Moses, Man of the Millennia, Mouthpiece of God

If the Old Testament had a man of the millennium award, well if they had a man of the last 4 millennia award, Moses would be the uncontested winner. In the Old Testament, Moses is the Man. Sometimes he is compared to Jesus in the New Testament, but since Jesus is fully God and fully man, that is really an apples and parakeets comparison.

His real counterpart is Paul, another mere human. Both men were educated and prepared in the highest classes of the highest civilizations of their time. They were super literate (although there is speculation that both men had speech impediments!), they never did anything half way. Oh, and they were both murderers. Well, if you want to define a person by a single action, repeated or otherwise. In fact, it has often been pointed out that most of the bible was written by three murderers: Moses, David, and Paul. And the point of that? God's redemption is greater than the vilest sin. To be fair, Moses and Paul killed on principle-they killed for social justice and zeal for God, even if they made bad calls in so doing. David killed out of less noble motives, at least in the case of Uriah. But God's grace extended even to him and his very selfish personal reason for murder.

Earlier I said that Joseph's story was a foreshadowing of the story of the Hebrews in Egypt as suffering and education there was necessary for the purposes God was calling them to. Moses is like the book end to the time of slavery in Egypt, the kind of leader Joseph was, one who would save his people by following God. Joseph saved his tribe from famine (and illiteracy). Moses delivered them from slavery. Both men enjoyed favor from royalty and developed great leadership skills among the Egyptians. So Joseph was the left bracket and Moses was the right bracket, so to speak, setting off this period of time when the people of Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt.

Moses and Paul are explicitly recorded as having exclusive, privileged, secular educations, which helped prepare them for leadership that would profoundly affect the rest of human history. Considering their respective importance for their covenants/testaments, it interests me that we have a birth narrative for Moses, but not for Paul. . .