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Old 04-09-2012, 01:33 PM   #1
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Default The Earliest Reference to the Idea that Moses was God

Of course it appears in Marqe. The Samaritans obsess over the equivalency of Mushi (Moses) and Shemah (his Name). MShH = 345 = ShMH (the Jewish equivalent is haSheM). I have always wondered where the original reference for this appeared. It is in the Mimar Marqe (hence its authority):

Quote:
Where is there a prophet like Moses and who can compare with Moses, whose name was made the name of his Lord ? [Mimar Marqe 4.1]
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Old 04-09-2012, 01:53 PM   #2
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I'm not sure when Marqe is dated, but Dunn writes (Dunn, James D.G. "Christology in the Making"):
Josephus twice reports the possibility of speculation that Moses had been taken or had returned to the deity (Ant. III.96f.; IV.326; cf. Philo. Mos. II.288(. Philo expounds Ex. 4.16 and 7.1 in several places and does not scruple to say such things of Moses as 'He (God) appointed him as god' (Sac. 9), or of one as 'no longer man but God' (Prob. 43; see also Som. II.189; Mos. I.158; Qu.Ex. II.29).
Philo of Alexandria:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/yonge/book24.html
What more shall I say? Has he not also enjoyed an even greater communion with the Father and Creator of the universe, being thought unworthy of being called by the same appellation? For he also was called the god and king of the whole nation, and he is said to have entered into the darkness where God was; that is to say, into the invisible, and shapeless, and incorporeal world, the essence, which is the model of all existing things, where he beheld things invisible to mortal nature; for, having brought himself and his own life into the middle, as an excellently wrought picture, he established himself as a most beautiful and Godlike work, to be a model for all those who were inclined to imitate him.
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Old 04-09-2012, 01:55 PM   #3
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I guess what I meant to say is that Jews and Samaritans see the letters in Moses's name as being a jumbled form of the Name of God. I meant to say that I have made reference to this concept many times but couldn't find an explicit reference to the Moses = Shemah concept. The earliest reference to that is found in Marqe.
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