More Apologetics...

I've been reading a fascinating post over at DovBear about Moshe marrying a Cushite woman. And the point isn't even so much the story itself, but how it changed between the time when Josephus, the noted Jewish historian of Roman times, wrote about it, and the time of the author of Sefer HaYashar, who wrote many centuries later. In DovBear's own words:

"Close readers will notice that the Sefer Hayashar's account differs from the story Josephes tells in one crucial detail. According to J, Moshe and his Ethiopian hottie lived as husband and wife. Sefer Hayashar, written 9-14 centuries later, says the marriage was never consummated. What explains the change? Did the author of the Sefer Hayashar doctor the tradition to fit medieval sensibilities? Perhaps. The audience that knew Josephus would have been less likely to object to an interracial marriage. Readers of the Sefer Hayashar, on the other hand, would have been scandalized."

And so, as time slowly crept by, the story had to change to fit the image of how people began to perceive Moshe Rabbeinu, not as a man, but closer to an angel, or a god since he began to be perceived as infallible...And this, folks, takes away from, rather than adding to the greatness of Moshe Rabbeinu. As I've mentioned before, I'd much rather see all these Gedolim, historic and present, as fallible beings who make mistakes rather than as godlike beings who are completely infallible and actually incapable of being wrong and making mistakes. Seeing them as fallible human beings means they are an example we can look to and use in our own life; whereas if they are as angelic or godlike, how can we live up to that? What hope have we of emulating them, and even learning from their mistakes, if they were indeed infallible? Wouldn't one think, logically, that the Torah and Nach include these stories of their fallibility in order from us to learn from it? Wouldn't that make more sense than somehow finding a contrived way to tell us these people, these human beings, were completely infallible?