Verbing the Character: Moses
In Mothers of Promise, Schneider describes her method of “verbing the character” as a means of “quantifying qualitative data.”1 The present examination takes up the first two of the four perspectives laid out in Schneider’s book: the character as the subject, and as the object, of verbs.2 Although there are specific situations in which the Biblical Hebrew or Old Avestan languages point directly to the subject or object (direct and indirect) of a verb, the more than occasional lack of clarity is addressed by Schneider: “All references are embedded in a literary text; thus just because a character is the subject of a verb does not necessarily mean they are in charge of a situation…there are places where the distinction between someone functioning as the subject is not as clear-cut as it may appear in a translation, and I will treat those cases that seem to best reflect the agency of that character.”3 A good example of this complexity can be identified in the case of Moses as the subject of verbs he is commanded, as object, to perform. As noted above, this is delivered mostly in the form of lengthy second-person speeches that would seem to be directed at the reader/listener rather than the character of Moses.
Table 5 shows that the total number of instances (across 220 verbs), in which Moses is either the subject or object of a verb within the Hebrew Bible is 2371; an additional 86 verbs are noted, but unclear, including the enigmatic postscript to Moses’ death at the beginning of Deuteronomy 34:6, וַיִּקְבֹּ֨ר אֹת֤וֹ (“and he buried him”).4 The 691 instances coded as “Command” point to the many times Moses is the subject of a verb, but as Schneider notes, he is not in control of the situation – he acts, or is informed that he will act, at behest of the Deity. This is important to understanding the ratio of subject to object counts. Overall, this ratio appears to be more than two to one, suggesting Moses acts far more than he is acted upon. Accounting for instances of command, the balance is dramatically shifted toward Moses as acted upon or involuntary actor, with the adjusted proportion of subject instances at less than 40% (947) of the total count. It is notable that nearly half of the verbs seem to appear in dialogue: 1266 first- or second-person instances.
The overwhelming majority of verbs appear with Moses as either the singular subject or object. Together, these observations agree with the top two verbs appearing in the dataset presented in Figure 13 (a visualization of the verbs appearing a minimum of ten times). Table 6 (details of the verbs appearing a minimum of ten times) confirms that nearly a quarter of instances in which Moses is either the subject or object of a verb have to do with verbs דָבַר (“speak”) and אָמַר (“say”).
In simple terms, the Hebrew Bible presents this “prophet-founder” of the religion that would develop, eventually, into Judaism as a social go-between. With a cropped view of the top verbs appearing in the dataset, Table 7 reveals patterns that characterize this form of interaction with the Deity, “the people,” and the religious professionals.
Moses appears to be spoken/said to the majority of the time (300/544 instances), the text specifically notes commands to him more often than he issues commands (100/181 instances), and roughly 40% of these commands include doing/making (15%) speaking/saying (14%), giving/putting (7%), and taking (5%). Together, these commands appear to support construct the construction of the character of Moses as an obedient actor, whose actions are given to him within instances in which he is acted upon.
The figuration of Moses as mostly object, often commanded subject, also seems to construct the Deity in a way that supports the image of empowered adherents noted throughout this chapter. Recall that the Moses narrative arc is rife with the struggle between “the people” and the Deity. Additionally, the lengthy speeches apparently delivered through Moses to “the people” may be understood to serve the function of cultivating the same experience for the reader/listener. The Deity is depicted as particularly concerned with “the people” and uses Moses not merely to exact the Deity’s will concerning them, but as a conduit for two-way communication. If Moses is one of the early models of “prophet-founders” it is not difficult to understand the messaging of the biblical text concerning the shape of this building block of religion. Consider the fact that Moses, despite the literary depiction of his individual significance to the salvation of “the people,” the development of social and religious institutions, and production of the writtenTorah, is not the focal point of worship in Judaism. Although a number of Christian interpreters over the centuries have read in the Moses narrative a prefiguration of the salvific Christ figure, the characterization of the “prophet-founder” as facilitator, rather than focus, of worship is a key difference between this and the way in which the object of Christian worship appears to be constructed.5
1 Schneider, Mothers of Promise, 11.
2 The other two perspectives concern adjectival descriptions of the character and relationships with other characters. Schneider, 11.
3 Schneider, 12.
4 The category of “Alternate Names and Body Parts” that appears at the bottom of Figure 1 indicates the number of specific references to Moses using words that include: “child,” “servant,” or “hand of Moses.”
5 Theodore Ziolkowski, Uses and Abuses of Moses: Literary Representations since the Enlightenment (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016), 14.
