Moses at war

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Mar 1 09:05:17 EST 2000


At 8:31 AM -0500 3/1/00, Bart Ehrman wrote:
>   Barnabas 12 provides a kind of midrashic exposition of Exodus 17:8ff,
>where Moses makes Israel prevail in war over the Amalekites by raising his
>hands over the battle.  Barnabas sees this as a "type" of the cross
>(evidently because of the positioning of the arms).  But what to do with
>his explanation of the event:
>
>TIQHSIN OUN MWUSHS hEN EF' hEN hOPLON EN MESWi THS PUGMHS, KAI STAQEIS
>hUPSHLOTEROS PANTWN EKSETEINEN TAS XEIRAS, KAI hOUTWS PALIN ENIKA hO
>ISRAHL.
>
>   The final two clauses are no real problem:  "and standing high above
>all the people he stretched out his hands; and so Israel again gained the
>victory."  But what's with the first one?  Is it saying that Moses stacked
>up some weapons in the midst of the hand to hand combat (= And so Moses
>stacked weapons one on the other in the midst of the battlefield)?  Or
>that he put weapons in his fists before raising his arms (= "And so Moses
>place a weapon in each fist, one at a time").
>
>   More specifically, I'm asking whether the second rendering strikes you
>as possible.  (The first has problems with PUGMH; and it's hard to figure
>out how it relates to the context -- why that is he would be stacking
>weapons; but I think it's the more normal rendering).  Again, I'm not
>asking about an interpretation of the Hebrew text of Exodus, but about the
>translation of Barnabas.

Assuming that hOPLON in your cited text is a neuter accusative, I see no
alternative to understanding that Moses lays down one weapon on top of
another--and there's no clear reference to more than two weapons, is there,
so that it could be a sword or spear laid down and then a second sword or
spear laid down across the first--but that's not stated so as to be the
clear meaning, certainly. I would understand EN MESWi THS PUGMHS as "in the
middle of the battlefield"--assuming that PUGMH here = Latin PUGNA.

Strange, strange, strange. Foreshadowing of Constantine at the Milvian
bridge? IN HOC SIGNO VINCES!

-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu 



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