the roles of in the pentateuch 19

The Roles of Moses in the Pentateuch

Robert D. Miller II

In four of the five books of the or Pentateuch, from the book of Exo- dus through the , the figure of Moses looms large. Admittedly, only fourteen of the 167 chapters of the Pentateuch deal pri- marily with the story of his life, but post-biblical tradition has expanded the significance of the “great man.”1 While a closer look reveals that Moses is not always spoken of in the same fashion in all of the Pentateuch,2 much scholarship of the past two centuries has been a quest for the historical Moses. This essay begins with an overview of this quest and its shortcom- ings. Then, using theoretical paradigms from the anthropological study of folklore and myth, the major roles Moses plays in the Pentateuch are tied to three proposed communities of authorship that were responsible for the Pentateuch’s Moses.

Traditions: History and Moses

One of the most important and influential works in the quest for the his- torical Moses was that of Martin Noth.3 Noth observed that Moses is in- frequently mentioned outside of the Pentateuch.4 In the pre-exilic prophets, he appears only in Jeremiah 15:1. In later prophets, he is only in Isaiah 63:11-12 and the late addition in Micah 6:4. In other narrative mate- rial, Moses appears six times in the Deuteronomistic History: 9:24; Judges 1:16; 4:11; 1 Samuel 12:6-8; 1 Kings 8:53; and 2 Kings 18:4. Only the first two of these and the last one are independent of the Pentateuchal tradi- tions. Thus, outside of influences emanating from the Pentateuch, Moses is negligible.

1 Brian Britt, “The Moses Myth, Beyond Biblical History,” and Interpretation (July 2004), http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Britt-Moses_Myth.htm. 2 Walter Vogels, Moïse aux Multiple Visages (Montreal: Les Éditions Médiaspaul, 1997), 61. 3 Martin Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice- Hall, 1972), 1-7, 65-71, 136-41, 156-88. 4 Noth, History, 156. 20 robert d. miller ii Noth concluded that Moses did not achieve his centrality until the elaboration and compilation of the Pentateuch. Within the Pentateuch, Noth considered that the figure of Moses was actually at home in only one of the various main themes of the Pentateuch, “from which only subse- quently, in the process of the merging of the Pentateuchal themes, he came to dominate such a wide narrative sphere.”5 The quest then became to find “which of the Pentateuchal themes was Moses’ true traditio-historical place of origin.”6 Noth argued that the connection of Moses was weakest in the case of the theme of the revelation at Sinai.7 “The same holds true also for the theme ‘guidance out of Egypt.’”8 The commemoration of the Exodus in Deuteuronomy 6:12 and 8:14, for example, omits Moses altogether.9 Moses is also missing from the Song of the Sea in Exodus 15.10 This left the wilder- ness wanderings and the guidance to the Promised Land, and Noth con- sidered stopping at this.11 Yet he proceeded, asking which element of the wilderness theme was original.12 What seemed hardest to explain as a later invention was the tradition of Moses’ marriage to a Midianite and the connection with meeting Midianites at the “mountain of God.”13 This ele- ment could not be derived from other elements in the Pentateuch. It was difficult to see why an author would have invented it, especially given the animosity towards Midianites in the biblical tradition (e.g., Judg. 6-7).14 Finally, the tradition occurs in three independent cases: Exodus; Numbers 12:1; Judges 1:16; and Judges 4:11. Noth decided it was “an historical fact” and that Moses, an Israelite leader on a journey to the Mountain of God, had married a Midianite.15 Noth, however, immediately retracted and decided it was doubtful this was the original element of the Moses tradition. Instead, he came “finally to the tradition of the grave of Moses as the most original element of the

5 Noth, History, 156. 6 Noth, History, 159. 7 Noth, History, 161-62. 8 Noth, History, 162-63. 9 H. Zlotnick-Sivan, “Moses the Persian?” Zeitschrift für Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 116 (2004): 190. 10 George W. Coats, Moses: Heroic Man, Man of God, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement 57 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1988): 162. 11 Noth, History, 163. 12 Noth, History, 166. 13 Noth, History, 168. 14 Roland de Vaux, The Early History of (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), 330. 15 Noth, History, 168.