"cumque descenderet Moses de monte Sinai . . . ignorabat quod cornuta esset facies sua ex consortio sermonis Dei" --Exod. 34:29 [Biblia Sacra Vulgata] ["When descended Moses from Mount Sinai, he was ignorant that horned was his face because he was conversing in the company of God"]
Old Testament
Book Two: Exodus
Israel at Mount Sinai (cont'd)
Chapter 33: Israel prepares to leave the sacred mountain
Chapter 34: Theophany!
Chapter 35: The erection of the tabernacle
Chapter 36: Judah and the holy carpenters
Have I gotten so bored with cow entrails and flinging blood on the walls that I have resorted to quoting St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate version of the bible? you ask. But that verse centers around the most fascinating thing I have encountered yet reading the bible. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai the second time, his face glowed because he had been talking to God. (Nevermind that that had never happened before, to anyone.) But look at the Latin Vulgate translation of that passage. Jerome said when Moses came down he had horns on his face!
The Hebrew word "qeren" means both "shine" and "horn," and Jerome mistranslated it as horn. But here's where it gets interesting. The Vulgate translation was written in the fifth century A.D., and remained the official Roman Catholic text for centuries. Even when the Roman Catholic church finally authorized an English translation of the bible, which became the Douay-Rheims version, that version was based not on the Greek and Hebrew texts, but on the Vulgate. So for centuries the official Roman Catholic bible said that Moses had horns on his head.
Consequently, artists for centuries thought Moses had horns on his head. Artists latched on to this one passage because it distinguished Moses from other saints. In most of the old testament (at least what we've read so far) there are very few physical descriptions of the characters. Moses' horns set him apart, gave him a readily identifiable characteristic. (According to the footnotes of my bible, "horns" is not necessarily a mistranslation. It says that "qeren" may have been related to the way "ancient priests were sometimes depicted with a horned headpiece which symbolized their semidivine status." So the Hebrew may very well have meant "horned"--Moses' face itself showed the horns that the ancient priests wore on their headpieces.)
Anyway, as a result, in one of Michelangelo's more famous sculptures, of Moses, in San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, Moses has horns! Here is that amazing sculpture. Click on the picture so you can see the full-size image:
I've been to Rome one time. It is an amazing place. The city is so overflowing with art, sculpture, history, that they don't have room for all the sculptures of Michelangelo. A single minor sculpture by Michelangelo would be the centerpiece of any museum's collection in America (see From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler). In Rome, many Michelangelo sculptures are OUTSIDE on the sidewalk. They don't have enough room in the museums, so they just put them in parks and on streets. How amazing is Rome? Read this article. Just last year, on December 7, 2007, a new sketch by Michelangelo, who died over 500 years ago, was found in the archives of the Vatican. Can you imagine? I have been told that it is difficult for the Romans to do any construction or public works in Rome, because every time they start to dig they uncover more ruins that need to be excavated and examined for years before they can continue. While I was there, in 2004, they had just discovered new artifacts in the basement of a building on the Piazza Navona that they were trying to renovate.
So, it's fascinating that 1000 years of art and iconography was influenced by a mistranslation of that one rather unimportant detail in Exodus. But this story is just getting started.
One of my favorite authors is Sigmund Freud. He had an amazing mind, and he wrote unabashedly about sex, and he invented this enormous framework for how the mind works. Even though psychologists tend to discount a lot of his work nowadays, I never understand why--it would be like discounting Darwin because we've learned so much more about evolution in the last 150 years. The basics of what Freud believed are so fundamental to our understanding of the human mind now, I think most people no longer even recognize his influence. When psychologists say he was "wrong," they are talking in very specific, nitpicky ways. But the basics of the id and ego, and dissembling (see my post on Sarah's Dissembling in Genesis), and defense mechanisms, and how people lie to themselves more than they ever lie to others, and when someone is lying to you, or does something mean, they aren't lashing out at you, they are trying to protect their own insecurities. All that is fundamental to understanding human behavior, and Freud laid it all out.
But more than that, his work is seminal. Although he's been rejected in many circles in psychology, feminist theory and film theory love him. SCREEN memories for heaven's sake! He created an entire theory of feminism and film. And yet, one of the main reasons psychologists don't like him is that his theory was too phallocentric--his theories, they say, were way off when it comes to women. But, feminists say, the entire world is phallocentric, that's the entire point. You know who else was highly phallocentric? Michelangelo!
It turns out, Freud wrote an essay on the Moses of Michelangelo! And not just any essay. It's apparently one of the strangest, most personal essays Freud wrote. Unfortunately Freud's works are not online. (Apparently they are still under copyright. I think of him as a nineteenth century thinker, but he didn't die until 1936.) So I haven't read the essay yet, but I will let you know.
What an amazing web of Western culture spread across 2000 years was sparked by that one little passage of Exodus!
--bibletoenail
Textual Notes
- Exod. 33:3 -- A great new twist. Now God says he's not going to go with Israel, because if he does he's afraid he will annihilate them along the way! It's so great, just like a bad marriage--"I just can't talk to you right now." Remember this is the god of supposed infinite compassion, etc. etc.
- Exod. 33:15-16 -- An amazing passage that refutes the entire Christian belief. Moses says to God, "Indeed, if thou dost not go in person, do not send us up from here; for how can it ever be known that I and thy people have found favor with thee, except by thy going with us?" Moses is saying that we humans cannot possibly be expected to believe in God if he does not show himself! More importantly, v. 17, GOD AGREES! "I will do this thing that you have asked, because you have found favor with me."
- Exod. 33:18 -- Moses gets a little pervy here: "Show me thy glory." George Michael got arrested for saying that to the wrong person.
- Exod. 33:19n -- Here again the editors are getting a little heavy-handed with the grace theme, and I don't think it fits. They say God's "graciousness" is shown by him being nice to Israel after the golden calf incident. But he has already promised them repeatedly that he would go--I don't see what is gracious about it.
- Exod. 33:20-23 -- Here's a weird, interesting little story. God tells Moses he can't see his face (although Moses has already had several face-to-faces with him). So God covers Moses' eyes until he passes, then God lets Moses see his back. It is very reminiscent of a tale from Greek Mythology.
- Exod. 34:1-35n -- Theophany. What a great new word!
- Exod. 34:6-7n -- Weird little passage, where God brags and complains: "[I'm] compassionate and gracious, long-suffering, ever constant and true, maintaining constancy to thousands, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin, and not sweeping the guilty clean away." Every single thing he claims about himself there is empirically not true. The note says "[t]his seems to be an extremely ancient cultic confession, and it is repeated many times (Num. 14:18; Neh. 9:17; Ps. 103:8, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2)."
- Exod. 34:15-16 -- More prohibition on miscegenation, here, again, don't let your daughters marry those Canaanites.
- Exod. 34:20 -- This is, I think, a VERY obscure verse that the notes don't pick up on. It says, "You shall buy back all the first-born of your sons, and no one shall come into my presence empty-handed." I cannot unravel that. He told them already that they have to give him their first born. And yet now they can "buy them back." What does that mean? And what is this about entering his presence empty-handed? Buying back your first-born will provide you company? That sounds vaguely Mormon to me!
- Exod. 35:3 -- Many of my classmates are "devout" Jews. (I don't know the official word for it--"orthodox," maybe? And they are also very wealthy. On some of the Jewish holidays it is apparently not allowed to turn on the lights in your house. Are you ready for this? Some of these people HIRE SOMEONE to come in and turn on their lights for them! Well, I think this verse might be the origin of that bizarre practice: "You are not even to light your fire at home on the Sabbath day." Getting back to my training as a lawyer (and these books of the bible are THE LAW after all! There is a concept called "vicarious liability" which means, basically, that if you tell someone else to do something illegal, you are guilty of it yourself. Pretty obvious. It seems pretty obvious to me that hiring someone else to flip your light switch is in no way better than doing it yourself, or doing it with a stick. There is no way you are getting around that prohibition simply by having someone else do it. In fact, it might even be more sinful, because you are enticing someone else to sin.
- Exod. 36:6-7 -- It's interesting that here the Israelites donated too much to the building of the temple, because I swear earlier God had to force to do so. This is a much softer version. (And yes, the book is wearing me down--even I am growing tired of all the needless and contradictory repetition.)
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