Life of Moses 1 part 2/8

And in this Moses also led them into a certain more ineffable initiation, the divine power itself initiating, through wonders beyond reason, both the whole people and the leader himself into the mysteries.

And the initiation was accomplished in this manner.

The people had been told beforehand to be free of all defilements, both those that are seen concerning body and soul, and to purify themselves with certain sprinklings, and even to abstain from marriage itself for a stated number of days, so that, washed clean of every passionate and bodily disposition, one might approach the mountain pure of passion, there to be initiated (Sinai was the name of the mountain), which at that time was granted for ascent to the rational beings alone, and of these to the men only, and of these again only to those purified of every defilement;

and there was every watch and forethought that none of the irrational creatures should set foot upon the mountain, and if perchance one did, that it should be stoned by the people--every irrational creature whatsoever appearing upon the mountain.

Then the airy light from a clear sky was darkened into gloom, so that the mountain became invisible, encompassed all around by the thick darkness.

And fire shining out from the gloom made the sight fearful to those who beheld, feeding upon the whole circuit of the mountain on every side, so that everything visible was wreathed in smoke through the encircling fire.

And Moses led the people toward the ascent, himself too not taking courage at

what was seen, but cowering in soul through dread and trembling in body with fear, so that he did not even conceal the suffering of his soul from the Israelites, but confessed to them that he was stricken at what appeared and was not steady in body.

For what appeared was not such only as to produce astonishment in the soul through the eyes, but also through hearing the fearful things were poured in, a voice from above breaking forth in terrifying fashion upon all that lay beneath;

of which voice the first onset too was harsh and hard for every ear to bear, occurring in likeness to the sound of other trumpets, but surpassing every such model by the deep and astounding quality of the voice, and becoming more fearful as it went on, ever intensifying its sound toward the more astounding by addition.

And this voice was articulate, the air, by divine power, articulating the speech apart from organs of speech.

And the word was not articulated at random, but was legislating divine ordinances.

And the voice, as it advanced, grew by increase, and the trumpet outsounded itself, ever surpassing the preceding sounds by those that followed.

And the whole people was too weak to endure what was seen and heard.

Therefore a common request is brought by all to Moses, that the law be mediated through him, since the people would not disbelieve that whatever was enjoined by him according to the teaching from above was a divine command.

So again, with all having run down to the foot of the mountain, Moses alone was left behind, showing in himself the opposite of what one might have expected;

for whereas all the others took more courage at the fearful things in the fellowship of those sharing them, this man, left alone of those standing by, was more confident, so that from this it became clear that the fear with which he was at first seized was not his own private experience, but that he suffered these things through sympathy with the terrified.

Since, then, stripped as it were of some burden of the people's cowardice, he was by himself, he then dares even the gloom itself and comes within the unseen, no longer appearing to those who looked on.

For having slipped into the inmost sanctuary of the divine mystagogy, he was there present with the Invisible, himself unseen, teaching, I think, by what he did, that the one who is to be present with God must go out of everything that appears, and stretch his own mind, as toward some mountain peak, toward the invisible and incomprehensible, and there believe the Divine to be, in that which the understanding does not reach.

And being there, he receives the divine commands.

And these were the teaching of virtue, the chief point of which is piety and the holding of fitting conceptions concerning the divine nature--that it transcends every cognitive notion and representation, being likened to none of the things that are known.

For he is bidden to look toward none of the things comprehended in conceptions concerning the Divine, nor to liken the nature that transcends the universe to any of the things known by comprehension, but, while believing that it is, to leave the question of what sort, or how great, or whence, or in what manner it is, unsought as unattainable.

And the discourse adds also all the right achievements that belong to character, making its teaching by both general and particular laws.

For the general law, abolishing all injustice, is that one must be lovingly disposed toward one's kindred; and this being established, of necessity it will follow accordingly that no one work any evil against his neighbour.

And among the particular laws, both the honour due to parents is proclaimed and the catalogue of forbidden transgressions is enumerated.

By these laws, as it were pre-purified in mind, he is led on to the more perfect mystagogy, a certain tabernacle being shown to him all at once by divine power.

And the tabernacle was a temple, having its beauty in a certain hard-to-interpret intricacy--forecourts and pillars and curtains, a table and a lampstand and an altar of incense, a sacrificial altar and a mercy-seat and the inner sanctuary of the holy place, untrodden and inaccessible; of all of which the beauty and arrangement, that they might neither escape his memory and that to those below

the wonder might be displayed, he is counselled not to hand down by bare writing, but to imitate through material construction that immaterial workmanship, taking up the brighter and more brilliant of the materials found upon earth; among which the gold was more plentiful, poured round about the pillars, and along with the gold silver too was included, adorning by itself the capitals and bases of the pillars, so that, I think, the gold, beheld on either side amid the contrasting colour, might shine out the more.

And there was a place where the material of bronze too was deemed useful, becoming the head and base for the silver pillars.

And the veils and curtains and the enclosure of the temple and the roof stretched over the pillars were all suitably completed through the art of weaving, each from its appropriate material.

For some of the woven fabrics had the dye of blue and purple and the fiery gleam of the scarlet-dyed crimson, and the brightness of the fine linen had its natural and unwrought beauty.

And for others flax, and for others hair, were taken up for the needs of the woven works.

And there was a place where the red skins too were well suited for the beauty of the construction.

And these things Moses, after his descent from the mountain, constructed through his assistants according to the pattern of the workmanship set forth to him.

And then, having come to be in that temple not made with hands, he is given legislation as to the kind of adornment with which the priest who treads the inner sanctuary must be made resplendent, the discourse ordaining in detail each thing both of the inner robing and of that which is seen.

And the beginning of the putting on of the vestments is not the hidden, but the visible.

There were shoulder-pieces variegated with differing dye, by which the veil had its construction, and having for the most part golden thread.

Clasps on either part, holding the shoulder-pieces together, encircling emeralds round about with gold.

And the adornment of the stones was, from nature, their gleam, flashing forth from itself certain greenish rays, and, from art, the wonder from the engravings--the art not having cut the engraving toward the character of any idols;

but the names of the patriarchs, six on either stone, engraved upon the stones, became an adornment.

And the little shields hung from these toward the front part, and the interwoven chains plaited through one another alternately in a certain rhythm in net-like fashion, and let down from the clasp on either part from above the shields, so that, I think, the beauty of the plaiting might shine out the more, made resplendent by what lay beneath.

And that gold-wrought ornament thrust forward upon the breast, in which were certain stones of differing kinds equal in number to the patriarchs, the rows being arranged in four, three set in each, displaying upon themselves by their letters the eponyms of the tribes.

And the robe within the shoulder-pieces, reaching from the neck to the very feet, becomingly adorned with the pendants of fringes.

And the lower hem fashioned to beauty not only out of the variegation of weaving, but also through the pendants of gold.

And these were golden bells and pomegranates dividing the lower hem alternately.

And again the band of the head all of blue, and the frontlet plate of unalloyed gold engraved with a certain ineffable character.

And a girdle, gathering in the looseness of the robe, and the adornment of the hidden things, and all that is taught through enigmas, in the form of vesture, concerning priestly virtue.

And when in these and such things, encompassed by that invisible gloom, he had been instructed in the ineffable teaching of God, having become greater than himself by the addition of the mystical lessons, thus emerging again from the gloom he comes down to his kindred, to share with them the wonders shown to him in the theophany, and to set before them the laws, and to establish for the people the temple and the priesthood according to the pattern shown to him on the mountain.

And [he bore] also the sacred tablets in his hand, which were a divine discovery and gift, requiring no human cooperation toward their coming to be.

But each of the two was alike a work of God, both the material and the engravings upon it.

But the people hindered the grace, before the lawgiver could arrive, by breaking loose into idolatry.

For since no short time had passed for Moses, occupied in converse with God through that divine mystagogy, and he was for forty days and as many nights partaking, beneath the gloom, of that eternal life, and had come outside nature itself (for during that time he had no need of food for the body), then the people, like some youth out of the sight of his tutor, was carried by unrestrained impulses into disorder, and, banding together against Aaron, lays necessity upon the priest to lead them in idolatry.

And when the idol had come to be from the material of gold (the idol was a calf), some exulted in the impiety; but Moses, having now come down upon them, breaks the tablets which he was bringing from God, so that, having forfeited the God-given grace, they might undergo a punishment worthy of the transgression.

Then, having purified the pollution by the blood of kinsmen through the Levites, and having propitiated the Divine by his own wrath against the transgressors, and having made the idol vanish, he thus again, by a forty days' attendance, brings the tablets, of which the writing was of divine power, while the material was wrought by Moses' hand.

These he receives again, having gone outside nature in that great number of days, living in some other manner and not according to what is customary for us, having admitted to his own body none of the things that support, through food, the deficiency of our nature.

And thus he both pitched the tabernacle for them and set forth the ordinances, having established the priesthood according to the teaching that had come to him from God.

And when he had constructed everything according to the divine direction through material workmanship--the tabernacle, the forecourts, all that was within, the altar of incense, the sacrificial altar, the lampstand, the curtains, the veils, the mercy-seat within the inner sanctuary, the adornment of the priesthood, the anointing oil, the various sacred rites, the purifications, the thank-offerings, the means of averting evils, the propitiations for transgressions--having ordered all in due manner among them, he stirred up envy against himself in those close to him, that infirmity congenital to the nature of men; so that even Aaron, honoured with the honours of the priesthood, and his sister Miriam, moved by a certain womanish jealousy against the honour that had come to him from God, uttered something of such a kind, at which the Divine was provoked to punish the transgression.

And here it is yet more worthy to admire the forbearance of Moses, that, when God was punishing the irrational malice of the woman, he, making nature stronger than wrath, propitiated God on his sister's behalf.

And when the multitude again turned to disorder (the immoderation of belly-pleasures led the transgression, for whom it did not suffice to live healthily and without grief from the food flowing down from above, but the lust of the flesh and the longing for meat-eating made the slavery among the Egyptians more preferable to them than the good things present), he communicates with God concerning the passion that had broken out among them, while God instructs them that they ought not to be so disposed, by granting them to obtain what they craved: letting fly upon the camp a multitude of birds, making their flight low to the ground, so that they came flying down cloud-like and in flocks, on which the ease of the catch carried their lust for meat on to satiety.

But the immoderation of the eating suddenly altered the temperaments of their bodies into corrupting humours, and the surfeit ended for them in disease and death; of which the example became sufficient for self-control, both to those very ones and to those who looked to them.

...of that land which, by divine promise, was in their hopes for habitation.

And when these did not all report the truth, but some announced false and gloomy things, again the people was angered against Moses.

But God condemns those who despaired of the divine alliance not to see the land promised to them.

And as they advanced through the wilderness, when water again failed them, the memory of God's power failed along with it.

For they did not trust, on account of the preceding wonder concerning the rock, that even now the need would not fail them, but, falling away from the better hopes, they proceeded to revilings against God Himself and against Moses, so that even Moses seemed to flag at the people's unbelief; nevertheless he again works a wonder for them, turning that hard rock into the nature of waters.

And as again the slavish pleasure of edibles roused in them the lust of gluttony, and, lacking none of the necessities of life, they dreamed of the Egyptian surfeit, the disorderly among the young are disciplined with sharper scourges, serpents casting deadly venom into them throughout the camp by their bite.

And as the falling from the beasts came one upon another, the lawgiver, urged on by divine counsel, having cast bronze in the likeness of a serpent, caused it to appear above the whole camp upon a certain height.

And thus he stopped among the people the harm from the beasts and freed it from destruction.

For the one who looked toward the image of the serpent in the bronze feared nothing of the bite of the real serpent, the sight, by some ineffable counter-influence, blunting the venom.

Again, when there arose against him from the people a rising concerning the leadership, and certain ones forcibly sought to transfer the priesthood to themselves, he became a suppliant of God on behalf of those who were sinning, but the justice of God's judgment was stronger than Moses' sympathy toward his kindred.

For the earth, gaping open by divine will with a chasm, again falls together upon itself, having taken in within, with their whole kindred, all those who had risen up against the rule of Moses.

And those who had raged about the priesthood, being consumed by fire, about two hundred and fifty in number, by their own suffering bring their kindred to soberness.

And, that men might rather be persuaded that the grace of the priesthood comes to those deemed worthy from God, he takes rods, one from each tribe, from the leaders, the giver having marked each with his own letters, among which was also that of Aaron the priest.

And having set these before the temple, through them he makes manifest to the people God's vote concerning the priesthood.

For alone of all the rod of Aaron budded, and put forth and brought to perfection the fruit from the wood (the fruit was an almond); which indeed seemed to even the unbelieving a very great wonder--how that which was dry and scraped and rootless, suddenly fattened, did the work of things rooted, the divine power having become to the wood in place of earth and bark and moisture and root and time.

Upon this, leading the army through foreign nations who hindered the passage, he makes a solemn pledge to allow the people passage through their ploughlands and vineyards, but to keep to the king's highway, turning aside neither to the right nor to the left.

And when the enemies were not even upon these terms at peace, having overcome the adversary in battle, he becomes master of the passage.

Then a certain Balak, holding the leadership of a greater nation (Midianites was the name of the nation), stricken at the suffering of those who had been captured, and expecting that he would all but suffer the like at the hands of the Israelites, brings in for alliance no help of arms or bodies, but elaborate sorcery, through a certain Balaam, who was bruited to be formidable in these matters and was believed by those who had employed him to have a certain power toward such pursuits; whose art was augury, and who, by the cooperation of certain demons, was dangerous, bringing upon men, by a more elaborate power, things

...irremediable things; who, following those who were leading him away to the king of the nation, is taught by the voice of the donkey that the way was not auspicious for him.

Then, having learned through a certain manifestation what must be done, he found the maleficent sorcery too weak to inflict any harm upon those allied to by God.

And instead of the operation of the demons, becoming inspired by divine inspiration, he uttered such words as to be plainly a prophecy of the things that would later turn out for the better.

For by the very things through which he was prevented from working evil by his art, through these, having come into perception of the divine power, bidding farewell to divination, he gives utterance to the divine will.

And upon these things the foreign nation is worn down, the people having become superior in the war; but, defeated afterward by the passion of licentiousness through the captive women--when Phinehas, transfixing with a single blow those joined together in dishonour, brought a respite to the wrath of God against those who had raged toward the unlawful unions--then the lawgiver, having gone up onto a certain high mountain and surveyed from afar the land which, through the divine promise made to the fathers, had been prepared for Israel, departs from human life, leaving behind on the earth no sign or memorial of his own departure in tombs; whose beauty time did not mar, nor did it dim the brightness of his eyes, nor blunt the grace shining from his face.

But he was ever in the same state and in the selfsame condition, having preserved, in the mutable quality of nature, the unfalling steadfastness in the good.

These things, then, as much as we have learned from the obvious history of the man, we have recounted to you in summary, even if the subject is in some places such that the discourse necessarily enlarged upon it.

And it would be the right time to fit the life that has been recalled to the aim of our discourse that lies before us, so that there may come to be for us, from the things said before, some contribution toward the life of virtue.

Let us, then, take up the beginning of the narrative concerning him.

CONTEMPLATION ON THE LIFE OF MOSES. When the tyrannical law decreed that the male be destroyed, then is Moses born.

How, then, shall we imitate by deliberate choice the man's birth, which came about by happenstance? For this surely is not in our power, someone will certainly say, so as for anyone to imitate, by his own birth, the renowned offspring.

But it is no hard thing to begin the imitation from what seems the more difficult.

For who does not know that everything subject to change never remains the same in itself, but always becomes one thing out of another, the change ever being effected either toward the better or toward the worse? Let it be conceived by way of hypothesis.

For the material and more passionate disposition, toward which human nature is borne as it slips downward, is the female of life, which is dear to the tyrant when it is kept alive;

but the hardened and vigorous quality of virtue is the manly offspring, hostile to the tyrant and suspected of rising up against his rule.

It is necessary, then, that what is subject to change be always, in some way, being born.

For none of the things that are always in the same state could be beheld in the mutable nature.

And to be born in this way is not from an alien impulse, after the likeness of those who bodily beget what comes to be, but such a birth comes to be from deliberate choice.

And we are in a certain manner our own fathers, begetting ourselves such as we wish to be, and from our own choice shaping ourselves into whatever form we wish, whether male or female, fashioned according to the principle of virtue or of vice.

It is wholly possible for us, too--against the tyrant's will and to his grief--to come forth into light in the nobler birth, and to be seen with pleasure by the parents of this fair offspring (these parents would be the reasonings that become fathers of virtue), and to be kept alive, even though it be contrary to the tyrant's will.

Therefore, as one taking his starting points from the history might uncover the enigma more nakedly, this is what the discourse teaches: to make the beginning of the life of virtue the being born to the grief of the enemy--in such a form of birth, I mean, whose travail deliberate choice brings to the birth.

For no one could grieve the adversary unless he showed in himself such marks as become tokens of the victory over that one.

And it belongs to the same deliberate choice both to beget this manly and virtuous offspring, and to nurse it with fitting nourishment, and to provide that it be saved from the water unharmed.

For those who give over their offspring to the tyrant deliver their children to the stream naked and unprovided for.

And by 'stream' I mean the life that is tossed by the successive passions, by which what comes to be in the stream is sunk under water and choked.

But the prudent and provident reasonings, the fathers of the manly offspring, whenever the necessity of life forces the good child down to the waves of this present life, secure the one given over to the stream in an ark, so that he may not become submerged.

And the ark would be the education compacted of various lessons, framed together out of different studies, which holds up above the waves the one borne along by it through life; which being present, he will not for long, carried about by the surges of the waves, be made to wander in the tossing of the waters, but, coming to be upon the firm ground of the bank--that is, outside the tossing of this life--he will of his own accord be thrust by the movement of the waters toward the firm; which indeed we learn also by experience: that the unstable and drifting motion of affairs themselves of itself thrusts away those who do not still go down baptized with human deceptions, reckoning, as some useless weight, those who trouble it by virtue.

And the one who has come outside such things, let him imitate Moses and not spare his tears, even if he happens to be secured in an ark.

For the tear is a safe guardian of those who are being saved through virtue. But if the daughter of the king, who is barren and childless (whom I think is rightly to be understood as profane philosophy), taking up the child, should contrive to be called the mother of such a one, the discourse permits not rejecting the kinship of the falsely-named mother for so long as one sees in himself the imperfection of his age.

But the one who has now run up to a height, as we learned concerning Moses, will count it a shame to be named the child of one who is by nature barren.

For truly barren is the education of the outsiders, ever in travail and never bringing forth a living birth.

For what fruit has philosophy shown of its long travails, worthy of such and so great pains? Are they not all wind-conceived and never brought to term, miscarried before they come to the light of the knowledge of God, though perhaps able to become men, had they not been wholly enwrapped in the bosoms of barren wisdom? Therefore let one who has lived with the Egyptian princess for so long as not to seem destitute of the dignities held among them run back up to his natural mother, from whom not even while being reared by the princess was he severed, nourished, as the history says, by his mother's milk; which seems to me to teach that, if we converse with outside teachings at the time of our schooling, we should not be separated from the milk of the Church that nurtures us.

And this would be the ordinances and customs of the Church, by which the soul is nourished and grows strong, making thence its starting points for the upward ascent.

And the saying is true, that the one who looks both to outside doctrines and to ancestral ones will come to be between two enemies.

For the foreigner in religion opposes the Hebrew teaching, contending to appear stronger than the Israelite.

And to many of the more superficial he seemed such, who, abandoning the ancestral faith, allied themselves with the enemy, becoming transgressors of the ancestral teaching.

But the one who, after the manner of Moses, is great and noble in

soul shows dead, by the blow from himself, the one who rises up against the word of piety.

And in another way too one might find such a battle within us.

For man, set in the middle, lies as a kind of prize of contest before those who lay opposing claim from the contrary side;

and to whichever he is added, this one he makes victor over the opposite;

such as idolatry and the worship of God, licentiousness and self-control, righteousness and injustice, arrogance and moderation, and all the things conceived as opposites--each is plainly a battle of an Egyptian against a Hebrew;

Moses, then, teaches us by his own example to take our stand with virtue as with a kinsman, but to slay the one who, from the contrary side, treads upon virtue.

For in truth the prevailing of piety becomes the death and destruction of idolatry.

Thus also through righteousness injustice is slain, and by moderation arrogance is done to death.

But also the strife of kindred against one another comes to be within us.

For the doctrine-mongering of wicked heresies would have had no place, unless errant reasonings, in opposing array, were warring against the truer ones.