In human history great
leaders attract great legends. The
details of their lives, often irretrievable, remain with us as the creation of
an imaginative mind, either to destroy these leaders or to elevate them to new heights. For
the Romans, Attila, the Hun (5th cent. CE), was a “scourge of god,” a
symbol of cruelty. On the other hand, Moses, in the Western world, stands for
law and wisdom.
Recently I was reading about the famous-- or maybe
infamous--Russian queen, the great Catherine II (1729-1796), who was the subject
of unbelievable legends that circulated for years in literary circles. Born a
minor German princess, Catherine, at the age of 15, was married to the grand
Duke, Peter of Russia. When she turned 33, she overthrew her insane husband in
a bloodless coup, and established herself as the Empress of Russia. During her
reign, the country expanded, prospered, schools were opened, laws enacted, and
many wars won, including the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by Russian forces in 1768.
After her death however, a number of incredible legends began to circulate:
that she had an excessive appetite for sex, that she had a sexual intercourse
with a stallion, that she was the illegitimate mother of Eva, the daughter of a
false Jewish-Messiah Jacob Frank, that she died on the toilet when her seat
broke, etc.
In human history she is not the only one. The Bible tells us
that, though king David began his life as a country thug (I Sam 22), he quickly
became a national hero, by defeating the valiant Goliath, the Philistine (I Sam.
17) (but in another passage, the Bible says, it was not David, but Elhanan who
killed Goliath; cf. II Sam. 21: 19) and by unifying both Judah and
Israel. Eventually, he was viewed as the messianic figure that will come at the
end of time to save humanity (Isa. 11; Jer. 23). In Jewish life, all
messianic contenders, from Jesus to Rabbi Sabbatai Zevi of Turkey (17th
cent.), have claimed to be of Davidic line.
And what do we know of Moses? The Bible tells us that he was
the great liberator of the Jews in Egypt, the legislator to whom God revealed
the entire Torah on Mt. Sinai, and, according to the sages later on, even all the
teachings of the rabbis who lived centuries after him (Shemot Rabba, 28:
6). In reality, the story of Moses’ birth seems to have developed very
much like the birth of the Assyrian king, Sargon the great (3rd
millennium BCE), including the detail of how he was placed in a basket and found
in a river by a young woman (See text, ANET, 119).
The observation that great leaders attract great legends does
not, in my opinion, deny the reality that these important leaders of the past (like,
Moses, David, Solomon, Jesus and others) lived but it highlights the fact that
the details of their lives cannot be verified. The kernel of truth we have about
them cannot be taken as historically reliable. Their descendants saw greatness
in them and attributed to them fundamental teachings that still govern our
lives.
Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D.
Jan. 2014.
