Some think that Moses had also married a black African woman

by Damien F. Mackey “There was no doubt that the "Cushite woman" who had caused the jealousy of Miriam and Aaron was Zippora herself”. Flavio Barbiero The following is an example of a writer who has no doubt at all that Moses had married a black African woman. John Piper wrote this in 2010: https://www.9marks.org/article/did-moses-marry-black-woman/ Moses, a Jew [sic], apparently married a black African and was approved by God. We learn in Numbers that “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman” (Num. 12:1). A Cushite is from Cush, a region south of Ethiopia, where the people are known for their black skin. We know this because of Jeremiah 13:23: “Can the Ethiopian [the same Hebrew word translated “Cushite” in Numbers 12:1] change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.” Attention is drawn to the difference of the skin of the Cushite people. In his book From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race, Daniel Hays writes that Cush “is used regularly to refer to the area south of Egypt, and above the cataracts on the Nile, where a Black African civilization flourished for over two thousand years. Thus it is quite clear that Moses marries a Black African woman” …. In response to Miriam’s criticism, God does not get angry at Moses; he gets angry at Miriam. The criticism has to do with Moses’ marriage and Moses’ authority. The most explicit statement relates to the marriage: “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman.” Then God strikes Miriam with leprosy. Why? Consider this possibility. In God’s anger at Miriam, Moses’ sister, God says in effect, “You like being light-skinned Miriam? I’ll make you light-skinned.” So we read, “When the cloud removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous, like snow” (Num. 12:10) God says not a critical word against Moses for marrying a black Cushite woman. But when Miriam criticizes God’s chosen leader for this marriage God strikes her skin with white leprosy. If you ever thought black was a biblical symbol for uncleanness, be careful; a worse white uncleanness could come upon you. …. [End of quote] My own view of the controversial matter, expressed in my recent article: Moses, his marriage in Midian, and the holy Mountain of God (4) Moses, his marriage in Midian, and the holy Mountain of God is that “the Cushite woman” is a reference to Moses’s Midianite wife, Zipporah. Moses is known (biblically, at least) to have married only once. Now, this conclusion of mine is perfectly in accord with what Flavio Barbiero had written in his ground-breaking article: THE CAVE OF TREASURES ON MOUNT HOREB (4) THE CAVE OF TREASURES ON MOUNT HOREB …. Moses' Cushite wife Often, in the Bible, the key to understanding a certain situation lies in a single word, and apparently, this was the case for this Jeremiah affair. It becomes clear if one understands why the term "cushite" is used for Ebed-Melek. This word caught my attention stimulated by a comment by Anati's wife, Ariela, on a passage from the Bible that was read one evening as usual at the Har Karkom camp. It said: "Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses, because of the Ethiopian wife whom he had married; for he had married an Ethiopian" (Num. 12:1). "Ethiopian? My text says cushite," I interrupted. "Yes, ethiopian; cushite in Hebrew means ethiopian. Moses had also married a black wife. So says the text," confirmed Ariela, a native Hebrew speaker. This seemed unlikely to me. The Bible does not speak much about Moses' family, but what little it says is clear and precise: there is no doubt that he had a family that he cared about immensely. I was unaware that Moses ever had a second wife, much less a black one. When he fled from Egypt, he took refuge in the land of the Midianites and found hospitality with Jethro, "who gave him his daughter Zippora in marriage. She bore him a son, and he named him Ghersom" (Ex. 2:22). Later on Zippora bore him a second son, Eliezer (Ex. 4:24). When Moses returned to Egypt to organize the exodus, his wife and children were sent to his father-in-law Jethro. Chapter 18 of Exodus is entirely dedicated to Jethro's visit to Moses, at Rephidim, near the sacred mountain, on the occasion of which he brought back to him his family: “Then Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, took Zipporah, Moses' wife, after he had sent her back, And her two sons; of which the name of the one was Gershom; for he said, I have been an alien in a strange land: And the name of the other was Eliezer; for the God of my father, said he, was mine help and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh: And Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, came with his sons and his wife unto Moses into the wilderness, where he encamped at the mount of God: And he said unto Moses, I thy father-in-law Jethro am come unto thee, and thy wife, and her two sons with her.” Jethro was very proud of the position his son-in-law had achieved among the Jews. He was generous with advice on how to govern the people and administer justice, after which Moses "dismissed his father-in-law, who went away to his land." This is the last time Zippora and the two sons of Moses are mentioned in the Pentateuch. There is no doubt, however, that they have remained with him ever since. Zippora reappears immediately afterwards, but not with her name. As soon as his father-in-law Jethro was dismissed, Moses, with all the Jewish people, "on the 20th day of the 2nd month of the 2nd year" (Num. 10:11), left the area of the sacred mountain, heading north towards Palestine. The first stop was Kibrot Attaava and after this Azerot. And it was here, in Azerot, that "Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married." It was at this point that Ariela had claimed that she was a "black" second wife. This didn’t make any sense to me because, according to the story, Moses had been reunited only a few days before with his legitimate wife, Zipporah, a Midianite. It was nothing strange that the woman, suddenly plunged into the Jewish community, had aroused the jealousy of other "prima donnas" like Miriam and Aaron, who had, until then, had an exclusive and privileged relationship with Moses. There was no doubt that the "Cushite woman" who had caused the jealousy of Miriam and Aaron was Zippora herself. I soon found confirmation that the term cushite was used to define the Midianites belonging to the tribe of Jethro. In Habakkuk 3:7, Cushan is mentioned as the name of a tribe of Midian. In 2 Chronicles 14,7-13, a war between Judah and the Cushites is described, clearly a population of Sinai and a little further on, in 2 Chronicles 21.16, it speaks of the "Arabs who live alongside the Cushites", from which it is deduced that the latter were neighbouring with the Nabataeans, certainly not Ethiopians. I had definitive confirmation later when I found in an apocryphal text of the Old Testament, dating back to the second century BC, "The Apocalypse of Moses", a passage in which Jethro and Zippora are expressly referred to as Cushites. In chapter 34.6, we read: "Moses fled to Midian, to the cushite Reguel, priest of Midian. He married the priest's daughter, the cushite Zippora; by her two sons were begotten: Ghersom and Eliezer." ….

The Burning Bush theophany directing Moses back to Egypt

by Damien F. Mackey “During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and He remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them”. Exodus 2:23-25 Introduction “During that long period, the king of Egypt died”. The “king of Egypt” here, the legendary “Chenephres” (Eusebius from Artapanus), died late during Moses’s Midian phase, and, with him, the dynasty virtually ended. There would yet be a brief-reigning female Pharaoh. I suited the last male Pharaoh with his historical (dynastic) alter egos in my article: The King of Egypt of Exodus 2:23 https://www.academia.edu/124085893/The_King_of_Egypt_of_Exodus_2_23 wherein I concluded: Conclusion: The vindictive “King of Egypt” of Exodus 2:23 was, all at once, “Chenephres” (tradition) – Chephren (Khafre) of the Fourth Dynasty – Pepi Neferkare of the Sixth Dynasty – Sesostris (Story of Sinuhe) Kheperkare of the Twelfth Dynasty. The female Pharaoh who saw off the dynasty would be, all at once: Khentkaus; Nitocris; Sobekneferure, the latter being her Twelfth Dynasty name. It is unlikely that Exodus 2:23 is referring to her as “king of Egypt”, given 4:16’s apparent reference to the jealous “Chenephres”, ‘… all those who wanted to kill you are dead’. Moses would be alerted to the passing of that mighty dynasty in the most dramatic possible way, by the Lord himself (Exodus 4:16): “Now the Lord had said to Moses in Midian, ‘Go back to Egypt, for all those who wanted to kill you are dead’.” The long-lasting (s0-called) Twelfth Dynasty had finally spluttered to a halt, to be succeeded by the Thirteenth Dynasty about whose fabric there is much debate amongst Egyptologists. We learned previously that some so-called Thirteenth Dynasty persons were actually high officials serving the Twelfth Dynasty rulers, and I also proposed that the succession in the Thirteenth Dynasty lists, Amenemhet (so-called VII) and Sobekhotep, was a repetition of the Twelfth Dynasty’s (duplicated) succession of Amenemhet and Sesostris – Sobekhotep (so-called IV) bearing Sesostris’s name, Neferkare, in reverse, as Khaneferre – again the traditional “Chenephres”. “God heard their groaning …”. Had the Israelites begun to groan in sincere prayerful entreaty to God, or were they just a bunch of whingers, like Dathan and Abiram (= Jannes and Mambres), so typical of most of that ungrateful generation? The Lord apparently “heard” them on behalf of the Covenant that he had sworn to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Burning Bush Exodus 3:1-10: Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, ‘I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up’. When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, ‘Moses! Moses!’ And Moses said, ‘Here I am’. ‘Do not come any closer’, God said. ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground’. Then he said, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob’. At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. The Lord said, ‘I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt’. Elsewhere, we have learned that Moses would influence Greco-Roman, Indian, and other mythologies, especially as a basket baby, and likewise Sargon of Akkad, who - though he preceded Moses in history - would, much later, have attached to him a legend very similar to the famous story of the baby Moses afloat on the river (or lake). Moses was also the basis for the non-historical Buddha, and he was, as a Lawgiver, the model for the revered Spartan, Lycurgus. Now here, where the Lord commands Moses: ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground’, Moses, standing before unquenchable fire, in the vicinity of a holy mountain, becomes the matrix for the Sicilian Greek, Empedocles. Previously I wrote this about him: EMPEDOCLES, though considered to have lived in the C5th BC and to have nonetheless been the first to have named the four elements, was way behind the Book of Genesis in this supposed achievement of his. Thus we read at: http://revelationorbust.com/wordpress/?p=376#more-376 Genesis 1:10 …. וַיִּקְרָ֨א אֱלֹהִ֤ים׀ לַיַּבָּשָׁה֙ אֶ֔רֶץ וּלְמִקְוֵ֥ה הַמַּ֖יִם קָרָ֣א יַמִּ֑ים וַיַּ֥רְא אֱלֹהִ֖ים כִּי־טֽוֹב׃ wayiqra – elohim – layyabbashah – erets ulemiqweh – hammayim – qara – yammim – wayyareh – elohim – ki+tov and (he) called – God – to the dry ground – earth and to collection – the waters – (he) called – seas – and (he) saw – God – for+good The construction of this verse is familiar. See in particular this post on Genesis 1:4 regarding “seeing.” Genesis 1:10 marks the last time in the creation narrative that God himself names things. Take a look at what he’s named: day and night (in 1:5), sky (in 1:8), earth and sea (here in 1:10). Are these meant to correspond to the four primal elements fire, air, earth, and water? Fire is perhaps a leap from day and night. But if the correspondence is intentional, God is shown to be the creator and fashioner of what was understood to be the substances from which everything else was formed until relatively recent history. This is a pretty nifty observation, but it presents a small challenge to the historical-grammatical interpretation of Genesis 1. The problem is that the four primal elements idea is normally attributed to a Greek philosopher by the name of Empedocles who lived in the 5th century B.C. – about 1,000 years after Moses and the traditional date for the recording of Genesis. The Wellhausen hypothesis posits later dates for Genesis but is still 400 years before Empedocles. We show our Western bias however when we focus on the Greeks. The Egyptians actually had a similar concept …. The Egyptian idea was embodied in a group of deities called the Ogdoad, and the four primordial substances were darkness, air, the waters, and infinity/eternity. All of this is to say that even from a purely secular standpoint it is not unreasonable to grant that the Greek primal elements concept existed in the Ancient Near East well before the Greeks. …. [End of quote] Sigmund Freud was well on the right track, I would suggest, when he considered the philosopher Empedocles to have been a ‘reincarnation of Moses’. See: http://moseseditor.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/taken-from-httpbooks.html I think Empedocles’ archetypal personage was indeed Moses. For instance: (http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com.au/2009/01/moses-magician.html): “… there arose in antiquity an interpretation of Moses as a scholar/magician in the classical mould of Pythagoras … and Empedocles”. (http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/cmt/gill/deu033.htm): Deuteronomy 33:25: “Thy shoes shall be iron and brass”. …. Either they should have such an abundance of these metals, that they could if they would have made their shoes of them; but that is not usual; though it is said of Empedocles … the philosopher, that he wore shoes of brass”. …. Moses had to remove his sandals on the fiery mountain (Exodus 3:5): “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” From the following quote we learn about Empedocles’ sandal on the fiery mountain. (http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2013/06/who-were-the-first-recreational-mountain-climbers.html) Moses climbed Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments and ascended Mount Nebo (Jordan) to gaze on the land he would never reach. …. Empedocles, the ancient Greek philosopher, climbed the active volcano Mount Etna on Sicily and leaped into the flaming crater in 430 BC. According to legend, he intended to become an immortal god; the volcano ejected one of his sandals turned to bronze by the heat. (http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft4m3nb2jk&chunk.id=d0e5110) “The character of Empedocles [Hölderlin’s The Death of Empedocles] is in some ways a synthesis of Moses and Aaron: his wisdom and mystical powers of leadership both separate him from the people and lead them to offer him the title of King. The contradiction in this dilemma, however, leads him to spurn the people for their lack of comprehension and ultimately to his own destruction—the plunge into the volcano rather than life in exile”. …. Spiritual significance On a far higher level, the Burning Bush at Horeb was aglow with the Glory of the Lord, the Chavod (כָּבוֹד), also known by the popular non-biblical term, “Shekinah”. It indicates the presence of the Lord. And it symbolises the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Divine Mercy, probably intended here by “the angel of the Lord [who] appeared to [Moses] in flames of fire …”. The same divine Person will, centuries later, accompany the three pious young Jews in King Nebuchednezzar’s burning fiery furnace (Daniel ch. 3). As with the Burning Bush of Exodus 3, the fire within the Sacred Heart of Jesus does “not burn up”, and those living within it, or close to it, are not harmed, but are inspired to sing hymns of cosmic praise, ecstatically, to the Almighty God. We live either within this salvific fire, or without (outside) it, which becomes Hell. “Who amongst us can dwell with everlasting burnings?” (Isaiah 33:14) DIVINE JESUS, MAY WE BURN WITHIN THEE, NOT WITHOUT THEE! Although Daniel 3 portrays the three Jewish youth as defiant, the underlying reality - if I am correct in identifying Azariah with Ezra son of Seraiah (Sirach), and with the author of Sirach 51 - is quite different. The prospect of being burned alive in fire, or in boiling hot oil, is utterly terrifying. And I think that we get an eye-witness impression of the horror of it from Sirach 51. Previously I wrote on this dramatic episode: Sirach 51:1, 2, 4: “I will give thanks to you, Lord and King … for you have been protector and support to me, and redeemed my body from destruction … from the stifling heat which hemmed me in, from the heart of a fire which I had not kindled …”. Saved “from the heart of a fire”, “hemmed in” by its “stifling heat”. Could this, the son of Sirach’s account, be a graphic description by one who had actually stood in the heart of the raging fire? - had stood inside “the burning fiery furnace” of the Chaldean king Nebuchednezzar? (Daniel 3:20) Another translation (GNT) renders the vivid account of the Lord’s saving of the son of Sirach as follows (Sirach 51:3-5): “… from the glaring hatred of my enemies, who wanted to put an end to my life; from suffocation in oppressive smoke rising from fires that I did not light; from death itself; from vicious slander reported to the king”. According to the far more dispassionate account of the same (so I think) incident as narrated in Daniel 3:49-50: … the angel of the Lord came down into the furnace beside Azariah and his companions; he drove the flames of the fire outwards, and fanned into them, in the heart of the furnace, a coolness such as wind and dew will bring, so that the fire did not even touch them or cause them any pain or distress. Note that both texts refer almost identically to “the heart of the fire [the furnace]”. Azariah - {who, unlike “his companions”, Hananiah and Mishael, is named here in Daniel} - I have identified as Ezra the scribe: Ezra heroic in the face of death (2) Ezra heroic in the face of death | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu In this article I had noted that: “Ezra [is] a mostly obscure character throughout the Scriptures, despite his immense reputation and status …”. And also that: “… Azariah is always listed as the last of the trio (Daniel 1:6): “Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah”, variously as “Abednego” (cf. vv. 11, 19; 2:17, 49; 3:12-30), perhaps because he was the youngest …”. To which comment, however, I had added, “… it is apparent that it is he [Azariah] who will take the leading part in the confession of guilt and the prayers”. And that would make sense if Azariah were Ezra, for, as also noted in the article with reference to Ezra 7:1-5, “[Ezra was] … a priest in the line of Aaron, hence, potentially, the High Priest”. So why might it be that the Daniel 3 text above names only “Azariah”, he perhaps being the youngest of the trio? Well, if Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) chapter 51 has any relevance to the fiery furnace incident, if the son of Sirach (Seraiah) were Azariah-Ezra, then he himself appears to have been the one who had decided to appeal prayerfully to the Divine Mercy for help and protection (vv. 6-12): I was once brought face-to-face with death; enemies surrounded me everywhere. I looked for someone to help me, but there was no one there. But then, O Lord, I remembered how merciful you are and what you had done in times past. I remembered that you rescue those who rely on you, that you save them from their enemies. Then from here on earth I prayed to you to rescue me from death. I prayed, O Lord, you are my Father; do not abandon me to my troubles when I am helpless against arrogant enemies. I will always praise you and sing hymns of thanksgiving. You answered my prayer, and saved me from the threat of destruction. And so I thank you and praise you. O Lord, I praise you! The three young Jewish men, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, had had no hope whatsoever of obtaining any human deliverance. But once again Azariah alone will be the one to proclaim this (“Then Azariah stood still and there in the fire he prayed aloud”) (Daniel 3:32-33): ‘You have delivered us into the power of our enemies, of a lawless people, the worst of the godless, of an unjust king, the worst in the whole world; today we dare not even open our mouths, shame and dishonour are the lot of those who serve and worship You’. Might Sirach 51 be an echo of this terrifying situation, when the son of Sirach prays to God, “You have redeemed me [v. 3] from the fangs of those who would devour me, from the hands of those seeking my life … [v. 6] From the unclean tongue and the lying word – The perjured tongue slandering me to the king. …. [v. 7] They were surrounding me on every side, there was no one to support me; I looked for someone to help – in vain”. … it was found (in the “Ezra” article) that the name “Ezra” was related to the name “Azariah”, apparently a shortened version of the latter …. If the one whom we call Sirach was actually Eleazar ben Sira, then that would do no harm whatsoever to my identification, and would likely even enhance it. For, according to Abarim, the Hebrew name, Eleazer, is related to both Azariah and Ezra: https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Eleazar.html Moreover, the name of Ezra’s father, Seraiah (Ezra 7:1), “… Ezra son of Seraiah …”, can easily be equated with Sira, which would give us the perfect equation: Ezra (= Eleazer) son of Seraiah; = Eleazer son of Sira(ch) Of course, any correlation between the young Azariah at the time of Nebuchednezzar, and the son of Sirach, estimated to have lived early in the Maccabean period, is quite unrealistic in terms of the over-extended conventional chronology. My above-mentioned article on “Ezra”, though, suggests that this is possible, with the holy man living to as late as the wars of Judas Maccabeus. While the Book of Daniel (chapter 3) will recount the story of the three young men in the burning fiery furnace in a somewhat objective and dispassionate fashion, presenting the three young heroes there as respectfully defiant before the Great King, Sirach, on the other hand, reads like a dramatic eye-witness window into the utter fearfulness and terror of the situation – a young man, who had actually experienced it, having been filled with the anxiety of expecting that he was about to lose his life in a most horrifying fashion. Comparisons with Fatima (1917) “Do not forget the works of the Lord!” (Psalm 77:7 Douay; Psalm 78:7) Saint John Paul II ‘the Great’ would liken Fatima (1917) to Sinai. Fatima also has resonances with the burning fiery furnace of Daniel 3 - three pious children once again threatened by a Nebuchednezzar-like tyrant with being burned alive: https://www.thecatholicherald.com/fatima-seers-are-holy-because-of-virtue-not-visions-cardinal-says/ “At the time of the apparitions, the Portuguese government was strongly anti-Catholic. Arturo Santos, mayor of the town where Fatima was located and president of the Masonic lodge of nearby Leiria, sent law enforcement officials to block the entry to the site of the apparitions. He also kidnapped the three children to force them to deny Mary was appearing at Fatima after news of the apparitions spread, Cardinal Saraiva Martins said. Santos separated Jacinta and Francisco from Lucia, telling the two children that their cousin was boiled in hot oil and that they would share the same fate if they didn’t say they didn’t see Our Lady and that “it was all a fantasy,” Cardinal Saraiva Martins said. “What was the response of those two children? ‘You can do what you want but we cannot tell a lie. We have seen her (Our Lady)’,” the cardinal said. “I asked myself, ‘How many adults would have done the same?'” the cardinal said. “Maybe 90 per cent of adults would probably say, ‘Yes, of course, it was a lie, it was all a fairy tale'.”” Like Moses had become, the three Fatima children were shepherds. These three children had been shown an electrifying vision of Hell. At the “Beatification of the Little Shepherds of Fatima, Francisco and Jacinta”, pope John Paul II had drawn a comparison with the Burning Bush that Moses had experienced: https://www.piercedhearts.org/hearts_jesus_mary/apparitions/fatima/jpii_beatification_jacinta_francisco.html "Beatification of the Little Shepherds of Fatima, Francisco and Jacinta" Homily of St. John Paul II at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima May 13, 2000 "Ask your parents and teachers to enrol you in the "school" of Our Lady, so that she can teach you to be like the little shepherds, who tried to do whatever she asked them." 1. "Father, ... to you I offer praise; for what you have hidden from the learned and the clever you have revealed to the merest children" (Mt 11: 25). With these words, dear brothers and sisters, Jesus praises the heavenly Father for his designs; he knows that no one can come to him unless he is drawn by the Father (cf. Jn 6: 44); therefore he praises him for his plan and embraces it as a son: "Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will" (Mt 11: 26). You were pleased to reveal the kingdom to the merest children. According to the divine plan, "a woman clothed with the sun" (Rv 12: 1) came down from heaven to this earth to visit the privileged children of the Father. She speaks to them with a mother's voice and heart: she asks them to offer themselves as victims of reparation, saying that she was ready to lead them safely to God. And behold, they see a light shining from her maternal hands which penetrates them inwardly, so that they feel immersed in God just as - they explain - a person sees himself in a mirror. Later Francisco, one of the three privileged children, exclaimed: "We were burning in that light which is God and we were not consumed. What is God like? It is impossible to say. In fact we will never be able to tell people". God: a light that burns without consuming. Moses had the same experience when he saw God in the burning bush; he heard God say that he was concerned about the slavery of his people and had decided to deliver them through him: "I will be with you" (cf. Ex 3: 2-12). Those who welcome this presence become the dwelling-place and, consequently, a "burning bush" of the Most High. 2. What most impressed and entirely absorbed Bl. Francisco was God in that immense light which penetrated the inmost depths of the three children. But God told only Francisco "how sad" he was, as he said. One night his father heard him sobbing and asked him why he was crying; his son answered: "I was thinking of Jesus who is so sad because of the sins that are committed against him". He was motivated by one desire - so expressive of how children think - "to console Jesus and make him happy". A transformation takes place in his life, one we could call radical: a transformation certainly uncommon for children of his age. He devotes himself to an intense spiritual life, expressed in assiduous and fervent prayer, and attains a true form of mystical union with the Lord. This spurs him to a progressive purification of the spirit through the renunciation of his own pleasures and even of innocent childhood games. …. Another Exodus likeness to Fatima occurs when God empowers Moses with miraculous abilities, “that they may believe” (Exodus 4:5). For that was the very purpose of the great Solar miracle at Fatima on October 13, 1917, “so that all may believe”. Sadly, in either case, there have been many who have not believed. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn — “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened”. “Do not forget the works of the Lord!” In 1925, at Pontevedra in Spain, towards the conclusion of the Fatima apparitions, the Chavod Glory cloud (Burning Bush; the Magi Star) will become manifest again, with the Child Jesus elevated upon it: https://fatima.org/news-views/the-apparition-of-our-lady-and-the-child-jesus-at-pontevedra/ “On December 10, 1925, the Most Holy Virgin appeared to [Lucia], and by Her side, elevated on a luminous cloud, was the Child Jesus. The Most Holy Virgin rested Her hand on her shoulder, and as She did so, She showed her a heart encircled by thorns, which She was holding in Her other hand. At the same time, the Child said: “‘Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother, covered with thorns, with which ungrateful men pierce It at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them.’ “Then the Most Holy Virgin said: “‘Look, My daughter, at My Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce Me at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console Me and announce in My name that I promise to assist at the moment of death, with all the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess … receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep Me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to Me.’” Moses who, forty years ago back in Egypt, had considered himself to have been the one to liberate his people from harsh slavery, will now (unlike the Fatima children, apparently) resist this new spectacular call to vocation. The prophet Jeremiah would later act similarly, and would likewise receive a Divine rebuke (Jeremiah 1:6, 7) – and so, ostensibly, would the Prophet Mohammed. Had Moses grown content with his simple married life amongst his Midianite family? Now, at age 80, he must have lost his former youthful exuberance. Perhaps someone else could free the Hebrews. “But Moses said, ‘Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else’.” (Exodus 4:13) And so here begins Moses’s series of protestations that will continue on even back in Egypt. Exodus 3:11-13: But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ And God said, ‘I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain’. Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” ‘I AM WHO I AM’ Exodus 3:14-22: God said to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you’. God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation. Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey.’ The elders of Israel will listen to you. Then you and the elders are to go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.’ But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go. And I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty-handed. Every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing, which you will put on your sons and daughters. And so you will plunder the Egyptians.” Need for a Perennial Philosophy A non-historical Thales of Miletus cannot be, as he is called, the Father of Philosophy. God the Father is the true Father of Philosophy and He would reveal the basis of the perennial philosophy of Being at the Burning Bush. God is the pure act of existing Tom Mulcahy has written on this: https://catholicstrength.com/tag/the-existence-of-god-is-an-imperative-of-metaphysical-reasoning/ GOD EXISTS BECAUSE GOD IS LIFE ” I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:14) We are caught up in the simple but precise argument that if there was nothing to begin with how could there be anything at all? And the core of our argument is that the existence of God is “an imperative of metaphysical reasoning,” or even of simple logic. Wilhelmsen states that “the metaphysics of being is simultaneously the Philosophy of God.” Such a statement finds correlation in the Bible, where God is revealed to Moses as I AM (Exodus 3: 14 ). And Jesus says – rather amazingly – that he is “the life” (John 14:6 ). In other words, God is that very beginning, or that very unbeginning, the absence of which there would simply be nothing. The “Supreme mystery,” then, is the mystery of a Being whose very essence is to exist. The philosopher says that God exists simply in virtue of Himself, so that God is the pure act of existing. “God affirms himself as the absolute act of being in its pure actuality” (Etienne Gilson). Father Garrigou-Lagrange, a great scholar of St. Thomas Aquinas, explains that: “God is the eternally subsisting being. God, then, is not only pure spirit, He is being itself subsisting immaterial at the summit of all things and transcending any limits imposed by either space or matter or a finite spiritual essence. Now, because God is the self-subsisting being, the infinite ocean of spiritual being, unlimited, unmaterialized, He is distinguished from every material or spiritual creature. The divine essence is existence itself, it alone of necessity exits. No creature is self-existent; none can say: I am being, truth, life, etc. Jesus alone among men said: “I am the truth and the life,” which was the equivalent to saying, “I am God” (Providence, 70-71). Another scholar, quoting Jacques Maritain, says that “the act of existing is the key to St. Thomas’s philosophy, and it [being] is something super-intelligible which is revealed in the judgment I make that something exists. ‘This is why, at the root of metaphysical knowledge, St. Thomas places the intellectual intuition of that mysterious reality disguised under the most commonplace and commonly used word in the language, the word to be…that victorious thrust by which it [being] triumphs over nothingness.'” Our affirmation or intuition of being, then, leads us to “the affirmation of Being Itself, God” (Wilhelmsen). The Incarnation is the revelation that Jesus is LIFE! One day Jesus revealed his glory to the apostle Thomas, saying, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the father but through me” (John 14:6). As the Pulpit Commentary explains, “I am the Life [means that Jesus is] the life eternal, the Possessor, Author, Captain, Giver, and Prince of life.” On another occasion Jesus encountered a grieving woman, Martha, whose brother Lazarus had died, and Jesus said to her (before raising Lazarus back to life): “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). This profound pronouncement of Jesus demonstrates that he “possesses the absolute sovereignty over life and death” that is “the sole prerogative” of God (ICSB). CONCLUSION: God is life, or, as the Bible says, God has LIFE in himself (John 5:26). “God is the ultimate Possessor of life per se” (Pulpit Commentary). This is a great mystery, but it is a mystery confirmed by Scripture and human intelligence, and St. Paul warns that our minds are darkened if they don’t rise to a knowledge of God (Romans 1: 19-22; ICSB). So, we return to the ultimate philosophical question, Why is there something rather than nothing?, and we must conclude that nothing can produce nothing! And it is only because God IS (that is, because God is ETERNAL LIFE, the eternally subsisting Being) that we hold on to life day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Our present “to-be-ness” is completely dependent on Him who IS I AM. And in this light we can come to see in a more penetrating way that God has the power – as the eternal custodian of life – to raise up our mortal bodies on the last day (John 6:40). Pseudo-scientifically-minded modern men and women are not adequately equipped, rationally speaking, to embrace God’s reality and genuine philosophical reasoning, and so they must deny the need for both. Pseudo-metaphysics arises from intellectual nihilism; it is a fantastic edifice of pretence, impervious to rational discussion since it obliterates all genuinely rational lines; it marks a retreat into egocentricity and a loss of the power of dialogue; ultimately … it is a craven attempt of the mind to … screen itself from the providence of God, and remove him farther off from the affairs of the world …. Gavin Ardley Once upon a time, those who sought wisdom and inspiration regarding man and the universe began by genuflecting to the Almighty God in reverential awe (the meaning of “fear” below). Because, as they saw it: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction”. Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding”. Proverbs 9:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. A good understanding to all that do it …”. Psalm 110:10 (Douay) “… here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind”. Ecclesiastes 12:13 “The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding”. Job 28:28 “If you fear the Lord, you will do this. Master his Law, and you will find Wisdom”. Sirach 15:1 And, now in the New Testament, John the Baptist is found to have been of the very same sapiential mentality. He, using the image of the light of the morning star fading with the sun’s rising (Jesus Christ), will declare (John 3:30): ‘He must become greater; I must become less’. Why? - because: The One who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The One who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. Whoever has accepted it has certified that God is truthful. For the One whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit. The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them. Only “the One who comes from heaven [who] is above all” can know the real design and structure of things. And He will only reveal such things to the likes of a Solomon, who prayed for wisdom and knowledge both humbly and submissively. Clearly there is a moral issue involved with attainment of wisdom and knowledge. And no one has explained this better, I believe, than Gavin Ardley, in Berkeley’s Renovation of Philosophy (Martinus Nijhoff, 1968). Having first discussed moral scruples: “The condition of moral scruples is morbid” (pp. 78-79), Ardley then proceeds to write about “intellectual scruples”: …. [George] Berkeley's estimate of the nature of pseudo-metaphysics and of its therapy runs along lines parallel to the moral case. Intellectual scruples are a philosophical disease; they spring from a kind of vanity, a wish to be god-like, to know all; which wish being frustrated leads to the opposite extreme, a loss of confidence, a conviction that we know nothing; which state, in turn, is a condition of receptivity to any irrational doctrine which seeks lodging; which state, in turn, is a condition of receptivity to any irrational doctrine which seeks lodging; which doctrine, in turn, is clung to tenaciously and blindly as a kind of protective cover. Pseudo-metaphysics arises from intellectual nihilism; it is a fantastic edifice of pretence, impervious to rational discussion since it obliterates all genuinely rational lines; it marks a retreat into egocentricity and a loss of the power of dialogue; ultimately, Berkeley suspects, it is a craven attempt of the mind to “screen itself from the providence of God, and remove him farther off from the affairs of the world” (Pr. 75). Ardley’s use of the adjective “craven” here is not an exaggeration in light of St John Paul II’s encyclical, Fides et ratio (1998), in which the indispensability of philosophy is upheld in the face of a modern intellectual cowardice - (recall e.g. Stephen Hawking’s: “Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead”) - which, the pope wrote, “has wilted under the weight of so much knowledge and little by little has lost the capacity to lift its gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being”. (Emphasis added) Here is the relevant section # 5 from that encyclical letter: On her part, the Church cannot but set great value upon reason's drive to attain goals which render people's lives ever more worthy. She sees in philosophy the way to come to know fundamental truths about human life. At the same time, the Church considers philosophy an indispensable help for a deeper understanding of faith and for communicating the truth of the Gospel to those who do not yet know it. Therefore, following upon similar initiatives by my Predecessors, I wish to reflect upon this special activity of human reason. I judge it necessary to do so because, at the present time in particular, the search for ultimate truth seems often to be neglected. Modern philosophy clearly has the great merit of focusing attention upon man. From this starting-point, human reason with its many questions has developed further its yearning to know more and to know it ever more deeply. Complex systems of thought have thus been built, yielding results in the different fields of knowledge and fostering the development of culture and history. Anthropology, logic, the natural sciences, history, linguistics and so forth—the whole universe of knowledge has been involved in one way or another. Yet the positive results achieved must not obscure the fact that reason, in its one-sided concern to investigate human subjectivity, seems to have forgotten that men and women are always called to direct their steps towards a truth which transcends them. Sundered from that truth, individuals are at the mercy of caprice, and their state as person ends up being judged by pragmatic criteria based essentially upon experimental data, in the mistaken belief that technology must dominate all. It has happened therefore that reason, rather than voicing the human orientation towards truth, has wilted under the weight of so much knowledge and little by little has lost the capacity to lift its gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being. Abandoning the investigation of being, modern philosophical research has concentrated instead upon human knowing. Rather than make use of the human capacity to know the truth, modern philosophy has preferred to accentuate the ways in which this capacity is limited and conditioned. This has given rise to different forms of agnosticism and relativism which have led philosophical research to lose its way in the shifting sands of widespread scepticism. Recent times have seen the rise to prominence of various doctrines which tend to devalue even the truths which had been judged certain. A legitimate plurality of positions has yielded to an undifferentiated pluralism, based upon the assumption that all positions are equally valid, which is one of today's most widespread symptoms of the lack of confidence in truth. Even certain conceptions of life coming from the East betray this lack of confidence, denying truth its exclusive character and assuming that truth reveals itself equally in different doctrines, even if they contradict one another. On this understanding, everything is reduced to opinion; and there is a sense of being adrift. While, on the one hand, philosophical thinking has succeeded in coming closer to the reality of human life and its forms of expression, it has also tended to pursue issues—existential, hermeneutical or linguistic—which ignore the radical question of the truth about personal existence, about being and about God. Hence we see among the men and women of our time, and not just in some philosophers, attitudes of widespread distrust of the human being's great capacity for knowledge. With a false modesty, people rest content with partial and provisional truths, no longer seeking to ask radical questions about the meaning and ultimate foundation of human, personal and social existence. In short, the hope that philosophy might be able to provide definitive answers to these questions has dwindled. …. Richard Weaver's concept of "burning bush" imagery, particularly in his book "Ideas Have Consequences," relates to the idea that truth and meaning are often revealed through symbolic, metaphorical, and evocative language rather than just factual statements. Weaver argued that the most effective way to communicate truth is through vivid imagery and symbolic narratives, rather than a direct, bald approach. This aligns with the biblical story of Moses encountering God at the burning bush, where God revealed Himself in a symbolic, fire-and-flame manifestation rather than in a straightforward way. Elaboration: • Symbolism and Meaning: Weaver believed that language, especially religious and cultural language, carries inherent meaning and can reveal deeper truths through symbolism. He felt that the "quest for immediacy" – the idea that the most direct route to truth is the best – often misses the point. • The Burning Bush as an Example: The biblical story of Moses and the burning bush is a prime example of Weaver's point. Instead of a simple revelation, God appears in a symbolic, fiery manifestation, demonstrating that truth can be communicated through vivid imagery and symbolic narratives. • Ideas Have Consequences: Weaver's book "Ideas Have Consequences" argues that the adoption of certain philosophical ideas, such as nominalism, has had detrimental consequences on Western civilization. He believed that the decline of the West was partly due to the rejection of absolute truth and the rise of a focus on individual interpretations. • The "Burning Bush" as a Metaphor: Weaver likely used the "burning bush" as a metaphor for the way truth and meaning are often revealed through symbolic language and imagery. It suggests that the most impactful messages are not always straightforward but require a deeper understanding and appreciation of their symbolism. Moses invested with miraculous powers Exodus 4:1-9: Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?” Then the Lord said to him, ‘What is that in your hand?’ ‘A staff’, he replied. The Lord said, ‘Throw it on the ground’. Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. Then the Lord said to him, ‘Reach out your hand and take it by the tail’. So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. ‘This’, said the Lord, ‘is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has appeared to you’. Then the Lord said, ‘Put your hand inside your cloak’. So Moses put his hand into his cloak, and when he took it out, the skin was leprous—it had become as white as snow. ‘Now put it back into your cloak’, he said. So Moses put his hand back into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was restored, like the rest of his flesh. Then the Lord said, ‘If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first sign, they may believe the second. But if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground’. Moses will now plead his lack of eloquence as a good reason for not confronting Pharaoh. He, the mildest man on the face of the earth, could burn with hot anger, could even kill, when occasion required it. For the mild Moses had a very keen sense of justice. But the supposedly taciturn Moses (his own claim) could also be inspired to great eloquence at times. And what about his reputation, not only for mighty “deeds”, but also for mighty “words” (Acts 7:22)? Well, this could actually refer to his wise writings, Maxims and Instructions, in Egypt, and then, later, the Pentateuch. Exodus 4:10-13: Moses said to the Lord, ‘Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue’. The Lord said to him, ‘Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say’. [Cf. Mohammed’s call: ‘Recite in the name of thy Lord Who created. He created man from a clot of blood. Recite, for thy Lord is Most Beneficent, Who has taught by the pen, taught man that which he knew not’ (96:2-6)]. But Moses said, ‘Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else’. Saint John of the Cross, the Master of Mystical Theology, takes Moses’s reticence as being an indication that he was now experiencing the ‘dark night of the senses’, during which spiritual phenomenon a person has difficulty with speech. But Moses here claims to have been always like this, slow of speech (cf. Exodus 6:12). By now, the Lord was tiring of Moses’s protestations (vv. 14-17): Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses and he said, ‘What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and he will be glad to see you. You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him. But take this staff in your hand so you can perform the signs with it.” Help is at hand, because older brother (83, Exodus 7:7)) Aaron is on his way (4:27), and he is an eloquent man, “it will be as if he were your mouth”, a very Egyptian sounding expression. And, indeed, scholars have sorely neglected the pervasive Egyptian element in the Pentateuch, except, say, for professor A.S Yahuda (The Language of the Pentateuch in its Relation to Egyptian, Oxford, 1933). Some key Hebrew figures at this time, e.g. Hur, Phinehas, appear to bear Egyptian, rather than Hebrew, names. So Moses and his little party set out for Egypt, to wage war upon Pharaoh and upon the harsh gods of Egypt (Exodus 12:12): ‘I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt’.

Hebrew influences permeated the lore of the ancient pagans

by Damien F. Mackey “The name of Aqht, the son of Danel, returns as Qehat, the grandfather of Moses. The name of the locality Mrrt, where Aqht was killed, figures in the gentilic form Merarî as the brother of Qehat in the Levite genealogy. The name of P?t, the daughter of Danel and the devoted sister of Aqht, is met in the Moses story as Pû'ã, a midwife who saved the life of the new-born Moses”. Michael Astour Law and Government Moses The great Lawgiver in the Bible, and hence in Hebrew history, was Moses, substantially the author of the Torah (Law). But the history books tell us that the Torah was probably dependent upon the law code issued by the Babylonian king, Hammurabi (dated to the first half of the 18th BC). I shall discuss this further on. Also, the famous Spartan lawgiver, Lycurgus, seems to have been based upon Moses: Moses and Lycurgus (4) Moses and Lycurgus For Egyptian identifications of Moses, see e. g. my article: Realisation of who was the Egyptianised Moses (4) Realisation of who was the Egyptianised Moses The Egyptians may have corrupted the legend of the baby Moses in the bulrushes so that now it became the goddess Isis who drew the baby Horus from the Nile and had him suckled by Hathor (the goddess in the form of a cow – the Egyptian personification of wisdom). In the original story, of course, baby Moses was drawn from the water by an Egyptian princess, not a goddess, and was weaned by Moses’ own mother (Exodus 2:5-9). But could both the account of the rescue of the baby Moses in the Book of Exodus, and the Egyptian version of it, be actually based upon a Mesopotamian original, as the textbooks say; based upon the story of king Sargon of Akkad in Mesopotamia? Sargon tells, “in terms reminiscent of Moses, Krishna and other great men”, that [as quoted by G. Roux, Ancient Iraq, Penguin Books, 1964, p. 152]: .… My changeling mother conceived me, in secret she bore me. She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid. She cast me into the river which rose not over me. The river bore me up and carried me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of water, took me as his son and reared me …. Given that Sargon is conventionally dated to the C24th BC, and Moses about a millennium later, it would seem inevitable that the Hebrew version, and the Egyptian one, must be imitations of the Mesopotamian one. Such is what the ‘history’ books say, at least. The fact is, however, that the extant Sargon legend is very late (C7th BC); though thought to have been based upon an earlier Mesopotamian original. Dean Hickman has re-dated king Hammurabi of Babylon to the time of kings Solomon and David (mid-C10th BC), re-identifying Hammurabi’s older contemporary, Shamsi-Adad I, as king David’s Syrian foe, Hadadazer (2 Samuel 10:16) (“The Dating of Hammurabi”, Proceedings of the Third Seminar of Catastrophism and Ancient History, Uni. Of Toronto, 1985, ed. M. Luckerman, pp. 13-28). For more on this, see e. g. my articles: Hammurabi and Zimri-Lim as Contemporaries of Solomon (4) Hammurabi and Zimri-Lim as Contemporaries of Solomon and: (4) Hammurabi and Zimri-Lim as contemporaries of Solomon. Part Two (b): Zimri-Lim's Palace and the four rivers? According to this new scenario, Hammurabi could not possibly have influenced Moses. Greek and Levant 'Moses-like Myths' Michael Astour believes that Moses, a hero of the Hebrew scriptures, shares "some cognate features" with Danaos (or Danaus), hero of Greek legend. He gives his parallels as follows (Hellenosemitica, p. 99): Moses grows up at the court of the Egyptian king as a member of the royal family, and subsequently flees from Egypt after having slain an Egyptian - as Danaos, a member of the Egyptian ruling house, flees from the same country after the slaying of the Aigyptiads which he had arranged. The same number of generations separates Moses from Leah the "wild cow" and Danaos from the cow Io. Mackey’s Comment: The above parallel might even account for how the Greeks managed to confuse the land of Ionia (Io) with the land of Israel in the case of the earliest philosophers. Astour continues (pp. 99-100): Still more characteristic is that both Moses and Danaos find and create springs in a waterless region; the story of how Poseidon, on the request of the Danaide Amymona, struck out with his trident springs from the Lerna rock, particularly resembles Moses producing a spring from the rock by the stroke of his staff. A ‘cow’ features also in the legend of Cadmus, son of Agenor, king of Tyre upon the disappearance of his sister Europa, who was sent by his father together with his brothers Cilix and Phoenix to seek her with instructions not to return without her. Seeking the advice of the oracle at Delphi, Cadmus was told to settle at the point where a cow, which he would meet leaving the temple, would lie down. The cow led him to the site of Thebes (remember the two cities by that name). There he built the citadel of Cadmeia. Cadmus married Harmonia, the daughter of Ares, god of war, and Aphrodite and, according to the legend, was the founder of the House of Oedipus. Astour believes that "even more similar features" may be discovered if one links these accounts to the Ugaritic (Levantine-Canaanite) poem of Danel, which he had previously identified as "the prototype of the Danaos myth" (p. 100): The name of Aqht, the son of Danel, returns as Qehat, the grandfather of Moses. The name of the locality Mrrt, where Aqht was killed, figures in the gentilic form Merarî as the brother of Qehat in the Levite genealogy. The name of P?t, the daughter of Danel and the devoted sister of Aqht, is met in the Moses story as Pû'ã, a midwife who saved the life of the new-born Moses. The very name of Moses, in the feminine form Mšt, is, in the Ugaritic poem, the first half of Danel's wife's name, while the second half of her name, Dnty, corresponds to the name of Levi's sister Dinah. Michael Astour had already explained how the biblical story of the Rape of Dinah (Genesis 34) was "analogous to the myth of the bloody wedding of her namesakes, the Danaides". He continues on here with his fascinating Greco-Israelite parallels: Dân, the root of the names Dnel, Dnty (and also Dinah and Danaos), was the name of a tribe whose priests claimed to descend directly from Moses (Jud. 18:30); and compare the serpent emblem of the tribe of Dan with the serpent staff of Moses and the bronze serpent he erected. …Under the same name - Danaë - another Argive heroine of the Danaid stock is thrown into the sea in a chest with her new-born son - as Moses in his ark (tébã) - and lands on the serpent-island of Seriphos (Heb. šãrâph, applied i.a. to the bronze serpent made by Moses). Moses, like Danel, is a healer, a prophet, a miracle-worker - cf. Danel's staff (mt) which he extends while pronouncing curses against towns and localities, quite like Moses in Egypt; and especially, like Danel, he is a judge…. Roman 'Moses-like Myth' The Romans further corrupted the story of the infant Moses, following on probably from the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Levantines and Greeks. I refer to the account of Romulus (originally Rhomus) and Remus, thought to have founded the city of Rome in 753 BC. Both the founders and the date are quite mythical. Did the Romans take an Egyptian name for Moses, such as Musare, and turn it into Rhomus and Remus (MUSA-RE = RE-MUS), with the formerly one child (Moses) now being doubled into two babies (twins)? According to this legend, the twins were put into a basket by some kind servants and floated in the Tiber River, from which they were eventually rescued by a she-wolf. Thus the Romans more pragmatically opted for a she-wolf as the suckler instead of a cow goddess, or a lion goddess, Sekhmet (the fierce alter ego of Hathor). The Romans may have taken yet another slice from the Pentateuch when they had the founder of the city of Rome, Romulus, involved in a fratricide (killing Remus); just as Cain, the founder of the world's first city, had killed his own brother, Abel (cf. Genesis 4:8 and 4:17). Mohammed: Arabian `Moses-like Myths' ... An Islamic lecturer, Ahmed Deedat ["What the Bible Says About Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him) the Prophet of Islam" (www.islamworld.net/Muhammad.in.Bible.html)], told of an interview he once had with a dominee of the Dutch Reformed Church in Transvaal, van Heerden, on the question: "What does the Bible say about Muhummed?" Deedat had in mind the Holy Qur'an verse 46:10, according to which "a witness among the children of Israel bore witness of one like him…". This was, in turn, a reference to Deuteronomy 18:18's "I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and I will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him." The Moslems, of course, interpret the "one like him [i.e. Moses]" as being Mohammed himself. Faced with the dominee's emphatic response that the Bible has "nothing" to say about Mohammed - and that the Deuteronomic prophecy ultimately pertained to Jesus Christ, as did "thousands" of other prophecies - Deedat set out to prove him wrong. On the deft apologetical ploy used here, see my article: Zakir Naik’s apologetical tactic meant to embarrass Christians (4) Zakir Naik's apologetical tactic meant to embarrass Christians For some of my own views on the Prophet Mohammed, see my article: Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously Mangles History (4) Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously Mangles History Some Conclusions regarding Mohammed (c. 570-632 AD, conventional dating) Whilst Mohammed supposedly lived much later than Moses, there nevertheless do seem to be Arabic borrowings of the Moses story itself (and even appropriations of certain very specific aspects of the life of Jesus, as we shall read later) in the legends about Mohammed, who especially resembles Moses in: (i) the latter's visit to Mount Horeb with its cave atop, its Burning Bush, and angel (Exodus 3:1-2), possibly equating to Mohammed's "Mountain of Light" (Jabal-an-Nur), and 'cave of research' (`Ghar-i-Hira'), and angel Gabriel; (ii) at the very same age of forty (Acts 7:23-29), and (iii) there receiving a divine revelation, leading to his (iv) becoming a prophet of God and a Lawgiver. Mohammed as a Lawgiver is (like the Spartan Lycurgus) a direct pinch, I believe, from the Hebrew Pentateuch, and also from the era of Jeremiah. Consider the following by M. O'Hair ("Mohammed", A text of American Atheist Radio Series program No. 65, first broadcast on August 25, 1969: www.atheists.org/Islam.Mohammed.html "Now the Kaaba or Holy Stone at Mecca was the scene of an annual pilgrimage, and during this pilgrimage in 621 Mohammed was able to get six persons from Medina to bind themselves to him. They did so by taking the following oath. Not consider anyone equal to Allah; Not to steal; Not to be unchaste; Not to kill their children; Not willfully to calumniate". This is simply the Mosaïc Decalogue, with the following Islamic addition: "To obey the prophet's orders in equitable matters. In return Mohammed assured these six novitiates of paradise. The place where these first vows were taken is now called the first Akaba". "The mission of Mohammed", perfectly reminiscent of that of Moses, and later of Nehemiah, was "to restore the worship of the One True God, the creator and sustainer of the universe, as taught by Prophet Ibrahim [Abraham] and all Prophets of God, and complete the laws of moral, ethical, legal, and social conduct and all other matters of significance for the humanity at large." The above-mentioned Burning Bush incident occurred whilst Moses (a) was living in exile (Exodus 2:15) (b) amongst the Midianite tribe of Jethro, near the Paran desert. (c) Moses had married Jethro's daughter, Zipporah (v. 21). Likewise Mohammed: (a) experienced exile; (b) to Medina, a name which may easily have become confused with the similar sounding, Midian, and (c) he had only the one wife at the time, Khadija. Also (d) Moses, like Mohammed, was terrified by what God had commanded of him, protesting that he was "slow of speech and slow of tongue" (Exodus 4:10). To which God replied: "Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and I will be your mouth and teach you what you are to speak' (vv. 11-12). Now this episode, seemingly coupled with Moses’s call, has come distorted into the Koran as Mohammed's being terrified by what God was asking of him, protesting that he was not learned. To which God supposedly replied that he had 'created man from a clot of congealed blood, and had taught man the use of the pen, and that which he knew not, and that man does not speak ought of his own desire but by inspiration sent down to him'. Ironically, whilst Moses the writer complained about his lack of verbal eloquence, Mohammed, 'unlettered and unlearned', who therefore could not write, is supposed to have been told that God taught man to use the pen (?). But Mohammed apparently never learned to write, because he is considered only to have spoken God's utterances. Though his words, like those of Moses (who, however, did write, e.g. Exodus 34:27), were written down in various formats by his secretary, Zaid (roughly equating to the biblical Joshua, a writer, Joshua 8:32, or to Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch). This is generally how the Koran is said to have arisen. But Mohammed also resembles Moses in his childhood (and Tobit also) in the fact that, after his infancy, he was raised by a foster-parent (Exodus 2:10). And there is the inevitable weaning legend (Zahoor, A. and Haq, Z., "Biography of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)", http://cyberistan.org/islamic/muhammad.html 1998.): "All biographers state that the infant prophet sucked only one breast of his foster-mother, leaving the other for the sustenance of his foster-brother". There is even a kind of Islamic version of the Exodus. Compare the following account of the Qoreish persecution and subsequent pursuit of the fleeing Moslems with the persecution and later pursuit of the fleeing Israelites by Pharaoh (Exodus 1 and 4:5-7) [O’Hair, op. cit., ibid.]: When the persecution became unbearable for most Muslims, the Prophet advised them in the fifth year of his mission (615 CE) to emigrate to Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia) where Ashabah (Negus, a Christian) was the ruler. Eighty people, not counting the small children, emigrated in small groups to avoid detection. No sooner had they left the Arabian coastline [substitute Egyptian borders], the leaders of Quraish discovered their flight. They decided to not leave these Muslims in peace, and immediately sent two of their envoys to Negus to bring all of them back. The Koran of Islam is basically just the Arabic version of the Hebrew Bible with all of its same famous patriarchs and leading characters. That is apparent from what the Moslems themselves admit. For example [ibid.]: The Qur'an also mentions four previously revealed Scriptures: Suhoof (Pages) of Ibrahim (Abraham), Taurat ('Torah') as revealed to Prophet Moses, Zuboor ('Psalms') as revealed to Prophet David, and Injeel ('Evangel') as revealed to Prophet Jesus (pbuh). Islam requires belief in all prophets and revealed scriptures (original, non-corrupted) as part of the Articles of Faith. On this, see e.g. my article: Durie’s verdict on Prophet Mohammed (4) Durie's verdict on Prophet Mohammed Mohammed is now for Islam the last and greatest of the prophets. Thus, "in the Al-Israa, Gabriel (as) took the Prophet from the sacred Mosque near Ka'bah to the furthest (al-Aqsa) mosque in Jerusalem in a very short time in the latter part of a night. Here, Prophet Muhammad met with previous Prophets (Abraham, Moses, Jesus and others) and he led them in prayer" [ibid.]. Thus Mohammed supposedly led Jesus in prayer. The reputation of Ibn Ishaq (ca 704-767), a main authority on the life and times of the Prophet varied considerably among the early Moslem critics: some found him very sound, while others regarded him as a liar in relation to Hadith (Mohammed's sayings and deeds). His Sira is not extant in its original form, but is present in two recensions done in 833 and 814-15, and these texts vary from one another. Fourteen others have recorded his lectures, but their versions differ [ibid.]: It was the storytellers who created the tradition: the sound historical traditions to which they are supposed to have added their fables simply did not exist. . . . Nobody remembered anything to the contrary either. . . . There was no continuous transmission. Ibn Ishaq, al-Waqidi, and others were cut off from the past: like the modern scholar, they could not get behind their sources.... Finally, it has to be realized that the tradition as a whole, not just parts of it as some have thought, is tendentious, and that that tendentiousness arises from allegiance to Islam itself. Mohammed, a composite figure, seems to have likenesses even to pre-Mosaïc patriarchs, and to Jesus in the New Testament. Thus Mohammed, at Badr, successfully led a force of 300+ men (the number varies from 300-318) against an enemy far superior in number, as did Abraham (Genesis 14:14); and, like Jacob (Genesis 30, 31), he used a ruse to get a wife (in Jacob's case, wives). And like Jesus, the greatest of all God's prophets, Mohammed is said to have ascended into heaven from Jerusalem. Modern Myths about Moses From the above it can now be seen that it was not only the Greeks and Romans who have been guilty of appropriation into their own folklore of famous figures of Israel. Even the Moslems have done it and are still doing it. A modern-day Islamic author from Cairo, Ahmed Osman, has - in line with psychiatrist Sigmund Freud's view that Moses was actually an Egyptian, whose Yahwism was derived from pharaoh Akhnaton's supposed monotheism [Out of Egypt. The Roots of Christianity Revealed (Century, 1998)] - identified all the major biblical Israelites, from the patriarch Joseph to the Holy Family of Nazareth, as Eighteenth Dynasty Egyptian characters. Thus Joseph = Yuya; Moses = Akhnaton; David = Thutmose III; Solomon = Amenhotep III; Jesus = Tutankhamun; St. Joseph = Ay; Mary = Nefertiti. This is mass appropriation! Not to mention chronological madness! I was asked by Dr. Norman Simms of the University of Waikato (N.Z.) to write a critique of Osman's book, a copy of which he had posted to me. This was a rather easy task as the book leaves itself wide open to criticism. Anyway, the result of Dr. Simms' request was my article, "Osman's 'Osmosis' of Moses" article [The Glozel Newsletter, 5:1 (ns) 1999 (Hamilton, N.Z), pp. 1-17], in which I argued that, because Osman is using the faulty textbook history of Egypt, he is always obliged to give the chronological precedence to Egypt, when the influence has actually come from Israel over to Egypt. [This article, modified, can now be read at: Osman’s ‘Osmosis’ of Moses. Part One: The Chosen People (4) Osman's 'Osmosis' of Moses. Part One: The Chosen People and: Osman’s ‘Osmosis’ of Moses. Part II: Christ the King (4) Osman's 'Osmosis' of Moses. Part Two: Christ The King The way that Egyptian chronology is structured at present - thanks largely to Dr. Eduard Meyer's now approximately one century-old Ägyptische Chronologie (Philosophische und historische Abhandlungen der Königlich preussischen Akad. der Wissenschaften, Berlin, Akad. der Wiss., 1904).) could easily give rise to Osman's precedence in favour of Egypt view (though this is no excuse for Osman's own chronological mish-mash). One finds, for example, in pharaoh Hatshepsut's inscriptions such similarities to king David's Psalms that it is only natural to think that she, the woman-pharaoh - dated to the C15th BC, 500 years earlier than David - must have influenced the great king of Israel. Or that pharaoh Akhnaton's Hymn to the Sun, so like David's Psalm 104, had inspired David many centuries later. Only a proper revision of ancient Egyptian history brings forth the right perspective, and shows that the Israelites actually had the chronological precedence in these as in many other cases. It gets worse from a conventional point of view. The 'doyen of Israeli archaeologists', Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, frequently interviewed by Beirut hostage victim John McCarthy on the provocative TV program “It Ain't Necessarily So”, has, together with his colleagues, virtually written ancient Israel right off the historical map, along with all of its major biblical characters. This horrible mess is an inevitable consequence of the faulty Sothic chronology with which these archaeologists seem to be mesmerized. With friends like Finkelstein and co., why would Israel need any enemies! The Lawgiver Solon Whilst the great Lawgiver for the Hebrews was Moses, and for the Babylonians, Hammurabi, and for the Moslems, supposedly, Mohammed, the Lawgiver in Greek folklore was Solon of Athens, the wisest of the wise, greatest of the Seven Sages. Though Solon is estimated to have lived in the C6th BC, his name and many of his activities are so close to king Solomon's (supposedly 4 centuries earlier) that we need once again to question whether the Greeks may have been involved in appropriation. And, if so, how did this come about? It may in some cases simply be a memory thing, just as according to Plato's Timaeus one of the very aged Egyptian priests supposedly told Solon (Plato's Timaeus, trans. B. Jowett, The Liberal Arts Press, NY, 1949), 6 (22)) and /or Desmond Lee's translation, Penguin Classics, p. 34]: "O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes [Greeks] are never anything but children, and there is not an old man among you. Solon in return asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. …" Perhaps what the author of the Timaeus really needed to have put into the mouth of the aged Egyptian priest was that the Greeks had largely forgotten who Solomon was, and had created their own fictional character, "Solon", from their vague recall of the great king Solomon who "excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom" (1 Kings 10:23). Solon resembles Solomon especially in roughly the last decade of the latter's reign, when Solomon, turning away from Yahwism, became fully involved with his mercantile ventures, his fleet, travel, and building temples for his foreign wives, especially in Egypt (10:26-29; 11:1-8). Now, it is to be expected that the pagan Greeks would remember this more 'rationalist' aspect of Solomon (as Solon) rather than his wisdom-infused, philosophical, earlier years when he was a devout Jew and servant of Yahweh (4:29-34). And, Jewish, Solon apparently was! Edwin Yamauchi has studied the laws of Solon in depth and found them to be quite Jewish in nature, most reminiscent of the laws of Nehemiah (c. 450 BC) ("Two reformers compared: Solon of Athens and Nehemiah of Jerusalem," Bible world. New York: KTAV, 1980. pp. 269-292). That date of 450 BC may perhaps be some sort of clue as to approximately when the Greeks first began to create their fictional Solon. Solomon was, as I have argued in my "Solomon and Sheba" article ("Solomon and Sheba", SIS C and C Review, 1997:1, pp. 4-15), the most influential Senenmut of Egyptian history, Hatshepsut's mentor; whilst Hatshepsut herself was the biblical Queen [of] Sheba. This article can now be read at: Solomon and Sheba http://www.academia.edu/3660164/Solomon_and_Sheba I have also identified Hatshepsut/Sheba as the biblical Abishag, who comforted the aged David (I Kings 1-4), and the beautiful virgin daughter of David, Tamar. See e.g. my article: The vicissitudinous life of Solomon's pulchritudinous wife (4) The vicissitudinous life of Solomon's pulchritudinous wife Professor Henry Breasted had made a point relevant to my theme of Greek appropriation - and in connection too with the Solomonic era (revised). Hatshepsut's marvellous temple structure at Deir el-Bahri, he said, was "a sure witness to the fact that the Egyptians had developed architectural styles for which the Greeks later would be credited as the originators" (A History of Egypt, 2nd ed., NY (Scribner, 1924), p. 274). One need not necessarily perhaps always accuse the Greeks of a malicious corruption of earlier traditions, but perhaps rather of a 'collective amnaesia', to use a Velikovskian term; the sort of forgetfulness by the Greek nation as alluded to in Plato's Timaeus. There is also to be considered that the Levantines and/or Jews had migrated to Greece. In 1 Maccabees 12:21 [Areios king of the Spartans, to Onias the high priest, greetings: "A document has been found stating that the Spartans and the Jews are brothers; both nations descended from Abraham." By this late stage the earlier histories would already have been well and truly corrupted. The Abrahamic emigrants would naturally have carried their folklore - not to mention their architectural expertise - to the Greek archipelago where it would inevitably have undergone local adaptation. The Jewish philosopher, Aristobulus, was one who claimed that the Greeks had borrowed heavily from the Hebrew Torah. Thus we read an article by E. S. Gruen (2016), “Jewish Perspectives on Greek Culture and Ethnicity: file:///C:/Users/Damien%20Mackey/Downloads/10.1515_9783110375558-011.pdf [Pp. 181-185. Note: Whereas the author himself, E. S. Gruen, believes that the Jews greatly manipulated the Greek texts to make these conform to their own point of view – I believe, on the other hand, that the Greeks appropriated, but distorted, the original Hebrew writings]: Aristobulus, a man of wide philosophical and literary interests … wrote an extensive work, evidently a form of commentary on the Torah, at an uncertain date in the Hellenistic period. …. Only a meager portion of that work now survives, but enough to indicate a direction and objective: Aristobulus, among other things, sought to establish the Bible as foundation for much of the Greek intellectual and artistic achievement. Moses, for Aristobulus as for Eupolemus and Artapanus, emerges as a culture hero, precursor and inspiration for Hellenic philosophical and poetic traditions. But Aristobulus’ Moses, unlike the figure concocted by Eupolemus and Artapanus, does not transmit the alphabet, interpret hieroglyphics, or invent technology. His accomplishment is the Torah, the Israelite law code. And from that creation, so Aristobulus imagines, a host of Hellenic attainments drew their impetus. Foremost among Greek philosophers, Plato was a devoted reader of the Scriptures, poring over every detail, and faithfully followed its precepts. …. And not only he. A century and a half earlier, Pythagoras borrowed much from the books of Moses and inserted it into his own teachings. …. …. Other philosophers, too, came under the sway of the Torah. So at least Aristobulus surmised. The “divine voice” to which Socrates paid homage owed its origin to the words of Moses. …. And Aristobulus made a still broader generalization. He found concurrence among all philosophers in the need to maintain reverent attitudes toward God, a doctrine best expressed, of course, in the Hebrew Scriptures which preceded (and presumably determined) the Greek precepts. Indeed, all of Jewish law was constructed so as to underscore piety, justice, selfcontrol and the other qualities that represent true virtues—i.e., the very qualities subsequently embraced and propagated by the Greeks. …. Aristobulus thereby brought the whole tradition of Greek philosophizing under the Jewish umbrella. That was just a part of the project. Aristobulus not only traced philosophic precepts to the Torah. He found its echoes in Greek poetry from earliest times to his own day. The Sabbath, for instance, a vital part of Jewish tradition stemming from Genesis, was reckoned by Aristobulus as a preeminent principle widely adopted and signaled by the mystical quality ascribed to the number seven. …. And he discovered proof in the verses of Homer and Hesiod. …. Aristobulus … interpreted a Hesiodic reference to the seventh day of the month as the seventh day of the week. And he (or his source) emended a line of Homer from the “fourth day” to the “seventh day.” …. The creative Aristobulus also enlisted in his cause poets who worked in the distant mists of antiquity, namely the mythical singers Linus and Orpheus. Linus, an elusive figure variously identified as the son of Apollo or the music master of Heracles, conveniently left verses that celebrated the number seven as representing perfection itself, associating it with the heavenly bodies, with an auspicious day of birth, and as the day when all is made complete. …. The connection with the biblical origin of the Sabbath is strikingly close …. Aristobulus summoned up still greater inventiveness in adapting or improvising a wholesale monotheistic poem assigned to Orpheus himself. The composition delivers sage advice from the mythical singer to his son or pupil Musaeus (here in proper sequence of generations), counseling him to adhere to the divine word and describing God as complete in himself while completing all things, the sole divinity with no rivals, hidden to the human eye but accessible to the mind, a source of good and not evil, seated on a golden throne in heaven, commanding the earth, its oceans and mountains, and in control of all. …. The poem, whether or not it derives from Aristobulus’ pen, belongs to the realm of Hellenistic Judaism. It represents a Jewish commandeering of Orpheus, emblematic of Greek poetic art, into the ranks of those proclaiming the message of biblical monotheism. Aristobulus did not confine himself to legendary or distant poets. He made bold to interpret contemporary verses in ways suitable to his ends. One sample survives. Aristobulus quoted from the astronomical poem, the Phaenomena, of the Hellenistic writer Aratus of Soli. Its opening lines proved serviceable. By substituting “God” for “Zeus,” Aristobulus turned Aratus’ invocation into a hymn for the Jewish deity. …. The campaign to convert Hellenic writings into footnotes on the Torah was in full swing. In that endeavor Aristobulus had much company. Resourceful Jewish writers searched through the scripts of Attic dramatists, both tragic and comic, for passages whose content suggested acquaintance with Hebrew texts or ideas. …. Verses with a strikingly Jewish flavor were ascribed to Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and others to the comic playwrights Menander, Diphilus, and Philemon, again a combination of classical and Hellenistic authors. On Aeschylus, see my series: Ezekiel and Aeschylus. Part One: Aeschylus a Greek appropriation of Ezekiel? beginning with: (4) Ezekiel and Aeschylus. Part One: Aeschylus a Greek appropriation of Ezekiel? The fragments are preserved only in Church Fathers and the names of transmitters are lost to us. But the milieu of Jewish-Hellenistic intellectuals is unmistakable. …. Verses from Aeschylus emphasized the majesty of God, his omnipotence and omnipresence, the terror he can wreak, and his resistance to representation or understanding in human terms. …. Sophocles insisted upon the oneness of the Lord who fashioned heaven and earth, the waters and the winds; he railed against idolatry; he supplied an eschatological vision to encourage the just and frighten the wicked; and he spoke of Zeus’ disguises and philandering—doubtless to contrast delusive myths with authentic divinity. …. Euripides, too, could serve the purpose. Researchers found lines affirming that God’s presence cannot be contained within structures created by mortals and that he sees all, but is himself invisible. …. Attribution of comparable verses to comic poets is more confused in the tradition, as Christian sources provide conflicting notices on which dramatist said what. But the recorded writers, Menander, Philemon, and Diphilus, supplied usefully manipulable material. One or another spoke of an all-seeing divinity who will deliver vengeance upon the unjust and wicked, who lives forever as Lord of all, who apportions justice according to deserts, who scorns offerings and votives but exalts the righteous at heart. ….

Sinai and Horeb may be separate holy mountains

Flavio Barbiero tells on pp. 64 ff. of his thrilling article: THE CAVE OF TREASURES ON MOUNT HOREB (3) THE CAVE OF TREASURES ON MOUNT HOREB …. The mountain without a name Since our first arrival at Har Karkom, we have been struck by a small mountain that stands isolated in the middle of the valley. Arriving from the Egyptian border, it impressively resembles an Egyptian pyramid, with the horizontal stratifications of the rocks giving a realistic idea of the various orders of stones. …. Figure 27 – Seen from the south the mount appears like an Egyptian pyramid …. Seen from the north, the mountain had a particular shape, like a large crouching dragon, with a large stone slab at the top of its back, which resembled an enormous lectern. That little mountain was the most notable point in the whole valley and could be seen from any direction. It was the constant reference for knowing where one was. With its unmistakable silhouette constantly under the eyes, it was impossible to get lost or go wrong. We were especially attracted by that large flat rock on the top which from below almost looked like a ramp launched towards the sky. One evening, at the usual assembly after dinner, we asked Anati what that mountain was called and what was on the top. "It's a mountain without a name," was the reply. 'Only the quota is shown on the maps: 788 metres. The Israeli cartographers considered it part of the Karkom complex and did not consider giving it a specific name. …. At the plain's beginning, a large triangular stone was stuck in the ground; it showed clear signs of workmanship to give it a cuspidal shape. On its side, there was a flint "eye" set in the rock and underneath some engravings with a mysterious meaning. It was oriented north-south but pointed towards a small escarpment, a few tens of meters ahead, from which a path began that climbed towards the top of the mountain. On the left was the huge boulder … surrounded by stones, most of which were flat and stuck in the ground. It looked like a large altar surrounded by steles, at the foot of the mountain. A stone vaguely shaped like an animal's head, placed on the rock who knows when and by whom, recalled the image of a calf. We called that boulder "the altar of the golden calf ", jokingly at first, but then with more and more conviction. …. While we were in front of the altar, imagining the scene of dancers around it with a golden calf on top, we looked up towards the mountain and gasped: of the large rock that was on top, we could only see the north side, framed by a saddle formed by the gully along which the wadi descended. The front of the rock (Fig. 40 and 41) was surmounted for its entire width by a drywall built with large stone blocks; it looked like the front of a fortress and was visible from across the plain. …. We decided to go up, heading towards the path indicated by the cusp stone. After a few meters of steep climb, we arrived at a false plain sloping gently down from the mountain. At this point the path passed through a gap created in a row of stones lined up along the edge of the escarpment, clearly a boundary line. On the sides of the gap were two steles, about sixty centimetres each, knocked down to the ground and, in the centre of the path, a serpent's head made of flint … facing those who climbed up. We couldn't help but think of the words of the Bible: “And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death." (Ex.19,12; 19,20; 24,1). … Figure 33 - Snake’s head made from a block of flint placed at the beginning of the path that climbs Mount 788 That gap seemed to be the only access to Mount 788 on that side … and that row of stones on the edge, with the two steles on either side, clearly constituted "limits". The serpent's head placed between the steles, in the centre of the path, was an all too evident threat of death addressed to those who climbed it. This is an undeniable indication that this was precisely the mountain to which the words of Exodus referred. …. Heedless of that threat, we followed the path along the slope initially quite gentle. Then the climb became harder, along the wadi, and a last steep climb took us to the top. The Acropolis in the desert This is how Valerio Manfredi describes it in his report later published by the Centro Camuno: "It is an imposing natural acropolis, rising from a mountain located exactly in the centre of the valley and arranged in its longitudinal axis in a north-south direction, surrounded both to the east and to the west by two large wadis. The current access is from the north ... This side is delimited by a drywall of large limestone blocks, superimposed with great skill and interspersed with smaller stones carefully fitted. The height of the wall is overall preserved, and it can be assumed that the original height was 2 meters max. The current maximum height is 1.54 m. The view that is disclosed to those who cross the entrance open into the wall is of extraordinary impact. The platform looks like a natural ramp to the sky, and it is paved by a sort of cyclopean natural tiles. About 14 meters from the entrance there is a small "sacred" complex consisting of four orthostats stuck in the ground, whose largest, in a central position, is 94 cm high and 54 cm wide ... To the north, at a distance of 1 meter from the main orthostat, is placed a stone 70 cm long, 42 cm wide and 37 cm high. An altar? At the top of the platform, 14 meters from the southern end, there is a rectangular construction, 6.24 meters long (E-W side) and 3.24 m wide (east side) and 3.40 m (west side). At the centre of the north side opens the door, the width of cm. 84, limited by a threshold consisting of three boulders next to each other. The southern long wall collapsed inside the structure and the northern long wall outside. The causes of the collapse are not known; recent causes cannot be excluded. The number of blocks that make up the collapse suggests that the original high could reach at least m. 1.50. The roof of the building, if it existed, could probably be made of organic materials such as wood or leather". …. We were fascinated by the sight of the "basolato", a sort of paved floor of large stones encrusted with green-blue lichens. One day, we had the chance to see the Acropolis after a short downpour. The wet lichens that covered the stones had become phosphorescent of an intense blue and offered an incredible, breathtaking spectacle, the same described in Ex 24,9: “Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness.” We had never seen anything like it. It instinctively came to us to follow the command of Ex. 3:5: "put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.." It was pleasant to walk barefoot on the smooth stones. It was the only point in that area where it was possible to do so because everywhere else, the ground was covered with sharp stones and thorny shrubs, which made it impossible to walk barefoot. The construction on top of the platform was the temple of the acropolis (so we called it from then on, because it is a natural acropolis in the desert). The collapse of the temple’s walls was not due to natural causes, but to man's work, which was very recent. …. From the top of the acropolis, you can dominate the entire surrounding valley and the desert, in the direction of Egypt, up to the distant horizon; to the north, you can see the edge of Maktesh Ramon and the dome of the Mizpé Ramon Natural History Museum, on the edge of the crater, more than twenty kilometres as the crow flies. From there you can control every corner of the Karkom valley and the entire plateau. No one could approach that mountain without being seen. Isolated as it is in the centre of the valley, with its unmistakable silhouette, it constitutes a unique natural landmark …. … The perfect setting of the events narrated by Exodus As far as we could see at that moment, Mount 788 fully corresponded to the biblical account’s description of Mount Horeb. The limits, the snake head on the access paths, and the impressiveness of the acropolis were important clues, but another thing also proved it. Throughout the valley, you could meet rock engravings everywhere. All the hills around the valley and the valley itself were strewn with rock engravings and on the plateau of Har Karkom there was the largest concentration of the whole Sinai. We expected we would also find many on the 788 because of its central location in the valley. In the following years, my brother and I inspected the mountain from top to bottom, stone by stone, but found no engravings, not even a scratch. That absolute absence was in sheer contrast with the incredible wealth of rock engravings of all kinds and ages, especially BAC, that were all around. "Nobody was interested in that mound", was the joking conclusion of Federico Mailland during one of the usual evening conversations at the camp. For us, however, it was the most … evident proof that that mountain was forbidden and in particular there was a prohibition on representing any living being, as the Bible highlights. In addition to all these indications, the fact remained that the biblical events could be set perfectly there. From the wall of the Acropolis, you could see the plain at the mouth of the wadi, with the great altar of the golden calf. Between the wall and the beginning of the paving, there is a trench, more than one meter deep and about three meters wide, for the entire width of the platform. Here you could hide and store materials without being seen from below. If a series of fires were lit along the wall, the top of the mountain would appear covered in smoke from the plain below. Furthermore, the gorge carved by the wadi that flowed next to the great altar had particular acoustic properties: sounds and noises produced in the gorge were greatly amplified for the benefit of those in the plain in front of the altar. ….

Moses had neglected to circumcise his son

Paul Carter wrote astutely in 2020 of: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/moses-zipporah-strangest-circumcision-story-exodus/ The Strangest Circumcision Story Ever If you were to make a short list of the strangest paragraphs in the Bible, Exodus 4:24–26 would almost certainly be on it. Moses has just met God at the burning bush and been given an exalted commission: go and speak to Pharaoh, and serve as God’s agent for the redemption of his people. He’s been called and equipped with miraculous powers, and now he begins to move out in fulfillment of his mission. We’re not prepared for what comes next: At a lodging place on the way the LORD met him and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” So he let him alone. It was then that she said, “A bridegroom of blood,” because of the circumcision (Ex. 4:24–26). What in the world is that all about? Besides being unexpected, the text is difficult to make sense of because of the obscurity of the language. For example, it isn’t clear who “him” is in verse 24. Is it Moses or his son Gershom? We’re also not entirely sure who or what Zipporah touched with the foreskin of Gershom in verse 25; the ESV adds the word “Moses,” but that word is not in the Hebrew text. And there are cultural obscurities equally hard to penetrate. The drama of the text seems to be driven by the disparity between the Midianite traditions surrounding circumcision and the Hebrew traditions as dictated to Abraham in Genesis 17. Given that we don’t have access to the Midianite traditions, reading Exodus 4:24–26 is a bit like listening to one half of a phone conversation. Our best reconstruction is as follows. Understanding What Happened As Moses and his family were traveling from Midian to Egypt, God somehow arrested them and assaulted Moses (Moses is probably the “him” in verse 24). Perhaps Moses had a seizure or became suddenly ill; we aren’t sure precisely how this attack was carried out. We know his wife Zipporah understood immediately what was going on, and we can also infer that the attack was slow-acting enough for her to respond in some sort of atoning way. This suggests that the attack was never intended to be fatal. It was a warning, and it produced the intended result. The main human actor in the story is Zipporah. Moses was incapacitated by the divine attack and Gershom was a child. That Zipporah knew precisely what to do in order to appease the Lord’s anger suggests that this wasn’t the first time she and Moses had discussed the issue of Gershom’s circumcision. Here our reconstruction is complicated by limited understanding of the Midianite ritual. Many historians suggest that the Midianites conducted the ritual just prior to the ceremony of marriage. Once a young man was betrothed, he’d undergo circumcision, followed by a time of recuperation, after which he’d marry his wife and consummate the marital union. If that understanding is correct, then it would seem that Moses had effectively raised his son as a Midianite. He hadn’t circumcised him on the eighth day as God had commanded Abraham and all his descendants to do (Gen. 21:4). Perhaps Moses had deferred to Midianite customs out of respect for his father-in-law Jethro. The fact that God deals directly with Zipporah, however, suggests that she had been part of the reason for this inappropriate delay. Perhaps realizing this, Zipporah immediately takes the flint knife and circumcises Gershom, thus breaking with Midianite custom. With Moses incapacitated, however, she has no option but to perform the ritual the way she was familiar with. She takes the bloody foreskin and marks the child with it. Again, the word “Moses” isn’t in the Hebrew text of verse 25. Translators and commentators must therefore decide whether she is touching Moses or Gershom with the foreskin. It seems better to assume that touching the child was part of the Midianite ritual. As Douglas Stuart notes: Zipporah touched the foreskin of Gershom to Gershom’s genitals from which it had been removed. “Feet” is one of the Hebrew euphemisms for genitals. She thus had physically circumcised Gershom, then immediately she symbolically used the removed foreskin to touch Gershom’s genitals and said the “right words.” The ESV then has Zipporah saying, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” (Ex. 4:25). However, the word translated as “bridegroom” equally means “kinsman.” Whether you translate it as “bridegroom” or “kinsman” is determined entirely by whether you believe she’s touching the foreskin to Moses or Gershom. It seems more likely that touching the young male with the foreskin made sense in the Midianite ritual. It was a way of saying: “By this blood and through this ritual you join and extend the family.” God accepts the use of these words as an indication that the act was done in faith and obedience—and the story proceeds on from there. Two Practical Takeaways If our reconstruction is correct, then two lessons are suggested by the narrative. 1. Leadership Begins at Home Moses, God’s chosen leader, had thus far declined to follow God’s instructions regarding circumcision. Keil and Delitzsche remark, “But if Moses was to carry out the divine commission with success, he must first of all prove himself to be a faithful servant of Jehovah in his own house.” If you’re going to step out as a leader of God’s people then you’d better be leading your own family. Get yourself sorted out, and get your wife and yourself on the same page, before you attempt to function as any kind of leader or officer in the Lord’s house. We see the same thing in the New Testament. Regarding the qualifications for a church elder, the apostle Paul says, “He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?” (1 Tim. 3:4–5). If a man isn’t leading his own house in the Lord’s ways, then he isn’t qualified to lead the congregation. This doesn’t mean perfection, but it does mean effort, courage, and attention to basics within the home. 2. Faith Makes an Ordinance Effectual Zipporah used words and actions more associated with Midianite practices than with Hebrew when it came to the circumcision of her son. She had limited options given the urgency of the situation and the incapacitation of her husband. Nevertheless, God accepted her version of the ritual because it was done in humility and faith. The same sentiment appears in the New Testament with respect to the sacrament of baptism. Commenting on the analogous relationship between our salvation and the salvation affected for and through Noah, Peter states that it’s not the mere ritual of baptism that saves us, but rather “an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 3:21). If the act of baptism represents our appeal in faith to God for justification and absolution through the work of Jesus Christ, then it is effective. Not because we say magic words, and not because we use magic water, but because the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is itself powerful and effectual unto salvation. Of course that doesn’t mean we should be sloppy in our practice of the ordinances. Zipporah wasn’t sloppy; she was ignorant. And ignorance, if it be paired with faith, is typically met with mercy. Thanks be to God!