Jeremy Rosen
Who Was Moses?

Jeremy Rosen - Who Was Moses?

- So we are so looking forward to your presentation this evening. And whenever you’re ready, we’ll hand over to you. Thank you.

• Everybody, nice to see you again. The subject today is Moses. Moses of course, we know Moses, but did you know that Moses is mentioned more than any other person in the Quran? And Moses of course is the, if you like, the hero of that famous sculpture by Michelangelo in which the poor guy has got horns on his head. Except of course, the Hebrew is for qaran is literally a beam of light. He had a beam of light after encountering God, he didn’t sprout horns. It’s true the term qeren can also mean a horn, but it’s bad translation and that’s how poor Moses got his horns. And of course, poor Moses also suffers because Freud accused him, if I may be indelicate, of pinching our testicles by imposing all these rigid laws on our sexual life. So Moses has a bad press as a law giver but interestingly enough, we call Moses Moses Moshe Rabbeinu, our teacher. He’s not a saint, he’s not magic, he’s not hocus pocus. He is essentially a teacher and probably and certainly the most gifted, influential teacher that we’ve had. After all, bear in mind to this day, the 10 Commandments in which almost everybody by and large claims to adhere to, even though most of ‘em don’t. Nevertheless, it’s thanks to Moses. But who was Moses? Did Moses exist? The only source we have, of course, is the Torah. And you might argue the Torah was written after his death and you might say the Torah has an agenda. But the Torah is remarkable in the way that it paints characters and fleshes them out, not as cardboard, pasteboard icons, but as living, struggling human beings.

And it’s that aspect of Moses that I want to explore. As I say, there’s no objective evidence. I want to go back. If you go back 1000 years to the mediaeval period to Rashi, we can go back to Ma'amadot, we go back another thousand years and we get to the year zero where Herod’s on the throne in Judea. We go back another thousand years where King Solomon’s hanging around, and we go back another thousand years and that would take us roughly to Abraham or to Hammurabi, the great first legislator living in Babylon. Around about the middle of that century, so we’re talking about 3,500 years ago, there is upheaval in the Middle East and this upheaval in the Middle East is caused primarily by groups of nomads known as the Habiru, which some people say that might be similar to the Hebrew. And it’s possible that this is the beginning of the Israelite people, of these tribes wandering around from one place to another. And it’s possible. And it’s also the interesting time when the Hyksos, also nomads from somewhere in the east, invaded Egypt and overturned the dynasty. And then after a few hundred years they were kicked out. And that might also jive with what the Torah says about the Israelites going down to Egypt to a sympathetic king and then when there’s an unsympathetic king, being kicked out. But again, it’s all speculative. Similarly speculative is our friend Sigmund Freud, who in his famous book “Moses and Monotheism,” comes up with his fanciful theory.

His theory goes like this. Round about 1,400 years before the Common Era, that’s 3400 years, there was a king in Egypt called Akhenaten. Akhenaten was a remarkable man. He is the husband of Nefertiti and the father of Tutankhamen. Now, Akhenaten brought about a revolution. He was fed up with all this multiplicity of gods and he decided there’s only going to be one god and he is the representative of that one God. And that god was the god of the sun and Akhenaten was his disciple. And according to Freud, Akhenaten introduced monotheism except he didn’t in the sense that he still worshipped the sun, he just compressed the number of gods. Akhenaten ruled for a while, but he was overthrown 'cause the priest didn’t like the fact that he was taking a lot of their business away from them and he was replaced by the old god and they carried on after that period of time. Now according to Freud, he believes that Moses was one of the top followers of Akhenaten, high up in his government. And when Akhenaten was overthrown, Moses was out of a job. And therefore he looked around with another group of people that he could have a senior position in and he found the Hebrews.

And Hebrews were slaves and he led them out of Egypt into the desert. But into the desert there was a different god and Moses was trying to impose this god on them with rules and regulations and they didn’t like it. And so they killed him. But then they felt guilty. This was like patricide, which as you know is very important in the Freud tradition. And so there is this alternative fiery god on Sinai who replaces Moses and takes them into the land of Canaan. Now, nobody takes that seriously. Now, they take Freud seriously, although modified a great deal. But this theory doesn’t hold, both because Akhenaten was not a monotheist and because there is no other reason for saying that Moses took them into the desert and there was another god other than saying that when he left Egypt, he spent some time in Midian and he was friendly with a high priest of Midian where he might or might not have got these ideas. But all this is total speculation. We can’t know. As with many things in the Bible, the context rings true. The names ring true, everything rings true. Let’s take Moses as a case in point. Moses is in Egyptian, the child, very common name. At about the time of the Hyksos, the emperor was called Thutmose, Thutmoses. The Hebrew Bible says that there’s a Hebrew origin for this, and that is Moshe comes from the Hebrew moshitihu. He’s brought out of the water, out of the water to become eventually this leader.

So it could come from moshitihu, it could come from Moshe. But also what’s interesting is that in Sumeria, which is towards Iraq, there is an ancient story goes back a long, long way about an emperor who was placed in a little ark in the river and the ark was pitched round in order to make sure it was waterproof. And that’s how he was discovered and evolved into becoming the great leader. So there are myths all over the place. And as we have said many times before, that when it comes to trying to find out exactly what we know, we are in a very difficult position because history is always written by certain individuals who have an agenda, victories usually. And therefore, I want to focus on the text. At least we have the text. And my question is, what does the text actually tell us about this guy Moses? So the text tells us first of all that he was born into a Hebrew family and then for whatever reason he was adopted. In the Bible, our Bible, it tells us he was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter. In the Quran, who liked fiddling around with our original text, he was in fact adopted by the wife of Pharaoh. And you can take a pick, I suppose. And then he was brought up in the palace.

The Bible says that his mother, his real mother was able to nurse him from an early age and therefore it would seem managed to implant in him some sense of his identity as a Jew, but he was brought up as a prince in the palace. And indeed, even the rabbis of the Talmud talk about how he was in this important position ahead of the garrison in the south and he was a very important leader at that particular moment. And these myths about him also enter throughout the Midrashic period. But he grew up in Egypt as a prince. And it says that one day from this princely position, he went out to see what his people were getting up to. So somebody must have told him who his people were. Possibly Pharaoh’s daughter had told him. Again, the Midrash says that Pharaoh’s daughter, who was given the name Batyah, the daughter of God, converted to Judaism and she gave him some sense of his Jewish identity. Look, it’s possible. Either way, the one thing we know that is remarkable about Moses and is remarkable about several other very important leaders in Jewish history is that they were multicultural. They had a sense of their culture and they had a sense that there were other cultures, better or worse. But they were broad-minded, not just brought up in a kind of a mental ghetto. So Moses goes out to see what’s going on. He sees the situation of slavery, he gets involved, he tries to defend a Hebrew slave who is being beaten up and then unfortunately he kills him, buries him in the sand, looks around to see if everybody was looking, and goes on his way.

Well unfortunately, there’s always somebody looking. And the following day when he goes out a second time and he sees two Jews fighting. Yes, Jews fought in those days too. And he sees them fighting and he tries to intervene. And one of 'em turns to the other and says, “Who the heck do you think you are? Don’t mix in our business.” So from the very beginning you see that Moses had some idea that the Jewish people were a fractious, difficult lot of people to try to deal with. And yet, what happens? Well, Pharaoh hears that he’s killed an Egyptian so he’s decided whose side he is on. Very clearly he has chosen where to go. Pharaoh tries to kill him and he runs away and he runs away to Midian. And there when he gets to Midian, he’s by the well. Lots of Hebrew characters from the Bible meet their fate and their wives at a well. And that’s what happened to Moses, if you like, imitating what happened to Isaac. Except Isaac, the wife was found for him by somebody else. Jacob too, the well. And then he gets taken home to the high priest of Midian who has seven daughters. He marries one of the daughters and he’s staying there with this young lady and they have a family, they have two sons and he works as a shepherd. And this is another important item. Many of the leaders, spiritual leaders spend time, leisure time because after all, they’re looking after their sheep for a lot of time in the desert. The desert seems to create, if you like, a different environment for spirituality than the city.

And there he sees this famous burning bush, which is not being consumed. God appears to him and says I’m God and Moses, who doesn’t seem to have had any notion of God before that said, “Oh, that’s very nice, tell me more.” And God says, “I’m going to take people out of Egypt.” And Pharaoh turns around and says, “Look, all very well, but there are slaves in Egypt. I want to know, what am I going to say to them? I can’t take this on.” So God first of all tries to persuade him with a couple of little tricks. Little trick of the snake, it turns into a stick and then back to a snake, of putting his hand to his clothes and it turns to leprosy and coming out again. So all these little tricks, if you like, seem to grab his attention, but in the end, Moses says to God, “Tell me more about you.” And God replies with a very strange reply. “I am what I am.” Ehre aser ehye. Which is to me sounds a little bit like saying, “You mind your business and I’ll mind mine.” But looking at the Hebrew origin of it, essentially, “ehye aser ehye” is made up of three words, the past, the present, and the future. And what God is saying to Moses in this message is, I am not like any of the material gods in the material world you are talking about, you’ve got to think of something differently. You’ve got to think of me as being beyond the physical world. Which Moses turns around and says to him, “Well that’s all very well and good, but when I go back down to Egypt and I turn to the Jews, and I say, this God called 'Ehye aser ehye,’ is sending me to get you out of Egypt, they’re going to say, ‘What the heck is this?’

What am I going to say to them?” And God’s reply is very simply this, history. You are going to see if things work out the way I say they’re going to work out. And I’m telling you eventually, you are going to come out of slavery. Well, Moses seems influenced by this. But then he turns around he says to God, “But God I’m no demagogue. I don’t speak well. I’m not much of a leader.” And God says, “Don’t worry, I’m going to get your brother Aaron to be your spokesperson.” So right from the very, very beginning, we have this idea that Moses is not an orator. His job is not to persuade, his job is to lead. So lead and to teach. I’m sure you’ve heard the famous myth from the Midrash of how he couldn’t speak properly because when he was a baby, he was brought in to show Pharaoh and Pharaoh said, “Listen, I want to know whether this baby is going to challenge my throne.” And so they brought this little test and the little test was to place in front of the baby a bowl with jewels and a bowl on the other hand with coals. And which one would he choose? If he chose the jewels, that would mean he wanted the crown. One of these weird sort of trials by ordeal that have been common for thousands of years. And the myth of the Midrash of course, is as he was about to grab hold of the jewels, an angel intervened and pushed his hand towards the coal. He put his hand on the coal, burnt him, put it to his mouth, he burnt his tongue, and that’s why he couldn’t speak.

Nice little stories. But essentially the point is that this was not speech that was going to determine, it was the message that was going to count. And so what happens is he then decides to go back down to Egypt. On the way to Egypt with his wife and two sons. It seems he hadn’t even bothered to circumcise his sons. So he’d obviously integrated if you like, into the Midianite culture. He doesn’t appear to have taken things seriously. Although some people say no, maybe what he thought is, well, as I’m the leader, I don’t need to do these traditions or things but either way, it showed again his, if you like, vulnerability. He was not a superman in any sense or meaning. He comes down to Egypt and then he goes in to face Pharaoh. Now imagine this guy. He is Pharaoh, who is the head of the most advanced culture, a nation at the time, sitting comfortably on his throne with all his power and his authority and his might. And in comes this guy, it seems he knows nothing about or he’d heard something about but didn’t rate him very highly, standing there in his kind of Midianite shepherd clothes and says, “I want you to let your slaves go.” Now, is Pharaoh going to take this guy seriously? Of course he wasn’t going to take him seriously. It’s the contrast between the two.

So then starts this slow engagement in which slowly Moses tries to show how it is possible to undermine all the certainties that Pharaoh had. His trust in his magicians, his trust in nature, in the Nile, his trust in the order of things, in the power of things and slowly everything gets undermined. In the process, we see Moses as a brilliant negotiator. ‘Cause he doesn’t come in right away and say, “Let my people go!” as the story goes, no, he says, “Look, my people, they’ve got a God. It’s part of their tradition. They’d like to go and spend a couple of days having a holiday worshipping their God in the wilderness.” Well, by and large, most people recognised at that time there were other gods and Pharaoh was perfectly happy in theory to let them go eventually to go just for a couple of days. But then slowly as under the pressure of plagues, Pharaoh begins to crumble, Moses ups the ante. Pharaoh says, “Okay, you can go, I don’t mind if you go.” And then Moses, “Ah yes, but we need to take all our cattle and sheep with.” “Oh no,” says Pharaoh, “what do you need all your cattle and sheep for?” “Well, you know, we’ve got to offer up sacrifices.” He says, “No, I’ll be damned. You’re not going to have your cattle and sheep.” Anyway, the plagues get worse and then he agrees the cattle and the sheep can go. And Moses keeps on upping the ante. And finally of course, the Israelites are allowed to leave. And of course after that, Pharaoh changes his mind. Now this process has been a slow process in which Moses has negotiated and at the same time he’s had to cope with his own people who say listen, they’re making life more difficult for us.

They’re giving us more work to do instead of less work to do. We’re suffering too under these conditions and therefore, leave us alone. We’re quite happy to remain in jail, so to speak, with our regular meals and with a roof over our head. So Moses has to cope both with Pharaoh and with his own people and struggle to get them out. They get to the Red Sea, they turn around, they see the Egyptians running after them, and immediately the people say, “Oh, let’s go back to Egypt! I don’t want to go back anymore. I don’t want to be here in the desert where there isn’t much fun.” Anyway, again, as you know, Pharaoh and his horses get swamped in the sea. Whether it was the result of bad intelligence as to when the tides were turning or whether Moses knew for a special way to go path by foot, small numbers and the chariots couldn’t follow, where the pedestrians could, whatever it was, they get to the other side and they’re in the wilderness of Sinai and all of a sudden there’s no water. And everybody’s complaining, “Oh water, I want to go back to Egypt. It’s no good. Where’s water? Who are you? Get rid of you.” And poor old Moses sees they’re about to stone him. I mean, this is the sort of pressure this poor guy was under and it’s not unusual. This is what politics is all about and politics then wasn’t that different to politics now. If I don’t get what I want and I want to do something about it, violently sometimes. So throughout the period of Moses with these people, getting them out of Egypt, getting them into the desert, in the desert, they are constantly faced with shortages.

Somehow or other, Moses managed to deal with shortages. In one case he deals with shortage by turning the bitter waters sweet because he puts some kind of wood that absorbed the salinity of the water. Sometimes out in the case of Marah, God said to him, “Hit the rock, knock the rock, strike it!” And water came out. Maybe he knew where there was a place where the water could break out beneath, come out of the surface, who knows? But he comes to the rescue time again, even when the people are complaining. After that there’s somehow this miraculous manner that he manages to provide them with food that comes down every day, except of course, the Shabbat. I don’t know what it was made out of, all kinds of things it could have been made out of in those times, different growth, different facilities coming from condensation, who knows what it was. There’s no way of knowing what it was or if it was true or how it came. But then also he was able to take advantage of the fact that there were migrations of massive amounts of birds that were able to provide meat at certain conditions. And remember in Sinai they were not that far from the trade routes coming down to Egypt and from the sea where there was trade and they were trading and they did bring their flocks and their sheep with them. But all the time he was having to deal with this fractious community who were on his side one minute when things went well and against him when things went badly.

The other interesting feature about Moses in this early stage is that when he was visited by his father-in-law, Jethro, Jethro comes to visit him just before the 10 Commandments incident and he sees in there trying to manage everybody and he says, “My goodness, this is bad management. You are going to drive yourself into the ground. You can’t do this alone. You’re going to learn to delegate. You need other people with you.” And Moses is not so arrogant that he can’t take advice and advice from his father-in-law to bargain. And not only he is very respectful for his father-in-law, keeps on calling, giving him this degree of respect, regardless of the fact that he might belong to a different religion altogether. And so here too, we see the wisdom of the man in terms of his capacity to run the show. Now the 10 Commandments, this revelation on Sinai was obviously a very important, maybe cataclysmic event. We don’t know about it, what happened, we are told there was lightning and thunder and Moses goes up the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights. And we are told that he comes down with tablets of stone and these tablets of stone have the 10 Commandments on them. But tradition of course as he came down with a lot more than that. And the question of course is what happened on Mount Sinai? Nobody was up there on the top with him.

We don’t know whether this was inspirational, whether it was some strange phenomenon, that we can’t explain how exactly God spoke to him, what language God spoke to him, what vocal chords God used, how he understood it, whether it was inspirational or not, we don’t know. What we do know is that this guy Moses comes down with a kind of a constitution. And the first constitution in the Middle East, which treats everybody equally civilly. I’m not talking about difference between priests and non-priests and ritually, but civilly, everybody is treated the same. All the earlier codes, there was a difference between whether it was a king killed a man, killed a woman, or a woman killed a man, a man killed a woman. That was no big problem, otherwise it was. If a free man killed a slave, no big problem. If an adult killed a child, no big problem. These differentials existed almost everywhere, in Egypt and in the Middle East. But in the Bible, when it comes to civil rights, they are equal. There are other obligations in which there is differential according to age and gender. And this is essentially not a collection of ideas so much as a collection of rules of constitution.

And as soon as he comes down the mountain, in theory, he’s going to start teaching everybody except before he gets down to the bottom of the mountain, there’s chaos. 40 days and 40 nights are up, he’s not yet back. The people want an idol. They say, “Listen, he’s dead, he’s got to be dead. Who’s going to lead us? We need an idol.” They turn on Aaron. Aaron, nice guy and may speak very nicely, but he doesn’t have the backbone or alternatively he was scared and he gets 'em to build a golden calf, which when Moses comes down the mountain, he smashes the 10 Commandments, he smashes the calf, he grinds it down into dust and with water he gets everybody to drink it. There can’t be a greater way of showing how ineffectual an idol is by getting people to stick it in one part of their body and excrete it through the other part of the body. But he has to fight everywhere. He gathers round people who can deal with the ringleaders and not frightened of using force where force is necessary. It’s not the first resort. In almost every case when he has challenged his first resort is first of all, almost to fall on his face and then to try to build up the strength to fight back. But force is a very, very last resort. So as you go through the period after that, in the desert of what he’s dealing with is he has rebellion after rebellion. On a national level, they’ve rebelled at the golden calf, they rebelled at the sea, at the golden calf, they rebel against again over the lack of food. They’re fed up with the manner they want more food.

And so in Numbers they rebel, Book of Numbers because they want to go back to Egypt where they remember the beautiful cucumbers and squash and watermelon and how they had so much wonderful fish and meat to eat. These are slaves, they weren’t getting caught on blur cuisine down there, but this is part of their mentality. We want rather go back to Egypt than die in the desert because we don’t like the food we’re getting. It sounds like all the school boys who used to complain about food at boarding school. And then again after the period of the spies in the first year that go into the land and then come back again because they’re not ready to invade. There’s another rebellion and then there’s another problem of water later on, much later on, a generation later on at a place called Kadesh where Moses again is told this time not knock the rock, but to speak to the rock. And because he didn’t speak to the rock, because he lost his temper and he said, “You bunch of rebels, you don’t deserve it.” And he smashed the rock when he was told to speak to it. Although remember the first time he was told to hit it. That’s why God turns around and says, “Now Moses, you have let me down and I’m not going to let you complete the work of taking them out of Egypt into the land of Israel, you’re going to die before you get there.” Now what this can argue for kingdom come and we do about what the meaning of all this is, but there’s an important point here.

And the other important point is why did Moses have to die? Just before I get there, I want to add that there were also individuals who rebelled against Moses. There was a famous Korach rebellion who said himself, while surrounded by people, “Why do you dare put yourself in charge of us? You have no right. Who the heck do you think you are?” And “You’re reserving some of the best jobs for your brother and your cousins. It’s true, we are a cousin too, but we want the top job.” And then there were these two guys, Eldad and Medad who were part of the 70 elders who were also, if you like, against the position of Moses. And of course, then there was a time when the Midianites sent the women in to seduce the men when one of the tribal leaders in front of Moses slept with his concubine and Moses just couldn’t act, he couldn’t respond. It was somebody else, Pinhas. His nephew who had to go in and deal with the situation. So both on a personal level and on a national level, he is constantly time and time again suffering. And time and time again, he turns to God and says, “I can’t handle this.” And each time God says, “You’re going to carry on.” And each time God says, when there’s a crisis like the golden calf, “I’m going to get rid of them, I’m going to kill a lot of them. They don’t deserve it. And I’m going to make you the new tribe and new people of Israel and start again with you.”

And each time Moses says, “No, don’t. Don’t. A, it will look bad to everybody else. And secondly, whatever you do, don’t think that you should destroy the people.” It’s true. They’re not reliable, they’re not perfect, they’re a mess. So there’s the mentality of Moses. And therefore given all that he managed to achieve, that this man was a man who had had a whole nation for a generation. And it doesn’t matter if you think it happened or it didn’t happen, it’s the idea that counts here. Why did he have to die? There are lots of different reasons, but the main reason is nobody knows where he was buried so they couldn’t worship him, they couldn’t make an idol out of him. They couldn’t turn him into something more than he was. He was just a teacher. Moshe Rabbeinu. He was not a God or a pseudo God. Even as a prophet, he wasn’t a prophet who was perfect by any means. And his encounter with God is something that is described metaphorically as mouth to mouth, face-to-face, that this was some incredible form of enlightenment, of communication that enabled him to establish this constitution that we call Torah. But to me, important as it is, is the fact that within this system of law and constitution, there was included a variety of options for leadership after Moses. When Moses died, of course, it was handed over to Joshua. When Joshua died, it was handed over to the leadership of individual tribal leaders and then eventually it moves over to the idea of kings.

Then after that it moves over to the idea of a kind of a council of Sanhedrin, combined with kings and then afterwards, a more meritocratic system. The Torah under Moses, the genius of Moses to my mind was the fact that he realised there is no single form of government that is perfect. And therefore God included within the structure of the Torah, the variety of models that you could follow. You knew you had to have leaders of hundreds, five hundreds, thousands, rather like in an army. And that was able, if you like, to spread administration from the top down to the bottom. And so you had the elders. The elders essentially were if true, coming from certain tribes, but nevertheless, elected on the basis of their human qualities. They had to be good human beings who would not take bribes, who would be trusted, who you could delegate to. Then you had leaderships of tribes that were called judges. And then you had, if you like, the police force, the shatrin, the military. And then you had priests whose role was a role not only of performing ritual ceremonies in the temple, but combined with the Levites, their job was to teach, to be the civil servants, to be the bureaucrats. And then of course, the famous statement at the end of Deuteronomy of having a king, which is particularly interesting because when both in the Torah and later on in Samuel, it says that people turn and say we want to have a king to be like the other nations.

But throughout the Torah, the Torah said time and time again, don’t be like the other nations, don’t be like the Canaanites, don’t be like the Egyptians, don’t be like the Babylonians. We don’t want you. We want you to have your own ethical system. So by doing this, Moses is saying, I’m drawing a distinction between an ethical moral system on the one hand and then a demonstrative system on the other. Because the fact of the matter is that when it comes to forms of government, there are so many different models. You should be able to choose which model works for which generation. Should it be hereditary or meritocratic? Should it be right wing, should it be left wing? There is no single ideal sole form of government. And therefore in effect, you should be able to choose well, the right or the left. The only criteria you have to apply is that it should be just and according to an ethical, fair judicial system to which the king is subject to. So you have from Moses the message coming through that there are some areas where you can borrow good governance from outside of Israel, which again shows the value of having experience as an Israelite and as a non-Israelite, as an Egyptian. And this is reflected in the way he sees government running forward.

So although you might want to say that Moses was a theocrat and he was in favour of a theocracy, that’s not entirely true. It’s correct that he, if you like, taking authority from God chose to, if you like, delegated a function this way because that was the best form of government that he had at the time. And he was able through this to have the authority to transmit the constitution. But once he had transmitted the constitution, in a way, he let go because for all his, if you like, knowledge passed by God to him, from the Torah itself we see that on many occasions, he had to go back to clarify what the law was or what the right thing was. So the complexity of what this person or what this symbol was able to achieve was absolutely stunning. And there’s never been, I would say, anybody like this man who we call our teacher because the essence of a good teacher is that he teaches you to stand on your own two feet. And he didn’t want to be a representative to intercede with God. It’s true the people said to him, “Please, we’re frightened to speak to God on the mountain with all this lightning going on. You speak to us.” But in principle and how it went on from there, his job was to teach. He first of all taught Aaron and he taught the priesthood and then he taught the elders and he spread out education around the people and gathered the people to know what the constitution was and to learn and to know.

So again, I am not concerned with the historicity of this, I’m concerned with what message is the text telling us about the foundation of our tradition and how our tradition is supposed to carry on into the future. And at the same time, we learn from him personal qualities, his humility, his modesty, his sense of outrage, and his sense of justice. We learn his willingness to learn from other people and accept the contribution of other people. There is no such thing as a perfect man, but I can’t think of anybody who got closer to it than he. And yet, he was human. He lost his temper, he lost his cool, he wanted to give up, he despaired. He had all the qualities that each one of us and effects, that each one of us has with adding on this incredible legacy, which is his legacy. It’s absolutely the legacy of Moses or if it wasn’t Moses, it was another cow man called Moses. And if it wasn’t another man called Moses, it was another man called Moses. And on that point I will end and turn over to the questions. So let’s start off with number one.

Q&A and Comments:

It was Freud who I believe uses expression about pinching testicles. But to be honest, I’m not a hundred percent certain. So if anybody knows anything more about the origin of this phrase, I’d be happy to hear it.

Q: Romaine, what’d you make of Freud’s “Moses and Monotheism”?

A: Well, yes I answered that.

Thank you. Thank you Arlene for your comment. Thank you Maya for your comment. Thank you Emily for yours.

And Esther, the 10th of Nisan is an important day, the beginning of Kashrut. Now, you’ve raised an interesting question. And the interesting question you’ve raised is this question of did the laws all start with Moses on Mount Sinai or were there laws beforehand that he, if you like, built on?

And clearly they were. Let me take the first example. Those of you who are going to be doing the book of Genesis with me when we come to Noah, we all know that Noah said, that we all think that Noah took the animals in two by two. And he did. But the Bible also said that he took in the seven pure animals, that’s to say the seven animals that you can eat. In other words, the animals or alternatively, that you could sacrifice. So already you can see from the time of Noah there were distinctions between animals. Beginnings, if you like, of kosher. And that went further when it came to Jacob wrestling with the angel. And wrestling with the angel, the angel couldn’t win or whoever it was and they kneed him in the thigh and the groin and as a result of that, he limped the rest of his life. And as a result of that, we don’t eat to this day the sinew, the sciatical sinew in an animal even if the animal is a kosher animal. So you can see that there were laws given of Kashrut before Moses. Then of course, there were the laws given in Egypt while they were still slaves. The law to celebrate the Passover, the idea of tying up the animals that the Egyptians wouldn’t have liked few days in advance in order to build up their confidence, their psychological strength, which in fact, it took a whole generation to do. And then not only that, but the Torah itself says that before they got to Sinai, Sam Lo Chok, there were some laws that were given even before that moment. I suppose some civil laws, even some ritual laws. So the Torah like the law of circumcision, which was given to Abraham, were there beforehand and created some sort of identity amongst the tribes. But it was the, shall we say, the full constitution that is attributed to what happened on Sinai.

Thank you Barbara Cotton. I’m glad you enjoyed that.

Q: Are there Moses-like characters in other cultures?

A: Gilgamesh. Well yes, but Gilgamesh and others were pseudo gods. They were all in this kind of position between the top god and ordinary human beings. There were plenty in Atra-Hasis and other early Mesopotamia and others. The big difference is that Moses is described as HaIsh, Moses the man. That’s what the people said when he was up the mountain all the time. They said, “Moses the man, he’s gone. We’d better have an idol or a God instead.” So that was unique about Moses. He was an ordinary human being.

Q: Why is little spoken about the Noahide laws?

A: Monty. That’s a very good question. In fact, the assumption was that anybody coming to live within the Israelite community who was not an idol worshipper had to be given equal rights within the community 'cause the Torah keeps on talking about the stranger, the Nochri, the alien, doesn’t necessarily talk about converts. You are told to be nice to them, to help them, to support them. And so at that early stage there was in a sense no need to specify the Noahide laws. And although the Noahide laws are derived from a text in the Torah, in fact, they weren’t formulated until the Greek period. And I think the reason they were formulated in the Greek period because at that time people were challenging the Jews and saying you’re too inward looking. You’re not thinking about society in general to which they would say yes we are. We do consider society in general as very important, which is why we think there are certain fundamental ethical laws like don’t murder, don’t steal and so forth and so on and no idolatry. It’s just that we don’t believe that you have to be a Jew. And so because they were challenged on this and because then you have religion saying we are the only way to get to the truth, you’ve got to join us, that’s why they formulated the Noahide laws and so you have this idea that anybody who adheres to the seven laws of Noah is a righteous person no matter what religion they adhere to. And if you want to know what the seven Noahide laws are in case you don’t, they are this. No idolatry, no blaspheming of God, not you have to believe in God, no blaspheming of God. Don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, don’t be cruel to animals, and have courts of law, have a judicial system. No fair society can exist without an accessible fair Jewish system.

Q: Austin, you make a credible story, do you believe it was put into writing and by whom?

A: I don’t know. Much was oral, Austin, much was passed down orally and I don’t know. There was writing at that stage. I don’t know how much was written down. Maybe it was added to, maybe there were other variations. It’s impossible to know. And therefore all I can say to you is we have the text. We have the text, which is a remarkable text unlike any other text which we go on interpreting. Every year I go over it again and I see something new. It doesn’t matter how often I read it, how often I teach it. It’s an incredible document.

Q: Audrey Travis, I understand not knowing Moses’ burial place, so why can’t we worship him? But wasn’t Abraham the first Jew as important figure of us as Jews?

A: Well, Abraham is regarded as the first person who had this relationship with God. But it wasn’t yet a moment it seems in time when it was, if you like, able to become a national movement. I suppose you’ve got to build things up slowly. And so the national movement as defined by our constitution, which is what the Sinai Covenant was, is what makes him, if you like, not the first Jew, but the most important figure even though you could argue that Abraham is more important. And Abraham of course, is worshipped to this day by the other monotheistic religions. And again, we don’t know where Abraham really is buried. We claim he’s buried in the Cave of Machpelah, in this place in Hebron. And it may well be the case, but I wouldn’t swear to it and we’re never going to get anywhere near to be able to take a genetic swab or some sort of evidence to prove what is and what is there and what is not there, but we don’t worship in general even though we do know the grave but that’s an excellent point you make. I have to say it’s an excellent point. If Moses hadn’t died, he would’ve been known as a conqueror of Canaan. Well possibly, he might have been, as Joshua to some extent was.

Q: Isn’t it amazing the result of Moses’ poor leadership exemplified by the revolt of people on their journey from such slavery to the Promised Land results in the success of God’s promise?

A: Well it does, but then I suppose you could argue, as many people would too is the disastrous behaviour of all citizens, of all countries who constantly and to this very day betray the values in the system and yet somehow or other the system manages to survive and get through it in one piece or not in one piece necessarily, I mean, we’re experiencing now such upheaval and dislocation and antagonism and tension. I think it’s just the lot. I wouldn’t say it’s Moses’s poor leadership. I would say that nobody can command a whole lot of people unless you mesmerise them in some way, which is what Hitler did, which is I think one of the good reasons why Moses was no Hitler. People claim ah yes, he managed to mesmerise you.

Brenda, as usual, thank you very much, Judith.

Dr. Rose the raham rach mani, first in this and the beginning of freedom of redemption. And at the end of the day, the Torah is written by man or God. It’s impossible to answer whether it was written by man or God. There are three positions. The position is it was written by, it was, if you like, comes from God, carved by stone on 10 Commandments, but not the rest of the Torah. The rest of the Torah wasn’t. The rest of the Torah was transmitted to Moses by God on Mount Sinai, roughly speaking, 3,500 years ago. That’s one position. There is another position which says no, this is a compilation of different texts and different sources over a long period of time, which probably transmitted over a period of almost a thousand years. And there’s another version which says, this is a collection of incredible documents that according to the Torah itself, were written down over a 40 year period. So even the Torah recognises there’s a time element in this transmission. But this unique special, divine book is either divine because it’s special, special because it’s divine, or just inspirational. Either way, it has so much to teach us to this very day. And people who dismiss it as a lot of old fashioned rituals, I think are misunderstanding the importance of ritual, the importance of structure, the importance of legislation, which is the genius of the Torah because our religion is not a theological system. Sure, there’s the idea of God, but we’re not told how to worship God and therefore its emphasis on behaviour is precisely one of the factors, the most important factor in my view, that has kept us going throughout everything.

Q: So I’ve answered James’s question, did he get the whole of the Torah or the whole of the Pentateuch on Sinai?

A: And again, it depends who you ask. Islam’s take on Moses. He was a great guy. He started the tradition. They believe, like Christians do, they came to complete it. He started it but didn’t finish it. The Jews let him down. And so they had to come in and take over and do a better job. Well, they certainly did a more popular job, but popularity doesn’t prove anything. After all, Adele, who is a great singer, gets far more downloads than Mozart does. I don’t think that makes her a better musician or a greater musician than Mozart was.

Vivian Lipsey, excellent. Thank you. Carla Bronsky, marvellous presentation. Thank you, thank you.

Q: Why does Michelangelo’s Moses have horns?

A: I did mention that, but I’ll mention it again. The Bible says that after Moses encountered God, when God went on speaking to Moses during the wilderness from the tabernacle that he built and whenever he had encountered God, he came out with such a brilliant face that he had to put a mask on his face because people just couldn’t speak to him, it was too strong. And the Bible says that when he came out of speaking to God, there were beams of light radiating from his face. And the Hebrew word for beams of light, Qaran, means beams of light. But the same word, qeren, can also mean a horn that a cow uses to gore with. And because they translated it mistakenly, that’s why they thought Moses had to have horns and did on poor old Michelangelo’s great sculpture of him. Iron is mentioned early in Bereshit long before the so-called Iron Age. Well, we don’t know if it was iron metal. Yes, Bereshit talks about metals of different kinds, which did exist long before the actual process of smelting iron and other things like that came later. No heidal specific for humanity. 10 Commandments are specific to Jews.

Thanks for fabulous talk. Well, you know, I’m not certain that the 10 Commandments are specific to Jews. I think the idea of Shabbat is in the 10 Commandments. That’s applicable to Jews. The idea of honouring your father and mother, that’s applicable to non-Jews as much as the Jews. I would say the 10 Commandments are applicable to everybody.

Q: How does having Moses in our biblical diary drive our story as Jews?

A: Well, I think it drives our story that we emerged in history at a certain moment in time with an incredible amount of, if you like, innovation, both in terms of our understanding God, monotheism. There’s no doubt that we are the founders of monotheism even though we fell back at various times and kept on worshipping idols as well later on. The foundation of a judicial system, the foundation of a religious system, the foundation of the culture that springs from it in law, in history, in commentary, in poetry, all these things coming from this original contribution.

Q: Are there hieroglyphics?

A: No documentary hieroglyphics, Sanskrit, cuneiform, evidence about Moses. But we shouldn’t be surprised because you know, so much has been destroyed, so much has disappeared over thousands of years.

Thank you for interesting lectures. Thank you very much. I’m glad I caused debate. It’s important to have debate.

Hi Barry. Guy Glasgow, ha, such fond memories and lovely to see you there.

Q: What does the Quran say about Moses?

A: Lots of things about the influence of Moses as being a great teacher and a great inspirer, first of all, of the Israelites. The Quran has very great deal of respect, actually, for Judaism. It’s the Hadit afterwards that comes up with all these horrible things about if you see a Jew hiding behind those rocks, bring him out and kill him and stuff of these kinds. But then without doubt, there was a great deal of respect, certainly in the earlier years, but through the Quran for Moses and for Judaism.

Q: What happened politically afterwards?

A: Well, that’s life. Politics always gets in the way. The punishment of Moses was unfair. Not entering- Yes, I do think it was unfair. I feel for the poor man. But in the end, okay, alright, so you can’t always have what you want in life. That is life. And I guess there being no other questions, I think I’m right. I will then say thank you for listening. If I see you tomorrow at 10 o'clock, it’s fine. Otherwise Wendy, do you want to say something before we close?

• No, thanks Jeremy. Thank you very much for your presentation.

• Enjoy Paris for me. I will enjoy vicariously through you.

• Thank you very much. We’ll be in touch.

• Take care.

• Take care. Thank you everybody for joining us and thank you Lauren.

• Yes Lauren, thank you.

• Thanks. Bye-bye.

• Bye.