Friday, June 29, 2012

Moses and Greco-Egyptian magic

JARED CALAWAY has a post on the post-biblical pagan Moses tradition at Antiquitopia: Moses and Greco-Egyptian Practices: Contextualizing the Christian Moses. In brief:
In this post, I would like to delve a little deeper in the Moses of the Greek and Demotic Magical Papyri: a Moses to be emulated; a Moses who belongs to an environment where his name had value and influence even beyond Jewish and Christian circles, and whose experiences upon the mountain provided a model to emulate as you, too, could call upon and see God on the mount.
Incidentally, The Eighth Book of Moses in PGM 13 has been translated by Todd Klutz for the first volume of texts from the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project (working title: Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures). Should be out in the autumn.