English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Agentive Play Of Bishop Henry Yates Satterlee, Richard Benjamin Crosby

Faculty Publications

The epigraph comes from the section of the Pentateuch in which Moses descends Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments and communicates the will of God to the children of Israel. God has been speaking with Moses for forty days and nights and has conferred on him the authority to serve as revelator and prophet of the children of Israel. In this passage, Moses has become the literal conveyance for God's word, a conduit for the divine Logos. Perhaps the detail that gets the least attention in this familiar story is Moses's veil. The image suggests a deliberate self-effacement. The veil, …