Review by Booklist Review
Kirsch meticulously distills the vast secondary literature that has grown up around the sparse biblical material on Moses. He draws on the myths, legends, and midrashim of Moses to soften ragged edges left by competing images of him as warrior, magician, shepherd, God's favorite, sorcerer's apprentice, and reluctant prophet. He wavers between a dispassionate historicism, intent on cutting through "secondary accretions" to get at "the kernel of genuine tradition," and a symbolic approach in which it is not so much Moses as the "values" he represents that matter. Finally, he leans toward the latter approach, which he says embraces the truth found in myth, legend, and poetry, rather than trying to ascertain what "really" happened. Yet, like Freud (whose pseudoscientific treatment of Moses is an obvious source of fascination), Kirsch has chosen to write a biography rather than a historical novel. A novel might better sustain the competing images of Moses and the unpredictable deity who befriended him, but the historical approach will better please serious though nonspecialist readers of all sorts. (Reviewed October 1, 1998)0345412699Steven Schroeder
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Kirsch's treatment is less a biography of Moses than a meticulous distillation of the considerable secondary literature that has grown up around the sparse biblical material. Kirsch (The Harlot By the Side of the Road) draws extensively on the various theories elaborated by biblical scholars over the past centuries to explain multiple accounts of Moses' life. He also draws extensively on myths, legends and midrashim that have been woven around the figure of Moses, who figures, in various interpretations, as warrior, magician, shepherd, God's favorite, sorcerer's apprentice and reluctant prophet. Kirsch offers interesting speculation on Moses's identity, including the depth of his connection to Egypt, and on the power struggles that he believes underlie the patchwork narrative of Hebrew scripture. He also notes the succession of strong women who intervene on Moses's behalf, and he pays careful attention to the struggle between Miriam (who was a priestess in her own right) and Moses. Ultimately, Kirsch's Moses emerges less as a presence than an absenceÄbut an absence that determines the structure of the whole narrative around him. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A journalist and amateur biblical exegete proclaims as striking news what diligent readers of that ancient text have long known: that its tales include many that appear to violate its own moral teachings. Kirsch (Harlot by the Side of the Road, 1997) retells the biblical stories of Moses, from the Exodus account of his birth to Deuteronomy's last verses on his death. But readers who expect from the misleading subtitle a historically grounded biography will be disappointed. What Kirsch achieves instead is a curious syncretism of views of Moses from sources that do not often speak to each other, including the Bible itself (and its traditional midrashic elaborators); ancient Hellenistic interpreters (principally Philo of Alexandria); modern academic exegetes (Elias Auerbach, Martin Noth, Gerhard yon Rad, et al.); and Freud. To juxtapose such unlikely bedfellows casually is provocative. To do so without regard for history or interpretive context is misleading. For example, in discussing the Burning Bush episode, when Moses first meets God, Kirsch asserts that Philo (in contrast to Jewish midrash and modern exegesis) ""insisted on reading the whole incident . . . as metaphorical,"" as though allegory were not the stock-in-trade of Philo and his Jewish Hellenistic colleagues. Part of Kirsch's hope in exhibiting such an array of interpretive voices is to show readers how much pietistic views of Moses owe to idealizing, post-biblical interpreters (like Philo) and how little to the actual biblical text, where Moses can come across as angry, unforgiving, and even murderous. But for whom is this newsworthy, except the audience of biblical illiterates that Kirsch must be counting on as readers for his unveiling of ""the real Moses--the Moses no one knows""? Discounting its grandiose self-image, this book can serve as an undemanding introduction to biblical narrative and its diverse interpreters. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
