part, the Jewish elements are limited to contributions in a series of nomina sacra to call upon various gods or various aspects/names of the same god.  One can almost find a spell at random and see names of Iao (Yahweh in Greek), Michael, Gabriel, Adonai, Sabaoth, etc.  Usually, Iao (Yahweh) is equated with Zeus (e.g., PGM I..300; III.212; XII.263-268 is especially telling).   It is not always clear whether the spell-caster thinks Iao (Yahweh), Adonai (Lord), and Sabaoth (Hosts) are the same deity fully equated, separate functions of that deity, or separate deities completely.  Moreover, these names typically are used to call upon another God (or the same god by a different name), such as Apollo (PGM I.298-328), and/or Helios (sometimes equated with Apollo, sometimes not) (PGM III.198ff).

Interestingly, the Jewish and Christian names are strongly associated with exorcism (PGM IV.1227-64; IV.3007-86):  “Hail, God of Abraham; hail, God of Isaac; hail, God of Jacob; Jesus Chrestos, the Holy Spirit, the Son of the Father, who is above the Seven, who is within the Seven.  Bring Iao Sabaoth; may your power issue forth from him, NN, until you drive away this unclean daimon Satan, who is in him” (IV.1231-1239).  This, indeed, mirrors a great deal of the NT, where the name of Jesus was used to exorcise (you could almost pick a chapter of Acts at random).

Sometimes the practitioner will take on the personality or identity of an ancestor or even a god in order to call upon the deity or angel they seek.  For example, calling upon the sun, one says, “I am Adam the forefather; my name is Adam.  Perform for me the NN deed, because I conjure you by the god IAO, by the god Abaoth, by the god Adonai, by the god Michael…” (PGM II.145-149).  Perhaps the most interesting example comes from a series of “I am “ statements that resemble the Gospel of John or Thunder:  Perfect Mind:  “I am an outflow of blood from the tomb of the great One [between] the palm trees; I am the faith found in men, and am he who declares the holy names, who [is] always alike, who came forth from the abyss.  I am CHRATES who came forth from the eye [of the sun].  I am the god whom no one sees or rashly names….” (PGM XII.227-230).  The passage continues in the same manner, equating the speaker with Krates, Helios, Aphrodites, Kronos, the Mother of the Gods, Osiris, Isis, etc. 

            Most interesting, however, is the attribution of spells and incantations to particular figures.  The most prominent in Greco-Roman Egypt would seem to be Hermes Trismegistus in the collections of Hermetica; nonetheless, a competing tradition ascribes a great deal of instruction in these arts to Jewish figures.  For example, there is the charm of Solomon to produce a state of ecstatic seizure (PGM IV.850-929; cf. the seal of Solomon in PGM IV.3040-45). 

But Moses is peerless, except for perhaps Hermes.  Many treatises are associated with Moses and the revelation of the divine name to him—it is the name that gives him his power.  There is the Diadem of Moses, which includes an invisibility spell, but is mostly directed as a love spell (PGM VII.619-27).  The most famous, however, are the lengthy collection of spells known as the “Eighth Book of Moses” (PGM XIII.1-343; XIII.343-646) and “The Tenth Book of Moses.”  Interestingly, these spells suggest that Moses and Hermes Trismegistus may be rivals—or, more likely, that different schools (or perhaps “Lodges”) competed with one using Hermes Trismegistus as mediator and another using Moses (see PGM XIII.15 on Hermes Trismegistus as the plagiarizer of Moses; on the “Lodge” concept, see R. van der Broek, “Religious Practices in the Hermetic ‘Lodge’:  New Light from Nag Hammadi” in From Poimandres to Jacob Böhme)—though, oddly given the history of competitive religious historiography, there is a positive reference to the Egyptian priest Manetho, who, in his own writings, excoriated the Jews and Moses in particular (see PGM XIII.23).

            There are a few points of importance for the study of Moses’ visions in the Magical Papyri.  Firstly, Moses’ moment on Sinai as well as the revelation of the divine name to Moses becomes paradigmatic for any practitioner.  The Books of Moses have the same strange ambivalence found in the Bible (but also elsewhere in Late Antiquity) of the impossibility and possibility of seeing God.  That is God cannot be seen, but the spell-caster is trying to see God—or at least God in some manifest form.  

I call on you, who are greater than all, the creator of all, you, the self-begotten, who see all and are not seen.  For you gave Helios the glory and all the power, Selene [the privilege] to wax and wane and have fixed courses, yet you took nothing from the earlier-born darkness, but apportioned things so that they should be equal.  For when you appeared, both order arose and light appeared.  All things are subject to you, whose true form none of the gods can see; who change into all forms.  You are invisible, Aion of Aion. 

            I call upon you, to appear to me in a good form....

….

            Come, lord, faultless and unflawed, who pollute no place, for I have been initiated into your name.  (PGM XIII.64-73, 90-91; cf. XIII.570-585, 621).

Moses’ God is equated, as elsewhere, with the high God.  This is the unseen seer; the uncontained container (PGM XIII.139).  This is the monad.  Helios has God’s glory—which might be an interesting combination of the Jewish tradition of the Glory as the visible fiery aspect of God (e.g., Ezekiel 1).  This being is what gives light to these celestial bodies—themselves Gods.  God’s true form, however, is unknown, unseen.  Yet, God does have form:  all forms.  God is polymorphic, adaptable (much like Jesus is in many Gnostic works; e.g., Gospel of Philip).  In this invocation, moreover, the speaker calls upon God both in the names given to God in various languages, but also because he has been initiated into the name—as Moses had been in Exodus 3:14. 

Moreover, there is much interest in the Eighth Book to call upon God as the creator God:  creative power is ultimate power.  There are two versions of the Eighth Book, and each has a cosmogony of seven parts (although with eight pairs awkwardly fit within this scheme—something that, it seems, tries to cram the eight-part Memphite Theogony into the seven-part Jewish cosmogony but using names of Greek deities/powers who look over each day (PGM XIII.162-205; XIII.472-564).  Like in Genesis, God creates through utterance, but unlike Genesis, this utterance is in the form of laughter—God laughs and it is.  I am not sure why.  Jesus laughs in some of the non-canonical gospels—most famously now the Gospel of Judas—but it is derisive laughter rather than creative laughter.

Through these incantations, one channels the power of the creator in order to invoke some of the powers of creation, to the point of identifying with the creator (which, it seems, by implication, Moses did too when he received the divine name and went on Sinai):  

To make Helios appear:  Say toward the East, “I am he on the two cherubim, between the two natures, heaven and earth, sun and moon, light and darkness, night and day, rivers and sea.  Appear to me, O archangel of those subject to the cosmos, ruler Helios, set in authority under the One and Only Himself.  The eternal and Only orders you.”  Say the Name.  (PGM XIII.255-259; cf. 335-340).

By being initiated into the Name, by invoking the Name, one takes on the power associated with that Name, becoming the rider of the cherubim, between the cherubim, as God is in the Bible (Exodus 25; Ezekiel 1; and a splattering of Psalms) identifying with the secret Name of the Monad. 

The Tenth Book also is more directly concerned with attaining a vision (PGM XIII.734-1077).  Much like the Eighth Book, through invoking the unutterable Name (764) one channels God’s own self:  “For you are I, and I, you” (795). 

Yet again, it is also about recapturing Sinai.  In the Demotic Papyri, the speaker calls himself the servant of the great God, “he who gives light exceedingly, the companion of flame, he is whose mouth is never extinguished, the great god who is seated in flame, he who is in the midst of the flame which is in the lake of heaven, in whose hand is the greatness and the power of the god:  reveal yourself to me here today in the manner of the form of revealing yourself to Moses which you made upon the mountain, before which you had already created darkness and light” (PDM 125-132).  One seeks a revelation of God (the fiery God) just as God revealed himself and information to Moses on Sinai.  Just like ancient Jews sought to do, just as some Christians would also do, these Greco-Egyptian individuals sought to recapture and reenact the revelation of God to Moses on Sinai. 

While in this last passage, one implicitly identifies with Moses:  as Moses as the great servant of God who, thereby, was allowed to see the very form of God (Num. 12:8), so too one could, as a servant of God, invoke God as Moses did.  At one point, the practitioner explicitly takes on the identity and person of Moses, just as he does Adam in another spell:  “I am Moses your prophet to whom you have transmitted your mysteries celebrated by Israel; you have revealed the most and the dry and all nourishment; hear me.  I am the messenger of Pharaoh Osonnophris; this is your true name which has been transmitted to the prophets of Israel” (PGM V.109-116).  This is, again, in order to exorcise and to control demons. 

Moses’ encounter with God on the mountain was an important event not just for Jews and Christians, who used Moses’ visions (affirming them or denying them for various purposes, and even seeking to experience Sinai for themselves), but for others seeking a divine encounter.  These texts demonstrate a fluid religious environment, a situation where the rank-and-file do not necessarily fit neat and tidy self-identifying definitions of Jewish versus Christian versus Greek versus Egyptia.  It is a situation that might be representative of other places around the Mediterranean, where we do not have the same level of evidence for non-elite religious practices, and maybe not.  Nonetheless, while Christian bishops and others used Moses, and Moses’ authority, as a means to crystallize religious boundaries and to establish their own authority; others, it appears, used Moses as the magus par excellence, used him to borrow from and polemicize against competitors (the Hermetics?).  He was invoked as a common exemplar, whose authority circulated beyond Jewish and Christian sub-cultures, becoming a cross-religious figure.  By acting as Moses did, one could even call oneself Moses, identify with him to call down God upon the mountain and to have a vision of the invisible.

Moses' Divine Visions in Josephus: Suppression and Exception

            I have been contextualizing treatments of Moses in the first to fourth centuries CE, particularly pertaining to his visions in early Christian sources (see my discussion here):  particularly how those visions are alternatively highlighted, expanded, or suppressed and diminished in the sources--and why?  In order to do this, however, it is important to see what the earliest Christians' contemporaries were doing with Moses, how they were using his visions, promoting or suppressing them.  While the earliest Christians, represented in the NT, largely suppressed Moses' visionary abilities, later Christians sought to affirm and even expand them.  Many Jewish (and don't forget Samaritan) trends in the first to fourth centuries also sought to expand what Moses saw and heard on the mount.  Josephus, however, proves to be more exceptional in this regard.

           Josephus, much like Philo, presents Moses as the greatest and best in basically all things (e.g., Ant. 2.229); however, unlike Philo, he overall downplays the miraculous and supernal as much as possible.  While Philo strongly emphasizes Moses’ visions at the burning bush and on the mountain when entering the dark cloud and seeing the “pattern” of the Tabernacle, Josephus removes nearly all visual references, turning instead to the stereotypical Deuteronomic emphasis on audition.  Indeed, while the biblical account is ambivalent about whether Moses did (Num. 12:8) or did not (Exod. 33:20) see God, while Philo strongly promotes Moses’ visionary abilities (through the eye of the mind), Josephus completely falls on the side of not seeing.  There are, however, a few exceptional moments, momentary glimpses where Josephus sometimes slips into visual language or allows indirect visual indicators of the divine presence.

            Let’s compare, for a moment, Philo’s and Josephus’s handling of the burning bush.  Firstly, in the biblical account, the angel of the LORD “appeared” to Moses, Moses saw the bush, but, realizing God was in the bush, he looked away “for he was afraid to look at God” (Exod 3:2-6).  There is the typical elision of the angel of the LORD and God as found in other theophanic passages, but the passage leaves the question of whether Moses could have seen God if he just looked.  Again, other passage will alternatively affirm or deny Moses’ ability to see God.  Philo handles this as a very interesting, but subtle vision:

In the midst of the flame was a form (μορφή) of the fairest beauty, unlike any visible object (τῶν ὁρατῶν ἐμφερὴς οὐδενί), an image supremely divine in appearance (θεοειδέστατον ἄγαλμα), refulgent with a light brighter than the light of fire.  It might be supposed that this was the image of Him that is (εἰκόνα τοῦ ὄντος εἶναι); but let us rather call it an angel or herald, since, with a silence that spoke more clearly than speech, it employed as it were the miracle of sight to herald future events. (Vita Mosis 1.66; see context in 1.65-70)

In this passage, Philo claims that Moses saw something quite astounding:  “a form of the fairest beauty,” “an image supremely divine in appearance.”  It is something unlike anything else of this world.  Whatever he saw, it was supernal; it was beyond.  It was superlative.  It was, as he says, “supremely divine.”  Did he see God?  Or, since Philo reserves “God” for one of God’s qualities, one might ask, did Moses see “the one who is” or the “self-existent one”?  Philo cannot grant this, not with visible appearance at least.  So he at least entertains a step removal of seeing the “image” of the one who is.  He grants its possibility, but does not consider it the best reading.  Instead, this most divine appearance is more of an angelic herald of things to come, a symbolic vision.  What follows is the allegory of fire and the bush, the bush consumes the fire rather than vice versa, as the Hebrews will consume those who are consuming them.  Philo, therefore, grants that Moses saw something quite special, but prefers to claim it is a step away from the divine—Moses would later “see” that in an intellectual vision when he enters the dark cloud where God is on Sinai (e.g., Vita Mosis 1.158; Post. 14; Gig. 54; Mut. 2-9, esp. 7). 

            Compare, for a moment, Josephus Ant. 2.264-269.  In his rendering, Moses encounters an “amazing prodigy” (2.265), of the bramble-bush being aflame, but remaining green with blooms intact.  Moses is further amazed when the bush speaks to him, telling him to “withdraw as far as might be from the flame, to be content with what he, as a man of virtue sprung from illustrious ancestors, had seen, but to pry no further” (2.267).  Throughout, Josephus emphasizes that Moses speaks with “the voice.”  Whereas Philo offered a compilation of visual terms, heightening the moment with an exalted divine presence, even if partially removed since Philo prefers intelligent vision of the mind rather than bodily vision, Josephus downplays the specter.  While Moses receives an amazing glimpse into a mysterious occurrence, he downplays the visual imagery, even making the presence of God/the Angel of the Lord a little more indirect in the passage than even in the biblical version.  Indeed, instead of Moses looking away, fearing to glimpse God, the voice tells him to pry no further—this is all he is going to get in terms of a vision.

            Even at Sinai where Philo repeatedly emphasizes that Moses, finally saw God plainly (with the mind), Josephus largely omits visual registers unless they are indirect.  For example, there are some visual cues, but they are left to the meteorological impact of the presence of God on the mountain (rather than a direct vision of God).  Indeed, Josephus retains the theophanic elements of a cloud, tempest, thunder, and lightning descending upon Sinai (3.79-80), even though, he suspects, his Roman readers won’t believe a word of it (3.81-82).  Otherwise, however, it is all auditory.  Moses prepares to ascend the mountain (and just a mountain, not into the immaterial realities as in Philo or heaven as in apocalyptic traditions) to “converse with God” (3.75).  Josephus presents this in two ascents.  Moses goes up and then comes down for the first one (3.75-87).  Interestingly, the episode is retold entirely from the perspective of an Israelite at the base of the mountain.  Josephus avoids a direct description of Moses’ encounter with God.  Instead, one hears second hand from Moses what happened: 

Τῷ θεῷ γὰρ εἰς ὄψιν ἐλθὼν ἀκροατὴς ἀφθάρτου φωνῆς ἐγενόμη:  οὕτως ἐκείνῳ τοῦ γένοθς ἡμῶν καὶ τῆς τοὐτου μέλει διαμονῆς.

For I have been admitted into a sight of God, I have become a hearer of an incorruptible voice:  such care has he for our race and for its endurance.  (adapted from Whittaker). 

The language of entering into a sight of God is rather strange.  It leaves much to the reader’s interpretation of what seeing has occurred.  There is a visual element to this, although it is rather muted compared to Philo.  He does not directly say that Moses saw God.  A sight of God could be Moses seeing God; or it could mean that Moses came within God’s sight.  This might, indeed, be what is inferred from the language of “entering” or “coming into.”  Perhaps Whiston was correct to treat it as a more generic “presence.”  Nonetheless, the event does not make him a “seer” but a “hearer.”  Afterwards, God speaks to all of the people the ten commandments (3.89-90). 

            Moses goes up again, Josephus completely omits the golden calf incident, and then Moses comes down.  For each occurrence, Josephus completely downplays the tradition of Moses’ glorious face—instead of people being amazed of his glorious face, they are joyous at his “appearance,” here seemingly meaning the fact he came back.  Instead of Moses seeing the pattern of the Tabernacle at this point (something about which Philo makes a lot of hay; see LegAll. 3.102; Vita Mosis 2.71-146, esp. 74-76), Josephus writes that God told Moses that he desires (βούλεται) a Tabernacle.  While Josephus spends a great deal of time on the instructions for building the Tabernacle (3.102-150), the priestly garments (3.151-187), and the purification and consecration of the sacred objects and people (3.188-223), during all of this Josephus omits visual language.  By contrast, Exodus emphasizes the visual registers, that this is something Moses sees and is not just hears (Exod. 25:9, 40; 26:30; 27:8). 

            While Moses’ visual encounters with the divine and divine revelations are largely dropped in favor of aural ones, there are some hidden gems.  Perhaps like “entering into a vision of God,” there are some other visual slips and cues.  One place where Josephus appears to slip from his acoustic emphasis on the divine voice is when he discusses how Moses knew what the Cherubim looked like.  The problem is that the Cherubim are of a “form” unlike any earthly creature any human has seen.  So how did Moses know what they looked like?  Especially since all of his encounters have been auditory?  Josephus writes,

Μωυσῆς δέ φησι τῷ θρόνῳ τοῦ θεοῦ προστυπεῖς ἑωρακέναι.

Moses said he saw them on God’s throne. (Ant. 3.137).

When did Moses see God’s throne in Josephus’s account?  Indeed, it almost sounds like Josephus is alluding to a merkavah vision of some sort, perhaps with Ezekiel 1 in mind?  The reference, to be sure, is extraordinarily subtle, couched in a long and tedious description of all of the Tabernacle’s furnishings; in other words, it is very easy to skim right over without noticing it.  Nonetheless, oddly for Josephus, he alludes to a visual encounter that goes beyond what is found in the biblical account of Moses.  In the biblical story, Moses saw a vision, although sans throne, that resembles the imagery and language of Ezekiel 1 in Exod. 24:9-11.  Moreover, when Moses enters the dark cloud where God is, he saw the “appearance of the glory of the LORD” (Exod. 24:17) much like Ezekiel’s “appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD” (Ezekiel 1:28).  [Indeed, the entire priestly account of the vision of the Tabernacle and what occurs afterward in issuing cultic instructions strongly resembles a great deal of Ezekiel 1 and 40-48; and Leviticus 17-26 sounds much like Ezekiel 20-22.  There are clear contacts.]  Moses, moreover, sees the mercy-seat with the Cherubim in the vision of the “pattern of the Tabernacle” (Exod. 25:17-22).  Whatever the precise reference for Josephus, he claims, as he does not elsewhere, that Moses saw the very throne of God.  Josephus has barely hinted that Moses saw anything before this except a flaming bush and that strangely worded “entering a vision of God.” 

            There is a reference to the divine nimbus, moreover, when God enters the sanctuary. 

While heaven was serene, over the tabernacle alone darkness descended, enveloping it in a cloud not so profound and dense as might be attributed to a winter storm, nor yet so tenuous that the eye could perceive a thing through it; but a delicious dew was distilled therefrom, revealing God’s presence to those who both desired it and believed in it. (Ant. 3.202-203; trans. Whitaker). 

One can sense, especially in the last line, an apologetic edge to this admission of at least one visual sight of God; or, at least, means by which God’s presence was made known.  Perhaps this works somewhat on par with the fiery theophany on Sinai:  using the elements to denote the divine presence in the form of dew and, not quite the dense, dark cloud of the Bible, but a fog.  Indeed, Josephus does not seem to apologize so much at hearing God, but any visual cue he does.

            One final case is perhaps the most fascinating visual indicator of the divine presence in Josephus:  the high priest’s shoulder:

Of those stones which, as I said before, the high priest wore upon his shoulders—they were sardonyxes, and I deem it superfluous to indicate the nature of jewels known to all—it came about, whenever God assisted at the sacred ceremonies, that the one that was buckled on the right shoulder began to shine, a light glancing from it, visible to the most distant, of which the stone had before betrayed no trace. (Ant. 3.214-219; trans. Whitaker)

Therefore, the people ultimately receive three visual indicators of the divine presence:  a thunderstorm on Sinai, a fog and dew entering the tent, and the gleam of light from a gem on the high priest’s right shoulder.  Excepting the high priest’s shoulder, Josephus is quite reticent, embarrassed even, and definitely apologetic about the incident.  These are, moreover, largely presented as indirect.  That is, people do not directly see God, but see the indicators of the divine presence—at least in the roundabout language Josephus uses in these incidents.  There are some subtle allusions for Moses’ visionary experiences, nonetheless.  Moses enters a vision of God—whatever that means.  And Moses, curiously, in an off-handed remark, saw the divine throne.  Otherwise, places in the Bible and in Josephus’s contemporaries that exalted Moses’ visionary abilities are suppressed. 

Seeing Speech, or God and the Senses (3): Synesthetic Visions of the Divine in Philo

While working on Christian hermeneutic mobilizations of Moses’ divine visions (or lack thereof), I am indulging myself by reading quite a lot of Philo's writings.  Philo was extraordinarily interested in the intellectual, contemplative vision of God, seeing with the mind’s eye rather than the bodily one.  Therefore, there is so much one could say about how Philo conceives of the possibilities and limitations of divine vision and how they relate to his most exemplary visionary, Moses, whom he refers to as the greatest and most perfect man who ever lived (Life of Moses 1.1), the most beloved of God (Migration of Abraham 67; On the Confusion of tongues 95-97), and the friend of God (Heir of Divine Things 21).  There are astounding discussions of Moses’ visions, especially concerning the burning bush (astounding for its rather unexpected reticence), Moses’ entrance into the darkness where God was, and Moses’ vision of archetypal reality (the “pattern of the Tabernacle”).  There are extensive discussions of Moses and the elders ascending the mount and seeing God (from Exod. 24) as well. Philo does not hold back to calling Moses "God," and gives him many of the same characteristics of the "Logos" (both, by the way, are archetypal high priests).

            These discussions are real gems that often have implications well beyond the passage itself, bits and pieces taken up again elsewhere in the treatise or in other treatises; they are overlapping discourses that one could spend a lifetime unraveling.   As usual, however, I am fascinated by things Philo says in passing.   Little things catch my attention and I want to unravel them.  One such remark is his discussion of synesthetic visions:  that is, seeing the divine voice (Given this instance of synesthesia, I am going to cross reference this discussion with my "God and the Senses" series).  Referring to Exod. 20:18 LXX—“all the people saw the voice”—Philo writes,

Now, a certain man, setting at nought this ordinance [about the Sabbath], though the echoes of the divine commands about the sacredness of the seventh day were ringing in his ears, commands promulgated by God no through His prophet but by a voice which, strange paradox, was visible and aroused the eyes rather than the ears of the bystanders, went forth through the midst of the camp to gather firewood, knowing that all were resting in their tents. (Life of Moses 2.213; trans. Colson LCL)

The point of the passage is to describe how the death penalty came about for abrogating the Sabbath command.  This ordinance is heightened by the fact that it is, according to Philo, given without the typical intermediary (Moses), but directly by the voice of God.  Yet, in a strange case of synesthesia, the divine voice is seen and not heard.  Although, as I have tried to show in other posts (see "God and the Senses" tag) that a fuller understanding of human-divine contact employs language from all of the senses, Philo distinctly privileges seeing over hearing (as do the Rabbis; see Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Bahodesh, 2).  Those who hear are “Jacob,” but those who see are “Israel” (pick up a treatise nearly at random, and you’ll see Philo discussing at some point “Israel” and seeing).  He is interpreting a peculiar translation in the LXX of seeing the voice, but does so to heighten the importance of the Sabbath command.  He does not, however, reflect here on the paradox of seeing sound. 

That he does, however, in Migration of Abraham 47-53.  It is too long to quote in full, but there are some important points to quote at length:

For what life is better than the contemplative life, or more appropriate to a rational being?  For this reason, whereas the voice of mortal beings is judged by hearing, the sacred oracles intimate that the words of God are seen as light is seen; for we are told that “all the people saw the Voice” (Exod. 20:18), not that they heard it.  (Migration of Abraham 47; trans. Colson and Whitaker LCL)

Before proceeding to Philo’s explanation of seeing the divine voice, resolving the paradox, we have to understand why he brings it up at all.  Opening with the rhetorical question of what life is greater than the contemplative life—the answer is “none”—he proceeds to the foundational moment at Sinai.  All of the people at Sinai who see the divine voice are, in this way, prototypical contemplatives:  those who do not just hear, but who see the divine things.  Contemplating through the eye of the mind divine speech (which Philo does continually through commentary; his meditations on the Bible are themselves visual contemplations of the divine voice) is the way to ecstasy (see Migration of Abraham 34-35), the heights of ascend and divine sight.  See as Moses did; and, if not that advanced, as the Israelites did.  This is in contrast to Rabbinic discussions which saw the event as unique—that general would see the divine in a way that not even Isaiah or Ezekiel would (MRI, Shirta, 3; Bahodesh, 9; see further Deuteronomy Rabbah 7:8; cf. Numbers Rabbah 12:4).  Philo continues to explain this paradox of seeing divine speech:

For what was happening was not an impact on air made by the organs of mouth and tongue, but virtue shining with intense brilliance, wholly resembling the fountain of reason, and this is also indicated elsewhere on this wise:  “Ye have seen that I have spoken to you out of Heaven” (Exod. 20:22 LXX), not “ye heard,” for the same cause as before.  In one place the writer distinguishes things heard from things seen and hearing from sight, saying, “Ye heard a voice of words, and saw no similitude but only a voice” (Deut. 4:12 LXX), making a very subtle distinction, for the voice dividing itself into noun and verb and the parts of speech in general he naturally spoke of as “audible,” for it comes to the test of hearing:  but the voice or sound that was not that of verbs and nouns but of God, seen by the eye of the soul, he rightly represents as “visible.”…  This shews that words spoken by God are interpreted by the power of sight residing in the soul, whereas those which are divided up among the various parts of speech appeal to hearing. (Migration of Abraham 47b-49)

Philo explains the paradox of seeing speech by calling upon a couple things at once:  (1) the distinction between human and divine and (2) what exactly does the seeing.  Firstly, human speech is divided up into different parts of speech by vocal organs operating upon the air.  Throughout his writings, Philo is careful not to confuse human and divine qualities.  God does not have a mouth, so to speak, or organs of speech in the bodily sense.  Human speech is sequential and divided; the implication is the divine speech is a unity and, therefore, synchronic.  As he concludes:

The truth is that our sound-producer is not similar to the Divine organ of voice; for ours mingles with air and betakes itself to the place akin to it, the ears; but the divine is an organ of pure and unalloyed speech, too subtle for the hearing to catch it, but visible to the soul which is single in virtue of its keenness of sight. (52)

Secondly, bodily eyes cannot see the divine in Philo; the soul’s or Mind’s (the highest part of the soul) is what sees the divine.  There is also a hint of this in this passage.  In the intervening passage that I did not quote, Philo speaks of how things to be sensed and interpreted by the mind, as he says here, are attracted to those places “akin to it.”  So perfumes waft to the nose; savours to the tongue; etc.  Likewise, the divine voice is interpreted by the place most akin to it, which, oddly, is not the ears, but being a pure thing is interpreted by that “organ” of purity (if, indeed, it has been kept pure and virtuous), the soul.  The rational soul doesn’t smell, hear, taste, or touch; it “sees.” As Philo elsewhere waxes rhapsodic when the “voice of God came” to Moses:  “It suggests a loud, sonorous, continual appeal, pitches so as to spread abroad throughout the soul, whereby no part shall be left to which its right instruction has not penetrated, but all are filled from end to end with sound learning” (Heir of Divine Things 67).

The Political Contexts of Vision

I just finished reading Elaine Pagels's new book, Revelations:  Visions, Prophecy, & Politics in the Book of Revelation, and thought I would collect some of my thoughts.  There have been many initial reviews that will, most likely, show greater verve and greater detail than what I am going to discuss here; this is more of a series of notes rather than a review, per se.  See Adam Gopnik's review in the New Yorker here. Moreover, three chapters of the book previously appeared as more technical articles, whereas the book is for a more general, non-specialist audience. 

What struck me is that the book is really about shifting contexts of visions, particularly John of Patmos's Revelation.  The different chapters of the book provide different political contexts from an imperial telescope to intra-Christian microscopes in overlapping contexts that slowly spiral outward in space and time until one finds oneself far away from the late first century setting (Pagels agrees with the majority of scholars who date the text to Domitian's reign).

The first context is the political context of the Roman Empire; it focuses on the enemies without.  It is the political context in which John mobilizes archaic symbols, particularly the chaoskampf of the (usually male) god conquering the (usually female) chaotic waters (often symbolized as a sea creature, the Leviathan, Rahab, or, in Babylon, Tiamat) and transforms them into a staunchly anti-Roman message.  Pagels admirably interweaves prophetic traditions, the emergence of the Roman Empire at large, the major political events of the first centuries BCE and CE, the specific effects of these events in Asia Minor, and the emergence of the Jesus movement.  While the scholarship in this chapter is nothing new--most NT scholars recognize Revelation as perhaps the most anti-Roman document in the New Testament--Pagels succinctly and vividly paints a picture that is engaging and informative.

Her second context shifts from telescope to microscope:  competitive prophetic figures and visions among the earliest "Christians" (placed in scare quotes since, as Pagels emphasizes, John of Patmos never calls himself such).  This is the context of enemies within.  Here Pagels sets up John against the rival prophets he mentions by code in the seven letters to the churches of Asia.  Her most interesting reading is how the message John proclaims would strongly conflict with Paul's or, perhaps more specifically, Paul's successors (since Paul would be long dead by now).  She specifically singles out Ignatius of Antioch.  John of Patmos rails against those followers of Jesus who have given in and assimilated in various ways:  sexual impurity (she reads this as a possible reference to intermarriage), food laws, and handling Roman money (idolatry since it has the image or "mark"(?) of the emperor-as-god on it).  Most interestingly, she reads "those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan" (Rev. 2:9) as Gentile Christians.  That is, those Pauline Gentile Christians who, following Paul's advice, do not follow the traditional food laws and would eat foods sacrificed to idols, likely are married to non-Jews, and, what is more, are not circumcised, yet consider themselves part of "Israel."  By the time of Ignatius, however, there would be a shift in the tides, as institutional authority sought to undermine or co-opt charismatic authority (at one point, going into an ecstatic state to say prophetically to obey the bishop; Philadelphians 7.1-2).

The third context turns to placing Revelation in a series of many revelations occurring throughout the ancient world in the second to fourth centuries CE, including Jewish, emergent Christian, Egyptian, Greco-Roman, etc.  Having visions was the way of the day.  She spends a great deal of time, however, on 4 Ezra and the Apocryphon of John, along with the other documents of Nag Hammadi in order to show the range of possibilities of revelatory documents at this time.  This is more of a programmatic chapter that largely introduces readers to the documents for which she famously introduced to the general reading public about 35 years ago now(!), and sets up the stage for what comes next:  deciding what is genuine and what is not--and who gets to decide?

The fourth context takes the first two and melds them together with the increased information from the fourth:  how do intra-Christian squabbles fit within Christian-Roman tensions, especially as one moves to the second to fourth centuries?  She sets this up in terms of who accepts and promotes Revelation and who rejects it all within terms of the sporadic persecution of Christians by Roman authorities as well as more written aspersions of Christians in books such as Apuleius' Golden Ass and Celsus' True Doctrine.  Revelation would be claimed (in spirit) by the New Prophecy movement (formerly called Montanism), and, oftentimes, those administrative folks (bishops) who preferred administrative authority rather than charismatic authority would condemn this movement and the books they most admired (Revelation and the Gospel of John) as false and heretical.  On the other hand, Justin (later Justin Martyr) and others such as Irenaeus would champion Revelation because they saw in its violent and anti-Roman imagery a reflection of what they saw in their own day:  "beastly" Romans killing Christians.  The apologists on the one hand sought to show that Christians were good imperial subjects; but on the other hand threatened that the events in Revelation would take place (being held back only by the good Christian subjects praying for its delay).  Irenaeus and Apuleius, from different perspectives, however, set up the critical discussion of discernment between true and false visions.  Revelation would be claimed alternately as true and false by different Christians.  Apuleius, however, promoted Isis as the true revealer of divine mysteries, and all Christian claims of vision as false.

The fifth context, as we spiral away from Revelation for the most part, is how the document came into the canon by the skin of its teeth.  Much of this material is well-rehearsed from any scholarly account one might read on the books found at Nag Hammadi, except with a special focus on John's vision.  Few canon lists circulating in the early fourth century include it...except Athanasius's.  Set against the backdrop of Constantine's "conversion," Athanasius builds upon an interpretation of Irenaeus to turn the "Anti-Christ" (which is never, as such, mentioned in Revelation) from the Roman emperor to other Christians, downplaying the anti-imperial aspects of the document since he was trying to court Constantine's favor (except when the emperors are Arian or except when they would exile Athanasius).  Drawing again on the third context, we see how Revelation begins to beat out other revelations (such as those found at Nag Hammadi), how it gets into the canon, and how those others are suppressed.  We also begin to see another power-conflict:  the (more charismatic) monastic authorities (particularly Pachomius and Anthony) clashing with the episcopal authority in Egypt.  Pagels looks at the letters of the "fiercely independent" Anthony, looking at the recommendations of the monastic leaders who seek to inculcate experiences and not dogmatic adherence, finding in their letters and other writings sentiments that match much of what was found at Nag Hammadi.  She seeks, in this way, to demonstrate how the spirituality in the eclectic documents found at the site near a Pachomian monastery is, in fact, completely in line with monastic practices at the time.  Indeed, I should note that one thing I did appreciate about her discussions of the Nag Hammadi texts was an emphasis on the practices they prescribe, describe, or assume, and the attempt to put them into a particular social setting of spiritual reading practices.  As Ignatius co-opted charismatic authority for episcopal ends, however, so does Athanasius with his Life of Anthony, transforming the sophisticated, independent, learned seeker into an illiterate, obedient follower of none other than Athanasius himself.

In its ancient, medieval, and modern contexts Revelation would be redeployed by opposing parties to denigrate one another--each side claiming to be the dispensers of divine justice and claiming their opponents to be on the side of the beast, or anti-Christ.  But, Pagels seeks to end with the message of hope, as Revelation ends in a new Jerusalem after a long nightmare (something Ron Charles at the Washington Post wishes she would have spent more time on), and especially recovery of those more universally oriented "revelations" as the Gospel of Truth, the Secret Revelation of John (Apocryphon of John), and the Thunder:  Perfect Mind.  Works that are open to dialogue between divine revealer and human questioner, open to revision rather than the strict "no addition; no subtraction" legacy of the closed canon.

Others have offered various critiques--many wish, for example, that she would have a more substantial discussion of medieval and modern usages of the book, something which she does in passing in the conclusion and partly in the introduction.  I understand that critique; but I also understand why she might avoid it.  I would, however, direct people to a scholarly (and readable!) account of how Revelation has been used in more modern imperial contexts as Spanish and Portuguese colonized the Americas, how its imagery was used differently by colonized and colonizers, and then re-deployed in street art in Los Angeles in the twentieth century in David Sanchez's From Patmos to the Barrio.  Gopnik also critiques, for example, that sometimes gory, violent imagery is just...entertainment and not always political.

I offer a different question.  Mostly Pagels emphasizes the political contexts and implications of visions, but at times suggests that through the apologetic mission to show that Christians could be good subjects while not following Roman religious practices, they, and Philo before them, began to disentangle religion from politics.  I found this quite a striking statement.  Is this a de-politicization of religion tout court?  It is a disestablishment of politics to a particular religious form, but to all religion?  Her example is Philo's Embassy to Gaius, but that work does not really show a divorcing (however slight) of religion and politics so much as a form of religio-political diplomacy.  This is a minor point, however, concerning a passing comment she made.

I also wonder:  while texts like Thunder:  Perfect Mind, and others, are quite eclectic and were placed in a very eclectic collection, are they necessarily as "universal" as she suggests in her conclusion?  I include non-canonical and canonical side-by-side, because that is the most accurate way to reconstruct the dynamic and fluid world of emergent Christianity.  But, when shifting perspective to modern inspiration, is there such a stark difference of "open" versus "closed," "universal" versus "particular" that aligns with non-canonical and canonical?  Can the canonical be creative, open?  Is the non-canonical always so?  I am thinking of J.Z. Smith's essay on canonization, where he compares the process of canonization to viticulture (or oenology).  We choose one fruit of many to make wine (though others do make wine out of other fruits), but then make a staggering variety of wines out of it through processing, cultivation, aging, etc.  We may choose a few books to be in canon, but we interpret them in so many different ways, ways that liberate and ways that oppress, ways that create and ways that destroy, ways that lead to and ways that block critical reflection.  Through the process of commentary and hermeneutics, creativity can still flow and transform--as well as stunt.

A final point--and a point that I am fundamentally in agreement with Pagels--is that the claiming of a vision, the affirming of someone else's vision, or the denial of a vision is a political act; it is an act where one is claiming a direct line to divine authority or the ability to speak on behalf of the divine.  While William James in his masterwork, Varieties of Religious Experience, sought to disentangle religious experience (particularly mysticism) from any form of authority over another (see the end of his chapter on mysticism) reflecting a broader tendency to privatize religion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the truth of that matter is that, historically, such claims of experience and direct contact with the divine have had a social and political effects over others; those who claim such revelations so often claim that such visions demand that they claim authority over others (Paul is a quintessential example of this).  People use visionary experiences to claim authority over others, and shape their lives.  One of the major contributions of this book is that Pagels offers a fairly thick description of the macro and micro power struggles over the claims of vision of a single book.  We see the power struggle between rival visions within the same geographical region in the same group (Asia Minor); we see rival visions at the same time between different groups (Christians, Jews, and Romans); we see rival claims of authority by visionaries and those who deny them or co-opt them in institutional forms of authority.  (note:  For a full discussion of the intersections of authority and visions, I would direct people to Grace Jantzen's Power, Gender, and Christian Mysticism, where she argues these points alongside the gendered implications of such claims of authority of divine vision in male-dominated institutions.)  This is just as true of one's contemporaries as of one's predecessors.  Centuries after John of Patmos wrote Revelation, people affirmed or denied his vision--usually an eye on whether their opponents were doing with it, using it to delineate who was "in" and who was "out" in community formation.  This was also true with major, even universally accepted, figures of tradition, such as Moses; how much more so with contested figures.

The Christian Moses: Choosing a Path

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?

To See God and Live

In Exod. 33:20, the LORD famously tells Moses, "you cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live." Moses then is allowed to see God's backside (v. 23). One might compare Exod. 3:6 where Moses is afraid to look at God.

Recently I was asked if I would write up a little piece on seeing God in late antique Judaism. It is quite a broad topic, and, of course, should I take up the task I will be looking at some of the Hekhalot texts. But my mind also began buzzing about something else--I wonder how Rabbinic literature, particularly the Targumim and the Midrashim, handle these passages of seeing God and living or not living. That is, even though we have this passage of God telling Moses no one can see the LORD's face and live (although perhaps God's backside), there are plenty of passages where people do see God's face and live--even Moses himself.

God says he speaks to Moses face-to-face in Num. 12:8 (as opposed to everyone else to whom he speaks in dreams and through indirect means). Perhaps most famously, Jacob remarks after he wrestles with the mysterious "man," "For I have seen god face to face, and yet my life is preserved" (Gen. 32:30). Gideon is amazed that he continues to live after seeing the (Angel of the) LORD in Judges 6:22-23. These passages are aware of the rarity of being able to see God; they are both aware that one should die from seeing God; and in both cases they live.

These are all individual visions of God, but there is a collective vision in Exod. 24:11: "And he [the God of Israel] did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and at and drank." As one might suspect, much of this has been explained through source criticism (that is, the differences between LORD and Angel of the LORD, and especially the use of God versus LORD in this verse). Nonetheless, even this source, which does not mention death to those who see God in a pronounced way denotes the danger and exceptionality of the collective vision, since it notes that God did not lay his hand on them--God restrained the typical consequence of death.

Deuteronomy changes much of the language to speaking and hearing: "Did any people ever heard the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and live?" (Deut. 4:33). Nonetheless, some visual language sneaks in: "The LORD spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, while I stood between the LORD and you at the time, to declare to you the word of the LORD; for you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up into the mountain" (Deut. 5:4-5). This is an interesting passage because it seems at odds with itself. Part of what marked the Israelites as special in Deuteronomy 4 was that they HEARD God and still lived. Deuteronomy 5 takes us a step closer and then two steps back. They not only heard God and lived, but God spoke with them "face to face" as God speaks to Moses in Numbers 12. And just at the moment of potentially seeing God and living, the Deuteronomist moves away from these implications: they did not quite see God (or perhaps fully hear God), since Moses stood between them and the LORD, because they were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain.

I want to end this posting with a meditation on two more passages of seeing God and living. When I first started thinking about this project, I immediately had thought not of Moses, but of Hagar. I thought she might be an interesting figure to track down the history of interpretation, since she is one of the few women who sees the (Angel of the) LORD and lives and one of the few (perhaps the only?) foreigner who does (she's Egyptian). How do later interpreters handle her vision? Genesis 16 is a fascinating passage. I often assign it to students to do an in-depth literary analysis on it. She is fleeing Sarai and is in the wilderness where the Angel of the LORD appears to her. For my current purposes, the ensuing conversation is less important, but it ends as follows: "So she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, "Thou art a God of seeing"; for she said, "Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?" Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered" (Gen. 16:13-14). This passage has a few quite unique features. Firstly, Hagar names the LORD, "God of seeing." One might compare other passages, such as Moses (Exod. 3) or Jacob (Gen. 32) in which they request the name of the LORD, whereas Hagar names. Secondly, while other passages state or exclaim that one has seen (or heard) God and lived, here Hagar (perhaps...) questions this. Different translators have either placed this sentence in the indicative or the interrogative, and I would like to look at it more carefully to consider this (and perhaps this is something that might come up in Rabbinic interpretation of the verse). It is clearly a marked passage. Not only do we have the exceptional vision of the LORD or Angel of the LORD remarked upon (of course, the LORD/Angel of the LORD appears multiple other places, especially in Genesis, without comment of living/dying, such as with Abraham), but we have a foreign woman who sees and lives and questions this fact.

The most remarkable passage, in my opinion, however, of seeing the LORD and living has to be in Judges 13 when Manoah and his wife (otherwise known as Samson's parents) see and live. I had previously thought that Hagar was the only woman in the Hebrew Bible who sees God and lives (or at least remarks on the case of seeing God and living), but I was wrong. Manoah's wife--never named--does as well. She is the lead seer in this passage, and she takes charge. There are some similarities, I think, between this story and the Jesus birth story--both have an Angel of the LORD, both have the angel appear to both husband and wife, wife first, and both about the birth of a special child. It is a very extensive vision with several important elements. For this reason, I think it deserves a post of its own. So, be on the lookout for Manoah and his wife seeing the LORD and living.

Hebrews 11:27: Moses' Vision of the Invisible

As I continue to work through my chapter on Hebrews, I am always struck by a certain productive ambiguity the homilist often exploits. One ambiguity is in a passage that I often just pass over in chapter 11. Indeed, the style of hall of faith of Hebrews 11 often makes my eyes glaze over, although I recognize the rhetorical effectiveness of its genre.

Nonetheless, this time I was struck by the following line (11:27):

πίστει κατέλιπεν Αἴγυπτον μὴ φοβηθεὶς τὸν θυμὸν τοῦ βασιλέως, τὸν γὰρ ἀόρατον ὡς ὁρῶν ἐκαρτέρησεν.

By faith he left Egypt not fearing the anger of the king, for as seeing the invisible he endured.

Immediately, I read this in two ways. Because of Moses' paradoxical vision of the invisible (i.e., God), he endured Pharaoh's anger. The vision gave him the strength or ability to endure. The other reading is that he endured the rare and frightening vision of God, the very sight of whom kills (since one cannot see God and live). Indeed, in Hebrews, as far as I have seen, only Moses is granted a vision of the invisible God. Moses also sees the "type" of the heavenly things, from which he builds the "copy," "shadow," or "antitype" of the earthly tent. Moses sees much in Hebrews, and vision language applies exclusively to him. Is it that of all humanity, only he could bear the sight of God or God's glory (at least pre-Christ)? On the other hand, what is the role of the "as"? Does that somehow qualify the vision? Did Moses, "in a way" see the invisible? Perhaps by seeing God's glory or the reflection of God's Glory, the Son, from afar (see 1:3)? Indeed, the previous verse makes Moses a proto-Christian, since he suffers abuse for (or of?) Christ. Nonetheless, it is difficult to endure even a refracted vision of the invisible, if, indeed, that is the gist (or one of the gists) of this line.