Let me jump into Moshe, the central figure of the Torah. This is, we looked at an example, not this one, but another inscription. This is the Hebrew word El.
We've got the Aleph and the Lamed. That word means El, the strong one of authority. There's another interesting thing about this word is that the ox has two horns. The shepherd's staff, in ancient cultures, the horns represented the strength of the one in authority. The shepherd's staff was carried by the kings to show his authority.
What did the ancient kings wear and carry? Horns, kind of like the Vikings'horns, and they would carry a staff. Here it is in the modern culture, the crown and the scepter. Those things exist today in modern royalty. We have, you know how some crowns have the points on them?
By the way, crown, that comes from the Hebrew word karen. What does karen mean? Horns.
The crown are the horns. And these are the horns. Some of them have just points coming up. The crown represents the horns. The scepter represents the staff.
Now Moshe was the leader, the strength and authority of Israel, correct? Did he have a scepter and horns? Did he have a scepter? Did he have a staff?
Thank you. Okay, let's take a look at that one first. And the Lord said to Moshe, See, I make you as God to Pharaoh. That word is Elohim.
I make you as... Elohim to Pharaoh. Elohim, El, it has to have the horns and the scepter. And Yahweh said to Moshe, see, I gave you Elohim.
That's what it literally says in the Bible. The Lord said to him, what is that in your hand? He said, a rod, a mateh. I think it's the word mateh, a staff. So we know we had a staff.
There's half of the equation. And there is Moshe. And when Aharon and all the people of Israel saw Moshe, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him.
There it is! There's the other half. Do you see it?
Do you see the horns? Oh, wait a minute, that's English. I'm sorry. If we translate this directly from the Hebrew, literally, this is what it says.
And Aharon and all the sons of Israel saw Moshe, and behold, the skin of his face had horns, and they were afraid to come near to... What? Your translation is translated as rays of light or shun.
That is not what the Hebrew says. The Hebrew literally says he had horns. Koran. Remember the Hebrew word Koran? The verb Koran is the word that's not the same word, by the way, as the Muslim.
But, he had horns. That's what it literally says in the Hebrew. This is my pet peeve with translations.
The translators, oh, they don't understand that. Oh, that don't make no sense. Let's fix the text for them. The translators are like Caltrans in California or the Mississippi Dot, you know.
You got a road with potholes in it. What do they do? They fill them. They come in and they pave it over. Let's start with a dirt road.
You drive down the road. Okay, well, that's not pleasant. So they come in and they lay a layer of rock down. Now it's kind of like this. Okay, it's not too bad.
But then they come along later on, they put the pavement. Now you can fly through it at 90 miles an hour. Have a nice, smooth ride.
That's what the translators are doing. They don't want you to have to worry about the problems in the text. So you can pick up that Bible and you can just read it to your heart's content and everything's okie-dokie. The only problem is they're interpreting the text for you, they're erasing a lot of the Hebraisms and a lot of Hebraic understandings.
What's going on here? Here's Michelangelo's picture, by the way, or sculpture of Moshe. What's that on top of his head? Let me make it a little clearer for you. There are horns there.
There are horns. That's Michelangelo. He got something right for once. Might have messed up on the Last Supper, but he's got horns there.
What's the problem we're all making right now? Horns? We're thinking image, picture, appearance. That's Greek.
What is the function of the horns? Power, strength. God was making a point. This text is making a point. It's saying he has the power.
He has the staff of God. Now he has the power of God. Now, was it literally horns coming off his face?
I don't know. I don't care. The Hebrews didn't care.
Well, they did because they were scared of it. Because whatever was coming off his face, they were scared of it. But the point is, is trying to make a point that we have now the authority, the staff, we have the power, the horns. And the author did this on purpose so that you can see that, but the translators come along and they just completely erased it. That's what I've got a problem with the translation.
which is why the mechanical translation shows you he had horns. It's up to you, the students, to go, wait a minute, I don't like that. Then you need to dig deeper.
Am I wrong? How do you know? Have you looked at it?
You've got to go out there and search yourselves. You've got to start digging into the books. You've got to look up those Hebrew words as best as you can with what tools you have to see why the text says what it does. Thank you all very much.
I appreciate it.