Re: Moses at war

From: Michael Holmes (holmic@bethel.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 01 2000 - 09:13:53 EST


Re Bart's question,
For hOPLON, BAGD suggests (on the basis of several classical references)
"shield"; Moses made a pile of shields to stand on so he could be seen when
he stretched out his hands. Seems to make sense both in terms of usage and
context; at any rate, so far the best explanation I've run across.

Mike Holmes
Bethel College

At 08:31 AM 3/1/00 -0500, you 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.
>
>-- Bart D. Ehrman
> University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
>
>
>---
>B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek
>You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: holmic@bethel.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
>
>
>
>

---
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