Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Sohn Gottes, Moses (Leap in being: nabi, legislator, historian)

Kurzinhalt: clash between the Yahwist experience of Moses and the cosmological order of the Egyptian empire; in the man in whose soul occurred the leap in being

Textausschnitt: 16/12 Through the analysis of forms, both of the Torah and of prophetic legends, we have penetrated to the common historical substance. It proves to be the clash between the Yahwist experience of Moses and the cosmological order of the Egyptian empire. From the result falls a new light on the difficulties which beset a critical understanding of Moses. Since the clash between the two orders, as well as its issue into the actual constitution of a people under the order that had its origin in the soul of Moses, was a unique event in history, general categories do not apply to Moses, on principle, but can be used only as approximations with careful qualifications. There was something of the nabi in the man in whose soul occurred the leap in being when he heard the word of Yahweh; () And, finally, while he was a spiritual founder he did not found "a religion," but a people in the present under God. Hence, in order to characterize adequately the essence of the Mosaic person and work, we are forced back from the type concepts to the symbols by which the unknown authors of the respective sections of the Biblical narrative tried to express the unique essence of the issue in continuity with their traditions. That essence is contained in the formula: Yahweh brought Israel, through Moses, up from Egypt. And we must look for the symbols in which the meaning of the terse formula is made explicit.