“From Moses to Moses”: Late Medieval Jewish and Christian Interpretation of Moses’s Prophecy

Yossef Schwartz

doi:10.3390/rel11120632

Abstract

The paper examines how the figure of the biblical Moses was philosophically interpreted in medieval Jewish and Christian writings. It highlights a turning point in a new concept of prophecy and scriptural authority and suggests that this transformation was made complicated for both Jewish and Christian intellectuals by the appearance of Moses Maimonides, who was most influential in promoting the Muslim model of philosophic interpretation of prophecy, and at the same time confusingly emerged as a living manifestation of semi-biblical authority. Against Jewish exclusivist interpretation of Mosaic law as the leading polemical argument to encounter competing revelations, the first part of my paper points out a mechanism of “Jewish successionism”, i.e., the re-interpretation of the biblical Moses as an instrument for rationalizing normative paradigmatic shift. The second, main part of the paper turns to the Latin translation of Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed, placing it in the midst of a crucial western Latin turn into a new phase of engagement with Old Testament concept of prophecy. A short comparison between some prominent twelfth century figures and later Scholastic thought demonstrates the central role of the new Arab Aristotelianism in general, and that of Maimonides in particular. Maimonides reception among the schoolman will culminate in the writings of Meister Eckhart, exposing the full potentiality of the double appearance of the Egyptian (Rabbi) Moses.

Highlights

The advent of atheism in the early modern age prompted the emergence of a provocative book: the Treatise of the Three Impostors (De Tribus Impostoribus)
I shall relate to the translation of Maimonides’ work into Latin during the 1230s and the reception of his discussion of prophecy among the Schoolmen3 ; I will introduce the unique synthesis offered in the writings of Meister Eckhart, where the medieval Rabbi becomes the highest authority for the Christian theologian in his turn to the biblical figure of Moses
Islam according to Maimonides, one that makes Islam an even greater threat is that, while Christians accept the authority of Moses regarding the old law (Hebraica Veritas), the Muslims, failing to find any support for the prophecy of Muhammad in the Hebrew bible, choose to attack all Hebrew testimony as falsification

Summary

Introduction

The advent of atheism in the early modern age prompted the emergence of a provocative book: the Treatise of the Three Impostors (De Tribus Impostoribus). The three protagonists of this widely circulated work were the three founders of the three hegemonial orthodoxies: Moses, Christ, and Muhammad. The appearance of a second Moses—be the act of naming in itself a sheer accident or part of alleged “eschatological conspiracy”—dramatically reshaped all the above mentioned aspects of Mosaic prophecy: Maimonides embedded a series of conceptual changes of traditions related to Moses, both in philosophical and juristic discourse; he systematized the discussion of paradigmatic changes within Jewish tradition; he was perceived as a new beginning of many crucial elements in Jewish intellectual history, again in relation with his Mosaic nomination. I shall relate to the translation of Maimonides’ work into Latin during the 1230s and the reception of his discussion of prophecy among the Schoolmen ; I will introduce the unique synthesis offered in the writings of Meister Eckhart, where the medieval Rabbi becomes the highest authority for the Christian theologian in his turn to the biblical figure of Moses

The Jewish Moses between Tradition and Innovation

The New Role of Prophecy in Medieval Christian Exegesis and the Double Moses

Maimonides among the Schoolman and the Unique Synthesis of Meister Eckhart

Conclusions