The Pentateuch concludes with the death of Moses:
And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the
mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against
Jericho. And the Lord shewed him all the land of Gilead, unto
Dan. And all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh,
and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea, And the south,
and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm
trees, unto Zoar. And the Lord said unto him, This is the land
which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob,
saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to
see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither. So
Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab,
according to the word of the Lord.
(Deuteronomy 34:1-5)
Pisgah, a Hebrew word meaning "summit" or "peak," refers to a
mountain ridge east of the Dead Sea, and to Mount Nebo within
that range. God takes Moses to the top of the peak, shows him
the Palestinian lands that he has promised to his chosen
people, and informs him that he will not be among them when
they end their 40 years of wandering and begin a new settled
life. Moses dies at the age of 120, and the Torah ends with an
assessment of the prophet's importance: "And there arose not a
prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew
face to face. In all the signs and the wonders, which the Lord
sent him to do in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his
servants, and to all his land, And in all that mighty hand,
and in all the great terror which Moses shewed in the sight of
all Israel" (34:10-12).
Aeolus has introduced a symbolic equivalence between
Ireland and Israel, and the stirring speech of John F. Taylor
recited by Professor MacHugh develops this analogy. The speech
advocates for "the revival of the Irish tongue" by imagining
what Moses would have said to Egyptians demanding, "Why
will you jews not accept our culture, our religion and our
language?" When Moses comes down from Sinai "bearing
in his arms the tables of the law, graven in the language of
the outlaw," he represents symbolically the political
aspirations of the people of Ireland and the artistic
aspirations of James Joyce, who was poised to put Ireland on
the cultural map by writing the epic of his race in a new kind
of language. Stephen's little story of two Irish women gazing
up at the statue of the English conqueror is a down payment on
the representation of ordinary Irish lives that would
eventually become Ulysses.
The spinsters' high station atop Nelson's pillar corresponds
to Moses's high vantage atop a mountain, and when they reach
the viewing platform the two women scan the geography of
Dublin for its prominent (and possibly
resistance-associated) Catholic churches, just as Moses
surveys the Palestinian lands in which his people will find
freedom and self-determination: "They see the roofs and argue
about where the different churches are: Rathmines' blue dome,
Adam and Eve's, saint Laurence O'Toole's." After they do this,
Florence and Anne settle themselves on their petticoats and
turn their gaze in a new direction, "peering up" at the statue
of Lord Nelson. This upward gaze has no precedent in
Deuteronomy 34, but it does have a possible explanation. By
lifting up their skirts and exposing themselves in a sexually
suggestive manner to the English admiral, the old women are performing a
certain kind of magical spell to cast out the evil
presence of the English.
If Joyce's "Parable" does imply apotropaic magic, then it may
also contain a second linkage with the biblical Pisgah. In a
personal communication, Alexander Medvedev points out that
Numbers 23 mentions Pisgah in connection with the casting of
spells. Chapters 22-24 of Numbers tell how Balak, the king of
Moab, three times asks the prophet Balaam to help him defeat
the Israelites by casting a curse on them. Each time, Balaam
privately consults God and comes back with the message that
God has decided to bless the Israelites, so a curse cannot
work. The second attempt takes place on Pisgah: "And he
brought him into the field of Zophim, to the top of Pisgah,
and built seven altars, and offered a bullock and a ram on
every altar" (23:14). This passage in the Hebrew Bible is much
less well known than Moses's "Pisgah Sight of Palestine,"
but it is extremely interesting that the peak also functions
as a place from which a curse may be cast to defeat a hated
enemy.
If one supposes that Joyce knew this second passage, then the
idea that Stephen's two spinsters may be performing apotropaic
magic on the English military becomes virtually certain. In
this case, Stephen's linkage of two alternate titles––Pisgah
Sight of Palestine, Parable of the Plums––would make perfect
sense. From the top of their tower, the two wise virgins are
surveying the promised land of an independent Ireland and
casting out the hated conqueror.
