Moses: A Life

474 Pages·1999·2.4 MB·English

by  Jonathan Kirsch

“[A] PROBING STUDY …
Unlike the familiar, granite image of Moses, Kirsch sees a man torn by
fits of violence, prone to arguing with God, marked by physical
handicaps, reluctant to be a savior.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Kirsch’s book is strengthened by both a close reading of the Torah and
his intimate knowledge of rabbinic folklore that grew up around the
biblical tale, to help fill in the famous silences in the Bible.”
—Houston Chronicle
“In Moses, Kirsch paints a fascinating picture of the biblical Moses as a
complex man subject to mood swings ranging from compassion to rage,
from piety to pomposity.”
—The Denver Post
“Even the most learned will find previously unfamiliar material
explained in a clear, intelligent and accessible fashion.… There is a
tremendous amount of fascinating material for anyone interested in
Moses and his family as well as some wonderful insights.”
—Jewish Journal
“A RAFT OF INTERESTING CONJECTURES
AND FACTS FILL THESE PAGES.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“A serious, sometimes brutal anatomy of Moses … Kirsch doesn’t gloss
over the rough stuff.… Among the best of the new crop of ‘historical
search’ writers.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune
“Books treating religious themes and written for a popular audience
seem to abound today. Many of these writers, though not biblical
scholars, are rigorous in their historical reconstruction and provide
readers biblical information that is quite enlightening. This is such a
book.… [It] brings Moses to life and makes scholarship available to a
popular audience.”
—The Bible Today
“[Kirsch expresses himself with] zeal and showmanship … skill and
sensitivity.… Kirsch is very good at providing the cultural and social
background necessary for a close reading of all the tales told of
Moses … but he’s at his very best in showing how the text of the Bible
holds together, in one compelling portrait, the many images of Moses
that compete for the reader’s attention as his life unfolds from birth to
death.… Kirsch leaves nothing out of his account, and doesn’t gloss over
any of the passages.… He distills valuable insights into the biblical
Moses out of sources as varied as the early rabbis through Baruch
Spinoza in the seventeenth century to Sigmund Freud and Martin Buber
in the twentieth.”
—Toronto Globe & Mail
From the bestselling author of The Harlot by the Side of the Road comes
an even more controversial conversation on the topic of Moses.… Kirsch
brings an intelligent perspective to the Bible as both a work of literature
and a sacred text.… As fresh and exposing as the unmasked face of
Moses himself.”
—The Jewish Transcript
“[Kirsch] reveals a Moses that will forever banish Charlton Heston’s
portrayal from the popular consciousness (and not a moment too soon).
… Kirsch’s scholarship and storytelling skill introduce us to a much more
interesting and compelling figure than we’d known before.”
—Yoga Journal

A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Ballantine Publishing Group Copyright © 1998 by Jonathan
Kirsch All rights reserved under International and
Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the
United States by The Random House Ballantine Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously
in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Random House, Inc.,
and Faber and Faber Limited for permission to reprint an excerpt from
“In Memory of Sigmund Freud” from W.H. Auden: Collected Poems by
W.H. Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson. Copyright 1940
and renewed 1968 by W.H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of
Random House, Inc., and Faber and Faber Limited.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99–90419
Maps by Mapping Specialists, Ltd.
eISBN: 978-0-30756792-5
v3.1
I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore
choose life, that thou mayest live.
—M
OSES
D 30:19
EUTERONOMY
Four hundred years of bondage in Egypt, rendered as metaphoric memory,
can be spoken in a moment; in a single sentence. What this sentence is, we
know; we have built every idea of moral civilization on it. It is a sentence that
conceivably sums up at the start every revelation that came afterward: “The
stranger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the home-born among
you, and you shall love him as yourself; because you were strangers in the
land of Egypt.”
—C O
YNTHIA ZICK
M & M
EMORY ETAPHOR

Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Map
Chapter One—The Moses No One Knows
Chapter Two—Born at the Right Time
Chapter Three—A Prince of Egypt
Chapter Four—The Fugitive
Chapter Five—The Man God Befriended, the Man He Sought to Kill
Chapter Six—Signs and Wonders
Chapter Seven—Exodus
Chapter Eight—The Sorcerer and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Chapter Nine—God of the Mountain, God of the Way
Chapter Ten—Man of War
Chapter Eleven—“Moses is Dead”
Chapter Twelve—The Search for the Historical Moses
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Endnotes
Bibliography
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
Chapter One
THE MOSES NO ONE KNOWS
God answered, “While the light of truth is not in thee Thou hast no
power to behold the mystery.”
Then Moses prayed, “O God, give me that light.…”
—J , D J
AMI IVINE USTICE
The Bible is remarkably blunt and plainspoken in telling the life story
of Moses. Unlike the sacred writings and court histories of other
figures from distant antiquity, which tend to dress up their heroes as
saints, kings, and even gods, the Bible portrays Moses with brutal
honesty and flesh-and-blood realism. Indeed, the essential impression of
Moses that we are given in the Bible—and the real genius of his
depiction at the hands of the biblical authors—is that he was born like
every other infant, grew to manhood with all the impulses and excesses
of which real men and women are capable, lived a life marked with
passions that are perfectly human, and came to a tragic end that is no
less riddled with ambiguity and contradiction than any other human life.
“There is nothing divine about Moses,” observes the eminent Bible
scholar Gerhard von Rad,1 and, as if to remind us of this crucial fact, the
Bible refers to him with a simple, sturdy, and straightforward phrase
—“the man Moses.” (Exod. 32:1, 23; Num. 12:3)
Yet much of what we think we know about Moses is simply made up,
and much of what the Bible does say about him is left out of both sacred
and secular art. When they conjured up the visions of Moses that are so
deeply familiar to us today, Renaissance artists and Hollywood moguls
alike felt at liberty to make him over into a shimmering icon—the
ultimate irony for the first iconoclast in recorded history. Even the
learned theological commentaries and richly decorated sermons of the
clergy tend to leave out the more scandalous incidents of his troubled
and tumultuous life. Ironically, some of the most intriguing details to be
found in the biblical account of Moses never find their way into art and
literature, sermons and Sunday school lessons, and what is invented is