Laurentius

There is no psychological motivation for people like Moses to disobey God and end up the way they do, in my opinion.

Despite living to 120, he did not enter the Land of Israel,or the promised land, because he hit the rock twice instead of speaking to the rock. According to scripture, God never instructed Moses to smite the rock. And in verse 10 Moses made it seem as though it was his ability to bring forth the water out of the rock and not the miraculous working power of God. And in verse 12, the disobedience of Moses led to his denial into the promised land. (Wikipedia)

Similarly, Judas betrays Jesus despite the fact that the Bible does not coherently justify his treason.

My question refers to Moses, actually. He seems such an archetypal biblical hero that it seems quite inconsistent to me that he should defy God and try to appropriate powers that were not actually his out of arrongance and thirst for power. Could anybody please help me with some good sources that might enlighten me on this topic?

gupwalla

I do think that Moses represents an archtypal man-myth hero, much in the lines of King Arthur. Someone who started as a significant man in history, and then grew through legend and myth to become something much more.

Moses struck the rock with his staff. There is a lot of stuff in the texts about Moses's staff, and it's important to realize how extraordinary this staff really was. I'd start the search there.

Then find out what eventually happened to that staff, under whose reign the staff met its fate, and also under whose reign the final redactions to the Torah took place. That's the next destination on your intellectual journey.

gupwalla

I'm home from work now, and I have a chance to sit down and explore in more detail. I was confused in my first response to you, and while investigating Moses's staff will lead to all sorts of interesting areas, it doesn't quite answer the question you asked (though it runs on a close tangent).

So I'll just be really brief here and say: if Numbers 20 is keeping you up at night, read Exodus 17 instead. It's pretty much the exact same story, but it's got a happier ending.

If you'd like a closer inspection of exactly this question and many more, I'd suggest you check out Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible?? As it turns out, the treason wasn't with Moses but with the priestly redactors who put a little political spin on an old, familiar story.

The staff story itself comes to its conclusion in the next, and last, revision of the Torah, some time shortly after Hezekiah's reforms, and has to do more with the consolidation of monotheism than the desecration of Moses's legacy.

Laurentius

Thank you for your interesting suggestions. I'll consider them all although I find this most interesting:

I am highly interested in learning what believers make of Moses; whether or not he can be considered a pivotal figure of the Bible and how consistent such interpretation can be taking his Lucifer-like act into consideration.

neilgodfrey

Thomas Thompson's The Mythic Past (NY) or The Bible in History (London) argues at length that the human characters (even the "heroes") in the Primary History at least are not the real heroes but are always theological foils for teaching the character of God, submission to him, etc.

Neil Godfrey

http://vridar.wordpress.com