Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Dornbusch, Moses (ehyeh asher ehyeh; Historizität); Hoses (Lo-ammi); Amon; Offenbarung - Spannung: Verborgenheit (Gegenwart)

Kurzinhalt: the crucial question whether the ehyeh asher ehyeh can be atributed to Moses himself; God reveals himself as the one who is present as the helper

Textausschnitt: 62/12 The revelation of the hidden God, through Moses, reveals his presence with his people; revelation and historical constitution of the people are inseparable. There is extant an interesting text, in the prophecies of Hosea, which proves beyond a doubt that this was indeed the sense in which the Israelites themselves understood the formulas of the thornbush episode. Hosea, as we have seen, diagnosed the "forgetfulness" of the people about their God and his instructions as the symptom of impending disaster. The God and the people who had been brought historically into their mutual presence through the revelations from seneh and sinai could separate again. The God who had disclosed himself as present could also withdraw; and then he would be no longer the "I will be with you," and the people would be no longer "My people." The prophet knew that the separation was already in process and would be consummated by disaster in pragmatic history, unless the people returned and remembered their God. As in the revelation to Moses the divine knowledge had embraced the actual constitution of Israel in historical time, so the revelation to Hosea embraced the actual dissolution of the people, accompanied by the external destruction of the Northern Kingdom. In order now to bring the divine foreknowledge to the knowledge of the people, Hosea chose the method of giving his son a symbolic name (1:9): (412; Fs) (notabene)
And he [Yahweh] said:
Call his name Lo-ammi [not-my-people];
for you are not my people [Io-ammi];
and I not I-am [lo-ehyeh] to you.
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64/12 The structure and date of the symbol have been clarified sufficiently to prepare the crucial question whether the ehyeh asher ehyeh can be atributed to Moses himself. An affirmative answer can be based on the close relation between the thornbush symbol and the Amon Hymns of Dynasty XIX (ca. 1320-1205 B.C.). We shall briefly establish the parallel: (412f; Fs) (notabene)
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... the ehyeh has the meaning "I will be with you"; and the Chicago translation justly paraphrases the ehyeh in 4:12 as "I will help you" - though the paraphrase destroys the structure of the text. The meaning that God will be present as the helper, furthermore, is confirmed by the instruction to Moses to tell the people: "Ehyeh has sent me to you" (3:14). The passage would have to be paraphrased: "The one who is present as your helper has sent me to you." In the light of this meaning, supported by the prophecy of Hosea, must be understood the central ehyeh asher ehyeh, usually translated as I AM WHO I AM. Unless we introduce extraneous "philosophical" categories, the text can only mean that God reveals himself as the one who is present as the helper. While the God himself is hidden (the first ehyeh) and, therefore, must reveal himself, he will be manifest whenever, and in whatever form, he chooses (the second ehyeh). (413; Fs) (notabene)

66/12 The parallel between the Yahwist and the Amon symbols is clear enough not to require elaboration. The tension between the hidden depth in God and his manifestations has been transposed, by the thornbush episode, from the form of cosmological myth to the form of revealed presence in history. Such a transposition could well have been the decisive work of Moses, if we consider the fundamental issue of his existence as it has emerged from the previous analysis, that is, the conflict between the orders of Yahweh and the Egyptian empire. It is highly probable that the revelation of the new order was couched in symbols which clearly abrogated the order of the Egyptian gods as it was understood at the time. It would be the same type of symbolic opposition that we could observe in the Abram episode of Genesis 14. The revelation could break with the cosmological experience, but it could not be communicable unless it continued the symbols while changing their meaning. The God of Moses had to make himself intelligible to his people, not only as the God of the fathers, but also as the God of the new historical dispensation in opposition to the Amon of the empire. Hence, we are inclined to attribute the symbolism of the thornbush episode to Moses; and since the Egyptian texts which supply the continuity are later than the Amarna period, a date for Moses will have to be assumed in the thirteenth century B.C. (414; Fs) (notabene)