Ulysses Essay 18 (37:9)

Chapter 3 (Proteus) Note 4

“The altar’s horns”

Thinking of the mass celebrated daily in St. Patrick’s Cathedral (and which he has escaped from, having chosen secular studies rather than a priestly life) Stephen mocks inwardly at the clergy celebrating the mass (“the choir gives back menace…the snorted Latin of jack-priests burly in their albs” (“jack-priests” – priests in name only, derived from “Jack Catholics” – Catholics in name only). He tell us that these “jack-priests” are “assisting about the altar’s horns.”

The expression “the horns of the altar” occurs a number of times in the Tanach (the Hebrew term is “karnot ha’mizbeach” – which actually can also simply denote “the corners of the altar”). In Exodus (29:12) the central role of these horns in the priestly ritual in the Sanctuary in the desert (and later in the Temple) is specified. The priests are commanded, “And you shall take of the blood of the [sacrificed] bullock and put in on the horns of the altar with your finger, and then you shall pour out the remaining blood at the base of the altar.”

With time, it became accepted that if someone had committed a killing felt to be short of outright murder (such as killing someone negligently, e.g. by a hammerhead flown off during construction work, or even carrying out a political killing on the orders of the king), the killer could seek refuge from vengeance sought by the family of the victim by entering the sanctuary and grabbing the two front “horns” of the altar. However, the circumstances of the deed still took priority. Thus in I Kings 2:28-31, we read how the newly crowned King Solomon, seeking to shore up his somewhat shaky throne, ordered the killing of his cousin, General Joab, although Joab had entered the sanctuary and had taken hold of the horns of the altar. Joab’s object in taking hold of the horns of the altar was to seek atonement for having undertaken a number of political killings which he felt had been justified as they were performed implicitly on the late King David’s behalf, but in the final analysis Solomon could not stomach the fact that Joab had supported his elder half-brother, Adoniya, in the rivalry for the throne that followed the death of their father, King David. And in fact on his deathbed King David had instructed Solomon, his chosen successor, that indeed the best course was to get rid of Joab, because he had “too much blood on his hands,” notwithstanding the general’s longtime unshakeable loyalty to the Davidic dynasty.

In modern Hebrew parlance, the expression “holding the horns of the altar” simply means to avoid giving up a position of power. In Israel it is especially frequently used in the labor and municipal fields where trade union bosses and local politicians operate Tammany Hall style to maintain power.

“Keren” thus means “horn” or “corner”, although the similarity in sound between “keren” and “corner” is to the best of my knowledge quite coincidental (“corner” comes from the Latin “cornu”, which interestingly also has the double meaning of “horn” as seen in the word “cornet”). In modern Hebrew a “keren“ usually denotes a monetary fund (adapted from the ancient use of horns for storing precious liquids) such as the Jewish National Fund (“Keren Kayemet Le’Yisrael) which was instituted by the Zionist movement at the start of the twentieth century, and which is symbolized by the “Blue Box” into which Jewish schoolchildren and adults all over the world would drop coins, to assist in buying land in Palestine (and I still recall my mother putting her coins in our “Blue Box”, emblazoned with a map of Palestine before making her Friday evening blessing on the Shabbat candles). A more mundane usage of “keren” in Israel today is on the soccer field where the word denotes the granting of a “corner” free kick to the attacking team. “Keren” also means a ray or a beam (as in light rays or X-rays or sunbeams) derived I imagine from the idea of “horns” protruding from a central nucleus, and its sunray connotation has made it a popular girl’s name in modern Israel.

From the root “keren” (a horn, and thereby a beam or a ray) we get the verb “karan” – to radiate or to shine. This usage is the basis for the well-known sculpture of Moses by Michelangelo (and other renditions of the prophet) showing him with two horns protruding from his head, the result of a mistranslation by St. Jerome in the Latin Vulgate version of the Tanach. As Moses comes down from Mount Sinai bearing the two tablets of the Law for the second time, we are told “U’Moshe lo yada ki karan or panav” (“And Moses did not know that the skin of his face sent forth beams” or “was radiant” – Exodus 34:29). St. Jerome must have read “karan” as “keren” (horn), especially as he was almost certainly using a non-vowelled edition of the Tanach in which both words would have the same three letters (Koph-Resh-Nun “K-R-N”). The Vulgate reads “And Moses knew not that his face was horned” (“cornuta” in the original Latin). Still, I wonder why Michelangelo gave Moses two horns (maybe he didn’t want Moses to be imagined as similar to Daniel’s vision of a single-horned goat: “And the goat had a prominent horn between his eyes” – Daniel 8:5).