27 November—Everything sounds better in Latin. Probably because it’s God’s primary language and the one he spake unto Moses. That’s why we often see the Ten Commandments pictured as twin tablets—usually rectangles with rounded tops—with Roman numerals rather than Hebrew letters (which, like I,V, X, L,C,D, and M, also represent numbers) substituted for the commandments.

It’s a pretty safe, if heretical, assumption that Moses smashed the first set of sapphire or lapis lazuli tablets God gave him all the way up on Mount Sinai not because he caught his followers worshipping a golden calf, but because he couldn’t read Latin. Luckily, God took pity on the old guy and translated everything into Hebrew for the second set of tablets.

Moses is thought to have been at least 80 when the Ten Commandments incident occurred, by the way. And living on high-carb, low-nutrition matzo for all those years didn’t help his health. In fact, he’s lucky to have made it to 80, let alone into his ninth decade.

So there may be something to the belief—regarded as apocryphal by conventional scholars—that God actually gave Moses 15 commandments, but tired, weak old Moses couldn’t manage to carry three big stones down the mountain all by himself, so he either dropped the one that contained XI to XV on the way down or simply left it with God to give to a younger man. Come to think of it, how did the old guy even make it up Mount Sinai?

Why, you may wonder, did it take 40 years for Moses to lead his followers to the Promised Land? The direct route from Cairo to Canaan, after all, is less than 300 miles. There again, the map Moses relied on was drawn on a round papyrus that he inadvertently kept turning around every time he checked it and the only travel directions available at the time were in Latin, which he couldn’t read. Makes sense.

In all events, we know for certain that Moses tried to do all he could. Or the right thing—whichever you prefer. But since he stubbornly refused to learn Latin, the language of the Promised Land (naturally), and was too old to be taught new tricks anyway, he was denied migrant status. Of course, his faithful flock stuck by the old guy and also couldn’t make it past immigration.

Except, of course, Caleb and Joshua, who had worked on their Latin religiously from the time they left Egypt. They were able to achieve enough fluency over 40 years to impress (or fool) the border guards.

So the moral of this homily is, “Για να φτάσεις οπουδήποτε, πρέπει να καταλάβεις λατινικά.” Whoops. That’s Greek to me. But it means, “To get anywhere, you must understand Latin.”