St. Paul’s “Jannes and Jambres” were a pair of Reubenite brothers
by Damien F. Mackey “Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected”. 2 Timothy 3:8 Jannes and Jambres not Egyptians The tendency, a natural one, is to suspect that the two characters to whom St. Paul refers in 2 Timothy 3:8, “Jannes and Mambres [Jambres]”, were Egyptians (e.g., magicians) who had ‘resisted Moses to his face’ when Moses was still back in the land of Egypt. Here it will be suggested, instead, that the pair were Israelite troublemakers for Moses, whose bitter opposition to the great man would lead to their terrible demise. In the course of my attempts over the years to set Moses in an historical Egyptian setting I have generally tried also to take into account “Jannes and Mambres” as Moses’ conte...