Horns of Moses
Moses is said to be "horned", or radiant, or glorified, after he sees God who presents him with the tablets of the law in the Book of Exodus.
The use of the term "horned" to describe Moses in fact predates Jerome, and can be traced to the Greek Jewish scholar Aquila of Sinope (fl.
Other depictions of Moses, horned and unhorned, are likely to have had antisemitic connotations, especially in the later medieval period, for example, on the Hereford Mappa Mundi.
Awareness of flaws in the Vulgate translation spread in the later Middle Ages, and by about 1500 it was realized in scholarly circles that "horned" was a mistranslation.
Horns were often replaced by two bunches of rays of light, springing from the same parts of the head, as seen in the 1481–1482 Moses frescoes in the Sistine Chapel or on the 1544 Mosesbrunnen fountain in Bern, Switzerland.
[2] The Catholic Douay–Rheims Bible (1609) translates the Vulgate as, "And when Moses came down from the Mount Sinai, he held the two tables of the testimony, and he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord.
"[10] Medieval theologians and scholars believed that Jerome had intended to express a glorification of Moses' face, by his use of the Latin word for "horned.
[12] The cultural historian Stephen Bertman argues that Jerome is known himself to have held antisemitic views, and may have made the choice to associate Moses with "horns" consciously for theological reasons.
These early images respect the timing of the change in Moses' appearance, showing him without horns before he comes down Mount Sinai.
[20] Art historian Debra Strickland identifies the horned Moses on the Hereford Mappa Mundi as an overtly antisemitic example, which she argues is associated with the redefining the Exodus story as a defence of the 1290 Expulsion of the Jews from England.
The most commonly known plays to feature Moses are based on Augustine's text Contra Judaeos, Paganos, et Arianos Sermo de Symbolo[27] (Sermon on the Creed against the Jews, Pagans and Arians) in which Moses and other Old Testament prophets serve as witnesses to persuade Jews of their error in persisting with their beliefs.
Art historian Jennifer Koosed has argued that the statue is the culmination of the horned Moses tradition, mixing animal and human qualities to present the divine.
[33] The presentation of Moses with rays of light remained common until the 19th century, for example appearing in the Bible illustrations of Gustave Doré (1866).
[34] A rather late horned Moses, from the 1890s, is the bronze statue by Charles Henry Niehaus in the hall of the Library of Congress, Thomas Jefferson Building, in Washington D.C..[35]
