“His Face Was Radiant”: Pulling Back The Veil On The Mystery Of Moses’ Shining Face

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Radiant face of the “Shining One of the Aten”, Akh-en-Aten (author provided).

“His Face Was Radiant”: Pulling Back The Veil On The Mystery Of Moses’ Shining Face

One of the Bible’s most enduring exegetical enigmas has to be the strangely shining semblance of Moses. The Book of Exodus relates how after the great Hebrew lawgiver receives the Ten Commandments from the Lord, he descends Mount Sinai, upon which everyone notices his face has become newly ‘radiant’. Fearful, they withdraw from Moses, and he is forced to wear a veil whenever addressing the people. This incident has remained a perplexing problem for centuries, first because the Hebrew verb meaning ‘to send out rays’, qâran, can also mean ‘to grow horns’, but second, because of the inherent difficulty in visualizing what exactly was happening to Moses when he was qâran. Was the skin of his face sending out light rays, or was it growing horns?

Moses and the Ten Commandments by James Tissot (1896-1902) Jewish Museum, New York. (Public Domain)

Moses and the Ten Commandments by James Tissot (1896-1902) Jewish Museum, New York. (Public Domain)

Those who view Moses as merely an ancient myth or even an invented solar deity suggest that his shining face is an example of his association with ancient Near Eastern solar gods like Ra, Helios, or Shamash. Traditional commentators like Philo of Alexandria suggested that the Glory of God had somehow rubbed off on Moses. Modern scholars like Gary Rendsburg suggest that this was a later literary device used to make Moses the equal of pharaoh, who likewise during the 18th to -20th dynasties wore ram horns and was described in contemporary texts as ‘shining like the sun’. The present author contends that Moses’ shining face is actually a clue to his own secret royal past, hidden in plain sight in the Bible. If Moses was indeed a king, who was he?


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