0069-1 Moses Throws the Tablet of Stone (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Bringing tablets from the mountain
The fact that Moses goes up in the mountains to receive his orders and to bring down the stone tablets was always a suspect to me of lacking divinity from early age. To state the obvious any reasonably well prepared and skilled man can go up a mountain and bring down two stone tablets (especially from a mountain that is all stone) with basic laws hammered onto it. All you need is some tools (perhaps one can even make tools spontaneously made from stronger and weaker stone). Spending amongst others 40 days (“without drink and water” – surely he has some hidden cave with tools and water and food) is plentiful to think of some laws? Moses goes alone, there are no witnesses either, who would have seen a magical inscription of the tablets by God. So this was always the basis of my doubt and perhaps the beginning of my secular Judaism. Perhaps fittingly it is here where also the Israelites doubt Moses (‘s return) and create a Golden Calf as the new inter-medium in places of Moses (sic according to commentary rather than alternative God(s)) between God and the people.
Restoring order not through God but by human violence against another.
The Levites are ordered to take upon their swords and slaughter some 3000 of their fellows as a punishment for making the Golden Calf, whilst Ahron who collected the gold and instructed is left unspoiled. Thus it is not God who punishes. It is one group of humans enforcing “the right way” and spreading death, terror and fear on their fellows to obey the Moses or rather Moses and God.
The commentary is split on this passage, saying that the Levites have to atone forever for this and thus become temple servants, others that this blood-sacrifice made them holy before the Lord.
Moses as a Chemist and Herbalist
Moses revelations, supposedly by God, show that he was a man of wisdom and superior knowledge and a authoritarian leader compared to the others. We read about special oils, scents and smokes to be used only in relation to the tabernacle. The Israelites are told that they may not use the same smells or incense for personal use. So here are items prepared by man using herbs and plants of local region and humans must not reproduce these. Temptation and sin is thus an act within reach of human ordinary ability, just like the melting of gold into a calf (by the way a familiar regional creature of the world between God and humans – see cherubim.). In other words we do not hear about an item that fell from sky alien and new to all that is labelled as untouchable or deemed not usable for normal purposes (of course people who believe in God would argue that all on earth is from God). The penalty is that people who nevertheless reproduce the items and use them ought be cut off from the Israelites. This requires self-restrained and limitation of freedom from the newly liberated people.
Moses enters the tabernacle and a column of smoke appears. He leaves it and it disappears. The Israelites think it is God coming down in the column / pillar of smoke.. But just a few paragraphs earlier we read about incense. Is it going too far to think that Moses kept the best smoke he could create to make claim of “godly cloud,” especially since we now the area was off limits for all others but the closest of confides? I go as far as thinking that the shine from his face could have been created by a silvery substance. Moses begins to hide behind a veil, creating an image of slight super-humanness.
No peace, no love, no other gods
(God) Moses instructs his people that they must not make agreements with the Amorites, the Caanites, the Gittites, the Perizites, the Hivites and the Jebusites , all of whom will be driven out of their lands. Not only this, but just following the passages on the golden calf, it goes further. The Israelites must destroy these peoples altars and pillars. Not doing so means that the stiff-necked Israelites may lust after their foreign gods. The same supposedly is promised to happen if an Israelites takes as his women any of these tribes daughters, for “your sons and daughters will lust after their gods.” And straight after that once again the warning you shall not make yourself molten gods.
Carol Meyers in a The Torah, Women’s Commentary, p. 514 notes the inter-marriage point too. She also notes that the same does not account for women taking men from these tribes. She constructs an excuse that marrying an Israelite woman would maintain the customs and technologies necessary for survival. I think this is slightly artificial as it does not allow for learning. The expression of “cultural disdain” she tries to liberate this passage from, in my view stays put. But she is right in pointing out that at the same time this can not be understood as absolute prohibitions. Beersheba, Esther, Moses, David and Solomon have all foreign spouses, she notes.
Overall I think this is a weak passage. Is the religion and the way that Moses prescribes not strong enough for people to keep to them? Does it require the destruction of others to safe ones own believe? I feel rather that true conviction comes from inviting the other rather than destroying it. Destruction is always a sign of spiritual and internal weakness, quite admitted in a way here, with the expected human protection mechanism.
Forgiveness granted for 1000 generations.
This is the sign of forgiveness after Moses has managed to convince God not to eliminated the Israelites. The Israelites are forgiven to the 1000th generation iniquity, transgression and sin. But the inequity of parents should be visited upon the third and fourth generation. In addition they are to receive soon the land of milk and honey.
Moses to me is a great chemist, wise man, magician and cult leader. He has a whole group of people (Levites) loyal to him, as we see ready to kill, if need be, even people from amidst their own ranks. This allows Moses to create a religion or perhaps here still cult of his ways through a mixture of superstitious believes and fear by all. The Israelites are ordered not only to follow him, but to keep certain rites: the shabbat, passover, shavuot and come before the Lord three times per year amongst others.
Chemical Knowledge again:
There is a Haftara reading this week it is First Kings 18 1-39
Elijah challenges King Ahab to make fire to a bundle of wood they both set up and make wet by praying to their Gods. Ahab’s people fail whilst Elijah wins and shows all that he has the real God. But what is suspect to me, if one takes the text literal is especially the presence of “water,” spread over the wood. There could have been all kind of substances one could use and mix to eventually react with each other and burn, whilst pretending it is but water. In my view those who understood early forms of chemistry and physics could claim anything. Elijah, just as Moses could have been such men.
Slightly updated and corrected 27/02/2013
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