Moses saw a burning bush
(Exodus 3)

Of course, nobody knows what Moses saw exactly. But it is curious that according to the bible, he saw an ancient symbol from another religion.

 

In Exodus 3, we read how an angel talks to Moses at Mount Horeb. It speaks “in flames of fire from within a bush”.

Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up." (Ex 3:2-3)

Stuff that isn’t consumed when it burns. Scholars have pointed out that non-consuming fire was a central symbol of the ancient Persian religion called Zoroastrianism. That’s a much older religion!

Non-consuming fire plays a prominent role in an ancient Zoroastrianistic legend about the calling of the Persian prophet Zarathushtra.

In it, Zarathushtra retreats on a mountain. Then the Gods set the mountain on fire. The fire burns for some time, but without consuming anything and without harming Zarathushtra.

This strongly suggests that whoever wrote the bible ‘borrowed’ the burning bush from Zoroastrianism and incorporated it in the bible. To people living in the Middle East in those days, non-consuming fire would have sounded familiar: a well-known supernatural thing.

Another possibility is that Moses’ encounter with the burning bush was originally a Zoroastrianistic story, which was recycled for another religion.

The bible does this all the time, theologists have pointed out. Noah’s flood, the creation story from Genesis and the river Nile turning into blood are well-known, well documented examples.

That it was a ‘bush’ Moses saw, also seems odd. The Hebrew word for ‘thorny bush’ (sene) also means ‘Sinai’.

No one knows what the author of Exodus was trying to tell us by that. Was it a nicely found piece of symbolic wordplay? Is it a coincidence? Was the author trying to say that Moses didn’t saw a bush burning – but the entire desert around him?

Marcel Hulspas: En de zee spleet in tweeen (2006)