The Historicity of Moses

It’s possible to read one’s Bible and never notice the thousand details that point to the existence of sources sewn together or merely juxtaposed in the Primary History (Genesis-2 Kings) and beyond. The comparative study of these sources, hypothetical though the sources will forever remain, opens a window onto a world which not everyone has seen and some are afraid to acknowledge. It is a wonderland, and not everyone wants to be an Alice.

It is a land populated with authors who are acrobats, tight-rope walkers, and somersaulters. Some of them, at least in my mind’s eye, appear to be scantily dressed. From another point of view, they appear to be a collection of sculptors who turn past, present, and future on a wheel of higher truth. The clay and water come together in smooth gestures. There is a rumor of treasure in their earthen vessels.

If you read the Bible in translation, it’s easy not to notice salient detail. Translations tend to homogenize and simplify. If you care about the detail of biblical literature, you have no choice but to learn the biblical languages, and learn them well.

The question of the existence of sources combined, framed, and reworked is separate with respect to the question of who combined them and when. An excellent scholar like Richard Averbeck, who thinks the Pentateuch is essentially Mosaic, does not deny the existence of J, E, D, and P.¹ But he thinks, as did Astruc, that Moses combined them.

My problem has always been that I do not disagree. As Franz Rosenzweig put it, what Wellhausen and the others call “R” (for “Redactor”) we confess to be Moses (actually, Rosenzweig said “Rabbi,” but it’s the same thing²).

That’s because Moses is, in Jewish tradition beginning within the pages of the Bible, a hermeneutical construct. He is a key that opens door after door in the quest for a narrative identity animated by hope and structured by norms.

Does that mean that Moses was not or is not a flesh-and-blood person? On the contrary: he was and is, in precisely three senses.

First of all, when the liturgy affirms that all Israel witnessed the parting of the Red Sea, the affirmation is not fantastic. In fact, the statement is tautological, since “all Israel” and “those who witness the parting of the Red Sea” are equivalent terms. Anyone who has experienced the liturgy will, I believe, understand. I’m a goy for God’s sake, but have experienced the liturgy often enough. On that basis, the statement that “all Israel” has witnessed the parting of the Red Sea appears self-evidently true.

The same is the case with respect to the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai, to its being written by the finger of God, to its being given to Moses, and then came Aaron’s golden calf which popped out of nowhere and all the rest. It’s all self-evidently true, though it is not a photograph of reality. It is more like a Klee, a Picasso, or a Chagall, whose abstract colors and forms, abstract and specific at the same time, speak a precise language.

In short, from within the system of signs, it is self-evidently true that the Torah was given to Moses and not to Aaron, David, or Elijah, though the chariots of fire stood on the hills around him when he moved from point A to point B. The Torah is above them all and above the chariots of fire and is mediated by still another. Moses is his name. He is the archetype of rich categories of experience and conflict which are at the heart of flesh-and-blood existence. There is not a scrap of the fantastic about him, though he is, no less than Aaron and more than David and Elijah, a transpersonal person.

Secondly, and specifically, everyone who has sat in the seat of Moses (Matt 23:2) is Moses. This is recognized in the concept of the unity of written and oral Torah. This unity is not an invention. Unless my eyes and mind completely deceive me, it is a fact. The transpersonal and the personal interact on this level.

Thirdly, once upon a time there was someone named Moses. Historically speaking, we don’t know much for certain about him. We don’t even know where he was buried. But if the God of Moses exists, then so does Moses, and he’s probably speaking with Elijah this very moment. But of that reality we can say very little.

For one who thinks in terms of signs, the value of the historical study of the Bible is clear: it allows one to sense the unity of the particular and the universal, the mystical and the historical. 

Shalom Paul put it nicely (481):

[T]hrough all the variegated and often contradictory legends runs the assumption that in spite of his unique career as the faithful “servant of God,” Moses always remained a mortal, fallible human being. In modern times the historicity of Moses – and the Exodus tradition as a whole – has been challenged; but many scholars agree that some of the tribes were in fact enslaved in Egypt and freed, that the Israelite religion was founded in law by a solemn covenant, and that a heroic figure like Moses played a central role in these events. . . . Both a historical personality and a spiritual symbol, Moses represents the passionate and self-sacrificing leader, liberator, intercessor, lawgiver, teacher (Moshe Rabbenu [Moses Our Master]), “faithful shepherd,” founder of Judaism, and prophet of monotheism. Tradition attributes to him the authorship of the entire Torah and regards him as the fountainhead of the oral law. Eschatological speculation also ascribed to him a role in the future, messianic redemption.

Starter Bibliography

Mark W. Chavalas, “Moses,” in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch (ed. T. Desmond Alexander and David W. Baker; Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003) 570-79; Dennis T. Olson, “Moses,” in The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible Volume 4 (ed. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld; Nashville: Abingdon, 2009) 142-152: Shalom Paul, “Moses,” in The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion (ed. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky and Geoffrey Wigoder; New York: Oxford, 1997) 480-81

Footnotes

¹ Richard E. Averbeck, “Factors in Reading the Patriarchal Narratives: Literary, Historical, and Theological Dimensions,” in Giving the Sense: Understanding and Using Old Testament Historical Texts (ed. David M. Howard Jr. and Michael A. Grisanti; Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2003) 115-137. See, for example, Table 5.2 on p. 129.

² “We . . . translate the Torah as one book. For us . . . it is the work of a single mind. We do not know who the mind was; we cannot believe that it was Moses. We name that mind among ourselves . . . R. We, however, take R to stand not for Redactor but for rabbenu [our Rabbi]. For whoever he was, and whatever text lay before him, he is our teacher and his theology is our teaching.” - Franz Rosenzweig in idem and Martin Buber, “The Unity of the Bible: A Position Paper vis-à-vis Orthodoxy and Liberalism,” in Scripture and Translation [= Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung (Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1939)] (ed. and trans. Lawrence Rosenwald and Everett Fox; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994) 22-26. Rosenzweig in referring to Moses had in mind the Moses of a critic like Ernst Sellin or Martin Noth. On another level of analysis, Moses and R are one and the same person.

 

Comments

[Simon Holloway]

A beautifully written post! And I have very much enjoyed your observations regarding the historicity of Moses, the construct, and his identification with R. I find it very interesting (and have been reminded of this very recently) how that which seems so very conservative when coming from the mouth of a Christian can sometimes sound so very liberal when coming from a Jew! You may have to correct me as regards the former half of that equation, but it seems to me as though the ideas that you espouse might place you towards the more conservative end of a Christian spectrum?

Within Judaism, any suggestion that Moses wrote the Bible is an "academic" suggestion and, while many unobservant and unaffiliated Jews might not realise this, the strictly traditional in our midst conceive of this idea as anathema to the faith. The Torah, rather than being composed (or redacted) by Moses, existed before the creation of the world, the latter having been created through it. It might sound radical, but I submit that Moses being composer and Moses being redactor are one and the same to the so-called "guardians of our faith", and that God alone can be credited with the Torah's composition.

[JohnFH]

Thanks, Simon. If I remember correctly, there are seven things that pre-exist creation according to one source. Torah however comes to the fore most often as a copy of something eternal, based on exegetical triangulation involving inter alia Proverbs 8.

[Simon Holloway]

The source that you are referring to is Avot 5:6, and it's wonderful! It lists 10 things that were created on the eve of the seventh day (בערב שבת בין השמשות), but the Torah is not one of them. They are:

1. The mouth of the earth (that swallowed Korah's host);
2. The mouth of the well (that provided the Israelites with water);
3. The mouth of the donkey (of Balaam);
4. The rainbow;
5. The manna;
6. The staff (that Moses cast before Pharaoh);
7. The shamir (a legendary worm that split the stones from which Solomon built the temple);
8. The writing (or the miraculous nature of the writing, that decorated the stone tablets of the Law);
9. The implement (or the style of the writing, that produced the engraved tablets);
10. The tablets themselves.

The mishna goes on to suggest four other things that must have also been created before the creation of the world: the harmful spirits, the grave of Moses, the ram of Abraham, and the first tongs. Why tongs? Because you need tongs to make tongs! Hah!

And this is now officially off the topic, but I don't know where the first reference exists to the Torah being a blueprint for all of creation. I definitely saw it in Tanna de-be Eliyahu, but can't seem to find the reference now.

[JohnFH]

Hi Simon,

Very interesting lists, but no, I was thinking of the list of seven in b. Pesachim 54a (compare Genesis Rabba 1:4):

Torah,
repentance,
the garden of Eden,
Gehenna [Hell]
the Heavenly Throne
the Temple,
and the name of the Messiah