Michelangelo's Big Mistake

I know, I know, this powerful sculpture of Moses is hardly a mistake.  It is quite magnificent.  Mose's anger is apparent.  He's returned from Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments only to find his people worshiping a golden calf.  You can see it in his eyes.  He's about to explode!  His musculature is enormous.  His beard tumbles and flows down a heaving chest.  His leadership is unquestionable.  But, oh, those horns!  What was the great Michelangelo Buonarroti thinking?

Historians claim it was not his fault.  A very poor translation of the Bible from the original Hebrew into Latin  was floating around Rome during that time.  This is what Michelangelo read:  "And when Moses came down from the Mount Sinai, he held the two tables of the testimony, and he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord."  The more accurate translation would have been "radiant" or "rays of light"; not "horns".

I'm still baffled why Michelangelo chose to believe the literal translation.  He put so much thought and time into each work of art.   This piece was commissioned in 1505 by Pope Julius II for his tomb.  My travel buddy thinks it was deliberate.  With those horns sticking out of his head, he looks like a satyr, a creature in Greek mythology who is half man, half goat.  Was he poking fun at the very religion that provided his bread and butter?

Moses can be seen at the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome.  If those horns were a mistake, whether unintentional or deliberate, it is still a masterpiece of High Renaissance Italian art.