In a previous blog post, I went out on a limb and predicted what the tablets might look like in Exodus: Gods and Kings, due to hit U.S. theaters in mid-December 2014. But I didn’t consider one important concern which could destroy the entire theory: How might Ridley Scott, the film’s director, choose to show the giving of the tablets?
This is a problematic issue, because Scott has already made statements that indicate that he is more comfortable depicting God as a force working within the boundaries of the laws of nature (though in epic proportions), rather than one who demonstrates power in supernatural ways. Bushes can catch on fire from time to time, ice pellets can fall from the sky, locusts can swarm the land, but tablets don’t fashion themselves nor are words a natural occurring element of them. Just what does a film director do with tablets “written with the finger of God”?
Ridley Scott could certainly take the easiest and safest way out: not show the giving of the Law. That was the approach taken in the made-for-television films Moses the Lawgiver (1974), starring Burt Lancaster, and Moses, (1995) starring Ben Kingsley. But Ridley Scott is not known for playing it easy or safe. Are there any options for him?
I believe there are, and the first such option was one put forward by Alan R. Millard, the Rankin Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and Ancient Semitic languages at the University of Liverpool. In “Re-creating the Tablets of the Law” (Bible Review, Feb 1994), Dr. Millard puts forward this possibility:
“…scribes working near the cliffs at the edge of the Nile valley could use flakes of stone….In fact, the land of Egypt has yielded hundreds of inscribed stone flakes…In short, inscribed stone flakes fit the description of the Tablets of the Law very well, certainly better than clay tablets of Babylonian style and far better than the large slabs of European paintings.”
Keep in mind that the Biblical text does not inform us whether or not Moses had a steady diet atop Mount Sinai, nor does it state whether or not he was in a state of reverie at the time, but it is presumed that those possibilities existed. How they may have impacted his perception of the tablets is also not known. This is not to say that Moses was crazy, nor is it to say that this phenomenon was not the work of the Lord, since one may well understand it as such.
Do I think this is what occurred on top of the mountain? Not really. Nevertheless, it is an interpretation not necessarily inconsistent with the Bible’s text, and so remains a viable alternative to showing nothing.