Why did Jehovah want to kill Moses?

by Doug Mason 14 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Half banana

  Note the stone age knife being used betraying the story's stone age mentality.
• 

  TheOldHippie

  Not quite ignored, it is quoted in Insight, saying

  Scholars have offered many interpretations of this passage, some of these being incorporated into modern Bible translations. (See CC, JB, Kx, La, NE, RS, as well as the German Zürcher Bibel, the Spanish Bover-Cantera and the French Crampon, Lienart, and Segond versions.) Such interpretations attempt to settle questions as to whether it was Moses’ or the child’s life that was threatened, whether Zipporah touched the feet of Moses or the feet of the child or the feet of the angel with the foreskin. They also venture opinions as to why Zipporah said (and to whom she said), “You are a bridegroom of blood to me.”

  It seems that it was the child’s life that was in danger in view of what the law of circumcision states at Genesis 17:14; that Zipporah circumcised the child because she realized what was needed to set matters right; that she cast the foreskin at the feet of the angel who was threatening the child’s life to demonstrate her compliance with Jehovah’s law; that Zipporah addressed Jehovah through his representative angel when she exclaimed, “You are a bridegroom of blood to me,” doing so to show her acceptance of a wifely position in the circumcision covenant with Jehovah as the husband.—See Jer 31:32.

  But there is no way of Scripturally settling such questions with certainty. The literal reading of the ancient Hebrew in this passage is veiled in the idioms used nearly 3,500 years ago. This is why literal translations (NW, Ro, Yg) and others (AS, KJ, Da, Dy, JP, Mo, Le), including the ancient Greek Septuagint, are not clear on these matters.
• 

  Room 215

  Old Hippie, that's about as much as can be reasonably said about this very arcane passage.... 3,500 year-old Hebrew idioms indeed.
• 

  St George of England

  Yet none of the children were circumcised during the 40 year trek in the wilderness without any problem.

  This necessitated the mass circumcision when they reached the promised land.

  Just fables.

  George
• 

  Doug Mason

  Thanks for the clarifications. I appreciate the collective scholarship.

  I do have a question, though (no surprises there, I guess). The quotation by Old Hippe from the Insight book states:

  "The literal reading of the ancient Hebrew in this passage is veiled in the idioms used nearly 3,500 years ago."

  Am I correct in saying that one of the tenets of Higher Criticism is to take contemporary idioms into consideration when researching the Bible? If that were so, then the Watchtower here is employing Higher Criticism.

  Doug