My longtime readers probably know that---every year during the Days of Unleavened Bread---I watch Moses movies and blog about them. Last year, Moses movies prompted me to do a little research into Egyptian religion as well as similarities between the story of baby Moses' rescue and similar stories in the ancient Near East (e.g., Sargon).
Today, I was watching the Ben Kingsley movie about Moses, and the scene in which Jethro advises Moses to set up courts so as to alleviate his (Moses') burden stood out to me. It's interesting how Moses movies that have this particular scene like to use it. In the 2006 Ten Commandments movie, Jethro (depicted by Omar Sharif) tells Moses to watch his back, as well as gives Moses an opportunity to make some profound theological points, and to relate to Jethro his relationship with God as he attempts to lead the people. The scene also allows Moses to see his wife and his son---which highlights that God chose Moses for a hard life, devoid of family, for Moses instead had to spend his time leading the people. (Of course, in the Bible, Moses had a wife who was with him on the journey, who was the object of complaints by Miriam and Aaron in Numbers 12.)
In the Moses movie starring Ben Kingsley, Jethro advises Moses to set up courts, as well as states that the Israelites need to learn to do the commandments out of choice, not because a God is threatening them. Jethro asks if Moses and the Israelites are exchanging Egyptian taskmasters on earth for a taskmaster in the heavens. At first, this may look like modern pop theology, but it actually echoes a Jewish tradition. There is a Jewish tradition that states that God actually valued the Jews' stand for him during the time of Esther more than their consent to the covenant at Sinai, for, at Sinai, they agreed to the covenant under duress---there was thunder and lightning, and, in one midrash, God was even holding Mount Sinai over their heads, threatening to drop it on them if they refused the covenant! During the time of Esther, however, the Jews affirmed their heritage, even when they were threatened with death for doing so.
But back to the story of Jethro's visit: in the movies that actually have this scene (and many do not), the scene allows for reflection on the part of the characters on what has come before, as well as presents Moses with a new insight. In the 2006 Ten Commandments movie, Moses gets to reflect on how he has interacted with God up to that point. He learns that he shouldn't exactly be so trusting of the people around him, for there are people who are seeking to overthrow him (which actually was the case in the biblical narratives). And he is hit hard with the burden of his mission. In Moses, Moses gets to tell Jethro what has occurred up to that point, and he also receives an insight about proper service to God---service that comes from choice, not force. I'm not sure how that insight plays into the rest of the movie, though.
A question that hit me as I watched the Jethro scene in Moses was this: Why does the Hebrew Bible have a scene about Jethro's visit? In a class that I took a long time ago, the teacher's assistant told us that the author of Deuteronomy 1 did not like Exodus 18's story about the foreigner Jethro being the source of Israel's court system. Okay, but why did someone invent that story in the first place? And how did John Van Seters interact with this issue, since he believes that J interacted with Deuteronomy as a source, not vice versa? Why would J take a story in which Moses came up with the court system, and say instead that it was Jethro's idea?
Van Seters addresses these questions in his Life of Moses. Van Seters states that Exodus 18 has "led to speculation about Midianite origins, not only of the courts, but of Israelite religion as a whole, the so-called Kenite hypothesis" (page 208). So why is it that some believe that Exodus 18 exists as a story in the Hebrew Bible? Because the Midianites had an influence on Israelite religion (either through Moses, or otherwise), and Exodus 18 was reflecting that fact. But Deuteronomy did not like that idea, and thus took Jethro out of the picture, according to many scholars (but not Van Seters).
For Van Seters, J (not E, in Van Seters' interpretation) transforms Deuteronomy's etiology of the Israelite court system into a story about Jethro's visit for two reasons: First, J, like his contemporary Second Isaiah, likes to stress the universalistic worship of God, and the story of a foreigner acknowledging the God of Israel after hearing of his great deeds fits well with that. (According to Van Seters, J doesn't even mind Jethro offering sacrifices in Exodus 18, for J does not believe that Aaron was a priest, but only the second-in-command. Since J regarded Jethro as the only priest in the story, of course Jethro is the one offering sacrifices!) And, second, Exodus 18 makes a connection between the later parts of the Moses story and the earlier parts. I guess that it's good to see a familiar face!
Another issue that hit me as I watched all of the Moses movies this year was the location of Mount Sinai. In the movies, Moses goes to Midian and encounters God on the holy mountain, which was in Midian. In the Ten Commandments movie starring Charlton Heston, for example, Jethro apparently is a priest because the mountain of God is in his country. Midian is located in modern Saudi Arabia. And yet, there are many people who do not believe that Sinai was there, but rather in the region between Egypt and Palestine. That would make more sense, wouldn't it? Israel goes from Egypt, to Sinai on the way to Palestine, and finally to Palestine, rather than taking a southern detour to Midian?
I recalled that James Hoffmeier addresses this issue in Ancient Israel in Sinai. Hoffmeier believes that Sinai was in the region between Egypt and Palestine. On pages 121-122, Hoffmeier addresses arguments that it was in Midian. First of all, Hoffmeier states that the Midianites moved around. We see this in the biblical narrative, in which the Midianites are in Arabah and the southern Transjordan (see Numbers 22, 25, 31). In southern Jordan, Late Bronze Midianite pottery has been found. And people could tend flocks far from home, which Hoffmeier thinks is the case in Genesis 37, in which (according to Hoffmeier) Jacob's sons graze the flocks 71.5 miles from home. Hoffmeier even says on page 142 that, "during the dry and hot summer months the Bedouin moved to the higher elevations where foliage and water could be found long after plants had dried up in the lower regions", which may "explain why Moses would be grazing his father-in-law's flocks in the area of the mountain of God (Exod. 3:1)." So Moses could be with Midianites and yet not be in Midian when he encountered God at Sinai---or he could even be away from the Midianites, as he tends their flocks outside of Midian.
This brings me to Hoffmeier's second point: Hoffmeier does not think that the Moses story says that Moses was in Midian when he encountered God at Horeb. Exodus 4:18 says that Moses went back to Jethro after the theophany, which could imply (for Hoffmeier) that Moses was returning to Midian. And, in Numbers 10:29-32, when Moses at Sinai asks Hobab (another name for his father-in-law) to serve as a guide to the Israelites in Canaan, Hobab declines, saying that he will go back to his own land and kindred. Since Hobab was away from his own land when he was at Sinai, that suggests to Hoffmeier that "Midian and Sinai were distinct but adjacent territories" (page 122).
But didn't Paul say in Galatians 4:25 that Sinai was in Arabia? How would a conservative Christian like Hoffmeier handle that? Hoffmeier argues that "the term Arabia as used in Greco-Roman times included Sinai" (page 130). That's why the "Septuagint of Genesis 46:34...locates the Land of Goshen beside or in Arabia (i.e., Sinai)" (page 130), even though Goshen was in the northeast delta, which is not what today is considered to be Arabia. On page 40, Hoffmeier provides further documentation that the region between Egypt and Palestine was called Arabia: Herodotus calls it that, and there is first millennium B.C.E. textual evidence that Arabs were in "the areas of southern Palestine and Transjordan, and Sinai." So, when Paul in Galatians 4:25 said that Mount Sinai was in Arabia, he didn't necessarily mean what we consider to be Arabia---or he does not limit "Arabia" to the land of modern Saudi Arabia.