Table Of Contentcontents i
Illuminating Moses
ii contents
Commentaria
Sacred Texts and Their Commentaries:
Jewish, Christian and Islamic
Founding Editors
Grover A. Zinn
Michael A. Signer (ob.)
Editors
Frans van Liere
Lesley Smith
E. Ann Matter
Thomas E. Burman
Robert A. Harris
Walid Saleh
VOLUME 4
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/comm
contents iii
Illuminating Moses
A History of Reception from Exodus to the Renaissance
Edited by
Jane Beal
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2014
iv contents
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Illuminating Moses : a history of reception from Exodus to the Renaissance / edited by Jane Beal.
pages cm. -- (Commentaria, ISSN 1874-8236 ; VOLUME 4)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-23577-9 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-25854-9 (e-book) 1. Moses
(Biblical leader) I. Beal, Jane, editor of compilation.
BS580.M6I45 2013
222’.1092--dc23
2013028010
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters
covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities.
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ISSN 1874-8236
ISBN 978-90-04-23577-9 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-25854-9 (e-book)
Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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This book is printed on acid-free paper.
contents v
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
List of Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
xvi
Introduction: Illuminating Moses from Exodus to the Renaissance . . 1
Jane Beal
The Roles of Moses in the Pentateuch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Robert D. Miller II
Moses in the Prophets and the Writings of the Hebrew Bible . . . . . . . 37
Tawny Holm
Moses: A Central Figure in the New Testament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Larry J. Swain
Moses and the Church Fathers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Christopher A. Hall
Moses and the Paschal Liturgy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Luciana Cuppo-Csaki
The Prophecy of Moses in Medieval Jewish Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Howard Kreisel
Epic and Romance, Narrative and Exegesis: Moses in the Minor
Midrashim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Rachel S. Mikva
“The Destiny of All Men”: Rabbinic and Medieval Justifications for
the Death of Moses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Devorah Schoenfeld
Legifer, Dux, Scriptor: Moses in Anglo-Saxon Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Gernot Wieland
The Biblical-Moral Moses: Type or Stereotype? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Deborah L. Goodwin
vi contents
Primus doctor Iudaeorum: Moses as Theological Master in the
Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Franklin T. Harkins
“Like a Duck from a Falcon”: Moses in Middle English Biblical
Literature, the Mystery Cycles, and Piers Plowman B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Gail Ivy Berlin
Moses and Christian Contemplative Devotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
Jane Beal
“Types and Shadows”: Uses of Moses in the Renaissance . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Brett Foster
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
440
acknowledgements vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
One of my favorite verses in the Bible occurs in Exodus: “And because the
midwives feared God, he gave them families” (Exod. 1:21). The writer of
Exodus, traditionally believed to be Moses, said this about Shiprah and
Puah, two Israelite midwives who refused to kill newborn baby boys when
ordered to do so by Pharaoh. As both a medievalist and midwife, I see a
special double meaning in these words, for it seems that God not only gave
these women their own families, but the families of Israel.
As the editor of this book, Illuminating Moses: A History of Reception
from Exodus to the Renaissance, I have had the privilege of being a kind of
midwife for the contributors who have written its chapters, and they have
become to me a special kind of scholarly family. With them, I have co-
labored to help bring the book forth from the womb of their scholarly souls
into the world of interested readers. I am very thankful to all of them:
Robert Miller II, Tawny Holm, Larry Swain, Christopher Hall, Luciana
Cuppo-Csaki, Haim (Howard) Kreisel, Rachel Mikva, Devorah Schoenfeld,
Gernot Wieland, Deborah Goodwin, Franklin T. Harkins, Gail Ivy Berlin,
and Brett Foster. Each of them joined the project at different stages, but all
of them have waited a long time for Illuminating Moses to make its appear-
ance at last.
The idea for this for book first emerged as part of a discussion held by
ROAMERS (Researchers on Ancient, Medieval et Renaissance Subjects), a
group of faculty researchers at Wheaton College in Illinois. I was facilitat-
ing it in 2004, and I thought it would be a good idea for the group to co-
author a book on the Song of Solomon. However, my colleague, Timothy
Larsen, the McManis Professor of Christian Thought, suggested that we
write a book about Moses instead. Everyone else agreed to this (though
only one of these dear colleagues, Brett Foster, eventually wrote a chapter
for a book). Yet this is where the idea for the book was conceived, and I am
thankful to Timothy Larsen and ROAMERS for the beginning.
I first proposed the book to Baylor University Press, and an editor there
turned down the proposal because I was suggesting a book by multiple
authors. He said he would be willing to consider it if I wrote the whole thing
myself. I cheerfully replied that this would be quite impossible, and pro-
ceeded to look for another publisher, but not before taking this editor up
viii acknowledgements
on another piece of advice he gave me: to focus each chapter in the book
on one or more of the particular roles of Moses in the Jewish and Christian
cultures who received and responded to them from the Exodus to the
Renaissance. I am thankful to this editor for the way he helped me to shape
the as yet unformed life of this book at an early prenatal stage.
While serving as Vice-President and then President of the Society for
the Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (SSBMA) between 2006-2008,
I turned to my research society colleagues at our annual meetings at the
International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan for
help in finding an interested press. E. Ann Matter and Grover Zinn,
together with others, had been thinking of starting a journal called Com-
mentaria, an idea that eventually became the series housed by Brill
“dedicated to outstanding monographs or edited volumes that address
subjects within the general area of the interpretation (exegesis) of the
sacred texts of three major religious traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam.” Grover Zinn and Michael Signer became the founding editors,
and Frans van Liere, Lesley Smith, E. Ann Matter, Thomas E. Burman, and
Robert Harris, all members of the SSBMA, became the series editors. They
expressed genuine interest and support for my gradually growing book on
Moses.
Before he passed away, Michael Signer in particular gifted me with sev-
eral specific ideas for shaping the breadth, chronological structure, and
cultural coverage represented in Illuminating Moses. He also kindly con-
nected me to Haim Kreisel, who authored a key chapter. I am grateful to
Michael, to my editorial colleagues at Commentaria, and to my fellow SS-
BMA members for their help in making this book the valuable resource it
has become.
I am also grateful to Elizabeth Teviotdale, the primary coordinator of
the International Congress on Medieval Studies, for the many sessions she
has approved for the Society for the Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages
over the years. In May 2006, she approved the session in which I presented
on “Moses and the Biblia pauperum,” and in May 2008, she specifically
allowed me to coordinate a roundtable discussion, “Illuminating Moses in
the Middle Ages,” with some other contributors to this volume, Gernot
Wieland and Devorah Schoenfeld. This latter session enabled us to discuss
our research and writing in person rather than only over the vast distanc-
es covered by the internet. It was also at the Congress that I first met Larry
Swain, Rachel Mikva, Deborah Goodwin, Franklin T. Harkins, and Gail Ivy
Berlin, who later connected me to Tawny Holm, so I really am quite
