Art historians love to debate the horns of Moses. Michelangelo’s famous statue of Moses at Saint Peter in Chains in Rome depicts Moses with two horns. Most claim that the horns of Moses go back to Saint Jerome’s “translation error” in the Latin Vulgate. I’d like to challenge that assumption. Not only did Saint Jerome have reason to translate the horns of Moses, Michelangelo had reason to carve them.
In the photo above you can see the horns of Moses. The horns come from the Vulgate version of Exodus 34:
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. And Aaron and the children of Israel seeing the face of Moses horned, were afraid to come near.” (Exodus 34:29–30, D-R)
Most interpreters say that this should be translated not as “horned” but as “his face shone.” The idea being that his face glowed with the residual glory of the Lord.
