A study of Moses’ request to see God and the issue of his infallibility (original) (raw)
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Divine simplicity and scripture: a theological reading of Exodus 3:14
Scottish Journal of Theology, 2020
Exodus 3:14 had traditionally been taken as God’s self-identification as ‘being-itself’, and hence as a source for the doctrine of divine simplicity. I begin this essay by arguing that the appropriateness of this interpretation of 3:14 should be evaluated by attention to the judgments about God made within scripture rather than merely the semantic range of a few words. I argue that there are three questions elicited by verses 1–14 that are relevant to the significance of 3:14 for divine simplicity, which concern God’s incomparability, intimacy, and ineffability. By considering what kind of judgments these questions elicit about God, I present a case for the utility of divine simplicity for holding the judgments together. This allows for a more sympathetic retrieval of premodern uses of Exod 3:14.
Certain questions or statements posed, but unanswered, in the Old Testament, such as Isaac's: 'But where is the lamb?' (Genesis 22:7), or Jacob's (to the angel): 'Please tell me your name' (32:29), may not actually be accounted for until much later, even in the New Testament.
God's Back! What did Moses see on Sinai?
What precisely did Moses see when he ascended Mt. Sinai to collect the second set of commandments? The notion that God allowed Moses to glimpse his back, but not to see his face, has taken a vice-like imaginative grip on the recent history of interpretation. In this paper, I shall suggest that God showed Moses neither his face nor his back on Mt. Sinai, but offered him a glimpse of the future. Reading God’s “back” as an idiomatic reference to the future, reflecting a biblical perception of time now lost to us, sheds new light on traditional Jewish and Christian commentaries on Exod 33:23. It helps explain why commentators more or less ignore God’s back until well into the middle ages. Far from being squeamish about anthropomorphic representations of God, they did not even contemplate a literal reading. It also helps explain thematic preoccupations of these commentaries, such as the relationship between (present) righteousness and (future) reward. As well as illuminating explicit responses to the second Sinai ascent, my reading helps to identify new responses. The story in b. Menahot 29b of Moses encountering God on Mt. Sinai, sitting and tying crowns to the letters of the Sefer Torah, and Moses’ subsequent visit to Rabbi Aqiba’s Torah academy, is among the best known and most widely discussed of all rabbinic Sinai narratives. I hope to show that it too is a response to Exod 33:12–23, thereby revealing a crucial textual dimension hitherto unrecognised, and, perhaps more importantly, indicating the need for yet another look at Jewish and Christian engagement over the use of Sinai as a focus for issues of succession, intercession, and transmission of authority.
Moses the God: The Apotheosis of Moses in the Blaze of Source-critical Struggles
Filip Čapek and Petr Sláma (eds.), And God Saw That It Was Good (Gen 1:12): The Concept of Quality in Achaeology, Philology and Theology (Zürich: LIT Verlag), 2020
A comparison of two deifying statements about Moses in Ex 4:16 and in Ex 7:1 in their respective literary contexts. As a result, Ex 7:1 is understood as a priestly attempt to safeguard the practical hierocracy in Jerusalem during the Persian era. Clearly dependent on it and therefore younger, the statement in Ex 4:16 is interpreted as an attempt of non-priestly Jewish circles to come to terms with this state of matters.
Moses in the Qur’an and Islamic Exegesis.pdf
This work draws upon a host of late antique and medieval sources to examine selected Muslim exegeses of Moses in the Quran. The Muslim exegetical image o f Moses in the Quran is linked with ancient Sumerian stories o f Gilgamesh, var- ious versions of the Alexander Romance (Ethiopic, Syriac, Persian), Aramaic translations of the Abraham story in Genesis, and rabbinic accounts of the Ten Lost Tribes in the Talmud and the Midrash. Muslim exegetes associate Moses with the Jacob story in Genesis, Dhu al-Qarnayn 's visit to the cities at the ends of the Earth, and the Prophet Muhammad as caretaker in the garden of Eden. In doing so, the Muslim exegetes do not confuse and mistake earlier sources, but they intentionally use non-Quranic elements thick in Biblical allusions to delineate a particular image of Moses, the Torah, and the Israelites. It is an image of Moses, drawn in contrast to the Biblical and Jewish image o f Moses, which the Muslim exegetes use to identify and authorize themselves as linked to the different image of the Prophet Muhammad. Using approaches from Biblical Studies, History of Religions, Folklore Studies, and Judeo-Arabic Studies, this book suggests how Muslim exegesis ofthe Quran is purposeful in its appropriation and adapta- tion ofelements consonant with Jewish and Christian interpretation and theology of the Bible.
Divine-Human Relations in Exodus 3:1–4:17
JANES , 2020
This article explores Exod 3:1-4:17-the theophany and description of Moses's appointment-employing a synchronic literary approach to reach a theological objective. 1 In this article, I will discuss the content and theological significance of the unit as it appears in its final form. These chapters have been the subject of a number of recent theological studies. The purpose of my study and the methodology it is based upon, however, differ significantly from these studies, thereby justifying a new exploration of these chaptersan exploration which culminates in a different conclusion. I wish to take a closer look at the characterization of God in this unit, to define the multiple divine facets that appear in it, and to discuss the tension between these facets -none of these aspects have been explored in previous studies. 2 I will do so reading of the text. 3
Didache, 2022
God's commands are very beneficial for all mankind who believe in Him. However, in reality, more people refused and did not carry out the order. In the Bible, Moses is one of the recipients of God's commandment that at the beginning of his call he rejected the order. But finally, he accepted and carried out God's command. Even though in the middle of the journey, Moses often complained and tried to refuse the order in leading the Israelites out of the land of Egypt due to the stubbornness of the people, sometimes Moses was affected by the situation so he violated His commands. The purpose of this article is to describe the journey of Moses receiving God's commands, since God revealed Himself to him and his ability to bring the Israelites out of Egypt to enter the land of Canaan by obedience to God's Commands. The method used in this article is to use a qualitative study research method with literature studies in the field of biblical theology. The discussion is focused on God's command to Moses in several important chronologies and how Moses' attitude towards God's command for the Israelites and how the attitude displayed by the Israelites responded to God's command.
The Meanings and Significances of Moses’ Prayers in The Qur’an: From Tabari to Khazin
2020
This piece presents a new style of tafsir employing hermeneutical approach to interpret meanings as well as gaining significances of invocations uttered by prophets in the Quranic chronicles. To limit the study only on the chronicle of Moses, the prayers within the verses will be explicated by referring to famous tafsir literatures of Tabari and Khazin. Both tafsir respectively represent either the traditional (ma’thur) or a combined traditional-rational (ra’yi) interpretation to the Qur’anic verses. Highlighting the Israelite struggle against the tyrannical Pharaoh of Egypt, the chronicle of Moses as illustrated by some prayers invoked by Moses in several occasions is a journey of approaching God. It begins by true repentance from wrongdoing and consistent avoidance of sin, put man’s trust in God only and preferring God more than any others. The chronic is certainly full of enriched meanings as we may take some lessons from historic events as well as bringing meaningful significati...
Seeing and not Seeing the Face of God: Overcoming the Law of Contradiction in Biblical Theology
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2020
This paper attempts to illuminate and interpret the contradictory portrait of God as both seen and unseen in the Torah. Thus Moses is commanded not to look on the face of God yet also praised for having spoken to God "face to face". We seek ways to reconcile the contradictory portraits of God through the use of the term "doubled-mindedness" in the theology of Jerome Gellman, in the logic of "thirdness" in C.S. Peirce's semiotics, and in the use of both particle and wave models in Einstein's physics of light. The paper concludes by disusing the practical consequences of theological double-mindedness for the religious life and the philosophical meaning of redemption as the time when the contradiction of the unseen and seen God is resolved.