From: Bart Ehrman (behrman@email.unc.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 01 2000 - 08:31:39 EST
Barnabas 12 provides a kind of midrashic exposition of Exodus 17:8ff,
where Moses makes Israel prevail in war over the Amalekites by raising his
hands over the battle. Barnabas sees this as a "type" of the cross
(evidently because of the positioning of the arms). But what to do with
his explanation of the event:
TIQHSIN OUN MWUSHS hEN EF' hEN hOPLON EN MESWi THS PUGMHS, KAI STAQEIS
hUPSHLOTEROS PANTWN EKSETEINEN TAS XEIRAS, KAI hOUTWS PALIN ENIKA hO
ISRAHL.
The final two clauses are no real problem: "and standing high above
all the people he stretched out his hands; and so Israel again gained the
victory." But what's with the first one? Is it saying that Moses stacked
up some weapons in the midst of the hand to hand combat (= And so Moses
stacked weapons one on the other in the midst of the battlefield)? Or
that he put weapons in his fists before raising his arms (= "And so Moses
place a weapon in each fist, one at a time").
More specifically, I'm asking whether the second rendering strikes you
as possible. (The first has problems with PUGMH; and it's hard to figure
out how it relates to the context -- why that is he would be stacking
weapons; but I think it's the more normal rendering). Again, I'm not
asking about an interpretation of the Hebrew text of Exodus, but about the
translation of Barnabas.
-- Bart D. Ehrman
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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