So, do you think we'll have rain?
So, what is Reverend Blob doing this Good Friday morning as he watches the clock before getting ready and leaving for church?
Opened today's Haaretz to read two excellent, fascinating essays by Elon Gilad, one copy and pasted below (scroll down), the other copied into a word document for maybe later reprinting here. Below, conjectural but a thinking man's contemplation of Scripture, similar to what we like to do in our Sunday School class sessions. Our pick-it-apart approach to Bible study mayn't appeal to everyone, especially literalist-inerrantists who profess to believe God stood behind Moses and dictated word for word. But for me it lets stories make more sense than clutching my breast, gazing piously at the sky, and murmuring, "I believe that; thank you, Lord".
Even so, I may draw lines of caution; even with our class of enthusiastic learners, scarcely ever using the word "myth", or leaving myself open for anyone to ask, "but what do YOU believe"?
Because my own faith is a tangled weave of study, contemplate, skepticism and knowing it's impossible to know many of the tenets that are unquestioningly credible to many whose paths in life have been far different to mine. Little else in life has been as interesting to me as the trappings of my late vocation, and I've probably explored it more than anyone else I've known, at least anyone on my non-academic side of the fence.
If I were doing life over, what would it be like? Well, not Navy, enormous fun at first, OCS and destroyer duty for a startling new life, most of the rest of it was not my thing, moving papers around, letting the government upset my children's lives, and watching the promotion list.
So, I'd find my place in studies, maybe teach to get paid so I could keep on studying; maybe some obscure college like Don, an early Navy shipmate. Don studied Russian language and history at Harvard before Navy, then, appalled at my decision to go Regular Navy, "Tom, I can't believe you're doing such a thing with your life", returned to Harvard for more Russian studies, divorced, went off for thirty or forty years to professor at a small college in Canada, where he remarried, had children, retired, and died.
Anyway, me! Certainly several languages, probably sabbaticals digging somewhere or gazing into the sky. IDK, it doesn't matter to anyone but me, sitting here hoping the coffee has some waking effect.
Elon Gilad's essay is below; the other one I read this morning, "The Surprising Ancient Origins of Passover" is even more interesting. Elon seems more like an explorer than a scholar, I like that.
Ah, I know, there's chocolate in here.
RSF&PTL
T
The Conspiracy to Turn Aaron Into Moses’ Brother
Aaron seems to be an afterthought in Moses’ Exodus story and Moses seems to be an alien branch on Aaron’s family tree
Open gallery view
Moses and Aaron with the Tablets of the Law, 1692, painter unknownCredit: Jewish Museum London
Considering Aaron’s oversized role in the Jewish faith according to the Pentateuch – he is said to be the first and progenitor of all subsequent priests who are exclusively permitted to offer sacrifice to God – one would have expected he be provided with an elaborate origin story. But this is not so. The Bible doesn’t provide Aaron with his own origin story. Instead, he shares in the origin story of Moses, in which he plays a secondary role of sidekick.
At first sight, this seems to make sense considering Aaron is Moses’ brother. The Pentateuch could not be clearer in stating that he was. But was he?
It is significant to note that during the entire beginning of Moses’ story there is no mention whatsoever of Aaron:
“And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived, and bare a son” (Exodus 2:1).
This son is Moses. But what about Aaron? Silence. We continue reading, and learn that Moses did have a sibling, but this was not Aaron, it was an unnamed sister: “And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him” (Exodus 2:4).
Moses is raised by an Egyptian princess as her own, grows up and becomes a man. Then he murders an Egyptian and flees to Midian where he becomes a shepherd and marries his boss’s daughter. Still no mention of Aaron.
Then one day, as Moses is out and about herding his sheep in the wilderness, God appears to him in a burning bush.
“Moses, Moses,” God calls out. “Here am I,” Moses answers (Exodus 3:4). God introduces himself, says and discloses his plans to free the Hebrew slaves from their Egyptian tormentors, with Moses’ aid.
Moses poses a series of objections to his role: He’s a nobody. God reassures him that he will be with him. He doesn’t know God’s name. God tells him his name. They won’t believe me that I was sent by you, Moses protests. God makes Moses’ walking stick magical, gaining the ability to turn into a snake and make his hand white.
Moses doesn’t think this would suffice to convince the Hebrews. God says he will have the ability to transform water into blood. Moses says he has a speech impediment. God says that he will fix that for him.
“And the Lord said unto him: ‘Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh a man dumb, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? is it not I the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt speak.” (Exodus 4:11-12)
The next verse isn’t entirely clear. The Machon Mamre version translates it: “And he said: ‘Oh Lord, send, I pray Thee, by the hand of him whom Thou wilt send” (4:13).
It seems though that Moses has finally agreed to accept the task assigned to him. Logically, we would have expected the next verse to be “And Moses went and returned to Jethro his father in law, and said unto him, Let me go, I pray thee, and return unto my brethren which are in Egypt, and see whether they be yet alive. And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace” (4:18).
But that comes later in the text we had come down to us. Before this development, we have four strange verses:
“And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Moses, and He said: ‘Is there not Aaron thy brother the Levite? I know that he can speak well. And also, behold, he cometh forth to meet thee; and when he seeth thee, he will be glad in his heart. And thou shalt speak unto him, and put the words in his mouth; and I will be with thy mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you what ye shall do. And he shall be thy spokesman unto the people; and it shall come to pass, that he shall be to thee a mouth, and thou shalt be to him in God’s stead. And thou shalt take in thy hand this rod, wherewith thou shalt do the signs.” (4:14-17).
In these verses we are suddenly introduced to a new character, Aaron. We learn he is Moses’ long-lost brother, and that he is eloquent.
The text doesn’t explain how Moses’ brother, who should presumably be a Hebrew slave in Egypt, appeared in the middle of nowhere, far off in the Midianite desert. This is a deus ex machina if there ever was one, though it is not clear why the author would resort to it. After all, Moses doesn’t need an eloquent spokesman: God had just told him “I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt speak,” but now he tells him that Aaron “shall be to thee a mouth”? What’s going on here?
From this point on Aaron regularly appears in the story but his role in it is very odd. Aaron doesn’t serve any independent purpose in the narrative. There are no independent “Aaron scenes.” Instead “and Aaron” is just liberally peppered throughout the text after Moses is mentioned: “And afterward Moses and Aaron came, and said unto Pharaoh: ‘Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel: Let My people go, that they may hold a feast unto Me in the wilderness” (5:1).
There are a number of sections in the story where Aaron appears to do something somewhat independently from Moses, for example in the First Plague: “And the LORD said unto Moses: ‘Say unto Aaron: Take thy rod, and stretch out thy hand over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, over their streams, and over their pools, and over all their ponds of water, that they may become blood; and there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone. And Moses and Aaron did so, as the LORD commanded; and he lifted up the rod, and smote the waters that were in the river, in the sight of Pharaoh, and in the sight of his servants; and all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood” (7:19-20).
According to the text, God told Moses to tell Aaron to take his rod and turn the water into blood, and Aaron does this but why would God do this? After all, he had already told Moses in the wilderness that he will have the ability to turn water into blood, so why have Aaron do it?
The same thing happens in Plague of Frogs and Plague of Lice: God commands Moses to command Aaron to perform the miracle. But then in the rest of the plagues it is Moses who performs the miracles usually with Aaron by his side, indicated by Moses’ name being followed by “and Aaron” but sometimes, as in the Plague of Locusts, with no mention of Aaron whatsoever.
The most plausible explanation for all these strange narrative decisions with regard to Aaron in this otherwise well-crafted story is that in its original form, Aaron was altogether absent from the Moses story, and was edited in by later scribes.
It was these scribes who added those four verses that introduce Aaron into the story of Moses and God’s one-on-one in the desert. It was they who added “and Aaron” after Moses’ name throughout the story, and it was they who altered the text ever so slightly so that it was Aaron who performed the miracles of the first three plagues. Very little needed to be changed to do this. They just added “Say unto Aaron” at the beginning of God’s command to Moses and added one “and Aaron” after Moses’ name later on in the text, and voilà: Aaron did it instead of Moses.
The scribes who edited Aaron into the Moses story did the same with Moses. They edited him into Aaron’s family tree in Exodus 6: “And Amram took him Jochebed his father’s sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses: and the years of the life of Amram were an hundred and thirty and seven years” (6:20). Aaron’s parents are Amram and Jochebed. As we saw above, Moses’ parents are unnamed. But here by just adding four letters (ומשה that is “and Moses”) - Moses was added to Aaron’s family tree and made to be Moses’ brother.
One may object and say there is no way of knowing that Moses wasn’t part of the family tree to start with, but note how many details are provided about Aaron’s family – not only the names of his parents, but also the names of his wife, his father-in-law, brother-in-law, daughters-in-law, children and grandchildren. Had Moses been part of this family tree would we not have expected that the names of his relatives be provided? Not one is given; not his wife Zipporah; nor his sons Eliezer and Gershom. This isn’t Moses’ family tree, it’s Aaron’s: Moses was only added in later.
Someone edited Aaron into Moses’ story and Moses into Aaron’s family tree. But who?
This is not in fact a difficult question to answer if we consider who had the motive and the means to do this. Clearly, the only people to have something to gain from Aaron being elevated to Moses’ brother and miracle worker were his descendants, the temple priests, who happen to be the keepers of the holy books and thus the only people with the means to accomplish this.
It was they who likely altered the story of Moses and the Exodus. By placing their founder in the myth of the Exodus, they conferred on their family the prestige that comes with great antiquity and familial ties with a venerated national hero, bolstering their claim to exclusivity against other competing priestly families such as the Zadokite priests who only could “only” trace their lineage to the reign of King David.