Re: Moses at war

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 01 2000 - 09:05:17 EST


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@artsci.wustl.edu

--- B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu] To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-329W@franklin.oit.unc.edu To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:40:59 EDT