Michelangelo sculpted Moses with horns. Leonardo da Vinci depicted the Messiah eating fluffy rolls for Passover. Trusting art, you might believe that Pharaoh’s daughter was decked out in the latest Italian fashions while King David could hardly find a stitch to wear.
For reasons of art and theology, paintings do not always pass muster with historians. But Moses’ protuberances were a Biblical Hebrew translation conundrum. For more than one thousand years Christians believed that Moses came off Sinai sporting new horns. Michelangelo's Bible said he did.
There is a Hebrew word in Exodus 34:29 whose root meaning is horn. But Hebrew builds vocabulary on root words and by creating figurative meanings from physical objects. See the horns of the sun at left? Because light radiating from the sun can appear as shafts that resemble horns, the word figuratively means to shine. Jewish interpretation favored the shine meaning, though not entirely unanimously. Horns were commonly a symbol of honor and divinity: see Alexander the Great below with ram's horns. A miraculously horned Moses may not have seemed so odd to the classically educated, 4th century translator Jerome, or his European readers. Skin emanating photons is not inherently more reasonable than horns sprouting. Literal or figurative interpretation? Horns or light? Many over the years have split the difference and imagined Moses with horns of light, as below in the English 12th century illuminated manuscript and 1638 painting.
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