Horns of Moses

The Horns of Moses are an iconographic convention common in Latin Christianity whereby Moses was presented as having two horns on his head, later replaced by rays of light. The idea comes from a translation, or mis-translation, of a Hebrew term in Jerome's Latin Vulgate Bible, and many later vernacular translations dependent on that. Moses is said to be "horned", or radiant, or glorified, after he sees God who presents him with the tablets of the law in the Book of Exodus.

The use of the term "horned" to describe Moses in fact predates Jerome, and can be traced to the Greek Jewish scholar Aquila of Sinope (fl. 130), whose Greek translations were well known to Jerome. The Hebrew qāran may reflect an allegorical concept of "glorified", or rings of light. Horns tend to have positive associations in the Old Testament, and in ancient Middle Eastern culture more widely, but are associated with negative forces in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. These considerations may have influenced the translators in their choices, for Aquila as a positive, or for Jerome, as a negative.

Moses with horns probably first appears in visual depictions in the eleventh century. These portrayals continue to compete with unhorned depictions of Moses through the medieval and Renaissance periods. Many are clearly positive depictions, as a prophet and precursor to Jesus. Other depictions of Moses, horned and unhorned, are likely to have had antisemitic connotations, especially in the later medieval period, for example, on the Hereford Mappa Mundi. Associations between Jews and devils were established, and a belief that Jews possessed horns developed, including through the badges or hats featuring horns they were mandated to wear; it may have been hard for the images of a horned Moses and the "horned" Jew to have been kept apart in the popular imagination. Horned Moses iconography may have reinforced the idea that Jews have horns.

Michelangelo's horned Moses of c. 1513–1515 comes at the end of the tradition of this depiction, and is generally seen as a positive depiction of the prophet, if containing an animalistic or demotic element. Awareness of flaws in the Vulgate translation spread in the later Middle Ages, and by about 1500 it was realized in scholarly circles that "horned" was a mistranslation. Horns were often replaced by two bunches of rays of light, springing from the same parts of the head, as seen in the 1481–1482 Moses frescoes in the Sistine Chapel or on the 1544 Mosesbrunnen fountain in Bern, Switzerland. These remained common until the 19th century. Artists often ignored the idea that Moses' rays were given to him when he received the tablets of the law, and by the 19th century some images of the infant Moses in scenes of the Finding of Moses and Moses in the Bullrushes feature the rays.

Depictions of a horned Moses stem from the description of Moses' face as "cornuta" ("horned") in the Latin Vulgate translation of the passage found at Exodus chapter 34, specifically verses 29, 30 and 35, in which Moses returns to the people after receiving the commandments for the second time. The Catholic Douay–Rheims Bible (1609) translates the Vulgate as, "And when Moses came down from the Mount Sinai, he held the two tables of the testimony, and he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord." This was Jerome's effort to faithfully translate the difficult, original Hebrew text, which uses the term קָרַן‎, qāran (based on the root, קֶרֶן‎ qeren, which often means "horn"); the term is now interpreted to mean "shining" or "emitting rays" (somewhat like horns). The Anglican King James or Authorised Version of only a few years later has no horns, but a shining face "… when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him."

The usual view in recent centuries has been that Jerome made an outright error, but it has recently been argued that Jerome regarded qeren as a metaphor for "glorified", based on other commentaries he wrote, including one on Ezekiel, where he wrote that Moses' face had "become 'glorified', or as it says in the Hebrew, 'horned'." The use of the term "horned" in fact predates Jerome, and was contained in existing translations he is known to have worked with, especially that of Aquila from Hebrew to Greek; other translations used included the alternative "glorified". Medjuck argues that "horned" is a metaphorical or allegorical concept relating to glory in both Jerome's translation and Jewish tradition, which Jerome was familiar with.

Another interpretation was that qeren also represented 'rings of light' as when Moses became enlightened after his journey. The Greek Septuagint, which Jerome also had available, translated the verse as "Moses knew not that the appearance of the skin of his face was glorified." Medieval theologians and scholars believed that Jerome had intended to express a glorification of Moses' face, by his use of the Latin word for "horned." The understanding that the original Hebrew was difficult and was not likely to actually mean "horns" developed during the Renaissance.

The cultural historian Stephen Bertman argues that Jerome is known himself to have held antisemitic views, and may have made the choice to associate Moses with "horns" consciously for theological reasons. Bertman argues that for Aquila, as a Jew, "horns" as presented in the Old Testament, would have generally positive associations, but that Jerome could have expected his readers to have in mind the New Testament association of horns with dragons, wild beasts and the antichrist in Revelation. Given that Moses was the holder of the old, now replaced, law, it may have been preferable to Jerome to portray him in a negative light. Furthermore, implying that Moses' face was "glorified" would imply an association with Jesus, and place the Old Law on a parallel with the new. Thus Bertman concludes Jerome may simply have been acting on his own biases and theological preferences.