Depictions of Moses with Horns
After visiting a Jewish synagogue I had to ask myself why the horns on Moses? When the early Christian scriptures were translated and spread by word of mouth, Moses was said to have had horns. The Septuagint properly translates the Hebrew phrase into Greek as "his face shone" as in to emit rays of light; while Jerome translates the phrase in the Latin Vulgate as reading "his face was horned." Moses was depicted with small horns late into the Renaissance until the mistranslation was identified.
3 comments:
A little more information...
The mistranslated verses in question can be found in Exodus 34:29-35. The word translated as either "shone" or "horned" was the Hebrew verb qaran.
I was just looking closer at that first image you posted and realized it is from the mural at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple. I believe in that image that those are actually rays of light and not horns rising from the head of Moses. The mistranslation of horns was done by the Christians, so it would probably be very odd for there to be an image of Moses with horns in a Jewish synagogue.
It's an interesting philological problem. I suggest that an Arabic cognate could provide a new solution:
http://aplaceofbrightness.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-horns-of-philological-dilemma.html
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