Uses and Abuses of Moses: Literary Representations since the Enlightenment [1 ed.] 026804502X, 9780268045029

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USES AND ABUSES OF M OSE S

U S E S and A BU S E S of M O S E S Literary Representations since the Enlightenment

Theo dore Z iol kow s ki

          ,    

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu Copyright © 2016 by the University of Notre Dame All Rights Reserved Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ziolkowski, Theodore. Title: Uses and abuses of Moses : literary representations since the Enlightenment / Theodore Ziolkowski. Description: Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015047532 | ISBN 9780268045029 (hardback) ISBN 9780268098520 (web pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Moses (Biblical leader)—In literature. | European literature—History and criticism. | American literature—History and criticism. | Literature, Modern—History and criticism. | BISAC: LITERARY CRITICISM / General. Classification: LCC PN57. M65 Z56 2016 | DDC 809/.93351—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015047532

For my sister-in-law

        , who found a home sixty years ago in her beloved Israel,

    

C O N T E N T S

Preface ix Introduction 1 . Nineteenth-Century Evolutions  . Postfigurations of Moses

29

71

. Fin-de-Siècle Variations

93

. The Jewish Renaissance

117

. Moses Viewed Askance

133

. Politicizations of the Twenties

161

 . Fresh Starts in the Forties

203

. Denominational Moses . The Fifties and Beyond

233 251

. Toward the Twenty-First Century

281

Conclusion 307 Notes 315 Chronological List of Works Treated 331 Bibliography 335 Index 347

P R E F A C E

Over forty years ago, in Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus (1972), I discussed twenty twentieth-century novels in which the pattern of the Gospels prefigures the lives of modern heroes exemplifying ideologies ranging from Christian Socialism to Marxism and in styles ranging from mythic to parodistic. After that biblical and even Mosaic interval, it seems only fitting to turn with similar aspirations to Jesus’ typological counterpart and the most popular hero in the Hebrew Bible. Contrary to the earlier history of the story as related by Jan Assmann in his brilliant Moses the Egyptian (1997), it is no longer the case that “the Moses-Egypt story is told not by poets but by scholars” (17). Indeed, Moses has been treated more frequently in literature and art than any other Old Testament figure. Moses, the liberator of the Israelites and their principal lawgiver, is not only mentioned more often (eighty times) in the New Testament than any other figure from the Hebrew Bible, which is commonly known as the Old Testament. He also prefigures Jesus just as Jesus prefigured the modern protagonists discussed in my earlier work. Like Jesus (and other mythic heroes — Sargon the Great, Heracles, Oedipus, Romulus and Remus—threatened at birth with death) Moses was rescued shortly after birth from a ruler who ordered the death of all newborn male children. He too emerged transfigured from his encounter with God on a mountain. Both magically fed the multitudes: Jesus with loaves and fishes and Moses with quail and manna from heaven. Just as Jesus transformed water into wine at the wedding of Cana, Moses produced water from a stone by striking it with his rod. Both controlled the waters: Jesus by walking upon the lake and Moses by dividing the waters of the sea. And Jesus saw himself as the fulfiller of Moses’ law. The modern novels dealing with Jesus are almost exclusively postfigurations, that is, modern actions based on the pattern of the Gospels. Most of the Moses fictions, in contrast and for reasons discussed in the following chapters, are historical novels in which modern ideologies are ix

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imposed retrospectively upon the ancient actions reported in the Pentateuch or, as they are also known, the Books of Moses or Torah. Yet the lives of both these preeminent biblical heroes, of Christianity and Judaism respectively, present patterns upon which the most urgent contemporary concerns can readily be imposed. It is my project in the following chapters to understand how this is accomplished in these fictional “mirrors of Moses” (one of my discarded titles). I have been living in daily contact with Moses for some fifteen years through the painting Moses and the Burning Bush, by the Israeli artist David Avisar, which hangs in our dining room, and a Karshi figurine of Moses with the Tables of Law standing on my desk. Prior to that, for many years I sat in the Princeton University Chapel while Moses, holding the Tables of Law under his left arm, gazed sternly down from his stainedglass window at entering freshmen and graduating seniors — and presumably also at the faculty and administration. In more recent years I have admired the striking bas-relief images of Moses receiving the Tables of Law and Miriam at the well, designed and executed by the sculptor John Goodyear, that adorn the granite walls flanking the entrance to the Jewish Center in Princeton, which I pass several times a week on my evening strolls. (A third relief, on another wall, not visible from the entrance, depicts the rescue of the infant Moses.) While all these visible representations provide ample opportunity for reflection, the literary potentialities of the topic first occurred to me when, in a wholly different context, I had reason to study closely the libretto and music for Arnold Schönberg’s opera Moses und Aron, which is discussed in chapter 6. The composer-librettist’s innovative adaptation of the biblical text alerted me to the possibilities of the story, which up to then I had known only in its pentateuchal form—and in its treatment by Cecil B. DeMille. As I looked further, I became aware of an extensive body of literary works that exploit the story of Moses for a variety of ideological purposes. That led me, in turn, to the different interpretations of the history (or legend) over the course of the centuries, which I survey in the introduction. The following chapters take up, in a loosely chronological order, the works, principally but by no means exclusively in German and English, that reflect various ideological and historical circumstances of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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No study of this sort can be exhaustive. I am already aware, notably through entries in the Encyclopaedia Judaica (14:540– 42), of several works that were either unavailable to me or whose language I am unable to read. But, with almost a hundred works in various languages treated, I have aspired to a representative thoroughness down to my cutoff date of 2012. I found an unanticipated wealth and variety of treatments, ranging from operas to brief poems, from poetic dramas to lengthy novels, from verse epics to parodistic short stories—treatments that expose a profusion of ideological views of Moses, from the most devout to the wholly secular, from the religious to the political. In general, I have retained the spelling of biblical names, whenever they are self-evident, as used by the various authors in their different languages: Zipporah, for instance, appears variously as Sefira, Sippora, Ciphora, Tsippora, and Zeforah, among others. In the rare cases of possible confusion I have added the standard English form in parentheses. I have also retained, from case to case, the various designations for the Hebrew deity. As for Moses—whose name also occurs as Mose, Moïse, Moshe, Moyseh, and Ptahmose—I have indicated the form used by the respective authors but, for stylistic smoothness, have recurred to “Moses” in my own narrative. All quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the editions cited in the bibliography. All translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own. For translations of verse I have included the original in parentheses or brackets.

I am grateful to Stephen Little, acquisitions editor at the University of Notre Dame Press, for his initial interest in my project and for his encouraging support throughout. Thanks to his initiative I benefited from the insight of two highly knowledgeable reviewers —John D. Barbour of St. Olaf College and an anonymous reader—whose comments and queries enabled me to improve and clarify my manuscript. Rebecca R. DeBoer, managing editor of the manuscript editorial department at the Press, escorted me patiently through the editorial process. I appreciate in particular the perceptive and sensitive attention that Sheila Berg devoted to my manuscript. Susan Berger kept me fully informed about the details of marketing and promotions.

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For this project I am indebted more than usual to friends and colleagues with whom I have discussed it. My onetime student, Alan Keele of Brigham Young University, reassured me about my treatment of the Mormon author Orson Scott Card. Siegmar Doepp, professor emeritus of Göttingen University and a distinguished scholar of late Latin literature, called my attention to the sixteenth-century biblical epics with which I was unfamiliar. Ritchie Robertson of Oxford University reminded me of a crucial essay by Gottfried Benn that I had overlooked. Jeffrey L. Sammons of Yale University sent me his informative article on Louis Untermeyer, the “American Heine.” Helen Leneman shared information about her forthcoming book on Moses and music. Georges Nataf responded generously to my query about names in his novel. Dietrich Steen of the Gütersloher Verlagshaus provided helpful information regarding copyrights for Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s works. As usual my family has been my primary source of reference. My daughter, Margaret Ziolkowski, professor of Slavic languages at Miami University, discussed with me the standing of the Ukrainian poet Ivan Franko. My son Jan Ziolkowski, professor of medieval Latin at Harvard University, helped me over some linguistic hurdles of late classical Latin. My son Eric Ziolkowski, professor of religious studies at Lafayette College, who took a continuing and professionally knowledgeable interest in my project, provided me with numerous references and helpful information. As always, of course, it was my wife, Yetta, who had to bear with me patiently through the highs and lows of research, reading, and composition while offering invariably incisive comments, criticism, and encouragement. Theodore Ziolkowski Princeton, New Jersey

Introduction U      A  A quick glance at Google generates a multitude of references comparing Moses and Hitler. In a YouTube oration Jakob Bösch calls them “brothers in spirit.”1 William P. Meyers writes that “Adolf Hitler could well be said to have been the Moses of Germany.”2 A respected scholar of religion suggests that Thomas Mann’s Moses amounts to “a dark parody of Hitler.”3 Dozens of other examples may be found. Hitler himself does not often condescend to cite Moses by name. In the remarkable documentation of his anti-Semitism recorded by Dietrich Eckart he speaks contemptuously of various figures from what he calls “the Bible of hatred”: “old Jacob,” “the grain profiteer Joseph” (der Getreidewucherer), “the whore Rahab,” and Moses, who led the “rabble” (Pöbelvolk) with all their “stolen stuff” (zusammengestohlenes Zeug) out of Egypt and consolidated them with the proto-Communist cry, “Proletarians of all lands, unite!”4 In his anti-Semitic diatribes Hitler repeatedly asserts that Judaism is not a religion but a race: “The Mosaic religion is nothing other than a theory for the preservation of the Jewish race.”5 Shortly after becoming chancellor in the newly elected National Socialist regime, Hitler railed against “the God of the deserts, that crazed, stupid, vengeful Asiatic despot with his powers to make laws” and predicted (implicitly as a new Moses), “The day will come when I shall hold up against these commandments the tables of a new law. And history will recognize our movement as the great battle for humanity’s liberation, a liberation from the curse of Mount Sinai.”6

1

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Uses and Abuses of Moses

Why cite these allusions, which many people find offensive? Because they illustrate vividly the manner in which the biblical figure of Moses can be co-opted for ideological purposes, ranging, as we shall see, from religious to secular, from socialist to fascist, from the historical to the psychological, and shifting from generation to generation to reflect the most urgent concerns of the times. During the very years when Hitler was ranting against Moses and the Jews, Winston Churchill published a remarkable account, “Moses: The Leader of a People” (1932), in which he called Moses “the greatest of the prophets,” “the national hero,” and “the supreme law-giver” (299– 301).7 Churchill assures us that “all these things happened just as they are set out according to Holy Writ” and insists that Moses was a historical man, “one of the greatest of human beings,” rejecting scornfully “all those learned and laboured myths that Moses was but a legendary figure upon whom the priesthood and the people hung their essential social, moral, and religious ordinances” (310). Yet he retells the Bible story in wholly modern and rational terms. According to Churchill, the rapidly expanding band of nomads who, centuries earlier, had sought asylum in Egypt “had become a social, political, and industrial problem,” and “a wave of anti-Semitism swept across the land” (300). Reduced to the capacity of state serfs, “their ceaseless multiplication became a growing embarrassment. There was a limit to the store depots that were required, and the available labourers soon exceeded the opportunities for their useful or economic employment. The Egyptian government fell back on birth control” (301). The child Moses is adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, “but he is no Egyptian, no child of the sheltered progeny of the Nile valley. The wild blood of the desert, the potent blood of Beni Israel not yet mingled with the Hittite infusions, is in his veins” (302). When he sees an Egyptian beating an Israelite, “the call of blood surges in him. He slays the Egyptian amid the loud and continuing applause of the insurgents of the ages” (303). Pharaoh had to act. “Very likely Egyptian public opinion — and there is always public opinion where there is the slightest pretence of civilization—fixed upon this act of violence as a final proof that the weakness of the government toward these overweening strangers and intruders had reached its limit” (303).

Introduction

3

There is no need to recapitulate the remainder of the familiar story, which Churchill continues to relate in modernizing terms—and often with a sense of personal identification. About the sojourn among the Midianites: “Every prophet has to come from civilization, but every prophet has to go into the wilderness” for periods of isolation and meditation (304). When Moses returns to Egypt, “great interest attaches to the behaviour of Pharaoh. Across the centuries we feel the modernity of his actions” (305). When the first mild plagues tempt him to let the Israelites depart, “this serious concession arrested all his building plans and caused considerable derangement in the economic life of the country. It was very like a general strike” (306). When the Israelites had departed, the resentment among the Egyptians, “combined with the regrets of the government at the loss of so many capable labourers and subjects, constituted a kind of situation to which very few Parliaments of the present age would be insensible” (308). Churchill goes on to account rationally for the various miracles: “Everyone knows that the pollution of rivers, the flies, frogs, lice, sandstorms, and pestilence among men and cattle, are the well-known afflictions of the East. The most skeptical person can readily believe that they occurred with exceptional frequency at this juncture. The strong north wind which is said to have blown back the waters of the Red Sea may well have been assisted by a seismic and volcanic disturbance” (309). But to Churchill’s mind, “all these purely rationalist and scientific explanations only prove the truth of the Bible story” (309). He concludes his essay, which contains unmistakable subjective elements— for instance, his own speech impediment and his service in the “wilderness” of India, Sudan, and South Africa—with a peroration on the historicity of Moses, prophet, national hero, and lawgiver, and the truth of the biblical account. Almost half a century later another writer offered “Moses: Portrait of a Leader” (1976).8 But Elie Wiesel’s version, which borrows heavily from Midrashic legends and Hasidic tales, features a more specifically Jewish leader than Churchill’s. “Moses remains a living figure,” he writes in his introduction (xi). “The calls he issued long ago to a people casting off its bonds reverberate to this day and we are bound by his laws. Were it not for his memory, which encompasses us all, the Jew would not be Jewish, or more precisely, he would have ceased to exist” (xi– xii). Like Churchill,

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Uses and Abuses of Moses

he accepts the truth of the biblical account but makes no effort to rationalize the miracles, which he simply skips. He sometimes offers surprising new motivations. His Moses flees to the Midian following his slaying of the brutal overseer—not out of fear of Pharaoh, whose anger he could easily have assuaged, but out of disappointment because his act had been betrayed by the very Jew he saved (188– 89). He is dismayed on his return to Egypt to discover that the oppressed Jews want to remain slaves until a number of non-Jewish slaves and Egyptians decide to join the movement (192). After the disaster with the golden calf “Moses’ outbursts of anger, even his abdication are understandable. This people he had chosen never gave him anything but worries” (196), yet he never lost faith in his people. Wiesel’s Moses, whom he calls “Moshe Rabbénu, our Master Moses” (182), has a passion for social justice and possesses organizational genius, but “unlike the founders of other religions or great leaders in other traditions, Moses is depicted as human, both great and fallible” (182). And unlike many mythic heroes, he has “no supernatural powers, no passion for the occult” (202). Why, then, did Wiesel write about Moses? For his contemporary relevance: “Jewish history unfolds in the present” (xi). His account begins with two nonbiblical legends, both concerning death: Moses’ curiosity about the death agonies of Rabbi Akiba; and his refusal to accept death when his own hour comes. “The reader cannot help but be troubled by Moses’ violent passion for life” (180). Toward the end of his narrative Wiesel returns to his initial question: “Why was Moses so attached to life, to the point of opposing God’s will?” (201). It was, Wiesel suggests, the final message of a man who was “a humanist in all things” (202). Namely, it was “his way of protesting heaven’s use of death to diminish, stimulate and ultimately crush man[,] . . . his final act of behalf of his people” (201). Like Churchill’s, his Moses is a great leader—but above all a leader of the Jews. This most inspired prophet wished “by his example to tell us, through centuries and generations to come, that to live as a man, as a Jew, means to say yes to life, to fight—even against the Almighty—for every spark, for every breath of life” (201– 2). We have seen three pronouncedly ideological uses of Moses: by Hitler in his anti-Semitic rants against the Jews, by the Holocaust survivor Wiesel as a model for the will of the Jewish people to survive precisely the

Introduction

5

genocidal efforts of people like Hitler, and by Churchill as the exemplary leader for all men in an age threatened by destruction.

Recent decades have witnessed, if anything, an intensification in the appropriation of Moses for ideological purposes (in works that I discuss below in more specific contexts). In 2014 the headline of an article in a leading German newspaper proclaimed, “Moses and the Exodus Belong to the Favorite Themes of Our Spiritual History.”9 And an op-ed in the New York Times hailed Moses, with all his flaws and virtues, as a wholly human leader and Exodus as “a vision of a life marked by travel and change.”10 Susan A. Handelman regards the proponents of what she calls “rabbinic interpretation in modern literary theory” as “a kind of substitute theology”—notably Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Harold Bloom—as “slayers of Moses.”11 She apparently posits Moses’ name as a code word for traditional interpretations of the law and the text as practiced in the Greco-Roman tradition and brought into the present by German Protestant theology. Michael Walzer, for whom “the Book of Exodus (together with the Book of Numbers) is certainly the first description of revolutionary politics” (134) as well as “the source of messianic politics” (146), regards Moses as essentially a political leader (12).12 Bluma Goldstein finds that the Moses figures in the works of four German and Austrian writers offer “illuminating insight into the peculiar and passionate struggle with Jewish identity.”13 Moses provides ideal material for Jan Assmann’s theory of “mnemohistory”—that is, the study of the past not as historical fact but as it is remembered.14 Allen Dwight Callahan argues that Moses was long regarded by African Americans as the “venerable ideal of African American Leadership,”15 a view sharply opposed by Michael Lackey in “Moses, Man of Oppression: A Twentieth-Century African American Critique of Western Theocracy.” For the contributors to A Feminist Companion to the Bible: Exodus to Deuteronomy Moses is an icon of male hegemony; one author even contends that Miriam’s designation as “the prophet” even before Moses “undercuts a hierarchy of authority with a male at the top”16—a position subsequently exemplified by

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“a woman’s commentary on the Torah” titled The Five Books of Miriam.17 Barbara Johnson traces Moses’ emergence as “a hero of mainstream culture” whose Jewishness has been erased by the different cultures that have taken him up.18 And in her compendium, Did Moses Exist? (2014), D. M. Murdoch summarizes doubts about his existence from antiquity to the present, concluding that “the figure of Moses constitutes a mythical compilation of characters, the significant portion of which are solar heroes or sun gods, along with fertility, serpent, storm and wine deities and attributes.”19 The most familiar, controversial, and influential ideological treatment of Moses appeared earlier, however, in the decade of Hitler and Churchill. I am referring to Sigmund Freud’s last major work, Moses and Monotheism (Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion: Drei Abhandlungen, 1939),20 which originated in Freud’s never completed project, “The Man Moses: A Historical Novel” (1934). Of the three essays that constitute the work, only the first two (which had appeared in 1937 in the journal Imago) deal with Moses’ life; the third and by far the longest one is devoted to Freud’s psychoanalytical analysis of the material, and especially to the development of monotheism among the Jews in the centuries following Moses’ death, in an effort to “cast light on the question: how the Jewish people developed ‘a tragic guilt’ among ‘the qualities that characterize it’” (581). The work begins with a few pages titled “Moses, an Egyptian.” Hailing Moses as the liberator, lawgiver, and religion founder of the Jewish people, Freud agrees with most historians that Moses was a historical figure. But basing his argument on James H. Breasted’s epoch-making History of Egypt (1905) and The Dawn of Conscience (1933), he assumes from his name that Moses—mose, which occurs frequently in Egyptian names as a suffix meaning “child”—must have been an Egyptian. Freud then cites Otto Rank’s The Myth of the Hero’s Birth (Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden, 1909), which establishes a universal mythic pattern: the hero, born of noble parents, is rejected by them—because, like the Sumerian Sargon, his mother is a Vestal Virgin or, like Oedipus, because his father has been warned that his son will kill him—and taken in and raised by humble folk or, like Romulus and Remus, by animals. Why did the Jews invert that classic mythic pattern, making the original family humble and

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the second one noble? (Freud, like Wiesel, usually speaks of “Jews” rather than “Israelites” or “Hebrews.”) Because, Freud reasons, they were dealing with history, not myth: they had to make a Jew out of the Egyptian who liberated them. In this case, since the family in which Moses was raised was the reality, the narrator had to invent for the purposes of the mythic pattern, and for national self-esteem, a Jewish family into which he was born, with the result that Moses, unlike normal mythic heroes, did not rise to his glory from humble origins but rather descended from royal heights to save the children of Israel. The second and longer treatise, “If Moses Was an Egyptian . . . ,” discusses the implications of that Egyptian heritage: namely, that the new religion Moses gave the Jews was “an Egyptian religion, albeit not the Egyptian one” (471; original emphasis). This leads Freud to a discussion of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, who assumed the name Ikhnaton (Breasted’s spelling, adopted by Freud) out of respect for Aton (Aten), the sun deity whose worship he proclaimed. Aton had previously been known to the Egyptians but only as one among numerous gods in their polytheistic pantheon. But Ikhnaton’s insistence on monotheistic exclusivity aroused the wrath of a fanatical priesthood, which eradicated all traces of his life and religion following his death. Freud now posits his conclusion: “If Moses was an Egyptian and if he transmitted his own religion to the Jews, then it was that of Ikhnaton, the religion of Aton” (475). (Freud suggests, without claiming any scholarly competence, that the Hebrew name “Adonai” may be identical with Aton.) As a follower of Ikhnaton, Moses found that his religious belief was no longer acceptable in Egypt. Hence he decided to take it to the Jews and lead them out of Egypt to a land where they would be free to worship this new monotheistic god. The fact that Hebrew was a foreign language for Moses accounts for his legendary heaviness of tongue. However, history repeated itself (according to Ernst Sellin’s Mose und seine Bedeutung für die israelitisch-jüdische Religionsgeschichte [1922], whose theory Freud accepted):21 in the course of their exodus the Jews, tiring of Moses’ enlightened despotism and unable spiritually to comprehend his insistence on the new monotheism, turned against their Egyptian liberator, murdered him, and discarded his religion. “While the tame Egyptians waited until destiny had removed the sacred person of Pharaoh [Ikhnaton], the

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wild Semites took fate into their own hands and got the tyrant out of the way” (496– 97). At some point during their wandering the Jews encountered another tribe of Semitic people, worshippers of the local volcanic god Jahweh,22 and took on their religion as professed by the Midianite priest Jethro: hence the two names for god, Jahweh and Adonai, in the Mosaic books. Jethro’s son-in-law was also named Moses, a fact that eventually led to a conflation of him as a priest of Jahweh with the Egyptian Moses and his belief in Aton/Aten. How does the rejected monotheism of the Egyptian Moses fit into this history? Freud speculates that such a great lord as the Egyptian Moses would hardly have gone unaccompanied to the Jews: he brought along a group of followers, his scribes, who became the Levites. They and their successors preserved the memory of Moses’ monotheism long after his death. “In the course of the long periods—from the departure from Egypt down to the fixation of the biblical text under Ezra and Nehemiah—the Jahweh religion had turned back almost to the point of identification with the original religion of Moses” (496). In his concluding paragraph Freud summarizes his theory. To the known dualities of this history—two peoples who come together for the formation of the nation; two kingdoms into which this nation is divided; two names for the deity in the basic writings of the Bible—we add two new ones: two establishments of religion, the first suppressed by the second and later nevertheless appearing victoriously after it; two founders of religion, both of whom are called Moses and whose personalities we must keep separate from each other. (501; original emphasis)

There is no need to add further particulars from Freud’s imaginative and often fascinating argument, hardly a detail of which—from Jahweh as a volcanic deity and the monotheism in the Egyptian cult of Aton to the murder of Moses—is original but may be found, as discussed below, in earlier works, some dating to the eighteenth century. What matters for our purposes is the fact that the biography and history of the first two sections of Moses and Monotheism are introduced essentially as background material for the theoretical and ideological exposition of the much longer third part, “Moses, His People, and the Monotheistic Religion.”

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Here Freud brings all the apparatus of his psychoanalytical theory to bear on the Moses story as well as the theory of religion as developed earlier in his Totem and Taboo (1913). (Freud is keenly aware that his “great man” theory of history stands in contrast to the contemporaneously fashionable theories that emphasized principally social and economic factors [553].) In brief: Moses, as “father” of the Jews, is the “superego” (Über-ich) murdered by the aggressive “id” (Es) of the still primitive people (562 – 63). Their murder of Moses produced among the Jews a “traumatic neurosis” that, during a long period of incubation, was repressed as a “latent memory” (516) and created a “longing for the messiah who will return and bring to his people salvation and the promised domination of the world” (537). Eventually maturing, they became selfconfident enough to accept the repressed memory and the monotheistic religion (the super-ego) it includes. This history explains, for Freud, the typical characteristics of the Jewish people, among whom he decidedly includes himself.

I have reviewed several of the more striking and typical examples of what I have termed the uses and abuses of Moses. My title, of course, echoes Nietzsche’s meditation On the Use and Abuse of History for Life (the conventional if imprecise translation of Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben, 1874). By “abuse,” however, I do not have in mind what Nietzsche meant by “disadvantage” (Nachteil). I take it to designate not merely such gross distortions as that of Hitler or, as we shall see below, Nazi propaganda generally, but, more broadly, any blatantly ideological adaptation of Moses’ name and life beyond his traditional biblical roles as liberator, lawgiver, and religious prophet of the Hebrews. I do not wish by the term to propose any rigorous category or to imply, from case to case, any moral or aesthetic judgment. Indeed, some of these so-called abuses have resulted in ingenious theories, amusing twists, and imaginative literary creations. Returning now to the biblical source: there Moses appears in various roles. He is the liberator who leads his people out of Egypt and unifies them against all outsiders. He transmits the laws by which they must

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henceforth live and conduct themselves. He is the prophet who foretells the destiny of his people. With his rod that turns into a serpent and the ten plagues that he calls down upon Egypt and, later, with the parting of the sea and the miraculous provision of food and water in the desert, he performs wonders that led the writers of antiquity and the Middle Ages to regard him as a magician. The biblical account leaves open many questions about Moses’ identity. Was he a historical figure or simply a legend? If historical, was he a Hebrew, an Egyptian, or a Chaldean? Is the name “Moses” Hebrew or Egyptian? Did he actually write the books attributed to him as the Pentateuch or, in Jewish tradition, the Torah? How many of the supposed incidents of his life—the childhood exposure in the river, the burning bush, the Tables of the Law, and others—are historical, and which are legendary? Is the deity he introduces to his followers the Egyptian monotheistic Aten; a local (Midianite) god of fire, Jahweh; or a conflation of the two? To what extent are his laws based on Egyptian or other conventional Near Eastern codes, such as the renowned one of the Babylonian Hammurabi? What about his death: was he murdered? And where is he buried? Literally every statement concerning Moses in the four biblical books in which he appears (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) is open to question.23 The issues must be introduced at least briefly in order to show how widespread since antiquity has been the ideologization of the figure known as Moses. The following overview is meant to be representative and in no way complete.

M     A           R        Moses was a familiar name among Jewish, Christian, and pagan writers of antiquity.24 The Roman-educated Jewish priest Flavius Josephus (b. 37/38 CE) devoted three books (2– 4) of his Jewish Antiquities to the story of Moses,25 which he expanded and embellished with numerous (presumably fictitious) details not found in the biblical account: how as a child he knocked off and trampled Pharaoh’s crown, his victorious campaign as an Egyptian commander against the Ethiopians, his flight from his attempted murder in Egypt, his miraculous disappearance in a

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cloud, and many others. Josephus finds an analogy to the miraculous parting of the seas in Alexander the Great’s military expedition to Persia. He reports that it was only on his second trip to Mount Sinai that Moses brought back the Tables of the Law, and during his absence the people behaved with propriety (no golden calf !). He explains that the Hebrews used spoils taken from the defeated Amalekites to build the tabernacle, and so forth. Josephus’ Jewish contemporary, Philo of Alexandria, wrote a Life of Moses (ca. 100 CE),26 in which Moses is designated in the opening words as “the greatest and most perfect of men.” Yet despite his fame as “the lawgiver [nomothetes] of the Jews” and the fame of his laws, few people know anything about the man himself; in particular, the Greeks ignore him out of envy. In the course of his two books Philo goes on to characterize Moses as a Chaldean who was raised as an Egyptian prince and educated by Egyptian teachers in arithmetic, geometry, music, and inscriptions, by Greek tutors in other subjects, and by Chaldean astrologists in the lore of the heavens — all this in preparation for his future career as a legislator, priest, and prophet, functions in which he transcends the role of mere philosopher-king (451). For Philo the burning bush is a symbol of those who have suffered wrongdoing, and the angel (not the deity!) who speaks to him foretells Moses’ role as their liberator. Equally interesting for our purposes are the critical references in various pagan writers. As John G. Gager has shown, in Rome the ongoing political and religious conflicts with the Jews prompted the Romans to denigrate Moses’ role as a lawgiver.27 Thus the rhetorician Quintilian (b. 30– 35 CE) in his Orator’s Education (Institutio Oratoria) alluded, without naming him, to “the creator of the Jewish superstition” (primus Iudaicae superstitionis auctor) who brought together “a people which is bent on the destruction of others” (perniciosam ceteris gentem) (3.7.21).28 The satirist Juvenal (b. 50– 65 CE) derides in his fourteenth satire (96–106) those people who “respect the sabbath” (metuentem sabbata) and worship nothing but the clouds and the “spirit of the sky” (caeli numen)—a reference, of course, to the Jewish prohibition of idols. Juvenal goes on to ridicule their refusal to eat pork and their practice of circumcision. Above all:

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Uses and Abuses of Moses

Romanas autem soliti contemnere leges Iudaicum ediscunt et servant ac metuunt ius, tradidit arcano quodcumque volumine Moyses.29 ——— [Accustomed to despise the laws of Rome, they study, observe, and revere the Judaic law, which Moses passed along in his arcane scroll.]

In Alexandria, meanwhile, the animosity of Greco-Egyptian writers expressed itself in revisionary accounts of the Exodus.30 Josephus devotes much of his brilliant two-book defense of Judaism, Against Apion (ca. 100 CE), to a refutation of what he calls the “buffoonery,” “gross ignorance,” and “charlatanry” of the grammarian Apion (293),31 whose lost five-volume history, Aegyptica, is known mainly from excerpts cited by Josephus. Like other Alexandrian critics, Apion represented Moses as an Egyptian priest, a native of Heliopolis, who led the Jews out of Egypt and appropriated the practices of Egyptian religion as the basis of his new cult in Jerusalem. Apion challenges the early date of the Exodus and the origin of the sabbath. Josephus argues that Apion’s attribution of Egyptian origins to the Hebrews and their practices is explained by the fact that he disowned his own Egyptian background and claimed to be Alexandrine: accordingly he calls all peoples he detests “Egyptians” (303). Jan Assmann ascribes the mutual hostility of Jews and Egyptians essentially to what, in a chapter of that title, he calls “suppressed history, repressed memory.”32 According to Assmann’s mnemohistory (which bears a conspicuous resemblance to Freud’s theory of latent memory), the Egyptian people underwent a collective trauma resulting from the authoritarian imposition on their polytheistic culture of the monotheistic worship of Aten, god of light, by Akhenaten, the fourteenth-century BCE pharaoh Amenophis IV and husband of Nefertiti, whose image is familiar worldwide from her renowned portrait bust. After Akhenaten’s death his religion and even his existence were so thoroughly eradicated from Egyptian history that they were forgotten until the rediscovery of his inscriptions in the late nineteenth century. But the trauma of that suppressed history remained among the Egyptians as a repressed memory that was imposed on their religious enemies, notably the Jews, and accounts for the hostility of the Alexandrine critics. At the same time the

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Hebrews, as they reconstructed their own collective history, conflated repressed memories of the monotheistic pharaoh with their legendary hero, Moses, and even—according to some—the name of Akhenaten’s deity Aten with “Adonai,” the Hebrew designation for their Lord. These few examples, to which Gager and Assmann contribute others, exemplify the ideological exploitation of Moses already in antiquity: notably his co-optation by the Egyptians to illustrate any aspects of Jewish history that they considered positive—especially his priesthood and his leadership—and by enemies to illustrate what they regarded as the pernicious features of his laws and his monotheism, which was so contrary to the widespread ancient polytheism or cosmotheism.

The rabbinic tradition kept Moses as presented in the Bible very much alive in Judaism: both as the great teacher of the law (Halakha) and as God’s agent for rescuing and leading the Israelites (Aggadah).33 In confirmation of that view, among the fifty-eight scenes from the Hebrew Bible depicted in the third-century synagogue at Dura-Europos, two feature Moses: receiving the Tables of the Law and leading the Hebrews out of Egypt.34 And Moses was not popular in Judaism alone: his story, related in detail in sura 20 of the Koran, is later characterized as “a guide and a blessing” (sura 46) for Islam.35 During the Christian Middle Ages the story of Moses, seeming less relevant to the new religion as it was being constructed on the basis of the Gospels and the life of Jesus, receded in importance. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae (II/1, q. 100–104), concedes the value of Moses’ moral precepts but denies the validity of his ceremonial and judicial ordinances, which were not binding after Christ.36 Accordingly writers turned increasingly to the New Testament for their material and looked to the Hebrew Bible mainly for typological prefigurations of its happenings and its actors. As Erich Auerbach pointed out in his classic essay, “Figural interpretation establishes a connection between two events or persons, the first of which signifies not only itself but also the second, while the second encompasses or fulfills the first,” with the result that “the figural interpretation changed the Old Testament from a book of

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laws and a history of the people of Israel into a series of figures of Christ and the Redemption.”37 One genre in which these analogies showed up was the biblical epic, a highly popular form that Ernst Robert Curtius called “hybrid” and “untrue,” a genre faux, because, he argues, the Christian tale of salvation loses its authority if it is recast into a pseudoancient form and falsified by its conventions.38 Most of these epics were literarizations of the Gospels, but there were occasional exceptions. The so-called Heptateuchos—an elaborate retelling in dactylic hexameters of the first seven books of the Old Testament traditionally attributed to Cyprianus Gallus—was presumably intended to present Christian material in classical form for school instruction. Recapitulating the story of Moses at considerable length but adding essentially nothing to the biblical account, it perfectly exemplifies Curtius’ critique of the genre. In the burning bush scene, for instance, we read: Ac dum lanigeras soceri per rura bidentes Moses solus agit, sacrati ad culmina collis deuenit, Hebraea quem dicit lingua Chorebum. in quo conspicua flammarum lampade cernit procuruam fulgere rubum neque ignibus uri. Permotus nouitate rei disquirere gaudet, fomite quo tandem tam clara incendia surgant. (lines 180– 86)39 ——— [And while Moses, alone, was herding the woolly sheep of his father-in-law through the countryside, he came to the summit of the sacred mountain, which in the Hebrew language is called Horeb. On it he saw a bent bramble-bush gleaming with a remarkable brightness of flames and not consumed by the fires. Moved by the novelty of the phenomenon, he wanted to find out from what tinder such bright flames surged forth.]

More typical are the cases in which Moses is introduced primarily as a prefiguration of Jesus, as in the fifth-century Paschal Song (Paschale Carmen) of Sedulius, one of the most popular authors of biblical epics in late antiquity. While most of the work (books 2– 5) recapitulates in dactylic hexameters the story of Jesus, the first book recounts miracles from

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the Old Testament that prefigure the miracles of Jesus. Moses appears (lines 127– 62)40 with the burning bush, transforming the staff into a serpent, dividing the waters of the sea, feeding the multitudes with manna from heaven and water from the barren rocks. (The section ends with three lines about Balaam’s ass, the animal that uttered human speech.) But Moses’ miracles were accomplished, we learn, through the power of Christ: “Christ was the bread; Christ was the rock; Christ was in the water” (line 159: Christus erat panis, Christus petra, Christus in undis). Accordingly, “as the people proceeded through the midst of the sea, they were already undergoing an early form of baptism, and Christ was their leader” (lines 141– 43: mediumque per aequor / Ingrediens populus rude iam baptisma gerebat, / Cui dux Christus erat). Later, in the four books devoted to Jesus, Moses is cited from time to time as the prefiguring type: “when the people had followed him [Jesus] from there into the wilderness, like Moses who foreshadowed him and like a true prophet he saw that they were feeling the same old hunger, and he performed the ancient miracle with even greater deeds” (lines 201– 4: Cumque dehinc populum sese in deserta secutum / Vt typicus Moyses uerusque propheta uideret / Antiquam sentire famem, maioribus actis / Antiquam monstrauit opem). Sedulius’ Paschale Carmen enjoyed wide circulation throughout the Middle Ages and was used in the medieval school curriculum.41 Another example occurs in book 5 of De spiritalis historiae gestis, by the early sixth-century Alcimus Avitus, where Moses’ life is related as background to the miracle of the Red Sea (De transitu maris Rubri).42 But again the intention is clearly typological. Inclytus egregium sollemni carmine ductor Describit factum, toto quod psallitur orbe, Cum purgata sacris deletur culpa fluentis, Emittitque novam parientis lympha lavacri Prolem, post veteres quos edidit Eva reatus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Si quid triste fuit, dictum est quod paupere versu Terserit hic sacri memorabilis unda triumphi, Gaudia quo resonant, crimen quo tollitur omne Per lavacrum, vivitque novus pereunte veterno;

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Uses and Abuses of Moses

Quo bona consurgunt, quo noxia facta necantur, Israel verus acris quo tingitur undis. (verses 704–16) ——— [The renowned leader described the famous event in a solemn song that is sung throughout the whole world: when sin, cleansed, is blotted out by the sacred rites of water, and the waters of baptism, giving birth, bring forth new offspring after the old guilts that Eve generated. . . . If anything savage remained, which is related in my poor verses, the unforgettable waves of the holy triumph will have washed it away— the triumph in which joy resounds, in which all sin is removed by baptism, and the new man [or race?] lives as the old one perishes; in which all good arises, in which harmful deeds are destroyed; in which the true Israel [i.e., Christianity] is imbued by the holy waters.]

Moses enjoyed a livelier presence in the art and architecture of the Middle Ages than in its literature: initially on the early Christian sarcophagi (as in Berlin’s Bode Museum, which contains a fifth-century Byzantine sarcophagus displaying the oft-depicted scene of Moses receiving the Tables of the Law on Mount Horeb) and later on the medieval cathedrals—for instance, Chartres, Reims, Dijon, and Notre Dame of Paris—where Moses frequently appears among the prophets represented on the portals or in the stained-glass windows.43 By the Renaissance, scenes from the life of Moses were being painted by such prominent artists as Botticelli, Raphael, Veronese, Giorgione, Tintoretto, Rembrandt, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas van Leyden, and Poussin. In addition to Moses and the Tables of the Law, the favored scenes were those regarded as prefiguring episodes from the life of Jesus: the rescue from the Nile (and the flight into Egypt), the burning bush (and Mary’s virginity), the transformation of the staff into a serpent (and the temptation in Eden), Passover night (and the Last Supper), the crossing of the Red Sea (and baptism), manna from heaven (and the loaves and fishes), and others.44 One of the most popular images was that of the horned Moses, an image, based on a mistranslation by Saint Jerome of a word at Exodus 34:29, that first emerged in England in the eleventh century and moved from there by way of northern Europe (twelfth–fourteenth centuries) to Italy, where the most renowned rendition was that by Michelangelo in his famous statue.45

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Martin Luther anticipated various more recent critics of Moses when he termed him “the hangman and master of all, and no one is above him or equal to him with terror, fright, tyranny, threats and similar penal sermons and thunder strikes. For he seizes the conscience sharply and hard, terrifies it, martyrs it, and does all this at God’s command as his representative.” As Luther remarked in another context, “We should despise [verachten] those who praise Moses’ legal order, Iudicialia, laws, and rights in everyday activities because we have our prescribed imperial and local laws under which we live and to which we have pledged ourselves.”46 Neither Job nor Daniel, he goes on to explain, nor other pious Jews applied Moses’ laws outside their own land but rather the law and rights of the heathens among whom they lived. “Moses’ law bound and obligated only the Jewish people in the place that God chose. Now they are free.” Yet Moses continued to claim a place in the Latin biblical epics of the sixteenth century written by Lutheran authors who sought to popularize the Bible.47 To be sure, Nikodemus Frischlin (1547– 90) omitted Moses from the twelve books of his posthumously published Hebraeis (1599), which relates the adventures of the Hebrew kings from David to Josiah according to the pattern of Virgil’s Aeneid. Frischlin justified the omission in his prooemium, saying that his theme was the kings of the Hebrews and not the history of the world from its creation down to their settlement in the Promised Land. “For that reason I skip how Moses warned them to keep the rituals and the sacred secrets” (lines 14–15: Atque ideo ritus arcanaque sacra monentem / Praetereo Mosem).48 His student, Ulrich Bollinger, who edited and published Frischlin’s epic, filled the gap with the nine books of his Moseis (1603), which shift the emphasis from many kings to the single figure of Moses, whom he celebrates in Virgilian tones. Nunc horrida Martis Bella virumque cano, Pharijs qui primus ab oris In terram veteris Canaae de nomine dictam, Per varios casus Erythraea per aequora duxit, Israële satos, rapidi Iordanis ad vndas. (lines 4– 8)49 ——— [Now I sing the terrible wars of Mars and the man who first led the sons of Israel from the coasts of Egypt, through the Red Sea and

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manifold destinies, into the land called Canaan and the floods of the rapid Jordan.]

Taking the reader from the birth of Moses to his death on Mount Nebo, Bollinger portrays Moses as both a lawgiver and a statesman. At the same time, in keeping with broadsheets distributed at the time of the Reformation and the Peasants’ War and depicting Luther leading Christians out of the Egyptian darkness,50 Bollinger describes the debates between Moses and Pharaoh in terms analogous to those between Luther and the spokesmen of the Catholic Church. The golden calf symbolizes not a single god but a multiplicity of divine beings, suggesting the Catholic worship of saints; and the Promised Land is the land of a single God, rid of the many idols: Cernitis? Ille ego sum Deus, ille ego solus & vnus,

Praeter me toto non est Deus alter in orbe. (book 9, lines 324– 25)51 ——— [Do you see? I am that God, that single and sole one. Apart from me there is no other God in the whole world.]

During the Renaissance another development was taking place. The rediscovery of mystical works from the first to the fourth century— notably the Emerald Tablet attributed to Hermes Trismegistus and the Corpus Hermeticum — excited the interest of scholars in the astrological, alchemistic, and magical lore of Greco-Egyptian origin. These works, mostly transmitted in Arabic translation, reawakened interest in the philosophical-religious thought of Egypt and, accordingly, in its relation to Moses and the early Hebrew religion. It was in response to these discoveries that such scholars as the seventeenth-century English Hebraist John Spencer (1630– 93) initially undertook a rationalization of Mosaic law on the basis of Egyptian culture.52 The studies by Spencer and his contemporaries enabled the Enlightenment historians of the eighteenth century to undertake serious rationalizations of the Hebrew Bible, which were paralleled by the reevaluations of the New Testament by such scholars as the Orientalist Hermann Samuel Reimarus, who portrayed Jesus as a Jewish nationalist executed for political reasons and only subsequently reinterpreted by his followers as an act of spiritual self-sacrifice.

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E        -C    S        Writers were not slow to appreciate these dazzling new findings. Rationalizations of the New Testament inspired Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741– 92), a onetime professor of sacred philology dismissed for scandalous conduct, to write his eleven volumes of “Letters to Truth-Seeking Readers” under the title Explanation of the Plan and Aim of Jesus (Ausführung des Plans und Zwecks Jesu, 1784– 92), which presented Jesus as a member of the secret order of the Essenes. The Passion is depicted as a plot to provide the Jews with a messiah who would die and rise again according to their ancient prophecies. The Essene physicians gave Jesus special drugs that permitted him to survive the scourging and the crucifixion. Afterward, removed from the cross and nursed back to health, Jesus lived in secrecy for years to come. A similar nonsupernatural account, Natural History of the Great Prophet of Nazareth (Natürliche Geschichte des großen Propheten von Nazareth, 1800 –1802), was published by Karl Heinrich Venturini, establishing a fictional tradition that can be traced down to Robert Graves’ King Jesus (1946) and Nikos Kazantzakis’ Last Temptation of Christ (1953).53 There had of course been occasional literary treatments of Moses since antiquity, for instance, the fragmentary drama Exodus (Exagoge) by the second-century Alexandrian Ezekiel the Poet and various Latin mystery plays.54 In the eighteenth century Moses appeared most frequently in oratorios and musical dramas such as Handel’s Israel in Egypt (1739). While serious literary treatments began to be undertaken only in the nineteenth century, several writers had previously turned their imaginations loose on the subject in nonfictional forms. Voltaire (1694–1778) dealt with Moses in numerous contexts,55 but the gist of his view is summarized in the entry “Moïse” in his Dictionnaire philosophique (1764), where he takes religion and the church to task. Voltaire summarizes the reasons advanced by recent scholars for why Moses could not have written the Pentateuch.56 For instance, in what language would Moses have written since he and his people were born in Egypt and probably spoke no other language? How could the entire five volumes of the Pentateuch have been engraved on two polished stones? In a note attached to a second edition in 1765 Voltaire cites various classical sources, including Herodotus and Josephus, to suggest that Moses never lived and that if he

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did he could not have performed the miracles attributed to him. For if he had performed such prodigies, would they not have been mentioned in the historical records of the Egyptians? Indeed, is it not more likely that the Hebrews, newly arrived in Palestine, appropriated miracles attributed to Bacchus—walking across the Red Sea, transforming water into blood, and so forth—and bestowed them on their own heroic myth? Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), a theologian and church official in an enlightened Weimar, entertained no doubts concerning Moses’ existence.57 In his magisterial Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Humankind (Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, 1884– 91) he calls Moses “the greatest man that [the Hebrews] ever had”— a man who provided his people with a constitution so wise that it “elevated them from a nomadic horde to a cultivated nation.”58 Herder scrupulously avoids any hint of the supernatural in his understanding of Moses. In his two-volume On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry (Vom Geist der ebräischen Poesie, 1782– 83), where he discusses Moses at greater length, he points out that he was raised at Pharaoh’s court, educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and acquainted with the secrets of their priests and the constitution of the land: “It is foolish to wish to deny that, for the organization of his priestly clan, his temple and its practices, Moses did not take Egypt into account.”59 He suggests that the alleged miracles and signs that Moses used against the Egyptians were simply the normal ecological phenomena of the land: plagues, snakes, insects, the Nile, nasty water animals, and darkness. Later he even implies that the burning bush was nothing but a symbol of deity appropriate to that time and place: “Since oldest times fire was the symbol of divinity in the Orient and among almost all nations”60 and, accordingly, “in Moses’ poetry and institutions, but without iconography and idolatry, became the symbol of Jehovah.”61 Several years later, inspired by the Samples of Rabbinical Wisdom (Proben rabbinischer Weisheit, 1776) published by his friend Moses Mendelssohn,62 Herder assembled the collection, Poetic Works from Eastern Legendry (Dichtungen aus der morgenländischen Sage, 1787), which included various Hebrew legends. These were not to be confused, he specified in his preface, with the biblical narratives: “they are wholly apocryphal, either ancient legends of several Eastern peoples or at least growths stemming from seeds of that sort.”63 One of these, “The Death of Moses”

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(“Der Tod Moses”), recounts a legend, for which there are several Midrashic sources,64 that was later treated poetically by both George Eliot and Rainer Maria Rilke. When it was time for Moses to die, God summoned the noblest of his angels—Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel—and asked which of them would fetch Moses’ soul, but all refused, saying that he had been their teacher. Then he sent the renegade angel Sammael, who, terrified by the brilliance of Moses’ face, dropped his sword and hastened back to heaven. Finally Jehovah himself went down to receive Moses’ soul, which recapitulated its achievements and then freely accepted death, which God kissed from his lips.65

S    ’ M         M  C Both of Herder’s younger contemporaries in Weimar, Schiller and Goethe, were drawn to Moses in the 1790s. It was no doubt a heady experience for the students at the University of Jena when Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), the thirty-year-old author of such revolutionary Stormand-Stress dramas as The Robbers (Die Räuber, 1781), arrived in 1789 as a professor of history. Schiller began his brief career in that capacity with a series of lectures on “universal history.” Following introductory ruminations on the topic “What Is and to What End Does One Study Universal History” and Kantian speculations, which he titled “The First Human Society,” Schiller proceeded to “Moses’ Mission” (“Die Sendung Moses”). Because he was not a professional historian, his lectures were based heavily on existing scholarship and theories. A note appended to “Moses’ Mission” (1790) states that it is indebted extensively to a pamphlet by his friend Karl Leonhardt Reinhold, The Hebraic Mysteries or the Oldest Religious Freemasonry (Die Hebräischen Mysterien oder die älteste religiöse Freymaurerey, 1788). Reinhold (1757–1823), a former Jesuit, was converted by Herder and, an early advocate of Kantian transcendentalism, became a professor of philosophy at Jena. A member of the Illuminati, he published his pamphlet under the name by which he was known in that secret society, “Decius.”66 It was his thesis that Mosaic law, Egyptian in origin, was based specifically on the Egyptian mysteries and the belief in a single deity.

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In an age fascinated by secret societies and attracted to such works as Mozart’s Masonic opera, The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte, 1791), and the numerous cult novels published in that decade,67 Schiller’s young audience must have been thrilled to hear from their mentor that Moses was himself a member of an Egyptian mystery cult — the same cult of Isis about which the Romantic poet Novalis was soon to write his story “The Disciples at Sais” (“Die Lehrlinge zu Sais,” 1798)—from which he got the main ideas for the god that he introduced to the Hebrews and the practices of its religion. Schiller’s lecture, based in all essentials on Reinhold’s ideas, begins with several paragraphs praising Judaism in much the same way as Herder did. “The foundation of the Jewish state by Moses is one of the most memorable events that history has recorded” (783).68 He goes on to state that we are indebted to the Mosaic religion in large measure for the present Enlightenment because it introduced the idea of a monotheistic god, which normally could have been discovered only through a lengthy process. Accordingly, he states, “the nation of the Hebrews must appear to us as an important universal-historical people, and all the evil that is spoken of this people . . . will not prevent us from treating it justly” (784).69 Schiller briefly reviews the earlier history of the Hebrews in Egypt, reporting that in the course of four hundred years they grew from a tiny group of seventy to a population of some two million and, as a result of crowding in their restricted area of Goshen, developed plaguelike illnesses that turned the Egyptians against them. Where should they find a liberator? Not among the Egyptians, who regarded them as wholly alien, and not from their own currently degenerate midst. Destiny, he continues, “chose a Hebrew, but removed him early from his coarse people and gave him the benefit of Egyptian wisdom” (788). Pharaoh’s daughter, who rescued him from the river, turned him over to the priests who taught him and trained him for the priesthood. Schiller, citing Philo as testimony that Moses was educated in “the philosophy of symbols and hieroglyphs” (789), argues that when one looks at the Egyptian mysteries (as known popularly from Freemasonry and The Magic Flute) a remarkable similarity emerges between those mysteries and what Moses later achieved. Foremost among the attainments of the mysteries—to which Schiller devotes roughly a quarter of his lecture—was the idea of the interrelationship of all being and, accordingly, the idea of a single highest reason:

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“Since Egypt was the first cultivated state that history knows and the oldest mysteries stem initially from Egypt, it was in all probability here that the first idea of the unity of the highest being was initially conceived in a human brain” (790). (Schiller, following Reinhold, proposed this early monotheism a century before history rediscovered Akhenaten’s religion of Aten.) To avoid the turmoil caused by the fanatical resistance of a people long accustomed to polytheism, the priests concealed their knowledge by means of the secret language of hieroglyphs and restricted it to the adepts of the mysteries. For Schiller it is “beyond all doubt” that the primary teachings of the mysteries were “the oneness of god” and “the immortality of the soul” (792). Such, in sum, were the teachings “that the young Hebrew brought out of the mysteries of Isis” (795), along with the knowledge of the sciences that later enabled him to perform the miracles attributed to him (but which Schiller does not further explain). Assuming that Moses spent twenty years or more in his study of the mysteries and the Egyptian government, Schiller imagines his thoughts after his flight into the Arabian desert. Though longing to free his people from their slavery in Egypt, he realizes that the Hebrews in their present state are incapable of comprehending the monotheistic god that he has come to know. The only option was “to proclaim his true god to them in a fabulous [fabelhafte] manner” (799). Adapting his demiurge, Jao, to the circumstances required at the moment, he Hebraicizes his name to Jehovah. In accordance with contemporary polytheistic belief that every people stood under the protection of its own particular god, “he made the demiurge of the mysteries into the national god of the Hebrews” (800): the most powerful of all gods and a miracle worker rather than a philosopher. Inspired by the conversation with the burning bush — Schiller implies that the event was not supernatural but simply thoughts that occurred to Moses at the sight of a bush on fire in the desert—Moses attached his god to the ancient folk beliefs of the Hebrews in order to make him into a familiar folk deity. Moses demonstrated his power by miracles that beyond a doubt occurred. But “how he achieved them and how one must understand them must be left to the imagination of each individual” (802). Returning to Egypt, Moses introduced his people to a god who would liberate them. But in order to give them a land of their own, which they

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had to conquer by their own hand, he also had to give them laws and a constitution. “As a priest and a statesman he knows that the strongest and most indispensable support of all constitution is religion” (803), and for this legislation he required not the popular deity but the true god so that his work would not be based upon a deception. Again he presented his lawgiving god to the Hebrews in a familiar heathen guise so that they would accept him and his laws. Moses, indebted for his ideas to a small circle of Egyptian cult initiates, is “the first person who dares not only to publicize this secret knowledge of the mysteries, but even to make it the basis of a state” (804), becoming thereby, for the benefit of the world and all posterity, a betrayer of the secrets of the mysteries. Schiller’s lecture, which was promptly published in the journal Thalia (1790) and in a volume of Schiller’s prose writings (1792),70 is relevant in the present context because it exemplifies the adaptation of Moses to the contemporary obsession with secret societies and the occult, which numbered among their members virtually every prominent contemporary— from Frederick the Great and Mozart to Goethe. Schiller, although he himself did not belong, wrote an enormously popular serial novel titled The Ghost-Seer (Der Geisterseher, 1787– 89), as well as a poem titled “The Veiled Image at Sais” (“Das verschleierte Bild zu Sais,” 1795).

G    ’  M   : M     M  In vivid contrast, Goethe’s “Israel in the Wilderness” (“Israel in der Wüste,” 1797), which was first published over twenty years later in the “Notes and Treatises” appended to his poetic West-Eastern Divan (Westöstlicher Divan, 1819),71 presents a completely different Moses in a wholly rationalizing depiction based on the research of such scholars as J. G. Eichhorn’s Introduction to the Old Testament (Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 1780– 83). This was by no means Goethe’s first encounter with the Old Testament. A quarter century earlier, in 1772, while studying at the University of Strassburg, his “deliberately outrageous” dissertation, in which he sought to prove “the secular origin of ecclesiastical law,”72 was rejected by the faculty, forcing him to settle for a licentiate rather than a doctorate of law. Years later, in a letter of April 12, 1797, he wrote to Schiller, “While tracing the patriarchal remains I got into the Old Testa-

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ment and again was astonished at the confusion and contradictions of the five Books of Moses, which, as is known, may be compiled from hundreds of written and oral traditions.” In his “Israel in the Wilderness” Goethe sought to bring his own order into that chaos: “The real, sole, and most profound theme of world and human history, to which all others are subordinated, remains the conflict of faith and lack of belief” (230). While Exodus portrayed the triumph of faith, the following three books have as their theme the lack of faith, which in the most trivial way hemmed the progress of faith. As a result, the promises of “a reliable national deity” (here Goethe takes over Schiller’s term) threatened to be destroyed. According to Goethe, that progress was hindered by “countless interpolated laws, whose reason and purpose for the most part one cannot comprehend (231). Why, he wonders, should the journey of the Hebrews through the wilderness be hampered by religious ceremonial baggage? Why should laws for a still uncertain future be laid down at a time when every day required new ideas and actions? Like many readers after him, Goethe was simply bored by the tedium of all the laws and ordinances of the Mosaic books, which he took to interfere with the fascinating tale of action.73 To disentangle the actual narrative—whether history or myth— from the teachings and preachings requires separating what is applicable to all moral human beings from that which is relevant only for the people of Israel. In the process he seeks to focus the reader’s attention, first, on the development of the Exodus from the character of its leader and, second, on his suspicion that the whole journey lasted not forty but only two years (232). Regarding Moses’ character, Goethe’s view differs completely from that of Schiller: instead of a priest and sophisticated statesman trained in an Egyptian mystery cult, he sees Moses much as Luther did, as “a violent man” (232: ein gewaltsamer Mann) motivated by his powerful sense of right and wrong. Though raised at the royal court, that experience had little effect on him: “he became an excellent strong man, but remained under all circumstances rough” (232). He killed an Egyptian who mistreated an Israelite, and his boldness won him the affection of the Midianite prince who took him into his family. Consumed by his inaction in the wilderness—and with no burning bush, which is later mentioned only in passing—Moses decides to return to Egypt and become the liberator of his people. With no magic tricks,

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the two brothers appear before Pharaoh and demand the freedom of their people, but the Egyptian ruler is unimpressed despite a variety of (perfectly natural) disasters that afflict the land. Finally the Hebrews force their release through what amounts to a criminal conspiracy: they announce to the Egyptians that they are going to celebrate a feast, and while the host nation is not paying attention, they attack them and kill all the firstborn children of the Egyptians. To escape revenge, they flee and (with no parting of the waters) manage to defeat the pursuing army, which gets bogged down in a swamp. They make their way through the wilderness, led by the fiery deity who had spoken to Moses from a burning bush (which is mentioned only at this point). But Goethe’s description implies natural explanations for the columns of clouds, the meteors, the thunder and lightning, and the occasional flames from the earth that guide them (234). When Moses, an unskilled leader, is consumed by his hands-on governing style, the wise Jethro helps him to organize the people and appoint subordinates. At the same time Jethro, leader of the Midianites, is shrewd enough to avoid potential territorial disputes with the violent Hebrews seeking to take over their land. He advises Moses not to take the most direct route to the promised land but instead the way through the desert, which leads them away from more peaceful peoples. “Unfortunately Moses had even fewer military than political talents” (237) and stands to the side during the battles that occur, leaving the leadership to Joshua. Eventually the people become disaffected, and even Aaron and Miriam—before their deaths—take part in the revolts. Finally Moses himself disappears, and Goethe speculates that he may have been murdered by Joshua and Caleb to rid themselves of an incompetent and restricted leader (239). At this point Goethe undertakes some meticulous temporal and geographic calculations — comparing, for instance, the stops recorded in the historical passages of the Pentateuch to the many more listed at Deuteronomy 33—which lead him to conclude that the extra stations were inserted after the fact simply to account for the period of forty years, a number that is biblically traditional rather than realistic.74 Altogether, he reckons, the Exodus lasted only two years, until the Hebrews reached the River Jordan. Goethe adds in conclusion a few words about Moses’ character.

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What is left, his reader may wonder, if the traditional virtues of ruler and military leader are taken away? Character is based on personality, Goethe insists, not on talents: “We gladly concede that the personality of Moses, from the first treacherous murder [Meuchelmord] through all the acts of cruelty until his disappearance, provides a highly meaningful and worthy image of a man who is driven by his nature to [aspire to] the greatest. But such an image is entirely distorted if we see a strong, shorttempered, hasty man of action wandering around for forty years without meaning and necessity with a huge mob of people in such a small space within sight of his great goal” (247). Only by shortening the time is it possible to offset the evil that has been said of him and to place him in his proper position. The preceding examples illustrate how the story of Moses was used from antiquity to the eighteenth century to exemplify the political and cultural biases of the authors as well as the scholarly knowledge of the times and such historical phenomena as the Enlightenment obsession with secret societies. But the story of the individual Moses and the history of contemporary Egypt were enhanced dramatically in the nineteenth century, when such discoveries as Champollion’s decipherment of the Rosetta stone and the discovery of Akhenaten’s city of Amarna opened the way to a new and larger understanding of that past just as the political and economic developments of the postrevolutionary decades provided new insights into its history.

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Nineteenth-Century Evolutions

E         Writers in the first half of the nineteenth century were more powerfully affected by the reigning Egyptomania than by developments in biblical scholarship. The scholars, to be sure, were not inactive. The era of rationalism prompted a more critical look at ancient texts and sources than had earlier been the case. Such New Testament scholars as Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) and Heinrich E. G. Paulus (1761–1851) began the critical reading of the Gospels that led to David Friedrich Strauss’ pathbreaking Life of Jesus (Das Leben Jesu, 1835), which stripped away all the “mythic” elements in order to present a purely human Jesus. The classical philologist Friedrich August Wolf raised questions about the authorship of the Homeric epics in his epoch-making Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795), where he proposed what came to be known as the Liedersammeltheorie (song collection theory), that is, that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not written by one man but assembled from a collection of existing ballads. Inspired by this theory, other scholars applied it to such medieval romances as the Nibelungenlied in an effort to trace their composition. On the basis of work by Gottfried Eichhorn (1753–1827), professor of biblical studies at Jena and then at Göttingen, who is known as the founder of Old Testament criticism, and in all likelihood influenced by the Liedersammeltheorie, such scholars as Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette (1780–1849), initially in his Dissertatio critico-exegetica (1805), laid the groundwork for the so-called documentary hypothesis, which holds that the Pentateuch, rather than having been written by Moses, resulted 29

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from the compilation of several discrete sources. This theory, given its classic formulation by Julius Wellhausen in his Prolegomena to the History of Israel (Prolegemena zur Geschichte Israels, 1883), dominated biblical criticism until the mid-twentieth century. After his momentous dissertation on the Hebrew Bible, De Wette wrote in his historical-critical “Introduction to the Old and New Testament” (1817) that “it is nonsense to assume that One Man created the epic-historical, rhetorical, and poetic style in its entire breadth as well as the realms of Hebrew literature in content and spirit and left it to all subsequent writers simply to follow him.”1 In the same work he explained that “the following differentiation of the Elohist and Jehovist elements according to Stähelin has a high degree of probability” (181; §151)—a distinction (E and J) to which the documentary hypothesis subsequently added the Priestly Code (P). For the time being, however, these exciting findings remained largely within the scholarly province and appear to have had no broader public or literary impact. It was a wholly different story with the current Egyptomania.2 Egypt had long, at least since Herodotus, exerted a seemingly irresistible attraction for Western writers. Various works—such as John Greaves’ Pyramidographia (1646) and the studies by the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher (e.g., Œdipus Ægyptus [1652], in which he argued that Adam and Eve spoke Egyptian)—provided ideas and images for the early Egyptophilia evident in the ceremonies of such secret societies as the Freemasons (as in Mozart’s Magic Flute) and in the pyramid placed at the suggestion of such Masonic founders as Benjamin Franklin on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States (and subsequently on the one-dollar bill).3 But Egyptomania, along with the rudiments of modern Egyptology, began properly as a consequence of Napoleon’s highly publicized campaign in Egypt (1798–1801), which was accompanied by a sizable troupe of artists and scholars. Although Napoleon was soon driven out by the British, the campaign produced such immensely popular works as Vivant Denon’s Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt (1802) and the twenty-three volumes of Description de l’Égypte (1809– 28), which included 907 plates encompassing more than 3,000 illustrations. It also resulted in considerable pillaging: both “official,” for European museums, and criminal looting, which provided plentiful Egyptian artifacts for a public newly fasci-

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nated by the reports about ancient Egypt—a fascination that lasted at least down to Sigmund Freud, who proudly displayed several such objects on his desk in Vienna’s Bergstrasse. The publicity was enhanced by Jean-François Champollion’s decipherment of the Rosetta Stone in 1822, which opened the way for the new field of Egyptology, founded in Germany by Karl Richard Lepsius (1810– 84) and in England by Sir John Gardner Wilkinson (1787–1875). But only toward the end of the century, with the work of such professionalized archaeologists as W. M. Flinders Petrie, could the field of Egyptology be established as a proper academic discipline.4 The excitement about Egypt rapidly manifested itself in literary works in Germany, France, and England.

P    G        E       Lesser figures are often more representative of their time than the more famous names because, rather than setting their own course, they flow with the prevailing currents. August Klingemann (1777–1831) is known best to literary history as the presumptive author of the pseudonymously published Romantic satire, Bonaventura’s Nightwatches (Die Nachtwachen des Bonaventura, 1804). From 1814, as a theater director in Brunswick and the author of useful theatrical criticism, he also wrote a number of mainly historical novels and plays that enjoyed popular success but no critical esteem among his classical or romantic contemporaries.5 Yet they exemplify views typical of the age of idealism in Napoleonic and postNapoleonic Germany, when writers were torn between classicism and romanticism and infected by a revolutionary fervor. Klingemann, perhaps the most pronounced “Schiller epigone” of his generation,6 shared at the same time the progressive views of his contemporaries. His plays, written in classical iambic pentameter, instead of emulating Schiller’s sophisticated psychological insights, single out and emphasize a single character trait. Thus the hero of his Luther (1809) emerges not so much as the founder of a new religion as a bold sociopolitical reformer. Similarly, the hero of his Moses (1812) displays neither subtlety nor the uncertainty of such Schillerian heroes as Wallenstein

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but, as we shall see, bulls his way single-mindedly to his goal despite the opposition of an equally arrogant pharaoh. At the same time Klingemann’s “Dramatic Poem in Five Acts” displays other characteristics of the age.7 The image on the title page, the statue of a multibreasted Isis standing on a vast plain in front of several pyramids,8 testifies to the prevailing Egyptomania and anticipates the many allusions to Egyptian religion and culture. Then immediately the dedication—“as a token of heartfelt respect” to Israel Jacobsohn, president of the Israelite Consistorium in Cassell, whom Klingemann knew when he was a young man—both signals the author’s view of Moses as “savior, liberator and lawgiver of the Israelite Nation” (Denkmal des Retters, Befreiers und Gesetzgebers der Israelitischen Nazion) and hints at his view of Moses as a Napoleonic figure set on freeing the Hebrews just as Napoleon liberated the Jews in Germany through a Napoleonic edict of 1808. A lengthy preface characterizes Moses as one of the greatest characters that history has given us. He was shaped—and here Klingemann follows Schiller’s argument—by “the sacred secrets of Isis” (viii: die heiligen Geheimnisse der Isis) at a time when a degenerate priesthood emphasized appearance rather than essence and deceived the people with their tricks. Klingemann, again following Schiller, quotes the renowned inscription from the Temple of Isis at Sais: “I am what is and shall be, and no mortal has raised my veil.” Here he learned the secrets of nature that later enabled him to achieve uncommon effects, not as a magician, but as “an ardent visionary” (x: begeisterter Seher). He recognized in nature “the symbolic shape of Isis” (xii: der symbolischen Gestalt der Isis), and he perceived Jehovah “concealed in the secret of IAO” (“the mystery of the sole deity in the mysteries of Isis,” as later explained in a note [73]).9 It is his fervor for a divine idea combined with his effort to realize it, Klingemann continues, that constitutes the dramatic motive in Moses’ character. At several points in the play itself Moses talks extensively about his experience of the innermost secrets of the Egyptian mysteries, explaining “how one supreme spirit illumines her [nature’s] heart—a spirit that is one and exists through itself and is the wellspring and source of all being.” Wie ein höchster Geist ihr Herz erleuchtet, Der einzig ist und durch sich selbst besteht, Und alles Daseins Quell und letzter Ursprung. (133)

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The play begins with a prologue portraying the circumstances of Moses’ birth. His father’s first words, a lament for his people who die while slaving on the pyramids as their children are drowned in the Nile, state the theme: “Who will be your savior from this misery!” (4: Wer wird Dein Retter sein, aus diesem Elend!). Their own son, whom they have successfully hidden for three months, is unwittingly betrayed by a neighbor. Jochebeth and Mirjam take the child to the river, where they see Princess Thermutis, who is captivated by the child and feels her own “Mutterherz” (30) stirring for him. Wanting no part of the “bloody sacrilege” (31: jenem blut’gen Frevel) being carried out by her brother (as a result of his dream that a newly born Hebrew child would overthrow his reign), she decides to keep the child and to be its “second mother,” even though she quickly perceives that Jochebeth is the true mother. She names him Moses because— and here the author footnotes Josephus’ etymology—she drew him out of the water. The action proper begins years later in Sinai, where Jethro and Zipora gaze up at Moses, standing atop Mount Horeb. He has recently changed, his wife observes, and now appears to her like “a mighty general or king” (48: ein gewalt’ger Feldherr, oder König) and even “mightier than a tribal leader or priest” (51: mächt’ger als ein Stammherr selbst oder Priester). Then Joshua arrives from Egypt and relates the history of the Hebrews in that land down to the present ruler, Sesotris, the mightiest of all pharaohs. But Moses objects: “Not of all. Up yonder reigns a pharaoh who pulverizes his power, before whom Isis and Osiris fall.” Nicht aller, aller nicht! dort oben herrscht Ein Pharao, der seine Macht zerstäubt, Vor dem die Isis und Osiris sinken! (60/61)

He reveals his identity as the notorious Moses, citing his killing of the brutal taskmaster and flight. As he speaks, fire breaks out on Horeb, the earth trembles, and the clouds are alight. When the others leave, lightning strikes the bush, causing Moses to faint. Recovering, he removes his sandals, kneels, and in a monologue promises to proclaim the Jehovah of Israel: not Peon (the deity of Midian), not Isis and Osiris, not the Egyptian IAO (as explained in the cited note). Leaving Jethro and Zipora behind, he departs for Egypt with Joshua.

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As act 2 opens, Moses has been back long enough to become reacquainted with Aaron and Mirjam, who have preached and sung his message to the Hebrews. When the Elders join them, Moses reports that he has been sent to lead them back—that they deserted Jehovah, and not vice versa. Only Korah, true to his role as rebel against Moses, disagrees, wondering to himself whether “a second pharaoh is rising for us” (88: Entsteht uns noch ein zweiter Pharao?). Joshua rushes in to tell Moses that guards are coming to arrest him for his killing of the taskmaster. As they chain him and lead him away, lightning frightens the guards. Meanwhile, at the Temple of Isis a grand procession arrives with the captured Ethiopian king, whom Sesotris haughtily liberates. When the chained Moses is brought in, the priests tell Sesostris about his father’s fateful dream. Although they demand Moses’ death, Pharaoh liberates him too, incapable of imagining, in his arrogance, that anyone—Ethiopian king or Hebrew slave—is capable of harming him. Then Moses asks that his people be allowed to go three days into the desert for their sacrifices, which would offend the Egyptians. When Pharaoh refuses, as the music of Isis resounds in the background, Jehovah’s thunder drowns it out. In act 3 Korah is complaining because the Egyptians are cursing Moses for the plagues that afflict the land, and Pharaoh has increased their labors. Even Aaron believes that the Hebrews have been destroyed by their servitude. But Moses assures him that in his vision on Mount Horeb he comprehended “the sacred highest being” (135: das heilig höchste Wesen) and his plans for Israel. At the palace, meanwhile, Pharaoh is infuriated when the water brought for him to purify his hands is bloody. He sends for Moses as messengers announce that a plague of locusts has destroyed the crops. When Moses and Aaron threaten Pharaoh with further afflictions, he is furious. Moses now warns the priests that he “will rip the veil of Isis and raise into the light the IAO buried beneath the rubble of [their] idolatry.” Drum will den Isis-Schleier ich zerreissen, Und den IAO in das Licht erheben, Den eures Götzenthums Schutt begräbt. (154)

When Pharaoh seizes his scepter to threaten Moses, it breaks in half, and Moses summons a darkness that the priests of Isis are powerless to over-

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come, while lightning strikes one who threatens Moses. In his desperation Pharaoh finally agrees to let the Hebrews leave. Soon, of course, he repeals that command, and guards again seek Moses. At the same time many Hebrews, incited by Korah, also rebel against Moses. At this point for the first time Moses displays his humanity: he is reluctant to summon the final horror, to “brandish your sword of vengeance” (170: Dein Racheschwert schwingen), he tells the Lord. Although Korah and his followers threaten to kill him, Moses warns the Hebrews to prepare for the Passover by putting lambs’ blood on their doorways. In the Temple of Isis, as Pharaoh finally orders Moses’ death, he learns that his wife has died of the pestilence along with a priest at the altar and the sacred bull Apis. All his advisers urge Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go, but he first wants to kill Moses. Hurling his sword at the entering Moses, he strikes his own sister, Moses’ mother. Infuriated, and despite Aaron’s plea, Moses issues the final command: kill the firstborn. “It’s in the cause of freedom! Hearts must break!” (201: Die Freiheit gilt es!— Herzen müssen brechen!) When Pharaoh’s beloved son dies in his arms, he finally tells Moses to lead the Hebrews away. As act 5 begins, the Hebrews have just passed through the parted waters of the Red Sea. Korah is still complaining, paraphrasing familiar biblical quotations (it “would have been better to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness” [Exod. 14:12], and the Egyptian army is pursuing and will slay them all). The Hebrews leave the stage, and then a bedraggled Pharaoh enters. He was thrown from his chariot and escaped, but the entire army was blasted from their horses by thunder and then drowned. “You are destroyed” (217: Du bist vernichtet), his sole follower tells him. The dream of his father has been fulfilled. Pharaoh curses the heavens, hurls his sword heavenward, and falls dead. (The author’s note reminds us that, according to an ancient tradition, Pharaoh was killed by lightning near the Red Sea.) As the play ends, Mirjam sings her song of victory, the Hebrews cover Pharaoh’s corpse, and they fall down to worship Moses, who reproves them: “Not me! In those heights, almighty, lives the God who liberates you” (226: Nicht mir! In jenen Höhen / Allmächtig, lebt der Gott, der euch befreit). The Hebrews march off together, singing, “Toward freedom, toward freedom, into the new fatherland!”

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Zur Freiheit hin! Zur Freiheit hin! Ins neue Vaterland! (228)

We note all the familiar themes: revolution against a tyrannical authority, liberation of the Hebrews, obsession with Egyptian mysteries and Schiller’s conviction that Moses was brought up to understand those secrets, a Moses who is as violent as Goethe believed him to be, a Schillerian conflict between two opposed temperaments (though without Schiller’s subtlety of characterization), the portrayal of Moses as a liberator (albeit not, as the preface promised, as a lawgiver). Indeed, we find almost everything except, despite the dedicatee, any real coming to grips with Hebrew belief or any doubts reflecting the incipient documentary hypothesis. After Klingemann’s romantic initiative, only two partial exceptions mark the German literary scene until century’s end.

At this point let us glance quickly at David Lyndsay’s two related works, The Plague of Darkness and The Last Plague, which, despite their publication in Lyndsay’s Dramas of the Ancient World (1822),10 are rhetorical displays without any dramatic action. The first scene begins with distinct allusions to the episode on Mount Horeb. Moses and Caleb are on “this mountain’s summit” (67) witnessing the beginning of the first day of darkness upon Egypt as Moses’ Lord, “The Terrible! the Just!,” closes his “eye of glory, and dark night descends” (68). When Joshua enters to tell Moses that the people are murmuring at his absence, Moses orders, “Be silent, and be humble” (71). The scene then shifts to Pharaoh’s palace on the third day of darkness, with Pharaoh complaining at the groans of despair from outside while he bears all, “serene and unrepining” (72). Coward sons, Of an effeminate land! why mourn ye thus To share your monarch’s draught of bitterness! For three whole days, with horror bound, have I Sat on this spot, nor tasted food, nor wine. (72)

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He asks his two sorcerers, Jochani and Mamri (who, according to the author’s note, are allegedly the sons of the wizard Balaam from Num. 22:5), why they cannot cope with the magic of Israel’s rebellious chief: That bastard of our Nile, the spawn of Levi, Nursed by the dreaming Thermutis, who left A curse unto her country in the Boy Her woe-fraught pity sav’d. (74)

In a lengthy hymn—including the familiar reference to the “mysterious veil no mortal hand / Hath ever yet upraised” (74)— they supplicate Isis for mercy, but the priest Rampsinitis (the nonbiblical name of a fictitious pharaoh based on Herodotus) tells them that their prayers to the goddess will do no good as long as “a brother God / Is scorn’d in Chemia’s land” (77). Reviewing at length the effects of the earlier plagues, the priest urges Pharaoh to let the Israelites depart. Pharaoh finally yields—not for himself, he stresses, but for the sake of his suffering people. After Moses appeals once more to his Lord, the darkness vanishes. But Pharaoh is reluctant to allow the Israelites to take their flocks and herds, which they require for their sacrifices. He reproaches Moses, calling him a son of the Nile nurtured by Isis and Osiris. As the play ends, Moses insists that his God is “alone, he is the ONE, the ALL, / From all eternity, to all enduring” (89). The one brief scene of The Last Plague takes place in Goshen, where Moses implores God to “pour out his chill breath / On miserable Egypt” (91) and calls on the “King of Death” to strike the firstborn of Egypt. Then voices and groans are heard outside deploring, “Woe, woe, unutterable woe!” (92). The two Egyptian sorcerers and the priest Rampsinitis, bemoaning the death of his own eldest son, come in and urge Moses to lead his people out of Egypt, and the play ends with another long speech by Moses. He hails “the free air of the wilderness” and “the deserts, where no tyrant reigns” (95). Egypt was “surpassing fair” with “beauteous scenes,” but “we beheld them with a captive’s eye” (96). Now a hand is outstretch’d from on high, To lead us through the long and dreary road, From the sad cells of dark captivity, Unto the promis’d land, our bless’d abode. (97)

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Guided by the famous pillar of cloud—“yon cloud” (95)—Moses leads Israel forward. Lyndsay, forgotten and eminently forgettable, displays no interest in the prevailing Egyptomania or in the lively discussions about the Bible. Apart from a few idiosyncrasies, such as introducing the legendary sons of Balaam, he has added nothing to the biblical account except for the bombast in which he apparently takes such satisfaction, and notably the verbose elocutionary exercises depicting the woes of the Egyptians from the various plagues. We must wait some four decades for the first noteworthy English contributions.

B   , D  ,    R        F    The third decade of the century witnessed a remarkable turn to Moses involving three major writers: Victor Hugo’s prize-winning poem “Moïse sur le Nil” (1820), Alfred de Vigny’s frequently anthologized poem “Moïse” (1822), and François-René de Chateaubriand’s play Moïse (1831). All three take the story as known traditionally from Exodus as their basis. This surge of activity can be attributed not to any interest in Old Testament studies but rather to the wave of nineteenth-century Egyptomania and to the fascination with Egyptian mysteries associated with the fashionable secret societies. “Moïse sur le Nil” by the eighteen-year-old Victor Hugo is still quite remote from his scandal-accompanied drama Hernani (1830), which was revolutionary not so much for its modestly radical ideas as for its poetic liberties, which offended the cultural conservatives in the audience.11 The ode of the lycéen was recognized by an award from the Académie des Jeux floraux precisely because of its mastery of conventional form: ninety lines of tail-rhymed sestets or romance-six (aabccb), as familiar from medieval romances, featuring accomplished alexandrines. The poem is based on a few lines from Exodus 2:5, which are cited as an epigraph: “Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, and her maidens walked beside the river.” The first half (lines 1– 48)12 consists of the young woman’s words—Hugo calls her Iphis, a name known from Greek mythology but not from the Bible—as she enjoys the tranquil morning out-

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side Memphis and suddenly, in the early mist, spots what she first takes to be the trunk of a palm tree and then, in acknowledgment of the current Egyptomania, “the barque of Hermes or the conchshell of Isis” (La barque d’Hermès ou la conque d’Isis). Then she realizes that it is a tiny skiff with a child “sleeping in the breast of the waves as one sleeps at the breast of his mother” (un enfant qui dort au sein des flots, / Comme on dort au sein de sa mère). The child awakens, and surmising that it is a child of Israel, the princess urges her maidens to save it in its “cradle of fragile reeds” (berceau de roseaux fragiles). She says, “I want to be its mother: he will owe me his life, even if he doesn’t owe me his birth” (Je veux être sa mère: il me devra le jour, / S’il ne me doit pas la naissance). At this point the poem switches to a third-person narrative. Stepping into the water, Iphis seizes the skiff, and, for the first time, pride is mixed in her features with her naive modesty. She carries the child to safety, where her maidens one by one kiss it timidly on its brow. Here Hugo changes the story: instead of his sister, Miriam, Moses’ mother is standing nearby. She approaches and takes her child in her arms, not betrayed by her tears and emotions. Then, as the princess bears the child triumphantly to her father, the fierce king, angels sing “their eternal songs” (les lyres éternelles), assuring Jacob and his descendants that they no longer need to fear exile on the banks of the Nile: “The Jordan is going to open its shores to them” (Le Jourdain va t’ouvrir ses rives), and Goshen will escape its enemies. The poem ends with the proclamation that the infant left on the currents of the Nile was “the chosen one of Sinai” (l’élu du Sina). “Bow down: a cradle is going to save Israel, / A cradle is going to save the world!” (Fléchissez: un berceau va sauver Israël, / Un berceau doit sauver le monde!) Hugo’s ode develops the personality of the princess far more extensively than the few biblical lines, and he does so with considerable poetic skill. But every word is consistent with the traditional understanding of Exodus and Moses’ rescue: it is simply an imaginative poeticization of the biblical passage as understood by the teenage writer. Thirty-five years later (1853– 55) Hugo returned briefly to Moses in his four-line poem “Le Temple,”13 modifying the passage (Exod. 31:1–10) in which Moses orders Bezalel and Oholiab to build and decorate the tabernacle (which Hugo calls a temple). In Hugo’s quatrain, in contrast,

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they craft statuary—“L’un sculptait l’idéal et l’autre le réel”—an opposition presumably based on the fact that Bezalel specialized in wood, stone, and metal, while Oholiab was mainly an embroiderer of fine materials (Exod. 38:23).

With “Moïse” (1822) by the young Vigny (1797–1863), which is only slightly longer (116 lines) than Hugo’s poem, we move to the other extreme: in scene, from Moses’ birth to his death; in mood, from joy and faith to tragic vision; and in organization: here the narrative precedes the long direct speech. The unrhymed alexandrines describe the scene in the last chapter of Deuteronomy (chap. 34), where the aged Moses, the “hundred-year-old prophet” (Prophète centenaire) ascends Mount Nebo to meet his death. On the way up he pauses to survey the vast horizon as well as Canaan and the promised land (tout Chanaan et la terre promise), where he already knows his tomb will not be admitted.14 Then he continues to the summit while “the children of Israel stir in the valley below like thick wheat stirred by the north wind” (Les enfants d’Israël s’agitaient au vallon / Comme les blés épais qu’agite l’aquilon). The six hundred thousand Hebrews, bowed down in the dust below and singing their sacred canticle, lose sight of him when he disappears in “the cloud of God” (le nuage de Dieu) covering the peak. At this point the narrative gives way to Moses’ words as he speaks to the Lord (lines 47–106): an unremitting lament punctuated four times by the refrain, “Let me sleep the sleep of the earth” (Laissez-moi m’endormir du sommeil de la terre). He begins by asking what he had done to be chosen to lead God’s people. Why did God not leave him alone, a simple man with his mistakes and blunders (homme avec mes ignorances)? He has caused fire to rain on the head of kings; posterity will adore his laws. But from Horeb to Nebo he has been unable to find his own resting place. He knows all the secrets of heaven; he has covered cities with sands, overturned mountains, and commanded the waters. “And still, Lord, I am not happy” (Et cependant, Seigneur, je ne suis pas heureux), he says, for the Lord has made him grow old, powerful and alone (Vous m’avez fait vieillir puissant et solitaire). The people cast down their

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eyes before him but regard him as a stranger. He has seen love extinguished and friendship wither. He has marched at the head of all, “sad and alone in my glory” (triste et seul dans ma gloire). Far from loving him, the people tremble before him. As his lament ends with the same refrain— “Laissez-moi m’endormir du sommeil de la terre”— the people wait below, fearing his wrath and not looking up at the mountain, for when they raised their eyes the flashes of lightning blinded them. “Soon the peak of the mountain reappeared without Moses. There was weeping. Marching toward the promised land, Joshua advanced, pensive and pale, for he was already the chosen one of the Almighty.” Bientôt le haut du mont reparut sans Moïse.— Il fut pleuré.—Marchant vers la terre promise, Josué s’avançais pensif et pâlissant, Car il était déja l’élu du Tout-Puissant. (lines 113–16)

In his powerful poem Vigny expands earlier hints in the biblical text of Moses’ sense of isolation and lack of fulfillment and satisfaction. He accomplishes this with specific detail and a controlled emotion that moves us even today as we read the poem. Yet though the poem goes beyond the biblical text in its psychological interpretation of Moses, it contains nothing that is inconsistent with the traditional understanding of the Books of Moses.

Chateaubriand began writing his only dramatic work, the five-act tragedy Moïse, as early as 1811, shortly after returning from his extended trip to the Near East, which took him, among other places, to Palestine and Egypt, which he described in three of the seven parts of his Itinéraire de Paris à Jerusalem (1811).15 The religious theme is hardly unexpected from the author of Le Génie du christianisme (1802). The play was completed, at least in draft, in 1812, but the author continued to revise until the work was finally published in 1831; it was not premiered until 1834, when it was dismissed by most critics as hopelessly old-fashioned.16 We readily understand why, only four years after the romantic revolution

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introduced by Hugo’s Hernani (1830), the reviewers reacted that way. The tragedy—with its alexandrine verse, small cast, and choruses—is wholly classical in manner. At the same time, the plot departs far more radically than the poems of Hugo and Vigny from the biblical source and displays evidence of the romantic associations— exoticism, fatal passion, and religious sentiment — of Chateaubriand’s early stories Atala (1801) and René (1802). While the scene of action is the Sinai desert at the foot of Mount Horeb at the time of Moses’ first descent with the Tables of the Law, the principal action does not concern Moses at all. The author has concocted a plot from hints about Aaron’s son Nadab, who “died before the Lord when they offered unholy fire before the Lord in the wilderness of Sinai” (Num. 3:4), and about Dathan, son of Eliab of the tribe of Reuben, who later led a revolt against Moses because he “brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness” (Num. 16:13). In Chateaubriand’s plot these separate events are combined into an action that takes place within the classically specified twenty-four hours. He also introduces a nonbiblical figure, the lovely and seductive Arzane, widow of the king of the Amalekites whom Nadab killed in the battle against that tribe (Exod. 17:8). When the play begins, Moses has been on the mountain for forty days, and it is rumored that he is dead. During that time, we learn, Nadab has disobeyed Moses’ command to execute Arzane and the other Amalekite women, worshippers of the pagan deity Astarte. In the process Arzane has succeeded, despite her hatred of her husband’s killer, in arousing Nadab’s passion — a passion supported by his friend Dathan. Believing Moses dead, Nadab asks Arzane to marry him, claiming that he will ally the Hebrews with the Amalekites. (It is worth noting that Chateaubriand had already employed a similar plot — concerning the problems of interfaith relationships—in his prose epic Les Martyrs ou le Triomphe de la religion chrétienne [1809], in which the hero, here a Roman officer converted to Christianity rather than a Hebrew, is pursued by a pagan, a druid priestess, with all the complications that ensue.) As the third act opens, Moses finally enters the action, bearing the Tables of the Law. He is chagrined to hear at a distance the sounds of music and dancing. “That’s not the cry of the martial solder singing the Sabaoth17 as he runs into battle” (141: Ce n’est point là le cri du belli-

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queux soldat / Qui chante Sabaoth en courant au combat). Nadab appears and informs Moses that the songs he hears are the hymns sung to their deities by the Amalekite captives. Nadab reminds Moses that the Amalekites, descendants of Esau, are a related tribe, but Moses is furious to hear that Nadab wanted to save “the stigmatized nation of Astarte” (183: d’Astarthé la nation flétrie). He shows Nadab the law on the tablets he has brought: “You shall have no other gods before me” (183: N’ADORE QU’UN SEUL DIEU). Recognizing Nadab’s weakness, he rejects him and departs, muttering, “The exterminator angel shall march before me” (186: L’Ange exterminateur marchera devant moi). When Arzane appears, she agrees to marry Nadab but only on condition that he accept her religion. While he hesitates the Levites rush in, led by Caleb, to kill Arzane, but Nadab enables her to escape. At that point the chorus of Levites sings a hymn in praise of the Lord based (as the author notes in his preface) on Psalm 18 (in the Vulgate; 19 in the Revised Standard Version): “Les cieux racontent la gloire / Du souverain Créateur” (197). In act 4, as Moses, Aaron, and the Israelite chieftains confer, a Levite dashes in to tell them that the entire camp has sworn allegiance to Nadab; that the present chieftains, should they stand by Moses, will be sacrificed; and that Nadab’s marriage to Arzane is being prepared. Moses hurls curses at the fickle race (208: Anathème à ta race volage!) while Aaron goes off to try to persuade his son to remain true to his religion. But Arzane induces Nadab to follow her and to ask Astarte to bless their union (222: Astarthé, qu’à tes chants notre union s’achève). As they depart together, the chorus of Levites led by Caleb and Israelite maidens led by Miriam sings a hymn based again on a biblical text (Miriam’s song at the Red Sea [Exod. 15:21]). As act 5 begins Dathan seeks to console Nadab, who is overcome by doubts and addresses “Pure Religion, whose altar I have sullied. How happy I was when your chaste fetters held my senses enslaved at the foot of a jealous God.” Pure religion, dont je souille l’autel, J’entends en ce moment ton soupir maternel. Combien j’étois heureux quand tes chastes entraves Au pied d’un Dieu jaloux tenoient mes sens esclaves. (232)

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Even after Arzane appears for their wedding, accompanied by a group of young Amalekite maidens bearing an altar with a pagan idol — Chateaubriand’s version of the golden calf—Nadab still regrets his betrayal of Jacob’s Israel. Then Moses appears high on Mount Sinai with the Tables of the Law, which he shatters on the rocks, saying that his people are no longer worthy. Overturning the pagan altar, he appeals to the Levites and Miriam to join him. As the people and soldiers take Moses’ side, Nadab assures Arzane of his protection. But when the Levites bear her away, she tells Nadab spitefully that she seduced and led him on only to avenge the death of her husband and the defeat of her people. Moses orders the Levites to “crush the head of this ungrateful serpent and dry the streams of venom that it spreads” (Allez, brisez la tête à cet ingrat serpent, / Et tarissez les flots du venin qu’il répand). Although Miriam prays for the Lord’s forgiveness of Nadab, he rushes off to “render his due” to Jehovah: his own death and the penalty of Hell, where he may be reunited with Arzane. A Levite comes in to report that Arzane has been stoned to death by the fury of the people and that Nadab sought to immolate himself (as in Num. 3:4) on her pyre “with an impure censer of impure fires” (244: de feux impurs un impur encensoir) but was struck dead by a lightning bolt that Moses assumes was sent by the “sovereign judge” (244: arbitre souverain). In a great concluding vision Moses foretells the future: his generation will die out in the desert, and their children, led by Caleb and Joshua, will cross the Jordan. He himself, “stigmatized by your iniquity” (245: tout flétri de votre iniquité) and rejected by the land of Jacob, will see the Promised Land only from afar and give the people his final blessing. With his concluding words, the devoutly Christian Chateaubriand allows his Moses to predict the coming of Jesus: “Tribes, I bless you now as at my last hour. May I live and die in the breasts of my children. And, after my demise, may a divine voyager show you the way to the true fields of Abraham.” Tribus, je vous bénis comme à ma dernière heure. Au sein de mes enfants que je vive et je meure; Et qu’après mon trépas un voyageur divin Des vrais champs d’Abraham leur montre le chemin. (245)

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As we see, Chateaubriand’s tragedy is less about Moses, who appears in fewer than half the scenes of acts 3 through 5, than about Nadab, whose deceitful seduction by Arzane is prefigured by such biblical tales as that of Judith and Holofernes. Moses himself, to the extent that he appears, is consistent with his traditional biblical role and even heralds the coming of Jesus. But the biblical account has been completely changed: the orgy of the golden calf has been transformed into the wedding celebrations for Nadab and Arzane; the military rebellion instigated by Dathan has been moved forward to this point, as has Nadab’s death when he “offered unholy fire before the Lord.”

Finally, we should note in this connection that the Moses fad of the 1820s in France encouraged Gioachino Rossini in his decision to revise his popular Mosè in Egitto (1818) into a version more closely adapted to the tastes of the French audience. Mosè in Egitto was already playing at the Théâtre Italien in Paris, where Rossini had been appointed director. But Moïse et Pharaon, ou Le Passage de la Mer Rouge (1827) displayed so many changes in score and libretto that it amounted virtually to a new opera.18 A libretto in French by Luigi Balocchi and Étienne de Jouy replaced the original Italian one by Andrea Leone Totolla. A lengthy exposition increased the number of acts from three to four. Several names were altered: for instance, Moses’ brother Aronne is now called Éliézer; Pharaoh’s wife is Sinaïde rather than Amaltea; and his son is Aménophis rather than Osiride (the name now given to the priest of Isis). An elaborate ballet, almost ritual in French opera, was added. And Rossini, deleting several arias composed in the Italian version by his collaborator, replaced them with his own music. The new French version was so successful that it continued to be produced regularly for the next four decades. Like Chateaubriand, Rossini and his librettists felt free to play with the biblical account and to spruce it up with a wholly fictitious love story. The opera opens in the camp of the Midianites—who for some reason are already here with the Hebrews—outside Memphis, where after fifteen (823) or twenty (846) but not the biblical four hundred years of captivity, Moses and the people await the return of his brother, Eliézer, his

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sister, Marie, and her daughter, Anaï, from the palace of Pharaoh. The Egyptian ruler has been influenced by his wife, Sinaïde—who has no biblical counterpart—to free Marie and Anaï, previously slaves in his household, and to liberate the Hebrews. (Sinaïde, who, as her name suggests, is a Midianite and a former worshipper of the Hebrew God—“Je respecte Moïse, et son Dieu fut le mien” [842]—plays a mediating role much akin to that of Esther in the biblical book of her name.) A mysterious voice from above tells Moses that their Lord is going to fulfill his promise that the Hebrews will fight and conquer in his name. Moïse, approche-toi. Je remplis ma promesse, Dans une sainte ivresse Viens recevoir ma loi. (825)

Moses takes the Tables of the Law—which here he receives long before Mount Sinai—to the people, who express their joy in a chorus in which they consecrate their firstborn to God’s service. (We note the total confusion of times and places as reported in the biblical account.) At this point we learn that Pharaoh’s son Aménophis has fallen madly in love with Anaï, who reciprocates his love but refuses to give up her religion. Oui, je vous aime, Aménophis, Et près de vous j’eusse été trop heureuse; Mais du sort la loi rigoreuse, En nous séparant à jamais, Ne saurait m’imposer l’oubli de vos bienfaits. (826)

When she states her intention to depart with the Hebrews, Aménophis orders his guards to seize her and to prevent their departure. On his son’s appeal, Pharaoh revokes his permission to free the Hebrews, whereupon Moses calls down a darkness—“ce désastre épouvantable,” according to Pharaoh (835)—that obscures the heavens as fire rains down from the skies and a pyramid is transformed into a volcano. In Pharaoh’s palace (act 2) his wife and son argue for and against the liberation as a chorus of Egyptians laments the disaster that has befallen

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them. Moses promises to intercede with the Divine Creator if Pharaoh will keep his word. Pharaoh promises, and light is restored, but Aménophis still fumes. As mother and son continue to argue, Pharaoh promises her he will break the chains of the Hebrews, and all but Aménophis sing in praise of “sweet light, the gift of heaven, which promises happy days” (840: Douce lumière, / Bienfait des cieux, / Tu nous promets des jours heureux). Then Pharaoh tells his son that he wants him to marry the princess of Assyria, a plan that casts him into despair. Despite the pleas of his mother, who begs him to remain faithful to honor and duty, Aménophis resolves not to let Anaï go and to seek vengeance for their misfortune from Moses, whom he holds responsible for all the problems: “J’aspire à la vengeance: / Moïse qui m’offense / Doit payer nos malheurs” (843). But he pretends that he will obey the wishes of his mother, who closes the scene with expressions of happiness: “O bonheur! ô douce ivresse! / Il a comblé mes voeux” (844). As act 3 opens the Egyptians are worshipping before the Temple of Isis—“Reine des cieux / Et de la terre, / De tous nos dieux / Auguste mère” (845)—with games and dances (the grand ballet). When Moses arrives to claim the fulfillment of Pharaoh’s promise, the priest Osiride orders them to bend their knees before Isis. Moses refuses indignantly, and an officer reports that the Nile has turned red with blood, the earth is trembling, insects are destroying the crops, and the desert winds are bringing poisonous air. The priest and Aménophis ask Pharaoh to punish the Hebrews as Sinaïde pleads for his indulgence. As Moses and Osiride argue, Moses extends his arms toward the altar of the false gods, where the fires are extinquished and the statue of Isis collapses. Osiride tries to claim that their gods are manifesting their will, but Moses states that the Lord, irritated, is manifesting his will through the new miracle. L’Eternel, irrité, Par ce nouveau prodige Manifeste sa volonté. (849)

In various ensembles the two sides express their views: the Egyptians decry the “funeste délire” of the Hebrews; the latter cry, “Tout cède à l’empire / Du Maître des cieux” (849). Pharaoh orders them to be cast

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out of Memphis into the desert—but in chains and destined to die as a symbol of terror to the universe (851: en horreur à l’univers). The last act finds the enchained Hebrews in the desert near the Red Sea. Aménophis has seized Anaï for himself and now threatens that Moses’ refusal to listen to his terms will change the happy day into a day of grief and sadness. Il se croit au terme de ses voeux; Il va m’entendre: puisse un refus orgueilleux Ne pas changer ce jour heureux En jour de deuil et de tristesse! (853)

When Moses appears Aménophis states his demand, that Anaï must marry him, but Moses says that she must make her choice: between two mothers, two lands, her lover and her deity. Anaï doit choisir en ce jour, en ce lieu, Entre Sinaïde et Marie, Entre Memphis et sa patrie, Entre son amant et son Dieu. (854)

After bemoaning her “affreuse destinée” (854) Anaï chooses to obey the laws of the Lord. Aménophis for his part now lusts for vengeance. Announcing that Pharaoh and his forces are advancing against the Hebrews, he wishes them all to perish, saying that a perjuring woman has brought this upon them. Moses tells the Hebrews not to fear, that in this moment an invincible force raises him beyond mortal stature. Dans ce moment terrible Une force invincible M’élève au-dessus d’un mortel. (856)

After a choral prayer the Hebrews’ chains fall from their arms. As the Egyptian forces approach, Moses leads the Hebrews into the sea, which parts before them. When Pharaoh and the Egyptians follow, they are submerged. The opera ends with Marie’s hymn of thanks as a celestial glory

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appears in the background with an apparition of Jehovah. (With a gesture of directorial hubris in the film version, the conductor, Riccardo Muti, has his own face appear here in the clouds rather than that of the deity.) Chantons, bénissons le Seigneur! Nous avons souffert pour sa gloire; Il nous a donné la victoire; Il frappe le persécuteur: Chantons, bénissons le Seigneur! (859)

These four Mosaica exemplify two principal tendencies of French Romanticism. While the two poems focus on the emotional extremes of the princess and the prophet at the beginning and end of Moses’ life, the two stage works use the story largely as a framework for the erotic action that titillates the authors/librettists and their audiences. Three of the four works, in addition, exhibit prominent traces of the currently raging Egyptomania.

T   S    R        Harro Paul Harring (1798–1870), born in North Frisia of Danish parents, began as a student of art in Copenhagen and Dresden, then the centers of Romantic painting.19 In 1821, excited by the uprising in Greece, he joined the Philhellenic Legion to fight the Turks; but disappointed by what he saw as the passivity of the Greeks, he went to Rome to resume his art career. Soon changing his plans, he spent much of the 1820s as a dramatist and theater director in Munich and then Vienna. Expelled by the Metternich regime for his demagogic activities, he served from 1828 to 1830 as officer in a Russian regiment in Warsaw but returned to Germany to take part in the revolutionary activities of 1830 and began to write voluminously in German, his adopted language: in addition to his Mémoires on Poland under Russian Domination (Memoiren über Polen unter russischer Herrschaft, 1831), many articles, poems, and novels about oppressed peoples, works that repeatedly caused his arrest and expulsion. In 1840 he sailed to Brazil to work for the liberation of the slaves and in

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1841 settled in New York, where he published the two volumes of his “selected works” in the hope of finding a “Germanic” public in the New World but instead encountered ideological difficulties with the German émigré community.20 The March Revolution of 1848 lured him back to Germany, where he called for the creation of the Free State of North Frisia and edited a newspaper, Das Volk. During the next two decades he continued to travel worldwide until, finally, he committed suicide in utter poverty on the Isle of Jersey. In light of this biography, we are hardly surprised to discover that his four-act historical drama, Moses in Tanis (Moses zu Tanis, 1839), is more political than religious. In fact, it is listed in his selected works among his “political writings in dramatic form” (1:336). It was to be the first of a planned trilogy that was to continue with “Moses in Midian” and “Moses in Diospolis,” but the author was so bitterly disillusioned by the reception—he had earlier been unable to find a publisher in Germany— that after its publication he declared that he was “taking leave from a language that was not the language of my mother but that I learned with enthusiasm and in which for twenty-five years I have sought to represent the affairs of humankind” (2:217). Religion, notably Egyptian, is not wholly absent. Within the secrecy of their temple the priests state that they alone comprehend true religion, “illumined by the eternal glory of Osiris, / illumined by the glory of the primal essence / that we alone recognize and whose existence / we keep strictly hidden from the people”: Umleuchtet von Osiris ew’gem Glanz, Umleuchtet von dem Glanz des Urwesens, Das wir erkennen nur, und dessen Dasein Wir streng’ verborgen halten allem Volk. (2:132)

They recognize “a single, highest being that reigns over Isis and Osiris” (2:138: ein einzig, höchstes Wesen, / Das über Isis und Osiris herrschet) that the followers of Abraham call Jehovah—a being that created the universe and directs the course of men and peoples. But this and a few other statements pointing to the essential monotheism underlying the popular polytheism of the common people constitutes the entire religious dimension of the drama, a dimension based wholly on Schiller’s essay.

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Otherwise the action is purely political, making Moses into a revolutionary much like the rebellious activists of the German Vormärz, the period preceding the March Revolution of 1848: a rebel against the authoritarianism of a reactionary church and state. Set in the royal city of Tanis (the biblical Zoan in the Upper Delta), the action is triggered by the imminent death of Princess Termuthis, sister of the reigning pharaoh and the affectionate mother who rescued the infant Moses. Moses, we learn from his former tutor, was instructed “in everything that the holiness of the priestly state embraces as art and science and understanding” (2:135: in Allem unterrichtet, was / Als Kunst und Wissenschaft und als Erkenntniß, / Das Heiligthum der Priesterwürde fasset) as well as the “higher magic” (2:136: die höhere Magie). His mind, the high priests believe, is powerful enough to overthrow the throne (2:136: Sein Geist ist mächtig g’nug, den Thron zu stürzen). Beyond that, he has won glory and popularity through his victory over Ethiopia, where he was sent in the expectation that he would be killed. (We hear of Pharaoh’s dream that a child of his daughter will overthrow him.) Even though Moses, out of love for the Hebrew people, has consistently refused to accept any royal honors, the priestly conspirators, fearing that he will now ascend to power following his mother-protector’s death, determine that he must die. It is their duty to protect the throne and the government, which require the sanction of the temple (2:139: Der Thron, die Staatsform fordert Tempelsatzung). Only Moses’ former tutor disagrees, arguing that the seeds for the decline of the monarchy are already present in its policies and forms and that, whether Moses lives or dies, “the spirit that seeks new forms” (2:140: Der Geist, der neue Formen suchet) will survive. In act 2 the Hebrew elder Guni appeals to Osymandis, high priest of Osiris, to help him recover his daughter from an Egyptian officer who has kidnapped her, but the priest—in one of various episodes displaying the Egyptians’ contempt for the enslaved Hebrews—haughtily turns him away, saying that she, like all other Hebrews, is a property of the state. The Hebrew spy Perez reports that Moses is the leader of a group dreaming of freedom for the Hebrews and promises to get the names of the other members. Then Moses appears, dismayed by his realization that the Hebrews, undermined by their slavery, have lost their faith, which is now nothing but “a phantom” (2:151). When he learns that his

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wife, the Ethiopian princess Tharbis, is not permitted to visit the dying royal princess, he wonders why he has been chosen by God for this thankless task. Tharbis realizes that his love for God, the creator of all things, and for his people as a party of humanity prevent him from loving her as she loves him: “Du liebst in deinem Volk, als Theil der Menschheit— / Im Weltall Gott, den Schöpfer aller Dinge” (2:154). But—with a hint at prefiguration—he assures his wife that she is “the myrtle in his crown of thorns” (2:155). When Moses goes that evening (act 2) to meet his Egyptian friend Amasis, the nephew of Princess Termuthis, he sees the Hebrew Guni seeking his daughter at the officer’s dwelling. When the officer attacks Guni, Moses intercedes and kills him. They rescue the daughter, Esther, and Moses tells them to flee. The last part of the action, meanwhile, has been witnessed secretly by the spy Perez. Moses is joined by Amesis, who helps him dispose of the body but warns him that he must flee. Moses reluctantly agrees, disappointed because, he says, “my people of the present have sunk so deeply, have been devastated too greatly by slavery, to be able yet to understand my belief in the sole God.” mein Volk Der gegenwärt’gen Zeit so tief gesunken, Zu sehr durch Sklaverei verwüstet worden, Als daß es jemals mich begreifen könnte In meinem Glauben an den ein’gen Gott! (2:171)

He must await a more youthful generation because “no people liberates itself from the yoke of slavery by sighs and laments. . . . Freedom demands action, and action springs from the heart, feeling, love of the people.” Kein Volk befreit sich je vom Sklavenjoch Durch Seufzer und durch Wehklagen, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Die Freiheit fordert That—die That entspringt Dem Herzen, dem Gefühl, der Lieb’ zum Volk. (2:171)

He dreams—like the German revolutionaries of the Vormärz —of the “unification of related tribes into one people” (2:173: Vereinigung ver-

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wandter Stämme / Zu einem Volk) and hopes to “found a people’s power opposed to the domination of the pharaohs” (2:171– 72: Begründen will ich eine Volkes-Macht, / Der Pharaonen Herrschaft gegenüber). At the beginning of act 3 the young Hebrew Bethuel is seeking Moses, who has long been forbidden to associate with his brother and sister, the prophetess Mirjam. Moses warns Bethuel not to be seen with him. Assuring him of his love for his people, Moses reiterates his conviction that they can be saved only through unity: “only through the unification of your spiritual power—in the belief in Jehova” (2:179: Nur durch Verein’gung Eurer Geisteskraft— / Im Glauben an Jehova). When Moses departs, Perez approaches Bethuel, reports that the princess has died, and says, in the attempt to deceive Moses’ friend, that Pharaoh should fall and Amesis come to power. Then Osymantis and Termuthis’ physician appear with a purported report outlining the dying princess’s confused murmurings in which she allegedly exposed Moses’ plan to seize power and his wife’s co-conspiracy—plans that require their deaths. The Ethiopian princess has already been poisoned, and both Moses and his friend Amasis must be seized and executed when they come to the temple to receive their inheritance. (High Priest Osymantis has long recognized that, in their friendship, Amadis is “Moses’ head and Moses Amadis’ heart” [2:150]). When the two friends enter, Amasis insists that Moses must flee for his life, but he will stay because only as Pharaoh can he accomplish any of their goals. Meanwhile, Perez’ Hebrew fiancée has discovered a letter of his in which his spying is revealed; she and her brother with Bethuel confront him, and Bethuel goes to inform Moses. In a long monologue (act 4) Amasis reflects that among his own people, the Egyptians, certain individuals have an “awareness of higher dignity” but not the general populace. ich erkenne Im Einzelnen: Bewußtsein höh’rer Würde; Dem Volk’, als Volk, blieb dies Bewußtsein fremd. (2:202)

Tyranny, he continues, requires a passive people: “Der Pharaonen Thron verlanget: Stillstand” (2:203). Any movement toward development, in contrast, overthrows the throne: “Bewegung zur Entwicklung—stürzt den Thron” (2:203). When he leaves, Perez and Hermonthis, an officer of

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Pharaoh’s bodyguard, figure out that Moses is guilty of killing the Egyptian officer and plan to arrest him when he comes to the Temple of Isis to receive his inheritance. When Bethuel comes looking for Moses, Perez tries to recover his letter of betrayal, but Moses arrives and learns the truth. The last scene, which takes place in the Temple of Isis, begins with a long procession of military, priests, and royal courtiers, followed by a choral song to Isis. But Moses, who is expected to take an oath to the throne and to the gods, has fled to Midian and does not arrive with his own procession. Amasis enters and, as Princess Termuthis’ nephew, states that he stands ready to take Moses’ place and to suffer all the consequences of the curse imposed on Moses by the law: “Thanks to Moses I became a human being;—I want to suffer for Moses” (2:216: Ich ward durch Moses Mensch;—ich will für Moses leiden). With those proud words this drama of religious and political conspiracy ends—a drama that recasts in biblical terms the principal concerns of young revolutionaries regarding the reactionary doctrines of church and state in the Europe of the 1840s. It also illustrates—a century and a half before Michael Walzer’s Exodus and Revolution—the author’s vision of liberty for enslaved blacks that was soon to draw him to South America. It thus represents a development well beyond the French works of the 1820s—all written prior to the revolution of 1830—which were more explicitly religious and based on social-erotic intrigue rather than political conspiracy.

For reasons that will become clear it is not inappropriate at this point to introduce a few words about Heinrich Heine (1799–1856). Heine, himself a Jew and a far greater writer than Harro Harring, had surprisingly little to say about Moses, who plays no role in his poetry.21 But the few brief allusions in his prose works are revealing. The earlier of the two passages occurs in book 2 of his “memorial” to the prominent political radical Ludwig Börne (1786–1837),22 to whose spirit (Manen) Harro Harring dedicated his Moses zu Tanis. In a passage dated July 8, 1830 (though actually composed in 1839/40), Heine writes that, on an idle Sunday, “I reached in desperation for the Bible . . . and I confess that, although I am a secret Hellene, the book did not simply entertain but also truly edified me” (7:46). (Later

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he writes that the Old Testament is a great book, comparable to Homer, “the other great book” [7:52].) It is in that context that he includes a rather critical paragraph about Moses, because, although he instilled spirit in his people, he also implanted “the stark ceremonial law and an egoistical nationalism as its protective hedge” (7:47). As Jeffrey L. Sammons has shown, Heine was constantly engaged in the “struggle against reactionary nationalists” and regarded nationalism as undermining the revolutionary movement.23 It required Jesus Christ to tear down the ceremonial law, inviting all the people of the world to share in the kingdom of God and bestowing “Jewish citizenship” on all humankind (7:47). Fifteen years later, as he reread the Bible while confined to his “mattress grave” (Matratzengruft) in Paris, Heine’s views shifted 180 degrees. In his late Confessions (Geständnisse, 1854) he acknowledges that he now sees the character of Moses, this “gigantic figure” (6:54: Welche Riesengestalt!), in a wholly new light. Indeed, were it not for the sin of anthropomorphism, he would say that the Mosaic God is “only the reflected blaze of light from Moses himself ” (6:55). He attributes his earlier disdain to “the Hellenic spirit [that] predominated within me, and I could not forgive the lawgiver of the Jews for his hatred against all figurative representation, against plastic art” (6:55). He now sees — a view that almost a century later (see chapter 8) contributed to Thomas Mann’s understanding of Moses — that Moses, “despite his hostility to art was himself a great artist and possessed the true artistic spirit.” Like the Egyptians, he focused that spirit on what was colossal and indestructible. But unlike them he did not form his works of art from bricks and granite, but he built human pyramids, he chiseled human obelisks, he took a poor shepherd tribe and created from it a people that likewise would defy the centuries: great, eternal, holy people, a people of God that could serve all other peoples as a model—indeed, as a prototype of humanity itself: he created Israel! (6:55)

Heine now understands that “the Greeks were only lovely youths, but the Jews were always men—powerful, unbending men” (6:55). Heine regards Moses as an early socialist, “although as a practical man who sought only to remodel existing practices in connection with

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property” (6:61)—that is, not to do away with property altogether but to moralize it and bring it into consonance with decency and reason. He wanted everyone to possess something so that no one would be reduced through poverty to servile attitudes. “Freedom was also the final thought of the great emancipator, and this idea breathes and flames in all his laws that concern pauperism. He hated slavery beyond all measure” (6:62). He ends with a peroration to Moses, “our teacher, Mosche Rabenu, the lofty fighter against servitude,” asking him to “hand me hammer and nails so that I can nail our comfortable slaves in their black-red-gold livery by their long ears to the Brandenburg Gate!” (6:62). In sum, Heine has shifted from a view of Moses not inconsistent with the earlier traditional understanding of Moses as lawgiver to a view influenced by the revolutionary thought of the 1840s and close to the powerful liberation theology of Harro Harring’s Moses in Tanis. What is more, his conception of Moses as a socialist anticipates by many decades the presentation of his figure in certain twentieth-century works.

Imre Madách (1823–1864) is renowned today almost solely for his masterpiece, The Tragedy of Man (1861), which has become a Hungarian stage classic and a standard text in schools. He hoped for similar success for his dramatic poem Moses (Mózes), which was also written in 1861 but was first published in 1880 and, despite a few unsuccessful stage performances, remained virtually unknown until the second half of the twentieth century. With the figure of Moses and the story of the Exodus, Madách sought to encourage the Hungarians to liberate themselves from the Habsburg domination under which they had lived since the expulsion of the Turks in 1697. Following the Revolution of 1848, when Madách was jailed for his activities, the Hungarians won temporary independence, which, owing to disputes among the various peoples and constituencies, they were unable to maintain. By the time Hungary achieved true independence in 1867 with its own constitution and king, Francis Joseph, the poet was deceased. In the absence of a reliable English version I am unable to provide a fair and objective account of Madách’s Moses.24 When the play begins, the

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“youngling” Moses has just returned to the palace from his priestly education and, wholly Egyptian in mentality, regards the people of Israel as “this gangrenous and old fester” (11). So when Aaron and Hur appear before him and the pharaoh with their request, he scornfully rejects them. When Jokhebed informs him that he is himself Jewish, he first begs her not to betray the secret but agrees to go among the Jews to become acquainted with his people. When he arrives in Goshen, Maria (Miriam) has just been raped by a bailiff, an incident that drives her mad and turns her into a prophetess. Moses kills the bailiff but, betrayed by some of his own people, must flee. In the next scene he is in Midian, happily married to Cippora, but when a bush begins to burn and the voice of Jehovah speaks to him, he agrees to go back to fight for his people. Aaron, Joshua, and Hur arrive to fetch him away, but when Joshua says that they will fight the Egyptians with spade and hoe, Moses replies that they will resort to tricks: ask for three days for prayer in the wilderness and then escape with ease. In Egypt he encounters the usual doubts and complaints from the Hebrews, but then, on the evening when “the doorsteps [are] painted by the blood” (64), they hear mysterious knockings everywhere, and the people clamor for Moses to lead them away. Part 2 depicts the usual scenes of the Exodus. At Mount Sinai Moses shatters the golden calf with the two tablets before he sends the Levites to kill the unfaithful and, for a time, banishes Aaron and Maria. Then he holds up his arms as the Hebrews battle the Moabites, who have been sent against them in vengeance for their lack of faith. Near Canaan Joshua is almost seduced by a Moabite maiden he has captured, but Moses warns him. When the spies return with reports of Canaan, there are the usual discontents, and Moses is tempted to give up and go home with Cippora. Then the voice of Jehovah speaks to him again from a fog bank in the tent and threatens to extinguish the disloyal people. This folk became now unworthy of me. I kill forever out it from the surface [sic]. (108)

When Moses pleads for them, Jehovah relents but tells him that the desert shall be his tomb. Moses is happy to redeem his people with his own life. At Mount Abiram Moses sends Aaron and Maria up before him to die in

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the awaiting sarcophagi while he stays behind to tell his people that the enjoyment of wealth in the Promised Land should not deceive them. Because it’s not the glebe you trample on But holy law makes you to be a folk! (118)

Joshua seeks to accompany him up the mountain, but Moses sends him back, saying that he should lead the people into Canaan when a lonely tree on the cliff falls down, signaling his death. Thirty days later the people hear heavy blows of an ax from the mountain and see the tree falling into the abyss with a loud crash. Singing Moses’ praise, they prepare to march off to the gates of Jericho. Even in the adaptation and its crude translation we can sense the revolutionary fervor that led Madách to hope for a unification that might solidify the Hungarians into one people mature enough for independence: they already have the land, the “glebe,” but they need the law and constitution that still lay ahead. In later writers, as we shall see, the revolutionary zeal was more specifically ideologized, but among these three writers of the nineteenth century Moses had already become a striking icon for that movement.

P              U     S   A remarkable duo of Moses adaptations appeared in the United States of the 1860s: J. H. Ingraham’s The Pillar of Fire (1859) and Frances Harper’s “Moses: A Story of the Nile” (1869). While the French and German writers had preferred stage representations for their adaptations of Moses, writers in English initiated the fictional treatment of the theme—a difference that signaled a pronounced shift of focus. Since the stage presentation requires action in a relatively restricted time period, the plays as well as Rossini’s opera tended to focus on the events immediately leading up to the Exodus or those in the Sinai surrounding the Tables of the Law. Narrative, in contrast, permits the writer to deal with events over an extended period. And since the biblical account tells us so little about Moses’ life prior to his first flight from Egypt, it invites imaginative speculation about his childhood and youth.

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Joseph Holt Ingraham devoted thirty-two of the forty-four chapters (269 of 376 pages) of his Pillar of Fire; or, Israel in Bondage (1859) to that period. Ingraham (1809– 60), a native of Portland, Maine, following his early years as a sailor, newspaperman, and prolific author of such bestselling novels as Lafitte: The Pirate of the Gulf (1836), moved to Mississippi where he taught languages at a school for boys and then, in 1852, became an Episcopal minister.25 In the latter capacity, rejecting his earlier popular works, he wrote a trilogy of novels illustrating “the three great eras of Hebrew history—viz., its beginning, at the Exodus; its culmination, as in the reigns of David and Solomon; its decline, as in the day of our Lord’s incarnation.”26 The Pillar of Fire deals with the first of these epochs, followed (in historical sequence, not order of publication) by The Prince of the House of David (1855) and The Throne of David (1860). It was his intention, as he continued in his author’s appendix, “to draw the attention of those persons who do not read the Bible, or who read it carelessly, to the wonderful events it records, as well as the divine doctrine it teaches; and to tempt them to seek the inspired sources from which he mainly draws his facts” (381). The novel is dedicated “To the Men of Israel, Sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Kindred of Moses, the Great Lawgiver and Friend of God,” in the hope that they would “follow the light of the Cross, as your fathers followed the Pillar of fire, and enter at last the real Canaan”—that is, the Canaan of Jesus, the true Joshua. Whether or not they did, almost exactly a century later Cecil B. DeMille used the novel as one of the three main fictional sources for his blockbuster The Ten Commandments (1956). After this dedication and the author’s declared proselytizing intention, it is a surprise to find that the novel itself is not so much a religious tract as an exemplification of nineteenth-century Egyptomania, based on “a careful study of the history and chronology of Egypt” (v) and displaying the author’s familiarity with the standard works on Egypt from Manetho, Herodotus, and Josephus down to Champollion, Thomas Young, and Karl Richard Lepsius, as well as the twenty-six volumes of the Napoleonic Description de l’Egypte and Hengstenberg’s Egypt and the Books of Moses Illustrated by the Monuments of Egypt. The long first part of the epistolary novel consists of letters written by the twenty-eight-year-old Prince Sesostris to his mother, the queen of Phoenicia, describing his Bildungsreise to Egypt to study its “laws and arts, religion and government” (vi). Despite

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the author’s statement that “this work is by no means a ‘book on Egypt,’” Sesostris’ letters are filled with exhaustive, sometimes exhausting descriptions of Egyptian magnificence: its architecture, interior decor, clothing, customs, social classifications, royal ceremonies, burial practices, dances, military parades and religious processions, and much more, almost as though the author wanted to put into words the three thousand illustrations of the great Description de l’Egypte. Imagine, my dear mother, this stupendous and noble temple with its vast wings facing the river, and reflected upon its sunny surface. Fancy the river itself, flowing laterally through these gateways into an artificial canal, lined with trees, and bordered by lesser temples, which recede in long lines of diminishing columns. Behold oranges swinging in clusters from branches bending over the water, while scarlet pomegranates, figs, and olives, fill trees innumerable that shade the terraces; and vine, either gorgeous with flowers of wonderful beauty and form, or pendent with purple grapes, entwine the columns, and depend from the carved abacus of the capitals. (12)

In the context of these skillful but often wearying descriptions the author provides an almost wholly fictionalized account of Moses’ life. Prince Sesostris, bearing letters of introduction to Queen Amense of Egypt, is welcomed by her son, thirty-four-year-old Prince Remeses, whose character impresses Sesostris: “Gentle in his manner, he is in temper rather reserved; in his morals irreproachable, and never known (a rare virtue in princes of Egypt) to exceed the bounds of the most rigid temperance” (51). Sesostris is also struck by his appearance: “Prince Remeses does not share a single characteristic of this Egyptian national head and face; on the contrary, he resembles the highest type of the Hebrew” (82). Even though he feels no sense of identification with them, Remeses is enormously sympathetic to the plight of the enslaved Hebrews. The two princes immediately become close friends and share their views and their secrets. Remeses/Moses has been raised by his devoted Egyptian mother in total ignorance of his true heritage, but Sesostris soon encounters his father and siblings, who live and work nearby: his father as chief palace gardener, his sister Miriam as a palace scribe, and Aaron as a temple arti-

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san who casts images of the golden calf for worshippers of the bull god Apis. Remeses is destined to become Pharaoh of his country—a plan bitterly opposed by his conspiratorial and sinister cousin, Prince Moeris, who is aware that Remeses is not Amense’s true son and has long blackmailed the queen with that knowledge. After Remeses successfully wages the war against the Ethiopians and has achieved enormous popularity among the people, Amense decides to resign her throne and to install Remeses as her successor. While Remeses is undergoing the ritual fortyday initiation into the mystery cults, so that he may become the chief pontiff as well as the pharaoh, Moeris manages to discover his true background—from elderly royal servants who were sent away from the palace years before—and blackmails Amense into offering him half the kingdom, Thebes and Upper Egypt. He also schemes with the priests indoctrinating Remeses to arrange a magical vision in which he is acquainted with the true circumstances of his birth and the bulrush crib. When he returns to the palace and finds Amense in distress at Moeris’ threats, he insists on hearing the truth from her. When she confesses, his own ethical convictions and honesty will not allow him to continue the deception by becoming Pharaoh or even governor of Goshen. Before leaving Egypt he is brought together by Sesostris with his true family. Then he departs and spends the next five years first with Sesostris in Tyre and then with the wise Lord of Uz (Job), from whom, as he writes to his brother Aaron, he learns about the true God worshipped by their forefathers and whose life (in accordance with legend) he records. When he returns to Egypt five years later, his prayers to this God produce his first miracle: he calms the storm threatening the ship bearing him back. But the Hebrews in Egypt are unwilling to listen when he and Aaron first suggest to them an emigration to Palestine, the land given to their people by God. When Moses kills the vicious Egyptian taskmaster and is then betrayed by the two quarreling Hebrews, he must again flee—this time to Midian, where he meets Prince Jethro, marries his daughter, and becomes his chief shepherd. The final section consists mainly of letters written some forty years later to Sesostris, now king of Phoenicia, by his son, who has also been named Remeses in honor of his father’s old friend. Again there are lengthy descriptions as the young man, now making his own Bildungsreise,

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informs his father about the changes that have taken place in Egypt. Soon, however, he makes his way into Midian to find Moses and thus becomes a witness to the following events. He observes the incident of the burning bush, which is described in all its supernatural grandeur, and the arrival of Aaron, who has been told by God to seek out his brother. He accompanies them back to Egypt, where now, rather rapidly, we hear about the various plagues and the night of terror when a Pillar of Fire strikes the firstborn of the Egyptians. The author has young Remeses add a symbolic interpretation of the miracles: for instance, the miracle of the frogs “was also directed against a god of the Egyptians and the worship of these unclean animals” (360), just as the miracle of the flies “was designed to destroy the confidence of the Egyptians in their god of flies, Baal-zebul” (361). The last six pages recount hastily the parting of the Red Sea, the Pillar of Fire that leads the Hebrews to Mount Hebron, and the episode of the golden calf. Remeses concludes his last letter before returning to Damascus with the report that God told Moses that the Israelites now, in punishment for their lack of faith, must wander for forty years in the wilderness. How does religion enter into this fictional panorama and novel of conspiracy? One central theme emerges from the many discussions of religion between Sesostris and Remeses/Moses, Miriam, and Aaron and between Remeses and the Lord of Uz as well as Prince Jethro: namely, the essential monotheism of thoughtful people in the Near East despite the polytheism of the ignorant populace, including the Hebrews. Sesostris soon learns that it is an error to think that “these enlightened Egyptians worship the sun, or any other objects, as such of mere matter. Their fundamental doctrine is the unity of the deity, whose attributes are represented under positive and material forms” (17). Remeses explains, “in its purity, our Egyptian idea of gods” is as beings “to whom the Supreme Intellect of the Universe delegates a part of His authority and power over man and nature” (90). Expressing to the astonished Sesostris his preCopernican conjecture that “the world may be a globe, suspended in subtle ether, and in diurnal revolution around the fixed sun” (98; original emphasis), he justifies it by saying, “Nothing is impossible with the Author of creation” (98). Sesostris himself worships the sun and simply “honours” the other gods that are nothing but its visible manifestations (186).

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Miriam tells Sesotris that, although she draws images of the gods for the Egyptians, “I simply believe in the unity of God” because her tribe has “preserved sacredly the knowledge of the God who spake from heaven to our ancestor, the Syrian” (186). From the Lord of Uz (Job) Moses learns to transcend his earlier “imperfect ideas of the God of Heaven” (275) and become a “worshipper of one God, whose name is the Almighty, and the Holy One” (276). In sum, when Moses hears the command of God from the burning bush, his belief, emerging smoothly from the earlier understanding of deity, is firm. But he experiences the typical biblical difficulty of communicating it to the still primitive and doubting Hebrews. Ingraham’s presentation is especially striking because it anticipates by eighty years the ideas of Egyptian monotheism under Akhenaten introduced by Freud and further explored by scholars of the later twentieth century.

The African American poet Frances E.W. Harper (1825–1911), a dynamic advocate of black liberation and an articulate spokesperson for the black women’s movement in the United States, frequently introduced biblical imagery into her poems, essays, and lectures. In her essay “Our Greatest Want” (1859), for instance, she writes, “I like the character of Moses. He is the first disunionist we read of in the Jewish scriptures. . . . He would have no union with the slave power in Egypt.”27 In another lecture she lauded the abolitionist Harriet Tubman as the “Black Moses,” who “has gone down into the Egypt of slavery and brought out hundreds of our people into liberty.”28 And in 1865 she celebrated Lincoln as a Moses figure: “Moses, the meekest man on earth, led the children of Israel over the Red Sea, but was not permitted to see them settled in Canaan. Mr. Lincoln has led us through another Red Sea to the land of triumphant victory, and God has seen fit to summon for the new era another man.”29 The Exodus as led by Moses provided Harper with a clear and frequent analogy to the liberation of blacks in the Civil War. In her poem “Then and Now” (1894), for instance, she speaks of “The Negro bound with servile hands, / Oppressed through weary years of toil,” who was freed when “God arose in dreadful wrath”:

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His hand the captive’s fetters broke, His lightnings shattered every yoke. As Israel through the Red Sea trod, Led by the mighty hand of God, They passed to freedom through a flood, Whose every wave and surge was blood.30

We understand, then, that her account of Moses and the Exodus always includes as its subtext the story of African Americans in the United States, just as the earlier French versions implied the Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. Moses appears with conspicuous frequency in her writing,31 and her poem “Moses: A Story of the Nile” (1869) may be regarded as an early model for the Moses motif that frequently occurs in African American writing. It is a lengthy narrative poem in free verse.32 (I say “free verse” rather than blank verse, as it is usually designated, because — with its varying iambic and trochaic rhythms, its irregular line length, and its emphasis on spoken stress accent rather than metrical cadence—it is more Whitmanesque than Miltonic.) Divided into nine “chapters,” it recounts the familiar biblical story but with original emphases. It begins, as did Hugo’s poem, with a long account by the Egyptian princess about her discovery of the ark in the river, not as a monologue, but in dialogue with Moses, who has come to announce his decision to join his people in Goshen (chapter 1). And it ends, as did Vigny’s poem, with an account of the death of Moses (chapter 9): he “stood upon the highest peak of Nebo” gazing at the lovely landscape until it faded from his view in death. But unlike the lament of Vigny’s Moses, Harper’s Moses then enjoys “another, fairer, vision” as “the pearly gates flew open, / And his ransomed soul went in” (65). The closing lines recount how “the troupe of fair young angels” then bear his body “From Nebo’s lonely mountain / To sleep in Moab’s vale” in a place whose location has never been revealed (66). Following Moses’ departure from his Egyptian mother, who tries to dissuade him from his action, he goes to his Hebrew mother, who has heard a false rumor that he has foresworn his faith (chapter 2). He assures her, “And thus I left the pomp and pride of Egypt / To cast my lot upon the people of my race” (46). Chapter 3 (“The Flight into Midian”) is a straightforward account of his angry slaying of the “officer of Pharaoh,”

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who strikes an aged man “with rough and cruel hand,” and with his decision to flee into the deserts of Arabia when he realizes, from his words with the two quarreling Hebrews, that his deed is no longer a secret. Chapter 4 describes the years in Midian and his experience with the burning bush, where upon that lonely spot, By Horeb’s mount, his shrinking hands received The burden of his God, which bade him go To Egypt’s guilty king, and bid him let The oppressed go free. (50)

Chapter 5, which follows Pharaoh’s haughty refusal to listen to the words of Moses and Aaron, provides a detailed account of the plagues, from the bloody Nile through the frogs and vermin and darkness to the death of the firstborn “save the blood-besprinkled homes / Of Goshen” (57). But even after Israel has been “thrust in eager haste / From the land” Pharaoh is “strangely blind.” Chapter 6 recounts the pursuit of the fleeing Israelites, the angry murmurs of the frightened Hebrews—“Were there no graves in Egypt, that thou hast / Brought us here to die?” (58)— and the parting of the waters. It ends, as does the account in Exodus, with “Miriam’s Song.” At this point Harper’s emphasis begins to differ from the biblical version, emphasizing the Christian heritage and fulfillment of Moses’ vision. In Chapter 7 the Israelites reach the sacred mount and “heard the solemn / Decalogue” (61); but the only one of the Ten Commandments discussed is the great, the grand, The central and primal truth of all The universe—the unity of God. Only one God.— (61)

Harper stresses this idea so that “as a living, vitalizing thought” it may bind us closer to our God and link us With our fellow man, the brothers and co-heirs With Christ, the elder brother of our race. (61)

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Chapter 8 briefly recapitulates the forty years in the wilderness described in Numbers, suggesting that the celebration of the golden calf, the feasting, and the merry songs never ceased: “and thus for many years / Did Moses bear the evil manners of his race” (62). At this point the poem appears to turn into a lecture by Harper to the blacks freed by the Civil War. If Slavery only laid its weight of chains Upon the weary, aching limbs, e’en then It were a curse; but when it frets through nerve And flesh and eats into the weary soul, Oh then it is a thing for every human Heart to loathe, and this was Israel’s fate, For when the chains were shaken from their limbs, They failed to strike the impress from their souls. (63)

In the final chapter, even though his people had “so rudely thrust aside” their heritage, Moses regards his work as done: “God’s great peace was resting on his soul.” Laying his charge in Joshua’s hand, he ascends “Nebo’s highest peak” to meet his death. Harper’s account adheres closely to the text of Exodus with two major exceptions. The author’s feminist impulse lets her begin her narrative with a subjective and wholly unbiblical analysis of the feelings of the two mothers.33 Later, when the action of Exodus gives way to theology, she shifts the emphasis from Judaism to her own devout Christianity and then implicitly to her disappointment at what she perceived to be the failure of liberated blacks to cast off their former subservient attitudes, attributing these thoughts and feelings to the Hebrews.34

M   ’ D    E       Almost ten years later George Eliot (1819– 80) published her poem “The Death of Moses” (in the volume Jubal, 1878). The poem was actually written several years earlier, during the period 1873– 76, when Eliot was deeply engaged in Jewish studies in preparation for her novel Daniel Deronda (see chapter 2). Eliot maintained a lifelong and profound interest in religion

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generally. Long before she began her career as a novelist she had translated two of the most epoch-making religious studies of the century: David Friedrich Strauss’ Life of Jesus (1846; Das Leben Jesu, 1835– 36), which treated Jesus purely as a human being; and Ludwig Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity (1854; Das Wesen des Christentums, 1841), which viewed Christianity anthropologically as fulfilling a purely human need. But in the 1860s, owing presumably to the influence of her friend Emanuel Deutsch, the great Jewish scholar, her interests broadened to encompass Judaism, including Midrash and Talmud, to which Deutsch had written introductions for the non-Jewish reader. She read not only the Bible but also legends of the Midrash as well as the Kabbalah and familiarized herself through direct experience with the practices of synagogues.35 “The Death of Moses,” which is based on an ancient Midrashic legend (the same one recounted by Herder), is quite different from Vigny’s poem of that title. Eliot’s Moses is content with his lot: both his life of 120 years and his relationship with God, with whom he spoke “as with his friend” (line 1).36 Because his flock still “needed its shepherd” (8), God wished to bestow on him as his final gift “the Death of Grace” (11), which freed men from burdens of the flesh but left them as “rulers of the multitude / And loved companions of the lonely” (13–14). Accordingly God ordered three angels to draw off Moses’ soul and bring it to him. But both Gabriel and Michael begged off, citing Moses’ uniqueness and understanding. Finally Zamaël, “the angel of fierce death” (37), agreed to go, but when he stood before Moses “that radiance / Won from the heavenly presence in the mount” (33– 34) so dazzled him that he reported that Moses was “deathless to angel’s stroke” (48) and “baffled from his errand fled” (59). At that point “the all-penetrating Voice” itself spoke to Moses (line 62), saying that his hour had come and promising that he should suffer no mortal death: “With me shall be thy death and burial” (68). The three angels stood ready to carry off “the soul-forsaken body” (73) to a hidden sepulcher. But Moses’ “grieved soul” (83) was still reluctant to forsake the body that it loved so dearly. Even though the Lord assured Moses that he would dwell with him “about the immortal throne” (87), the soul still lingered in the body until “A kiss descended, pure, unspeakable— / The bodiless Love without embracing Love” (93– 94) and drew forth the soul and carried it off to heaven.

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The watchers below felt a sudden eclipse because “The great ruler among men was gone” (100), and laments were heard from the sea to the west and the deserts in the east. Then in the evening the Elders, who had stood afar and seen the angels take his body, came and reported that “His burial is hid with God” (111). As the orphaned people sought what had vanished forever, the “Invisible Will” resounded within them, saying, “He dwells not with you dead, but lives as Law” (71). Unlike Harper’s poem, which looks at Moses from a purely Christian point of view and sees him fulfilled in Jesus, Eliot presents the Jewish standpoint: first in the Midrashic legends of the three angels and then in the Law as the still vital embodiment of Moses. Her poem exemplifies the profound interest in Judaism that, as I discuss in another context, was to shape her novel Daniel Deronda. However, neither the American nor the English poem betrays yet any influence of the critical biblical studies that were currently being developed, especially in Germany. Like the earlier poems, plays, and novels during most of the nineteenth century, these poems and novels in English use a framework based loosely on the traditional biblical story of Moses for various purposes: to exploit the current obsession with Egypt; to expand the many gaps in Moses’ early life; to provide a background for conventional love affairs; to suggest long before Freud the monotheism underlying the popular polytheism of the times; and to expose the analogy to such modern political theories as democracy, socialism, liberation, and revolution.

“S      O”   G     The generalization above does not apply to the “spiritual opera” Moses (1887– 89) by Anton Rubinstein with a libretto by Heinrich Mosenthal.37 Mosenthal (actually Salomon Hermann von Mosenthal, 1821– 77) was a prolific writer with a pronounced interest in Jewish themes: notably his highly popular drama Deborah (1848) and his libretto for Rubinstein’s better-known opera Die Makkabäer (1872– 74). Moses, which Rubinstein composed after Mosenthal’s death, attempts to recapitulate Moses’ entire life in eight scenes: from his rescue from the Nile by Princess Asnath (scene 1) to his death on Mount Nebo (scene 8).

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The action leaps directly (in scene 2) to his slaying of the violent taskmaster, where Moses—with no prior explanation—is fully aware of his heritage as a Hebrew and as the Deliverer of his people. Scene 3 finds Moses in Midian, where he rescues Zipora and her sisters from attacking Edomites and then, after wondering if the God who chose him is still alive—“Wo, wo, wo weilt er, wo kann ich dich erfassen?”—is commanded by the Voice of God from the burning bush—surprisingly, a tenor rather than a bass—to go back to liberate his people. Back in Egypt (scene 4) most of the plagues have already taken place, darkness covers the land, and Pharaoh concedes, to the dismay of his priests, that “the gods are bound by the superior power of the Hebrew God” (die Götter sind gefesselt durch des Hebräer Gottes Übermacht). When Moses asks Zebaoth to lift the darkness and reveal his glorious splendor, Pharaoh reneges. Thereupon Moses calls down God’s “angel of death” (Todesengel), who immediately kills all the firstborn. Scenes 5 and 6 depict the miraculous parting of the sea and the hymn of victory and praise by Miriam and her chorus of Hebrew women. After the Hebrews give choral thanks for the manna from heaven (scene 7) Moses divides the people into twelve tribes and a Voice from above issues the Ten Commandments. But while Moses is away on the mountain, Korah and Aaron quarrel, and Korah provides the golden calf, which the people celebrate until Moses returns, curses them, and tells them that they are condemned to wander for forty years in the desert. The last scene, following a dialogue between Balak and Balaam, depicts the battle with the Moabites, during which the otherwise unbiblical Kur supports Moses’ arms. Then, after telling the Hebrews that he is destined to see the Promised Land only from afar, Moses reminds them that “Jehovah, the God, is the Eternal one, the Single one” (Jehova, der Gott, ist der Ewige, Eine), and departs up Mount Nebo while Kur and Joshua sing, “No prophet like Moses will ever arise” (Kein Prophet gleich Mose wird je ersteh’n). Despite several passages that would no doubt be quite effective in full performance—the chorus of Egyptian soldiers pursuing Moses, “the traitor, deceiver” (der Verräter, Betrüger), and seeking to stone him for killing the overseer; Moses’ aria when he doubts his mission; the music proclaiming the darkness and announcing the angel of death; Miriam’s

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chorus of victory; the ecstatic dance around the golden calf; and others— the opera has had absolutely no public impact, and (because of its Wagnerian length) it would be extraordinarily demanding on the audience should it ever be performed. While Rubinstein’s score moves toward modernity, Mosenthal’s libretto offers a traditionally Jewish view of Moses and absolutely no original insights or, apart from the radical compression, novel twists of plot. The work is worth mentioning in this context simply because operatic treatments of Moses are otherwise astonishingly rare between Rossini and Schönberg (see chapter 7), whose works are the only ones usually mentioned in handbooks of opera. Moses provided a popular subject for dozens of religious oratorios, from Handel’s Israel in Egypt (1739) and C. P. E. Bach’s Die Israeliten in der Wüste (1775) down to Max Bruch’s Moses (1895, Op. 67), but the texts are generally unimpressive—they are often taken directly from the Bible — and not relevant here.38 Bruch’s oratorio, for instance, based on an original text by Ludwig Spitta and regarded as one of his finest works, vocalizes four episodes of Moses’ life for chorus and soloists (Moses, Aaron, and the Angel of the Lord): “At Mount Sinai,” “The Golden Calf,” “The Return of the Spies from Canaan,” and “The Promised Land.” While much of the music is striking, notably the powerful choral scenes, the text at no point goes beyond conventional readings of the Books of Moses. Toward the end of the century, however, a pronounced shift began to take place.

T W O

Postfigurations of Moses Literature since the early twentieth century teems with postfigurative novels: that is, novels in which the modern action is prefigured by a familiar mythic or, less frequently, biblical pattern. The most famous example in English literature is no doubt James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), in which a modern Odysseus is set adrift in the Dublin of 1904, where he reenacts the adventures of the Homeric epic. But examples abound. In Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus (1947) the composer Adrian Leverkühn acts out the life of the Reformation hero in Weimar Germany. Bernard Malamud’s baseball story, The Natural (1952), patterns its action after the myth of Parsifal and the Fisher King. John Updike’s The Centaur (1962) updates the myth of Chiron in the unlikely setting of an American high school. Few stories have provided a more popular fictional pattern for so diverse a group of writers than the Gospel account of Jesus.1 From Gerhart Hauptmann’s The Fool in Christ Emanuel Quint (1910) to Günter Grass’s Cat and Mouse (1961), from Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory (1940) to William Faulkner’s A Fable (1954), from Ignazio Silone’s Bread and Wine (1937) to Carlo Coccioli’s Manuel the Mexican (1956), literature in virtually every Western country and language has returned—seriously or parodistically, for political or psychological purposes—to the biblical pattern as the basis for fictional plots. The pattern is attractive, of course, because it is familiar to virtually every reader: a protagonist whose postfiguration is often suggested by his name (variations on Emanuel) or initials (J. C.), who is often the son of a carpenter or illegitimate (an ironic analogy to virgin birth), and who usually dies or disappears at age thirtythree; a friend who, like John the Baptist, prepares the way for the hero; a judge or other authority who functions as Pontius Pilate; a fallen woman 71

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(Mary Magdalene) who is rescued by the hero; and of course a Judas figure who betrays him. Though fewer by far, the model of Moses has also attracted the authors of several notable postfigurations. But their very occurrence indicates the familiarity that the authors now, thanks to the earlier popularizations of the story, are able to expect on the part of their readers.

A V      M   Rescued from Egypt (1866) was written by “A. L. O. E.” (= A Lady of England), the pseudonym of Charlotte Maria Tucker (1821– 93).2 Her first book, The Claremont Tales (1852), contained stories originally written for the moral edification of her brother’s three children. A prolific author of children’s books, the devout believer dedicated most of her royalties to missionary or charity work. This religious impulse is clearly evident in her novel Rescued from Egypt, which at first glance appears to be a typical English social novel revolving, like so many novels by Dickens and his contemporaries, around a lawsuit. The four Madden siblings—Lionel, Arthur, Cora, and Lina—are living in Castle Lestrange with their stepmother while they await the outcome of an inheritance suit that has already lasted for months. A distant cousin changed his will at the last moment, leaving his fortune to the four Maddens rather than to his nephew, Edward Verner, who had long been destined to inherit the estate. The suit revolves around the question of the cousin’s sanity and intentions at the time he changed his will. The Maddens stand to become wealthy and independent or utterly impoverished since their deceased father, though he married a wealthy widow, left them no money of his own. Their anxiety is heightened by the fact that their stepmother is planning to marry an avaricious baron who is eager to have the siblings leave the castle and her support. As they pass the next troubled weeks, several events take place. The younger son, Arthur, has developed a strong ethical consciousness and profound religious belief, shared to a certain extent by his younger sister Lina. This leads him to turn over to the lawyers an old letter from his father that is harmful to their case. At the same time, encouraged by the local pas-

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tor, Mr. Eardley, he takes an interest in the affairs of the nearby factory village of Wildwaste. He protects a child from the bullying of local boys and intercedes when her drunken father almost beats her mother to death. He has gratifying success when he begins to teach the local boys and encourages them to attend Mr. Eardley’s services. He saves the villainous owner of the local tavern when it burns to the ground. Finally, he rescues a passing traveler when he is attacked by the tavern owner and drunken husband, who mistake him for the courier delivering wages to the factory. Back at the castle, meanwhile, things go from bad to worse when the cousins are informed that they have lost the suit that they and their lawyers expected to win. Just when matters seem to have reached their lowest point, it turns out that the traveler Arthur rescued is none other than Edward Verner. The cousin, a missionary on the point of setting out for Palestine, had been so greatly impressed by Arthur’s ethical and truly Christian behavior in turning over the letter, even though it hurt the cousins’ case, that he was coming to announce his intention to give them each a generous share of the inheritance before departing for the East. Having witnessed Arthur’s good works in Wildwaste, he invites Arthur and his sister Lina to accompany him—an offer that they eagerly accept, once Arthur has used his new wealth to build and endow a school in Wildwaste for the children he has grown to love. What does Moses have to do with this contemporary social novel? The theme is introduced in the first chapter, as the siblings speculate about their respective plans for the inherited fortune. Lina, a Victorian Miriam, exclaims with her customary enthusiasm that she and Arthur will travel to the East: “Then we’ll go to Egypt, that glorious old land! sail up the Nile, cross the Red Sea, wander through the desert, visit every spot named in Scripture with the feelings of ancient pilgrims!” (13). In the Holy Land they will “build a little gem of a church, a record of our visit, an offering of devotion, a blessing to leave behind us!” (14). Arthur agrees: “To visit Egypt and Palestine, to track the wanderings of the Israelites from the house of bondage to this land of promise, has been my desire from the days of my childhood, when I first heard the history of Moses from the lips of our own dear mother” (14). Here, early in the novel, their plans amount to little more than the casual speculations of young people accustomed to wealth and ease.

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Once the theme has been introduced, however, the author manages to interweave it skillfully with the plot: in a series of ten sermons, or “lectures,” on the meaning of Moses’ life that the pastor delivers every few days (every three or four chapters) for the edification of his parishioners. The lectures recapitulate with considerable facility the familiar biblical story, from “The Infant Moses” and “The Decision of Moses” (to forsake his Egyptian upbringing and take on his Jewish heritage) to “Desert Wanderings” and “Death of Moses.” As Mr. Eardley explains in his first lecture, he intends to present three views of Moses: “the historical, the typical, and the practical” (36)—that is to say, Moses’ life, his role as a precursor of Jesus, and his significance as a model for the present. To this end, the historical account in each section is followed first by paragraphs “compar[ing] the mission of Moses with that of his great Antitype, our blessed Redeemer” (186). Thus in the lecture “Moses as Leader” he invites his listeners to “raise our thoughts from the servant to the Master, from the earthly to the heavenly Leader” (290), pointing out how Christ helps his people in sorrow. “We are helpless, and full of wants; like the Israelites in the desert, we require to be every hour sustained by the watchful providence of God” (292). Elsewhere he mentions the dazzling brightness on Moses’ face when he came down from Mount Horeb with the Tables of the Law. “Never again was such honour conferred on a mortal, till the transfiguration of Him who was not only Man but God” (329). While every lecture contains such typological analogies between the Old and New Testaments, as well as practical advice, the plot itself almost routinely reflects the message of the preceding sermon and postfigures cardinal episodes of Moses’ life. The siblings’ sojourn in the luxury of Castle Lestrange is analogous to Moses’ privileged upbringing in the palace. “The Decision of Moses,” discussing Moses’ determination to forsake Egyptian glory for the sake of his own people, is followed by Arthur’s decision to send off the harmful letter that ruins his own chances to inherit Castle Lestrange: “He, like the Israelite of old, had come to a fixed decision” (87). After the lecture “The Mission of Moses” Arthur walks through the factory village, thinking, “Here indeed were an oppressed people, groaning under worse than Egyptian bondage, the bondage of ignorance, misery, and sin” (172). Like Moses, Arthur seizes opportunities to assist others being bullied or attacked. Following “Moses by the Red

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Sea,” an acquaintance tells the battered housewife, “You’ve had your plagues and your troubles” (256). In connection with “Moses as Lawgiver” Arthur reflects that “the bulk of so-called Christians, like the seventy elders on Sinai, go but a little way up the mountain; and though they see something of the glory of their Creator, it is, as it were, but the sapphire pavement under His feet. There is still the veil of thick clouds and darkness to separate them from His presence” (343). And when Lina wishes that Arthur had not sent the letter hurting their case, he instructs her that “we must not deceive ourselves; they only receive Christ as their Saviour, who seek to obey him as their Lawgiver also” (364). Similar examples, both of typological analogies to Jesus and of the practical application of his teachings, can readily be multiplied—sometimes all too predictably—from chapter to chapter. As Tucker states in her preface, she regards the subject as so sacred that “I have a repugnance to mixing any thing like fiction in my work,—though carefully isolating the sacred history from the mere tale, by giving the former in the shape of lectures” (v), which highlight the frequent postfigurations of the biblical tale in the lives of Arthur and Lina. She does so, she continues, out of her fear that if published by themselves, the lectures “would be unopened by many of those young readers who prefer a story to a sermon.” What the author intended as a work of moral edification becomes, if not Bleak House or Middlemarch, a readable novel incorporating a life of Moses and showing its relevance for nineteenth-century England. As though to prove the sincerity of her theme, Tucker herself went to India in 1875, where she spent the remainder of her life, working — like Arthur and Lina in Palestine—as a self-supporting missionary and as a teacher in a school for boys.

M   D   The observant reader of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (1876) soon realizes that a Moses pattern underlies the life of the titular hero. Surprisingly, however, despite exhaustive studies of George Eliot’s interest in Judaism,3 there has been little discussion of the role of the Moses theme in her novel.4 We know already, from the discussion of her poem “The

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Death of Moses,” which was written during the years of the novel’s composition (1874– 76), that Eliot was intimately familiar with the story of Moses and that, during this period, she immersed herself deeply in the study of Jewish history, the Talmud, the Midrash, and the Kabbalah.5 The analogy is signaled by several textual references to Moses in connection with Daniel Deronda. When Daniel sacrifices his studies to help his Cambridge friend, Hans says, “With your mathematical cram one may be like Moses or Mahomet or somebody of that sort who had to cram, and forgot in one day what it had taken him forty to learn” (154). His friend Mordecai tells Daniel that “we will unite in a labour hard but glorious like that of Moses and Ezra” (456). Later he tells him “that the erring and unloving wills of men have helped to prepare you, as Moses was prepared, to serve your people the better” (641). And in the epigraph to chapter 63, to characterize Deronda’s state of mind, Eliot quotes a passage on Moses from Heine’s Confessions. Once we are alerted to the analogy, we recognize other motifs. Daniel, who learns only late in the novel that he is actually Jewish by birth, has been raised since the age of two under gentlemanly circumstances by the kindly Sir Hugo Mallenger. Just in case the reader has failed to pick up the allusion, Mordecai reminds his sister Mirah that Daniel “has a preparation which I lacked, and is an accomplished Egyptian” (563). The Moses analogy emerges most vividly when Daniel learns of his Jewish heritage and of his grandfather’s desire for “a grandson who shall have a true Jewish heart.” “Every Jew,” he says, “should rear his family as if he hoped that a Deliverer might spring from it” (568). Daniel’s inborn instinct to help others—a trait exposed repeatedly during the first half of the novel— develops into his final Zionist ambition to go to the East: “The idea that I am possessed with is that of restoring a political existence to my people, making them a nation again, giving them a national centre” (688). Incidents connected to other Jewish figures remind us of various motifs from the Moses story as well. Mirah enters the novel when Daniel rescues her from the river, where she was on the point of drowning herself— “a miserable creature by the river,” she says (312)—just as Moses was saved from the Nile. Like the biblical Miriam, whose name suggests her own, she is a singer. Mordecai, whose names, Ezra Mordecai, suggest the Babylonian exile rather than the Egyptian exodus, plays the role of Moses’

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brother Aaron, regarding Daniel as his spiritual “brother” (487), just as Daniel speaks to him as to “a venerated elder brother” (489), even before they become actual brothers-in-law through Daniel’s marriage to Mirah. He repeatedly expresses with a powerful eloquence his vision of “a land and a polity [where] our dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life which has a voice among the peoples of the East and the West” (454), long before Daniel/Moses sets out for the East. Dying of consumption and thus unable to join his sister Mirah and Daniel on their journey, he resembles Moses in never seeing the Promised Land; indeed, as if in anticipation, he earlier recited Hebrew verses, including the line, “Solitude is on the sides of Mount Nebo” (409). In sum, to the extent that the striking Moses analogy lends shape and meaning to the “Jewish” plot of the novel, Daniel Deronda may be regarded as a postfiguration of Moses.

H   M   The most familiar Moses postfiguration in American literature, and one that differs sharply from the seriousness of Eliot’s novel, is no doubt Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).6 The author alerts us to the analogy in the first chapter, when the Widow Douglas gets out her book—presumably the Bible—“and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by-and-by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more about him; because I don’t take no stock in dead people” (4). Made attentive by this hint, we remember that Huck, tiring of the widow’s effort to “sivilize” him, left her house to live in his “sugarhogshead” until Tom Sawyer persuaded him to go back to the widow’s house: the widow who was “of the first aristocracy in our town” (97). So Huck’s life immediately reminds us of Moses, who was taken from his basket made of bulrushes to live in the elegant palace of Pharaoh’s daughter. The theme is reinforced by occasional passing references, as when Buck with seeming irrelevance asks Huck “where Moses was when the candle went out” (91). (The answer to the riddle is “in the dark.”) Or elsewhere when the charlatan “king” dresses up and looks “that grand and

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good and pious that you’d say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old Leviticus himself ” (144). Huck’s mistake in calling Noah “Leviticus” is no doubt intended to remind the reader again subtly of the Books of Moses. The grand analogy that governs the narrative is Huck’s effort to help the slave Jim escape and then journey down the river with him to freedom, just as Moses leads the Hebrews out of Egypt. Along the way we note various motifs that remind us of the Moses story. The flight begins, for instance, when Huck has been taken back from the Widow Douglas by his brutal father. One night Pap, in the drunken delusion that Huck is the Angel of Death, attacks his son with a knife (28). Fearing for his life, Huck decides to escape. In his father’s absence he smashes the cabin door, smears it with blood (from a pig), and constructs other evidence to suggest his own death—all motifs suggesting the Passover on the eve of the Hebrews’ departure from Egypt. Huck cannot speak proper English, just as Moses was burdened with a heavy tongue. But, he says, “I’d noticed that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth, if I left it alone” (198), just as Moses finds the words to communicate Jehovah’s laws and ordinances to his people. In addition, he has his friend Tom to speak for him if necessary, as does Moses’ brother Aaron. Billy Collins points out that Twain sometimes merely parodies the events in Exodus “as he does with the comic plagues in the Arkansas farm chapters.”7 Thus Huck and Tom, in the roles of Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh, collected “a splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs, and caterpillars, and one thing or another” (238) to let loose in Silas Phelps’ house; the Phelpses, who like almost all the other white citizens in the novel, use religion to justify slavery and are thus the novel’s equivalent to the Egyptians. At another point he tells a woman that he is running away from a mean farmer to whom he has been bound and is on his way to his uncle in “the town of Goshen” (56), just as Moses led the Hebrews from the land of Goshen. And while in the midwestern USA there is no sea to part, it is a body of water—the river—that provides the means for their escape and Jim’s eventual liberation (when his owner dies and sets him free). The parallels are not introduced in any systematic manner, but they are obvious enough to make Twain’s intentions clear. And they are clearly introduced satirically in Twain’s effort to expose what he regarded as the

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unwitting religious hypocrisy of many otherwise decent white slave owners. In contrast, in the sequel, Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894), written hastily as a potboiler to capitalize on the success of the two earlier novels about Tom and Huck, the analogy is tacked on in a clumsily obvious manner. On one of Tom’s great adventures he, Huck, and Jim board a flying balloon in St. Louis and after crossing the Atlantic lose its builder and pilot, the professor, who falls overboard. Intrepidly, they continue the flight, not to Europe, but across the Sahara, encountering various adventures along the way: they witness a battle among desert nomads, rescue a child from its kidnapper, find treasure among the belongings of caravan corpses dead from a sandstorm, and so forth. Finally they reach Egypt and the pyramids, and here, in the final pages of the novel, the episodes inspired by the Arabian Nights and the works of Jules Verne give way to Exodus. To guide them on their route from Cairo they hire a young Egyptian, “and by the time we was through dinner we was over the place where the Israelites crossed the Red Sea when Pharaoh tried to overtake them and was caught by the waters” (208–11). (Twain does not explain how it is that Huck, who only a few months earlier was ignorant of the Bible and uninterested in Moses, has suddenly acquired his knowledge of Exodus.) Jim is thrilled: He said he could see it all, now, just the way it happened; he could see the Israelites walking along between the walls of water, and the Egyptians coming, from away off yonder, hurrying all they could, and see them start in as the Israelites went out, and then, when they was all in, see the walls tumble together and drown the last man of them. (211)

From there they fly to Mount Sinai “and saw the place where Moses broke the tables of stone, and where the children of Israel camped in the plain and worshiped the golden calf, and it was all just as interesting as could be, and the guide knowed every place as well as I know the village at home.” At that point the biblical references end: they have retraced the route of the Exodus but not reenacted it postfiguratively as in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck and Tom spend the night on Mount Sinai while Jim and the guide fly back home to St. Petersburg (Missouri), carrying a letter from Tom to his aunt Polly, which elicits from Aunt Polly a stern command to come back home.

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T   S   M   During the very years when Twain (1835–1910) was writing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, his German contemporary, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), was composing a wholly different masterpiece, Thus Spake Zarathustra (Also sprach Zarathustra, 1883– 85). Nietzsche, like surprisingly many major German writers, was the son (and grandson) of Lutheran ministers.8 Educated at the renowned Schulpforta, where he excelled in religion as well as classics, he began his university studies at Bonn as a student of theology and classical philology. Although he soon dropped the theology and followed his professor, Friedrich Ritschl, to the University of Leipzig to complete his studies, Nietzsche, popularly known for his proclamation that “God is dead,” was knowledgeable about theology and thoroughly acquainted with the Bible, of which he absolutely favored the Old Testament over the New. “I don’t like the New Testament,” he proclaimed in The Genealogy of Morals (Zur Genealogie der Moral, 1887), in contradiction to “the taste of two millennia.”9 The Old Testament, he continues, “yes, that is entirely different: all respect for the Old Testament! In it I find great men, a heroic landscape, and something most rare on earth: an incomparable naiveté of the strong heart; and, even more, I find a people,” in contrast to what he regards as the petty sectarianism and spiritual rococo and bucolic mawkishness of the New Testament. Similar passages may be found elsewhere, as in Beyond Good and Evil (Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 1886), where we read, “In the Jewish ‘Old Testament,’ the book of divine justice, there are human beings, things, and speeches in such a grand style that Greek and Indian literature have nothing comparable.”10 In light of this professed admiration for the figures of the Hebrew Bible, it is no surprise to hear echoes of Moses in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Nietzsche’s best-known and most popular work, to be sure, consists largely of Zarathustra’s speeches: analogous to (but not like!) the many pages of ethical laws and religious ordinances that Moses enunciates in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. But the minimal narrative framework reminds us of Exodus. Like Moses, we learn in the prologue, Zarathustra goes up the mountain to seek wisdom. (Unlike Moses, to be sure, he spends ten years there and not simply forty days; he is forty years old

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when he returns.) When he comes down the first time, he is dismayed by the distractions he finds in the city, which is several times called “the colored cow” (and we instantly think of the golden calf ).11Although a few disciples listen to his words, at the beginning of Part 2 he goes back up the mountain—again, not for forty days but for “months and years.” When he comes back down, he leads his followers to various places— through the forest, to an island, through many cities—but finally (Part 3) returns to his mountain cave, complaining that his speech (mein Mundwerk) is too colloquial, too crude and hearty for the more elegant public (2:439: die Seidenhasen). There he sits and waits, the “old broken tablets around me and also new, half-inscribed tablets” (2:443), implying that, like Moses, he had shattered the old ones in despair. As he wonders when his brothers will come and help him carry the tablets down to those waiting below, he recites several edicts reminiscent of Moses’ laws: “There is a madness called Good and Evil” (2:448); “We need a new nobility that is opposed to all rabble and all rule through violence and that will write the word ‘noble’ on new tablets” (2:449); “You should have only enemies who are hated, but not enemies who are despised; you must be proud of your enemy” (455); and others. He urges his followers to shatter the old tablets of law: “Most of all they hate the creative man: the one who breaks the tables and old values” (2:459; original emphasis). Indeed, one student of the Moses tradition in Germany argues that the entire section amounts to a parody of the Mosaic scene.12 Finally (at the end of Part 4), when his hair has become white, Zarathustra leaves his cave again, “glowing and strong, like the morning sun” (2:561), because his hour has come — but whether for further life and a new descent or for death is left open, like the mysterious disappearance of Moses at the end of Deuteronomy. In sum, Nietzsche has used a number of familiar Moses motifs—a speech problem, ascents of the mountain to encounter truth and wisdom, the golden calf, broken tablets, new laws, mysterious disappearance—to shape and enliven the fragile narrative framework of his work. In view of his fondness for the Hebrew Bible, the parallels can only be regarded as conscious and intentional.13 To that extent, then, Zarathustra may also be recognized as a postfiguration of Moses, albeit in a manner wholly different from that of Mark Twain.

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M        C      F L   By all odds the weirdest postfiguration of Moses was composed by Edvard Munch (1863–1944), who in addition to his renowned paintings wrote and drew witty caricatures, including notably the posthumously published “The City of Free Love” (“Den fri Kjaerligheds By,” 1905).14 In this dramatic sketch, which is accompanied by several illustrations, the artist satirizes the artistic bohème that he encountered in Christiania (Oslo) as a student at the Royal School of Art and Design and later, after his return from abroad around the turn of the century. The principal but not sole objects of his satire are his onetime lover, the wealthy and free-spirited Tulla Larsen, who sought aggressively to force him into a marriage until he finally rejected her, and Christian Krohg, his teacher at the Royal School, whose wife—the artist Oda Krohg—was notoriously promiscuous. Krohg was editor of the journal Impressionisten, where in 1889 the celebrated “Nine Commandments of the Bohemians” appeared, which stated, among other things, “Thou shall write your own life” (1), “One can never treat one’s parents badly enough” (3), “Thou shall hate and despise all farmsmen (5), and “Thou shall kill thyself” (9).15 The “modern Moses” does not enter until the final scene, but we are well prepared for him by the preceding scenes, which are based on the pagan celebrations by the Hebrews as they wait for Moses to descend from Mount Horeb with the Ten Commandments. As the skit begins, several women are sitting around a table, drinking wine and passing around “the gilded lap-pig” (obviously the golden calf ). The minstrel (representing Munch himself ), weary from his fruitless search for his great love, enters the city, eager to warm himself in the arms of love. Escorted by citizens who want to show him their city of free love, he is immediately spotted by the Dollar Princess (representing Tulla Larsen and reminding us of the dangerously seductive women in several of Munch’s paintings), who sings: I want to have him. Just think, then I’ll have not only money and the pig but also fame—and since he is poor, I’ll have power and freedom —I want to have him—let him come in. (62)

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The minstrel has other ideas: “I’m looking for a girl for love in freedom.” But as soon as he kisses the Dollar Princess, she exclaims that he now belongs to her and pursues him when he leaves. She follows him to a hospital where he is suffering from stomach pains, but he runs away, crying, “God protect me from the City of Free Love.” Captured at a street corner, he is brought before the Queen of the Bees (Oda Krohg), who commands him to be chained to the Dollar Princess. Again he escapes and is caught up in a procession in the marketplace, led by a pig, a dog, witches, a large goat, and a kangaroo—all of whom represent former friends and acquaintances of Munch—while “roasted doves” (the quail in the desert) fly around. When the Dollar Princess pretends to die and lie in a grave, the minstrel falls in, breaks his leg, and pleads for liberation from the city of freedom. On crutches and now starving, he goes to the meeting of wealthy supporters of Nansen’s expedition to the North Pole, demanding his payment for a song that he wrote for the occasion, but the wealthy donors say that they can give him nothing because their festive dinner costs so much (60,000 Norwegian crowns). At this point the minstrel is totally exasperated: I get nothing to eat. They set traps for me so that I break arms and legs if I have kissed a girl. We are in the City of Freedom. I’ll try to win my rights. (70– 71)

But the politicians, drunks, and cuckolds of the city attack him and leave him bleeding in the street. When an emissary arrives and announces that the city has declared war, they first propose to send the minstrel and another vagrant against the enemy. Instead, they attack and almost kill the minstrel, then blame him for causing street disturbances and smearing ladies and gentlemen of the city with his blood. “You are an anarchist and dangerous for your surroundings” (72). He is borne on a bier to the court, where the judge orders the “modern Moses” to be brought in to express his opinion. Moses staggers in, drunk and in a good mood because his wife kissed him that night rather than her thirty lovers. Then he demands his (legendary) horns, his beard, and the book of laws so that he can render his

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advice. The judge reads the indictment: the minstrel is accused of kissing the Dollar Princess and then refusing to let himself be chained to her; he fell into a grave and displayed indecent behavior by yelling; he sprinkled blood on the clothes of several ladies; he caused disturbances when he was beaten by the police and then delayed them by not dying promptly. The minstrel’s attempts to defend his case are shouted down, and the judge asks Moses for his opinion. Moses pedantically recites ordinances from his book of laws: one has the right to kiss twenty times but not just once. When the minstrel explains that he slept with the Dollar Princes because he did not want to marry, Moses states, “People first sleep together and then get married when they are sick of each other. People first get divorced—and then marry. By my horns and my beard, that’s simple and plausible enough.” The minstrel tries to defend himself by pointing out that, according to the laws of the city, only women have the freedom to love and to break the law. But in vain. The sardonic playlet ends on a bitter note as the minstrel is executed for breaking the Mosaic law.

A Z      M   Arnold Schönberg (1874–1951), or—as he spelled his name following his immigration to the United States — Schoenberg, had an unusually intense involvement with the theme of Moses. His uncompleted opera, Moses und Aron, for which, unlike most composers, he wrote his own libretto, is based on Exodus yet mainly original. But before undertaking this Schönberg wrote a stage play incorporating the themes that subsequently informed his opera. Schönberg, born in Vienna, was brought up in an Orthodox Jewish family,16 but, maintaining in his early years that he was not a believer, he converted to Lutheranism in 1898. Conversion, however, could not protect him eventually from the anti-Semitism in Austria and even in a Vienna whose cultural life was in large measure dominated by Jewish writers, artists, and composers. Although he long sought to ignore these trends, which were only intensified by World War I, an incident in the summer of 1921—he and his family were compelled by the anti-Semitic policy of the local government to leave an Austrian resort, Mattsee, when it was restricted by growing anti-Semitism to Aryans—made him keenly

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aware that he could not escape his Jewish heritage.17 He wrote his friend the artist Wassily Kandinsky (Schönberg was himself during these years a skilled and dedicated painter),18 “I have at last learnt the lesson that has been forced upon me during this year, and I shall not ever forget it. It is that I am not a German, not a European, indeed not perhaps scarcely even a human being (at least, the Europeans prefer the worst of their race to me), but I am a Jew.”19 This insight, which prompted him to concern himself increasingly with Jewish and Zionist issues, led finally, in 1933, to his formal return to Judaism—a ceremony, he wrote to Alban Berg, that marked no sudden change but simply confirmed an inner conversion that had occurred a decade earlier.20 During those years he even contemplated giving up music and dedicating himself wholly to his dream, inspired by the example of Theodor Herzl, of renewing within European Jews the idea of being the Chosen People and of leading them to New Palestine. These ideas are vividly evident in Schönberg’s stylistically expressionistic but patently tendentious drama, The Biblical Way (Der biblische Weg), which was written in 1926/27 but never published.21 The action takes place in the present, first (act 1) in an unspecified European city and then (acts 2 and 3) in New Palestine. The central figure is named Max Aruns, who according to the author’s notes represents a synthesis of Moses (Max) and Aaron (Aruns): thought and action, vision and politics. As Max explains to a leader of the Orthodox Jews, “To me, Moses and Aron [sic] represent two activities of one man—a statesman, whose two souls ignore each other’s existence. The purity of his Idea is not blurred by his public actions; and these actions are not weakened by his thoughtful consideration of yet unsolved problems that the Idea presents” (304– 5). Several other characters are prefigured by biblical figures: Guido (initially Joseph), who carries out Aruns’s plan following his death, is Joshua; Sanda, who betrays Aruns, is the biblical Dathan, who led a revolt against Moses (Num. 16:1– 35); Pinxar, who provides Max with his powerful weapon, is named for Posaune (trombone), the German word for the instruments that caused the walls of Jericho to fall; and so forth.22 Max Aruns is absolutely firm in his monotheistic faith. “For a true believer,” he tells the Zionist Michael Setouras (= biblical Sethur, son of Michael, one of the spies sent to Canaan), “the Scriptures themselves

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should be authoritative enough. One can extrapolate from them, when translated into present-day terms, that Moses—who certainly was a true believer in the Mosaic laws—used the forty years of wandering in the wilderness for the purpose of accustoming the rising generations to a life governed by laws, and transforming them into a nation of combat-ready warriors” (220– 21). In act 1, as a festival of young Jewish athletes is taking place in the background, the charismatic Max announces his plan to a group of followers, including Zionists and Orthodox believers whose ideas differ in some respects from his. He has established contact with the leaders of the land neighboring New Palestine (Ammongaea, or land of the biblical Ammonites who inhabited the country east of the River Jordan),23 who have promised their support; and Pinxar has developed a powerful new weapon—death rays that can reach any point on earth— with which the émigrés to New Palestine will be able to protect themselves against any enemies. When they arrive in New Palestine, matters initially proceed as planned, but dissension soon arises. Max must justify his use of violence to the Orthodox rabbi: “When I base the liberation of our nation on its defense capability, I am not doing anything differently from Moses, who transformed his people into a military power and, in doing so, certainly did not offend against the Mosaic laws and against the purity of the Idea” (309). It turns out, further, that he has been betrayed. The Ammongaeans threaten to withdraw their support. Aruns’ wife, Christine, jealous of his secretary, Linda Rutlin, deceives him with the traitor Sanda, confiding to her lover the secret of the new weapon. Sanda sabotages the plane bringing Pinxar’s weapon to New Palestine. Max is killed in a riot triggered when the transport conveying food supplies to the new colony is turned back. Guido, displaying a document naming him as Aruns’ successor, orders the immediate installation of the new weapon, which through his cunning has been saved: “Have the apparatus installed and immediately made operational. . . . Make it known to all that the apparatus is so set that any manipulation by an unskilled hand could exterminate every living thing here, and annihilate Ammongaea” (322– 23). Guido does not plan to investigate Max’s death. We want to bury the past. We strive neither for revenge nor for retribution. . . . The course of events has been preordained by divine provi-

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dence. Just as it was not given Moses to enter the promised land; just as it was his mission only to guide his people to its borders; just as he had to die when his mission was accomplished; so did this man’s life come to its end when New Palestine became a reality. (324– 25)

But having obtained, thanks to the new weapon, the power to dominate the earth, Guido says, “We wish to proclaim, in the name and in the spirit of this dead man, that nothing is further from our intention” (326– 27). The Jewish nation lives out an Idea, the monotheistic idea of one eternal God, Guido continues in this speech that concludes the play: “We have an immediate goal: we want to feel secure as a nation. We want to be certain that no one can force us to do anything; that no one can hinder us from doing anything” (327). Schönberg was pleased with the play, which he believed to be “very highly dramatic, stylistically the best thing I have written, and, although its profundities offer the superior mind plenty of food for thought, it is vivid and theatrical enough to fascinate a simpler sort.”24 Indeed, the political problems he addressed have considerable relevance for the present, and Guido’s speech might well be pronounced by contemporary leaders in the state of Israel. While it is an impressive literary document, the play is too blatantly propagandistic and rhetorical within the framework of a jealous-love drama to be effective on the stage. Schönberg was obviously aware of its limitations because by 1928 he dropped the notion of staging the play and instead sought to express precisely the same ideas in operatic form (see chapter 7).

T   M     G     A  One of the most remarkable postfigurations of Moses occurs in Children of Gebelaawi (1959), a novel specifically cited when the prolific Egyptian novelist and short-story writer Naguib Mahfouz received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1988. Born in Cairo’s Islamic Quarter into a devout Muslim family, Mahfouz (1911– 2006) later moderated his religious faith with progressive social and political ideas and staunchly opposed radical Islam, even to the extent of endangering his own life, as when he defended Salman Rushdie against the fatwa issued against him for his Satanic Verses.

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In Children of Gebelaawi Moses is simply one of several characters prefigured by great religious leaders —Adam, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad — all of whom are descendants of the Godlike figure Gebelaawi. In the beginning, we are told, Gebelaawi created his Great House on the fringe of the desert, a splendid building within a large garden enclosed by a long high wall. Known as the Founder of the Trust, which according to its Ten Clauses collects rent for its holdings and pays out benefits to its tenants, Gebelaawi eventually expels his son Adham for succumbing to the temptation of his wife and the evil Idrees to sneak into their father’s office and look at the secret book of Deeds. Later, when Adham is despondent because one of his sons murdered the other, Gebelaawi appears to him and assures him that “the Trust will be used for the benefit of his descendants” (101). Adham’s generation passes away, but, as his children intermarry and increase their numbers “thanks to money from the Trust,” the settlement gradually expands along two rows of houses running westward from the Great House and forming the Alley. When Gebelaawi finally closes himself off from the world, the Great House continues to be occupied by a descendant of his sons known as the Trustee or “the Effendi” (99), and order is maintained in the Alley by the Strongman and his henchmen, each headquartered in one of the cafés that line the Alley. The Trustee followed his good example for a while. Then greed took hold of him, and soon he was keeping the income of the Trust for himself. He began by fiddling the accounts and paring down the allowances, and ended up by grabbing everything, confident in the protection of the Chief Strongman whose allegiance he had bought. (101)

At this point, in a timeless nineteenth century, we reach the story of Gebel (chapters 24– 43), a foster child of the current Trustee, whose childless wife rescued him as “a naked child splashing about in a pool of rainwater” (114). One day a group of discontented residents who live near Hamdaan’s café approach the Effendi to complain, as descendants of Adham and Umayma, that they “suffer from poverty and ill treatment” (108) and to demand their own right, as children of Gebelaawi, to their share of his Trust. The Effendi rejects their request, but Gebel, who now

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works in the Trust office, is troubled by the plight of the people in the Alley and by the Effendi’s plan to use his strongman Thudclub to punish them. One day Gebel is lying in the desert, appealing in his thoughts to Gebelaawi. “Do you like this tyranny, Gebelaawi? . . . Everything in the Alley is run on the basis of terror. . . . Our Alley has never known a day of justice or peace” (119). Suddenly he hears voices and sees one of the strongmen pursuing a resident, Digger. Gebel asks the strongman to go easy on Digger and, when he refuses, strikes him so hard that he kills him. Soon thereafter, following an argument with the Effendi and Thudclub, he leaves the Great House because the Effendi threatens further reprisals against the people. When the scheming Digger threatens to betray him for the killing, he flees into the desert. In an oasis there, at a public pump, he defends two young women who have been pushed away and fills their cans. They are daughters of the conjurer Balqeeti, who takes Gebel in and teaches him his conjuring tricks, in particular, his conjuring with snakes; and Gebel marries his daughter Shafeeqa. Years later, while Gebel is performing elsewhere, he is recognized by Digger, who reports on events in the Alley: the ban has been lifted, but the people have been condemned to permanent disgrace. They work far away from the Alley and when they return hide in their houses lest a strongman amuse himself by beating them or spitting on them. “We’ve lost all hope,” Digger tells him (153). Gebel, with his wife, returns to the Alley, explaining to the residents that on a high place overlooking the Alley he encountered “a huge figure” (156) that turned out to be Gebelaawi, who told him, “Your people are my people. They have rights in my Trust that they must obtain” and “by force you will destroy injustice, reclaim your rights and live a good life” (158). Even though the listeners believe that the encounter was a hallucination or that Gebel was “high on some stuff” (156), Gebel proceeds to the Effendi “to demand the rights of Hamdaan’s people to the Trust and to a secure life” (163) and informs him that he had met the Founder in the desert. The Effendi, furious, strikes Gebel, who leaves the Great House. Soon the houses in the Alley are infested by snakes, and the Effendi summons Gebel to drive them out. Gebel agrees, asking for no money but only for the Effendi’s word of honor that he will “respect the dignity of Hamdaan’s people and their rights in the Trust” (169).

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Gebel rids the Alley of the snakes, but, while the people celebrate, the Effendi reneges on his promise and orders Thudclub to punish them again. “If Gebel succeeds in winning the rights of Hamdaan’s people in the Trust, nobody in the Alley will rest till he has obtained his rights too. So the Trust will be lost and us with it” (172). But when Thudclub and his henchmen leave the gated garden, the ground suddenly opens, and the leaders fall into a pit that the residents have stealthily dug. Women pour buckets of water from the windows on either side of the Alley while the men heap baskets of stones upon them. When the other henchmen see their bloodied leaders, they flee, and Gebel leads the people to the Great House, where the Trustee promises to restore all their rights. “It was a memorable day when Gebel collected his people’s share of the Trust’s revenues” (183). He refuses any special treatment for himself and his wife, saying that all are equal. But Digger, who promptly loses his share by gambling, knocks out the eye of the winner and takes all the money. The infuriated Gebel is not appeased by the promise that Digger will return the money: “Let him first give him back his eye” (185). “The Founder of the Trust did not prefer you so that some of you could attack others. Either you have a life based on order, or chaos that will spare none of you” (185). Gebel knocks out Digger and then insists that the victim put out Digger’s eye. After the people recover from the shock of this event, “everyone wanted the order he stood for and nobody disputed it. Uprightness and honesty reigned in his days. He remained among them as a symbol of justice and order till at last he died without having swerved an inch form his path” (187). In this account of the first rebel against injustice and “the first to have the honor of contact with Gebelaawi after he withdrew from the world” (187), the pattern of Moses’ life—from his childhood rescue from the waters to his legal judgments in Sinai—is clearly evident. It is followed by similar postfigurations of Jesus and Muhammad. The novel ends with a fifth section set in the twentieth century and again featuring a magician, albeit not prefigured: this time a pharmacologist with medicines and potions and amulets to help people who are sick, infertile, or feeling week. The novel, which first appeared serially in an Egyptian newspaper, initially led to protests because of its irreverent treatment of the lives of the prophets and, in particular, Muhammad; it was then banned officially and its publication in book form prohibited.25 In 1967 it was finally pub-

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lished in Lebanon but was immediately condemned by a committee of Muslim theologians. The novel was largely neglected until 1988, when the citation by the Nobel Committee reopened the controversy and aroused the attention of the broader public. It now provides a fitting conclusion to this survey of postfigurations of Moses.

M       T    It would not seem inappropriate at this point to mention two works as examples of those whose titles suggest postfigurations but which, in fact, have little to do with Moses. Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980) is noted principally as a painter of early Expressionism, but at the beginning of his career he wrote several expressionistic dramas, of which the best known is the series of sexually masochistic scenes titled Murderer, Women’s Hope (Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen, 1907). Equally explicit in its seductive sexuality is The Burning Thorn Bush (Der brennende Dornbusch, 1911). Its five scenes involving an unnamed “woman” and “man” have absolutely nothing to do with Moses or the Bible. But the last scene, in which “woman” has killed the man she previously sought to seduce, includes at the end three biblical images: the scene, in which the woman bends over the dying man, is explicitly called a “Pietà group” (Pietagruppe), and an allusion by the chorus to Eve’s apple (“Ich gab ihm einen Apfel in die Hand”) recapitulates the earlier seductive efforts of the woman. An allusion to the burning bush, “Ein Dornbusch brannte auf einmal”—its significance highlighted by the fact that it provides the title of the work— suggests the moment of illumination at the end of life: men and women are “supposed to be in reality, but they insist on remaining in appearance”: “Weil sein sie sollten, / im Schein verharren sie wollten.”26 As a result, like the “woman” and “man” of the play, they never succeed in having lives of substance and meaning. These biblical references were inserted presumably to add a dimension of meaning to a work that is otherwise wholly irreligious and nonbiblical. In several of his works but most conspicuously in his novel A Fable (1954), William Faulkner used the story of Jesus as the prefiguring pattern for modern actions.27 Accordingly one might expect to find something similar in a work titled “Go Down, Moses,” but we find nothing of

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the sort. The story is the final one in the collection of seven stories bearing that title (1940). The title refers to no specific biblical passage but rather to the familiar African American spiritual, “Go Down, Moses.” The hymn, echoing God’s words from the burning bush, ordering Moses to go “down” to Egypt to liberate his people, only loosely hints at the plot of the brief story. An elderly black woman in Faulkner’s mythic Yoknapatawpha County appeals to the white lawyer Gavin Stevens to locate and bring home her long-missing grandson. When Stevens looks into the matter, he discovers that the grandson has just been executed for murder in Illinois. Collecting the necessary funds from sympathetic friends and merchants, he succeeds in having the body returned to the grandmother for burial at home. The story has little to do with any expectations aroused by its title. Broadly, perhaps, it suggests the liberation of slaves in Faulkner’s South, such as the devoted family servant to whom the volume is dedicated and other onetime slaves or descendants of slaves who appear in the various other stories of the collection. In general, however, the title, like Kokoschka’s, is essentially misleading in this context.

T H R E E

Fin-de-Siècle Variations T   S      B     By an ironic coincidence 1906 witnessed the publication of Albert Schweitzer’s now renowned Quest for the Historical Jesus (Geschichte der LebenJesu-Forschung) and Eduard Meyer’s influential “Old Testament Investigations” titled The Israelites and Their Neighboring Tribes (Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme), in which he denies the historicity of Moses. Meyer, a distinguished ancient historian and Egyptologist, defined Moses instead as a conglomerate figure compiled from common myths of heroic births and deaths as well as legends taken from various independent biblical accounts. Both Schweitzer and Meyer represented the culmination of developments in scholarship that had been taking place throughout the nineteenth century.1 Ever since the late eighteenth century, rationalists including Voltaire and Thomas Paine had viewed Jesus as a great ethical teacher rather than the divine Son of God—a liberal attitude that led to a more critical appraisal of the Gospels by such scholars as the German Orientalist Hermann Samuel Reimarus, who portrayed Jesus as a Jewish nationalist whose political execution was only subsequently redefined by his followers as an act of spiritual self-sacrifice. Others, such as Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus in his Life of Jesus (Das Leben Jesu als Grundlage einer reinen Geschichte des Urchristententums, 1828), sought to find rational explanations for the seemingly miraculous events of the Gospels, viewing the voice of God as thunder, the transfiguration as an optical illusion produced by the play of light on mountain mists, and so forth.

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The scholar who sought to overcome the conflict between the supernaturalists and the rationalists was David Friedrich Strauss, who in his Life of Jesus (Das Leben Jesu, 1835) attempted to reconcile the two views by what he called a mythic interpretation. He contended that many of the seemingly irrational deeds and miracles were actually literary conventions based on predictions in the Old Testament that were added by the authors of the Gospels to fulfill the prophecies. The work that brought these more scholarly studies to the attention of a broader European public was Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus (Vie de Jésus, 1863), which lacked critical originality but through its popularity familiarized nonspecialist readers with the image of Jesus as a living human being rather than an ethereal deity: Jesus rather than Christ. This development, traced by Schweitzer in his survey, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, reflected the historicism of the nineteenth century. It was paralleled to a conspicuous extent by trends in Old Testament scholarship but with a strikingly different outcome: namely, that Moses was not a historical figure at all but a myth. Criticism of the Pentateuch begins with the original ancient belief—in the Talmud as well as by such classical historians as Philo and Josephus— that Moses was the compiler of the books known under his name, the Books of Moses.2 But doubts arose early: notably the sense that certain statements in the Pentateuch could not be attributed to Moses on dogmatic or ethical grounds (e.g., God’s swearing, Noah’s drunkenness) or that there were stylistic inconsistencies within the books. By the sixteenth century these incipient doubts had become more critical. How could Moses have described his own death? What about the many repetitions and inner contradictions? A century later the philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Spinoza argued that the Pentateuch as a whole must be postMosaic, even if certain specific sections may be ascribed to him. On the basis of this skepticism scholars in the eighteenth century began to develop the documentary hypothesis, stemming initially from the observation that in Genesis two different names are used for the deity. This idea, first proposed by the German pastor H. B. Witter, was elaborated by the Frenchman Jean Astruc, who in his Conjectures sur les mémoires dont il paroit que Moyse s’est servi, pour composer le livre de la Genèse (1753) concluded that Moses had two main sources, one using

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the name Elohim for the deity and the other Jehovah, plus ten fragmentary sources. This older hypothesis, based on and restricted to Genesis, was further elaborated by Eichhorn in his Introduction to the Old Testament (Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 1780– 83), which went further than the work of earlier scholars by assuming that the compilation was made not by Moses but by a later redactor unknown to us. Scholars of the next generation, notably Martin Leberecht de Wette, went even further: they argued that the legal sections—the Decalogue and the Book of the Covenant — constituted the original text, which could be traced back to the time of David and Solomon, and that the historical sections were added later. But scholars in the second half of the century, convinced that the legal sections were of a later date than the narrative, refined the documentary hypothesis to the form in which it is known today: the Pentateuch, consisting of four parts known, in their order of composition, as Jahwist (J), Elohist (E), Deuteronomy (D), and Priestly Code (P). This is the form of pentateuchal criticism most effectively synthesized and formulated by Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) in his celebrated Prolegomena to the History of Israel (Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, 1883), which not only surveyed earlier scholarship but also was written in a manner accessible to the nonspecialist. He makes the question relevant to the general reader by asking whether the “law of Moses”—that is, the Priestly Code—is the starting point for the history of ancient Israel or, much later, the starting point of Judaism. He concluded, according to the documentary hypothesis, that it is the latter.3 Wellhausen publicized his view through his entry on “Israel” in the renowned ninth “scholarly” edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1875– 89), where he wrote that “the history of Israel commenced with [Mosaism],” “the legislative portion of the Pentateuch cannot in any sense be regarded as the startingpoint of the subsequent development,” and “the historical tradition about Moses must carefully be separated from the legislative.”4 In his subsequent entry on Moses he summarized the “few certain details” that have been handed down about Moses in the Bible and the Midrash.5 Let me pause at this point to note that scholars of the documentary hypothesis—that is to say, most leading biblical authorities down to the end of the nineteenth century—were concerned primarily with the

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sources and their dating and less with the historical substance of the Pentateuch, the actual story of Moses. They continued the process that Hans W. Frei called in his book of that title “the eclipse of biblical narrative.”6 Archaeological findings in Egypt and Palestine, and notably the materials excavated at Amarna, the capital city established by Akhenaten as the seat for the monotheistic worship of Aten and named Akhetaten, brought about a pronounced shift of emphasis. The remains of Amarna were known to travelers in the eighteenth century, but it was only after the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt and expeditions by subsequent archaeologists that its importance was gradually appreciated. This was true especially after the discovery of over three hundred cuneiform tablets (the Amarna Letters) recording diplomatic correspondence, which provided for the first time extensive information regarding Akhenaten’s seventeenyear reign — not to mention the recovery of the world-famous bust of Nefertiti. Accordingly we now begin to find in popular literature more frequent mention of the Egyptian monotheism (now represented specifically by the cult of Aten), which had been generally known since Schiller’s “Moses’ Mission,” along with more detailed descriptions of Egyptian life and culture. A second fact needs to be mentioned. The new interest in the substance of the Pentateuch, and specifically in Moses’ life, was enhanced and illuminated by the pioneering study of myth and folklore as embodied in Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890), where details from the story of Moses are several times mentioned as an exemplification of myth. No doubt inspired by Frazer and other scholars of myth, Eduard Meyer opened his magisterial work, The Israelites and Their Neighboring Tribes (Die Israelisten und ihre Nachbarstämme, 1906), with a section headed simply, “The Legends of Moses and the Levites” (“Die Mosesagen und die Lewiten”), in which he discusses the mythic or legendary nature of such episodes as the burning bush, the feast in the wilderness, the catastrophe at the Red Sea, and the slaying of the firstborn. While Meyer at no point actually states that Moses never existed, he makes it clear that any possible historicity of the figure is far outweighed by its mythic or legendary elements: “The Moses that we know is the ancestor of the priests of Qadeš, that is, a figure from the genealogical legend connected with the cult— not a historical personality. None of those who treat him as a historical

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figure has been able to fill him with any content, to represent him as a concrete individual, or to cite anything that he created and that would be his historical accomplishment.”7 A year later, in Mose (1907)—the fifth and concluding volume of his Astralmythen embracing Abraham, Lot, Jacob, and Esau—the Egyptologist and novelist Eduard Stucken (1865–1936) approached the story of Moses as “a means to an end. . . . Not the personality of Moses, but several motifs from the life-history of Moses are discussed here and ordered into the rows of comparisons” (with stories from other cultures throughout the world).8 Two hundred pages later he summarizes that virtually every element of Moses’ life as we know it from the Bible is not historical but mythic, including even his staff and his speech defect.9 It is difficult to overemphasize the new public awareness of biblical questions, especially in pre-1914 Germany, that was stimulated by often sensationalizing books and lectures. Drawing on such studies as John M. Robertson’s Christianity and Mythology (1900), the German professor of philosophy Arthur Drews published in 1909 The Christ Myth (Die Christusmythe), in which he provided a readable account of the various mythic interpretations of Jesus, for instance, as a cult god in the faith of a preChristian Jewish gnostic sect. The book generated slanderous attacks on Drews’ character and professional competence, a series of acrimonious debates at leading German universities, and a mass demonstration of protest in Berlin in 1910. That same decade witnessed the so-called Babel and Bible controversy, triggered by a series of three lectures in 1902 by Friedrich Delitzsch, professor of Assyriology at the University of Berlin—lectures repeated at the request of Kaiser Wilhelm II at the Royal Palace in Berlin. In the first he argued that the biblical story of the Flood was based on a passage in the Gilgamesh epic and in the second that Moses’ tablet of laws displayed conspicuous parallels to Hammurabi’s famous code.10 Mythic thinking of this sort prompted the Assyriologist Peter Jensen, in his monumental monograph on Gilgamesh in world literature, Das Gilgamesch-Epos in der Weltliteratur (1906), to contend that Moses is simply the Gilgamesh of Exodus who saved the children of Israel from a situation analogous to that faced by the inhabitants of Erech at the beginning of the Babylonian epic (and that Jesus is “nothing but an Israelite Gilgamesh”).11 It was

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doubtless because of these sensationalizing studies and the broad public response that most of the literary works produced during this period were also German.

S                     Heinrich Hart’s epic poem Mose (1896) is one of the odder products among literarizations of Moses. Hart (1855 –1906) and his younger brother, Julius, are best known for their Kritische Waffengänge (Critical [Military] Engagements) of 1882– 84, a series of six polemical brochures attacking what they regarded as the irrelevance of most contemporary literature of so-called Poetic Realism and preparing the way for Naturalism. While he later achieved recognition as a drama critic, Hart’s own poetic production had little impact on his contemporaries. But his Mose, the third in what was projected to be “an epic in twenty-four narratives” with the grandiose title “The Song of Humanity” (Das Lied der Menschheit), represents a unique attempt to apply the sociopolitical principles of German Naturalism in an epic poem consisting of almost seven thousand lines of rhyming iambic pentameters. In the dedication of the first volume to his brother, Julius, he argued that only in the present century had humankind reached a peak that afforded a relatively unobscured view of the entire past:12 an overview that began for Hart with the first man and woman, Tul and Nahila, in primal Ceylon, and was to extend down to the present with a look forward, in volume 24, to “3000.” However, the project never got beyond volume 3. In his afterword Hart explains that he chose the epic form because “no single individual, no single epoch embodies the idea and ideal of the human and humanity” (217).13 In Mose he seeks to present the sociopolitical aspects of the Exodus with no appeal to the supernatural. The entire action—from Moses’ initial descent from Mount Horeb to his disappearance (from Horeb and not from Pisgah)—takes place within two days. The epic begins with the statement that night surrounds Horeb’s peak (3: Nacht um des Horebs Haupt), and it ends some two hundred pages later when Moses has again ascended the same mountain, which is obscured by fog; when the air is clear “the peak was glittering, clear and light, but he—he was not standing on the peak.”

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Da lag die Zinne schimmernd, klar und licht . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Er aber,—er stand auf der Zinne nicht. (216)

As Moses descends in the opening lines, the quarreling leaders establish the factions that dominate the action: Moses, his opponent Korah, and their respective followers. When Aaron prepares to consecrate the golden calf, his grandson Phinehas tries to prevent the sacrilege, but Korah intervenes, telling him to go back and “howl with the other owls of the prophet” (25: Heul’ mit den andren Eulen des Propheten!). Moses— first displaying (like Goethe’s Moses) the violence that characterizes him throughout the work—destroys the idol, but Aaron rebukes him, saying that he “blesses with the hammer and prays with the sword” (34: Du segnest mit dem Hammer / Und betest mit dem Schwert). Thereupon Moses, in the first of what appear to be epileptic seizures that account for his visions, falls on the ground screaming, his eyes rolling, his head jerking back and forth. Kaleb and Eleasar come to his assistance, explaining that “his God’s light has often penetrated him like a sudden stroke of lightning” (35: Oft schon durchfuhr ihn seines Gottes Licht / Wie jäher Blitz). From this point on, various episodes from Exodus and Numbers are introduced in epically expanded form but concentrated into the barely two days of action on and beneath Mount Horeb. The brief passage (Num. 25:7– 8) in which Phinehas kills the drunken Simri for sinning with a Midianite woman and curses him for defiling Jahwe’s mountain with the worship of Baal—“Weg! Du Verfluchter. Weg zu deinem Bal! / Dies hier ist Jahwes Berg und Jahwes Thal” (51)—becomes a lively scene of some five pages (49– 53). After Eleasar has succeeded in reconciling Moses and Aaron, Moses goes back up the mountain, accompanied only by “the Four”—Aaron, Caleb, Eleasar, and Joshua—to learn whether or not Jahwe will forgive his people. Resting on the way, he recounts to them in a lengthy flashback the story of his years in Egypt: how he was raised as an Egyptian prince but then disabused when he was rejected scornfully as a “Hebrew dog” (82: Hebräerhund) by an Egyptian woman who had seduced him; how the glory he achieved through his military victories brought him nothing but “torment, disgust, regret” (85: Qual, Ekel, Reue); how he sought solace through initiation into the mysteries of Isis—only to be disillusioned

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when the sacrifices were “not wine, not incense, neither hoof nor horn. Blood of our blood,” that is, of the Hebrews (98: Nicht Wein, nicht Weihrauch, weder Huf noch Horn. Blut unsres Bluts). At this point, he continues, he accidentally read something written “not in the holy temple script” but in “our fathers’ language and our fathers’ words” (100: nicht in heilger Tempelschrift [but] Der Väter Sprache und der Väter Wort) and learns, for the first time, the history of his people. (This amounts, by the way, to an implicit suggestion that Hart was aware of the current documentary hypothesis that Moses’ books were based on earlier sources.) His rejection of his Egyptian past is completed when, one evening, he overhears two Egyptians speaking contemptuously of him: “a jackal who seemed to be a lion . . . from the mob from the desert, from the dark blood of the shepherds” (103: Ein Schakal ist’s, der uns ein Löwe schien / . . . von der Brut / Der Wüste, aus der Hirten dunklem Blut). Fleeing to the desert, where he first undergoes a Jesus-like temptation, he encounters Jethro, marries Zipora, and becomes a shepherd. There, one night, he has his experience of the burning bush, which is rationalized as struck by a bolt of lightning (113: ein Strahlenblitz), and has a brief (one-page) vision of the events following his return to Egypt: earthquakes, the Exodus, battles, but no miraculous parting of the waters. While this narrative is taking place on the mountainside, down below Assir, the son of the rebel Korah, is introduced in a passage inspired by a passing reference (Num. 26:33) to Tirza, a daughter of Zelophehad. Seeing a girl in the dark, he mistakenly thinks it is Tirza, but it is her sister Zibea, who reviles him as a wishful seducer: “You wolf ! You dragon! You—you behemoth!” (130). In clearly sexual imagery she tells him that he will not pluck their myrtle. The rejected Assir is already furious when he gets to his father’s tent and meets the conspirators, who are plotting against Moses under the watchword: “We are a people unto ourselves. And our kingdom is called Enjoyment, and Power is our army, pride our shield, and cleverness our defense.” Wir sind ein Volk für uns. Und unser Reich— Es heißt Genuß, und Macht heißt unser Heer, Stolz unser Schild und Klugheit unsre Wehr. (137)

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They commission Assir to kill Moses, but when he nears the summit of Mount Horeb Moses sees him and reproaches him for presuming to approach “the golden throne of light” (155: zum goldnen Thron des Lichts): “You viper, that crept into the temple; you wanted death. Look! Jahweh is slaying you” (155: du Viper, die sich in den Tempel schlich, / Du wolltest Tod. Sieh! Jahwe tötet dich). He converts Assir, promises him Thirza for his bride, and sends him back down the mountain to proclaim that “the great day of the Lord” (167: der große Tag des Herrn) is at hand. Assir confesses his conversion and new belief to his father, saying that he has seen the great god called Jahweh. Korah is enraged because Moses has succeeded in turning “blood against blood and father against son” (173: Blut gegen blut und Vater gegen Sohn) and his own son is acting as Moses’ proselytizer. He and his followers go off to join forces with the Reubenites, who are already in arms to enforce “the iron banishment” (176: der eherne Bann) that is about to surround the prophet. Seeing all this commotion, Phinehas alerts Joshua, who is ready to attack the rebels. Before they can do so, however, an earthquake shakes the battlefield and scatters Korah’s army. As the Hebrews gather to swear their allegiance to Jahweh, Korah’s forces reassemble and try to interrupt the ceremony. The Reubenite Abiram climbs onto the altar, slays one of the sacrificial animals, and ridicules the “beggar god and his mob of beggars” (193: Des Bettlergotts und seiner Bettlerrotte). Furious, Moses seizes him and hurls him down into the abyss while Joshua’s men kill Korah’s other followers. An Ammonite priest snatches a child from a dying Egyptian dancer, hands it to Moses, and implores him to save it. Moses, in his fury, is prepared to leave the child to be slaughtered until Eleasar persuades him otherwise. Finally, another earthquake strikes and the mountain launches avalanches down upon the rebels, who are again scattered while Korah himself retreats up Mount Horeb. When Assir volunteers to kill his own father, Korah, in angry despair, plunges his sword into his own chest and dies. Meanwhile the regrouped rebels drive back Joshua’s men, who are discouraged at the rumor that Moses is dead. Then, in a scene based on the battle with the Amalekites (Num. 17:8–13), Moses holds up his arms while Joshua’s army defeats the last of the rebels. Following these events Caleb implores Moses to lead the Hebrews as their king—an offer Moses rejects, saying, “Jahweh is king, he alone,—the

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One; / but I . . . I—I am in the Lord’s community” (207: Jahwe ist König, er allein,—der Eine; / Ich aber . . . ich—bin in des Herrn Gemeine). Joshua begs him not to desert them, even though their light is still in the clouds. “We old ones are the withered foliage on the trunk; the dust of Egypt still lies upon our minds. But a new race shall arise for you and will go with you without vacillation and will grow on the law of the Lord— until its heart is ripe and cloudless its star.” Wir Alten sind am Stamme welkes Laub, Noch liegt auf unsrem Geist Misraïms Staub. Dir aber wird ein neu Geschlecht erstehn Und ohne Schwanken wird es mit dir gehn Und wachsen wird es am Gesetz des Herrn,— Bis reif sein Herz und wolkenlos sein Stern. (209)

Moses believes that he must sacrifice himself because he still stands between Jahweh and the people. Joshua and Zipora appeal to him, but he goes back up the mountain and, as already noted, disappears. In sum, Hart has grouped a number of unrelated episodes, relocated them all to Mount Horeb, and compressed them into a period of scarcely two days. Few of the supernatural events—the Egyptian plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the miraculous watering and feeding of the multitudes in the desert, and so forth—are mentioned. Only the burning bush is depicted in Moses’ retrospective account, where it is given a wholly rational explanation. Religious doctrine goes virtually unmentioned, and religion plays a role only to the extent that it separates and motivates the opposing parties. To this extent, then, Hart’s epic adaptation of the Moses theme may be regarded as a document of Naturalism. While he makes it clear that he is familiar with current thought regarding the documentary hypothesis, his work makes no attempt to come to grips with either biblical or Egyptological research. His Mose is rather an expression of the sociopolitical thought of the 1890s. T   M          M   Literary interest in Moses was not, of course, limited to Germany. From Scandinavia to the Ukraine, major writers took up the theme for their

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own purposes. In 1903 August Strindberg composed the twenty-one brief scenes that constitute his play Through Deserts to Ancestral Lands (Genom öknar till arvland, 1918) to exemplify his new theory of history and to dramatize his fascination with leaders constantly opposed by their followers. Following the spiritual crisis that he underwent in the 1890s, known from the title of the novel describing it as his Inferno (1897), Strindberg (1849–1912) turned to world history and religion in his attempt to find a new meaning in life. One result was his remarkable essay “The Mysticism of World History” (“Världshistoriens mystik,” 1903)—a long treatise compiled from a series of newspaper articles that he had published earlier that year. The essay begins with the statement that when the people of Israel departed from Egypt “the country was ruled by a pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty.”14 Strindberg goes on to cite a series of similar events (the movements of peoples) that occurred at the same point in history: the voyage of the Hellenic Argonauts; the Assyrian Semiramis’ journey to India; in China the shift of the capital from Shensi to Honan. Not content with these parallels, the author detects others. At the time when Moses declared the Law, the Indians received the Rig-Veda, Buddha was born, and the ruler Wu-Ting reformed Chinese morals and laws; he suggests also that perhaps Zoroaster belongs to the same period. It is not my goal here to examine the historical plausibility of Strindberg’s conjecture (which anticipates by analogy Karl Jaspers’ concept of an “axial age” for the period 800– 200 BCE) but simply to ask what he himself concluded from these coincidences, which he believes can be detected on other major historical and historic occasions: notably Christ’s birth, the appearance of Muhammad, and the reformation of Martin Luther. Is the power of thought so enormous that it defies time and space and immediately transmits itself, to set kindred spirits in comparable movement, even at a distance? Or is the world soul the sum of all souls, and does mankind comprise only a single being which responds in all its parts when a movement occurs in any one of them? Or does the conscious world will stand above everything, ordering and controlling? (187)

It was this belief in the world-historical significance of certain key events that prompted Strindberg to write, first, a powerful full-length drama

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about Martin Luther, The Nightingale of Wittenberg (1903), to whom, as “an intellectual disavowed by his own people,”15 he felt closely akin. This was followed by the ambitious plan to compose an entire cycle of dramas illustrating his theory — a project that never got beyond short plays on Moses, Socrates, and Christ, which were published in 1918 under the grandiose title The Trilogy of World History (Den världshistoriska trilogin). The twenty-one scenes of Through Deserts to Ancestral Lands, sometimes consisting of no more than two or three lines (e.g., scene 11, in which “The Voice” utters the first of the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai), amount to often verbatim dramatizations of episodes from the biblical account. Strindberg, eager to get to the later scenes in the desert where Moses is in constant conflict with his people, condenses the earlier action to five scenes. In the opening prologue Pharaoh is determined, because of an ominous dream and despite the pleas of his priest to set the Hebrews free, to destroy the ever multiplying people by slaying their firstborn male children. The next scene (2) shows the rescue of the baby Moses by Pharaoh’s daughter and then jumps directly (3) to Mount Horeb and the burning bush. In scene 4, after Pharaoh and the priest recount the various plagues that have afflicted them, Pharaoh tells Moses and Aaron to depart with the Hebrews. Then at the Red Sea (5) “The Voice” from a pillar of cloud commands Moses to stretch out his hand so that the waters may swallow the Egyptians. From that point on the scenes depict mainly Moses’ attempts to reassure the complaining Hebrews: water in the desert (6), the battle with the Amalekites (7), Jethro’s advice (8), the voice of the Lord to the people (9), Moses on Sinai (10–12), the golden calf (13), Moses’ plea to the Lord not to destroy his people (14), the return of the scouts and the complaints of the people (15), Korah’s conspiracy and punishment (16–17), Aaron’s death for his lack of faith (18), the episode of Balaam (19), a lengthy proclamation of the laws to the elders and the commission of Joshua (20), and Moses’ death on Mount Nebo. His dying words — “O Lord, let now Your servant depart in peace—now that I have beheld Your glory!” (164)—suggest typologically his prefigurative role because they are taken not from Deuteronomy but from the New Testament (Luke 2:29– 30).16

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It is evident that Strindberg’s choice of scenes is highly selective, intended to highlight Moses’ archetypal role as a leader who accepts his mission despite the opposition of his people and the personal sacrifices that he is required to make. Strindberg’s obsession with Moses, whose actions opened both the essays “The Mysticism of World History” and “World Historical Plays” did not stop there. He—or at least the legend of his birth, “The Egyptian Bondage”—opens the collection of short stories titled Historical Miniatures (Historiska Miniatyrer, 1905).17 Moses’ father, Amram, a carpenter, has been summoned to the temple to repair a doorway. On the way he takes the occasion to look around the temple itself, where he encounters an old friend, the scribe Ruben. That evening he learns that his wife has given birth to a boy, but the next day in the palace he overhears a conversation between Pharaoh and the priest—a conversation that virtually reproduces the prologue of the earlier play—in which the ruler announces his intention to destroy the “unnecessary and foreign mouths” of the Hebrews because the Nile is steadily receding and the crops are failing. In the final scene Jochebeth and Mirjam put the reed basket into the river, where the child is rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter. Like the play, the low-key story ends with a proclamation of faith by Jochebeth and praise of God for his great mercy. Moses himself plays no role in the tale, but Strindberg, writing during this decade of highly publicized mythical analogies to the Bible, no doubt intended the story of his miraculous rescue to suggest, according to his mystical theory of historical parallels, the various other legends from world mythology of similar rescues. Again he emphasizes the attempts of the priest to dissuade Pharaoh from his evil plan; this subplot inverts the relationship of Moses to his people, wherein the good leader is opposed by his doubting people; here, in contrast, the evil leader overrules his sensible and benevolent adviser. (The collection of twenty stories, continuing like the three short plays with narratives about Socrates and Jesus, continues with episodes that display snapshots of history in miniature right down to the French Revolution.) A U       R       Ivan Franko (1856–1916) was one of the principal successors to Taras Shevchenko, acknowledgedly the greatest Ukrainian poet. For much of

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his life Franko worked tirelessly—as an agitator, editor, scholar, and author of numerous volumes of poetry, such as his early Eternal Revolutionist (1880)—for the cause of Ukrainian nationalism and the liberation of his people from the political and economic exploitation of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian hegemony. His last major work, the powerful but cheerless Moses (Moisei, 1905), which is widely regarded as his finest,18 reflects his discouragement at his lack of success, after so many years of ceaseless effort, in motivating his countrymen in the face of widespread conservatism and passive acceptance of their present state. The subjectively personal tone of the poem is quite pronounced.19 The long poem, in rhyming four-line strophes, consists of twenty brief “chapters,” preceded by a dedicatory “prologue” to the “great genius” of his people, which makes explicit the intended analogy between the Ukrainians and the peoples of the Exodus.20 My people, tortured, overpowered, And like that beggar at the cross-roads With human scorn, as if with scabs all covered! (28)

The action, such as it is, takes place entirely on the last day of Moses’ life, when he is depressed because his people, after forty years in the wilderness, have lost their faith and believe that “the prophets lied” (31). While Moses has sacrificed everything in his own life “For one idea, one just cause” (32), the people, led by “noisy Dathan” (33), pay homage to Baal and threaten Moses with stoning if he continues to preach rebellion. Although he has been ordered to keep quiet, on this day Moses comes forth and (chapters 4– 6) speaks to his people, chiding them because they have considered tranquillity “that most blessed human state” (39). He relates a parable about trees seeking a leader; after they are rejected by the lofty cedar of Lebanon, by the haughty oak, and by their kindred palm tree, they turn to the lowly blackthorn, which promises to conquer fields for them and to guard them “with ever ready prickly thorns” (44). In his exegesis Moses explains that the race singled out by God, like the blackthorn, is poor und unimposing but threatening and sharp and bearer of a sacred message. Abiram scoffs at his sermon, saying that Baal and Astarte promise wealth rather than Jehovah’s thorns. And Dathan suggests that Moses, educated in Egyptian schools, was a traitor to his people and

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helped forge their bonds. With his final words to the crowd, Moses urges them, “Beware, that Jehovah may not retract / The promise you so oft have heard” (58). As the sun sets, he wishes to himself that Israel might know his love for his kin, to whom he has devoted his life; but now he must die. When he starts up the mountain, he is held back by the children, who call him “Grandpa” and want to hear once more the tale of his adventures, especially about the burning bush on Horeb. Though Moses cannot tarry, he promises them that a time will come when they shall all see before their eyes, as he did, a burning bush and a voice ordering them to cast off their bondage. Ascending, Moses pleads with Jehovah to speak again to him as he did from the burning bush, but the voice he hears, which suggests that it was not devotion but ambition that prompted him to mold his people, turns out to be that of Amazel, the “demon of the wilderness” (69). In his own heart Moses now wonders if, in fact, he did not feed the people with his own narrow views and do them a wrong by leading them from their homes in Egypt. But Jehovah still does not speak to him. The next day at sunrise the people, seeing Moses standing on the summit of the mountain, tremble lest he now invoke a curse upon them. But Moses hears, whispered, another parable—a wholly unbiblical one— about the blinded hunter Orion, who sought the brilliant light of the sun to restore his sight but was constantly led astray—east in the evening and west in the morning—by a joking youngster on his back. Orion, he is told, is all humankind, rushing in despair toward some unseen goal and cheated of its goal by “the logic of pure facts” (79). Then Amazel, showing him the land of Palestine, offers him a vision of the future: its battles, the Babylonian conquest, the fallen temples, the crucifixions by the Romans, and points out that the land is much too small to accommodate his people. Moses grieves that his people are “predestined to be slaves of time” and that “Jehovah fooled us like a herd!” (86). A violent storm rages, and finally Jehovah speaks to Moses once more, pointing out that his people are to grow “on this miserly and sterile land” just like the thornbush of his parable: “This Palestine is nothing but a gift / With which to offer you a start” (90). But Moses himself, because of his doubts, must never enter that land. His bleached bones will serve as an example “To all who always strive to reach the goal / And slowly perish on their way” (90).

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The next morning when the Israelites peer up at the mountain, Moses has vanished. But Joshua comes forth to lead them across the Jordan to liberty: “And from the lazy nomads, in a flash, / A race of heroes will arise” (92). Thus will they wander through uncertainty, While full of yearning and dismay, To pave the highway for the human soul And slowly perish on their way. (93)

Franko, who died in 1916, did not live to see the emergence of several independent but short-lived Ukrainian republics in the years immediately following the Russian Revolution of 1917. But his poem expresses, along with the sadness of the leader dismayed by the apathetic response of his followers, who are misled by the reassuring promises of the status quo, the fervent hope of this impassioned nationalist that his country will bring forth once again “a race of heroes” comparable to that of the Ukrainian Middle Ages, when it was for a time the most powerful nation in Europe—a race analogous to that of the Israelites, who will emerge from their servitude in Egypt “to disseminate, to conquer all / The life and treasures of the lands” (89). Franko’s powerful and energetic poem, which resembles Hart’s epic in its political thrust, poses a remarkable contrast to Strindberg’s dispassionate and colorless effort.

E   P       Moses and the Exodus were broadly politicized toward the turn of the century. Theodor Herzl, portrayed in Zionist propaganda as the “New Moses”—the leader who, like Moses, tried to bring the Jews out of the modern Diaspora but saw the Promised Land only from a distance— was frequently depicted as such in paintings and photographs. In 1898 Herzl actually outlined a five-act drama about Moses, whom he calls in his Zionist Diary “the leader because he doesn’t wish to be.” “Everything submits to him because he has no personal desire,” he continues. “For him what matters is not the goal but the wandering. Learning through

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wandering” (Erziehung durch Wanderung).21 His project was carried out by others. Carl Hauptmann (1858–1921), the older brother of the more famous dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann, was the more intellectual of the two siblings. At the University of Jena he earned his doctorate with the zoologist Ernst Haeckel, author of the renowned World Riddles (Welträtsel, 1899), but also studied with the Nobel Prize–winning philosopher Rudolf Eucken. Although he soon gave up his plans for an academic career and, thanks to his wife’s wealth, was able to enjoy the life of an independent writer and intellectual, he developed a view of humankind’s nobility and grandeur that differed radically from that of the milieu-determined men and women that informed the naturalism of his brother and most of their contemporaries. Turning to the religious mysticism of his native Silesia, he became, in his own words, a “searcher after God” (Gottsucher)22—a standpoint evident in his drama Moses (1906). Hauptmann’s five-act “stage poem” in blank verse differs conspicuously from most of the works considered up to this point. Taking place wholly in Hebrew settings and among Hebrew figures, it betrays absolutely none of the interest in Egyptology that characterized most works of the nineteenth century. Taking the biblical account quite literally, it is written for an audience familiar enough with the Bible to recognize the frequent allusions to passages that are implied rather than depicted. (In act 4, for instance, we see Simri lusting after the Midianite dancing girls, but there is no rendition or even mention of the fact that Phinehas kills him for his sacrilege.) And while it accepts the miracles as described, it avoids any direct representation of them or, for that matter, of any situations normally regarded as “dramatic.” Moses himself, present only at the end of the first two acts, emerges more centrally in the later acts; but the author’s interest is focused almost wholly on the response of others to him and his works. As a result of this absence of spectacular dramatic scenes, the play had no success on the stage and is scarcely mentioned in studies of modern German literature. The action begins on the eve of the Passover in Goshen, where the group assembled in Aaron’s home expresses their distrust of Moses because he grew up in Egyptian opulence while his people starved in the desert. Waiting for Aaron’s return from his audience with the pharaoh,

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they recapitulate the plagues that have struck Egypt. When Moses returns, he announces that Pharaoh is still unbending and must therefore suffer the final blow: the “angel of terror” (34: Schreckensengel). He sends everyone home for the night, urging them to follow his instructions about lamb and blood on the doorways. Even Aaron now expresses his doubts until a great storm announces the coming of the angel. Act 2 shifts without transition to Sinai, where Moses has been gone for forty days while his people are starving in the desert. Zipora’s brother suggests that even Moses now suffers doubts and is afraid to return. Aaron has created the golden calf, but Zipora and Jethro fear that the Hebrews will take out their feelings of vengeance on them as Midianites. Nun worries that the loosened order that held the mob together will soon burst, and even Miriam criticizes Moses’ acceptance and imposition of Midianite organization on the Hebrews. With a group of virgins she leads the dance around the golden calf. Finally Moses, accompanied by Joshua, appears with the tablets and, having broken them, wonders in his anger and despair if he was worthy to carry out the task assigned Jehovah: “Was that the mark of shame—that I finally did try what at first seemed hopeless?” (94: War das der Schandfleck, daß ich’s endlich doch / versuchte, was erst ohne Hoffnung schien?). He wonders, too, if he is now being punished for his presumptuousness. When the third act begins, the Exodus has moved on to Paran, where the people await the return of the spies whom Moses has sent out to survey the Promised Land. Moses has provided new Tables of the Law for the tabernacle, or Tent of Congregation, that Bezaleel has constructed. Although the people bring lavish gifts to the tabernacle, which is described in biblical detail (104), Moses wonders if their faith is truly firm or “whether they are bringing gifts only in order to receive greater rewards without effort” (121: daß es nicht / nur Gaben bringt, um Größres zu empfangen / ohn’ eigne Mühe?). Aaron reads the Ten Commandments to the people (in a form slightly modified from that in Martin Luther’s translation), and then Joshua and Caleb return from their expedition bearing rich heaps of fruit and grapes. They describe Palestine and report that the land is filled with enemies, including giants, but that the Hebrews, led by Jahweh, can surely overcome them. At this, the crowd turns against Joshua, whom they already distrust as Moses’ chosen successor: “What does the boy want? The favorite! . . . Strike him dead! . . . No, such

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impudence!” (146: “Was will der Knabe? / Der Günstling! . . . Schlagt ihn tot! . . . Nein, diese Frechheit!). Rather than fight, they want to go home to Egypt—a choice that elicits Moses’ curse: “Cursed be this rabble! . . . None of them shall ever see the fathers’ land!” (152– 53: Verflucht sei dies Gesindel! . . . Keiner soll / das Väterland je schauen!”). As the act ends, the mob rushes the sanctuary, which is suddenly covered by a cloud as thunder and lightning terrify them. The fourth act takes place thirty years later at the foot of Mount Horeb. Miriam is dead, and the Amalekites have been defeated. Joshua wonders why they continue to wander like cowards instead of conquering the Promised Land as brave warriors. Meanwhile, lightly dressed Midianite maidens dance as the Hebrew youths look on lustfully. (At this point the scene with Simri is alluded to.) Adiram, Korah, and Dathan, arguing that Moses suffers from dementia (189: Altersschwäche), plot their rebellion (which is not further mentioned). Khersom (Gershom) is also angered because Moses favors Joshua and Caleb over him, his own son. When it is announced that Eleasar has become high priest, Moses and Aaron set out up the mountain, where Aaron is to die. In his final prayer he asks Jahweh not to allow Midian’s fickleness to corrupt Israel’s youth (201: laß’ nicht den Leichsinn Midians Israels Jugend / noch ganz vergiften). The play ends ten years later at Mount Nebo, where the Amorite warriors have been defeated, and Basan, king of Balak, comes in with the sorcerer Bileam (Balaam), asking for his intercession against the Hebrews, which Bileam refuses. After the defeated Moabites have departed, Moses and Joshua appear, and Joshua—like Moses years earlier before the burning bush—tries to refuse the burden of leadership: “I shall never stand for it, dear father: that you impose upon my weakness the great burden that you still bear” (222: Ich werd es nimmer dulden, lieber Vater, / daß du die große Last, die du noch trägst, / auf meine Schwäche bürdest). Finally, however, in another recapitulation of the Ten Commandments, Joshua swears, “So be it!” (225– 26: So sei es!), to each one. Then, after gazing once more across at the Promised Land and with a blessing on his lips (233: sei gesegnet!), Moses dies and, before the eyes of the astonished Joshua, is transfigured. In the valley below the people, marching with Joseph’s bones into the land of their fathers toward which Moses led them, sing a final chorus:

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Wir tragen des Josephs Gebeine heim zu dem Lande der Väter, wo Moses uns hinführt. (234)

In every act the most famous biblical actions and scenes have been largely suppressed and are mentioned as about to take place (as on the Passover of the first act), or as having already occurred (as with the battle with the Amalekites at the beginning of act 4), or are merely alluded to (as in the rebellion led by Korah or the slaying of Simri for consorting with the Midianite maiden). Moses’ vacillation and doubts, which embody Hauptmann’s own mysticism, are shown in enough detail to make his character interesting, but we hear far more about the shifting moods of the Hebrews, including Miriam and Aaron, who so easily lose faith in Moses and in the Promised Land. To that extent Hauptmann’s play amounts to a critical commentary on the current political situation in Germany, where the authoritarian regime and anti-Semitism of Kaiser Wilhelm II (Pharaoh) was ineffectively resisted by the conflicting opposition parties of an often immoral fin-de-siècle that lacked a modern Moses or Joshua.

T   I         G   Otto Borngräber (1874–1916) is wholly forgotten today, but during his lifetime the Berlin producer and dramatist had dedicated cult followers, who regarded him as “a longed-for and unseen leader.”23 Several of Borngräber’s dramas—Giordano Bruno (1900) and his “erotic mystery play,” The First Human Beings (Die ersten Menschen, 1908), enjoyed stage productions that appealed especially to young radicals. But his tragedy, Moses, or the Birth of God (Moses oder die Geburt Gottes, 1907), which most fully incorporated the vision of his philosophical treatise, “A God-Free Christianity” (“Gottfreies Christentum,” 1903), was never completed and performed despite the conviction of his cult that it was “a project of titanic grandeur”—a “world drama” of such “breadth of intent” that it had necessarily to remain fragmentary.24 The work that was published, along with Borngräber’s “Holy Ten Commandments of the Free Man,” “The Holy Belief of the Free Man,” and “The Holy Prayer of the Free Man,” was a detailed outline of the

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tragedy, including several major speeches in versified prose (assisted metrically by frequent “hm”s and “ah”s). For the author “the people of Israel are the symbol of mankind,” and it was Moses’ task, as he realizes in the first act, to liberate the people “by leading them to self-awareness” (13). His lofty spirit recognizes that “the consciousness of his own goodness and grandeur makes man good and strong and gives him support against all storms.” But his first attempts to awaken “the human being in the human breast” (den Menschen in der Menschenbrust) stirs no resonance, and he finds his task increasingly insurmountable. Verfluchtes Los, ein Herr sein diesem Volk und seiner Herr nicht sein! Es geht nicht weiter! Dies Volk sitzt allzufest in seinem Tier! ——— [Accursed destiny, to be the leader of this people and not to be master of oneself. It can’t go on! This people is still stuck all too firmly in its animal nature!]

Trying to think of some way to leash and lead the still instinctual people, he realizes that he needs “an eternally irreversible law” to put before the people on tables of stone: “Thou shalt! Thou shalt!” (14). But why should they believe such a law if he is seen as its creator? How would it be, he wonders, if he created a being of such might that a word from his mouth would strike the people as the commandment of power? “If I created such a being out of nothing?” (14). But it would be necessary to fashion it so that it would cling fast in the people’s collective madness (Wahn) as something eternally present, so that “this shape of nothingness, this mere spectre should become the primal reality of all reality, the being of being: as Jahweh! Lord! and God!” wenn so würde dies Nichtsgebild, dies bloße Schreckgespenst zu aller Wirklichkeit Urwirklichkeit, zum Sein des Seins! als Jahwe! Herr! und Gott!! (15)

But how to create such a deity? It occurs to him to use Mount Sinai, which terrifies the people with its manifestations of fire. What if he should

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ascend the mountain where no one dares to go and there, amidst the clouds of its smoke, create tablets bearing commandments? If he then should descend with the tablets in hand and proclaim them as the iron law against the background of the thundering mountain, then they would believe it: “A God lives! A God speaks! A God engraved the tables!” As act 3 begins, Moses has doubts: the true god within him struggles with the demon of lies who prompted the deception. Borngräber calls it “the battle of the great prophet, the truly great educator of the people” against “the clever, calculating ruler of the people” (16). But in his eagerness to lead his people to a goal, “he commits the sin against his spirit, against his innermost conviction” (16). So he creates the celestial deity who reigns on Sinai and promises him the Tables of the Law, and the people clamor for the law. In act 4 “the tragic ring” is closed. By becoming the servant of his own inner untruthfulness and creating through his law a power to which he himself becomes enslaved, Moses has achieved the servitude of his people. Tragic necessity presses him farther along the path that is not his path. “He leaves the people in its belief: he prays before the people to God” (17). Ultimately (act 5) the spirit of truth and the pangs of conscience overcome him. He confesses his deceit to Joshua: he used an unworthy and false means to lead the people instead of the true law slumbering within him. He now reveals to Joshua the “holy ten commandments of the free man” (the ones printed at the beginning of the volume), which begin (1) “You are a Lord and God. . . . You shall have no other gods within you apart from yourself ” (6: Du bist ein Herr und Gott! . . . Du sollst nicht andre Götter in Dir haben außer Dir!); (2) “You shall not bear your name God in vain. For the spirit within you cannot leave unpunished whoever misbears the name God”; and so on. Joshua does not fully understand, but he has premonitions of the new law and says that “in late days after him another Joshua [i.e., savior, liberator] will come, who will lead humankind to its God-awareness in the land of the free” (18). Joshua will do everything possible to make that happen. He leaves Moses alone “under the infinity of the starry night,” and Moses sinks enraptured (18: entzückt) into the eternal night. According to his own enraptured follower, Karl Arthur Schmidt, Borngräber had another ending in mind: “When Moses, carried away by

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the truth, starts to shatter the old stone tablet on the cliff, Joshua tears it out of his hand and smashes Moses’ head with it” (45). However that may be, the detailed outline makes Borngräber’s notion of a “God-free Christianity” based on purely human values quite clear. His vision is further enhanced not only by the “holy ten commandments of the free man” but also by “the holy faith of the free man,” which includes the statement, “I believe in the consecrating spirit—a general, sacred, human community, the brotherhood of beings—and a divine becoming!” (10). And especially in “the holy prayer of the free man,” which amounts to a parody of the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, who art in me, hallowed be Thy being! Thy kingdom grow within me” (11), and so forth. Borngräber presents a Moses unlike any other that we have hitherto encountered.

P     L     D  To conclude this overview of poems, plays, and novels written in the years before World War I we might briefly consider a work by a more familiar name. Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “The Death of Moses” (“Der Tod Moses”), written mostly in the summer of 1914 but completed only a year later, is based on the same Midrashic legend that underlies George Eliot’s poem “The Death of Moses” (see chapter 2). From an inscription on the copy Rilke made for Clara Rilke we know that his source was Herder’s rendition of a “Talmud passage about the death of Moses” (see chapter 1).25 Rilke, implying the refusal of the first three angels, begins with the “fallen angel” who took his weapons and approached Moses but then recoiled, shouting, “I can’t!” For Moses had gazed at him calmly through his thick eyebrows (Denn gelassen durch die dickichte Braue / hatte ihn Moses gewahrt) and continued to write his eternal words. So the Lord himself, dragging along half of the heavens (mitreißend die Hälfte der Himmel), descended and opened the mountain as a bed for the aged Moses. He summoned from its ordered habitation the soul (Aus der geordneten Wohnung / rief er die Seele), which emerged and recounted many mutual experiences with the Lord. But finally the soul had enough and felt fulfilled. So God bent down to the old man, “with a kiss took him out of himself into his own older being” (Nahm ihn im Kusse aus ihm /

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in sein Alter, das ältere), and covered him with the mountain: “So that it should be only one, a re-created one, among the mountains of the earth, not recognizable to mankind” (Daß es nur einer, / ein wiedergeschaffener, sei unter den Bergen der Erde, / Menschen nicht kenntlich). Citing Rilke’s poems and a few others, the Old Testament theologian Eckart Otto claims that “the image of Moses standing on Mount Nebo and gazing into the promised land while doomed to die became in German literature of the twentieth century even more fundamentally a metaphor for the finiteness and fragmentariness of human life.”26 In any case, the figure of Moses, liberated from Old Testament historicity by biblical scholarship and its mythic reconstitution, has now become the vehicle for works ranging from the mysticism of Strindberg and Rilke to Borngräber’s atheism, from Franco’s revolutionary fervor to the politicizations of Hart and Hauptmann.

F O U R

The Jewish Renaissance The years preceding and immediately following World War I witnessed a remarkable resurgence of interest especially among German Jews but also among Western European Jews generally in their history and culture: what Martin Buber has termed the “Jewish Renaissance.”1 This interest, which complemented the Egyptomania still prevalent up to that time, was produced by a variety of factors, including a widespread new sense of national consciousness among many groups. Beginning in 1881 a wave of pogroms and economic deprivation sent millions of Eastern European Jews on a new exodus to Western Europe and the United States. The presence of these strange relatives—initially regarded as barbarous but by the turn of the century as representative of a lost and genuine Judaism— triggered a new interest in the culture that they had preserved and brought along with them. This fascination was especially pronounced among young Zionists.2 In 1893 the many local organizations for Jewish history and literature across Germany came together into a national union and began systematically to disseminate Jewish culture among assimilated Jews. Four years later the first Zionist Congress was convened in Basel by Theodor Herzl.3

M    H      J  We sense this response immediately in Victor Hahn’s Moses (1907). In contrast to Carl Hauptmann’s rather lifeless play that appeared the previous year, Hahn’s Moses, also five acts in blank verse, is a much more spirited humanization—not rationalization—of the biblical tale: a work that 117

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deserves much more recognition than it has received since the “lively applause” that it won at its premiere in Nuremberg.4 Hahn (1869– ca. 1933), an Austrian-born Jewish dramatist who spent most of his career as a theatrical producer and publicist in Berlin, goes virtually unmentioned in histories of modern German literature.5 But the contemporary social implications of his version, which is enlivened by a love subplot and wholly forgoes miracles and the supernatural, were appreciated by the audience at the premiere. The play begins with a lengthy prologue showing Hebrew slaves at work on the pyramids on the day after the slaying of one of the taskmasters, when their labors were increased. Moses, who still takes himself to be a full-blooded Egyptian and, despite his religious doubts, is in training to become a priest, is walking with his closest friend, Mineptah, the pharaoh’s son. He confesses to his friend that it was he who struck the guard out of shame for Egyptian cruelty in the eyes of the slaves. Mineptah, who shares Moses’ humane values, respects the secret and hopes that it will serve as a warning to other taskmasters to behave more benevolently. Then they learn from the Hebrews that the guard died and that the unknown perpetrator has been sentenced to death. When Moses reproaches a young Hebrew for mishandling his father, the Hebrews recognize him and summon the guards, hoping for better treatment. Mineptah, urging Moses to flee, tearfully reproaches the Hebrews for their lack of gratitude: “You doglike people [Hundevolk] full of ingratitude and betrayal! He was my friend! I had no other one!” (27). The action proper begins thirty years later in Midian, where Moses has become prosperous and lives with his wife and children on an elegant country estate (28: a Landhaus von fürstlicher Pracht). His daughter Merri is engaged to be married to his favorite, Joshua. But as Zipporah confides to her brother Jitro, her husband appears to be filled with a secret longing (29: geheimer Sehnsucht voll). Then his son Elieser, returning from a trip to Egypt, reports that the fate of the Hebrews is worse than ever: he saw an elderly priest named Aaron whipped. When she hears this news, Jochebet—Moses’ nurse in Egypt, who accompanied him to Midian—now confesses that Moses is actually her son and that he too is a Hebrew. She implores him to lead his kinsmen out of Egypt, out of the land of torment, curse, and slavery.

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Führ’ aus Mizraim deine Brüder fort, Aus diesem Land der Geißel und des Fluchs! Führ’ aus dem Land der Knechtschaft sie heraus! (46)

Her words are a revelation to Moses and seem to fulfill his own inchoate dissatisfaction and longing. It seems to him, he tells her, as though God’s “thunderous voice” were calling to him from the surrounding landscape— “from the gentle caress of these breezes, from these palm trees, these green meadows, from this thornbush full of blossoming roses”— to liberate his people. als ob aus dieser Lüfte sanftem Kosen, aus diesen Palmen, diesen grünen Matten, aus diesem Dornbusch, blüh’nder Rosen voll, mir Gott mit seiner Donnerstimme riefe: Ermanne dich! Steh auf ! befrei’ dein Volk! (47)

As the curtain falls, Moses orders the camels to be saddled for that very evening. Outside Ramses City (act 2) Mineptah’s son Abuhol greets Moses joyfully, knowing him well from his father’s accounts. He is also immediately infatuated with Merri, who accompanies her father. Soon Joshua, recognizing the powerful attraction between the two and displaying the nobility that will make him Moses’ successor, tells Moses that he is willing to give up Merri for the sake of the union between Egypt and Midian: “Accept my sacrifice. Despite my tears I offer it with a happy heart!” (64: O nimm mein Opfer hin; trotz meiner Tränen / bring’ ich es frohen Herzens!). He will dedicate his grief to a higher purpose: to end the sufferings of four centuries. Moses and Joshua visit the cave inhabited by the Hebrew slaves. At first the Hebrews are disturbed by his promises and plans, saying that they are satisfied with their present condition. When they tell him that he is simply a crazy (79: wirr) old man, Moses wins their confidence by confessing that he is the one who, thirty years before, killed the cruel taskmaster. Then Aaron arrives and learns that the majestic foreigner is his brother, the great friend of Pharaoh Mineptah, and that he is to accompany him to the pharaoh with the demand for liberation. At this the

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Hebrews finally recognize in Moses the savior prophesied by their forefathers and eagerly seek to kiss his garb and his feet. Act 3, which consists largely of a dialogue in the royal palace between Moses and Mineptah, constitutes a dazzlingly dramatic tour de force. When Moses introduces Aaron the Egyptian priests are infuriated, saying that even his breath desecrates the sacred residence. But Mineptah, apologizing for the arrogance of the Egyptians, sends out all the others and the two old friends celebrate their reunion after so many years. From that moment on, in a brilliantly escalating conversation, the civilized discourse turns into an angry dispute. It begins casually enough with a disagreement about religious beliefs. Mineptah states that “the divinity of all divinity is time” (94: Die Gottheit aller Gottheit ist die Zeit!), to which Moses objects: If that were the case, God would be nothingness (95: Die Zeit wär’ Gott? Dann wäre Gott—das Nichts!). Deity doesn’t conceal itself, he continues. When he requests the liberation of his people, then it is the word of the Lord that is being expressed. He reminds Mineptah that he did not enslave the Hebrews; he only took over the practice of his fathers, but the Egyptians have no inherent right to the Hebrew people. His friend is astonished at Moses’ words. From what land have you come? “As long as the Nile has coursed fruitfully through our land, there have been masters here and slaves” (97: Solang’ der Nil befruchtend rauscht durchs Land, / gab’s Herren hier und Knechte). Without the Hebrews, where would his country get its servants? It is a matter of order versus chaos. “The right you claim would shatter the structure of the world!” (98: Den Bau der Welt erschütterte dein Recht!). Moses points out that even the lowest creatures have a right to pity, but Pharaoh replies that “a fool feels pity” (100: Ein Tor fühlt Mitleid!)—that pity exists only in weak hearts laden with guilt which think themselves unworthy of their own happiness. Moses: “Pity is humankind’s loveliest blossom; the highest duty of the strong” (100: Mitleid ist der Menschheit schönste Blüte; / das Mitleid ist des Starken höchste Pflicht). When Mineptah replies that such pity would be a betrayal of his heritage and the bequest of his son, Moses implores, “Be more than Pharaoh! Be a man!” (102: Sei mehr als Pharao! Sei Mensch!). As their anger reaches its peak, Mineptah declares that he will not yield. Moses, wishing that the Nile might turn to blood and that his son might die before him, storms out cursing the palace, the Egyptian people, their gods, his onetime friend, and his son.

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Mineptah is left alone, grieving that Moses “came in love and left in hate” (104: Er kam in Liebe, und er ging in Haß) and lamenting the grave of their friendship. But when he tells his son that he may not marry Moses’ daughter Merri, Abuhol rushes out in despair and hurls himself from the balcony into the river, smashing his body on the rocks below and coloring the water with his blood. (108: Da färben an den Klippen sich die Wasser). At the Red Sea (act 4) Merri has died of grief for Abuhol, and Joshua is depressed by the servile mentality of the Hebrews, “a horde of miserable creatures” (111: eine Horde elender Geschöpfe), whom they are leading. Their guide has brought them to a known ford, but as they wait for the tide to recede the Egyptians show up in the distance, and the Hebrews regret that they ever left Goshen, with the ritual lament that there were graves enough in Egypt (116). When the waters recede, Moses sends the Hebrews ahead while he remains behind to ask Mineptah why he reneged on his promise: “My heart was broken, my mind confused; I was crushed by grief when it happened” (120: Zerrissen war mein Herz, verwirrt mein Hirn, / zermalmt war ich vor Schmerz, als es geschah). When Moses shows him Merri’s body, they embrace in their mutual grief. After Moses’ departure the priests and officers want to pursue the Hebrews, and the army threatens to mutiny if they are not ordered to do so. Mineptah, knowing that the army will be destroyed by the returning tide, agrees in order to save Moses and the Hebrews. Meanwhile, the fickle Hebrews, not realizing that the pursuers are being drowned, want to kill Moses or hand him over to the Egyptians. With a vision of the future that includes his own death, Moses summons the multitude to march on. The play concludes with a brief fifth act that takes place forty days later at the foot of Mount Sinai. The Hebrews are again discouraged at his disappearance. They want to return to Egypt but believe it is first necessary to reconcile their old gods. So they threaten Aaron and demand that he create an idol for them but are reluctant when he asks for their gold in order to do so. When Moses and Joshua come back down and hear the singing and notice the pagan rites, Joshua (not Moses!) smashes the golden calf while Moses shatters the Tables of the Law, telling the Hebrews, “With these you, who yesterday were still slaves, would have become masters of all peoples!” (150: Zu Herren aller Völker wäret ihr, / die gestern Sklaven noch, damit geworden!). Now none of those living

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shall see the land of milk and honey, which shall remain for a better generation. As the curtain falls, Joshua consoles Moses: “You have strewn golden seed for the world. When will this seed sprout toward the light — tomorrow, or after thousands of years? I know only one thing: Ultimately it will bloom!” Du hast der Welt doch goldne Saat gestreut! Wann diese Saat dem Licht entgegensprießet, ob morgen, ob nach Tausenden von Jahren—? Nur eines weiß ich:—Endlich blüht sie doch! (152)

Hahn has given the familiar story persuasive new twists. In the first place, all the miracles are rationalized in a purely human way: the burning bush, the death of the firstborn sons, the bloody Nile, the parting of the waters. In the second place, Moses’ conversion is explained as an outgrowth of his innate sympathy—even when he still thought of himself as Egyptian—for the plight of the Hebrews and then through the revelations of his mother and her plea for liberation of her people. Pharaoh’s character in turn has been wholly humanized: as Moses’ friend he also shares, albeit not his religious beliefs, his hatred of human cruelty; if he is occasionally swayed, he is not finally changed by the persuasion of the priests and councilors. The extremes in the quarrel between the two friends correspond to the depth of their friendship. The nobility of these two figures contrasts sharply with the character of the respective peoples with whom they have to deal: the arrogant hostility of the Egyptians and the servile fickleness of the Hebrews. The issue of belief as a religious matter hardly arises—only as a political factor that divides the two peoples.

M   P      The poets did not lag behind. In England, the novelist Israel Zangwill (1864–1926), a prominent Zionist of Russian Jewish background who was also known as “the Dickens of the Ghetto,” published a sonnet titled “Moses and Jesus” (in his volume the Blind Children, 1903).6 He imagines

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“two Jews meeting”: one of them “old, stern-eyed, deep-browed,” and the other “young, with sweet, seraphic glance,” both looking askance as “the Town’s Satanic dance” goes on around them. As they hear an organ hymn resounding from the church and “a loudly chanted air” from the synagogue, Then for the first time met their eyes swift-linked In one strange, silent, piteous gaze, and dim With bitter tears of agonized despair.

Apart from the bitterness characteristic of Zangwill’s social commentary, the poem is notable especially for its linkage of Moses and Jesus—a linkage normally appearing in works by Christian writers eager to expose not only Moses as a prefiguration of Jesus but also Jesus as the fulfiller of the more severe Hebraic law. In her Hebräische Balladen (1913), the distinguished Jewish poet Else Lasker-Schüler (1869 –1945) gathers poems about many of the most popular figures of the Old Testament, from Abraham to Esther, including “Moses und Josua,”7 which like Rilke’s poem a year later deals with Moses’ death. The short (eleven-line) poem begins with Moses’ anointment of the heroic young Joshua as his successor (salbte ihn zum König seiner Schar) and then for two strophes goes on to express the people’s fondness for their “crowned brother,” whose hair—both recapitulating Moses’ experience with the burning bush and prefiguring his namesake, Jesus— “burned as sweetly as a sacred thorn branch” (wie heiliger Dornstrauch brannte süß sein Haar). In the concluding two lines the focus returns to Moses, whose dying eye sees the longed-for home star (den ersehnten Heimatstern) rising as his weary lion’s soul cries out to the Lord: “Den Mosis altes Sterbeauge aufgehn sah, / Als seine müde Löwenseele schrie zum Herrn.” Among the many religious poems of the Austrian Jewish writer Franz Werfel (1890–1945) we find an almost aggressively challenging “Prayer of Moses” (“Das Gebet Moses,” 1919) in which Moses warns God that he intends to rush into his orderly universe and hurl himself head-overheels into his reign and that God cannot resist him (Ich fahre in deine Ordnung, ich werfe mich kopfüber in dein Walten, du widerstehst mir

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nicht).8 He will not let God go, no matter how he twists and turns (Ich lasse dich nicht, du wendetest denn an allen Enden!) God cannot escape him in his infinity (Du entgehst mir nicht in deiner Unendlichkeit!). Saying that no further flight is possible, no escape (Da ist keine Flucht mehr, ist kein Ausweg), Moses demands the appearance and support of his God.

T   S     M      Isaac Rosenberg’s dramaticized poem Moses (1916) marks a striking shift toward the modernistic works of the period between the two world wars from the experimental variations of the fin-de-siècle. In fact, the first page might be regarded as a kind of stylistic indicator of its modernism, moving as it does from bland prose through blank verse to free verse. The letter from Pharaoh that Moses reads at the beginning is in a conventional bureaucratic prose. The oral edict that the messenger delivers—to rip out the two molars of the Hebrew slaves under his command—is in a sardonic blank verse. The royal paunch of Pharaoh dangled worriedly, Not knowing where the wrong. Viands once giant-like Came to him thin and thinner. What rats gnawed? (85)9

But when Moses begins to contemplate the implications of the royal command, the style shifts radically to modernistic free verse. See in my brain What madmen have rushed through, And like a tornado Turn up the tight roots Of some dead universe. (86)

Rosenberg (1890–1918) is widely regarded, along with Wilfred Owen, as one of the finest English poets of World War I. One expert in the literature of those years, Paul Fussell, has called his “Break Day in the Trenches” “the greatest poem of the war.”10 Written between his return from a stay with his sister in Cape Town in 1915 and his military assign-

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ment to France in the spring of 1916, Moses is intensely autobiographical, reflecting the author’s background as a self-conscious Jew in England, his observation of the contrast between the lives of whites and blacks in South Africa, his concern about the immorality of military service without patriotic conviction, and his experience of the violence and antiSemitism of his military training and service.11 Rosenberg initially planned to include in his play a scene in Midian in which Moses, surprising an Ethiopian conjurer burning brandy over a bush, falls into an intoxicated sleep from alcoholic fumes and dreams of a conversation with God.12 But he decided to drop that scene altogether, allowing Moses to experience his revelation sooner and independently. The two scenes of the published version take place entirely in the Egyptian capital of Thebes (the biblical No Amun). The first scene, following the appearance of the messenger with Pharaoh’s message, consists entirely of a monologue in which Moses considers the implications of the brutal command to tear out the molars of the Hebrew slaves in order to save scarce food for the Egyptians. Up to this point, though aware of his Hebrew ancestry, Moses has been raised as an Egyptian prince, a favorite son of the pharaoh, and lover of the lovely Egyptian maiden Koelue. Suddenly, that image is shattered. Unlike the pharaoh and other Egyptian royalty, “well-peruked and oiled” (87), I am rough now, and new, and will have no tailor. Startlingly, As a mountain side Wakes aware of its other side, When from a cave a leopard comes, On its heels the same red sand Springing with acquainted air, Sprang an intelligence Coloured as a whim of mine, Showed to my dull outer eyes The living eyes underneath. (87)

He decides to test Pharaoh’s affection for him with “a small misdemeanor, touch of rebelliousness” (87)—his refusal to carry out the command. Pharaoh has ordered him to act. “Lord! his eyes would go wide / If he

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knew the road my rampant dreams would race” (88). Now “sick of priests and forms, / This rigid dry-boned refinement,” he becomes aware of the servitude of the Hebrews, changed from wolf to dog, and hears them cry: Break this metamorphosis, Disenchant my lying body, Only putrefaction is free, And I, Freedom, am not. Moses! touch us, thou! (90)

His epiphany results in his resolution to “ride the dizzy beast of the world / By road—my way” (91). The second scene involves more action. Two Hebrews laboring at the pyramids talk furtively. While the younger one, a Joshua figure, appreciates the concern and ideas of Moses, who rescued him from near-death, the older one, representing the murmuring Hebrews of Exodus, is skeptical: He is a prince, an animal Not of our kind, who perhaps has heard Vague rumours of our world, to his mind An unpleasant miasma. (93– 94)

Moses’ kindness to the Hebrews, he believes, arises only from “his cunning way” to earn favor from Pharaoh for his humane acts. But his younger friend determines to help Moses even though Moses, for the sake of his beloved, has made her brutal father their overseer: Abinoah, a hashish addict whose one obsession is his hatred of Jews (96). When Abinoah comes up and beats the old man until he is blinded, they hear in the distance a minstrel singing, and the old Hebrew thinks it is the voice of a messiah. The minstrel asks the overseer to desist, but he scoffs, “mud and lice and Jews are very busy / Breeding plagues in ease” (98). The minstrel, revealing himself as Moses, reproaches the “drunken rascal” with “bawdy breath.” Abinoah replies, alluding to Moses’ affair with his daughter, “my breath was worth your mixing with” (99). Moses says that he simply gave her what she asked for. As their argument intensifies, Abinoah laments that Moses won his daughter away from the promises of Prince Imra—Moses, a Jew who

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visits his sister secretly at night. When Moses realizes that Abinoah is aware of his relationship with his sister Miriam, he decides he must die. Abinoah, for his part, knows that Prince Imra has been sent by Pharaoh to arrest Moses for his insubordination and plans to delay Moses until they arrive. Pretending that he wants to persuade Abinoah to join his rebellion, Moses explains: So with these slaves, who perhaps have dreamt of freedom, Egypt was in the way, I’ll strike it out With my ways curious and unusual. I have a trouble in my mind for largeness, Rough-heart, shaggy, which your grave ardours lack. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . All that’s low I’ll charm; Barbaric love swee’en to tenderness. Cunning run into wisdom, craft turn to skill. Their meanness threaded right and sensibly Change to a prudence, envied and not sneered. (101)

While talking, he stealthily seizes and suffocates the Egyptian as, in the darkness, the glimmer of javelins and spears announces the soldiers coming with Prince Imra to arrest him. The dramolet ends with the clear implication that Moses will be seized and executed. Although this ending departs from the biblical account, Rosenberg leaves the reader with the understanding that the Hebrews will continue to strive for their liberation: through the efforts of the young followers who have grasped Moses’ message and regard him as their spiritual leader even if his physical presence is removed. Rosenberg’s little-known play marks a sharp departure from earlier Moses adaptations, which for the most part retained the biblical framework even when altering it with subplots of love and conspiracy—a departure enhanced by its stylistic radicality. A  A    -Z      M   A wholly original standpoint is evident in Rudolf Kayser’s remarkable “legend,” Moses’ Death (Moses Tod, 1921). Kayser (1889–1964), Albert

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Einstein’s son-in-law, was from 1919 to 1933 chief editor of the cultural journal Neue Rundschau. Circumstances in Germany prompted the antiZionist Jewish internationalist to emigrate to the United States, where he served as professor of German literature at Brandeis University until his death. In contrast to the Zionists, as he put it in his treatise “The New Alliance” (“Der neue Bund,” 1918/19), Kayser saw it as the “European task” of Judaism “to ethicize the world of profit and hatred into a kingdom of messianic love.”13 The language of his short (twenty-page) work is highly poetic, as in his description of the desert as the Israelites approached Canaan: “In its wide monotony it resembled thoughts that stretch into infinity. . . . Over the landscape hung gray fabrics of cloud like words of farewell” (13: In ihrer weiten Monotonie glich sie Gedanken, die ins Unendliche sich dehnten. . . . Über die Landschaft hingen wie Abschiedsworte graue Wolkentücher).14 This passage is noteworthy among many similarly poetic ones because the desert itself emerges as a central symbol in the short narrative: a life of purity and loneliness as opposed to the fleshpots of Egypt or the fertile allure of Canaan. As the story begins and day breaks over the encampment, for the first time in their forty-year exodus the Israelites glimpse in the distance the mountains heralding the Promised Land. Anticipating the pleasures and benefits of the rich land, they calculate the distance and time it will take to complete their journey. Unlike their elders, only a few youths, who were born and grew up in the desert, have regrets: their souls are so filled with wilderness that departure seems unimaginable. During the remaining three days of their journey disagreements break out among the Israelites. Desire shines from their faces, making them ill tempered and crafty as they plan to steal their brothers’ projects and to seize for themselves all the advantages of the new land: “They no longer complained, but they also no longer prayed; they dreamed and planned, just as thieves and conquerers do” (17). Finally Moses appears to pronounce his farewell words and proclaim Joshua his successor. But he also prophesies the diaspora resulting from the breakdown of solidarity: “treachery will rule among you, and God’s wrath, inflamed by your lack of faith, will punish you and drive you into all lands” (20).

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As evening falls, they see and hear thunder and lightning over Mount Pisgah as a mighty shovel appears to reshape the mountains, digging Moses’ grave. The children surround Moses, imploring him not to leave them, and one, Jobab, urges him to stay, promising that they will go back into the desert. But Moses tells him, “This people enters Canaan as it left Egypt: vain for external goods; greedy for possession and enjoyment; alienated from Jahweh and his word” (25). Jobab exclaims that he doesn’t want to go to Canaan: “I hate that land. I want to die in the desert” (26). Climbing up on a rock, he speaks to the people: In this desert we became a people. Miracles occurred as no other people ever experienced them. . . . From Sinai resounded the Law and let us grow beyond animals and every sort of man; we saw the Tablets and Moses’ shining face. There in the desert, in need and stillness we built Jahweh’s house: from acacia wood, lambs’ hides and purple, as the law commanded. (27)

If they now turn away from all that, they shall lose God. He urges the Israelites to return to the desert and to leave behind the happiness that they have not yet enjoyed. The desert is their true paradise! But the mob scoffs and tries to stone the boy, whom Moses protects. Jobab accompanies Moses up the mountain until Moses orders him to remain behind. Entering a gap in a cliff, he disappears forever from human sight. Jobab gazes down on one side at the Israelite camp and, on the other, at the desert, illuminated by the stars.15 With a cry of exultation and filled with the joy of the homecomer, he rushes off into the desert.16 On the next morning the Israelites move on and take possession of Canaan. Kayser’s anti-Zionist stance is vividly evident in his brilliant though brief composition, as well as the more general concerns of the social critic who worries that many of his fellow German Jews, emerging from what might have been the purifying effects of World War I, were rushing all too avariciously into the economic seductions of the postwar period and the political turmoil of the Weimar Republic. It should be noted, at the same time, that Jobab’s return to the desert, while it fulfills Kayser’s ethical expectations, hardly satisfies his challenge to Judaism to ethicize Western society by becoming a part of it.

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M    A      G   The most improbable of these works is Walther Eidlitz’s drama The Mountain in the Wilderness (Der Berg in der Wüste, 1923). The poet and writer Eidlitz (1892 –1976) was born into a wealthy Austrian Jewish family, converted to Christianity after World War I, and then in 1938, while traveling to India in search of God, turned to Hinduism. In 1946 he returned to Europe and spent the remainder of his life in Sweden. In his autobiography he described his spiritual quest and in a series of further works set forth his understanding of Indian mysticism. His early four-act drama reveals his intensely religious disposition as well as his uncertainty about the nature of the deity that he was still seeking. The whole play is based on the theory that God is asleep because he has been neglected and forgotten by his people and must be reawakened by their belief. As the action begins, Moses and his friend Karna, haughty Egyptian youths, have been swimming in the Nile. From the roof of the boat lodge they now gaze down at the Hebrew workers staggering by with their loads of bricks. One of these, Aharon, tries to tell Moses that they are brothers. Moses, though unpersuaded, is disturbed by the encounter and remembers that his nursemaid once told him about “a great, invisible God and that we all are descended from one pair of parents” (11). He is distracted from these reflections by the arrival of Karna’s sister, with whom he flirts. But when he sees a brutal guard beating Aharon, he impetuously kills him. The frightened Hebrews betray him with their cries of “Murder!” When he reveals to Karna and his sister that he is a Hebrew, they both turn away from him. Moses says, “So I must go along the path into the desert. God has blessed me. God has cursed me. Which God is my God?” (19). The second act finds Moses at the well in Midian, where the first of many demons appears, cursing him with the sign of Cain. Then he rescues Zipora and her sisters from the shepherds who are trying to rape them. Zipora takes him home with her, and an Egyptian messenger announces the intensified labors of the Hebrews and the search for Moses. Although Zipora assures him that he is safe with her, he gazes up at the nearby mountain: “I must see Him. There is His dwelling place!” (27). As Moses disappears into the fog of the mountain (act 3) a chorus of invisible

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watchmen sings that they are there to protect the sanctity of the place. Aharon and Zipora, both searching for Moses, meet on the mountain, and Aharon sends her off in what he knows is the wrong direction. As the fog lifts, the watchmen—stone giants—announce that Moses is still thinking about women: “He’ll never give up the last traces of happiness. He’ll never beat his fists on God’s walls. God is still lying asleep” (34). Then the voice of God is heard saying, “Redeem Me! Awaken Me in My People!” (35). Hearing God’s appeal, Moses assures him, “You are alive in All, God, you live in the people” (35). He decides that he must awaken God in humankind and give him shape. When various demons—the spirits of earth, air, and water, among others—try to distract him from that mission, he orders them to kneel down in the presence of Soul, and they are overcome. A sudden scene change takes the action to Egypt, where Moses appears briefly before Pharaoh who, without miracles and plagues (or adequate motivation), frees the Hebrews and sends them out into the desert — presumably as punishment and to die of hunger and starvation. The last act finds the Hebrews back at the mountain in Midian, where Moses rejects Zipora because his God is “severe and jealous” (45). As Moses, dismayed by the complaints of the Hebrews, climbs back up the mountain, the discontent grows more violent. One ringleader tells them that Moses has brought them into the desert only as a sacrifice to his God whose altar is the mountain. After a long debate followed by the golden calf and erotic dances, Moses reappears, ecstatic because he has finally seen God, whose Law he bears on the tablets. In the back-and-forth between him and the ringleader of the rebels, the people reaffirm their wish to go back to Egypt. But when Aharon warns them that the Egyptians will punish them for killing their king in the Red Sea, they suddenly change and beg Moses to help them. When he points out that God’s tablets lie shattered on the ground, they beg him to go back up to God and get new ones. “Why me?” he asks. “You have betrayed me. Go yourselves!” (61). When they start to climb the mountain he sees that they are serious. They ask him to go with them. “Everywhere?” he asks. “Even forty years through the desert?” (62). When Moses asks God if his people shall live, the atmosphere brightens, and birds begin to sing, Moses raises the broken stone of the tablet, and his head is transfigured. As the people implore Moses for his blessing, the curtain falls.

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Given its abrupt changes of time and scene and its lack of character development and psychological motivation, and despite the theatrical tricks of talking stones, demons, and transfigurations, Eidlitz’s play hardly makes for persuasive drama. But the work, which virtually exemplifies the end of the Jewish Renaissance, deserves our attention as testimony to the spiritual quest of the author who, disenchanted with the Judaism of his family and obviously not fulfilled by the Christianity to which he converted, was still engaged in the search for God that would eventually lead him to India (as did the quest of many other German writers of the early twentieth century).17 To this extent Eidlitz is not untypical of a generation seeking surrogates for its lost religious faith. But his work has little to do with the biblical account of Moses or with the various theological and political theories of the period.

More than the works by non-Jewish writers, these products of the Jewish Renaissance reveal the authors’ outspoken critique of what they regard as a betrayal of the original Mosaic values. Several of them go beyond critique to combat the modern secularization of the legend by an appeal to its profound moral significance and, especially, to the meaning of Moses’ death.

F I V E

Moses Viewed Askance A subcategory among the works often mentioned as Mosaica comprises those in which Moses is depicted only indirectly as a figure in someone else’s story. The oblique approach is sometimes used as a means to criticize Moses or at least to relativize his position in history. In any case, these works offer a provocative alternative to the familiar narrative.

T        E    J     Georg Ebers (1837– 98), child of a wealthy Jewish family converted to Christianity, taught as a professor of Egyptology at the universities of Göttingen and Leipzig until, in 1889, ill health forced his early retirement. In addition to several scholarly works, he turned out, beginning in 1864, numerous popular historical novels of the sort sometimes labeled by critics with a certain disdain as “Professorenromane” because they display more erudition than creative imagination. Joshua: A Story of Biblical Times (Josua: Eine Erzählung aus biblischer Zeit, 1889) exemplifies the category, of which Felix Dahn’s Battle for Rom (Ein Kampf um Rom, 1876) is probably the most famous example. Although Moses appears only occasionally in the novel, the entire plot revolves around him as its spiritual center. But the main action concerns the wholly fictionalized earlier life of Joshua, originally named Hosea, who first appears in the Bible to conduct the battle with the Amalekites (Num. 17:9–13). In his preface Ebers, writing two decades before Meyer and Stucken reduced Moses to a compilation of mythic and legendary motifs, makes clear his belief in the historicity of the Exodus narrative, quoting the 133

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theologian and biblical scholar Gustav Baur, to whom the volume is dedicated: “It belongs to history no less certainly than the French Revolution and its consequences” (ix)—a remark that reminds us of the early French treatments of the theme. Against the background of various locales that he knew from his extensive travels in the region and had already described in earlier works—notably Egypt and the Books of Moses (Aegypten und die Bücher Mose’s, 1868) and Through Goshen to the Sinai (Durch Gosen zum Sinai, 1872)—Ebers set out to show “how the events related in the Bible from the standpoint of the Jews may have affected the Egyptians, and what political conditions existed in the kingdom of the Pharaohs when the Hebrews left it” (x). To this end he weaves into his romance the conspiracy of Pharaoh’s nephew Siptah, the second high priest, Baï, and the Syrian general Aarsu to overthrow the ruler and seize the throne. To introduce the erotic element required in historical romances, he imagines a passionate although unfulfilled early love, while still in Egypt, between Joshua and Miriam. The entire action takes place between the evening of the Passover, when the Hebrews are finally permitted to leave Tanis, and the defeat of the Amalekites only a few weeks later. Hosea first appears as a brilliant military leader in the Egyptian army who worships not the God of his fathers but the Egyptian god, “the Sum of the Universe” (47: Summe des Alls), who is still unknown to the masses but who, like the Hebrew Jehovah, is omnipotent. His nephew Ephraim arrives with messages from Hosea’s father, Nun, ordering him to join his people on their exodus, and from his beloved Miriam, saying that he shall henceforth be known as Joshua and must serve the Hebrew God. When Hosea/Joshua, out of military honor and ethical duty, goes to inform Pharaoh Menephtah of his departure, Pharaoh and the high priest commission him to serve as a mediator to the Hebrews, offering them favorable conditions for their return to Egypt. Meanwhile Ephraim has been smitten with the beautiful Egyptian Kasana, who actually loves Hosea. At Succoth the malcontents, discouraged by the first day’s march, are already murmuring against Moses, who has gone off to scout the way around Egyptian border fortresses for their continuing exodus. When Hosea arrives, Hur, who has been left in charge of the Hebrew forces, indignantly rejects any offer of reconciliation; and Miriam, worrying that

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Hosea/Joshua is wrong, turns down his offer of marriage. He confesses that he has returned to the Hebrews only out of love for her, but she accepts Hur’s hand, and Hosea goes back to Tanis. There the conspirator Baï, who has now become High Priest, persuades the pharaoh to arrest Hosea and Ephraim and to send them both in chains to a labor camp in the mines. As they are marched along in a convoy of slaves, Kasana, accompanied by Pharaoh’s nephew, Siptah, catches up and persuades Siptah to have the chains removed from Hosea, Ephraim, and the other prisoners. Ephraim manages to escape and, in the guise of an official messenger, makes his way to Siptah’s camp, where he overhears the plot to overthrow the pharaoh. When Siptah returns to Tanis to seize power, Ephraim makes his way to the Red Sea. There, while the people again complain of their hardships and the great storm that is currently tormenting them, the waters of the sea recede in the face of the huge winds, and the Hebrews make their way across. When the winds change direction, the Egyptian pursuers are drowned. While the Hebrews are robbing the corpses that float ashore, Kasana drifts to land, barely alive, and is stabbed by a vengeful Hebrew woman. Confessing that she allied herself with Siptah only to help Hosea and Ephraim, Kasana dies. Moses sends Hur with a band of warriors to rescue Hosea/Joshua and the other Hebrews from the mines, and Joshua, displaying his military skill in the ensuing defeat of the Egyptian garrison, is hailed by the Hebrews as their leader. He and Hur are reconciled, and Hur concedes the command to Joshua. But their respective tribes quarrel, each wanting its member to be the leader. Miriam also, rejected by Joshua, wants her husband to have the glory. When Moses hands over the command to Joshua, she is miserable and quarrels now with Hur. In the battle with the Amalekites the Hebrew shepherds are startled by the nomads on their dromedaries, but Joshua’s shrewd strategy—an ambush by his archers and sling throwers — wins the battle as Moses on the mountain above holds up his hands in prayer, supported by Hur and Aaron. Joshua rescues Miriam and the other women, who have been seized as hostages by some of the Amalekites. All are reconciled, and Joshua now finally is proud of his decision to leave the Egyptian army and join the Hebrews. When the celebrating Hebrews turn in their excitement to worship the Phoenician deity Moloch and the Egyptian Seth,

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the aged Nun shatters their idols (as, in the Bible, Moses shatters the golden calf ), and Joshua worries about the apostasy of the newly liberated Hebrews. Then he meets Moses high on Mount Sinai, where Moses tells him that the Law will save the wandering tribes. Joshua lies down and experiences a vision that law alone will not suffice—that, centuries later, another Jehoshua will come and bestow on all mankind “Love, Mercy, Redemption” (426: Liebe, Gnade, Erlösung). So the novel, which has revolved far more around Egyptian culture and political plots and around military maneuvers and love affairs than around religion, either Egyptian or Hebrew, ends with a prophecy of the future Christianity. It should also be noted that Ebers takes for granted the idea—publicized by Schiller but first authenticated by the excavations at Amarna in the nineteenth century—that a basic monotheism underlay the Egyptian polytheism. In course of the narrative we have encountered all the usual biblical figures—from Moses, Aaron, and Miriam to Hur, Joshua, and Ephraim, as well as a few fictional ones, notably Kasana. But the author’s emphasis has brought certain figures into new prominence, notably Joshua, whose earlier military career is wholly invented, and Miriam, who is given a love life unknown to the author of the Pentateuch; but also Hur, Ephraim, and others whose role in the Bible is largely peripheral. Moses, in turn, is usually somewhere else, and his words and actions are reported by others. At best, he is seen holding up his arms during the battle or standing high on Mount Sinai. Ebers’ Professorenroman offers a good read for fans of historical romances, set against a fascinating background of Egyptian history and culture. To the extent that it provides a larger setting for the familiar biblical story, it belongs in my series of literarizations of Moses, although here the “use and abuse” is clearly not so much to contribute to the Moses story per se but to capitalize on the still enduring Egyptomania.

T       E    K   A similar approach with a different emphasis is evident in Henry Dobbs’ poetic drama Korah (1903). Sir Henry Robert Conway Dobbs (1871–1934) served in the British Foreign Service from 1892 to 1929 as a senior ad-

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ministrator in India and then as high commissioner in Iraq. Apart from a work on pottery and glass in the Northwestern Provinces of India, he appears to have published nothing other than Korah, in which as in Ebers’ Joshua Moses is a tangential figure. The focal point of the three acts is Korah, who is mentioned only briefly in Numbers as leader of the antiMoses conspirators who are swallowed by the earth. In his earlier life, as imagined by Dobbs largely on the basis of passages from the Koran and the Talmud cited in the preface, he is an intellectual, an enlightened rationalist, who in Egypt studies the hieroglyphs and Egyptian religious and magical lore. With that knowledge he conjures up Abaddon, “the Spirit of the Bottomless Pit” (8), with whose assistance he enters the Hebrew tabernacle in Goshen as a spirit. There he meets the spirit of Joseph, who reveals to him his hidden treasure, believing that Korah, himself a spirit, cannot make use of it. But Korah, reassuming his human shape, recovers the treasure, becoming fabulously wealthy but earning Joseph’s fateful curse. In the wilderness, rejecting Jehovah, Korah enters the tabernacle again, where he announces: He that with Reason for his guide Hath Nature’s mystery denied, And smothered up that haunting Voice, Which calleth to another choice, Upon God’s throne Destruction shall he see: Nor ever shall he find a nobler Deity. (55)

Taking Destruction as his new deity, Korah decides that if life can be produced by Science, then all reasonable justification for God disappears. After a disquisition to his friends Dathan and Abiram that sounds very much like a weird exposition of Darwin’s theory of evolution, he undertakes a series of alchemical experiments with “rare essences” (57) to see if he can produce life. But unbeknownst to him, Abiram secretly introduces “living atomies” (71) into his crucible, tricking Korah—an ancient Dr. Frankenstein—into believing that he has created life and that, therefore, “there is no God in heaven” (75). In this belief he now has the confidence to challenge Moses.

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During this entire period he has neglected his loving wife, Zilpah, who tries to warn him against Abiram, but Korah ignores her warnings. With Abiram and other conspirators he approaches Moses to demand a share of the leadership, arguing that Moses has deceived the people and tempting Moses’ followers with promises of riches like his own. Moses proposes a test: which lighted censer will Jehovah accept? Denying Moses’ God —“Jehovah’s naught!” (116)—Korah lights his censer and swings it outside the tabernacle as the incense burns. Suddenly the Beasts of the Apocalypse reappear, and the earth trembles, then opens to swallow Korah and all his companions. Zilpah, still moved by love, leaps into the chasm after him, and Moses leaves with their child as Miriam leads her maidens in a hymn of praise to “Jah, the Disposer” (123). Like Ebers, Dobbs has used Moses and the Exodus tale simply as a framework within which to develop his own wholly invented story of the evolution of an intellectual (mis)led by rationality and science to doubt the existence of God. In the absence of reliable biographical information it would appear to be the attempt of a believer to cast doubt poetically on Darwin’s theory of evolution and to refute, albeit through simple faith, any failure to accept the existence of the Judeo-Christian God.

T        E    M   Twenty-five years later we encounter a wholly different ancient intellectual in Ernst Bacmeister’s tragedy Maheli versus Moses (Maheli wider Moses, 1930), one who tells Mirjam not to confuse him with Korah because his revolt, he says, is fundamental: “Ich rühre auf bis in den Grund” (37). The German poet and dramatist Bacmeister (1874–1971) was an early Nietzschean who later, after service as an officer in World War I, became an adherent of the poet Stefan George and the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner. Although his 1930 play was awarded the prize of the Bühnenvolksbund (People’s Theater Guild)—given its Christian orientation, it was later suspended by the Nazis—it appears, like most of his later works, to have had little popular success because the wholly nonpolitical author did not suit the current political mood. Maheli, a nonbiblical figure, is a religious skeptic and the devoted grandson of a woman who still believes fervently in the Egyptian cow

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goddess Hathor. Although the young man helps his grandmother conceal her small wooden idol of Hathor from the spying eyes of Aaron and his thought-police, he has no faith in the god Zebaoth of Moses and his followers: “Here a mute cow to whom one speaks; there a talking pillar of smoke. The progress is mighty and justified the desert wandering—right past God” (7). The action takes place on a Sabbath day in the Israelite settlement near Mount Nebo, where Maheli, sunk deep in his meditations, hears from Aaron’s flunky, Ussiel, that the woodworker Habok is going to be stoned to death for collecting wood on the holy day of rest. Maheli expresses his strong objection to the sentence and tells Ussiel to report him to Aaron because he himself, since daybreak of the Sabbath, has been carrying around even heavier loads—ten times more than the carpenter. Ask my mother, he says. “She knows me, how I sit when I am mightily and busily thinking myself to pieces” (12); that is, he is certainly not celebrating or resting. After cursing Ussiel—for which he too will be persecuted—he tells his mother that he’s going off to visit Ussiel’s beautiful and unloved wife, Basmath, and apparently Maheli’s lover. Before his condemnation he says, “I want once more to have lived life to the utmost” (13). In Ussiel’s dwelling he tells Basmath that he wants to break all ten commandments by evening that day. She teases him, saying that “coveting” comes last, joking at the coupling in that commandment of women with cattle and noting that, according to the commandment earlier in the list, he is incapable of even killing a fly. But when their conversation becomes serious, he assures her that his God is “the sacredly mighty, the highest within me, my divine Self ” (20: mein göttlich Ich). After Maheli leaves, the Levite Elder Asaph comes in to fetch Basmath as a witness before Aaron against the carpenter. He tells her that Maheli’s mother is also being called as a witness but against Maheli, who “whores with a Hathor” (23), because he concealed his grandmother’s idol. Angrily accusing Asaph of whoring with Zebaoth and saying that she will testify against him, she goes off to gather other women to stand by Maheli. In Aaron’s tent Maheli’s mother explains to Aaron and Mirjam why Maheli has never offered sacrifices — not even an animal. Why? “He doesn’t want to kill” (28). Mirjam sends her out and warns Aaron that Maheli is even more dangerous than Korah. The Sinai commandments order, “Thou shalt not!” But he says of his own free will, “I don’t want to,” and challenges them to protect the Sabbath from his restless thinking,

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“the heaviest labor of my brain” (29). In him she suspects a clever opponent whom they cannot catch with ten or even twenty commandments. She even suggests that Maheli might succeed as a “counter-prince” (31: Gegenfürst) who will challenge Moses’ arrogance. When Maheli is brought in, they confront him with the wooden idol of Hathor. He explains that his grandmother found the idea of an invisible god too new and difficult and yet wanted to pray and be pious. So they left her the idol as a prop for her reverence, even though his mother, from a younger generation, accepted Moses’ new God, Zebaoth. He tries to explain his own feelings: “At Sinai we heard him—he sounded like the darkest brass horn that my ear ever heard. Meanwhile the smoke from the sacrificial fires burned my eyes: I not only did not see Him; for I saw nothing at all.” Wir haben ihn am Sinai gehört.— Er tönte gleich der dunkelsten Posaune, Die je mein Ohr vernahm. Die Augen beizte Inzwischen mir der Rauch der Opferfeuer: Ich sah nicht Ihn nur nicht; denn ich sah nichts. (32)

When Mirjam reminds him that Zebaoth wrote the Ten Commandments clearly enough, Maheli acknowledges it in a passage that strongly suggests the ideas proposed by Martin Buber in his famous treatise I and Thou (Ich und Du, 1923), where he states that God is the “ewiges Du” (eternal Thou). But “unfortunately he said: I” (32). What’s wrong with that? “God is never an I. God is only Thou.—Whoever says I, swallows himself. So an I cannot be the world. It is only Thou: the blind, necessary exhalation.—I is the free, murderous inhalation.” Niemals ist Gott ein Ich. Gott ist nur Du.— Wer ich sagt, schluckt sich selber. Also kann Ein Ich die Welt nicht sein. Sie ist nur Du: Der blinde, notgedrung’ne Aushauch.—Ich Ist freier, mörderischer Einhauch. . . . (33)

For Maheli, in contrast, “The Lord is named I—and—Thou and lives in the We” (33: Der Herr heißt Ich—und—Du und wohnt im Wir”): wher-

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ever, in other words, a spirit grasps him and is able to hold him sacred. Tell Moses, he continues, that someone got away from him on Mount Sinai: “I stayed on my own mountaintop, free of the deception of his [followers]” (33: Ich blieb auf meiner eignen Bergesspitze / Frei vom Betrug der seinen). When he departs, Mirjam confesses to Aaron that she felt inferior in his presence—much more than with Moses, who only ridicules them. “That was thought out, my friend. But who among you, you clever ones, can think like Maheli!” (37: Das war gedacht, mein Freund. Doch wer von euch, / Ihr Klugen, kann denn wie Maheli—denken!). In act 4 a group of Israelites is discussing events, warned by Ussiel that a revolt worse than Korah’s is threatening. But a young man urges them to listen to Maheli, who says that there is a better Canaan than the one beyond the Philistines: “The Promised Land is everywhere and can be conquered by anyone who understands it properly” (41: Überall / Sei das gelobte Land, und ohne Schwert / Erobert es der Mensch, der’s recht versteht) because “free thought is Canaan” (42: Und dieses Denken, das sei Kanaan). When Maheli joins them, he states that he wants to see the countenance of God, even if it is deadly. Far from denying the grandeur of Moses, he says that “Moses is truly great. So great that he could not bear himself and unloaded himself in his greatest hour onto this Zebaoth” (45: Wahrlich ist er groß.— So groß, daß er sich selber nicht ertrug / Und lud sich ab in seiner größten Stunde / Auf diesen Zebaoth). What a shame that Moses could not tolerate his own grandeur: “Why did the divine one, man, hide himself in a— God!—?” (45: Warum versteckte sich der Göttliche, / Der Mensch, in einen — Gott!—?”). It was from the workshop of his own mind that the law came, but to enforce his Ten Commandments he felt that he had to create Zebaoth. Maheli believes in mankind and human will. “For each one of us raises with himself the All into the light” (48: Denn jeder hebt mit sich das All ins Licht). When Maheli confronts Moses and sets forth his views, Moses concedes their validity: he needed a god to command “Be holy” and needed Canaan as a goal toward which the Israelites could aspire, making a people out of a herd of slaves. Maheli, recognizing Moses’ true grandeur, kneels and begs his pardon for presuming to compare himself to him. Moses, appreciating a kindred spirit, offers Maheli the role as his successor. They will let the people believe what they must. “But whoever is

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able—like you and me—to serve the spirit fearlessly without laws, from the depths of his being” (54: Und wer’s vermag—wie du und ich—dem Geist / Gesetzlos, aus der Tiefe, tapfer dienen) should do so. If Maheli is to be the future protector of the people and the laws, he must prove his worth today by casting the first stone at the woodworker Habok. Maheli rejects that demand indignantly, saying that Moses has never comprehended the innermost secret of the mind and spirit. His whole mission will have failed if he cannot teach his people to seek divinity in the true manner and not in a god outside themselves. Moses repeats that he needs a man who understands him to help him and to stone the defiler of the Sabbath. But Maheli refuses to compromise his views. Moses casts him away angrily and orders the Elder of the Levites to release Habok and to stone Maheli. Then Maheli, reminding Moses of his own commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” seizes a weapon and stabs himself to death, vindicating himself and exposing Moses’ hypocrisy. Sending the Levite away, Moses kneels beside the body, saying that only he can truly understand Maheli. Today we can appreciate why Bacmeister’s play was satisfactory neither to the traditional Judeo-Christian belief, with its celebration of Moses, nor to the flourishing Nazi view that the laws of the leader must be obeyed without question. Neither party was sympathetic to such a radical freethinker and skeptic of both religion and society. His play bears in this respect a remarkable resemblance to Otto Borngräber’s earlier Moses, or the Birth of God (1907; see chapter 3), because in both works the invention of God is attributed to Moses.

T       E    Z     The French Jewish writer Mark Halter, born in 1936 in Warsaw, enjoyed a flourishing career as a painter and political journalist-activist before achieving success with his first book, the prize-winning political autobiography, The Jester and the Kings (Le Fou et les Rois, 1976). In his novels he has treated mainly historical and biblical subjects. In addition to works about Abraham (La mémoire d’Abraham, 1983; Les fils d’Abraham, 1989) and Mary of Nazareth (Marie, 2006), he composed in quick suc-

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cession a trilogy of novels on women of the Hebrew Bible (La Bible au féminin): Sarah (2003), Lilah (2004), and Tsippora (2003)—a topic conspicuously absent in twentieth-century literature according to feminist critics.1 The epilogue ends with the question, “But Zipporah, the Black, the Kushite, who remembers her? Who remembers what she accomplished, and who still pronounces her name?” (268). It is precisely that memory that Halter sets out to (re)construct. His Zipporah is not simply Moses’ passionately devoted wife: she inspires, teaches, admonishes, and encourages him in his faith. In the mainly third-person narrative, which is introduced by a prologue and final section in Zipporah’s own words, we learn that she is a true Kushite, adopted as a child by Jethro, who found her on the shores of the Red Sea in her mother’s dying arms. So she grows up, her foster father’s favorite daughter, among six sisters, four of whom have married and moved away while Sefoba and Orma still remain at home. Throughout, Zipporah is the dynamic one, urging the often passive Moses to action. When he first appears in Midian, dressed in Egyptian garb, she immediately recognizes him as the man she saw in her dream (prologue), where he parted the waters of the Red Sea and rescued her from them. Later we learn that Moses, the adopted son of the Egyptian princess Hatchespout (Hatshephut), was rejected by the palace court when the hateful Tuthmose became pharaoh and disclosed his Hebrew parentage. Sent to labor among the slaves, he killed an Egyptian and fled. But initially, after saving Zipporah and her two sisters from attack and rape by four shepherds, he does not confess his past, reporting simply that he is a Hebrew wearing clothes stolen from a prince. Moses does not accept the sisters’ invitation to come to Jethro’s house, but Zipporah seeks him out in his cave with food and beer. When he tells her, “I have no god. Who is the god of the Hebrews? I don’t know him” (122), Mount Horeb thunders in the distance, and Zipporah explains that it is the god of Jethro’s Abrahamic ancestors. He tells her the true story of his life, and she in turn explains her background: they are both adopted children. Their instinctive rapport soon leads to the sexual union of the two lovers, but when he asks her to marry him, she refuses, saying that he has not yet fulfilled what her dream revealed about him. The rage that he expressed against the suffering of the Hebrew slaves was

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what Horeb heard. Moses objects that Horeb is not his god, but she exclaims, “You know nothing of Horeb. He is rage and justice” (128). When Jethro wonders why she will not marry Moses, she explains that it is not a question of desire but that she will not agree until he sets out again for Egypt: “The day when he takes the road to Egypt, I will be his wife” (147). Moses still objects that Horeb is not his god, but Jethro explains that he is the god of the sons of Abraham and of all those oppressed by Pharaoh. And Zipporah reveals her dream: “Horeb arose rumbling to salute your coming among us. He is speaking to you” (144). During these days she also instructs Moses about the history of the Hebrews since the time of Abraham. Moses still delays—more than a year, past the birth of Gershom. Then one day he returns, feverish and borne by his mule, from the mountain. He confides to Zipporah, “He called me. He summoned me to Him” (173), through a fire that sprang up on the mountain with flames that did not consume the bush from which the voice of YHWH spoke. Understanding his mission, they make their plans to journey, accompanied by servants and camels. After Eliezer’s birth Moses suddenly falls ill, and Zipporah heals him by circumcising the newborn son. Moses still torments himself with doubts, but Zipporah constantly and patiently reassures him: “Have confidence in your God. What do you have to fear? The Eternal, isn’t He volition itself?” (190). When they finally arrive in Egypt and meet Aaron and Miriam, who have been sent by YHWH, the siblings welcome Moses effusively but take an instant dislike to the black Zipporah and her mulatto sons—a dislike that increases and becomes thematic, despite the acceptance and love of Jochebeth. Moses, who has his command directly from YHWH, is surprised when Aaron informs him that they must await the decision of the Elders before they undertake any action. He is again tormented by doubts and remorse, but Zipporah, to avoid a confrontation with Aaron, keeps silent. Then a messenger arrives to conduct Moses, Zipporah, and Aaron secretly to his Egyptian foster mother, who also welcomes and accepts the Kushite wife. On their way out, Joshua rescues Zipporah when Moses and Aaron are arrested by soldiers and taken to Pharaoh. They are released, but life becomes even harder for the Hebrews. When Miriam reveals her scars to Zipporah, saying that they were the true signs of the people of

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YHWH, Zipporah decides in the face of so much hatred that she must return to Midian. Months later Zipporah learns of the events in Egypt: the miracles, the departure of the Hebrews, the Red Sea. Joshua is sent to fetch her and Jethro, and they arrive at the camp just in time for his admiring sons to see Moses holding up his arms at the battle with the Amalekites. But matters quickly go downhill. Moses, following Jethro’s advice, ascends the mountain to obtain laws by which his people may be governed. When he returns after forty days to find them celebrating the golden calf, the earth opens to swallow it, and the mob disperses in such a frightful tumult that they trample Gershom and Eliezer to death. Moses then orders the slaughter of the celebrants, and Zipporah again realizes that, despite her own faith, there is no place for her among the spiteful Hebrews, who refuse to acknowledge a Kushite-Midianite as one of their own. When she returns to Midian, she finds that Jethro is dead and that her vengeful and jealous sister Orma is now wife of the king of Sheba. Saying that Zipporah “wanted at all costs to be the spouse of Moses” (266), she refuses to send any assistance to the needy Hebrews and has Zipporah stabbed to death. Her death is to Zipporah a matter of indifference: “But what did it matter? I was already dead. My life had remained in the bodies of my sons” (266). The brief epilogue reports simply that Miriam was punished with leprosy for her treatment of Zipporah. When Aaron says that they should march against Midian to punish the Midianites for the death of Zipporah, Moses replies, “For what good? She wanted trust, respect, and love. Not wars. She hoped for caresses to embellish the blackness of her skin. And how long since I gave them to her? I too, I have killed her” (267). Halter’s novel, then, depicts a Moses who owed almost everything to his wife, Zipporah. From her he first learned about YHWH, the God of Horeb who was the God of Abraham and his descendants; she insisted on his acceptance of his mission before she would consent to marry him; and she gave him constant encouragement when his spirit wavered in the face of difficulties and the criticism of others. Without her, the author suggests, Moses would have remained an outcast in the wilderness or, at best, the husband of one of Jethro’s other daughters with no ambition to return to Egypt and liberate his people.

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T        E    M   Despite the uninformed critique in the Kirkus Review (May 1, 1973), disparaging the “Brooklyn accent of the early ’50’s ‘Jewish novel,’” Samuel Sandmel’s Alone Atop the Mountain (1973) is a worthy addition to the literarizations of Moses. The author conceived the hitherto unexploited fictional device of having the aged Moses, during the weeks at the foot of Mount Nebo, recount his own life. Sandmel (1911– 79), an ordained rabbi and a respected scholar whose works include two on Philo of Alexandria, was intimately acquainted both with the Talmudic legends and the Hellenistic-Jewish stories concerning Moses. His novel, which he calls “a portrait of Moses hopefully consistent with our age,”2 was presumably written with an eye to Jewish readers who maintained the faith of their religion but also entertained modern skepticism regarding many of the less than realistic incidents of the Pentateuch. We also hear occasional echoes of recent history, such as allusions to the Nazi concentration camps when Aaron outlines his thoughts about the Passover celebration, which Moses regards as too elaborate. I speak of these things because I know people. I was in the camp and you were not. You do not have bitter memories to forget, but I do. You do not understand that our people want to forget the ugly things that went on in the camps, and you do not understand that as soon as they forget the misery of the camps, they will forget about freedom too. (93)

The novel’s appeal lies precisely in the interplay between Moses’ own recollection—not always infallible—of past events and the legends that have inevitably grown up around them as reported to him by his closest friend, Cabeb. “Today Caleb regaled me with still another story about my infancy, about my remarkable precociousness” (3): namely, the tale of the crown and the hot coals (from the rabbinic literature). Moses knows that the story is pure fiction. “But if someone were to say so, thus Caleb informs me, he would hear the reply (as he says he has heard it) that a babe simply does not and cannot remember such things; and therefore Moses’ not remembering the incident in no way makes the story untrue” (3). Moses’ early years in Egypt, having little basis in the Bible, are passed over rapidly. He later hears from Caleb the stories of midwives who saved

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male babies, although, he says, “the fact is that only a small number of babes was sporadically slaughtered” (9). Though he feels no sense of identification, his disapproval of the Egyptian treatment of the Hebrews motivates his killing of the overseer. The action moves soon to Midian, where he discounts as legend the story about driving away the shepherds molesting Jethro’s daughters. Moses seeks shelter with Jethro, whom he impresses with his knowledge of writing and mathematics. He observes both the religious practices of the Midianites—notably the blood on the doorposts to keep away the destroyer who comes in the spring to kill the lambs—and their custom of judging by traditional laws passed down from Abraham. In their discussions of religion it turns out that Moses, although he has heard many traditions about the Hebrew God, knows no name for him. But eventually, after his marriage to Zipporah and the birth of Gershom, he is disturbed by dreams about the pains of the Hebrews, whom he now calls “my people.” The single apparent miracle occurs when Moses sees the burning bush. A rational explanation is offered—“Bright as was the sunlight, I could nevertheless see that the bush was on fire” (35)—and the voice of the Lord speaks to him in the biblical words. But he emphasizes that the story about the rod turning into a snake is “a harmless legend” (37). And when Moses is perplexed by God’s instruction—“Tell them that I am sent you”—the deity tells him that it was simply a joke. “O Moses! Are you to be like other people and deny me a humorous word? Am I available only to the long-faced, the gloomy, the dispirited?” (37– 38). When Moses reports the incident to Zipporah, she insists that he must go back to Egypt, although she worries that because of his frailty as a baby Gershom has not yet been circumcised, an act she carries out. When he sets out, he is accompanied by two capable Midianites, who prove to be essential allies in his endeavors. Back in Goshen, he weighs two plans for freeing the Hebrews, by armed revolt or by sabotage, and eventually settles on the second. Through trickery—imitating an Egyptian official—he frees Aaron, and for two years they work on their plan, which involves the collaboration of a group of discontented Egyptians as well as Moses’ two Midianite companions. With the help of an Egyptian chemist, they poison the Nile with a red dye. When the heralds proclaim that Pharaoh wants to confer with Moses, he is not naive enough to venture into the palace; instead he

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insists that Pharaoh come alone and meet him in a temple. When Pharaoh reneges, the conspiracy, manned now by Joshua as well as Egyptians, methodically carries out other works of sabotage, culminating with the murder of Pharaoh’s own son by poison. The “miracle” at the Red Sea is accomplished by the usual winds from the east, and afterward Moses’ slight distaste for his sister Miriam is intensified by her “vindictive pleasure” at the deaths of the Egyptian pursuers. During the many months and years in the wilderness, all the “miracles” that occur and around which legends have arisen have commonsense explanations. The pillars of smoke and fire are simply volcanic eruptions, which were occasionally glimpsed from afar but transformed by legend into God’s guiding light. After his Midianite companions teach the Hebrews about manna, Caleb tells Moses how the people expanded the story in various ways. Water emerged from the limestone at Massah, Moses recalls, when the angry mob pried out stones to throw at him. Moses did raise his arms during the battle with the Amalekites but in order to warn Joshua about hostile forces advancing from various directions. It is only after Jethro’s arrival at Mount Sinai that Moses realizes the need for laws by which the judges can judge—and regrets his lack of interest in the law when he was still a student in Egypt. “We Hebrews had judges even before we had laws! And what could be more preposterous!” (150). He assembles the people, not yet certain what must be done. Then after several days of silence the mountain explodes again with smoke and fire, and Moses “heard His voice in the midst of the sound.” “I heard it clearly,” he says. “I understood the words” (154): that is, the Ten Commandments. Although the people believe that they hear the voice of God in the volcanic thunder and even faint out of fear, they cannot distinguish the words. Moses teaches them the words that he (believes!) he has heard, and Aaron, with his inevitable desire for ceremony, argues that they should offer an animal sacrifice so that the people will remember the words: “The Words are His, not theirs. The Words must become theirs” (159). Moses relents and after the ceremony admits that Aaron had been right. But he also realizes that the Ten Words were standards, not laws. “We needed laws, exact laws, definite laws” (163). And in the absence of laws inherited from Abraham, he had to start from scratch.

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Ascending the mountain, Moses writes and revises on parchment sheets the laws of property, crime, procedures, worship, and the priesthood familiar from the legislative books. He also chisels on two stones the Ten Words he heard in the thunder. When he comes down and discovers the sacrilegious ceremonies taking place, he shatters the stone tablets on the image of the golden calf and scatters his parchment sheets to the winds. But Caleb secretly preserves them and later, when his anger is subdued, restores them to Moses. He also tells Moses the various stories that have already arisen: about the pavement of sapphire that the Elders allegedly saw and about Moses’ transfiguration. Moses decides to ascend the mountain once more to prepare another set of stone tablets. Before leaving, he gives the parchment sheets of laws to Zipporah, showing her which to keep and which to throw away. But Zipporah retains them all, we learn, with the inevitable result of duplication and contradiction among the laws as we know them today from the Pentateuch. “My laws were there, but no longer systematic or free from repetition” (202). The novel now moves rapidly to its conclusion, providing along the way brief descriptions of the revolt and deaths of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram; Phinehas’ murder of the Hebrew with the Midianite prostitute; the prediction of Balaam; and the deaths of Miriam, Zipporah, and Aaron. Shortly before his own death Moses catches a glimpse of the eulogy that the efficient Joshua has already prepared (Deut. 34:10–12) and that annoys him because of its omissions. “I want to be remembered as the man who dared to turn an enslaved rabble into a law-abiding people, and, perhaps, raised them to be a unique people” (228). Then he prepares, despite the dissuasions of his children, to ascend Mount Nebo for his death. I will look at the land, for I want to see it. But more than the land, it is our unique people—our children, and their children, and their children— that I shall imagine I am seeing.

Sandmel’s novel is not a masterpiece of fiction. But based as it is on a specialist’s knowledge of the Pentateuch, the Talmud, and the Greek Hellenists, and with the author’s gently humorous understanding of human affairs and the kind of man Moses may well have been, it provides a more

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imaginative literarization than the many that depend solely on Egyptology, political intrigue, and invented plots.

A wholly different approach is offered by Joan Lawrence in The Scapegoat (1988).3 The title refers to the passage (Lev. 16:5–10) in which Moses is commanded by the Lord to take two male goats “for a sin offering”: one for the Lord and one for the desert demon Azazel. “The goat shall bear all their iniquities upon him to a solitary land; and he shall let the goat go in the wilderness” (Lev. 16:22). In the novel Moses feels challenged by the goat’s innocence: “Then it had recognized me: you and I are one, it had agreed, and nothing more remained to be acknowledged between us” (122). Moses begins his prologue with the statement, “They will set horns upon my head, like a goat” (11)—an allusion to the notorious misreading of the passage describing Moses’ second descent from Mount Sinai (Exod. 34:29) as depicted in Michelangelo’s renowned sculpture. Later, after the Red Sea episode when he realizes how feckless and intractable, how perverse and unstable the Israelites are, Moses wonders if he himself would become “the scapegoat of God: the inarticulate, the impotent, who would be responsible for my people’s wrong-doing and who, in the end, would be forsaken in the desert” (58). The theme is stated in the first chapter, “The Cloven Tongue,” where Moses reflects, “I grew a cloven tongue along with my cloven mind” (17)—a mind divided by the two languages and two cultures he has imbibed since childhood from his two strong-minded mothers. “All so determined, these women who constantly attempted to arrange my life”: his two mothers, his maliciously assertive sister Miriam, and his moody and resentful wife, Zipporah. Moses recognizes his own “unquelled arrogance and posture of meekness” (53), yet he also realizes that “there is a desert within each of us” (48)—in his case, the ability to stand apart impartially from the endless chatter that surrounded him, his “gift from the desert” (39). What distinguishes Lawrence’s account is the intense introspection of her narrator, Moses. Not unlike Sandmel’s novel, in which Moses recounts and presumably records his memories during his final weeks be-

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neath Mount Nebo, what we find here are Moses’ ruminations as he sits atop Mount Nebo, “looking out, from the height of eagles, across the Land” (12). He reflects on his life down to the moment of his death and beyond, when the typical bifurcation of his mind renders him unsure which of the two angels fighting over him—the prince of God’s angels or the prince of demons (in the Talmudic legend)—had borne him away. The narrative sequence of Lawrence’s novel, which includes many quoted passages, remains closer to the biblical account than most of the other works considered so far. While the various “miracles” in Egypt are all explained rationally, the theophanies on Mount Horeb are accepted as supernatural even as Moses strives to understand them as natural events. On the first occasion Moses tries to reject the reality of the burning bush and the messenger angel of the Lord: “And still the thing confronted me, with majesty and power, standing with its feet planted easily upon the flames and its great hands raised up in blessing” (927). Similarly at Mount Horeb there is never any doubt, to Moses or the Israelites, about the reality of the divine apparitions, the Voice, and “the enormous monologue of the Lord” that imprinted itself upon his whole being (89). When Nadab and Abihu are destroyed by fire, he tells himself that “the desecration must surely have occurred because the two young men were drunk” (120). As for the pit that swallows the rebellious Korah, Dathan, and Abiram: “I tried to tell myself that this destruction was as I had always thought such things to be—a natural catastrophe, an unsuspected movement of the earth’s crust, erupting just at this moment, just in this place,” yet in his heart he knew that “evil had been called up” (153– 54). Lawrence’s “towering ‘hero’ figure” (7) is totally lacking in the humor that characterizes Sandmel’s Moses. If her profession as a psychiatrist explains her fascination with Moses’ schizophrenic vacillation between arrogance and meekness, assurance and uncertainty, her association with the Council of Christians and Jews in London, where she sought to promote understanding between the two faiths, accounts for his repeated ecstatic visions of the future, such as the one that clearly foresees Jesus: a young man with a soft, thin face, dark eyes, a faint smile, and a brooding gaze “as if he might be looking back down centuries” (41). Elsewhere he sees Talmud scholars poring over the events of the Exodus: “a small group of black-robed men . . . those gentle teachers from a time far into the

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future, as they expounded the happening of this day which was for them far back in their own ancient past” (55). During the battle with the Amalekites, he envisions “a symbol unknown to me, the device of a blue star, its six points imprinted on a white ground” (71)—the future Star of David on the Israeli flag. In other visions Jeremiah and other prophets appear before his eyes. As Lawrence states in her preface, “It is this complex and very human Moses, plagued by his own inner conflicts, which this book seeks to discover: not in any way to diminish the myth but rather to reveal, and so enlarge, the man” (7). She also declares that she has ignored the various legends that have arisen around the man Moses, with two exceptions: “the reputed power of Moses to see into the future . . . [and] the legend of his death, which so clearly sums up the sharp contradictions of his life” (8). Scarcely an episode is omitted—from his unrealistically early memories of his exposure and rescue from the bed of reeds to his dying vision of the contending angels—and in each case we are offered insight into Moses’ emotional quandaries, yet overall the novel adds no new dimensions to our understanding of the biblical text.

Unlike the works by Sandmel and Lawrence, Georges Nataf’s Moses, Autobiography (Moïse, autobiographie, 1996) is not so much a novel as a fictionalized synthesis of a variety of sources, including Midrashic commentary on the Pentateuch, Flavius Josephus, and Philo of Alexandria, as well as the studies of Arthur Weigall, Sigmund Freud, and Martin Buber. Nataf (b. 1942) is the founding director of the publishing house Berg International, which specializes in books of humanistic studies (sciences humaines). Himself an independent scholar on similar matters, he has written books on symbols, signs, and ciphers (Symboles, signes et marques, 1973), the pagan sources of anti-Judaism (Les sources paiennes de l’antijudaisme, 2001), and a commentary on a new, “disenchanted” translation of Ecclesiastes (L’Ecclésiaste—Quohélet, le prédicateur désenchanté, 2011). His “autobiography” of Moses is by all measures the most thoroughly documented fictionalization we have encountered: it provides, in addition to a bibliography, 307 footnotes, many of them filling over half the page. As a novel, it offers a sober rationalizing account of the familiar story.

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Written at the end of his life by a Moses unwilling to “sacrifice [himself] to the image that they offer of a Moses changed by the life that the Hebrews imagined for him,” his account is meant to correct the report of the scribes, which “corresponds more to the desire to present [him] as a man of their nation than to reality” (10–11). The Egyptian princess Tchésoup,4 his true mother (with no father specified), is a devotee of Aton, before whose golden disk she prays daily. As a young man, Moses consorts with a group of like-minded young intellectuals at the pharaonic court, who have concluded that if the world is a single unity, then its creator must also be such. But the tolerant Tchésoup, who approves of their monotheism, reproaches the youths when they presume to ridicule the priests and believers who worship other individual gods. In their idealism the youths decide that the slaves they see are also human beings deserving of their help. But when Moses carries his assistance too far and kills an overseer, his mother and his friends tell him that he must flee. In Midian, and without an episode at the well, Moses meets Jethro, whose doubts have caused him to give up his priesthood, and marries his daughter Sippora. Tending his sheep on the slopes of Mount Sinai (whose various locations are discussed in a lengthy footnote and indicated on the map in the appendix), he sees a bush covered with red flowers and thorns on its golden branches: “One would have believed that it was a bush of iron and fire, a fire that does not consume” (33). At the same time a “terrible voice” (33) orders him to return to Egypt and to demand from Pharaoh the liberation of the slaves in the name of Jahweh, “this strange name that he revealed to me” (34). He should ask Tchésoup to intercede for him, and Pharaoh would be open to his request because of his affection for the child Moses, who—according to Hebrew legends he later hears— knocked off his crown and chose the burning coal over the jewels. After the editor’s two-page footnote on the practice of circumcision, Moses returns with his wife and children to Egypt. But Pharaoh refuses repeatedly even to see him, nor does Moses seek out his former friends lest he compromise them. Despite Tchésoup’s urging to return to Midian, he works with the laborers building temples and is introduced to Hebrew religious rituals by his former wet-nurse Jochabeth, with whom he is brought together by his mother. Then a series of disasters strikes Egypt: “natural events,” the editor assures us (49 n. 49), extraordinary only in their rapid succession. As a loyal Egyptian, Moses is distressed at the

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sufferings of the Egyptians and feels that the departure of the Hebrews is necessary in order to save Egypt. But Pharaoh consistently refuses until, finally, his ministers on their own initiative order the Hebrews to go. Moses is “humiliated” (61) by the vast riches that many of the Hebrews take with them in their chariots: gold and jewels, later used to buy supplies during their wanderings and, finally, to build the golden calf. At Succoth the fleeing Hebrews assemble with tribes from other locations. Pharaoh, furious at their escape, sends pursuit. But when the chariots of wealthy Hebrews get stuck in the marshes, the unmotivated army gives up its pursuit, determined to lie to Pharaoh that the Hebrews all perished. The Hebrews go on their way with no miraculous parting of the waters — a fiction invented by the scribes “to lend force to the account” according to Moses (70) and explained in a two-page footnote by the editor. Moses, soon wearied by the complaints of the people and losing his own belief in the Promised Land, is tempted to abandon the people in the wilderness. But Joshua’s recruits defeat the Amalekites as Moses stands on a hill and directs their maneuvers. He gradually realizes that the multiple peoples, if they are to be united, need laws. So he ascends Mount Sinai and engraves on the stone tablets that he has brought along the Ten Commandments “inspired by the One” (85)—his usual term for his deity. When he descends to find the celebrating people, he shatters the tablets so that the people will not be irremediably condemned to death by their knowledge of the new prohibition against the worship of false gods (87). The shifty Aaron is quick to blame others, and Miriam, without leprosy, is sentenced to seven days of isolation when she criticizes Moses publicly for having married a Kushite woman (even though Sippora is a Midianite). On Jethro’s advice Moses appoints seventy judges so that the people will not begin to regard him as a chieftain or king and then goes back up the mountain alone to fetch the new pact—a pact of blood with a harsh, jealous, and irascible god (107: un pact de sang passé avec un dieu dur, irascible et jaloux), a god who defeats, along with the other Egyptian idols, even his fond childhood memory of his mother’s god of love, Aton. In the coming years he quarrels often with Aaron, who wishes a strong people while Moses wants a worthy people: “Israel had to know that only justice pleases Jahweh,” who wants “a holy people that would be a model

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for the world” (118). He again presents to the Hebrews a table of laws, engraved with an original alphabet based on the Phoenician one—laws “not perceptibly different from those of other peoples” apart from the fact that they were handed down by no sovereign but by “the master of the world, the One” (119). This time Moses stresses the prohibition of images, which are like prostitutes in that they promise love in exchange for gifts. While Moses was on Mount Horeb writing down the second table of laws based on the principle of justice (138), Aaron was busy down below constructing an elaborate set of ordinances and rituals meant to solidify his own position as high priest: the tabernacle, the ark, the pectoral, and other accoutrements. When they move on to Kadesh, Miriam soon dies, and the celebration of Passover is established as an annual ritual, a week of peace, during which all the scattered tribes assemble. “During this time when we were all together . . . we began to form a unified people” (146). Here at Kadesh the scribes begin to copy onto papyrus the tablets brought along by the Elders with accounts of Genesis and the Prophets, supplemented now with accounts of the people’s recent history down to the pact of the Ten Commandments. (Moses himself observes that in the future the writing will no doubt be attributed to him; the editor, in a twopage note [150– 51], discusses the actual sequence of composition.) When a nomad arrives and tells them that tribes of shepherds in Canaan are also descendants of Abraham, the people become impatient and send spies to scout the Promised Land. They return with extensive reports (based on modern archaeological findings cited in the footnotes). But when Joshua and Caleb are defeated by the Amorites, they are driven from Kadesh and, avoiding Edom, make their way north. Koreh and Dathan along with 250 other tribal leaders initiate an insurrection, but when they are defeated by the lots cast with Urim and Thummim from the high priest’s pectoral, they are driven into exile (not swallowed up by the earth). Aaron soon dies, but they continue on their journey, fighting battles along the way with various peoples, including the Moabites, whom Balaam (with an ass that does not speak) counsels not to attack. Instead, they send their prostitutes into the camps of the Hebrews, many of whom become infected with venereal diseases. When they finally reach the region facing Jericho, Moses summons Joshua, with recommendations and

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benedictions, and formally turns over the leadership to him. We read Moses’ last words when he ascends Mount Nebo and gazes out over the Promised Land: “It is a lovely land” (217). Nataf has added hardly a single original motif or scene to the familiar story; indeed, he has stripped it of many traditional features (the dividing of the sea, the miracles of food and water in the wilderness, the swallowing of Korah and his followers by the earth, etc.). Interrupted incessantly by its 307 lengthy footnotes, the novel is a much less smoothly readable narrative than most others. But precisely because of those notes it provides an extremely useful and provocative text for certain readers— not professional biblical scholars, who are familiar with the ancient and medieval material, but general readers interested in informing themselves about research and theories, from antiquity to the present, regarding Moses and the Exodus.

T       E    G  Franco Ferrucci’s (1936– 2010) wildly and comically blasphemous The Life of God (as Told by Himself) (1996) is related by a wholly humanized and tenderhearted deity who confides in his first sentence, “For long stretches at a time I forget that I am God. But then, memory isn’t my strong suit” (5).5 In his moments of lucidity he recounts various episodes and significant encounters of his life, from the creation—much of which he now regrets—and other events of the Bible, by way of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Dante, as well as such poets as Hölderlin and Goethe in Germany and Emerson, Melville, and Emily Dickinson in the United States, down to modern thinkers like Freud and Einstein and to events such as Hiroshima, when he exploded, “liberating the energy of my every particle” (278). By far the longest section is devoted to Moses, whom he first met, we learn, at the Egyptian court of Ikhnaton, where Moses was “one of the convinced followers of the new cult” of Aton, the sun (53). After Ikhnaton’s death, Moses disappeared along with the sovereign’s other persecuted followers. They next meet on Mount Sinai. “Did Moses really believe that I was God? Even today I can’t answer that question with absolute certainty” (57). At their first meeting Moses knows nothing about the Is-

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raelites. “I took him to the village and showed him around” (58). “‘This is what must be done, Moses,’ I would repeat in the low, firm voice that one uses with obstinate adolescents” (58). Studying a map, they identify Canaan as the proper destination for the Exodus. Then God “withdrew into the shadows, guiding Moses but leaving to him the glory that he seemed to need” (59). When they discuss how God should be described to the people, they first consider the vague memories of a divinity from the Israelites’ remote past: “Violent and aggressive, at night he wandered among volcanoes, exploding with rages that sent lava rushing down upon the tribe” (59). Unhappy with that god, “whom I would not want to have even for a distant cousin,” God says, he advises Moses to say simply, “I am who I am,” but soon learns that “Moses was elaborating versions of my story that he thought the villagers could accept more easily” (60). He listens spellbound as Moses, from fragmentary clues and scattered hints, composes an original tale of creation: from the first six days of hard work down to “the hallucinatory tale of the plagues in Egypt,” little realizing that God himself would eventually become “a prisoner in his mirage” (60). (God eventually learns that people all over the world were creating different versions of the same story, “like professional writers adjusting the same idea for different audiences” [60]). It was also “one of Moses’ manias” to transform his rod into a snake, “from his having learned to do some magic tricks from a charlatan he had met in the Alexandria market” (61). Later, during the forty days on Mount Sinai, God realizes that Moses “was animated by a strong need to believe in God, a single, august, potent God who would give him power over the crowd” (63). That Moses so readily forgot the Egyptian sun god Aton and replaced him with another god “was a sign of his opportunism as a politician, but it was the reason for his huge success with the people” (63). As they talk on Mount Sinai, where Moses impatiently waits for another delivery of bread and cheese, he describes the curtained sanctuary he plans to build to conceal the tabernacle, and so forth. God becomes irritated. “This was Moses’ least attractive aspect: an unexpected vanity that turned this ascetic athlete into something more like a housewife chattering about dresses and bedspreads for the new house” (65). Finally, despite the bad weather atop Mount Sinai, they settle down to serious work, and God “sat down on a slab of stone and began to write [the Ten Commandments] on a scroll” (68).

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God falls asleep and wakes up to find Moses gone. Descending the mountain, he hears the roar of a mob and sees the muzzle of a cow or calf. “It was the most absurd portrait of me that anyone could have conceived” (70). He asks Aaron, “If you had to resort to an animal, couldn’t you have found a more distinguished one?” (70). But Aaron is only “the witch doctor, brimming with compassion for the defects of his people and with secret antagonism toward me!” (71). When Moses finally appears in a black cape that reaches to his feet, “It was worthy of a great director and great actor” (73). (God suspects that he kept a wardrobe hidden in his tent.) Moses tells the people that it was to have been a great moment: “I was carrying the Lord’s tablets that were handed to me during my meditation on Mount Sinai” (72). God is dumbfounded: “We both knew very well that I had not written anything on a tablet” (72). But Moses picks up two slabs of stone and, raising them so that they are illegible, shatters them against the statue and then goes “berserk,” demanding that each one take up his sword and murder his best-loved relative (73). When God sees Aaron slaughtering Miriam, he rescues a young woman who is unable to kill her own child. He takes them with him, falls in love with her, and in the coming days sleeps with her as man and wife. When he finally ascends Mount Sinai again, God finds Moses sitting at his stone desk composing his rules and injunctions. He reads three of them to God, who complains, “They don’t please me at all, and you have represented them as my ideas” (84). Losing himself in detail, the legislator has neglected the most important things. Moses replies arrogantly that he had “expected a God better equipped to give order and assume command” (84). When God recovers his own scrolls from the back of the cave and hands them to Moses, setting forth his plans for the new life of a people that has lost its soul, he realizes that Moses completely misunderstands him. They go down to the people, where Moses proclaims all his decrees and moral regulations. Then God speaks, recounting the history of humankind that has brought them to that point. The people listen, enchanted. But during a pause Moses tears up God’s scrolls and interrupts his eloquent speech, crying, “Bring forth the adulteress!” (91). It is none other than the woman God saved from the mob. She is stoned to death, and as God tries to save her, he is himself struck by a stone and falls into a darkness from which he awakens centuries later in Greece, now in the company of Xenophanes.

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Obviously, Ferrucci, a professor of Italian literature, taking his material largely from Freud (the spelling “Ikhnaton,” the volcanic deity, Aton, etc.), has added no new dimensions to our understanding of Moses. He has, to be sure, modified Freud’s theory of Moses’ murder, having God stoned by the mob instead. Otherwise the chapter amounts simply to parodistic variations on familiar biblical motifs with no particular ideological slant apart from the author’s desire as a writer to épater les bourgeois.

These views of Moses from unusual perspectives offer an extensively, sometimes even satirically, humanized and demythicized figure. More than elsewhere they employ feminism (Halter and Lawrence), intellectual critique (Dobbs and Bacmeister), and humor (Sandmel and Ferrucci) to expose unexpected aspects of the familiar legend.

S I X

Politicizations of the Twenties I         After World War I Moses became a figure of considerable interest to writers of diverse political persuasions. H. Rider Haggard’s Moon of Israel: A Tale of the Exodus (1918) is sometimes cited in this connection,1 but Moses is never mentioned by name in the novel. He appears twice as one of two unnamed Hebrew prophets who come briefly before Pharaoh, and there are allusions to certain events leading up to the Exodus—notably the ten plagues and the miracle at the Red Sea—but from the Egyptian point of view and with no reference to Moses. Otherwise the novel, which is wholly Egyptian in setting—and dedicated to Sir Gaston Masparo, director of the Cairo Museum—amounts to an adventure story and palace conspiracy of the kind readers expected from the author of She, King Solomon’s Mine, and other romances of that genre, including a love affair à la Rossini between an Egyptian prince and a Hebrew maiden. In 1927 the Austrian poet and dramatist Anton Wildgans (1881–1932) wrote that Moses was “for me the greatest man of history, for out of a horde of slaves he made a people and created a state for this people and— a God!”2 To celebrate Moses he set out, in 1920, to compose a trilogy that was to deal, as he put it in another letter, with problems of political philosophy (staatsphilosophische Probleme)3 and to comprise The Call (Die Berufung), The Journey through the Wilderness (Der Zug durch die Wüste), and The Death (Der Tod). For a variety of reasons the work never got beyond the opening scenes of the first part. These scenes show, nevertheless, that Wildgans planned to adhere essentially to the biblical framework while elaborating it freely, for instance, with the addition of motifs 161

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(the lion’s skin) relating it to the myth of Herakles. The action of the four extant scenes takes place entirely at the well where, as we learn, Moses had encountered Zipporah and her sisters nine years earlier. Now an elderly Hebrew, Abimael, and a young blind boy, Elisas, arrive at the well: Elisas having been told in a vision that “in the land of Midian at the well . . . is hidden the lion who shall loosen his people’s chains, and the name of the blessed one is: Moses!” Im Lande Midian am Brunnen— Sprach mir der Herr im Traum—birgt sich der Leu, Der seines Volkes Ketten lösen soll, Und Name des Gesegneten ist—Moses! (320)

They have already visited many wells, and Abimael, who knew Moses years earlier, has seen no one resembling him. Now their ass driver comes in to tell them that he saw an elegant dwelling with seven lovely maidens and—the best part of his story—a man “like a veritable Moloch” (329: wie der leibhaftige Moloch) with a dead lion on his shoulders. The seven daughters of Jethro come to the well, singing songs in praise of their sister Zipporah, the chosen wife of the still unnamed stranger at the well. Moses appears, wearing like Herakles the skin of the lion he slew. When the other girls withdraw, he puts his head in Zipporah’s lap, and she notices his distraction. He asks if she has ever heard of something that burns and isn’t consumed, of bushes that speak while the earth trembles at the voice, where the flames form a face before which one must kneel. He tells her that the night before the skies were red as blood and the ground shook; but she had seen and heard nothing of the sort, and he tries to persuade himself that it was a feverish dream. When she apologizes that his life there with the shepherds is so uneventful that he must be bored, he assures her that he is happy to know nothing more of the world outside: “I would never tear this from me, come what may. No signs, no wonders are so powerful that they could entice me with the image of fame and mighty achievements!” Nie riß’ ich dies aus mir, was immer käm’! So stark sind keine Zeichen, keine Wunder,

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Daß sie mich locken könnten mit dem Bild Des Ruhmes und gewaltigen Vollbringens! (346)

As the fragment ends, Zipporah murmurs, trembling, “Lord, thy will be done!” It is clear where the experienced dramatist intended to go from this beginning: The Call would have developed Moses’ inner struggle to resist the summons from the burning bush and from the Hebrews who have come to fetch him; and, in light of Wildgans’ expressed interest in problems of political philosophy, the following action would have portrayed the conflict with Pharaoh in mainly political terms. Given Wildgans’ demonstrated prowess as a dramatist, notably the earlier expressionistic domestic tragedy Dies irae (1918) and the “mythic poem” Kain (1920), it is fair to assume that his work, had it been completed, would have been of considerable interest within the Moses canon.

T  T        B     For most writers of the interbellum decades in Europe and the United States, any religious or theological interest in Moses receded in the face of political concerns, and even the popularly exciting discoveries in Egyptian archaeology—notably the bust of Nefertiti in 1912 and Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922—received less attention than one might have expected. The most influential source here, both in the United States and in France, comprised the many books, lectures, and essays that the eminent Egyptologist and ancient historian James Henry Breasted (1865–1935) published from roughly 1905 until his death. It was Breasted’s principal thesis, summarized in the foreword to his volume The Dawn of Conscience (1933), that “our moral heritage therefore derives from a wider human past enormously older than the Hebrews, and it has come to us rather through the Hebrews than from them.”4 In this connection he translated and popularized the Egyptian Royal Hymn (discovered in 1883) in praise of the sun god and universal creator, Aton (281– 89), and celebrated the role of Ikhnaton (Breasted’s spelling) and his capital at Amarna. (One symptom of its popularity is the poem “Echnatons Sonnengesang,” by the Austrian

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Jewish writer Franz Werfel, which amounts to a paraphrase of the original.)5 Breasted’s Moses, “born in Egypt and bearing an Egyptian name,” retained many reminiscences of Egyptian religious practices and the “wisdom of the Egyptians” when he transmuted the local volcanic deity Jahweh into the national god of the Hebrews (350– 52). We sense the presence of Breasted’s ideas, both implicit and explicitly acknowledged, in many works of the twenties. While most of the writers appear to be generally aware of developments in biblical research—and feel liberated by that research to undertake their own free inventions—they mostly see Moses in a political context. The principal influences, apart from actual political and social circumstances in their various countries, were books on similar topics. A perhaps surprising source for the often radical views of Moses in the United States and England of the twenties was provided not by biblical scholars but by the historian Brooks Adams (1848–1927), who included a lengthy section on Moses in the revised edition of his work The Emancipation of Massachusetts (1919). As early as 1895 Adams had offered a pre-Spenglerian theory of history in The Law of Civilization and Decay, in which he stated that human society, as a part of nature, is governed by laws of force and energy. In humankind that energy produces two phases of thought: fear, which “by stimulating the imagination creates a belief in an invisible world,” which in turn generates religion and art; and greed, which first leads to war and then “dissipates its energy in trade.”6 In that work Adams’ historical examples begin with the Romans. But the revised edition of The Emancipation of Massachusetts, which had first appeared thirty years earlier (1887), included a lengthy (170-page) preface in which the author rejected the nineteenth-century Darwinian belief that civilization is a progressive evolution and restated his more skeptical theory, now introducing Moses as “the first great optimist” and “visionary,” who “met with the failure that all men of that cast of mind must meet with when he sought to realize his visions,” notably his theory that “the universe about him was the expression of an infinite mind which operated according to law” (99)7—in other words, the attitude that Adams identified with the belief in progressive perfectibility held by the scientific optimists of his own day. While Adams was aware of the findings of the higher criticism— that the Pentateuch was a collection of different works compiled at differ-

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ent times—he still regarded it as an “authentic record . . . of the workings of the Mosaic mind” (16). Adams assumes that Moses, though raised at the Egyptian court and forced to flee because of the treachery of a Hebrew who betrayed his slaying of the overseer, had grown up knowing of Joseph’s prediction that his bones should be taken back to the Promised Land and that a Jewish exodus from Egypt was always imminent. Feeling himself bound by that tradition, he also reasoned, contrary to general polytheistic opinion, that the God of the Hebrews was not simply a local deity since he had followed Joseph to Egypt and aided him there. So when the summons came to him in Midian, it was not unexpected. Moses’ main concern was this: the tricks of magic that God proposed as proofs were no better than the magic of the Egyptian sorcerers, which he had mastered. But he reasoned that the God who had elevated Joseph to an eminence never before attained by a Jew was a moral being who could be placated by obedience and that he could prove to the Hebrews that God’s moral standard had been disclosed to him and that he could prove it by various miraculous signs. What he promised his people was not an Egyptian felicity in a future life but “prosperity in this world” (34– 35). In other words, by offering “assets as an inducement for docility” (42), he persuaded the Hebrews to follow him out of Egypt and to defeat the Egyptians at the Red Sea, “the culminating moment of his life” (51). From this moment, Adams argues, “his slow and gradual decline began” (51). Despite his years in Midian, Moses was “nearly worthless as a guide” through the desert (52) and therefore urgently needed Jethro both to set them on the right path and to teach him the secrets of administration and law. When his inadequacies as a military leader led to the defeat of the Hebrews at Hormah, he “dawdled away his time in the wilderness” for forty years until his final mental collapse and “his suicide on Mount Nebo” (55). Adams goes on to argue that Moses needed dramatic effects to persuade the people to accept his law. Intoxicated by his initial success with the covenant, he believed that there was no limit to the credulity of the Hebrews. Inspired by his awareness of Hammurabi’s code of law engraved in stone, he decided to emulate that model and create his own tablets of law on Mount Sinai. But no sooner was he out of sight with his tricks and showmanship than his people forgot him. When he returned and saw the golden calf, his anger led him to the indefensible massacre

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and “wholesale murder of several thousand people” (66). To assure his own safety, he created a powerful guard from among the Levites who carried out the massacre: the beginning of the “privileged and hereditary caste” of priests (67). But this new caste, with its costumes and equipment and ceremonies, was expensive to maintain, and the people soon became discontent with this reactionary and selfish “theocratic aristocracy” (70). When Aaron and Miriam, resentful of Moses’ Ethiopian wife, presumed to criticize him, he punished Miriam with leprosy—a disease whose symptoms he alone defined. To the extent that Moses as a military commander was timid and vacillating, as a “quack” (80) he displayed temerity and effrontery. In sum, after his initial successes, at the point when Moses the lawgiver and idealist gave way, after the victory at the Red Sea, to “the political adventurer and unscrupulous man of the world,” Mosaic civilization broke down (8). Despite the ultimate soundness of his moral code, at every subsequent stage of his career Moses sank “to a deeper depth of fraud, deception, lying, and crime in order to maintain his credit” (101). This, according to Adams’ theory, is “the chasm which has engulfed every progressive civilization since the dawn of time” (8). His startlingly bleak and cynical view of Moses shows up, as we shall see, in several of the American literary depictions of the following decade.

L            A   ’ T    Although Adams is never mentioned, clear evidence of his thought is present in Lawrence Langner’s Moses: A Play (1924), which focuses on the conflict between narrow-minded legalism and the world of culture. Langner (1890–1962), a British-born producer best known as the founder of such American cultural institutions as the Theatre Guild and the American Shakespeare Festival, was also an active playwright and writer. With his early Moses he created one of the most delightfully wicked, even comically blasphemous adaptations of the theme.8 The play is prefaced by an introduction specifying the “protest and proposal” announced in the subtitle. Langner begins by stating his belief that the subject of Moses can be better expressed theatrically than in churchly terms because the church

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is hostile to new views on old subjects while the theater welcomes them. Our preconceptions of Moses, whom Langner regards as a purely legendary figure, are based “not upon the actual life of Moses as told in the Old Testament, but upon the amazing results of his teachings upon humanity” (ix)—results, he speculates, that would have appalled Moses. For Langner—and this becomes the principal theme of his play— Moses was “probably the first man with a modern legal mind” and “the father of our present system of legal morality” (x). He was not only the liberator of the children of Israel, but “he created a conception of God and of himself which almost every child associates with its own father” (xi). Langner is aware that scholarship has proved that the so-called Books of Moses were not written by Moses himself but compiled after the Babylonian Captivity. But that historical fact is less important than what Jan Assmann was later to call mnemohistory: believers’ acceptance for hundreds of years of Moses’ authorship. In his review of Hebrew history Langner argues that “the impact of the Israelites upon the Egyptians . . . was at first almost entirely economic” (xii). Joseph became Egypt’s “food dictator,” enabling Pharaoh to become “the first capitalist-monopolist” (xiii). The Egyptians were economically disadvantaged vis-à-vis the Israelites by their religious beliefs, which caused them to fasten all their hopes on the afterlife while the Israelites were concerned with this world. In particular, the discovery of Jehovah was “an amazing feat, both spiritually, economically and scientifically” because “it laid the foundation for modern scientific thought” (xvi). Instead of devoting time and energy to the worship of the many gods of Egyptian polytheism, the Israelites, with their one deity, developed a method of logical thinking that began to explain nature “in terms of reality instead of in terms of mythology” (xvii; original emphasis). While the Egyptians regarded the sun as a god who journeyed across the sky daily, the Israelites saw it as “a gigantic lighting and heating machine without the slightest attribute of divinity” (xvii). As the Israelites became more productive and wealthier, the less practical-minded Egyptians began to persecute and rob them, forcing them into servitude. At this point Moses appeared: not only a man of thought and “author of the first unified system of law and a code of hygiene” (xix) but also a revolutionary leader. In order to deal with his “stiff-necked people,”

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Moses the liberator had to become Moses the lawmaker, and it was this phase of his life, Langner argues, that “has most influenced the civilization which has followed in his wake” (xxi). To accomplish his ends, Moses proclaimed the authority of Jehovah as Supreme Judge and then proceeded “to legislate to his heart’s content” (xxii). His law, based upon “a definite and logical conception of justice,” superseded “the autocratic whims of monarchs and the conflicting laws of the priests of different gods” (xxii). Because his authority depended upon the monotheism of one Jehovah, Moses prohibited graven images lest the sculpted idols be worshipped rather than Jehovah, but his law against idolatry became generalized into a prohibition against artistic representations generally. Langner argues that the creative faculty for the arts and architecture has been developed most highly in peoples when they have believed in many gods or saints: the polytheistic Greeks and the Catholics of the Renaissance. In contrast, “the great periods of scientific, philosophical, ethical or legal development have been either accompanied by a lack of faith in a number of gods, or by a positive belief in a single god” (xxvi). The greatest period of scientific development in the West, he continues, was made possible by the advent of Martin Luther, who “did for the Protestants what Moses did for the Israelites” (xxix), yielding little originality in the arts or architecture but great advances in the fields of science, finance, trade, medicine, literature, and music. The scientific discoveries in Catholic countries, he maintains, were made by men like Galileo, who were opposed to the church. The rediscovery of Moses’ ideas, he concludes, was responsible for three modern movements: nationalism, democracy, and political freedom. With his belief in the supremacy of the Chosen People, Moses was a pronounced nationalist. By liberating the Hebrews from their bondage, he became the first great democrat. And through his faith in the power of oratory to popularize himself with the people, he founded political liberty. Above all, he initiated the belief that any of the problems of humankind can be solved by law—a formula, says Langner the practicing attorney, that has “run riot in the United States” (xxxviii). The new golden age of science fails to acknowledge “the need of men for beauty,” in the arts and crafts, which have been replaced by machines. “The result is materialism at its worst” (xl). Langner concludes with a protest against the

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modern industrial system that, with its “manufactured patriotism” (xlii) and war machines, is ruinous to body and soul. He pleads for “a twentiethcentury polytheism” that will worship “the gods within ourselves” (xlvii) and that, freeing human artistic creativity, will release itself from “the domination of Moses, Materialism and the Machine” (xlix). Anyone who first reads Langner’s introductory “protest and proposal” will hardly expect a wholly positive view of Moses in the play that follows, which dramatizes his theoretical exposition. Indeed, Miriam’s criticism of her brother’s autocratic legalism often sounds remarkably contemporary, virtually like the speeches heard on the floor of the U.S. Congress in 2013 against excessive governmental regulation. Moses’ sister Miriam, a dancer and enthusiastic lover of the arts, opposes the steadily narrowing, indeed obsessively legalistic mind-set of her brother. The play, which takes place in seven scenes preceded by a prologue and interrupted by four brief “interludes,” covers all the main stages of Moses’ life but without any of the supernatural occurrences, which are carefully rationalized. The prologue introduces the Egyptian princess, Bint-Anath, as an enlightened young woman who, when the priest insists on elaborate prayers and ceremonies before she may bathe in the palace pool, proclaims herself “sick and tired of all these gods” (17). She would rather be an Israelite because they have “but one god to our two hundred” (18) and find it a simple matter to get into the water. “We Egyptians are simply obsessed with gods,” she tells the priest (19). He reminds her that her father foresaw that “a people who worshipped only one god would have far more time for barter and commerce than a people who worshipped over two hundred, and that the wealth of the country would rapidly pass into their hands” (21). He regrets that her mother’s sentimentality prevented the pharaoh from slaughtering the entire tribe. Precisely for that reason, she replies, she wants an Israelite to oversee her own affairs. “Why entrust these duties to a stupid Egyptian, who has no talents but to write poetry or to rave over the colors of the desert sunset?” (24). At this point they hear the baby Moses crying in his basket, hidden in the rushes beside the pool, and the princess decides to raise him as her own future business manager. The first scene, twenty-four years later, displays the contrast between brother and sister before they even speak. Moses, now the princess’s steward, reading a scroll and writing in the palace, is clothed simply; but

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Miriam, leader of the palace dancing girls, is “dressed richly in a coloured robe, with jewels in her hair and on her hands” (32). When she asks what he is doing, he proudly reads what he has written: “In the regulation of his conduct by law, doth Man differ mainly from the beast. There can be no law without authority and no authority higher than that of a god.” Contrasting the Egyptians and the Hebrews, he concludes that “the children of Israel, having but one god and one authority, alone of all the peoples, can have a perfect law” (33). When Miriam points out that the Egyptians have created a great civilization, he replies that it has led them only “to lust and corruption[,] to luxury and softness[,] bestiality,” and more, for which he despises everything Egyptian. She then says that she would agree to his dream to lead his people to freedom if he would also take to Canaan the arts and crafts of Egypt so that their people might create images surpassing even those of Ramses. But Moses despises such works. “Your temples are the temples of justice. Your images are images of the mind” (42), she tells him sarcastically. When the princess comes in to receive an envoy, she is annoyed that Moses, absorbed in his legal dreams, has not made the proper preparations. Dissatisfied with his life and responsibilities in the palace, he resigns his position to go and live among the Israelites, accompanied by his sister. A brief interlude shows Moses reduced to beating the drum to publicize Miriam’s dancing show, which supports them. When he sees Egyptian guards whipping laboring Israelites, his resolve is momentarily renewed, but in the next scene, having again forgotten his dream, Moses and Aaron are still the shills for Miriam’s dance. They look on as two quarreling Israelite merchants bribe an Egyptian official—“the eternal policeman” (63), according to the stage directions. Later, when Moses accidentally kills the same official who is beating a crippled boy, he is forced to escape. The second interlude shows Moses fifteen years later in Midian, where his soul has been purified “by the quiet of the great spaces” (79). Though there is no burning bush, as he sleeps and dreams he hears a Great Voice ordering him to go to Egypt to rescue his people. Back in Egypt (scene 3) Moses is first opposed by Israelites who imagine the hardships of the desert and the battles needed to win Canaan, but in a hilarious interview with Pharaoh and Nefreti he is finally ordered, irrationally and desper-

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ately, by a Pharaoh irritated by the boils on his neck and a Nefreti vexed by the frogs under her throne, to take his people and “Go! Go! Go!” Two years later (scene 4), while the Israelites wait in Sinai for the war between Egypt and Syria to end so that they can proceed, Moses is obsessively consumed by his legal thoughts. When Caleb tells Miriam that he is forbidden to admire a lovely figurine given to her by the sculptor, she is indignant: “This law-making must stop. It has become a passion with him” (107). Caleb tells her that Moses’ new project is “a book called Deuteronomy,” which is to contain “every possible law to meet every possible situation” (107). Aaron enters, fatuously describing the official robe he has designed for himself as high priest, and informs his sister that there will soon be a law against her dancing. When Moses arrives, complaining of exhaustion from judging over seventy disputes that day, Jethro suggests that he should “write down your laws, and appoint judges to administer them with a strong hand” (112). In the following discourse Moses, unaware of his own cynicism, tells Miriam that she simply doesn’t understand. It is “the nature of law to give men freedom by prohibiting them from doing as they please” (114). He shatters her figurine, explaining, “If I permit the people to make images, at the first moment of danger, the first moment of doubt, they will abandon Jehovah, and make idols out of clay, and worship them, like the Egyptians” (118). Indeed, he has noticed—and here we hear the voice of the twentieth-century theatrical producer —“that the image-makers are generally the trouble-makers. They are the rebellious spirits who speak against the law. They are shiftless, lazy, grumbling, discontented; and it was always so in Egypt, where they disobeyed the priests” (121). He has the sculptor of Miriam’s figurine arrested and orders him to be stoned, but Miriam intercedes, and the sculptor is allowed to return to Egypt, where he is honored for his craft. When Moses sets off to Mount Sinai with some stone tablets and a chisel, Miriam taunts him: “What, are you going to make a graven image?” (128). After his departure, when the Elders propose to make a golden calf, they explain to Aaron, “Why should we worship the Golden Calf? Is not Jehovah our God? The Golden Calf will bring increase to our cattle. And why not?” (134). The following interlude shows nothing but Moses chipping away at his stone while eight different voices sequentially shout, “Thou shalt not!”

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Forty days later (scene 5), when the people wonder at Moses’ absence, Aaron sneers, “He has probably found a stone quarry, and is writing laws by the hundred” (143). Meanwhile Aaron, proud of his priestly splendor, and Miriam, delighted to be leading the maidens in a dance around the altar, prepare to celebrate the golden calf that he has created. As the Israelites quarrel among themselves about the propriety of worshipping the image, Moses suddenly appears with a thunderclap and tells them that those who have joined in the evil corruption will feel the fury of his wrath. He orders his followers to kill the idolaters, including Aaron. But when Miriam intercedes, Moses relents. Miriam is to be dressed in sackcloth and banned from the camp, he sends Aaron away, and, ordering the idol to be ground to dust, shatters his own tablets. Scene 6 takes place in the hills of Kadesh overlooking Canaan, to which the spies have just returned with their report of an army being raised against the Israelites. When Moses tries to assure the people that they will conquer because their cause is righteous, Miriam asks, “Is our cause so righteous? Have not the people who now dwell there, possessed the land for many scores of years?” and reminds Moses, “Have you not written ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s property?’” (162). Following a dispute among the Israelites, Caleb and Joshua assure them that their young men will be able to defeat the enemy. The Elders—notably those of Judah and Reuben—begin to quarrel about the distribution of the land. As the Amorites advance, Moses orders his people to fall back into the desert, lamenting the “evil generation” that grew up in Egypt. Miriam wishes that she could comfort him. “Alas, you know many things, but you do not know what is written in the hearts of men!” (174). After a brief interlude depicting the death of Miriam, the final scene takes place on the heights overlooking Canaan. Aaron is now also deceased, and Moses, feeble with age, speaks for the last time to his people, showing them the beautiful land of Canaan. As he falls to his knees in prayer, the Elders squabble again over distribution of the land, pretending that their concern is only to protect the weaker tribes and love for their country. Their dispute results in a fight, which disturbs Moses in his prayer. Muttering to himself that Miriam was right, he appoints Joshua as leader. “I who have given judgment, am judged. I who have given punishment, am punished,” he laments (185). Dismissing Moses as an old man whose mind is wandering, Joshua seizes command and urges the people

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to strike immediately and hard. As the soldiers pass, “eyes gleaming at the promise of rich plunder,” Moses is left behind, a broken man, to die. In the United States Langner clearly shared many of the same socialcritical views as did his contemporary Kayser in Germany. He was alarmed at the economic rapacity enabled by legislation that characterized American society in the Golden Twenties. But, unlike Kayser in postwar Germany, his concern was not so much with the sense of a desertlike ethical liberation stemming from the war as, rather, with what he saw as the neglect of the arts by the mercantilism of the twenties and the legislation that made it possible. In both cases, the writers found effective literary means of expressing their beliefs through their creative adaptations of the story of Moses.

In the “Argument” prefaced to his Moses adaptation, My Head! My Head! (1925), Robert Graves (1895–1985) cites the “magnificent play Moses” by Isaac Rosenberg, who as “a race-proud Whitechapel Jew” was “a natural champion of Moses the deliverer” (24). He goes on to acknowledge his debt to Brooks Adams, “the sceptical and learned American historian, whose life appears to have been permanently soured by early Puritanical training” and whose “detailed and courageous attack on Moses” exposes him “not only as a hypocrite, a murderer, and a charlatan, but as a coward, an incompetent dawdling muddler, and finally as a miserable suicide” (25 – 26). Graves’ King Jesus (1946) is much better known than his early novel, but he uses the same “analeptic method” in both: in King Jesus he puts the story of Jesus into the words of a Hellenist historian writing around 93 CE; in My Head! My Head! the story of Moses is told by the prophet Elisha in response to questions by the Shunamite woman whose pregnancy he predicted and whose son he subsequently restored to life (2 Kings 4:8– 37). In Graves’ version it is the prophet himself who succumbs to the lure of the flesh and impregnates the lovely young woman with the elderly husband. What concerns us here, however, is not the narrative frame but rather the story of Moses that he relates in response to her initial query: “Was Moses truly the child of my namesake Jochebed, the wife of Amram?” (51).

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Elisha’s narrative, which takes up over half the book, sounds virtually like a fictionalization of Adams’ depiction with various inventive additions. Moses is presented as the illegitimate child of Pharaoh’s son and his Hebrew concubine, Jochabed. Although he attends the College of Priests at Heliopolis and learns “all the wisdom of Egypt” (54), he is tormented by his fellow students because of the spite of his stupid half brother, the future pharaoh. He prophesies that one day, “when the Nile runs blood,” they will regret their taunts. Later, when he marries an Ethiopian, daughter of a great magician, his own father begins to hold him in contempt, and the Hebrews also dislike him for his Egyptian manner. But his half brother Aaron instructs him in the traditions of Israel, and when he must flee from Egypt they exchange letters twice a year. One night in Midian Moses dreams that his father, the pharaoh, is dead. That same night his Ethiopian wife dreams that her father reports that there is “a great abundance of a red growth here in the river bed” (62) and that the land will be sick when it washes down to Egypt. At that news Moses returns to Israel, and the various plagues, all rationally explained, take place: the Nile, as expected, turns red; the fish die, and the tadpoles flourish; when the tadpoles become frogs, they move onto land to search for food; the frogs are eaten up by maggots and lice; and so forth. At each stage of these natural events, Moses, aware of their sequence, predicts a plague. Finally, when Pharaoh does not relent, he organizes bands of murderers who creep through the city, killing all the firstborn. When Pharaoh finally tells Moses to take the Hebrews and depart, they steal jewels and clothing from the Egyptians. At the Red Sea it is, as usual, the wind that comes violently from the north and blows back the shallow waters, permitting the Hebrews to pass but drowning the pursuing Egyptians. When, after all this, Moses orders the people to stay in the desert for many years, he tells Aaron that “it is evident that we must remain here yet another ten years until the young lads be trained up for warriors” (86). To ease his labors Jethro persuades him to appoint deputies, but a table of law is necessary because “the deputy judges judged some according to Egyptian law and some according to the traditions of the Hebrew people . . . and some by no law at all but by what seemed best for the occasion” (88). Moses knows from his earlier sojourn that certain oils oozed from the

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rock on Mount Sinai—oils that if ignited would explode with smoke, fire, and a hissing noise. Assembling the people, he lights the oils, takes from his cloak a trumpet concealed there, and in a solemn voice pronounces his ten commandments to the judges and the people. Then he goes back up for forty days and hews and engraves two stone tablets, which he presents as proof that Jah (Graves’ name for the deity) has made the Hebrews his chosen people. At this point the Shunamite asks if the commandments were, then, simply the invention of Moses, and Elisha responds, “Moses acted in Jah’s name, and believed on Jah. And though the commandments of Jah were not the commandments of Jah until they were accepted as such by the people, they were indeed accepted [and] are still so accepted and obeyed” (91). (We recognize Brooks Adams’ theory and Moses’ argument to Maheli in Bacmeister’s play.) When during his absence the Hebrews again complain, Aaron is afraid and tries to perform magic feats, as Moses did; but in his fear his magic forsakes him. To diffuse their wrath, he makes a golden calf about which they dance in the Egyptian manner. On his return, angered, Moses breaks both calf and tablets and orders the Levites to kill the naked dancers. He also has two of Aaron’s sons killed when they offer fire in a manner not ordained by the law. When Miriam criticizes Moses’ Ethiopian wife—“Black is an abominable color to me” (99)— Moses punishes her by turning her skin white with leprosy; but because Miriam had prophesied in the name of Jah, he has his own wife killed. (Again we note the trickery and expediency proclaimed by Adams.) When Moses sends spies to Canaan, Aaron tells them secretly to report bad news from their expedition. When the Hebrews, encouraged by Joshua and Caleb, attempt nevertheless to defeat the Canaanites, Moses sends word of the attack to the Canaanites, who ambush the invaders. Korah and other Levites accuse Moses of assuming too much authority, but he prepares a trap for them: he schemes for them to walk over a cliff that appears to be level ground and to be consumed below by the oil of Sinai, with which he has drenched the chasm. After Miriam’s death Moses takes Aaron up Mount Hor and, stripping him of his priestly garb, which he puts on Eleazar, leaves the naked Aaron to die of cold on the mountain. When the curses of Balaam are fruitless, Moses knows that his troubles are almost over and that it remains only for him to die. “He had

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taken a people of slaves from their captivity and he had made a fighting people of them. He had given them a law and a faith” (120). Finally, he promulgates the law for a second time, ordering it to be carved on stone. “He also ordered a chronicle to be added to the books of the law, telling of the captivity in Egypt and of the flight from Egypt and all that had passed since according to the history he had given them: this chronicle was to be added to the Book Genesis that he had already made and had laid up in the Tabernacle” (121). As for his death, Elisha speculates that Moses had already dug his grave and piled up stones in such a manner that, as he lay there, he could dislodge them to cover him. Elisha ends his account by saying that Joshua, Jethro, and Caleb held Moses in respect but that there was no common bond between them—only a common purpose. “Joshua knew the greatness of the man and the singleness of his purpose” (122). We see, in retrospect, that Graves has skillfully interwoven the views of his two principal sources—the admiration of Isaac Rosenberg and the radical skepticism of Brooks Adams—into a sardonic portrayal of the Old Testament hero whose belief in his deity is accompanied by a cynically legalistic mentality and ruthlessness.

T   L         P  In 1925 and 1926 the prolific Austrian writer Vinzenz Zapletal (1867–1938), who claimed to be unaware of earlier literary treatments of the topic (although textual hints suggest that he knew at least Ebers’ Joshua), published the first of his two novels about Moses: The Godseeker (Mose, der Gottsucher, 1925) and Leader of the People (Mose, der Volksführer, 1926). Zapletal, a Dominican theologian and scholar, had earlier distinguished himself with numerous studies of the Old Testament (e.g., Alttestamentliches, 1903), as well as metrical translations, with detailed commentaries, of Ecclesiastes (1905) and Solomon’s Song of Songs (1907). After World War I, presumably in the hope of reaching a wider public, he turned to fictional treatments of the same material, beginning with Jephtas Tochter (1920; Jephthah’s Daughter), David und Saul (1921), and David und Bethsabe (1923)—all bearing the designation “cultural-historical

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tale” (Kulturhistorische Erzählung). Even before he undertook his biblical novels, he tells us in a preface, he had visited the Sinai peninsula and climbed Mount Horeb,9 and both works display his obvious pleasure in describing the landscape and scenes that he had seen firsthand. The first volume of his entertaining Moses, a “cultural-historical tale of ancient Egypt,” has more to do with cultural history and Egyptophilia than with Moses’ search for God. In fact, many chapters amount to detailed and knowledgeable depictions of Egyptian ceremonies: Pharaoh’s triumphal return to Thebes, the religious festival of thanks, the embalming and burial of Moses’ Egyptian foster father, and others, including extensive quotations from Egyptian songs, hymns, and fairy tales (based on authentic sources). In addition, we are given historically informed accounts of the curriculum at the school for princes that Moses attends and, later, of his activities as a military commander in Nubia. (His schoolboys and soldiers talk very much like their counterparts in the twentieth century.) The first third of the novel, moreover, is almost wholly concerned with a nonbiblical subplot meant to explain Moses’ later killing of the brutal overseer. At school he is hated, both as the adopted son of a princess and as an outstanding scholar, by Enebni, son of the high priest. Enebni plots against Moses by stealing gold and jewels from the temple and leaving behind a filched note that Moses had written to his mother, Princess Merit. Moses is jailed; but his friend, the dwarf Nub, principal steward of the princess, establishes his innocence by recovering the jewels, which Enebni had stolen in order to impress a dancing girl, and demonstrating Enebni’s guilt. Moses is freed, and Enebni, hating him more than ever, is punished with thirty lashes and sentenced to the demeaning lifelong task of an overseer of Hebrew slaves in Goshen. There, years later, Moses encounters and kills him when the enraged Enebni attacks him with his heavy club. Moses’ escape to Midian with a caravan is portrayed with details based, as the author tells us in a footnote (346), on his own ride from Suez to the central Sinai peninsula, where he encountered similar caravans. The novel ends years later when Moses, having met Jethro and married his daughter Sippora, encounters the burning bush. In this conversationally related story of adventure and romance— Moses and Princess Merit’s daughter Nofrit are in love and expected to marry—the search for God emerges only gradually. Even before he learns

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from Mirjam, who works as a servant in the princess’s quarters, that he is her brother, a Hebrew, and hears the circumstances of his birth, Moses has thought much about religion. As the foster child of an Egyptian princess, he is fully informed about the gods of the Egyptian pantheon and the cult of the Nile, with its many animals. At the same time, as a child he learned Hebrew from his nurse and heard their talk about their god El-Schaddaj as well as stories about Abraham and the Promised Land. “He doubted the existence of the many gods that were revered around him although he was firmly convinced that man must acknowledge an almighty Lord over himself and venerate him with all his power” (48– 49). He wonders why the god Amon needs to be carried around, fanned, and fed (146) and is also dismayed by ceremonies in the temple of Anat. Eventually, having attended worship of the Hebrews and observed their mistreatment by the Egyptians in field and mines, he confesses his doubts to his beloved Egyptian foster mother, saying that it would be against his innermost conviction “to believe in gods, whose actions have to be depicted,” and that he already has a god: “El-Schaddaj, the God of the Hebrews” (282– 83). When he is summoned to Goshen to the deathbed of his father, Amran, he decides to remain among the Hebrews but is forced to flee after slaying his enemy Enebni. In Midian, forsaking all thought of a glorious existence in Egypt with Nofrit, he marries Sippora and settles down to his new life, still troubled by the unfulfilled pledge to his dying father to care for his mother, his siblings, and his people (307). Then, on the last page, El-Schaddaj speaks to him from a burning bush: “I want to send you to Pharaoh so that you can free my people, the Israelites, from Egypt!” (364). Zapletal reports in the preface to his second novel that when he had completed Moses, the Godseeker in 1922, his friends told him that without its expected sequel the work would remain nothing more than a torso. After a year’s deliberation because of the difficulties of the theme, he quickly wrote Moses, Leader of the People in the eight months from November 1923 to June 1924. As the novel begins, Moses prays to Jahweh, assuring him that “from now on my whole heart and the remainder of my life belong to you and to your people” (1). But he tarries in Midian for months, first awaiting the birth of a child and then falling victim to a serious illness with feverish dreams in which Jahweh reproaches him for fail-

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ing his duty and threatening to kill him because his child has not been circumcised. Then Aron, following his own commands from El-Schaddaj, arrives to accompany Moses back to Egypt. In contrast to the first volume, which was largely invented, the sequel essentially follows the narrative of the Pentateuch, from the return to Egypt (which the author meticulously dates to 1447 BCE) to Moses’ death on Mount Nebo, in careful sequence and in surprisingly realistic detail, with a minimum of law and theology but considerable Egyptological lore. The various miracles are retained, but they are downplayed and usually mentioned ex post facto, almost as an afterthought. It is rumored among the Hebrews, for instance, that the staff of Moses—“the greatest wizard!” (92)—is magical and can be transformed into a serpent, but it is never shown; and we hear about the plagues briefly after they have already occurred, presumably as perfectly natural disasters. Within the biblical framework the author expands a number of passages considerably, making whole chapters out of the sojourns of the Hebrews at Mara (Exod. 15:22– 25) and Elim (Exod. 15:27) and the battle with the Amalekites (Exod. 17:8–13). The figure of the dwarf Nub is carried over from the first novel, and other biblical figures are given much larger roles: Joshua, whose beloved wife dies of snakebite in the desert; the artist Bezaleel, who is aesthetically captivated by Moses—“He is the most perfect of the sons of earth that I have ever seen” (65)—and later, in elaborately described detail, builds the tabernacle and the ark; the adventures of the twelve spies in Canaan; Pinechas’ slaying of Zimri and the Moabite maiden. Joshua’s rescue of Hebrews from the Egyptian mines may well have been inspired by Ebers’ Joshua. The account has occasional shifts of emphasis. Although Pharaoh is contemptuous of Moses’ Jahweh, whom he repeatedly terms a “little god” or “godlet” (Göttlein), the Egyptian people themselves, weary of the disasters brought upon them by the magician Moses, drive out the Hebrews and give them gifts to persuade them to leave. At the Red Sea it is troops freshly back from Libya that Pharaoh sends in pursuit, because the forces stationed in Egypt have been sobered by all the disasters attributed to Moses. The Ten Commandments as they are inscribed on the two tablets are printed in Hebrew, and El-Schabbaj instructs Moses that he prefers to be known as Jahweh. In his final vision, as in several of the earlier works

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by non-Jewish writers, Moses anticipates the coming of Jesus when he has a dying vision of the future leaders of his people. “Lord Jahweh, he is more than an earthly man; his majesty is divine. Do you also intend to send him?” (358). His son Gershom is a witness to Moses’ death, and he is buried with great ceremony. “On his grave no monument was erected and no inscription provided. For that reason the place of his burial in time was forgotten. But the memory of Moses remains ineradicable. In the hearts of his people he lives forever” (360). Zapletal’s Moses is clearly depicted as the leader of his people, but it should be noted that at that time the word leader (Führer) had not yet picked up the unpleasant associations that it has borne ever since Adolf Hitler assumed that title. Although his faith and patience are sorely tested by his people—even before they depart from Egypt and then repeatedly during the forty years in the desert —Moses is constantly reassured by Jahweh — or at least by the inner voice that he takes to be that of Jahweh — to persevere in his mission. The result is a highly readable, historically informed, and informative fiction of the Bible with few of the legalistic details that make some of the other plays and novels sometimes tedious. Surprisingly, neither the author nor his novels have made any impression on the standard histories of German literature.

T  T      R      Lawrence Langner was simply the latest in a series of writers who portrayed Moses as a social revolutionary. Other writers of the period went beyond “revolution” generally to see Moses in the light of specific political parties. The popular muckraker Lincoln Steffens (1866–1936), with no apparent awareness of his predecessors, turned to Moses as a prototype to exemplify his theory of revolution. Moses in Red (1926), unlike other works considered up to this point, is not a novel or any kind of literary fictionalization; rather, it recapitulates the Books of Moses, including frequent extended quotations from the Old Testament and the author’s own interpolated commentary. As he puts it, “I have chosen to relate the good, old story literally; with parallels, comparisons and suggestions, but, as a narrative, without change” (44). He includes all the miracles: the plagues, the Red Sea, the voice of Jehovah, and so forth.

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Steffens was aware of the recent “higher critics” of the Bible (11), as well as the so-called social gospels of American progressive theologians.10 But his interests lay elsewhere, as he makes clear in his introductory “Point of View” (9– 45). His book is neither theological nor literary but rather political science: a theory of revolution based on his own experience as a reporter of the events following the revolutions in Mexico and Russia. “Revolutions, like wars,” he writes, “are social-economic explosions due to human (political) interference with natural (and, therefore, divine) law and forces which make for the gradual growth or constant change called evolution” (18). From his point of view the story of Moses follows the course of a typical revolution. Let Jehovah personify and speak for Nature; think of Moses as the uncompromising Bolshevik; Aaron as the more political Menshevik; take Pharaoh as the ruler who stands for the right (the conservative “evolutionist”), and the Children of Israel as the people—any people; read the Books of Moses thus and they will appear as a revolutionary classic. (21)

Steffens’ theory sometimes sounds as though it were taken directly from Adams’ works (which he does not cite). Moses’ “government by priests, with its imitators in Rome, New England and Utah, was an experiment in and a complete exposure of the failure of the theory that good men will give us good government” (22). For “in revolutions, in wars and in all such disorganizing, fear-spreading crises in human affairs, nations tend to return to the first, the simplest, and perhaps the best form of government: a dictatorship” (36)—a historical development that Steffens had witnessed firsthand in Mexico and the young Soviet Union and consistent with his view that reactionary governments inevitably bring about their own overthrow with their repressive measures.11 For this reason, he summarizes, “I have put into Moses’ story without altering it, the understanding I got out of the revolutions, the wars and the peace-makings I have seen” (44). Accordingly he tells the familiar story, adding nothing but a new vocabulary. Yet even the pessimism and harsh criticism of the disillusioned liberal is hardly able to match Langner’s cynicism. Moses is “a labor leader” (51). Born during the Egyptian “pogrom” (55) and raised with Egyptian privileges, he combined two traits, “Egyptian nobility and race

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loyalty, that made him a great Jewish leader of Labor” (57). As the chosen “agitator” of a conspiracy initiated by the Lord, he gave speeches that Steffens calls “demagogic” (63). The hardest problem for labor leaders, he explains, is to arouse workers who are “tired out, spiritless and accustomed to the routine of bondage [and] sunk deep in contentment” (64). When he first visits Pharaoh it is for labor negotiations: not land and liberty but simply a few days off. Pharaoh, of course, as the negotiator for management, has a good case: “three days off for so many workers would really have set back business and production which already had begun to suffer from their agitation” (70). As the Lord knew, when he kept hardening Pharaoh’s heart, “the government must illustrate the propaganda of the revolution; the chamber of commerce must co-operate with the labor union” (72) until the workers are forced out. The Lord has no illusions about the people. As we have seen, He had had Moses agitate among them for a strike, a walk-out, and they resisted Moses. They besought him to let well enough alone. So the Lord, in His wisdom, had arranged for a lock-out also. He had had Pharaoh force the people of Israel to go three days into the wilderness. (85)

In short, the Lord needed Pharaoh to oppress the people until, finally, they no longer wished to return. Because the Lord feared a battle with the Philistines, he needed a pursuit from the rear to force them into their passage across the Red Sea, which as usual was opened for the Hebrews by a strong east wind. The rest of Steffens’ retelling is equally predictable. The forty years in the wilderness correspond to the human generation malformed by life under the tsar that, according to Russian “prophets,” must die off before a new generation might come to power (91– 92). Taking Jethro’s advice, Moses, the inexperienced idealist, adapted “some practical methods of government” (99) and then, at Sinai, laid plans for “the most solemn and majestic law-making that the world has ever seen” (100). The Levites’ slaughter of the celebrants of the golden calf amounted to a “Terror” of the sort familiar from other revolutions (108). When the covenant was finally accepted by the people, “the dictatorship [of Moses] was ordained and established by God” (113). When Aaron and Miriam criticize Moses,

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they are motivated by ambition within the ruling class. The spies sent out to Canaan constitute an “investigating committee” (121). The ten who advise against fighting prefigure the “wise men, sincere men and great, [who] have gone over into Russia and been disappointed because, forsooth, there was no milk and honey there, no liberty and order, but only work and discipline and promises” (136). In his final address to his people, Moses reminds them that they were “on a trek from one kind of a life into another; from an orderly, petty, but accustomed condition of culture and slavery to the wide liberty of open plains and uncrowned hills; from an irrigated system of husbandry and policed tyranny to free farming and self-government” (131). But his own death was necessary. “A prophet for the revolt and the wilderness, he was not fit for the fighting days of conquest. After the revolution, Napoleon; after Moses, Joshua. And after Joshua, the Judges; . . . Round and round the wheel rolls, lifting true leaders, dropping the faithless” (142). And it was just as well. Had he entered Canaan, he would have been disappointed. “The Russian revolutionists and the other revolutionists who have gone through hell dreaming of heaven only to wake up on earth— they and their anguish have shown us in our day that Moses would have been brokenhearted if he had lived on and gone over thither” (144). Despite Steffens’ great hopes for his Moses, the book elicited virtually no response in its time and has been resurrected only recently by critics interested not in literature but in political theory. Published by a small press and most of the first edition destroyed by fire, the few copies that were distributed were reviewed rather blandly by the author’s friends.12 Still today it is regarded as one of Steffens’ less significant works. But it is of interest in the present context as a further example of a category that has emerged at least since Imre Madách: Moses the revolutionary.

T   T       R  A German novel of the same period offers a Moses representing a wholly different political persuasion. In his Moses Novel (Mose-Roman, 1927), Werner Jansen (1890 –1943) accomplished what amounts to a literary oxymoron: he wrote an anti-Semitic Exodus in which Moses appears as

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an advocate of Nazi racial theory. Jansen, a professor of medicine who received a Goethe Medal for his literary work in the service of racial reform, achieved remarkable popularity with his novels on nationalistic topics— Germanic heroic sagas such as the tale of the Nibelungs or such legendary heroes and heroines as Dietrich von Bern and Gudrun—and with his retelling of German fairy tales, folkbooks, and sagas. Toward the end of his career he wrote his Moses novel, anticipating, as he predicted in a prefatory note, accusations of an agenda from the “snoopers” (Schnüffler) and, from the historians, criticism of mistakes. He was not mistaken. “Never has a German novelist been pelted more crudely and hatefully, rarely has a literary work experienced sharper controversy and disappeared more rapidly from the displays of the book trade,” he recalled in a prefatory note to a later edition.13 When he reissued the novel in 1935, now under the title The Children of Israel: A Novel of Race (Die Kinder Israel: Rasseroman), the reception was quite different: “The wave of the new age has swept away that episode, and the men of the Third Reich lift my book from the shadows.” His novel, which depicts the life of Moses down to the adventure at the Red Sea, wholly without miracles, is almost entirely fictitious. His Moses is the son of Amram, the Hebrew vizier of the pharaoh, and the princess Bithja, whom he seduces. When Pharaoh Ramses is on the point of death, his once disinherited nephew, Menephtah, who has won fame as a warrior, is reinstated as the successor. He also persuades the princess, his niece, to become his wife—not out of love but for political purposes—by offering to restore her child, whom he has kidnapped. To assure the child’s acceptance by the public, he arranges for it to be discovered during the celebrations surrounding his installation as Pharaoh. The early chapters concern mainly Egyptian affairs. A member of the nobility complains that the nobles are being cheated of their wealth by “the Hebrew with his extortionist brethren” (56), who attack the Egyptians “like vultures over fallen prey” (57). Pharaoh explains why he needs the Hebrew Amram as his vizier: he is not only “the smartest man in the kingdom,” but, with his countrymen, he controls the major part of foreign trade and thereby the temples and Egypt (59). (Later we learn that Amram kept two sets of books in order to conceal the vast fortune that he obtained from the priests and foreign trade and set aside for the pharoah.)

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It is not only the nobility who complain. The court sculptor, Imhotep, protests that “the stingy tradesmen are prescribing their bad taste, and the high-handed schoolmasters in the temples want their gods dead, dumb, and accessible” (83). Moreover, the Hebrew sculptor Oholiab controls the materials, for which he demands exorbitant prices. Imhotep laments that Egyptian art has declined disastrously since the glorious days of Echnaton at Amarna. Again Pharaoh explains that Egypt needs the Hebrews: “Our economy is shot through with them; I cannot get rid of them without destroying everything” (95). And would the Egyptians be content to go back into the fields and undertake the chores currently carried out by the Hebrews? Even his Hebrew vizier Amram warns him that “the Hebrews constitute a danger for the kingdom” (115). For the Hebrews live from the work of others and exploit their needs and desires. “Away with us if you want to live!” (121). At this point Pharaoh reveals his long-held secret: Moses as the heir of both peoples shall bring about the resolution and assimilation. He sends Moses to Goshen to hasten the completion of the buildings there and, in the process, win the confidence of the Hebrews he despises and regards as “a shame for Egypt” (130). For his various deeds—his insistence on humane treatment of the Hebrews and adequate medical care, all in the interest of their labor—he is soon regarded as their hero. Then, on the final day of his year in Goshen, he commits an error: he kills an Egyptian who is attempting to rape what appears to be an innocent girl and, in his excitement, is seduced by her. But she turns out to be a loose woman married to a thief, Abinoam, whose silence Moses buys by giving him his golden arm ring. (Unbeknownst to Moses, it is the seal of Abraham, handed down from father to son, which Amram had entrusted to him.) As a result of that encounter—and for reasons that are not given adequate psychological motivation or explanation—he begins to wonder about his sympathy for the Hebrews, undergoes a nervous breakdown, and lies unconscious for two weeks. To assist in his recovery, he and his Egyptian sister, the princess Nenith, along with their friends Aaron, Miriam, and Imhotep, make an excursion to Amarna, where Imhotep is ecstatic about the bust of Nofretete (the one that Jansen would have known from its recent installation in the Berlin museum) and Aaron is astonished by the signs of wealth. But Moses has been so changed by his

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experience in Goshen that he is unable to share their enthusiasm, for he is beginning to believe that he is truly a Hebrew. He goes off alone to reflect on his new feelings. “‘If you are truly a Hebrew,’ the daemon began again, ‘how can you tolerate it that your people is submerged in shame and crime?’” (177). When he becomes aware of an intruder plundering the treasures of the graves, he attacks and kills the thief, who turns out to be Abinoam, the husband of the Hebrew woman who seduced him. Recovering his armband from the thief, he abandons his friends and, with no response from the Lord to his pleas for advice and direction, sets out for parts unknown. A few weeks later, in the Sinai, he is caught by a huge storm from which he hears the Lord’s voice saying, “Go and live, blood of my blood!” (187). From this point on the “blood”—that is, the racial motif—replaces the dominant theme of the first part, criticism of Hebrew corruption. At the well Moses encounters Sephora, who takes him home, where Jethro recognizes the armband as the seal of Abraham. For the first time Moses begins to suspect his parentage and mission, but it does not happen immediately. From soldiers who come to the village in search of him, he learns that many of his friends were killed in a war with the Libyans, but he still refuses to return to Egypt. He marries Sephora but is obviously distraught by all that he has learned and experienced. His perceptive wife realizes that he is suffocating in the narrow constraints of Midian: “I know only that some kind of longing is drawing you into the distance, and you must follow it” (235). One night unidentifiable sounds draw him out into the darkness, where he finds Amram, who, having learned from the soldiers that Moses is still alive, has come to fetch him home and confesses that he is his father. Moses tells Amram about his insight: “‘Blood, father, sacred blood is the name of the God to whom all men pray, and thus he appeared to me in the storm on Sinai, and his thunderous voice penetrated my ear: Whoever believes in his blood, he shall always be victorious!” (249). He is not rejecting the Hebrew deity: “‘Who is Shaddai? A name for a power; if you like, one of the thousand names of the nameless one. I am not fighting against names. But let’s do away with all images and similes for the deity; it is far too manifold and all-powerful to be compared to anything’” (251). Moses has never suspected that “the vizier and the pharaoh have worked for years on the incorporation of the Hebrews and have spent a

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fortune of astuteness on their plan to adapt Hebrew feeling and thinking to the Egyptian” (259)—and that he himself is the key element in that plan. He returns with Amram to Heliopolis—to liberate the Hebrews, not to integrate them. Pharaoh, who still loves Moses, generously agrees to his plan and even gives him a deed to the territory of Canaan. The Hebrews may leave but without their wealth—terms to which Moses readily agrees. A few weeks later Pharaoh sits with Moses and Amram on a dais to watch the departure of the Hebrews in a great procession led by the urban Hebrews with the caskets of Joseph and other early leaders, followed by the Goshen Hebrews led by Sephora and their son, Elieser. The entire procession is marked at beginning and end by pots of fire from which great clouds of black smoke rise as a guide. When Pharaoh inquires about the route they will take, Moses says that he will lead them on the longest ways: “They are immature and as playful as children—the old ones worst of all. And it seems to me that I ought to drive them through common hardships as through a sieve” (281). When Jethro warns him that the Philistines are waiting to attack, he changes the route to go by way of the Red Sea, which is parted and dried out by the winds. But as the Hebrews cross, Moses’ Egyptian sister rides up to warn him that the Egyptians are pursuing. She relates that, contrary to the agreement, Oholiab and his followers stole vast amounts of gold from the temple treasuries. Despite his promise Pharaoh had to yield to the demands of the priests to recover the stolen loot. The shifting winds kill the pursuers, but Moses discovers that the gold is indeed concealed in the caskets supposedly bearing the bones of their ancestors. In his rage he slays Oholiab, but in the ensuing riot his own wife and son are killed. The mob falls back—“His grief seems more dangerous to them than his rage” (302)—and Moses is left alone at the end, with no companion but his faithful dog, Isheb. Given the almost total absence—apart from Imhotep’s rapture at the splendor of Amarna and Nefretete — of any Egyptophilia or ancient atmosphere, it is easy to imagine the conversations in the first half of Jansen’s novel between the pharaoh and others—the nobleman, the sculptor, his vizier—as taking place in a Munich beer hall of the 1920s. The complaints about the Jewish monopolization of commerce and industry and the arts sound like fictionalizations of passages from Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1925/26), which had just appeared. But in the second half,

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the proposal by the book’s token liberal to resolve the problem by assimilation is effectively negated by none other than Moses, whose theology of blood amounts to a precise statement of the Nazi racial theory, as formulated by Alfred Rosenberg in his notorious Myth of the Twentieth Century (Der Mythos des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, 1930), where the author even spoke of a “religion of blood” that characterizes not only what he regarded as the superior Nordic peoples but also such inferior races as Slavs and Jews.

Perhaps the most remarkable and shocking example of Moses as a theorist of race was produced by the physician and writer Gottfried Benn (1886–1956), one of the finest German poets of the twentieth century. During a brief period (1933– 34), misled by his anti-Communist animus and his fears for the destruction of traditional values, Benn expressed his enthusiasm for the new German regime in a number of essays and radio talks.14 One of these essays, revealing his absolute belief in science, bears the telling title “Breeding I” (“Züchtung I”).15 Hailing the new age, Benn states that “a historical transformation will always be an anthropological transformation” and that formerly, for man as a rational being, meaning in history meant the progress of civilization but that today it signifies “the attachment to the past as mythic and racial continuity” (215). He is convinced that from this transformation a “new man” will emerge in Europe, half from mutation and half from breeding: “German man” (216). He defends the concept of breeding against those who argued that breeding this new man through legislative pressure “burdens him morally and robs him of all inner nobility”(218). To this end he cites Moses, “the greatest national terrorist [völkischer Terrorist] of all times and the most magnificent eugenicist of all peoples” (218). In the desert Moses allowed the elderly and all that he considered generate to die out so that only the healthy young might enter Canaan. “His law was: a quantitatively and qualitatively high-quality progeny, a pure race” (218). Hence his brutal measures against his own people as well as the alien tribes they encountered. He killed off the Midianites, men and women alike, because they had brought “the plague”—a venereal disease that the physician Benn suspected to have been gonorrhea—among his people. For the same rea-

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sons of “racial hygiene” (219) he forbade any marriages or alliances with tribes in the land they usurped. “That was Moses,” Benn concludes, before going on to present other justifications for racial breeding and his vision of the new people that will be produced: a free people “that no longer will desire happiness but only its breeding” (222). In fairness it should be added that Benn, though he never gave up his hopes for the improvement of humankind, soon turned away from the Nazis and their racial policies and that in his autobiographical volume, Double Life (Doppelleben, 1950) he came honestly to grips with what he frankly called his great “error” (Irrtum).

P           M   The Twenties witnessed several notable efforts to popularize the Exodus, including Cecil B. DeMille’s silent film The Ten Commandments (1923). That same year, following the spectacular success of his popularization of Jesus, The Man Nobody Knows (1925), Bruce Barton produced a sequel, The Book Nobody Knows (1926), which retells the stories of the Bible in an accessible form. In the introductory “Outline of History” we learn that Moses, after “extended negotiations with Pharaoh,” became “leader of a grumbling, short-sighted and discontented lot of ex-slaves” (33). He was “not only a leader but an executive as well, thanks partly to his father-inlaw Jethro” (33), on whose advice he provided his people “not only with a law—through the Ten Commandments and the comprehensive Mosaic Code—but with a judiciary as well” (34). Later, in the section titled “Ten Great Men of the Bible,” we hear in a more extended discussion (199– 204) that “as law-giver, military commander and executive, [Moses] transformed them into a self-governing people, and left a body of laws which have come down to our own day as the foundation of modern jurisprudence and civic sanitation” (201) but that “like so many other men of vision he never quite realized his whole ideal” (204). In 1928 another remarkable and widely read popularization appeared in French and was translated immediately into English and German: Edmond Fleg’s The Life of Moses (Moïse).16 Fleg (1874–1963), a Jewish essayist and publicist, devoted himself in his writings extensively to Jewish topics, as in his Anthologie juive (1923). Fleg’s version is not so much a

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fictionalization or literarization of Moses’ life as a retelling of the biblical story, using its own language but augmented extensively with extracts from “the story-tellers of the Talmud” by the author, who regards himself as “their very humble heir” (xi). Fleg wanted to avoid the “critical” or “scientific” approach, which would lead to “a primitive, savage Moses,” and to reproduce what Assmann later called the mnemohistory of Moses: “the creative memory of Israel transfigured by a tradition rich in wonderful legends” (xi). So his Jochebed gives birth “without pain” (in contrast to the painful labors experienced ten years later by Hurston’s Jochebed), and Moses is born already circumcised (10). The Egyptian princess who saves him from the Nile is plagued by leprosy, which vanishes the instant she touches the child (11). Why does Moses flee into Midian? Because, “say our Teachers” (26), he was betrayed by Dathan. “Why [does God appears to Moses] in a bush of thorns?, ask our Doctors,” whereupon Fleg quotes four rabbis in response (28– 29). When the Hebrews are driven out, Korah—as already in Dobbs’ novel—steals Joseph’s treasure, the secret of which he had forced from the last descendant of Joseph’s last brother (48– 49). When Moses goes up the mountain to receive the Torah, he studies it for forty days and nights but forgets each night what he had learned that day. Therefore, God “took two tables of sapphire, . . . and with His own hand He inscribed on them, for Moses, the Torah”: not only the Ten Commandments, but, between the lines, “the two hundred and forty-seven precepts and the three hundred and sixty-five prohibitions of the Torah” (102– 3). We hear again the legend of Samael, who is so greatly awed by the Prophet’s countenance that he flees his presence (273). And when Moses’ spirit ascends toward the Eternal, he goes past Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to take his place “beneath the Throne of Glory” (276). In sum, Fleg has produced a readable and informative life of Moses, which enjoyed considerable popularity in various languages; but it adds little to the accounts already known from the Bible and the many Jewish legends.

By the time the prolific poet and anthologist Louis Untermeyer (1885– 1977) wrote his only novel, Moses (1928), it was difficult to achieve orig-

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inality with the theme, and the lukewarm reviews reflect that weakness.17 Robert Graves and Werner Jansen had already made Moses the love child of mixed Egyptian-Hebrew parentage; many had rationalized the burning bush and the other miracles; Adams and Langner had presented him as a labor organizer and a compulsive lawmaker. Writers since Schiller had understood Moses as a man learned in Egyptian religion, and since the discovery of the Amarna Tablets the monotheism of Akhenaten had been publicized by such scholars as J. H. Breasted (whose History of the Egyptian People is acknowledged in Untermeyer’s appendix). What could Untermeyer add? The worldwide publicity following the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 encouraged Untermeyer to locate the Exodus during the brief reign of that pharaoh, the son of Akhenaten. Years earlier, in the summer of 1914, Untermeyer had already seen Moses as “a perfect example of the universal spirit, the divided soul, for he was both liberator and law-maker,” and he wrote a hundred-line poem to exemplify that view—a poem rejected by his fellow editors at the Masses.18 Perhaps encouraged by the success of Langner’s play and Barton’s works, he presented Moses’ life in a chatty, colloquial, vernacular language interspersed, as he tells us in his Recollections, with extensive fragments from Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews and his assumption—apparently unaware of earlier works using the same fiction—that “Moses was half Egyptian, Pharaoh’s daughter having ‘found’ and ‘adopted’ the infant strategically placed by her in the bulrushes, because he was her own love-child.”19 In 1926 he set out to write a semi-historical novel, a free fantasia on the Biblical theme of liberty and exile, law and leadership. In the book I drew a new portrait of Moses. I pictured him as part-Jew, part-Egyptian prince, a rebel deeply influenced by Akhnaten’s One God— a characterization followed and analyzed by Freud eleven years later in his Moses and Monotheism.20

“As a Jew,” he continued, “I could not accept dictatorially inspired authority. . . . The Jew suffered because he constantly denied divine authority in mortal man” (322). It was his aspiration to humanize Moses: to reveal him as man whose ideas of deity are self-generated (like Bacmeister’s

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Moses). Moses recognizes at the end that he and Aaron, “drunk with legislation” precisely in the sense criticized by Adams, have heaped up mandates and prohibitions until the people rush from them into lawlessness (365). Moses confesses that he himself (thus fulfilling the aspirations of Bacmeister’s Maheli!) has broken all ten of the Commandments: he has murdered and stolen from the Egyptians; he committed adultery with an Ethiopian woman while Zipporah was still alive; he cursed his mother and father when he learned the secret of his birth; he coveted the throne of Egypt; and he worshipped a false god: “though I tried to put God first, my own fulfillment was my idol” (367). He looks forward to the time when “men will formulate their own liberty” and “will require no more directions than a tree” (366). Rejecting Aaron’s Jahweh as unjust, “a god of rape and massacre, a tribal god jealous of his neighbors” (368), Moses believes ultimately in “the spirit that refutes denial, that gives hopelessness power to survive, that strengthens the very will to disbelieve” (367)—in other words, a wholly humanized God identical with man himself. To bring his Moses to this point, Untermeyer takes him through all the familiar adventures. The illegitimate son of Amram and Princess Thermutis, he is placed, on the advice of Queen Ni, herself a Midianite, in a basket in the Nile in order to fulfill an ancient prophecy. With his cousin Akhnaton he discusses comparative religion and learns about Aton, the invisible power that underlies all being. He accompanies Akhnaton when he, now Pharaoh, establishes a new capital city known (according to Breasted’s translation) as the Horizon of Aton (Amarna). There he kills a soldier who threatens the scribe Nash and learns of a military rebellion against the peace-loving Akhnaton, led by the military commander Horemheb with the support of the priest Bialim. When his foster mother, the eminently sensible Queen Ti, summons him back to Thebes and informs him of his parentage, Moses, shaken by all his recent experiences, goes off into the desert of Midian to reflect. There he meets and marries Zipporah and receives from her father, Jethro, a staff made from the wood of the Tree of Knowledge that Adam carried out of Paradise. He sees the burning bush—which is rationally explained as a thornbush through which the setting sun glows like a ball of fire— and hears a “soundless dialog” (122) of his two inner voices, which remind him of the essential identity between “the revealed invisible God that

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was Aton” and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and whose name “is legion”: Aton, Adonis, Adonai. “The syllables change; the spirit is constant” (124). From a messenger he learns that Queen Ti is dead, Amarna deserted, the child Tutankhamun now Pharaoh, and Egypt in chaos ready for revolution. Returning to Egypt, he meets Aaron and Miriam, to whom he announces his intention to accomplish “a peaceful revolution” through “organization” and “a show of solidarity” (148– 49). After a year or more of organizing Moses appears before the young pharaoh, who is under the total control of Bialim and the priesthood. Following the various plagues, which are rationalized in the familiar manner, the soldiers and most of the priests want to let the Hebrews go, but Bialim still refuses on the traditional grounds of need for Hebrew workers. During this period Moses and Aaron work out an agreeable distribution of authority: Moses for strategy and movement and Aaron for religious life and ceremonials. Then General Horemheb approaches them and, expressing his fear of civil war, says that he wants the Hebrews to leave. They do so, and, when the priests send their mercenaries after them, the usual “miracle” takes place at the Red Sea: an event explained in straightforward realistic terms by Joshua and more miraculously by the scribe Nash. Once in the desert, Moses tells Aaron that they must “keep them out of the promised land until they are ready for it—possibly until this whole stiff-necked generation is gone” (267) and they are ready for the Law. When Moses ascends Mount Sinai in order to meditate in tranquillity, his thoughts move “in luminous, almost palpable, shapes” (277) and nature reveals to him its ten commandments. There must be no theft, for instance: “Do the stars steal from each other to increase their glory? Does one day rob the next one of light?” “The uncovered universe bared its secrets until all space and energy were one. . . . Symmetry was the essence of God; Order his first command[;] . . . Harmony. Balance and counterbalance” (278). When he descends with these humanized laws scratched on chippings of slate, he shatters them on the idol around which the unfaithful people are celebrating; but he refuses to allow Joshua to kill the idol worshippers. Moses and Aaron sit down to recompose the commandments, which Moses dictates while Aaron takes notes. When it occurs to Moses that

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destroying the idols was not enough, that they must have no more statues or paintings altogether, Aaron—like Miriam in Langner’s play—is dismayed: “That would be the death of art” (285). But Moses is unmoved, and they go on to specify in oriental detail the design of the tabernacles. When the spies return with their discouraging reports, Moses is delighted: “We need every malign agent” (323). Without the persecutions of Bialim, he reminds Aaron, the Hebrews would still be yoked in Egypt. In due course we hear about Korah’s revolt, the wars with the Amorites, and the episode with Balaam. All too briefly Moses’ marriage with a seductive Ethiopian dancer is mentioned; but after the slaying of Zimri and his Midian maiden, the Midians kill Zipporah and their two sons in revenge. Moses, enraged by his own weakness, has his own Ethiopian wife slain along with the other foreigners. In the aftermath of the license and violence, he realizes that he and Aaron, “drunk with legislation,” have been so obsessed with laws that they have forgotten basic decency and “the power for good, not our capacity for evil” (365). After Aaron’s death, he takes Joshua aside and, informing him that he, Moses, will not enter Canaan, hands over the leadership to the capable younger man. When Joshua reminds Moses that he showed his people God in many ways, Moses objects: “No. I imposed him on them. United them in false reverence, drove them to their knees through fear” and away from true worship (379). In Canaan the people will drive themselves. He himself will stay behind with his vision “undisturbed by multitudes suffering and resenting the will of one man” (379). As Moses makes his final speech to the departing Hebrews, the impatient journeyers mutter about the old man whose mind is wandering and urge him to hurry and finish so that they can get on with their mission. As they march off to Canaan and leave Moses behind, his speech still unfinished, “They did not look back.” Untermeyer’s novel, a fictional counterpart to Barton’s popularizations of the Bible, is perhaps less tedious than his early critics believed, but it adds no new elements to the story of Moses. Again we hear that Moses was familiar with the monotheism of Aten, that he was obsessed with legislation, and that he was opposed to art. Its main claim to originality lies in the author’s humanization of the figure of Moses, with all its strengths and weaknesses, and in his effort to sublimate the Jewish idea of God to a universal power underlying all nature.21

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A D-H      M   Though born into a wealthy Jewish family in Berlin, the poet and dramatist Ernst Lissauer (1882–1937) did not participate in the Jewish Renaissance. Brought up within the Jewish Reform movement that preached the de-Hebraicization of Judaism and wholly assimilated into German culture, he was later regarded as “the most German of all Jewish writers.”22 His early volumes of poetry gained him wide recognition, and then, caught up in the nationalist euphoria of World War I, he composed the notorious “Song of Hatred against England”—“dich werden wir hassen mit langem Hass, / wir werden nicht lassen / von unserem Hass”—which was widely propagated during the war years. But during the Weimar years, unable to avoid the growing anti-Semitism in Germany, he moved to Vienna, and, while continuing to write dramas on the German topics that had earlier assured his popularity—for instance, Luther und Thomas Münzer (1929)—he began turning for the first time to such Jewish topics as Jephtha’s wife (Das Weib des Jephta, 1928) and, in The Way of the Mighty One (Der Weg des Gewaltigen, written in 1919– 31), Moses. His drama—a brief prologue followed by fourteen scenes—departs from the biblical account more radically than any other literary treatment that we have observed to this point. In the prologue an angel, the Guardian of the Ages (Hüter der Zeiten), addresses the audience in the “house of reflections.” Whether masters or servants, murderers or prophets, they have entered the present parable and participate in it. From time to time, he continues, one is sent, unchosen, to one’s people to fight for it against the many whom he leads. “Muslim? Heathen? Buddhist? Brahman? Here is mankind’s sole kingdom”; and “man is always like himself” (9). In the first scene that same angel tells “The Voice of the Lord” that he needs a new soul to renew the structure of the ages: the people of Israel. Why? “Weary is the old soul of the Egyptians; but Israel is young. Fallowness came over Egypt’s mind; but Israel will bear harvests, for centuries” (14). To that end a soul, high above other souls, is required. He presents the soul of Moses, which appears wholly covered by a long gray veil. That soul is told that it is time for it to be sent to earth for a great mission but that it will eventually return to the eternal light—after bitter suffering that will make it grow in strength and splendor.

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The next four scenes take place in Egypt. Here Moses is introduced as a Hebrew carpenter in his twenties, the best worker in his group, who is still pondering the dream he has just experienced. Other Hebrews are quarreling, but when Moses, respected for his judgment, tries to intercede many resent his interference. When an Egyptian supervisor tries to carry off a beautiful Hebrew girl, Korah’s sister, Korah kills him and flees. Moses hands himself over to Amenophis as the slayer in order to release the Hebrews from the new labors imposed on them as punishment. When Korah himself confesses, Pharaoh asks Moses to pronounce sentence: for killing he deserves the death penalty, but, because the supervisor abused his office and Korah was protecting his sister, he should be pardoned to a few months of imprisonment. Amenophis is impressed by Moses’ wisdom and by the fact that Moses fulfills a prophecy that a great friend would appear for him. Moses becomes his closest friend and adviser and, within a few months, has fallen in love with Amenophis’ sister Nefretete. Amram comes to the palace to complain that since things have gotten so much better for the Hebrews they have deserted their faith and now worship the Egyptian gods, but Moses sends him away in disgust: “Hasn’t the Eternal One punished them enough? Truly slaves! Scarcely do they breathe a bit of free air but they strike out and misbehave” (51). While he is admiring a bust of himself created by the sculptor of Nefretete’s famous portrait bust— again a nod to its recent acquisition by the museum in Berlin—the angel appears, and then, from a tree burning in the park, the Voice of the Eternal One orders Moses to leave his Egyptian distractions, and Moses rushes away, leaving Amenophis and Nefretete. When he reappears, now in a gray cloak with graying hair and beard and clearly aged, he comes to ask for liberty for the Hebrews, “worn down,” he says, “between the millstones of the Eternal One and my own happiness” (62). After much debate, Amenophis is persuaded by Nefretete to free the Hebrews, and Moses, with profound regrets, departs from his friend and beloved. In the following scenes the action shifts to Sinai, where the Hebrews are waiting in a fortified position for the attack they expect from pursuing Egyptians, but a messenger arrives to report that the army, along with Pharaoh, drowned in the Lake of Rushes. Many of the Hebrews, spurred

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on by Korah, are discontent, but Zipora and Sulamith are both smitten with Moses. Commanding the Hebrews to sing a lament for Amenophis, Moses goes up the mountain to meditate. He tells the Voice of the Lord that the weak senses of man require something visible; and since it is prohibited to make images of the Lord, he asks for a law that he can display. Following the Voice’s commands, he takes a piece of slate and begins to inscribe, not words the Voice utters, but his own inner thoughts. By the time he comes back down, seventy days—not the biblical forty—have passed. Korah has gone off with a group of younger followers and stolen from the Edomites their golden calf. When Amram protests, Korah kills him, and Sulamith leads the Hebrews in dances and celebrations, despite Joshua’s protests. When Moses reappears, Korah and his men rush to attack him but retreat, cowed, in the face of the tablets that Moses holds aloft; but he doesn’t break them or the golden calf. Going back up the mountain, Moses tells the Voice of the Eternal One that his people want neither discipline nor law. When the Voice commands him to go back and punish them, Moses insists that they will not improve. The Voice orders him to take the tablets back down to his people, but Moses, angered, throws them down and shatters them there, telling the Voice, “I’m protecting you against yourself !” (98). The angel, Guardian of the Ages, appeals to him not to reject his people; a Levite and an Elder of Ephraim beg him to return; then Zipora and Joshua arrive. Finally relenting, Moses storms back down the mountain. Another angel, “the Angel of Command,” tries to dissuade him, but Moses forces him to his knees and goes on, crying that he is saving the people in order to free himself from them: “Ich will das Volk von mir!” (103). Then he is opposed by a cloud pillar of fire and begs the Lord to destroy him and save the people he now calls his brothers. When he reaches the valley, he learns that Korah and Sulamith along with thousands of Hebrews have been slain by the Edomites—their punishment for defying the Lord. He tells the remaining faithful ones that “a Sinai is erected in the soul of every human being; and every person must now and then stride to the Sinai within himself” (107). The judgment of the Eternal One means that he shall lead them through the desert but not settle among them. He commits the people to Joshua, whom he instructs to build an ark as container for the Tables of the Law. Commending

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Zipora to the Eternal One, he follows the people as they start off on their journey across the desert. The postlude finds the same spirits together again, and the Voice of the Eternal One tells the soul of Moses that, having fulfilled his mission, he may now make three requests. He asks, first, that he may again have a youthful body and be sent back to earth to help; then, that he may again be with Amenophis and Nefretete. He has no further requests, but the Eternal One grants him a final desire: that he may forever absorb and radiate the eternal light. Lissauer’s drama displays almost none of the familiar Egyptian or Hebraic trappings. His free play with all the biblical motifs—Moses’ skill as a carpenter and the initial murder of the Egyptian overseer (by Korah, not Moses), his love of Nefretete and no marriage with Zipora, his shattering of the tablets before the Eternal One and not before the faithless Hebrews, and many others—illustrates the feelings of the Jewish writer who rejected the Hebraic aspects of Judaism and yet, given a profoundly religious sense, believed in the divinity within all peoples, regardless of race or belief: Muslim or Jew, Buddhist or Christian. But given the historical circumstances—only two years before the Nazi takeover of Germany— and despite the efforts of such postwar critics as Julius Bab to rehabilitate Lissauer and his works, his truly ecumenical play stood no chance of performance on German stages or success in the bookstores.

F   S    Arnold Schönberg, as discussed in chapter 2, was pleased with his 1928 dramatic postfiguration of the Moses story but, obviously aware of its limitations, dropped any notion of staging the play and instead sought to express precisely the same ideas in operatic form: in Moses und Aron, initially as an oratorio (1928) and then as an opera (1930– 32) that is regarded by many as his greatest achievement.23 The third act was left unfinished, in large measure because when Hitler came to power in 1933 the composer did not return to Germany from vacation in France and immigrated to the United States. The work, never performed during Schönberg’s lifetime, enjoyed its first staging in Zurich in 1957.

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The work is notable musically, and has been extensively analyzed, as an opera based on a twelve-tone scale. But I am concerned not with its score but with the libretto, which the composer wrote himself. Schönberg’s source was the Bible in the standard German translation by Martin Luther, but by the time the libretto was completed very little of the biblical text remained. In the opera, as in the earlier play, Moses is the visionary prophet representing pure mind and Aron [sic] the activist leader. Schönberg eliminated much of the biblical material—notably everything involving Pharaoh and the Egyptians—and limited his action to sections concerning Moses and the Hebrews and especially the conflict between the two brothers. Accordingly the first act depicts Moses’ calling, his encounter with Aron in the wilderness, and their proclamation of their mission to the people. Act 2 jumps immediately to the Sinai, where Aron and the Seventy Elders confer while Moses is on the mountain. (The most renowned music of the opera accompanies the next scene, the wild dance around the golden calf.) The act concludes with the confrontation in which Moses accuses Aron of betraying their cause. Schönberg never composed music for the very short third act in which the chained Aron is dragged in by soldiers who want to kill him. When Moses sets him free, Aron immediately falls dead. As the first act opens, the voices of angels summon Moses to the burning bush. Moses begs God not to compel him because he is old and wishes to herd his sheep in peace. But God insists that Moses has seen the truth and must now free his people. When Moses asks why they should believe him, God describes the miracles he will enact; and when he objects that his tongue is clumsy, God tells him that Aron will be his mouthpiece and assures him that the Jewish people are chosen before all peoples to be the people of the one God. Aron wonders how they can persuade the people to love an invisible God that they cannot visualize: “Invisible! unimaginable! People chosen by the One, can you love what you dare not envision?”(40– 41: Unsichtbar! Unvorstellbar! Volk, auserwählt von dem Einzigen, kannst du lieben, was du dir nicht vorstellen darfst?). But Moses encourages him to purify his thoughts and he will succeed. Scene 3 depicts the excitement of the people as they wait for Moses and Aron to proclaim the new God and wonder how he looks. Does he hover above? Is he mightier than Pharaoh? Will he demand blood

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sacrifices? Will he liberate them? When the brothers appear finally (scene 4) the people are perplexed. Moses speaks first, telling them that the single, eternal, almighty, ommipresent, invisible, unimaginable (God) demands no offerings. They must simply fall to their knees to worship him. But the people, accustomed to visible idols, wonder what they should worship. Where is he? They don’t see him. Show him to them! Aron tries to explain: Close your eyes! Stop up your ears! Then you can see him. But the people want nothing to do with an invisible God. When Moses tells God that his strength is at an end and his thought powerless even in Aron’s words, Aron reproaches him angrily, telling him to be silent. With his miracles he convinces the people, who now proclaim their willingness to go off into the desert where, Aron assures them, despite the warnings of the priests, God will provide sustenance. As the act ends they prepare to march off to the land of milk and honey, where God will liberate them from Pharaoh. During the interlude the people wonder where Moses is (on Mount Sinai) and whether his God really exists: “Wo ist Moses? Wo ist sein Gott”—words repeated for many minutes. Aron tries to assure them that after forty days Moses will come down with the laws, but the Seventy Elders say that it is too late. The people are desperate: they demand their old gods so that they may reestablish order and threaten to tear the Elders limb from limb for taking away their idols. Promising to restore their gods, Aron tells them to bring their gold and, after their exuberant songs of rejoicing, displays a gold image that attests that a god lives in all that is. As he speaks, a procession of camels, horses, and wagons appears bringing offerings: gold, wine, grain, cattle, and other things. While butchers slaughter the cattle and fires are kindled under kettles, an invalid woman is carried in whose limbs are healed in the presence of the golden calf. The Tribal Leaders appear, and an Ephraimite proclaims that the people, now free under their own rulers, will subordinate themselves to gods who rule with power. A youth who tries to destroy the golden calf and lead the people back to their belief is slain by the Tribal Leaders, who soon ride off again. Then the people get drunk from wine and break into a wild dance, which is interspersed with quarreling and fighting. The Seventy Elders, seeing this, rejoice that the gods have restored “soul and senses” to the people. Then four virgins offer themselves freely for blood sacrifice, and a terrible chaos ensues. Men strip off their clothing,

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seize women, and disappear behind the altar, celebrating creative power (480: Zeugungskraft), fertility (Fruchtbarkeit), and desire (Lust). As the stage empties, voices from afar celebrate “the golden god” (484: Du goldener Gott!). When Moses returns, he angrily asks Aron what he has done. Aron replies, “Nothing new! Only what was always my task: When your idea produced no word and my word no image for their ears, to work a miracle for their eyes” (498 – 99: Nicht Neues! Nur, was stets meine Aufgabe war: Wenn dein Gedanke kein Wort, mein Wort kein Bild ergab, vor ihren Ohren, ihren Augen ein Wunder zu tun). They quarrel, with Moses asserting his love for his ideas and refusing to distort them, while Aron argues that no people can believe what they cannot see and feel. Aron maintains that the people may be humanly weak but still lovable, but Moses does not want to live to see that. When Aron says that Moses must live because he is bound to his idea, Moses replies, “Yes, bound to my idea as these tablets set it forth,” as he smashes the Tables of the Law. Pointing out that the tablets are also a kind of image, Aron concludes that it is his destiny to lead the people even when he does not fully understand Moses’ thought. In the background the people, now guided by a pillar of fire that gradually is transformed into a pillar of cloud, march off into the land of milk and honey, singing that their Almighty is more powerful than Egypt’s gods. As they disappear Moses remains behind. “Will you allow this interpretation?” he asks God. “Shall Aron, my mouth, fashion this image? Then I have fashioned for myself an image, false as only an image can be. So I am defeated! So, everything that I believed before was madness and can and may not be said in words?” He collapses in despair, lamenting, “O word, thou word that I lack!” (540: O Wort, du Wort, das mir fehlt!). In the brief third act time has again passed and the situation is reversed. The chained Aron is brought in, and the brothers recapitulate their differences. “I was to speak in images while you spoke in ideas,” Aron says. “I was to speak to the heart, you to the mind” (544: In Bildern sollte ich reden, wo du in Begriffen; zum Herzen, wo du zum Hirn sprichst—). But Moses objects that Aron was always satisfied only with the act, the deed, and never understood the idea. He is like a skillful politician: “You won the people not for the eternal one, but for yourself.” It was for their freedom and nationhood, Aron responds. But Moses explains that his images—the golden calf and the pillars of fire and cloud—are images of a powerless

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god, and simply fulfill what it has promised. But the true almighty is not obliged to do anything and is bound by nothing. He employed his gift of speech and image for false and negative ends. Then he orders the soldiers to free Aron, who first rises and then falls down dead. Moses addresses the final words to the people of Israel: “In the wilderness you are unconquerable and shall attain the goal: at one with God” (445: Aber in der Wüste seid ihr unüberwindlich und werdet das Ziel erreichen: Vereinigt mit Gott). As in his play, Schönberg emphasizes the differences between the man committed absolutely to an idea, placing his vision of God over the people, and the skillful orator who is willing to compromise that idea for political purposes and to satisfy the people. But here the two brothers represent the conflicting aspects combined in the person of Max Aruns. Moses und Aron exemplifies the thoughts about the liberation of the Jews that the composer-librettist had been developing since the early 1920s and first sought to express in his stage play, The Biblical Way. At the same time, its pronounced religious theme—the insistence on Jewish monotheism without compromise24—reflects no awareness of or interest in the historical view publicized by Breasted and others that Hebrew monotheism has its background in Egyptian religion. Like most other adaptations of the Moses theme in the twenties and thirties, this one is also largely politicized.

S E V E N

Fresh Starts in the Forties For a variety of reasons Moses largely disappeared from the literary scene during the thirties. This was undoubtedly due in part to the expenditure of intellectual and literary energy in Mosaica during the twenties. But other factors contributed significantly. With the rise of National Socialism in Germany, Jewish writers had other concerns, ranging from persecution to emigration. In addition, Nazi policy actively discouraged German writers from dealing with Old Testament topics. Self-styled German Christians (Deutsche Christen) advocated the “de-Jewification” (Entjudung) of the Bible and encouraged pastors as well as parishioners to give up the “Judenbuch” (“Jew Book,” or Old Testament). One of these adherents, the poet, translator, and essayist Ernst Ludwig Schellenberg, published a volume on this subject tellingly titled The Foreign Body in Christianity (Der Fremdkörper im Christentum, 1936). In Eisenach, where Martin Luther found asylum in the Wartburg while he translated the New Testament, the Nazi theologian Walter Grundmann established in 1939 the “Institute for the Research and Elimination of the Jewish Influence on German Ecclesiastical Life.”1 Accordingly, Moses and other Old Testament heroes had little appeal in Hitler’s Germany, which favored Germanic myths and nationalistic themes. Outside Germany, many writers, if they turned at all to biblical prototypes for their generally socialist ideas, detected a more suitable model in the Jesus of the Gospels than in the leader and lawgiver Moses: Ignazio Silone, in Bread and Wine (1936); Graham Greene, in The Power and the Glory (1940); Arthur Koestler, in Darkness at Noon (1940); and others.2 Even John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939), despite the various structural echoes of the Exodus in the Joad family’s flight from Oklahoma 203

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to California—the twelve members of the family, the trek through the desert, the Mosaically strict laws that govern the roadside camps—has a title based (by way of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”) on the New Testament (Rev. 14:19), and its spiritual center is the revivalist preacher Jim Casy (note the symbolic initials), who is himself aware of the many parallels between his life and that of Jesus. There were of course occasional Mosaica. Louis Golding (1895–1958), a British writer renowned in his day for his novels on mainly Jewish themes, published In the Steps of Moses the Lawgiver (1937) and In the Steps of Moses the Conquerer (1938), both of which later appeared in the United States in a condensed version titled simply In the Steps of Moses (1943): a spirited, well-informed, and illustrated account of his journey in the 1930s with a few friends from Cairo to the Jordan in search of the locales associated with Moses and the Exodus. Citing Talmudic stories with which he had been familiar since his childhood as well as scholarly works listed in his bibliography, Golding follows the course of Moses’ life step by step, providing lively descriptions of places, landscapes, and more recent museums and memorials. In addition to adventures encountered along the way, he offers rationalizations for the various “miracles”—rationalizations that, as we shall see, are gratefully borrowed by some later writers.

T   D         R   The forties felt a new burst of energy, heralded in 1939 by the appearance of three utterly different works. I have already had occasion to discuss Freud’s influential monograph Moses and Monotheism (Der Mann Moses, und die monotheistische Religion, 1939), which appeared in the year of his death in London exile (see chapter 1). There Freud presents his reasons for believing that Moses was an Egyptian and not a Hebrew; that the religion he offered to the Jews was based essentially on Ikhnaton’s monotheism and subsequently attached to the local volcanic deity Jahweh; that Moses, as “father” of the Jews, was the “super-ego” murdered by the aggressive “id” of his still primitive people; and that the murder, long repressed among the Jews as a “latent memory,” created their traditional longing for a messiah. Freud’s ideas, of which the two primary motifs

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had been around at least since Schiller, affected the views of many writers about Moses in the following decades. A radically different work appeared that same year on the other side of the Atlantic: Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939). Hurston (1891–1960), who as an undergraduate at Barnard College had studied anthropology and folklore with Franz Boas, worked on her novel over a period of several years, incorporating various elements of the folktales and legends about Moses that she heard during research trips to her home state of Florida.3 In 1931, in the Journal of American Folklore, she published “Hoodoo in America,” which provided further material for the novel, in which Moses becomes a master of that African and Haitian witchcraft (which is distinct from “voodoo”).4 She also mentions the infamous grimoire known as “The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses,” which describes various magical practices used by Moses and other biblical prophets. (First appearing in eighteenth-century Germany, it spread with immigrants to the United States, then to the American South, and from there into the Caribbean and back to West Africa.) The mysterious Book of Thoth, buried in the Nile near Koptos and guarded by a deathless snake, about which Hurston’s Moses learns from the wise old stableman Mentu and which he later retrieves and studies, suggests that very work: “When you read only two pages in this book you will enchant the heavens, the earth, the abyss, the mountain, and the sea” (53). Already in 1934 Hurston had published a short story, “The Fire and the Cloud,”5 which anticipates the last chapter of the novel. In both works Moses has a conversation on Mount Nebo with a lizard and then, rather than stay there to die, “descended the other side of the mountain and headed back over the years” to seek out on Sinai the ancient bearded lizard “who knows all the things that used to be” (287– 88)—a conclusion that does not exclude the implication that the God who spoke to Moses from the burning bush was none other than that lizard. Here as elsewhere the author leaves open many questions, such as the the one about Moses’ birth that concerned Freud, Assmann, and other scholars. Her Moses tells Jethro that the Egyptian princess “might not be my actual mother as they say. She might have adopted me from Assyria, or found me on the Nile or borne me” (110).6 His uncertainty stems from the fact

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that Miriam, left to watch the basket, fell asleep and did not actually see what happened to it. But she lies about it to her mother and later insists to Moses that he is a Hebrew and her brother. Hurston’s novel, which not coincidentally consists of forty chapters, a biblical and Mosaic number, is striking initially because of the “Negro Way of Saying,”7 which she attributes to the Hebrew and Midian figures in the novel and that her Moses gradually assumes as he casts off his Egyptian education and upbringing. (The use of dialect in a novel with a Moses theme had of course been anticipated decades earlier by Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn.) When Jochebed entrusts her baby to the river, she entreats it, “Nile, youse such a great big river and he is such a little bitty thing” (25). Or Moses, when he reports to Jethro about the fate of the Hebrews during his recent trip to Egypt: “I thought they was in a bad fix when I used to live down there. But they are in a sure enough bad fix now” (121). When Moses journeys to Midian, he passes through a landscape featuring churchyards and roosters perched on the ridgepoles of barns that is more typical of the American South than of the Middle East. It was this folksy dialogue and atmosphere, which can become tedious and often seems predictably obvious, that annoyed some contemporary critics, who believed that it trivialized the subject matter. It was defended by other readers impressed by the author’s use of folklore8— a use analogous, though this is not pointed out by her defenders, to Edmond Fleg’s incorporation of legends from the Torah. And her depiction of Jochebed’s agonizing labor pains (9–13) is surely one of the most vivid depictions of childbirth in literature. On another level, Hurston also incorporates various terms familiar from the thirties: political demonstrations, Roosevelt’s New Deal, and Hitler’s Germany. Amram and Caleb go off to a “protest meeting” (8); Moses tells Jethro that the pharaoh has “got more government projects going on than you can shake a stick at” (121); and the Egyptian “secret police” are omnipresent: “Hebrew began to suspect Hebrew. Men were accused of treason and revolt for saying Pharaoh was not kind” (15). But when Pharaoh addresses the Hebrew Elders he sounds more like a plantation owner speaking to his slaves than the ruler of an important kingdom. Melanie J. Wright, in one of the finest readings of the novel, suggests, “The tone of Hurston’s Pharaoh (who charges the downtrodden Hebrews with

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conspiracy and portrays his brutality as a measured response to a disobedient people whom he is weary of indulging) also evokes Hitler’s attempt to suggest that it is the Jews’ own willful refusal to develop ‘amicable’ relations with the German nation that necessitates their legalized persecution.”9 All these features, however, may be found, more fully and systematically developed, in earlier works that I have considered, from Steffens’ socialism to Jansen’s fascism. Apart from its use of African American dialect, the most conspicuous originality of the novel can be seen in Hurston’s feminist attitude,10 previously unexploited in the works considered so far, and in her shrewd depiction of the petty strife among Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. Herself deprecated by many of the male writers in the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston shows how women are repeatedly put in their place. When Amram and Jochebed worry about the safety of baby Moses in their hut, “Jochebed started to say something, but her husband shut her off with a gesture” (18). Similarly, “Mrs. Jethro” never asks her husband about his long absences: “She was used to it and besides she knew she would get no answer” (106). Hurston expresses her feminist feelings and views most effectively through the figure of her Miriam. When the Elders come to Aaron’s house to meet Moses, he sees Miriam among them. “But what is she doing here?” he asks. “I have called the Elders to me on serious business” (135). When Aaron informs him that she is a great prophetess and respected by the people, Moses says that she may stay: “She would be useful in handling the women” (135). When Jethro chastises Moses for devoting too much time to his wife Zipporah, saying, “Women pull men aside, you know,” Moses replies, “It’s your daughter’s fault. It’s a shame the way this woman keeps me running after her” (221). Most of the women in the novel are depicted as shallow and selfcentered. Zipporah wants Moses to return to Egypt and claim his rightful place so that she can enjoy all the glory of a queen. When she arrives, splendidly dressed, at the camp of the Hebrews, “thousands of women were crowded around staring at Zipporah and her trappings. Mrs. Moses was the greatest sensation the women had ever had” (221). Miriam is disgusted because the women are no longer concerned with prophecy and politics: “They were still interested in the earrings of Mrs. Moses and her sandals, and the way she walked and her fine-twined colored linens” (221).

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Miriam, whose attitude often implies a Jewish antiblack sentiment, is fiercely resentful of “the black Mrs. Pharaoh” and “dark complected woman” (230) and tries to stir up the people against her: “Even if she was born and raised in Midian, her folks could still come from Ethiopia, couldn’t they? Tell me! Look how dark her skin is. We don’t want people like that among us mixing up our blood and all” (243). (This is uncomfortably similar to Jansen’s theory of blood but with a radical inversion because he lumped Jews and blacks together as racially inferior.) She and the ambitious but incapable Aaron come increasingly to resent Moses, “that no-count Egyptian with his mealy mouth” (230). Before his arrival she was the grand prophetess and Aaron was the leader. But now, Aaron complains, “he never tells me nothing. . . . He goes up on the mountain to talk to God by himself and that leaves me and Miriam in the dark” (230). Miriam suggests that it is because they deserted the religion they practiced in Egypt: “Maybe that’s how come we having such a hard time, because we done give up our gods. Isis will sure help you if you pray to her and pray right. Did the Bull God Apis ever go back on us? No!” (230). It is she who proposes that Aaron should make the golden calf, and suddenly the camp comes alive again. Moses controls their lives and deaths, compelling Miriam to beg her brother to let her die: “I’m just a beat old woman and I want to die” (262). As for Aaron, he never recovers from the altercation over the golden calf: “From that minute on till the hour he died Aaron kept his eyes on Moses in secret and waited his chance. All he needed was the strength to seize his hour for vengeance. His hate was strong but his heart was weak. From then on for forty years the underhand struggle went on” (239). Moses, in turn, insults him by saying that he is too unconscious of the people’s needs ever to be an effective leader. “I wish I could buy you for what you are really worth and sell you for what you think you’re worth. I sure would make money on the deal” (245). But we never find the serious conflict, for instance, between intellect and action, that dominates Schönberg’s Moses und Aron. Finally Moses takes Aaron up the mountain, removes his priestly robes to pass along to Eleazar, and then stabs him to death. Moses himself does not die on the mountain but goes back into the desert—almost like Jobab in Kayser’s Moses’ Death—to consult the lizard on Mount Sinai.

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In sum, the novel offers no serious discussion of religious questions and even fails to clarify Moses’ beliefs. It is Jethro who insists that the reluctant Moses return to Egypt. Moses himself has no wish to be a leader or ruler. As far as liberation is concerned, “he had found out that no man may make another free. Freedom was something internal” (282). At the end he simply wants his personal freedom “to ask God and Nature questions” (285)—in other words, both the deity and the lizard, the Ten Commandments and the secrets of the Book of Thoth, religion and nature. But Hurston never investigates more profoundly the meaning of either dimension. Her Moses never even repeats the words on the “tablets of testimony” (241) that he brings down from the mountain, much less the other injunctions and ordinances of the Pentateuch. Indeed, he spends more time with “the religion of Jethro” (111)—that is, a nature religion from which “he learned the secrets of plants and animals, and the living and the giving earth”—than with God. Hurston’s novel is a lively retelling of the familiar story, with mostly shallow characters whose psychology is no more profound than the dialect they employ and a Moses who cannot decide whether he wants to be a religious prophet or a hoodoo magician.11All the various miracles are taken for granted. When Moses sees the burning bush, “he could no more help coming closer to try and see the why of the burning bush than he could quit growing old. Both things were bound up in his birth” (125). But Hurston never explains how and why the two phenomena are related to his birth; it is simply a mystifying statement without reason, as is so much in the novel.12 The suggestion occasionally advanced that there is a similarity between the views of Hurston and the theories of Freud is, in my opinion, completely groundless.13 Unlike Freud, Hurston makes no determination about Moses’ background; instead of Ikhnaton’s monotheism, her Moses turns to Jethro’s hoodoo; and rather than being murdered at the end, with all the implications that deed held for the future of the Jews, Hurston’s Moses goes off into the desert to commune with nature in the shape of the ancient lizard. At best, her novel amounts to a humanization of Moses, not unlike the approach of Untermeyer a decade earlier, but with a strongly feminist agenda and a language that keeps the association with the African American experience constantly in the reader’s consciousness.

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Another humanization appeared that year in England: Arthur E. Southon’s On Eagles’ Wings, which provided one of the sources for DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956). The strongly Christian orientation of the work is signaled by the fact that it was first published in 1939 by the Religious Book Club in London.14 Southon (1887–1964), ordained in England as a Methodist minister, spent several years as a missionary in Nigeria before returning to England in 1915, where he continued his service in the Methodist church while beginning a prolific career as a writer. His first novels were based on his experiences in West Africa, but in the 1930s and 1940s he shifted his focus to religious themes in works both fictional and expository. In his preface Southon explains his reasons for undertaking his novel: his belief that even people familiar with the story have not thought about “the essence of the drama” (vii). The author lists three questions that in particular concerned him: Why did Pharaoh not simply imprison or kill Moses? How did Moses win the confidence of the enslaved Hebrews? Can the miracles of Exodus be reconciled with our modern knowledge of the laws of nature? Southon assures his readers that he has taken no liberties with the Bible but sought only “to fill in what I believe to be the inevitable background,” using plausible information from the Jewish tradition and offering probable explanations for the biblical facts. The result is a fairly straightforward account of Moses’ life from birth to the events at the Red Sea—the moment indicated by the title (from Exod.19:4)—featuring almost uniformly one-dimensional figures and accepted rationalizations but offering no new perspectives of the sort we have encountered in the works of Hurston, Steffens, Jansen, and others. Southon’s Moses is an implausibly heroic figure: “the most popular man in Egypt because of his magnificent physique and his handsome features: prince, priest, warrior, athlete” (49). His “great barrel of a chest and the powerful, rippling muscles of his wide shoulders and mighty arms” (149) are mentioned almost as leitmotiv. He is not only “the greatest lawmaker of the world” (130) but also “among the most highly educated men of his day” (137) and “that rare product, a practical mystic, worker as well as dreamer” (160).

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His allies are equally outstanding. Jochebed, convinced from the start that her son is the Deliverer, “shows genius in her methods” (28). She carefully studies Princess Merris’ daily movements and uses that knowledge to hide the basket just where Merris will find it herself. Aaron has a “high, noble head with its broad brow” and “fine, sensitive mouth” that indicated “dignity and a high intelligence” (179). Miriam’s “fury not only made her fine eyes flash; it gave her tall, shapely form a carriage which was almost regal” (68), and she lives “for one thing only, vengeance on her enemies” (238). Her animosity is initially directed at Moses himself, as a representative of the hated Egyptians, because she does not realize that he is unaware of his true parentage. Merris, the Egyptian princess who rescues Moses, is driven by her love for Moses to send Jochebeth and her family away and, years later, Miriam: “You were all I had to love, and I feared that Miriam would steal your love from me. I wanted you all to myself. You are a man, and you cannot understand a woman’s heart” (101). These figures remain absolutely consistent in character throughout, with no development or change. Moses’ enemies are similarly stick figures. The priest Jannes—the name given at 2 Timothy 3:8 for one of the two priests who contend with Moses—conceals behind his unnaturally immobile face a “keen malevolent mind scheming the downfall of the man he had hated through many years. It was a hatred which sprang from fear, part of the price he had to pay for dabbling with the dark underworld of wickedness” (104). Jannes, whose prophetic dream about a Hebrew child who would become the Deliverer had prompted Rameses to order the killing of the firstborn boys, is the actual power behind the throne of the pharaoh’s successor, Merneptah, whose “mean soul” is driven by “unreasoning jealousy” of Moses (200) and who dreams only of ways to humiliate his enemy— even at the expense of his own people as he keeps ignoring the various plagues. “The stubborn pride of a weak man kept him from yielding to his fear” (205). Yet within “his little, evil heart” Moses “had become as a god to him” (215). Hence his reluctance to imprison or kill him despite his repeated demands for the liberation of the Hebrews. Beyond these biblical figures Southon has added few characters. The opening chapter on the terror in Egypt preceding Moses’ birth is related from the viewpoint of the lame Paseah—a name borrowed from the

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postexilic books—who foresees the calamities soon to be brought down on the Children of Israel as a result of their increase and enormous success. “They were all the descendants of Jacob, that man who was really two men in one. Jacob the Cunning, who had lied and tricked to rob his own brother Esau,” but who later learned the folly of deceit and turned to truth and honesty (9). In Midian Moses rescues and gains as his messenger the escaped Hebrew slave Hakkatan, another name borrowed from a later book (Ezra 8:1). Other familiar figures, such as Zipporah and Joshua, play little or no role. Most of the miracles are rationalized in the usual manner. The serpent is an Egyptian magicians’ trick involving mass hypnotism (219). As for the plagues, from the blood in the Nile through the various invasions of frogs, flies, locusts, and so forth: “where the modern man speaks of microbes, the primitive man speaks of angry gods afflicting a people” (232). The pillar of cloud and fire is caused by “electric discharges” that Moses, familiar with the phenomenon from his years in the desert as well as the cyclones that create the barrier between the Hebrews and the pursuing army, “assured them . . . was indeed a sign, but from Him” (287). Moses, who was already well acquainted with the Red Sea, saw that “the water was unusually low, and it was just possible that the always shallow stretch between Baal-zephron and Migdol might prove to be fordable” (288). But two miracles are left unexplained. The acacia bush remains untouched by the “strange lambent flames” that leapt around it during Moses’ conversation with Jethro’s God of the Sacred Mountain. When he later relates the experience to Aaron we are told, “Whether that Voice shattered the awful silences of Sinai or was a Voice which spoke within the heart of Moses matters not” (156). And the death of Egypt’s firstborn caused by the angel of death is simply recounted as fact. Curiously, in this novel by a clergyman there is little discussion of religion and no respectful mention of Egyptian beliefs or of the underlying monotheism of Aton. Although Moses, as the son of a princess, is trained as a priest, “the religion of Egypt had never touched his soul or appealed to his clear-thinking mind,” because he did not yet know that “his Hebrew origin made it almost impossible for him really to believe that vast amount of crude superstition and gross fetishism of Egypt” (138). Even during his weeks among the Hebrew slaves before his flight he does not

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give much heed to their religion. Only when he meets Jethro, the priest of Midian, does he learn more about the God of Abraham. “For the first time in his life religion touched his heart,” and he understood that “men ever see God in the light of their fellows” (141). “Jethro’s words had wakened the slumbering religious sense within the soul of Moses: the sight of the mountain of God brought it to vigorous life” (142). But we never learn whether that God truly exists or is simply Moses’ own inner voice. In any case, Jehovah is a god who demands allegiance to himself rather than any love of one’s fellow man. “Pity for a nation of slaves was subordinate to his loyalty to Jehovah,” Moses thinks when he returns to Goshen. “He was a man of God first; a leader of the slaves second. Hence, when there came a conflict of loyalties, he took the side of God against the very people he pitied so profoundly” (266). The Hebrews, for their part, share that sentiment. When Moses ascends a hill to observe the Egyptians’ defeat at the Red Sea, “no one noticed his departure. . . . All Israel forgot Moses in the hour of Egypt’s defeat. . . . In that great hour the soul of Israel was revealed” (296). “The deep, passionate religious sense of the Beni-Israel which made them abler than any other people in the world to respond to the leading of God, moved them to worship Him instead of exalting the human means employed” (296).

As the forties get under way, then, they are announced by two radically new interpretations: one making of Moses an Egyptian and of Judaism a variant Egyptian sect; and the other, a radically new literarization, presenting Moses as what amounts to an African American savior figure. The third work is a thoroughly conventional, almost anachronistic fictionalization recapitulating, the author affirms, “the world’s greatest epic, to be told in every generation until the last man leaves the world” (169). The decade also produced two biographical studies by Jewish scholars, which may be seen virtually as a reaction against the radicalizations and as an effort to restore Moses to the Jewish consciousness: Martin Buber’s Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant (Moses, 1946) and Elias Auerbach’s Moses, which though first published in 1953 was already finished in manuscript (and read by Buber) in 1944. Both works, while

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differing somewhat in emphasis, take the reader systematically through the Books of Moses, seeking to expose what can be ascertained about Moses’ life and largely rejecting many of the more radical findings by other scholars: for instance, Eduard Meyer’s denial of Moses’ historicity, Freud’s argument for his Egyptian parentage and the Egyptian source of monotheism in Ikhnaton’s worship of Aton, or Hammurabi’s code as the model for Moses, as argued by Brooks Adams. Both men find natural explanations for the “miracles”: for Buber, they are “Nature stamped by History”;15Auerbach argues for the probability that “the oldest account told of one plague only” and that “everything else is built as a later expansion” on the pestilence and, as its consequence, the death of the firstborn.16 Otherwise both writers seek to confirm Moses’ standing “as a concrete individuality” (Buber, 7) and as a “great hero” whose “remarkable figure” “confronts the historian with great difficulties” (Auerbach, 7). Whereas Buber sees his work as a “history of faith” (9), Auerbach promises only “a truly historical insight” that discards “cherished ideas” (11). T   F    L          Many literary works of the forties, in contrast, show a distinctly Freudian cast, which was noted by early reviewers.17 In W. G. Hardy’s All the Trumpets Sounded (1942) the spelling “Ikhnaton” (106) points clearly to Freud’s monograph, as does the monotheism that Moses learns as a student in the temple school at On (Greek Heliopolis). There he is taught that the peasants, too simple-minded for the majesty of Aton as “the one and only god,” need for solace “their beast-gods and their homely, familiar gods” (105). The monotheistic god of his teacher Ipuwer turns out to be “too impersonal for Moses,” who did not want his deity to be “a disembodied force” but rather “a person, one whom one could think of as watching over one” (284). When he becomes acquainted with Jethro’s God of Mount Sinai, Yahweh—a name he had already heard from his Hebrew nurse, Jochebeth—he decides that it is the perfect deity for him as well as for the Hebrews whom he wants to lead out of Egypt. But he is still polytheistic enough to believe that “other gods existed with whom the Power of Yahweh battled and that the Power of Yahweh tended to weaken the farther the Ark was removed from His Holy Mount” (328).

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Hardy (1895–1979), a Canadian classicist at the University of Alberta and an amateur archaeologist acquainted at firsthand with the Mediterranean regions, whose landscapes he depicts vividly, was the author of several popular historical novels, one of them on Abraham (Father Abraham, 1935) and two about Julius Caesar (The Scarlet Mantle, 1978; The Bloodied Toga, 1979). The subtitle of his work, A Novel Based on the Life of Moses, makes it clear that his interest is literary and historical rather than religious or biblical. He introduces the figure of Joshua’s father, Nun, a former physician and the Hebrew whom Moses saves from the brutal overseer, as the admiring but skeptical and philosophical observer of Moses’ activities. Nun thinks privately that Moses’ Yahweh differs from the Egyptian gods only “insofar as He was a wilderness God and had, therefore, the morals and habits and viewpoint of a desert people” and that Moses did not differ from the Egyptian priests, who “also delude with promises and illusions and threats of punishments and with the declaration that they alone knew the will of the gods” (379). Yet he appreciates Moses’ sense of drama and stagecraft. When Moses assembles the people and waits for thunder and lightning on Mount Sinai before ascending to receive the word of God, “it was, Nun thought to himself with the hint of a smile on his lips, a perfect setting. You could feel the weight of belief around you, and belief, he observed to himself, is self-hypnotizing” (475). Nun also shares a Spenglerian view of history, convinced that “every civilization had in it the seeds of its own destruction, that to survive one could not become too civilized” (318) and that Egypt had become weakened enough for Moses to lead the Hebrews to the Exodus. We also hear occasional echoes of the theories of race present in Germany in those years: “As an intelligent man he [Nun] knew that races weren’t real” (100). But Miriam is what amounts to a racial fanatic, with “the intensity of the feeling of race which the repression of her life had bred in her” (141)— a feeling that causes her contempt for Moses’ Kushite wife. Moses himself is fully aware of the magic tricks, learned from the Egyptian priests, that he uses to produce the various “miracles” he needs— ”miracles” achieved by sheer power of will over others. When the Egyptian priests scoff at his trick with the rod that turns into a serpent, it turns into a battle of mind.

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Moses gazed deep into the eyes of Sebeknefrure, the chief soothsayer. For long instants, whilst their wills battled with each other, there was violent confusion on the floor and the serpents were tangled in a writhing, twisting mass. But then, before the Pharaoh’s eyes, the serpent of Moses with its hooded head, fell upon the other serpents until there was only it on the floor and it raised its eyes and puffed out its hood and swayed dangerously before the Pharaoh. (397)

Similarly, the plagues never actually occur. Instead Moses sneaks into Pharaoh’s bedchamber through a secret entrance disclosed to him by his Egyptian mother and finds his hated uncle and enemy alone. “Moses, putting all his power into the eyes with which he held Merneptah, had willed him to silence. And then, taking a step forward, he put illusion upon him” (416): visions of the locusts, the blood-red Nile, the hail, the death of his son. Shattered by the illusion produced through what amounts to hypnotic suggestion, Pharaoh signs the order permitting the Hebrews to leave. Other “miracles”—notably the manna and the flock of quail—are natural phenomena with which Moses was familiar from his years in the desert. The “miracle” at the Red Sea is attributed to a violent sandstorm that comes between the Hebrews and the pursuing Egyptians and whose winds then blow back the shallow waters of the sea. Hardy’s Moses is a curious mixture of intellect and an almost primitive need for faith: “Moses might understand in his mind, as Aaron and Nun did, that it was the wind and not the Hand of Yahweh which had pressed back the waters . . . yet it was firmly fixed in Moses’ own belief that it was Yahweh who had reached out from Sinai and stirred up the wind. For was He not the God of the Storm Cloud?” (444). The miracle of the burning bush is explained simply as the slanting rays of the setting sun through the thorn tree, “and, by some trick of light, every branch, every spike, seemed to light up miraculously as if ablaze with fire. The illusion was perfect” (360). In any case, the phenomenon produces a hypnotic effect on Moses, who now seems to hear within himself “a still, small voice” that speaks to him as Yahweh and outlines his plan for liberation of the Hebrews. In addition to the theme of leadership, which develops from Moses’ initial indifference through reluctance and success until he becomes what

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Nun ultimately recognizes as “a dictator, as absolute as the Pharaoh himself ” (494), the first half of the novel revolves extensively around palace politics involving principally the schemes and struggles for power among women: first between the princesses Bint-Anath and Tiiy in the interests of their respective sons, Moses and Merneptah, to become the future Pharaoh; and later, between Bint-Anath and Tharbis, the voluptuous and calculating Kushite princess whom Moses marries and brings back from his conquests in Ethiopia. Many years later, Moses—partly out of continuing sexual desire for Tharbis, partly for revenge against Merneptah, whom she married after Moses’ flight—takes Tharbis with him back to Sinai. There a similar battle of wills takes place between Tharbis and his Kenite wife Zippora. This time, finally, Moses recognizes Zippora’s superiority of character and sends Tharbis back to Egypt. Despite his shrewd understanding of magic tricks and the psychology of men, Moses seems incapable of grasping the bitter strife among the women, even in a novel more explicitly sexual than any of its predecessors and in which the women are at least as predatory as the men. (Moses’ Oedipal rage against Merneptah, who is the lover of his “mother,” Princess Bint-Anath, is purely Freudian.) After a quarrel between Bint-Anath and Tharbis, Moses is puzzled. “It made him wonder uneasily just what did go on in women’s minds. . . . Why, he wondered in vexation, couldn’t women be straightforward?” (167). His Egyptian friend Sinuhe wonders if Moses was “fully cognizant about the conflict between his wife and his mother. He wondered, too, whether Moses had any idea about the kind of woman he had married. Probably not, he decided. Moses had always been singularly obtuse about women and what they were really like” (192– 93). Failing to understand that his Egyptian mother is using him purely for her own political purposes, Moses allows himself to be blackmailed by her when she threatens to expose his true Hebrew identity at a time when he still has imperial ambitions. Hardy’s Moses emerges as a figure “of an amazing singleness of purpose” (478): obsessed with the Hebrews of the present, he has no concern for the future—a Freudian Moses, moreover, who creates from the God of Sinai a Yahweh suitable for the needs of the Hebrews at that point in their history. Thus he lays down—or Yahweh allegedly lays down through him—the laws and rules to live by that are required for the present desert

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life of the Hebrews. “Nor was Moses philosophical enough to realize that in the course of the centuries conditions change and that what was valid for the Hebrews at this moment might be absurd a century hence” (478). His view of religion, involving no profound theological speculations, is a relatively primitive one designed for his needs and for the needs of the times. This focus of vision, which rendered him incapable of understanding certain basic human relationships, such as the jealousies, antipathies, and ambitions among women, or the loftier visions of men like his teacher at the school in On or the ruminations of Nun, enables him to manipulate through cleverness and sheer power of will both his enemies and his followers and thus, ultimately, to achieve his specific goal. When he dies on the peak in Moab he is content. “Fear not, Moses,” the Face in the cloud seems to tell him, “for thou hast made the Hebrews My people and hast given them My Law and the imprint which thou hast left shall never perish” (501), despite future sufferings and dispersions and persecutions. “But the Law that thou didst give them shall remain, more enduring than the pyramids, more ageless than the mountains. For it is written in their hearts. Fear not. Thy work is done.” All the Trumpets Sounded remains an eminently readable “novel based on the life of Moses.” It is psychologically plausible, historically knowledgeable (each of the three books is precisely dated, from 1265 to 1220 BCE), biblically precise, and religiously feasible from a Freudian standpoint.

A year later another remarkable semi-Freudianization of Moses appeared: Thomas Mann’s novella The Law (Das Gesetz, 1943). Although the author himself categorized it merely as a “lightweight improvisation”18 and a noted scholar of Mann’s works has characterized it as little more than “propaganda of the better sort,”19 the work has attracted more scholarly commentary than most other literarizations.20 It was undertaken on commission (a rarity in Mann’s career). In 1942 he was approached by the Austrian-born editor Armin Robinson to write, for an honorarium of $1,000, the introduction to a volume of stories by distinguished writers— Rebecca West, Franz Werfel, John Erskine, Bruno Frank, Jules Romains,

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André Maurois, Sigrid Undset, H.W. Van Loon, and Louis Broomfield— “to open the eyes of those who still do not recognize what Nazism really is.”21 As presented to Mann, “the idea was moral-political . . . and meant to treat in dramatic stories the criminal disregard of the ethical law.”22 Mann readily agreed, but he soon decided that rather than an essayistic preface he would contribute a novella about Moses’ initial proclamation of the commandments. His title, Das Gesetz, was meant to designate not simply the Decalogue but “ethical law in general, human civilization itself.”23 Mann, having just completed the four hefty volumes of his Joseph and His Brethren (1933– 43), was thoroughly steeped in the biblical and Egyptological material surrounding the Old Testament. In preparation for his new work he referred to the Pentateuch, Goethe’s essay “Israel in the Wilderness,” Freud’s Moses and Monotheism, and Elias Auerbach’s Wilderness and Promised Land (Wüste und Gelobtes Land, 1936– 38), which in two volumes depicted the history of Israel from the beginnings down to the return from the Babylonian exile (Ezra and Nehemiah).24 But these explicitly mentioned sources, as we shall see, are no more important than several others left unnamed.25 Mann retells the familiar story in a mixture of biblical language (following Martin Luther’s translation) and modern prose, featuring frequent interpolated commentary as well as biblical quotations often so cunningly modified that they suggest parody.26 His narrator, writing with a contemporary sense of ironic detachment, wonders, for instance, why the deserts— Shur and Paran—have different names since they simply extend each other (8:832). He assures us that the battle between the Israelites and Amalekites “is a historical fact” (8:838). After the winds make possible the crossing of the Red Sea, it is Joshua and Caleb “who spread among the masses the report that Moses called on God and held his staff over the waters” (8:830). His God on Mount Sinai tells him he is the right man to elevate the Hebrews to a holy people and that his mixed heritage is a benefit, because “if you were stuck within them and were one of them, you would not see them and couldn’t lay hand on them” (8:855). We are told that the Egyptian princess was inspired by the legend of the Assyrian Sargon to her fiction of discovering the baby in a basket in the Nile (8:812). Before the Exodus Moses and his war council welcome the intensified cruelties of the Egyptians because they make the people more

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receptive to the cry of the savior god. Moses makes the water at Marah potable by what amounts to a filter system (8:834: Filter-Vorrichtung), and the manna, when properly prepared, tastes “almost like breakfast rolls [German Semmel] with honey.” That his arms required support during the battle against the Amalekites shows “what a hard time spiritual masculinity has on its hill of prayer—in truth harder than those who were slashing away down below in the tumult” (8:839). When Jethro advises Moses to delegate some of his responsibilities to subordinates, he worries that they will take bribes. “I know that perfectly well,” Jethro replies. “But you have to take something like that into account, if only justice is spoken and order exists; it is complicated somewhat by the gifts, but it doesn’t matter all that much” (8:845). We learn, further, that Joshua secretly kept Moses provided with bread and water during his forty days on the mountain and that the meticulous Moses was not unhappy to smash the first set of tablets because a few of the letters were badly incised. In some places Mann alters the biblical account for no obvious reason. When Moses returns from Midian, the same pharaoh is on the throne (unlike Num. 2:23, where he has died and a new one ascended); Jethro is Zipora’s brother rather than her father; at the battle with the Amalekites it is Aaron and Miriam, rather than Aaron and Hur, who hold up Moses’ arms. And the plagues, for which rational explanations are offered, may not have taken place: “There is nothing impossible about them; it is only questionable whether—excepting the final one, about which there still remains an impenetrable, never really clarified question—they contributed essentially to the final result” (8:825). Mann made several other more significant changes. His Moses is the illegitimate son of a voluptuous Egyptian princess who seduces a Hebrew worker, who is then killed. (We have already encountered this device of mixed parentage in the novels of Werner Jansen and Louis Untermeyer.)27 As a result, his Moses—like Tonio Kröger and other figures from Mann’s works, as well as Mann himself—has a mixed heritage, inheriting his lustful nature from his mother and such features as his powerful wrists, and presumably his Hebrew spiritualism, from his father. Mann opens his novella with statements that bear this out: “His birth was disorderly, and therefore he passionately loved order, the inviolable, commandments and prohibitions”; “He was heatedly sensual, and therefore he had

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a need for what was spiritual, pure, and holy, the invisible, for it seemed to him spiritual, holy, and pure” (8:808). Later it is made clear that the angel of death, Jahweh’s Würgengel (strangling angel), is none other than Joshua with his band of young Hebrew warriors, who murder the firstborn of the Egyptians—a notion that had already been advanced by Goethe in his essay and adopted by Robert Graves in his novel. But in Mann’s novella these Würgengel go on to function essentially as Nazi SS troops, providing security for Moses and discipline among the Israelites when they become too unruly or defiant. Mention of the Nazis brings us to Mann’s most notorious reshaping of the legend, for his Moses emerges in many senses as a Hitler of the desert.28 He repeatedly uses Hitler’s term rabble (Pöbelvolk, from Hitler’s rantings cited in chapter 1) to designate the undisciplined Hebrews. In addition to vocabulary, this Moses shares many personal traits with Hitler: from the irregular circumstances of his birth and his typical gestures to his obsession with bodily hygiene and flair for dramatic effects and rhetoric. Accordingly Mann speaks of “the belief of the people in their leader” (8:830: der Glaube des Volkes an seinen Führer). It was not only Hitler, but surprisingly also Michelangelo—from Freud’s essay “The Moses of Michelangelo” (1914) and several other sources, such as Vasari’s Lives and an illustrated volume of Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel—who contributed to Mann’s vision of Moses.29 His description is based, Mann tells us,30 not on Michelangelo’s famous sculpture of Moses but on the artist’s own appearance (as portrayed in the bust by the Flemish painter known as Giovanni da Bologna) and his depiction of Jeremiah: his broken nose (from his fight with the overseer) and unusually large wrists (from his Hebrew father). He did this—partly under the unconscious influence of Heine, who emphasized the artistic side of Moses’ character (chapter 1)—he continues, because he wanted to portray Moses as the artist working under often discouraging conditions on the recalcitrant human raw material of his people. Hence the frequent allusions to Moses as the shaping “sculptor of the people” who “in the sweat of his brow worked on it [his people] at Kadesh, his workshop, directing his widely spaced eyes everywhere—chopped, split, shaped, and smoothed away at the reluctant block with tough patience” (8:855)—or “blasted around on them with his chisel so that the chips

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flew” (8:850). The horns that seem to Moses—they don’t actually do so—to spring from his forehead when the ingenious idea of inventing an alphabet occurs to him (8:864– 67) are indebted to Michelangelo’s celebrated statue, which was reproduced on the cover of the first German edition of the novella. Although Mann was familiar with — and used in the Joseph tetralogy — the idea of Ekhnaton’s monotheistic worship of Aton,31 it plays no role in Das Gesetz, which takes from Freud only the notion of the volcanic god of Mount Sinai.32 He was also attracted by Freud’s suggestion that Moses was Egyptian, but rather than make him the child of two Egyptian parents, he chose, as we have seen, to give him mixed parentage. Almost surprisingly, since it would have nicely fit the generally ironic mood of the novella, Mann does not take Freud’s central theory concerning Moses’ death—that he was murdered by his own people— but ends his story with the second ascent of Mount Sinai. From Goethe’s essay he borrowed the image of Moses as a man of violence who, despite his intellect, has no talent for military leadership; and he also found there the notion that Joshua and his guard carried out the murders of the firstborn. Auerbach’s volumes provided the most important source for his information about Egypt and for such ideas as the fact that “one brilliant mind” among the Israelites created the alphabet and that Hammurabi was Moses’ source for many of his legal thoughts as well as the notion of a code.33 In sum, Mann’s novella, written hastily in less than two months, can be regarded in the loftiest sense as an ingenious pastiche of ideas and motifs from various sources, shaped in accordance with the political theme of the collection it was commissioned to introduce. Thanks to its ironic and often parodying adaptations of the sacred legend, his novella received mixed reviews and, in particular, condemnation by Jewish critics in the United States and abroad who labeled it “unworthy” of its subject and “an expression of hatred against Judaism.”34 It is symptomatic that the many useful secondary studies of the novella deal primarily with issues of source—Hitler, Michelangelo, Auerbach, Freud, and such others as Nietzsche35—rather than with its literary merits: notably the pervasive sense of irony that is most distinctive of Mann’s literary genius, or its relationship to other literarizations of the Moses theme.36

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The most obvious fictionalization of Freud’s theory was created during the war in occupied Holland by the Dutch playwright and novelist Manuel van Loggem (1916– 98), who as a student of psychology—he received his PhD in 1953—was fully aware of Freud’s works. Loggem’s Moses: The Genesis of a People (Mozes: De wording van een volk) has been called “a reflection on Jewish identity.”37 Though not published until 1947, it was written during the war years by the Amsterdam-born Jew, who did not register as such during the Nazi occupation and, by not wearing the stigmatic Star of David, managed to escape persecution. Known today mainly for his science fiction and crime novels, he wrote his Moses as a gesture of personal resistance to the Nazi persecution of the Jews, which is symbolized by the Egyptian enslavement of the Hebrews. In his later years he returned to biblical themes in such novels as A Jew from Nazareth (Ein Jood uit Nazareth, 1979) and Paulus (1983). Set during the reigns of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten, the first half of the novel deals primarily with the political and religious intrigues in Egypt as the priests of Amun in Thebes resist, first, the worship of the sun god Re-Horachte in On and, later, the monotheism of Aton in the new capital city of Akhet-Aton. Moses—about whose birth, childhood, and background we hear nothing apart from his awareness of his descent from the Hyksos, who invaded and ruled Egypt for four centuries—is the High Priest of Re-Horachte and “Master of Mysteries” (8: Meester der Mysteriën),38 while his brother Aaron serves as his second in command. He is sought out by an emissary from Canaan, who reports that fierce bands of Habiru are terrorizing the countryside and fighting the Egyptian outposts. Himself a Habiru, he approaches Moses because he knows of the priest’s political reasons for wishing an alliance with his people; but Moses asks time for consideration. The same emissary visits the camps of the Hebrew slaves and tells the assembled group—the Hebrews in Egypt at that time still worship a variety of pagan gods—about Jahu, the “fire god from the desert” (28: vuurgod uit de woestijn), who cannot be depicted but assumes form in fire and flames, and about their forefathers, proclaiming that it is time for them to leave their oppressors and the false gods of Egypt. When Moses goes to Thebes with a delegation of priests

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representing the various gods of Egypt, he visits the camp of the Hebrew slaves to find the man from Canaan. Peeved by the distrust of the Hebrew priest, he kills a brutal overseer for striking the young priest and scribe Hosea. Since Moses’ deed goes unreported for the time being, he returns to On, where a new conflict arises with the priests of Amun when Amenhotep and his wife Tej, as a gesture of defiance against the overbearing priests, journey to On to celebrate the mysteries of Re-Horachte, a ceremony that culminates with a dance symbolizing the battle among the gods. Ameni, the scheming High Priest of Amun, hears rumors about the murder of the overseer and begins to plan the overthrow of Moses. He spies on a service of the Hebrews, who have eagerly turned to the worship of the new god Jahu, and there he witnesses what amounts to a ceremonial reenactment of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac: in this case a young man who turns out to be Hosea is replaced on the altar by a lamb. Ameni realizes, from his appearance and descent from the Hyksos, that his enemy Moses must be related to the Hebrews. At this point a bit of cultural genealogy is interposed to clarify relationships: Moses and the Egyptian Hebrews are all descendants of the Hyksos, who prior to their invasion of Egypt split off from the Habiri in the north. Accordingly Moses, the Hebrews, and the Habiru are all at least distantly related. When Ameni threatens to punish all the Hebrews for the overseer’s murder, Hosea exposes Moses’ guilt. Moses flees to Midian, where he meets and marries Zipporah (a marriage that plays little role in the novel). He accompanies Jethro to Mount Sinai for a celebration by the various desert worshippers of the mountain god Jahweh—a primitive pagan ceremony that, among other rituals, involves men coupling with their animals. Moses learns that this Jahweh was the god of the Hyksos and is apparently identical to the Jahu now worshipped by the Hebrews in Egypt. Following Amenhotep’s death and burial, which are described at length, his son Cherepoe becomes Pharaoh. (Cherepoe — actually Neferkepherure-Waenre, “beautiful are the forms of Re”— is the socalled throne name of Akhenaten.) To assert his belief in the sun god and to break his ties with the priests of Amun, he completes the great temple of Re-Horachte in Thebes that was undertaken by his father. But realiz-

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ing that Re-Horachte is only the visible symbol of Aton, he decides to build the city of Akhet-Aton devoted to the worship of that god in his pure form. He changes his name to Ikhnaton (“Ichnaton” in the first edition, spellings that signal the author’s familiarity with Freud’s work) and imports Hebrew slaves, the worshippers of Jahu, for that purpose. Meanwhile, a messenger, Bajawa, has reached Moses in Midian and reports that the Habiru are now so strong that they want to help the Hebrew slaves, their relatives, leave Egypt. But a leader is needed. He and Hosea appeal to Moses, who is reluctant. Then, while driving his flocks in the wilderness, Moses encounters desert tribes worshipping a god with the same name as the Midianite Jahweh. When he sees a bush burning, he begins to understand that god is within men and that fire is simply “the spirit of the godhead” (182). In the presence of the burning bush he has what is clearly an inner monologue weighing the pros and cons of going to Egypt, “as though the god in the thorn bush were countering his doubts” (183). He decides to undertake the challenge, but before his departure he angers Jethro by circumcising his new son Gershom at the altar of Jahweh—an abominable Egyptian practice that dishonors the desert god! Moses’ sojourn in Egypt lasts several years—a lengthy period during which he makes occasional visits back to his family in Midian. During this time the enslaved Hebrews are increasingly encouraged by reports of uprisings in Syria and Canaan and a general weakening of Egypt’s power under the negligent rule of Ikhnaton, who ignores politics and diplomacy for the worship of Aton. And Hosea, now renamed Joshua, enlists and trains young Hebrews for military service. But when Moses and Aaron pay their first visit to the pharaoh, who welcomes Moses as an old friend, their appeal is rejected: Ikhnaton needs slaves to build his new city, and it is the destiny of slaves to endure suffering. Later Moses approaches him privately, but the pharaoh simply appeals to him as a former Egyptian high priest for support. We gradually learn more about the Hebrews’ new god. A captured Levite tells Ikhnaton that Jahweh is “fire, thunder, the voice from the earth. He is lightning and the redness of dawn” (211). Ikhnaton, realizing that “the god of the Hebrews was a dangerous god who under a different name had stolen the essence [wezen] of Ihknaton” (212), writes his

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renowned hymn to Aton, whom he views in a virtually proto-Christian manner as a trinity of Holy Ghost (the spirit of deity within all earthly being), Father (the symbol of the sun), and Son (Ikhnaton himself ) (221). As the resistance against Ikhnaton increases, both at home and abroad, the pharaoh stands increasingly apart from everyday reality, absorbed in his own thoughts. To relieve the concerns of his advisers and the despair of his mother, Teje, and his wife, Nefertete, he appoints his son Semenkere as coregent. When a series of disasters strikes Egypt—severe drought and heat, followed by downpours that leave behind stagnant pools of water that breed mosquitoes and frogs—they are blamed on the new god Jahweh, while Hebrew prophets have visions and proclaim that “Israel is the people of Jahweh, Jahweh the god of Israel” (241). Soon riots occur in Thebes, and Aton is overthrown and the old gods are restored. Then a darkness spreads across the land, and Semenkere, the firstborn son of Ikhnaton and Nefertete, dies. When the Habiru threaten the borders of Egypt and Moses threatens to join forces with them, the pharaoh finally relents and lets the slaves go. The Hebrew slaves (who now increasingly view themselves as Israelites) do not depart immediately. They remain in Akhet-Aton for weeks while Hebrews from other parts of the country join them there and then, before their departure, ransack and burn the city. Moses leads the people to the Red Sea, where they encamp and wait for the proper weather conditions to dry the morasses so that they may cross. But when Ikhnaton dies and Tutankhamun becomes Pharaoh, Horemheb, furious at the behavior of the escaping slaves, leads a punitive expedition against them. Joshua, who has become a shrewd military leader, launches a preemptive attack on the approaching force and then, retreating, lures the pursuing chariots into the morasses, where his men kill many Egyptians with their arrows. While the Egyptians are regrouping, the winds arrive and dry the morasses, enabling the Hebrews to escape. Acknowledging his defeat, Horemheb gives up and returns to Thebes, where we are told in a quick summary that Tutankhamun’s brief reign is followed by Eje (Ay) and then Horemheb. (Egypt plays no further role in the novel.) The crossing of the wilderness by the Israelites with the traditional motifs—the search for food and water, the battle with the Amalekites— is described briefly (286 – 88). When they reach Kadesh, Jethro joins

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them and tries unsuccessfully to set himself up as their High Priest, but Moses now has a new and fuller conception of god. “He knew that Jahwe was an apparition [verschijning] of the great world god” (291)— not simply Jethro’s fire god — and he feels a great sense of peace as his doubts disappear. During their sojourn the learned Levite Elders, and not Moses, write what amounts to the biblical Genesis and Exodus—an account of the mythic origins of the people and of their flight from Egypt. When they go to Mount Sinai to make their formal pact with Jahweh, they now feel vastly superior to the more primitive tribes worshipping there. When the mountain erupts, Moses ascends to meet Jahweh, who tells him, “Moses, my servant, I have summoned you in order to create for myself a place among your people. I want Israel to be my dwelling so that all men may open their souls to receive me” (299). Moses begins to understand how from a number of freed slaves of various background and development a people was beginning to grow. Hearing what amounts to a paraphrase of the prayer pronounced by Egyptians seeking entrance to the underworld and virtually identical to the Ten Commandments, he pronounces this new pact to the people at the stone altar that he establishes. Yet Moses and Joshua understand that the people are not yet fully ready for the demands of Jahweh’s new religion, and, sure enough, after the celebration many of the Israelites still pray secretly to the old idols that they have hidden and brought along. When the people return to their encampment, Moses and Joshua stay behind to write up the law, but the people grow restive. When they demand from Aaron a visible sign of the new god, he asks for a sign, turning to a prophetic young girl, who falls into a fit and calls for an image of the god. The Levites send messengers for Moses, who returns, shatters the tablets of law and the golden calf, and kills the ringleaders of the pagan rites. Then he returns to Sinai and brings back the laws once more, along with a second contract with Jahweh, who has signaled his intention to forsake Sinai in order to travel with the Israelites. To that end they build the tabernacle and establish a priesthood with its own rigid laws. (When Aaron’s two sons break those laws, they are punished by death.) At this point, finally, the Israelites, learning that “the Lord of the World [de Heer der Wereld] had taken up residence in their camp” (330), begin to feel that they belong to “a people in the making” (333: een wordend volk). But when Moses takes the Kushite Anat as his second wife

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(with the full approval of Zipporah), it precipitates a major showdown with Aaron, who objects to a non-Hebrew black. Moses makes a strong statement to the effect that the Hebrews must serve all people as a model of liberation and tolerance: Jahweh “has liberated all of us who have accepted him and we are all equal before him” (352). The spies’ mission to Canaan, whose people worship a variety of gods, and the battle with the Canaanites are described at length. Meanwhile, dissatisfaction grows among the people, led by Korah’s conspiracy, which is destroyed. When Aaron’s role as leader of the conspiracy is discovered, Moses takes him to Mount Sinai and sacrifices him there on an altar of stones. But the discontent continues to thrive among Aaron’s followers, who demand that his son replace Moses as their leader. Despite Joshua’s efforts, Moses is stoned to death. In the closing paragraph we find a thought that might have come straight out of Freud’s book as, gradually, the sense of their guilt produces among the people their longing for a savior. But the last sentence goes beyond Freud to portray Moses as a prefiguration of Christ. For the thought grows among the Israelites that a redeemer, clad in white and crowned by light (precisely as the high priest Moses is depicted in the opening pages), “shall arise in Israel, an emissary from Jahwe speaking his words and transmitting his wishes to us” (386). We recognize the fictionalization of Freud on virtually every page: Moses’ Egyptian (Hyksos) background and his familiarity with Egyptian monotheism (specifically, the religions of Re and Aton); his amalgamation of Egyptian monotheism with the Midianite fire god into a new Jahweh embracing the spirit of the world; the dissatisfactions of a still immature people that eventually result in his murder and their “traumatic neurosis” that creates their longing for a messiah.

M     W   W   I I One of the most poignant literarizations is the poem “The Death of Moses” (“Der Tod des Mose”)39 that the director of the German Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906– 45), wrote from Berlin’s Tegel Prison in 1944, shortly before he was executed by the Nazis for his activities in the Resistance. The first half of the 180-line

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poem in rhyming couplets, as Moses stands on Mount Nebo awaiting his death, amounts to a recapitulation of the Exodus. Moses first thanks the Lord for fulfilling what he promised and for never breaking his word: So erfüllst Du, Herr, was Du versprochen, niemals hast Du mir Dein Wort gebrochen.

He summarizes God’s achievements for his people: “You liberated us from servitude, bedded us gently in your arms, marched miraculously ahead of us through desert and sea waves, endured patiently and at length the people’s grumbling, screaming, complaining.” Aus dem Frondienst hast Du uns gerettet, uns in Deinen Armen sanft gebettet, bist durch Wüste und durch Meereswogen wunderbar vor uns einhergezogen, hast des Volkes Murren, Schreien, Klagen überlange in Geduld getragen.

He recalls how the Lord swept away those who revolted midway through the Exodus and how impatience and doubt made his own faith sometimes waver. He knows that only an unscathed faith will be able to drink from the ripe grapes of the Holy Land—“Von des heilgen Landes voller Traube/ trinkt allein der unversehrte Glaube”—and that therefore he himself will be unable to enter the Promised Land. But he can now see from afar, when the night of death veils him, the Lord’s promise of salvation fulfilled: Wenn mich die Nacht des Todes nun umhüllt, seh ich von ferne doch Dein Heil erfüllt.

From this point on, Moses’ words to his people as they enter Canaan reflect Bonhoeffer’s own hopes for the German people in the postwar world. He prays for “God’s grace over a free earth so that a sacredly new people may arise here”:

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Gottes Gnade über freier Erde, daß ein heilig neues Volk hier werde.

He is confident that “God’s truth will convert a people gone astray from human teachings to faith”: Gottes Wahrheit wird von Menschenlehren ein verirrtes Volk zum Glauben kehren.

He implores God, who once lived among his fathers, to let his sons be a people of worshippers: Gott, der Du wohntest unter unsern Vätern, laß unsre Söhne sein ein Volk von Betern.

and believes that “a people, no matter how guilty it has been, will always recuperate through Your Holiness”: Stets wird ein Volk, wie schuldig es gewesen, allein an Deinem Heiligtum genesen.

He then asks God to carry out his punishment of death because, as he sinks into God’s eternities, he sees his people marching into freedom: Sinkend, Gott, in Deine Ewigkeiten seh mein Volk ich in die Freiheit schreiten.

Bonhoeffer, like Moses, did not live to see his people liberated, but he was confident that that time would soon come. His moving poem on the death of Moses is much more directly relevant to his own life and situation than the earlier ones of Rilke and Lasker-Schüler.

With The Firstborn (1946; first performed 1948) Christopher Fry (1907– 2005), though he had a decade of theatrical experience behind him, had not yet hit his stride as the author of compelling verse dramas,

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which came shortly thereafter with such works as The Lady’s Not for Burning (1948). His three-act play has powerful characters, to be sure, but very little development and none of the usual talk of theology or law. The action, teeming with such ironies as a Miriam who hates Moses for joining the Egyptians until her own son does so, takes place in the months between Moses’ return from his ten-year absence in Midian (about which we hear nothing) and the night of the Passover, and the scene shifts rhythmically back and forth between Pharaoh’s palace and the tents of the Israelites. As the play opens, Pharaoh Seti II comes to his sister, Anath Bithiah, to ask where Moses is, knowing that she has remained in contact with her beloved adopted son. Pharaoh, whose borders are threatened by Libyan troops and whose son, Ramses, is too young to lead the army, needs the expertise of Moses, the onetime hero of the Ethiopian war. On that day, as it happens, Moses has returned from Midian to Egypt, driven by the blood motif that was common at the time: “My blood heard my blood weeping / Far off like the swimming of fear under the sea, / The sobbing at night below the garden” (20).40 He and Aaron come to the palace and tell the welcoming pharaoh about the many cruel and unnecessary deaths among the Israelites, but Seti is unimpressed. When he asks Moses to command his army, Moses refuses, saying that he has a greater victory in mind for Egypt than his earlier one over Ethiopia: “That she should come to see her own shame / And discover justice for my people” (23). When he leaves the palace, Ramses, who still remembers Moses as his boyhood hero, follows him back to Miriam’s tent. Miriam is contemptuous of her brother: “A king’s daughter / Swallowed him and spat out this outlaw” (27). When he speaks to her of God and Israel, the disillusioned prophetess replies, “Israel’s the legend I told you in the nursery. / We’ve no more spirit to support a God” (29). Ramses urges Moses to accepts Seti’s offer, arguing that he will then be in a better position to help the Hebrews—a proposal Moses indignantly rejects, saying that it would be “like adultery” (31), serving Egypt while wed to Israel. Miriam’s son Shendi rushes in, pursued by overseers, but Ramses intercedes and saves him, promising him a safe position with the Egyptians: a military commission. Moses quarrels again with the pharaoh, who calls him a man without laws. “What are the laws? Tell me, you taker of lives!,” Moses replies. “I am here by fury and the heart. Is that not / A law?” (45).

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When act 2 begins, some time has passed: the blood has appeared in the Nile, and Anath comes to Miriam’s tent to tell Moses that the pharaoh is prepared to concede. It does not happen, of course, and the pharaoh is soon trying to explain to his sister that he is not responsible for “the furious God-epilepsy of earthquake and eruption” (56) that has afflicted his people. We also learn from a dismayed Ramses that Shendi, now an Egyptian officer, “Drives the Hebrews harder than any Egyptian” and “thrives under the admiration of the overseers” (61). When Moses appears at the palace, Anath, who sees both Egyptians and Hebrews suffering, asks Moses, “Does this god use you / Or do you use this god? What is this divinity / Which with no more dexterity than a man / Rips up good things to make a different kind / of good?” (65). But as the darkness spreads across Egypt, Moses asks her only to tell her brother, the pharaoh, that he awaits his answer. Act 3 begins in Miriam’s tent, to which she has returned from the city, where she has been living with Shendi. She finds Aaron putting lamb’s blood on the entrance posts in preparation for the “hawk of death” (72) that God is about to unleash. When Shendi arrives, Moses warns Miriam to keep him in the tent, but Shendi refuses, tearing off his Egyptian insignia and saying that his blood still makes him a Jew. He leaves the tent, and Miriam, following, is heard crying outside over her dead (firstborn) son. Meanwhile, back in the palace, Ramses is scheduled to meet his new Syrian wife and to assume the crown from his father, but he too falls dead as the firstborn. Moses is left wondering, “Anath—Egypt, / Why was it I that had to be disaster to you? I do not know why the necessity of God / Should feed on grief; but it seems to” (83). As the play ends, Moses can only promise Anath that morning will again come to Egypt as well as Israel. “We must each find our separate meaning / In the persuasion of our days / Until we meet in the meaning of the world” (84). Fry’s unusually depressing Moses play, with all its ironies, must obviously be read in light of the recently ended Second World War, which brought misery and death to both sides. Some good Germans, like Ramses, died along with the Jews and political prisoners in the concentration camps, while some of the oppressed, like Shendi, collaborated with their Nazi oppressors. The widows on both sides, Anath and Miriam, were left to weep and mourn, while the leaders, lamenting their lack of power when matters went beyond their control, ultimately wondered at the sense of it all.

E I G H T

Denominational Moses The postwar years witnessed a pronounced surge in religion, primarily but not exclusively in the United States, resulting at least in part from the spiritual reassessment produced by the ideological challenges and horrors of World War II.1 This phenomenon helps to account for the enormous success of DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956)2 and the appearance of several Moses novels, as well as the scholarly interest in the new field of religion and literature marked in 1950 by the establishment of the graduate program in Religion and Art in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago.3 Conspicuous among the novels are those with a pronounced denominational slant, which differs distinctly from the political and ideological biases of the twenties and forties.

A M      M   The third among the acknowledged fictional sources for DeMille’s The Ten Commandments —after Ingraham’s Pillar of Fire and Southon’s On Eagles’ Wings—was Dorothy Clarke Wilson’s best seller, Prince of Egypt (1949). Like Southon, the widely traveled Wilson (1904– 2003) was active in the Methodist church (in her home state of Maine), and her many plays, novels, and biographies, which also include novels about such biblical figures as Amos and Jesus, reveal her typically Methodist commitment to missionary activity and social service, for instance, Ten Fingers for God (1966; about Paul Brand, a missionary to the lepers in India) and The Story of Dorothea Dix: American Reformer (1975).

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Her most popular work, Prince of Egypt, which won the Westminster Prize for the best religious book of the year, emphasizes precisely those themes: it opens with a section in which the boy Moses, while accompanying an Egyptian campaign in Syria, impulsively and at personal risk frees a young slave; it closes with a scene in which Nehsi, father of Moses’ Nubian wife, Tharbis, as leader of the pursuing Egyptian troops, saves the Hebrews by wittingly directing his chariots into the closing waters of the Red Sea. “Only through the Nehsis of the world, those who were willing to suffer and become consumed for the sake of their brother men, could the Eternal fully reveal himself” (423). A Bildungsroman, the novel traces Moses’ development from instinctive feelings in his boyhood to the understanding of the mature man, who places human relationships at the center of his religious belief. Wilson’s wholly rationalizing novel offers perfectly plausible explanations for all the miracles, several of which are based, as she notes (424), on Golding’s account In the Steps of Moses. The burning bush, for instance, stems from a striking image created by rays of the setting sun passing through dust swirling in the branches of an acacia tree. To Wilson’s Moses this “unspeakable beauty born out of agonizing conflict” suggests that “Yahweh had not finished his work of creation. He was still trying, patiently and in desperate agony of spirit, to create man in his own likeness” (349). In any case, the moving experience is followed directly by a dream in which the voice of “Yahweh, the Eternal,” commands Moses to go down to Egypt. The crossing of the Red Sea is made possible by the tides, with which Moses was familiar. The miracle with the staff and the serpent is a magician’s trick Moses learned as a pupil from the temple priests. The blood-filled Nile, the darkness covering the land, and the ensuing plagues are all the indirect results of ashes spewed from volcanic mountains near the Upper Nile and the resulting contamination of the water. Pharaoh’s beloved son succumbs to an illness that has already made him sickly for months. Although the novel features a rich Egyptological background, the author does not focus on the magic and miracles but rather on the palace intrigues—among the priests, who oppose the pharaoh’s project to shift the capital from their temple of Amon in Thebes to his new city, PerRamses, in the Nile delta, and among the various women competing for

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Moses’ affection: his Egyptian mother, Sitra; the princess Nefretiri, whom he first loves and marries; his nagging and discontented Midian wife, Zipporah, who deserts him out of desire for a livelier life in the city of Ezion-geber; and his Nubian wife, Tharbis, whom he initially marries for tactical reasons in return for victory over Nubia but who eventually becomes his beloved spouse for life. Within this framework Moses undergoes his personal development: at the temple in On, where he is apprenticed as a scribe; as “favorite of pharaoh” for saving the life of his best friend and the pharaoh’s favorite son, Amon-nebet; then in Nubia, where he is sent through the schemes of the pharaoh’s other son, Ramses, who wants to remove Moses as the protector and supporter of his competitor for the throne. When Moses returns as victor from Nubia, Amon-nebet is dead, and the pharaoh, enlisting his help in his struggle against the priests, sends Moses to Goshen to hasten the completion of the new city of Per-Ramses. Moses is physically attacked at one point by the proud Hebrew slaves (and saved by Miriam) and in the course of things meets the elderly and bed-bound Jochebed, who relates the tale of the birth and loss of her younger son—without yet letting him know that he was that child. Back in Thebes, the ambitious Nefretiri tricks her father, the pharaoh, who is saddened by the death of his wife, into naming Moses his successor, rather than Ramses, and wedding her to Moses. She kills the elderly nurse, the only Egyptian who otherwise knows the true circumstances of Moses’ birth, and demands that Moses divorce Tharbis. Sent back to complete his work at Per-Ramses, Moses finally learns his true identity. In an effort to understand this heritage, he lives for a time secretly among the Hebrew workers, but “the fact that he shared their uncouthness made it not less but more repulsive” (263). When the depraved overseer of his crew rapes Miriam, Moses kills him and is betrayed by Dathan, a scheming Hebrew foreman. It is during his ten years in Midian, where he is married to the restless and discontented Zipporah, that Moses first thinks seriously about religion. From an aged priest he had earlier heard about Ikhanaton’s religion of Aton, “the creator of life and of beauty, the giver of all good” (103). An Egyptian scribe taught him the more cynical lesson that religion is “the one thing necessary to make the poor man contented with his lot[,] . . . the

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promise of equality in the hereafter and the hope of immortality” (134). In Midian he now unwittingly absorbs much that, implicitly, he later adapts to help the Hebrews in their desert wanderings and to shape their new religion. (Those later years are not depicted in the novel; Wilson expects her readers to draw from general acquaintance with the legend the implicit conclusions.) As a shepherd he learns the tricks of nature that later enable him in the desert to obtain for the Hebrews water stored in porous limestone and sustenance from the sweet globules that fall from the tamarisk trees (phenomena also based on Golding’s In the Steps of Moses). From Jethro’s worship of the God of the (volcanic) Mountain he learns many of the practices that he later adapts for the Hebrews: slaying and eating the firstborn lamb and smearing its blood on the entrance posts to the tent to keep out the evil spirits; the Tent of Meeting where Jethro communes with Yahweh when he comes down from his mountain and resides for a time in the pillar of incense smoke; Jethro sitting patiently in judgment of his tribe; and others. From traveling tale-tellers he hears many of the stories (e.g., regarding the creation) that we recognize from the Book of Genesis. For the time being, however, he simply accepts these practices mindlessly: “He was through asking questions about god and men. Questioning brought nothing but trouble” (286). As long as he was still in Egypt he had questioned, and where had it led him? Ultimately he comes to the realization that true religion is revealed only through the sacrifice of men and women who are willing to suffer for the sake of their fellows. His life in Midian changes when Jethro sends him as his representative to a meeting with the pharaoh’s envoy at Ezion-geber, and Moses is invited to remain in the city as manager of the coppermines of the wealthy businessman Eldad. When he decides to go back to the desert, his discontented wife Zipporah leaves him and goes to stay with the lecherous Eldad. It is at this point that Moses finally climbs the holy mountain and has his encounter with God the Creator. “Yahweh did not smite him. He had reserved for this supreme audacity an even more effective punishment: to let him live” (348). Back in Egypt, he labors as a slave and is whipped by the Egyptian foremen while secretly, with Aaron, proclaiming his message to groups of Hebrews, who regard him as a madman. “I hear he got away once and

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came back. I always thought he was crazy, and that proves it” (259). It takes his trick with the serpent-staff to impress them. But when his feats are exposed by Pharaoh’s priests, the Hebrews suffer doubly. Led by Dathan, they try to stone Moses to death, but Miriam saves him again with the serpent trick. Following the various plagues, there is public pressure for the Hebrews to leave—pressure nurtured by the priests. “Naturally they don’t think the Hebrews are really to blame,” Moses is told by Tharbis’ father, Neshi, who has become Pharaoh’s chief adviser. “You and I both know what their purpose is, to balk Ramses’ building operations in the Delta” (386). When Nefretiri, who after Moses’ flight married Ramses, begs him to save their dying child with his magical staff, he arrives too late (and so his magical abilities are not tested). When Moses leads the Exodus, it is Tharbis who accompanies him. Wilson’s Prince of Egypt neatly rounds out the decade that was heralded by Freud and Hurston. Without being ideologically slanted, it presents the reader with a thoroughly humanized Moses in a realistic setting: a Methodist Moses, so to speak, who is obsessed neither with law nor with theology but who believes in salvation through service to one’s fellow human beings. “It was so incredibly simple! For if Yahweh had created man in his likeness, then did it not follow that in man at his best one might also behold the likeness of the Eternal?” (423). It is this insight that motivates Moses to go back down to his people at the Red Sea and lead them into what he knows will be many years of tribulation.

T J    M   The Polish American Jewish writer Sholem Asch (1880–1957) is commonly recognized to have been the finest Yiddish-language author of the early twentieth century. Nominated in 1933 for a Nobel Prize, the honorary president of the Yiddish PEN Club (1928) was included in 1936 by Ludwig Lewisohn among the world’s ten greatest living Jews.4 But beginning in 1939 that rapturous enthusiasm changed. That year—the same year that saw the resurgence of Moses in many quarters—Asch published his Jesus novel, The Nazarene, which was followed in the course of the next decade by his fictional biographies of Paul (The Apostle, 1943),

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and Jesus’ mother (Mary, 1949). Although those books were best sellers and won critical acclaim in the United States, Asch was boycotted by Yiddish newspapers, and even his translator, Maurice Samuel, refused to take on the third volume. Asch was by no means the only prominent Jewish artist during those war years to attempt a reconciliation of Judaism and Christianity and to claim Jesus as a Jewish martyr. Marc Chagall, for instance, created a number of paintings with Christian or Christological motifs: notably the many crucifixions he painted after 1938. His series of twenty-four lithographs illustrating Exodus (1966) includes one in which the crucified Jesus gazes down as Moses, bearing a Torah, leads the Israelites on their march. But the negative response to Asch’s Christological trilogy by the Yiddish and, more generally, the Jewish audience was far more severe. He reacted by writing a novel that he had been contemplating ever since a trip to Palestine in 1908:5 Moses (Moyseh, 1951). Asch’s novel can be regarded virtually as a fictional counterpart to Martin Buber’s Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant (1946) and Elias Auerbach’s Moses (1953): an effort to reclaim Moses for the Jewish tradition. Like Buber and Auerbach, Asch rejects such radical notions as Freud’s, that Moses’ conception of Jehovah was based on the Egyptian Aten, or of Thomas Mann’s, that he was of non-Hebrew parentage. “It was this Hebrew nature in him which revolted even in his earliest years against the gods of Egypt” (23). When Moses, in his first conversation with Aaron, recalls the pharaoh “who wanted to replace all the gods by a single God,” his brother instructs him, “The God of our fathers is not an unknown living god, such as Pharaoh sought to introduce among the Egyptians. He is the one and only living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (18). At that moment he becomes aware of the difference between the Egyptian spirit of the dead and the living Spirit of Abraham. Later, in a dispute with the seer Balaam, Moses asks rhetorically, “Who was Aton,” in comparison to the living God of Abraham. His answer: the sun, “only one of the creations of the great Spirit” (101). Similarly, Asch’s Moses rejects from his early years the “fable” that he was the son of an Egyptian princess and the reincarnation of the god Horus. He knows that “he was the child of a Hebrew slave woman of Goshen” (6). In his lengthy (500-page) novel Asch develops expansively many episodes that are mentioned only briefly in the biblical account, sometimes

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in his effort to reconcile apparent inconsistencies stemming from different documents (J and E).6 For instance, he provides a sustained account of Korah and his followers, going back to the time in Egypt when they functioned as overseers for the Egyptians, to justify their later dissatisfaction, revolt, and death. The seer Balaam is introduced at various points in the narrative before the famous episode with his talking ass and his prophecies favoring the Israelites. The evil behavior of the Egyptian overseer is demonstrated through several incidents before Moses, catching him on his way to rape a Hebrew woman, kills him. Or, to take a later example, the killing of Zimri and the Midianite princess Kozbi by Phinehas is set in the larger context of the war with the Moabites. The miracles are given ambivalently “natural” explanations. The Egyptian sages advise Pharaoh “that the frog pestilence was a natural thing” produced by fish carcasses and that “it would die down as soon as the supply of rotting fish came to an end” (134); and similarly for each successive miracle. But the author undercuts all the explanations with his own statements: Now the greatest of the miracles which God wrought in Egypt was this: that in the beginning each miracle did not look like a miracle. It looked like a natural phenomenon such as recurred at some season of the year in Egypt. . . . And it was precisely in the naturalness of the plagues that the Egyptian magicians saw the finger of God. (135)

Similarly, the pillar of fire is explained initially as a cloud of dust created by the crowd of foot travelers and tinged with red by the light of the moon and stars (163). But by the time the Hebrews have crossed the Red Sea, “the sign itself appeared, God’s sign, the illumined cloud which had preceded them ever since they had left Goshen” (180)—a cloud that now moves ahead of the procession. As usual, the east wind blows back the waters of the Red Sea, making it shallow. Then, miraculously, “the two walls of water moved away from each other, and between them a flat, hard path lay, dry and firm” (173). As they pass, the Hebrews can see, as though behind aquarium walls, the fish swimming. In this manner, expanding and partially rationalizing in a manner absolutely consistent with the Old Testament, Asch retells in detail the entire story of the Exodus, including most of the laws and injunctions,

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and elaborating but not adding figures or incidents not already in the biblical text. The author presents Moses as a man with “no personal ambitions and no personal aspirations” (330), “in essence a simple man with one obsessive feeling—the distinction between right and wrong” (74). When Moses sees the burning bush, it was nothing astonishing: “it happened often enough that a dried and withered thornbush caught fire in the desert” (108). But the voice that then speaks to Moses from the bush and commands him to liberate his people is anything but natural. Yet later, after “the wondrous revelation on Mount Horeb,” Moses “heard God’s voice in his heart, comforting him” (124– 25). When God commands Moses to record the events of the Exodus, he does not chisel them in rock or write them on papyri like the Egyptians, nor does he incise them on clay tablets like the Babylonians. Instead “Moses decided to put his record on lambskins, using as ink a dark fluid excreted by certain fish” (215). So the book, which also told of first things (Genesis) and gradually includes all the laws and injunctions, would be light enough to be carried about for forty years until the Israelites are finally permitted to enter the Promised Land. We hear at length about Moses’ formulation of his laws, some of which are based on tradition and others on Babylonian law, but essentially they all proceed from the underlying principle of “the inviolable sanctity of the person” (238). The specifications for the tabernacle, which Moses commissions when he is persuaded by Aaron that the people of the invisible God need something they can see, are rendered in almost biblical detail (283– 91). But from time to time Asch inserts comments to emphasize the significance of Moses’ laws for Jewish life in general. “A law which has had the profoundest effect on the making of the Jewish family,” we are told, is “the ancient, tender, and delicate law of denial during the woman’s periods” because it “infused a strange freshness and beauty into Jewish life” and “ceaseless purification” (304– 5). One of the main themes of the novel—a theme that implicitly justifies the Christological trilogy for which he had been so hurtfully criticized— is Asch’s belief in the inclusiveness of Judaism. We learn, for instance, that Moses’ devoted Egyptian mother, the princess Bathiya, who blessed him when he told her that he was returning to his people, converts to Judaism at the time of her death. Moreover, in order to liberate Fiha, the princess’s

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Nubian slave who brought him that news, Moses marries her, believing that “in this woman he had betrothed to God all the peoples of all the generations who would come to seek Him; for Jehovah made it known to Moses that what he had done had found grace in His eyes” (345). His decision is then confirmed by the leprosy that afflicts Miriam when she and Aaron object. (Aaron is not afflicted, we know, because he could not otherwise continue to function as a priest.) Moses himself is motivated by a blind faith in Jehovah, “untouched by questioning or doubt” (477). He accepted Jehovah’s laws not because in terms of human reasoning they were just but because “they were, simply, the laws of God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the Creator of the laws of nature” (477). Similarly, Israel was for him “the chosen people” with a “divine destiny, assigned to it through the covenant between Jehovah and Abraham” (473). Even if that people sometimes wavers in its faith, it will nevertheless endure. As God reminds Moses in their final interview at Mount Pisgah, “Did I not appear to thee in a burning bush? And the bush burned, and burned, and was not consumed. This will be the destiny of Israel” (494). In the last analysis, then, Asch’s novel, utterly lacking the irony of Thomas Mann’s recent novella or the skepticism of Freud’s theories, constitutes a profound confession of faith and commitment to the fundamental principles of Judaism as he felt them to have been exemplified and expressed by Moses. Yet this late novel, meant as a response to earlier criticism, appears not to have achieved the popularity or critical response of Asch’s more celebrated earlier works.7

In comparison to Asch’s novel and to the works considered earlier (the Jewish Renaissance), Julius A. Leibert’s The Lawgiver: A Novel about Moses (1953) presents a weirdly distorted and almost grotesque Moses. Leibert (1888–1968), a San Francisco rabbi who also published a novel titled The Wives of King David (1962), knows his material firsthand, but he has altered the traditional narrative so radically that it is often almost unrecognizable, beginning with the names. Many of the names have been disconcertingly modified, for example, Ah-Ro (Aaron), Meri-Amon (Miriam), Yo-Shu (Joshua), U-Re (Uri), Habir (Hebrew), Romet (Egyptian), and

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Qemet (Egypt); and many Hebrew terms requiring footnotes are used for no apparent reason apart from suggesting atmosphere: Adonoy emochem (“The Lord be with you”), kareth (exclusion from tribe), zaken and zemenim (elders), kohanim (priests), haroseth (mortar-shaped dish), elohim (courthouse), oson (ass or disaster), araelim (uncircumcised), ogol and rehem for the male and female genitals, and many others, not to mention such more familiar terms as matzos, goyim, and shicksa. In addition, from his Hebrew teacher, U-Re, Moshe acquires a whole list of Egyptian words for war science that were borrowed from the Hebrews along with their weapons. In this Hebrew-flavored linguistic setting the figures and plot have been changed drastically. Moses—called Moshe, of course—is the illegitimate child of a Hebrew girl, Beth-Levi, who is raped by an unknown assailant (although it is repeatedly hinted that the father was Egyptian). Miriam (Meri-Amon) is not his sister but the Egyptian friend of his mother who adopts Moses after his mother’s early death. He is saved by the Egyptian queen in an annual ritual, Inundation Day, when the queen, who subsequently plays no role whatsoever, adopts babies who are left at the Rose-Bud Pool. Aaron (Ah-Ro) is not his brother but, along with Korah, another Hebrew with special aptitudes selected to receive instruction at the Royal Stables. Moshe is forced to flee when he kills an Egyptian overseer who is beating Meri-Amon—an act betrayed by Korah, who calls it “terrorism” (105). But rather than head across the desert, he sails down the Nile and on to Tyre, accompanied by Yo-shu (Nun’s cabin boy) as his servant and by Ah-Ro, who helps him to conceal his stutter and fool the border security. He gradually makes his way to Sodom, Jerusalem, and Beth-El, where he hears a voice naming itself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and informing Moses that he is in the land promised to his forefathers. He briefly organizes a robber band and later founds an academy where he teaches government. Making his way, finally, to Midian, he is taken in by Jethro, a priest of Moloch, whose unattractive daughter Zipporah seduces Moses. (She schemes for him to be aroused sexually by watching a bull and heifer copulate—and gets pregnant.) When he first sees Horeb, the mountain is “in a tantrum” (138), with smoke and flames billowing from its summit. Then, to his disappoint-

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ment, the mountain quiets, until finally a spurt of molten rock plunges down and sets fire to the brush, consuming everything except one thornbush. Then the voice of Yahaveh explains that he is the God known under various names to his forefathers. Moshe understands the symbolism: fire was the Egyptian god Re and the thornbush, Israel, which was not consumed by Egypt. “Romet remained Romet, and Habiri Habiri” (144). Before departing for Egypt, Moses is persuaded by Jethro to stay long enough to marry the detested Zipporah. During this period he studies Hammurabi’s code in preparation for his future legal responsibilities. Then Yo-Shu arrives with messages from Egypt, where Ah-Ro has been preparing the way for his return. When he gets back and demands the liberation of the Hebrews from his boyhood friend, Amon-Nofer, who is now Pharaoh, he vaguely threatens the various plagues. But in fact no plagues ever take place. The events he cites all occur naturally from time to time. But Hur, his adviser, tells him, “Suppose you start foreseeing calamities against Egypt—war, famine, pestilence, crocodiles, locusts, hailstorms, the chamsin, anything that will threaten life” (186). People take them for granted, Hur explains. But if someone predicts their occurrence, then “an expectancy has been built up in the minds of his hearers. The banal has, presto, turned into the extraordinary.” If they do not occur, nobody calls the seer a liar; if it happens, then the seer gets the credit. As for the killing of the firstborn: Moses is dismayed by the ritual infanticide that was practiced by the Hebrews as well as the Egyptians. By persuading the Hebrews to substitute a lamb for the child and, as a sign of devoutness, to smear its blood on the doorposts, he created a situation in which the children of the Hebrews were spared while those of the Egyptians were sacrificed as usual. “‘The Habiri heretics,’ one U’eb vociferated with spleen. Behold, they have cheated and circumvented their own gods. While we have offered up our children, they, by hook or crook, have evaded their sacred duty. That was an act of blasphemy” (228). To rid their land of such blasphemy, they drive the Hebrews out. When they leave, Moshe is accompanied by his true love, the Nubian maid Cushti. The Exodus leads not across the desert but, again, by boat down the Nile without any adventure at the Red Sea. (It turns out that the legend was based on a minor episode involving a small

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company of Hebrews rustling cattle and pursued by a troop from a nearby garrison across the water cleared by a freak storm.) Indeed, Pharaoh even sends a message guaranteeing his assistance when the Hebrews attack his Canaanite vassals. Nor does the battle with the Amalekites take place: the iconic image of Moses with his arms supported by Ah-Ro and Hur is simply a papyrus drawing by Bezalel. Moses rejects the kingship that is offered to him; but because the Hebrews still believe in no single god, he leads them south to Mount Horeb. Along the way, and without any instructions from Yahaveh, Moses has Bezalel build a tabernacle with a chest, table, and candlestick in that order of importance. The chest symbolizes the heart, the table the will, the candlestick the soul; without them, the tabernacle that houses them is dead and superfluous (256). When Jethro arrives, he resents Moses’ marriage to Cushti and plots with Ah-Ro to undermine Moses. He advises Moses—as a means to kill time while the plot gains strength—to take small groups to Mount Horeb, one at a time. When the first group arrives, the mountain, after a long apparent extinction, starts erupting again, and at its foot Moses proclaims, in language quite different from that of Exodus, the Ten Commandments— laws for which Moses must invent a new alphabet so that they can be written in Hebrew letters and not in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Back at the camp, meanwhile, Ah-Ro and Meri-Amon scheme to have Zipporah lodge a formal complaint against Moses for bigamy and for disobeying his own laws. Soon the revolt is underway, Cushti is murdered, and Korah tells Ah-Ro that they need images, not the blatant animal images of the Egyptians, but something more subtle: symbolic images of the male and female genitals. When Moses finally comes down with the tablets, the dissenters are dancing wildly around the images, which have been brought together by a man and woman simulating sex. Moses shatters them, and most of the people come back to him. In despair Korah and Zipporah commit suicide, and Moses erects in the center of the camp—very much after the fashion of Hammurabi’s Code—huge tablets of law for everyone to see. Meri-Amon, for her part in Cushti’s murder, is declared leprous and sent to live, and soon die, among the actual lepers. Ah-Ro’s sons are condemned to be burned to death for committing fornication in the Taber-

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nacle. And Ah-Ro is killed in a hand-to-hand fight by Moses, who passes his high priest garb on to his son Elazar. After he strangles Jethro for his betrayal, Moses feels that his tasks are almost complete. But when he asks to enter the Promised Land, Yahaveh rebukes him, saying, “Only small men die with their work done. Great men—never!” (355). He must be buried in an unknown place “so as to give every place on earth the chance to claim that it holds your ashes” (355). Leibert’s novel, for all its alterations, is clearly a Jewish novel. “There never arose another prophet in Israel like unto Moshe,” he writes (356). When Jethro criticizes Moses for restricting his First Commandment to Israel—“I am the Lord Thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt” (303)—Moses explains that Jethro still worships the universal. “The universal is cold and empty just as the personal is too full of selfishness. Superior to both of them is the social”: that is, “the god who works in and through humanity” (304). Over and over the author makes it clear that his Moses, no matter how radically he appears to differ from the one with whom we are familiar from the Pentateuch, is first and foremost a Jewish God. We find here no hint of the foreshadowing of Christianity encountered in earlier novels, including some by Jewish writers. Because the context is already emphatically Jewish in language and substance, the emphasis is on Moses’ function as lawgiver within that system rather than as a priest professing its religion.

A M    M   Orson Scott Card (b. 1951) is best known as the author of popular science fiction, but he has also written a number of novels based on the Bible: notably the trilogy comprising the women of Genesis: Sarah (2000), Rebekah (2002), and Rachel and Leah (2004). Much earlier in his career Card wrote a free-verse play titled Stone Tables, to which he then added lyrics for a “rock musical” based on the play (1973).8 Card, as he tells us, wrote the play when he was in Brazil fulfilling his two-year missionary assignment as a young Mormon and graduate of Brigham Young University. One of his principal sources, we learn, was Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, which he was reading at the time; and he

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thought in particular about the relationship between Moses and Aaron. “Perhaps Aaron was like Hyrum was to Joseph Smith, an older brother whose love and faith disposed of all possible jealousies,” believing that he detected “a pattern of envy, ambition, and hubris running through the life of Aaron” (x). As it happens, he saw no performance of his play and heard none of its music at the time, which was performed at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, while he was in Brazil. Years later, while the composer (his brother) and orchestrator (Robert Stoddard) were revising a definitive arrangement of the musical (1981), Card returned to the material, this time recasting it as a novel, Stone Tables (1997), and giving it a historical setting inspired by Charles Pellegrino’s book Return to Sodom and Gomorrah (1994) and shaping it “in part by Joseph Smith’s revelation of the Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price” (xv). So we know from the outset that we are dealing with a Mormon Moses because The Pearl of Great Price—along with the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrines and Covenants—is one of the Four Standard Works in the canon of scripture for Mormons.9 (Smith allegedly translated the Book of Moses from papyri purchased from a traveling salesman in Illinois, but the chapters are mostly original inspirations.) Card was attracted in particular by Pellegrino’s account of Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut (seventeenth century BCE), the daughter of Tuthmosis I.10 Reputedly the most beautiful woman who ever lived, she married her father, Tuthmosis I, after the mysterious deaths of his two sons. Dressing her in men’s robes and a false gold beard, he proclaimed her both queen and king of Egypt, titles she retained after his death around 1665 BCE. She then married her weakly half brother, Tuthmosis II. After his death (presumably poisoned by his concubine eager for the succession of her son, Tuthmosis III), she remained the ruler of Egypt until, sometime in the 1630s, she was killed by Tuthmosis III, who mutilated every likeness of her and effaced all her monuments, in effect wiping out all memory of her reign. (In the novel Hatshepsut predicts the discovery of the inscriptions “hundreds of years from now” [188].) Pellegrino also offered a controversial theory that accounted for the various miracles of the Exodus as direct results of the famous explosion of the volcanic island of Thera in 1628 BCE (during the reign of Tuthmosis III), which had devastating effects across the northern hemisphere (235– 41); but Card does not take advantage of those rationalizing explanations.

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In the opening chapters Hatshepsut is introduced as the princess who rescues and raises Moses as a devoted and loving mother. With all the advantages of his princely upbringing and his formal adoption by Tuthmosis I, he knows from childhood on that Jochabed is his true mother and Aaron and Miriam his brother and sister. Initially, feeling no sense of compatibility with the Hebrews, he achieves military victories at Saba in Nubia. Eventually driven by the desire to learn more about his people, he goes among them dressed as an Israelite, is lashed, and, in turn, kills an Egyptian who is beating an elderly Israelite. Deciding that his continued life is useless both to Hatshepsut—the Egyptians resent and reject him as a Hebrew—and to the Israelites, upon whom his actions have brought nothing but trouble, he explains his reasoning to his beloved Egyptian mother and then flees to the east. From this point on until the affair of the golden calf, as the scene switches back and forth between Egypt and Midian, the novel closely follows the biblical account, including all the miracles, which are not rationalized. (At the Red Sea, for instance, there is absolutely no mention of wind; the parting of the waters is sheer miracle.) The fictional expansion results initially from a far more detailed description of Moses’ relationships with his brother and sister (inspired by Card’s initial speculations) and with the highly intelligent and fiercely independent Zeforah. With her and her father, Jethro, a priest of “the only true and living God” (13), he has extended discussions of religion. (He also hears about the apocryphal Book of Enoch, which plays a role in Joseph Smith’s Book of Moses [164].) From Jethro he learns the Hebrew art of writing in letters, so different from the Egyptian hieroglyphs. And Jethro teaches him about the importance of praying, which plays a large role in the novel. “My son, you don’t know the feelings of your heart until you discover them by praying” (194). Moses finally discovers the power of prayer when Jethro’s dream sends him to Mount Sinai. “A voice came to him then, though he wasn’t sure he was hearing with the ears of his body, for the sound seemed to come from all around him, from inside him, making him tremble throughout his body, dropping him to his knees” (236). It is of course the voice of God sending him to bring out the Israelites. Intense prayer brings answers to Moses’ questions at every crucial moment as he deals with Pharaoh and then leads the Israelites through the desert. He ascends Mount Sinai to receive God’s commandments.

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As Moses watched, the rough face of the stone crumbled and slid down, leaving a smooth surface. Then small bits of dust formed on the face of the stone. When he brushed them away, he could see that letters had been incised in the stone, deeper than any tool could have engraved them, he read, brushed away more dust, and read again. (406)

Meanwhile, Joshua, waiting below, feels no hunger for forty days. “‘The glory of God is on this mountain,’ said the angel, ‘so you have no need of food or drink’” (403). After Moses shatters the original tablets on the golden calf, he brings new tablets of stone, but “few guessed and fewer knew that it was not the same law that had been shattered into shards at the judgment seat” (428). The original tablets, we learn, held not only commandments and laws, but “the whole sweep of the world’s past” (390)—just as in the opening chapters of Joseph Smith’s Book of Moses. The remaining years of the Exodus are compressed into a final chapter of barely four pages. At the end Moses entrusts to his son Gershom two scrolls containing an account of his original vision on the mount: “The higher law, the prophecies of the meridian of time, and of the fullness of time. This is what Israel lost when they allowed the dancing before the calf, not as punishment, but because they weren’t ready yet” (431). Moses instructs Gershom that each new generation must copy the book “until a time that the Lord reveals to you.” This reminds the reader of the Mormon message of Card’s novel: the belief that the prophets of the Old Testament foresaw the coming of Jesus Christ, or the Son of Man. In Joseph Smith’s Book of Moses—the eight chapters of which are contained in the volume Card mentions in his preface, The Pearl of Great Price—“Enoch saw the day of the coming of the son of Man, even in the flesh; and his soul rejoiced” (chapter 7, verse 47). The novel contains several allusions to this and similar passages. At an early point Jethro tells Moses, “The true Son is the one anointed by God. He will come to deliver Israel from bondage” (139). And when Moses, confused, thinks that he himself might be meant, Jethro corrects him: “Not you! Not the bondage of mere slavery. A man can be a slave and still serve God. It’s the bondage of sin I’m talking about, and you’re already too impure to be that Son” (139). Later, he first learns to pray by imitating Zeforah’s prayer: “‘In the

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name of the Son,’ he said, not knowing what it meant, or why she said it” (207). On Mount Sinai, God reveals to Moses how “all time before and after pointed to the meridian of time, to the one who gave himself completely,” and tells Moses that he (whose name means “son”) was named for him. “And Moses saw the Son of God in all his glory” (392). When Moses recovers from this sweet faintness, he hears a voice calling and sees a man standing in the air beyond the edge of the cliff. “His smile was beautiful and seemed kind.” It turns out, however, that the vision is not the Son of Man but Satan, seeking to lead him astray: precisely the scene that Joseph Smith describes in the opening lines of chapter 1 of his Book of Moses. In sum, Card’s novel, written in a colloquial language, adheres closely to the biblical text while adding historical details from his reading of Pellegrino’s book and elaborating many of Moses’ human relationships: notably with Zeforah and Jethro, with Aaron and Miriam (inspired by his ruminations on the possible analogy to Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum), and with Joshua. But the image of Moses that he offers is fully consistent with the Mormon view as presented in Joseph Smith’s Book of Moses: both the temptation of Moses on the mountain by Satan and the understanding—by Jethro, Zeforah, and Moses—of the future coming of the Son of Man.

N I N E

The Fifties and Beyond The postwar proliferation of Mosaica extended well beyond the denominational novels to works with other angles published in Germany, France, Hungary, Holland, Denmark, and Israel, among others. It should be noted at the outset that these works often display, through no fault of the authors, a noticeable reduction in originality: most of the fictional approaches had, in the course of a century and a half, already been tried. There were no new developments in Pentateuch research that captured the public imagination as had, earlier, the documentary hypothesis or the theories of Breasted, Adams, and Freud. We also find virtually no allusions to the many theoretical approaches to Moses that were generated in these same years (see chapter 1). As a result, writers sometimes turned to often outlandish theories in other fields and applied their implications in order to enliven the Exodus story. In other cases they were inspired by film and television. In addition, writers in languages other than German or English, in which most of the earlier works had appeared, were sometimes able to suggest the appearance of originality because their literatures had no tradition of Moses literarizations. Accordingly, it is possible to treat many of the works cursorily and to single out mainly those that, for one reason or another, have a claim to uniqueness. Sometimes mentioned in the present context is Joan Grant’s novel, So Moses Was Born (1952).1 Grant (1907– 89), whose first husband was an Egyptologist and who visited excavation sites in Egypt, became (in)famous as the author of the cult classic Winged Pharaoh (1937), which like her other “historical” novels, she later weirdly confessed, she transcribed in a trancelike state as records of her own previous incarnations.2 In So 251

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Moses Was Born, as in several of her other novels, she took pleasure in the Egyptological setting; but her story has virtually nothing to do with Moses, who is born only a few pages before the end and plays no role in the plot. The rather preposterous plot allegedly reproduces the letter written to Moses by his uncle Nebunefer, years after his birth, to explain to him the circumstances of his birth: the child of Ramoses and the Hebrew maiden, Habaka, who was brought to Pharaoh as one of his many concubines in the effort to produce a suitable male heir and with whom he fell in love. It involves much palace intrigue as well as a major love element— Nebunefer renounces the throne out of love for his wife—but virtually no Hebrew background until the last few pages, when Ramoses plots with his wife and brothers to have his newborn child discovered in the Nile and brought into the palace as the alleged baby of his daughter Bintanta.

A M   S     M   In his Moses, the Near Easterner (1956), Leon Kolb makes no attempt, linguistically or historically, to create a biblical, Egyptological, or otherwise ancient atmosphere. His Moses grows up in a society that resembles the Viennese culture in which Kolb studied and worked between the two world wars. The life of émigrés in the Sinai bears a closer resemblance to that in the new state of Israel or the United States, to which the author emigrated, than to the circumstances depicted in the Books of Moses. Nor does any deity appear to Moses at any time, either in a burning bush or to reveal the Ten Commandments. Kolb, born in 1890 into a Jewish family in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, studied medicine in Vienna and then served in the medical corps of the Austrian army. After the war, while practicing medicine in Vienna, he completed four more years of study in anthropology and ethnology at the university there and traveled extensively in the Middle East. In 1937 Kolb moved with his family to San Francisco, where he became an associate clinical professor of pharmacology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He and his wife assembled an outstanding collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century portrait prints now held by the Stanford University Library. After his Moses and in his retirement he wrote

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several additional novels revolving around Jewish history of the first century CE: Berenice, Princess of Judea (1959), Mission to Claudius (1963), and The Sage (58– 60 AD) (featuring the life of Johanan ben Zakai). His Moses begins just as the hero, after three years as an officer with the army in Ethiopia, arrives back in a Memphis torn apart by a struggle between the priesthood and the military. His account of those war years to his loving mother, Princess Anath, no doubt based on Kolb’s own experiences as an army medical officer, is reminiscent of Wilfrid Owen and other war-weary poets of the Great War: “War is an ugliness you can’t imagine unless you have seen it. . . . Men are torn open and lie in dust screaming while their friends still in the battle trample them” (16). At the same time, “throughout the elite sections of Memphis, evidence of the war-gained wealth displayed itself” (28). When Moses and his mother attend a fête in the palace of the wealthiest and, next to the High Priest and Commanding General, most powerful man in Memphis, Moses is disgusted by the orgy, which is reminiscent of the most decadent extremes of the European twenties. “Anger and revolt stirred in Moses,” and he was indignant that the pharaoh and his son, Prince Seti, “were forced to come to terms with the money-mad Ophar” (31). To introduce him to a different side of Memphis, his mother, dressed in plain clothing, takes him to the slave market and guides him through the poor sections of the city. She then reveals to Moses the circumstances of his birth. As an adventuresome girl eager for new experiences, she had often stolen out of the palace in disguise with her lady-in-waiting, where soon she met Amram, a noted Hebrew poet, and fell in love. They were secretly married, but when she became pregnant their secret could no longer be maintained. In return for her promise never to see her Hebrew husband again, the pharaoh agreed to protect her and her child from the priests. The child Moses was then brought into the royal household as an orphan found in the rushes of the Nile. Confused by these unanticipated revelations of his Jewish heritage and unwilling to continue his army service, Moses first studies medicine for a year with the wise physician Tsen-Re and then, to gain a position from which he can help the downtrodden, joins the civil administration and requests a posting to Goshen. In prosperous West Goshen, in the salon maintained by the highly refined Anre—a salon that resembles

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Jewish cultural salons in Vienna more than anything likely to have been found in ancient Egypt — he meets the finest representatives of free Hebrew society: an elderly philosopher, a Nubian poet, and the singer Nair-Am, daughter of Atar, who carries messages back and forth between Moses and his mother. Hearing about the writer Benjamin, a cousin of his now deceased father, Moses arranges an introduction, and there meets Benjamin’s son and daughter, Aaron and Miriam. From his repeated visits to Benjamin, Moses learns about the Hebrew religion and its One God. Benjamin also arranges for Moses to meet the few remaining worshippers of Aton, where he learns by heart “Akhnaton’s Hymn to Aton.” But he soon perceives the difference between the two groups of believers. The followers of Aton were “idle and complacent, presuming an idyllic world which did not exist,” while Israel’s God “asked for effort on man’s part, not idleness; inquiry, not delusion” (97). At this point Moses realizes that the Hebrews who needed his help were not the elite in West Goshen but the slaves in the labor camps of East Goshen—labor camps that closely resemble the Nazi concentration camps of which Kolb no doubt had heard before he left Austria in 1937. Requesting a transfer, he manages for a time—and despite the resistance of the military managers—to improve the circumstances of the slaves: through hospital cottages, cleaner food preparation, and other innovations. But eventually he accidentally causes the death of a brutal overseer as he tries to prevent him from flogging an aged slave. Rather than flee, Moses awaits his arrest and trial back in Memphis, where the pharaoh— to save him from the vengeance of the priests and the military—sentences him to ten years of exile. If the first half of the novel suggests the culture and politics of Austria and Germany of the twenties and thirties, the second half introduces wholly new aspects. Along with his faithful servant Monas, Moses makes his way through the Sinai peninsula, paying for food and lodging by using his skill as an Egyptian physician. They eventually arrive at the Village of Mount Horeb, where Moses marries Zipporah and, from Jethro, who is a priest of many gods and not of the Hebrew One God, learns the history of migratory peoples (in lectures of the sort that Kolb presumably heard in his studies of anthropology). In turn, he tells Jethro of his own Plan (always capitalized) to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt and “to

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organize and discipline them[selves] for the final settlement” (142)—a Plan that he is carefully developing in his journal. In order to finalize matters, he realizes, he must explore the territory lying between Mount Horeb and Canaan. Setting out again with Monas, he surveys the Negev, carefully mapping out the route and noting the mineral and ore deposits. He also remains for a time with Jethro’s friend, the legal scholar Reheni, who introduces him to Hammurabi’s Code of Laws and shows him a relief depiction of the Babylonian ruler, whose beard impresses Moses and motivates him to grow his own so as to appear more mature and imposing. Back at Mount Horeb and based on his new knowledge and experiences, Moses drafts a constitution for the Hebrews he intends to lead to the Promised Land. When Moses, at the end of his ten-year exile, returns to Egypt, his uncle Seti is now the pharaoh and, caught between the priests and the military, as powerless as his father. For a time Moses lives in Memphis as an entitled prince, cultivating Khamse, the High Priest, and persuading him that the emigration of the Hebrews will relieve the overpopulation problem during a period of drought and food shortages—and, indirectly, reduce the power and influence of the army, which depends on the slaves for labor and military service. Eventually Khamse is convinced and, when Moses presents his petition to the already sympathetic pharaoh, lends his voice in support. (There are no magical staffs and no plagues, although perfectly normal low tides of the Nile and infestations of locusts exacerbate the other problems.) The petition is approved, and with Pharaoh’s good wishes Moses leads the Hebrews of Goshen in a hasty march to the Red Sea, which must be reached by a certain date: the coincidence of low tide and full moon, which Moses has carefully calculated. The procession crosses the dry seabed while a decoy band of young warriors diverts the pursuing troops. At the end the Egyptians are drowned in the returning tide, and a great celebration is staged on the eastern shore of the Red Sea, under the direction of the singer Nair-Am. (Miriam has virtually no role in the novel.) As the procession makes its way south along the Red Sea, pausing at the oases that Moses carefully marked on his maps, they are attacked by and drive back the Amalekites. Then (in a chapter titled “Israel Is Born”)

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Moses, again with no help from God, proclaims his Constitution (the Ten Commandments). Shortly thereafter he leaves the people for forty days to ascend Mount Sinai, where in leisure (and still godless) he engraves his laws and administrative plans for Israel on clay tablets. He envisions seven departments of government: work, health, education, finance, defense, symbolism (rather than a priesthood), and justice. Below, meanwhile, disgruntled members of the former West Goshen elite plot to make the emigration disintegrate and to inspire the people to return to Egypt. They persuade Aaron to agree to a celebration of the favorite old idol, the golden calf. Returning, the angry Moses shatters his clay tablets along with the golden calf and with Nair-Am’s support quickly regains control and authority. He does not punish the offenders, but to assuage the people he names Aaron High Priest. Miriam dies of leprosy, feeling ashamed at the thought that she betrayed Moses and his cause. Straightaway Moses puts in place his administrative plan for the settlement of Hebrews at Sinai. He sets up what amounts to a sophisticated modern government system, intended to democratize the disparate groups of émigrés (among them Egyptians, Nubians, and other non-Hebrews). While larger areas are being developed for cultivation, the Department of Work assigns groups to go regularly to a nearby oasis to snare the migratory birds and preserve them for a steady meat supply, while others barter in neighboring cities, with the enormous wealth they brought out of Egypt, for sheep, goats, and other supplies. As soon as the food provisions are stabilized, others go to the Negev, where they mine the rich copper veins that Moses had located (shades of King Solomon’s Mines in the Timna Valley!) and set up smelters that flourish and provide the basis for Israel’s industrial wealth on the new roads that are built through the desert and to the harbor at Etzion-geber. Training programs are established for the various occupations, and skilled craftsmen make jewelry from the precious stones that are mined. Inspired by Nair-Am and by a folktale poeticized by Moses’ father, Amram, an Arbor Day is established by the Department of Symbolism and becomes a popular festival for planting trees. A tabernacle is built to contain the clay tablets on which the Constitution is engraved, but the essential job of universal education is handled not by the priests, as in Egypt, but by the Department of Education headed by Nair-Am.

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After the lapse of many years Israel has grown “from a fleeing horde to a young nation” (270) living in a group of camps that might well be called kibbutzim. After the death of Zippora (whose role in the novel is quite small) Moses marries Nair-Am, whose beloved mother, Atar, has died. Then Moses decides that the time is ripe for a move farther north, to Mount Hor. After a new revolt by the West Goshen clique led by Korah, Moses regretfully determines that the offenders must be executed. When he ascends the mountain to discuss matters with his brother, Aaron dies. By the time they move north again, seven years later, to Mount Nebo, “Israel had grown into a nation strong and prosperous, though as yet without a permanent home” (296). Along the way they encounter hostility from neighboring rulers, who fear a people without kings or slaves and governed by democracy, but Joshua’s troops beat back such attackers as the Amorites. King Balak of the Moabites pays the prophet Balaam to come (without a talking mule) and curse the Israelites, but the prophet, surveying the situation, blesses the nation of Israel. When the people of the settlement are celebrating a Day of Thanksgiving, Moses hears them singing thanks “to the One God and to our King Moses” (313). Dismayed by this call for a king—“Is a teacher not enough for them? Must they have a king?” (314)—Moses instructs Joshua to tell the people that he has gone to the summit of Mount Nebo to consider their proposal. There, reflecting on words of the now also deceased Nair-Am—“those who have always had freedom may not understand what it means” (316)—he looks forward to the time of “an ideal meeting ground of freedom and order” (317). Then, stepping to the edge of the cliff, he looks once more toward the Promised Land, raises his hands in a final prayer to the One God, and “step[s] forward into the blue space” (318), removing himself through this “final sacrifice to the future” (317) from any consideration for a kingship. His body is never found, and after a period of mourning the Israelites under Joshua cross over from the east bank of the River Jordan into the land of Canaan. In Kolb’s novel we encounter a modern and wholly secularized Moses. He worships his invisible God, and Kolb makes it clear that the Hebrew God owes nothing either to Aton or to Jethro’s Midianite gods. He meticulously plans his strategy for the liberation of the Hebrews, which he achieves by rational argument and not by miracles. He composes in

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advance his Constitution for the Hebrews and outlines his administrative plans, which anticipate those of several twentieth-century states, through which the wandering Hebrews are transformed into the nation of Israel.

M         C      The Danish writer Poul Hoffmann (b. 1928), despite a prolific output of some fifty mainly historical novels, including a dozen on biblical themes and translations into many languages, is virtually unknown to mainstream media and scholarship. His name is not cited in the standard histories and handbooks of modern literature, even in Denmark.3 This neglect is due in part to his untimely religious fundamentalism. Labeled by one sympathetic critic “a proto-Christian dinosaur,” he terms himself a “rock-solid Lutheran” (beton-lutheraner).4 A second factor is no doubt his identification with the controversial catastrophist Immanuel Velikovsky (1895–1979), who in his best seller Worlds in Collision (1950) argued that many of the epoch-making events recorded in ancient myths and legends resulted from various natural catastrophes. Velikovsky contended that a “cometary Venus” with a sticky tail consisting of an inflammable substance (naphtha) was ejected from Jupiter in the first half of the second millennium. It caused a “reddening of the earth’s surface by a fine dust of rusty pigment”—hence the appearance of blood in the Nile and the various plagues and the ensuing hurricane that caused the parting of the Red Sea. Its continuing influence produced the thunder, lightning, and earthquakes around Mount Sinai as well as the theophany witnessed there by the Hebrews.5 Summing up, he claimed that “the narrative of the Hebrew Bible concerning the plagues and other wonders of the time of the Exodus is historically true and the prodigies recorded have a natural explanation” (380– 81). Velikovsky’s theory has been rejected almost universally by astrophysicists and ancient historians alike, but it was welcomed by Hoffmann, who acknowledges in the first volume of his Moses trilogy, “I have found myself obliged to accept in considerable part Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky’s universally known theories on the collisions of planets, as well as his thorough revision of our conception of the times prior to, and events taking

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place around, the time of the emigration of the Israelites out of Egypt.”6 Both his fundamentalist acceptance of the biblical account and the influence of Velikovsky’s theory show up in Hoffmann’s trilogy, The Burning Bush (Den braendende tornebusk, 1956), The Eternal Flame (Den evige ild, 1957), and The Brazen Serpent (Kobberslangen, 1958). As though to announce the theory, The Burning Bush opens with a description of the bright comet with “shining hair, which stood out from it like a red, luminous mist” (3). The priest Ipi (whose name is presumably based on the Ipuwer mentioned by Velikovsky) is observing the planet from the temple of Ra in On. His most brilliant student, preparing for his ordination into the cult of Osiris, is Moses, who is already aware of his Hebrew background and the legends of JHVH that he discovered on an ancient scroll and does not accept the Egyptian gods. (The elaborate account of his initiation takes up much of this first part.) The “star of Isis,” with its hair, as Moses learns from Ipi, at an earlier appearance caused the flood and is never a good omen. He fears that it signals Moses’ failure at the initiation rites. Moses succeeds, but it does presage the elderly priest’s own death: “The comet reached the highest point in its path an hour before dawn” (72), when Miriam, who is caring for him, sends a boy to summon her brother. Following the death of his mentor Moses goes to Goshen, where he slays the slave driver and flees. Part II finds Moses, after years of service in Babylon as a multilingual scribe and following an encounter in Ezion-geber with the merchant seaman Hobab, in Medina, where he meets Hobab’s father, Re’uel (Jethro), the Kushite priest of El. The two men become friends and engage in lengthy conversations about the god El, in whom Moses soon recognizes the JHVH from his earlier studies, and the ancient legal code of the Kushites. He marries Zippora and settles down happily, although he makes lasting enemies of the Amalekites by opposing them when they try to enlist the men of Medina in an invasion of Egypt. He has also acquired a friend in the person of Hosea (Joshua), who had to flee Egypt after killing an Egyptian slave driver attempting to rape his beloved Judith. Then the ominous red star appears again: “the star continued to grow, constantly changing its position in the heavens until at long last it was revealed to have a blurred red tail trailing after it, looking as long as the hair of a human being” (298). As they watch over their sheep, Moses asks

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Hosea if his brother Aaron had ever mentioned the star with hair, “the one that was visible more than a generation ago” (299)—that is, when Ipi died and Moses left Egypt. Leaving Hosea alone with the sheep, Moses goes off to Mount Horeb. Hosea, alarmed by his absence, soon follows him. There it is Hosea through whose eyes the burning bush is described: “this lone flaming bush with its white light” (309). Glimpsing Moses in the distance, he catches up with him: “his face was ghostly pale and his eyes shone as though he had a fever” (310). Later Hosea saw “at his feet a long, yellowish-green serpent writhed, its forked tongue darting in and out” (312). Again the “miracle” is apparently only in the eyes of Hosea. Moses is unperturbed, and when he picks it up Hosea realizes that “of course it had not been a serpent, it was just the stout staff with which Moses now sat.” He wonders if it was all his imagination: “the bush that burned without being consumed, the strange transformation he thought he had seen come over Moses, the serpent that did not exist” (312). When Moses leaves Hosea to go back to Medina, “the star with the hair rose over Mount Horeb,” and Hosea hears a sound from the direction Moses took. It was a hollow, dull thudding like the sound of walls falling, a rumbling in the earth that gradually rolled closer. For a moment it seemed as if the whole of Mount Horeb shook, as if a roar were coming from the mountain to greet the red celestial beacon. (314)

The star appears again shortly thereafter when Moses and Zippora, on their way to Egypt, stay overnight near Mount Horeb. Zippora is awakened by “a strange, shadowless, red glow. The Star!” (317). Her fear causes her to remember the circumcision they had neglected to perform on Gershon because of his illness as a baby. So she quickly undertakes it now, and sprinkles Moses with the blood. The next morning, when Moses walks out from the hostel to greet Aaron, “a low thunder came rolling down from Horeb” (325), while back in Egypt “the Pyramid of Mysteries trembled and groaned, and throughout the whole of Egypt suckling babes let go of their mothers’ breasts and screamed” (325). In the first volume, then, Velikovsky’s comet signals the priest’s death, the burning bush, and the coming destruction of Egypt. But it is only in

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The Eternal Flame, which often owes more to Velikovsky than to Exodus, that the true wonders begin. From Moses’ first appearance before Pharaoh to the scene at Mount Horeb, where two angels stand on a mountaintop and watch the Israelites marching north toward the Promised Land, the cataclysms caused by the comet, known now in Hebrew as Mazzaroth, never cease. Jahweh, standing on Mount Horeb and gazing over toward Egypt, “beckoned Mazzaroth to him, and the star glided close past the top of Horeb, and he leaped over the chasm with sword in hand and landed on its back and seized its reins and turned its head toward Egypt once more” (101– 2). The Nile runs red with blood, “thick with the stench of rotting aquatic creatures” (caused as we know from Velikovsky by the star’s “fine dust of rusty pigment”). Its starry rain causes the river to catch fire with a thick reddish flame that “gave off a strong smoke so lifelike he was able to smell it” (99) and destroys the crops before killing men and beasts with its hailstones. Its igneous tail darkens Egypt and covers Pharaoh’s palace with coal dust. Finally “the silent thunder from the comet causes the earth to tremble with fright” (162) and “a tremendous pressure encumbers the foundations of the mountains” (163). “Chasms yawn and swallow towns,” and “the walls of Pithom crack and slither into the ground, which closes over them with a crash that topples Raamses” (164). The Hebrews are saved from this disaster, which kills many Egyptians, including most of the firstborn, by the resilient marshy soil upon which their fragile houses are built of materials so flimsy that they cannot harm anyone even if they do collapse. After all this, “with ostentatious pride Mazzaroth returns to his master, swaggers before him, and talks loudly about all that he has done” (184). But the comet’s tasks are not yet complete. In a great battle with the earth Mazzaroth cracks apart, “and streams of fire flow toward the earth, but the seas of the earth rise up miles high into the air and catch them, mountains of water drawn together from the oceans and built up like storm embankments of ice against the enemy” (185). All this activity exposes the foundations of the earth, notably at the Red Sea, where the Israelites pass among sea monsters that croak as they go by and stare with giant eyes: snakes, dragons, octopuses. But the Israelites walk easily across the slime, even as their hair stands on end. “This, Israelites, is what it means when Jahweh divides the sea and one walks along its bed from slavery into the wilderness!” (186).

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If the first part is dominated by Velikovsky’s conception of the red comet of Venus, the second part, “The Mount of Revelation,” introduces a new pseudoscientific theme: radioactivity. We learn that the Egyptian priests of Ra were already aware of radiation from the sun, evidence of which they kept buried in the cellars beneath their temple at On. But in the wilderness it is radiation—whether directly from the sun or mediated by the comet or volcanic activity is not made clear—that accounts for many of the miracles and incidents. It explains Moses’ glowing features in his transfiguration and the leprosy that strikes Miriam and others. More important: the stone tablets of the law radiate because they were inscribed by the finger of God. For that reason they must be enclosed in a protective chest made of a double layer of gold, just as Aaron and the other priests must wear special layered garments of leather and other resistant materials. Even so, the radiation causes the tabernacle to glow with its eerie light and kills Aaron’s sons when they enter unprotected. Hence, as Moses explains to Hobab, “should I let these tablets lie unprotected in Israel’s midst” and perhaps be stolen by thieves lusting after “the costliest heirloom of all peoples before radiation paralyzed their fingers” (415). In this account, dominated by the author’s elaborate depictions of the effects of the red comet and solar radiation, which also cause the compasses of sailors to go awry, the expected events of the Exodus take place: the battle with the Amalekites, water from stones, manna, the plots of Korah, the incident of the golden calf, and Moses’ ascents of Mount Horeb. The action is enlivened by subplots carried over from the earlier volume: the adventures and doubts of Hobab before he is fully won over to the worship of Jahweh; the love affair of Joshua and Judith; the (suspiciously lesbian) friendship of Judith and Zippora; the escape of Queen Nefer-neferu-Amon after the death of her husband in his pursuit of the Israelites and the invasion of Egypt by the Amalekites—an escape overseas by ship with whose Phoenician captain she has an implied affair. We learn that Moses reads the epic of Gilgamesh for relaxation (231) and that his laws—which one skeptical Egyptian calls “all humbug from beginning to end” (331) and which Joshua copies onto parchment from the broken stones—are based on Hammurabi’s code. His days and nights on Mount Horeb are accompanied by ecstatic visions of past and future.

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The Eternal Fire adds little to the image of Moses that emerges from the first volume; in fact, his actions here remain much closer to the account in Exodus. But Velikovsky’s theories, which here are far more pervasive, add the element of uniqueness to Hoffmann’s trilogy that makes it noteworthy in our context. (The third volume, The Brazen Serpent, adds nothing new.) For all their catastrophism, Hoffmann’s novels present essentially a fundamentalist Moses who adheres rigorously to his own strict laws and principles.

T  M     P  The American poet Aaron Kramer (1921– 97), known for his translations of Yiddish works and of such German poets as Heinrich Heine and Rainer Maria Rilke, made his reputation chiefly with the many poems of protest and radical critiques that he wrote on topics ranging from labor exploitation in the thirties and the Holocaust to McCarthyism and the 1983 war in Grenada. His “dramatic ballad” Moses (1957), composed mainly but not exclusively in rhyming iambic pentameters, uses the familiar legend of the Hebrew leader as a grand metaphor for his theme of protest.7 The short work begins with a prologue featuring two dreams: Pharaoh’s dream interpreted by the Wise Men to mean that the Hebrews will soon outnumber and overrun Egypt, which prompts his decision to kill the newborn sons; and Amram’s dream that a baby will be born who will save all the others. It concludes with the princess’s rescue of the baby in the basket. In the first of the following four brief scenes the Wise Men warn Pharaoh’s son against Moses, and the princess cautions Moses to be on his guard. Then Moses goes among the Hebrews, who resent his presence; he kills the overseer and flees. In Midian (scene 2) Zipporah is telling Gershom a bedtime story about her encounter with his father at the well when Moses returns. He recounts his experience on Mount Horeb when he briefly closed his eyes: Awake, or dreaming—lo! A conflagration; A bush blazed brighter than the blaze of sun. (39)

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He tells her how God, after shaming him for his fright—“I thought that, like this bush, you’d be aflame” (40)—commanded him to lead back his sheep, bid his family farewell, and “turn [his] face toward Pharaoh!” Zipporah ridicules him for taking seriously a hill, a voice, a burning bush. When the third scene begins, Moses and Aaron are already making their final visit to Pharaoh, who again refuses the request of the “gray fools” (42). The narrator reports that “there was a great cry in Egypt” and “not a house where there was not one dead” (43). Pharaoh seeks out Moses and Aaron at their home to proclaim the freedom of the Hebrews. The fourth scene finds the children of Israel already in Succoth, where the chariots of Pharaoh, who has been persuaded by the Wise Men, pursue them. The narrator relates that “the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground,” and, when the Egyptians pursued, “the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh” (48). The ballad concludes with a scene in which a father and child gaze at the water, where not even a ripple betrays the drowning of the Egyptians. Moses and Aaron watch Miriam as “weirdly she dances” (50), and Aaron complains that “she’s making a scene.” But Moses answers simply, “What matters is that she has never danced before, and may never dance again” (51). Kramer’s ballad, which adds nothing to the motifs familiar from many earlier works, deserves mention simply as another in the long line of works introducing Moses as the leader of protest and revolt and as a metaphorical restatement of Kramer’s many poems on the Holocaust.

Howard Fast (1914 – 2003) is best known for his best-selling historical novels on topics that exemplify his socialist and, later, communist themes, such as Citizen Tom Paine (1943) and Spartacus (1951). This is very much the case in Moses, Prince of Egypt (1958), which, as the title suggests, has almost nothing to do with the biblical Moses. It deals rather with his life from age ten to twenty-three, when (close to the last page) he kills the overseer and flees across the Red Sea, accompanied by his onetime Levite slave and now friend, Nun.

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Moses is always the outsider. His abilities are recognized early by the elderly priest Amon-Teph, who introduces him to the religion of Aton, and by Ramses’ chief architect, Neph. Only after the death of his devoted Egyptian mother does he learn the circumstances of his adoption— though not yet of his parentage. After a fight with several other princes he is sent off on the three-year military campaign to Kush under the command of Seti-Keph, an assignment that necessitates his purchase of the Bedouin slave Nun. On the way there he falls in love with Merit-Aton, the daughter of the exiled physician Aton-Moses. At this age he is torn by many doubts stirred by the men he has encountered: “the caustic irony of Seti-Keph or the practical wisdom of Neph or the strange and sometimes frightening philosophy of this little doctor who lived on the edge of Egypt” (161). Defying the Egyptian gods, “he became what the Egyptians and their neighbors called leshbed, which means an enemy of the gods, and thereby a madman” (216). When he returns from his three years in Kush, where he has become a military hero and has been sent on a futile search for the legendary City of Kush—it turns out to be a primitive African village ruled by a matriarchal council of seven women—he finds both his beloved Merit-Aton and her father have been killed by Kushites for their friendship with the hated Egyptians. Back in the City of Ramses, the pharaoh tries to win Moses as his possible successor, but Moses, now utterly disenchanted with the lavish wealth of Egypt, their mindless killing of foreigners, and their brutal treatment of slaves, refuses. With Nun, who now reveals himself as a Jew and, learning the circumstances of Moses’ adoption, is able to identify him as the son of Jochebed and Amram, he goes to Goshen. The bitter and broken Miriam does not acknowledge him as her brother. But Moses kills the brutal overseer and, with Nun, makes his escape to Midian. The readable narrative is written with all the facility familiar from Fast’s earlier best sellers, and the author has obviously invented his entire plot and action as well as most of his characters. Most surprisingly, apart from the occasional mentions of Aton, for which Aton-Moses is exiled and Moses’ Egyptian teachers, Amon-Teph and Neph, are murdered at Pharaoh’s command, there is little discussion of religion in the novel. When Moses crosses the Red Sea, he has only heard vaguely of the god who would turn out to be Jehovah: “Nun explained that Yavah was the

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great Baal of Midian, a notation less than meaningful to Moses, who had never heard of either Yavah or Midian” (220). It gives far more evidence of the author’s fascination with Egyptology—its social structure, its medical procedures, its architectural practices, and its military tactics, all of which are discussed and depicted in vivid detail. His novel is purely a historical romance to which he was presumably inspired by the recent popularity of the film The Ten Commandments (1956), and it adds little to our understanding of uses and abuses of Moses.

T  T    M   In the 1970s the increasingly popular medium of television began to generate its own literary versions of Moses: notably the Italian-produced miniseries Moses the Lawgiver (1975), featuring an international cast starring such actors as Burt Lancaster, Anthony Quayle, and Ingrid Thulin. Thomas Keneally’s Moses the Lawgiver (1975) is formally classified as nonfiction, and up to a point that classification is valid. The work—copyrighted by the Italian-British television company RAI/ITC—is a spinoff of the four-and-a-half-hour TV series; some of the dialogue is taken directly from the film; and almost every other page is illustrated, in color as well as black-and-white, with stills from the film. Moreover, the Australian Keneally (b. 1935) knows his Bible: he studied for the priesthood but left the seminary before ordination and taught for a short time before becoming a full-time writer. He later achieved fame as the author of the Booker Prize–winning novel Schindler’s Ark (1982), which was made into the film Schindler’s List. His version follows more closely the sequence of events recounted in the Books of Moses than most other versions. Yet Keneally’s work amounts to far more than a screenplay or recapitulation of the Bible. The author has put his whole account into the mouth of a narrator: a Cretan metallurgist who becomes manager of the Egyptian copper mines in the Sinai. Captured by the Hebrews in the course of their exodus, he eventually converts to Judaism and becomes a trusted friend of Moses, helping “the Representative” (as he is called) to locate water in the limestone of the arid peninsula. Known to the Hebrews as Hur (the same Hur who helps to hold up Moses’ arms at the

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battle with the Amalekites), he is circumcised and marries a Hebrew wife. Crossing over into Canaan after Moses’ death, he settles down on a farm near Jericho, where in his old age he writes his memoirs. Hur turns out to be a highly rational man, who regards events with a detachment that often amounts to cynicism and relates them in a contemporary colloquial language that often trivializes the story. When Moses is seven years old, the princess “sacked” his wet-nurse, Yokabed (54). Annoyed with Aaron, Moses exclaims that “a god is very hard up to have to choose a scabby oaf like you” (56). When Yahweh enters Moses’ tent, “all I can say about what happened then is that it was pretty startling” (83). As for Aaron’s consecration as High Priest: “If you don’t think it sounds impressive, you should have been there” (171). As one might expect, a scientist like Hur rationalizes almost all the “miracles” apart from the burning bush (which he did not himself witness). According to Moses’ account, “he saw the now famous thorn bush” (which Jethro had already experienced) and hears “a great babble of voices coming out of the bush” (Miriam’s, Amram’s, his own) (77). Otherwise Hur is quite skeptical. The snake story, for instance, “is a favourite one with many peoples. It’s told of many legendary magicians. . . . I simply remark that it turns up in a lot of romances” (101). As for the plagues: “Of all these disasters the college of physicians said, ‘Taking the plagues one by one, each one was normal and we were able to control its severity by the force of our science and our incantations’ ” (109). Similarly, the parting of the waters is explained as a sandbar exposed at low tide— a natural phenomenon revealed to Moses by a wagoner who had often driven his cart across there (121). When Aaron’s two sons are allegedly struck dead for burning the wrong incense at the altar, “the two unfortunate young men in fact died of contagious fever that ran through the Israeli camp” (169). Hur’s final words, speaking of his wife, are typical of his attitude: “But she goes on worrying about why she is living. And continues healthy from day to day. She’s a typical Israeli” (221). The effect of the narrator’s cynicism and rationalism is to play down the religious seriousness that characterizes the TV film, which contains far less bombast than the 1956 DeMille film. For instance, the Ten Commandments are reduced to a brief “message to the race of Jacob”:

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To Israel’s sons let it be known. You have seen for yourself what I did to the Egyptians, how I carried you as if you were on eagle’s wings. And took you up into my care. Listen and keep your agreement with me. I, to whom the earth belongs, will single you out amongst its peoples to be my own. You will serve me as a royal priesthood, as a consecrated nation. (146)

And when Moses claims to have written the laws “in the presence of Yahweh’s fire” (148), Hur expresses his doubts: I hope no one will accuse me of being nasty-minded if I say it was very helpful to Moses as the law-giver to have people believe that every bit of the law he made on Horeb was spoken by Yahweh. I sometimes wonder if Yahweh would have gone to the trouble to actually say, for example, that no one should broil a kid in its mother goat’s milk, I mean, doing that is a rite practised by Amelekites and some of the nastier desert people.

Apart from a few legal cases that Moses resolves with common sense, we see little of his lawmaking and hear far more about his doubts. The tone of the work, whether fiction or nonfiction, is wholly in keeping with Keneally’s own description of himself as a “free-thinking hedonist.”8

Anthony Burgess’ Moses: A Narrative (1976), originally conceived as the basis for the same Italian-British TV miniseries, turned out quite differently. Burgess (1917– 93) is best known for his dystopian novel, A Clockwork Orange (1962), and for such innovative works as his Napoleon Symphony (1974), in which the Napoleonic narrative is presented in four symphonic movements accompanied by various musical effects.9 His Moses constituted the first work in a biblical trilogy, which continued with The Man of Nazareth (1979) and The Kingdom of Wickedness (1985; about Paul and the apostles), all of which began initially as scripts or plot outlines for films or TV series. It deserves consideration in our context because, among the many Mosaica so far, it is the only one composed as a narrative poem in free verse. As Burgess explains in his preface, his solution to the linguistic problem was “to precede the assembly of a shoot-

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ing script with a more or less literary production” (5). But “to have written Moses first as a prose novel,” he continues, “would have entailed the setting up of a somewhat cumbersome mechanism, in which the devices of ‘naturalism’ would have led me to an unwholesome prosaism both in dialogue and récit.” Hence the decision to present it in the form of a verse epic. Burgess, like Keneally a self-professed lapsed Catholic who received his early education in Catholic schools, appears to be fully at home in the Bible, even if his work shows little influence of, or interest in, biblical research or contemporary theory. Indeed, his novel follows the text and, often, the language of the Pentateuch more closely than most of the works considered hitherto. At the same time, his poetic liberties account for much of the considerable delight of the work. When Aaron sets out to meet Moses, he “now left the freedom of slavery / And sought the prison of the desert” (43). In the midst of the plagues, Moses explains, “‘The making of the world was a dance of seven. / The bringing low of Egypt. Will be a / Dance of ten’” (61). (The abrupt punctuation is Burgess’ device for suggesting Moses’ stutter.) After the departure of the Hebrews “In the / Empty heart of Pharaoh bitterness / Found a house, then the house grew to a palace, / Then the massive portals of the palace heaved to opening” (75). When Zimri is seduced: “As so often happens, he finds his way / Through the little god of wine toward the great god” of sex (171). The biblical narrative is enhanced not simply by the author’s poetic play with the language but also by the elaboration of certain characters and episodes. The figure of Dathan, for instance, is introduced early as the husband of a woman being raped by an Egyptian overseer; but after Moses kills the overseer, he is betrayed by the scheming Dathan. From that point on Dathan, as leader of the complaining Hebrews, plots to overthrow Moses. Koreh, in contrast, is one of Moses’ most ardent supporters until, finally, he is won over by the rebels. Miriam is her brother’s loving supporter until her death, with no hint of the biblical disparagement of Zippora (whose role in the novel is minimal). At her death the prophetess foretells the eternal wandering of the Hebrews. Aaron never wavers in his faith, even when he constructs what appears to be a bull calf, which he justifies as “an image of our unity as a people” (114) that makes holy the profane silver and gold of the Egyptians.

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Almost predictably, Burgess devotes an entire comic chapter to Balaam, the fat curse maker on his talking ass. Zimri is a “moral spy” for Moses, seeking out offenders among the Hebrews who consort with the Moabites. In a drunken moment he eventually succumbs to the Moabite princess Cozbi; but the encounter turns into true love, and he has converted Cozbi to the Hebrew faith when they are ruthlessly killed by the self-righteous fanatic Phinehas. From time to time minor episodes are freely added. For instance, shortly before the scene with the golden calf, a puppeteer entertains a group of children with small stone figures, including a bearded one that speaks with the voice of God, threatening punishment for working on the Sabbath. It is the angry Koreh who stops them, arguing that even the pretense of worshipping graven images is strictly forbidden by the law, including children’s games. In a move anticipating Moses with the golden calf, he hurls away the “crude God of stone” (109). As the title of the TV miniseries suggests, the theme of law is emphasized throughout. In his last words to the tribal leaders, Moses concedes that some will think that there are too many laws: “A huge web woven of many webs.” But he explains that “that the law is our city, / Complex, cunningly woven—many streets, / Buildings, rooms—yet a city we may carry / About with us, wherever we go” (186). He insists that the laws prescribing cleanliness are necessary to prevent the Hebrews from dying in the desert from the consequences of eating forbidden foods, such as the pig that harbors worms in its gut and passes them on to those who eat its flesh: “The body of the law must wax fat / Because the brain of the Israelite is small” (127). On occasion he demands stiff enforcement of the law, as when he orders the beheading of those who have sinned by committing whoredom with the Moabites and sacrificing to their gods. Moses himself often applies the law with lenient discretion. When Phinehas boasts of killing Zimri and Cozbi, Moses is sickened by his “sacred murderous zeal” (181). When the five daughters of the slain Zelophehad come to ask what will now happen to his portion of the Promised Land, the fanatical Eleazar, who has inherited the position of high priest from his father, Aaron, insists that the law is clear: only the sons shall inherit. But Moses, telling the women that they are right to question the law and overruling Eleazar’s objection of “heresy,” responds, “If a man die and leave no son, then the father’s / Inheritance shall pass to the

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daughters” (183). When he catches a couple in adultery, he tries to educate them by explaining the reason for the law: “We face the hard task of building a nation. / The bricks of the edifice are the families. / If the families crack the whole structure totters” (89). In this generally scrupulous retelling and elaboration of the biblical account, the miracles are taken for granted: the burning bush speaks to Moses in the voices of Miriam, his father, and his own; as he dies on Mount Pisgah, he hears a voice showing him the Promised Land—but it is his own voice, young again. Often a rationalization is suggested. After the plagues, the Egyptian chief magician uses reasonable words, asking the ministers to look at matters scientifically. “There are records / Of mud pollution of the Nile, followed inevitably / By an immediate exodus of creatures that live / And breed in clear water. Swarms of frogs and gnats— / Inevitable. We may expect also flies, locusts, / A murrain on the cattle— all stemming from / The pollution, by whatever cause, of the river” (58). Similarly the pillar of cloud appears to be a cloud of dust driven by the wind and the cloud of fire may be simply “a blinding company of fireflies”—yet still God’s sign. “God works through / Everything” (76). The law plays a more pervasive role in the novel than theology, which comes down basically to the contrast between pagan polytheism and Hebrew monotheism. As Aaron puts it, “The Egyptians see the world / As multiple, various. . . . / And, so the Egyptians argue, there must accordingly / Be many beings in the heavens, matching, ruling / The many things of earth. We Israelites / Never believed that. In the beginning we knew / that all was one, that All was made by One” (45). In sum, the true originality of Burgess’ verse epic resides in its language and imaginative elaboration of character, which remains essentially consistent with the biblical narrative.

M   ’ A    Arnulf Zitelmann’s Moses, the man from the desert (Mose, der Mann aus der Wüste, 1991) often reads more like theological anthropology—not Egyptology—than fiction. Moses is accompanied by an angel who is sent out of eternity into temporality, “liberated from the current of time”

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(9: Der Zeitsog gab den Engel frei), as we learn in the opening sentence— not so much to guide as to attend Moses, whom he joins at the moment of conception and observes already in the womb. The angel sometimes disagrees with Moses’ decisions, but, though unable to take human shape, he always supports him spiritually and looks into the future to see the Hebrews long after Moses’ death: “He already saw a people in a stage of becoming, proud of its past but with no visions of the future—a people that was no longer committed to the Jahweh of the tents but to a God that, like the Egyptian gods, resided in stone houses for the millennia” (297). The angel sometimes appears to Moses as a column of fire, and it is with the angel’s voice that Jahweh speaks to Moses from the burning bush. The very existence of this angel — inspired, as we learn from the author’s afterword, by Walter Benjamin’s conception of the “angel of history” (321)—provides a sense of timeless detachment from the story we are reading. As for the anthropology, the author is obviously fascinated by desert lore and devotes many pages to the detailed depiction of events that have absolutely no biblical basis. On a training expedition into the Sinai, for instance, the six-year-old Moses learns how to avoid places with scorpions and snakes, how to make fire by friction, how to cleanse himself with stones and sand after defecation, and so forth. As a young man he is sent on a diplomatic (actually spy) mission to Egypt’s northern outposts and, as he makes his way south through today’s Lebanon and Israel, learns about the geography, demography, and political tensions of ancient Canaan. All this is related in a language teeming with Egyptian and Hebrew vocabulary defined in a ten-page appendix: Egypt (a term never used) is either Meri (Egyptian) or Mizrajim (Hebrew), Isis and Osiris are Aset and Uris, Canaan is Retschenu, the Egyptians gods are Netscheru, and when the Nile overflows during the ascendency of Sirius and is celebrated by a royal festival, we read, “Again Hapi raised himself from his bed to bless the two shores, again the Sopdet-star pressed over the horizon, and again User-maat-Re, the strong bull of Meri, rejuvenated his royal power with a jubilee festival” (83). This language, plus the need constantly to refer to maps at the front and back of the volume, does not make for smooth reading. Zitelmann, born in 1929 in Oberhausen (in Germany’s Ruhr region), studied theology, philosophy, and psychology in Marburg and Heidelberg

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and then served as pastor in Frankfurt am Main and Darmstadt. In 1977 he became a teacher of religion at a gymnasium in Darmstadt, where he began writing a succession of self-styled theological-philosophical adventure novels, mainly for younger readers, for which he has been awarded a number of prizes, as well as biographies of such figures as Martin Luther (1983), Martin Luther King (1985), and Immanuel Kant (1996) and more general works on religion, such as his Religions of the World (Die Weltreligionen, 2002) and a History of the Christians (Die Geschichte der Christen, 2004). His Moses gives clear evidence of his strong pedagogical tendency. Over half of the novel deals with Moses’ (nonbiblical) life up to the killing of the brutal overseer, including his sensations in the womb and his first months at home with Jochebeth and Amram, where he is called Tob. After his adoption by Princess Tachait and his further three years with Jochebeth and Amram as his foster parents, he moves to the palace and is renamed Moses. He rapidly forgets his Hebrew parents, absorbed as he is by his vaguely Oedipal love for his new mother with the smile that is routinely characterized as subtle or devious (hintersinnig). He plays with his pet monkey, becomes friends with the stallmaster Kenena, who takes him on the desert expedition, and attends school, where he learns to read and write hieroglyphs. When he enters the military academy at age ten, his reading leads him for the first time to question the inequality he observes around him in Egyptian society, but he still regards himself wholly as Egyptian. At sixteen he leads the party of guards accompanying his mother Tachait south into Kush for ceremonies following her father’s death (and more anthropology). She and a supportive priest reveal their plot to keep the vice-king from the throne after the anticipated death of the present pharaoh and to assure the ascension of Tachait’s natural son and Moses’ foster brother, Amenmesse. Soon Moses is sent on the diplomatic mission to Canaan, where he hears tales of Abraham and Jacob and learns about El Shaddai, about whom he has disturbingly vague memories from his earliest years with Jochebeth and Amram. In the course of the expedition almost all his men are killed, and Moses, recovering from wounds near present-day Tel Aviv, is seduced by a young woman whose smile reminds him of his mother. When he realizes why he was attracted to her — his first sexual experience — he becomes violent and strikes her. He is arrested and jailed for several days until he is freed by the local Egyptian administrator, his onetime

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childhood tutor, who recognizes the necklace from his mother that he wears and from whom he learns the story of his birth and adoption. Thinking about these revelations on the boat back to Egypt, he is overwhelmed by the sudden realization that he has always been exploited by Tachait with her subtle smile—used as a tool to put her other son on the throne—and kept away from his true heritage. Almost without motivation, his love turns to hatred. Back in Egypt, where he has been reported dead, he does not return to the palace but sets out to find his parents. He fails but in the process kills a brutal overseer and flees to the Sinai, where he travels with a group of Bedouins (Schasu), who befriend him and from whom he learns further lore of the desert (which is recounted in elaborate detail). When they reach Midian, it is these Bedouin friends whom he holds off at the well so that the girls can water their sheep. Angered, the Bedouins reject him, and Moses is promptly taken in by the girls’ father, the local priest Jitro. He is attracted by the quiet daughter Zippora, with whom for months he herds sheep before he summons the courage to ask for her hand. When their first son is born, they quarrel: he names the infant Gershom, although she insists that, in Midian, naming the child is the mother’s privilege; and he insists on delaying the circumcision, as in Egypt, until the thirteenth year rather than proceeding immediately, as is the Midianite custom. But he is happy. Because as guest in an alien land he has no god (El), he entrusts his son to the local god Jahweh as his tutelary deity, “for this one seemed to him to be less tied to place than the other gods (“Elim” [206]). Soon thereafter, herding his flock south, Moses finds himself at Mount Paran (the pre-Israelite name for Mount Sinai, as we learn from the glossary), where he encounters the burning bush and where the angel also discovers for the first time that his protegé—the child drawn from the water—was destined to draw his own people out of Egypt: “Shall-Be seized him and placed him before Moses as a burning bush” (218). As for Moses himself: “His inner being was filled with bitterness against Jitro’s god, who had seized and monopolized him at the burning bush” (222), forcing him to desert his family and his life in Midian. On his way back to Egypt he meets Aharon, a priest traveling with a group of Bedouins, who recognizes Moses and tells him more about his childhood. He is Moses’ cousin, not his brother, but Aharon knew him as

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a baby; Amram is now deceased, but Jochebeth and Mirjam have left Egypt and live in Kadesh. Back in Egypt they witness the misery of the people in a land now overrun with what Zitelmann in his afterword calls the “ecological catastrophe” of the period: low Nile, frogs, mosquitoes, flies, cattle plagues, boils, hail, crickets, death of newly born children (319). Without identifying himself Moses, accompanied by Aharon, makes two visits to the palace to present his arguments for liberation of the Hebrews to the new pharaoh (his foster brother), and the second time he succeeds. With only the slightest hint at the biblical Passover he orders the Hebrews (“Ibrim”), according to a Midianite custom, to smear their doors with blood so that the evil spirits oppressing the Meri will spare the people of Jahweh (244). Then six hundred families (a number justified in the author’s afterword) set out and make their way across a ford in the lake region. When the pursuing troops are drowned, Moses is overcome by grief as he thinks of his own former military colleague, but Mirjam, leading the women in song and dance, feels her first anger against her cousin Moses for his weakness. From this point on the narrative moves rapidly (only fifty pages) to its close. The men trained by Joshua, himself a former Egyptian soldier, drive back the various attacking hordes of Aamu (desert peoples) as the procession makes its way across the Sinai, eating the quail and tree fruit and drinking the water that Moses knows how to detect among the stones. When they reach the oasis of Paran, Jitro arrives with Zippora and the two boys and advises Moses to appoint deputies to relieve him of the onerous judgment of petty affairs. Soon after Jitro’s departure Zippora dies, and Joshua reports to Moses, who has withdrawn in his grief, on the increasing complaints of the people, exacerbated by Aharon and Mirjam. He goes back up the mountain where he had seen the burning bush, but this time, “otherwise than before at the burning bush Jahweh did not come over him like fire, not violently like the blow of a stone, but in the wordless stillness of thoughts that shape themselves in his head into words. He engraved them in stone tablets” (272)—not in hieroglyphs, but in the letters he had learned while jailed in Canaan. (All recitation and discussion of the laws and ordinances is omitted— an omission justified in the afterword as a much later addition to the Moses legend.)

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When he returns he finds the orgy taking place around the golden calf. He smashes the tablets in fury and knocks over the idol, but he refrains from punishing the offenders—a restraint that the angel can’t understand because of his “lack of the capacity for empathy,” which prevented him from identifying with Moses’ understanding of the sexual urges of human beings. “How could the non-sexually multiplied angel have been able to comprehend this?” (283). For the first time the angel’s self-assurance is shaken, “and that was a new dimension of experience for the rider of time’s arrow” (382). When Moses is comforted in his grief and loneliness by the Kushite woman Hedit, who nursed Elieser during Zippora’s illness, Mirjam accuses him publicly of consorting with a nonHebrew woman—but, stricken for seven days by the biblical leprosy, is shamed into compliance. One final revolt takes place when some of the Hebrews, after the report of the spies, try to enter Canaan from the south and are killed. Years later, below the Pisgah mountain range, the aged Moses has long since handed over leadership to Joshua. Aharon, Mirjam, and even Hedit are gone. Moses realizes that his own time has come— “that his El, his Jahweh, was summoning him” (306). He ascends the mountain, gazes once more over the Promised Land, and lays his shepherd’s staff aside. “The angel went past Moses and took his soul with a kiss. The temporal journey of the angel, his human becoming, was ended, the edge of time attained, the knot tied in the net. But the network is firm so that nothing gets lost. For all time consists of future, the coming-to-be that now overtook Moses” (308). Using the biblical text (but omitting the laws, many battles, Balaam as well as other figures, and several events), legends from the Jewish tradition (e.g., the name Tob, the angel’s kiss of death) but also the most recent anthropological scholarship, Zitelmann has portrayed Moses as “a multicultural man, a Mensch” (318) but also as a tragic figure who is always misunderstood, caught up himself in guilt (murder, sexual violence), and dying within sight of his life goal (309).

A F     ’  M   The American writer Judith Tarr (b. 1955), best known for such fantasies as her Avaryan Chronicle series, has also written a number of historical

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novels, including four set in ancient Egypt. The most striking of the latter is Pillar of Fire (1995), in which the extraordinary account of Moshe/ Moses is related from the viewpoint of the strong-minded and outspoken Nofret, a protofeminist of the second millennium BCE. Nofret— actually Arinna, the daughter of a Hittite warrior—has been captured, enslaved, and sold as a teenager to the Egyptians, where she becomes the personal servant and, soon, confidante of Ankhesenpaaten, the third and most determined of Pharaoh Akhenaten’s six daughters. As an intimate of the princess, free to speak her own mind, she is in a position to witness firsthand, but always with the sharp eye of an outsider, the remarkable history of the celebrated Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt: Akhenaten’s attempt to impose his new monotheistic worship of Aten on the unwilling priests and populace; his marriage, following the deaths of his wife Nefertiti and his first two daughters, to the young Ankhesenpaaten; his own disappearance and his resolute widowed queen’s successive marriages to her grandfather Ay and her younger uncle Tutankhamon, along with her attempts to restore order and the traditional polytheism to the land; then, following the murder of Tutankhamon by the ruthlessly ambitious general Horemheb, whom she takes all measures to avoid marrying, her disappearance from history. These events, which take up almost exactly two-thirds of the long novel, initially seem to have nothing to do with Moses and adhere more or less to Egyptian history and chronology as outlined in various studies cited in the author’s note (445– 48). At this point, however, what has been simply a lively fictionalization of history as seen from the feminist standpoints of the strong-willed princess and her maidservant becomes pure fantasy inspired—as the author acknowledges in her note—by the controversial if not outlandish theories of Ahmed Osman, who argued in his book Stranger in the Valley of the Kings (1987) that the biblical patriarch Joseph was identical with Yuya, minister to two rulers of the Eighteenth Dynasty and an ancestor to the four Amarna kings: Ay, Akhenaten, Tutankhamon, and Semenkhare. In his sequel, Moses: Pharaoh of Egypt, Osman squeezes the chronology by some hundred years, bringing together the Eighteenth Dynasty (fourteenth century BCE) and the Exodus (normally dated mid-thirteenth century), in order to argue that Akhenaten did not in fact die and be buried in Egypt but rather fled to Sinai,

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taking with him his scepter of royal authority. This scepter (Moses’ staff), confirming his entitlement to the throne, enabled him, when he returned to Egypt, to convince the priests and rulers — without the benefit of miracles—of his right to lead the Israelites, as well as his mother’s relatives, back to Sinai, where they continued to practice the monotheistic religion handed down from Joseph. This theory, as outrageous as it may seem from the standpoint of biblical scholarship, is according to Tarr “from the novelist’s perspective pure gold” (445). In the first part of the novel Akhenaten is depicted as a weak and incompetent ruler, so obsessed by his religious beliefs that he is regarded as a lunatic. Nofret, who sometimes goes wandering in the village of the Apiru (the form routinely used in the novel for the Hebrews) has met and become friendly with the family of Leah, her son Aharon, and his son Johanan. On one such occasion, she is astonished to observe the pharaoh himself in Hebrew garb grinding flour with the slaves. She learns from Johanan that they are fully aware of his identity and appreciate his identification with the Hebrews. The pharaoh is also acquainted with their “Lord who is One” (150). No one taught him, he says. “I knew him before I knew words to call him. He was in me from the womb”— that is to say, in his blood heritage from the patriarch Joseph. When the pharaoh is threatened by Horemheb and the revolt of the discontented Egyptians, he is rescued by Aharon and Johanan, who arrange a false death and burial of a false corpse in Akhenaten’s tomb and then flee with him to Sinai. Leah remains behind, joining Ankhesenpaaten and Nofret in the palace. While the remarried queen is still wed to Tutankhamon, Johanan returns and reports that Akhenaten, now known as Moshe, is thriving but changed. “The desert is a forge of souls” (238). He has become a leader among the Hebrews: “He was not a king imposing an alien faith upon a reluctant people, but a prophet among the chosen of his god” (351). Then Tutankhamon is killed in a chariot accident, apparently caused by the scheming Horemheb, who now tries to claim the queen’s hand in marriage. When he also slays a Hittite prince to whom she had hoped to be married, she realizes the danger to herself. Still reluctant to flee, she sinks into a kind of madness, in which she is fixated on a dream of a basket woven of rushes and caught in the reeds. One night, when she wanders out to search for the basket and, in her daze, almost drowns, Nofret

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saves her. With the help of Johanan, whom Moshe has sent to rescue his daughter, they take her by boat in a drugged state down the Nile and then by land across the desert to the Holy Mountain of Sinai. When she finally awakens from her coma, she is furious and demands to be taken back to Egypt. Because of her unsmiling face she soon comes to be known among the Hebrews as “the bitter one,” or Miriam. In the course of the following years the beautiful Nofret has with one exception—to satisfy her own awakened sexuality—resisted the advances of men. Then she falls in love with Johanan, marries him, and produces three children, including the eldest Jehoshua/Joshua. She continues to remain in many senses an outsider, skeptical of the Hebrews’ belief in their one god. “Nofret prayed to no god in particular. Egypt’s gods held power here, for this was still Egypt, but they were changed as the land was changed” (313). Yet when Leah dies, she passes her role as tribal seer first to Miriam and then to Nofret, in both of whom she has recognized the gift of vision. One day, now aged forty and still restless, she follows Moshe when he sets out up Mount Horeb. There she witnesses his crucial communication with the Apiru god: although she does not hear the voice of the god, she hears Moshe’s own responses and “feels the force” of the deity in the earth. “She had not felt anything so strong since she came to Thebes where the gods of Egypt were, when the Aten had cast them all down and sealed their temples. There was godhead here” (353). She helps the now feverish and stumbling Moshe down the mountain, where soon he receives an embassy from the tribes back in Egypt reporting that Horemheb is dead and that the Apiru implore his leadership. Together with Miriam, Nofret accompanies Moshe, Aharon, Johanan, and an embassy of Israelites back to Memphis, where Miriam is tormented at the sight of the palace. “She had been queen within these walls. Here she had known both her greatest happiness and her greatest grief. And the palace did not know her” (369). Nofret is angered at her husband for allowing their firstborn son, Jehoshua, to accompany them on this dangerous mission, and the account of the following incidents is constantly colored by the emotions of the two women and by Nofret’s continuing doubts about the power of the Apiru god. However, the audiences with the new pharaoh, Ramses, take place while, in the background, Pharaoh’s trusted daughter, Nefer-Re, and Miriam hold conference.

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“‘Women can sway their men,’ said Nefer-Re, “and my father listens to me” (402). But they reach no agreement: “There was no remedy but surrender, and it must be absolute. Kings or queens, they were all the same. Wives, too, and husbands. War was the way of the world. Even gods fought one against the other” (404). So the miracles as reported in Exodus take place—from the trick with the serpent-staff down to the death of the firstborn, in this case Pharaoh’s daughter, Nefer-Re. Moshe is still Egyptian enough to grieve at the sufferings of his people: “Moshe wept for Egypt. He alone of them all had wept when they left Pi-Ramses, wept as he had done on the river out of Memphis, for the dead and for the sorely battered kingdom” (419). When the sea closes over the pursuing Egyptians, washing only one lifeless body onto the shore—the king of Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands—Miriam leads the women in song and dance. Even Nofret, the Hittite woman and still the foreigner who refuses to worship their god, joins in: “The dance was too strong, the music sunk too deep into her bones” (442). The novel ends, as it began, with the woman Nofret, who is now happy because while their god might have Johanan’s soul she had his body and his heart. “Warm in his arms, tired beyond the need of sleep, and ineffably happy, she watched the sun rise over the hills of Sinai” (443). Tarr’s Pillar of Fire is a perfect example of the extremes to which novelists of recent decades have had to go to stamp the imprint of originality on their treatments of the now almost all-too-familiar story. Here the extravagant theories of Ahmed Osman are embedded in a narrative that is outspokenly feminist, both emotionally and physically, in its depiction of the familiar biblical account. Well informed in its Egyptology, the novel recounts its story in a straightforward manner with dialogue—especially between the two outspoken central figures, Nofret and her princess—that is conversational in a contemporary idiom. The often fantastic historical and biblical events are always seen from the women’s point of view — indeed, they sometimes seem to take second place to them.

T E N

Toward the Twenty-First Century Just as the revitalized popularity of Moses was exemplified in the postwar period by the ponderous earnestness of the 1956 DeMille film, The Ten Commandments, and in the 1970s by the intense realism of the television miniseries Moses the Lawgiver, the character of the new millennium was signaled by The Prince of Egypt (1998), the highly acclaimed (and highgrossing) animated musical produced by DreamWorks, which won an Academy Award for Best Original Song and broad admiration for its innovative techniques. In the Directors’ Commentary and the description of the making of the film included on the DVD and in the accompanying publicity volume—The Prince of Egypt: A New Vision in Animation (1998) with scores of images from the film—the producers, the artists, and the actors providing the voices are far more impressed by the spectacular digital techniques than by the story of Moses. The plot, which ends with the crossing of the Red Sea, focuses in large measure on the relationship between the two close foster brothers, Moses and Prince Rameses (hence the emphasis in the title on Moses as an Egyptian prince), whose beliefs gradually estrange them. The producers, believing that Ramses has been misunderstood as unfeelingly cruel, accent his character more than is usually the case. (They are obviously not familiar with many of the earlier treatments.) Here, too, Miriam and Tsippora are close friends, who sing duets together. The pop nature of the film is exemplified by its music and songs —Moses realizes that Miriam is telling the truth about his birth when she sings a lullaby he recognizes from his earliest days—and its animation effects. Like the movie and the TV series, this animation also generated its own literary offspring. Simultaneously with the film, 281

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the British author Lynne Reid Banks (b. 1929), who spent many years in Israel, published Prince of Egypt (1998; also issued under the appropriate title Brothers in Egypt), a “tie-in” work for young readers based on the film, which is aimed at a generation obsessed more by digital devices than by spirituality. More weightily, the new millennium was heralded by two massive (over 800 pages) and massively learned novels in, respectively, French and German.

A “R        ” M   In the preface to his two-volume Moses (Moïse, 1998) Gerald Messadié calls his work a “fictional reconstitution” (reconstitution romanesque),1 explaining that it is guided by “conjectural analysis” of the biblical legends to determine which elements are certain, which are plausible or doubtful, and which are impossible. Accordingly, he appends to each volume a sixty-page bibliography with critical notes explaining the various inclusions and exclusions. The result is a Moses unlike any other that we have encountered up to this point. Messadié, who was born in Cairo in 1931, is an enormously prolific writer who, in addition to editing the journal Science et vie for twentyfive years, has turned out an impressive oeuvre of some sixty volumes on subjects ranging from science (Les grandes découvertes de la science, 1987) and history to biography and fiction. His readable works include not only the Histoire générale du diable (1993) but also similar “general histories” of God (1997) and anti-Semitism (1999). His fictions on religious subjects extend from a tetralogy on Jesus and the apostles (L’Homme qui devint dieu, 1998– 2005) to novels on Judas and Jacob (both 2007). His Moses falls into this category. The Prince without Crown (Moïse I), which covers the period from Moses’ birth down to the crossing of the Red Sea, is almost wholly fictional invention, although it is based on a bibliography of studies cited in the notes. Moses (as in several earlier novels not cited by Messadié) is the son of the Egyptian princess Nezmet and the Hebrew slave Amram, who plays no further role in the story. Although the circumstances of his ille-

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gitimate conception and birth—the couple were caught in the act by a maid—are known throughout the palace, Ptahmose, as he is called almost to the end of the volume, is brought up in a wholly Egyptian environment, which the Cairo-born author of other works about ancient Egypt takes pleasure in describing. At age fifteen the pharaoh, recognizing his unusual abilities, sends him to Lower Egypt as commander of construction activities by the Hebrews. (Ptahmose gradually realizes that the assignment is only partially an honor but also an exile to keep him, the half Hebrew, away from the principal seats of power in the palace, the temples, and the army.) Soon noting the corruption of the chief overseer and legislator, who slow down construction for their financial benefit, he puts an end to their activities despite their attempt to assassinate him. Realizing that the customary harsh treatment of the slaves impedes their productivity, he greatly improves their living conditions. This is appreciated by the Hebrews, who send him a roasted goose and include him in their conversations, tell him about the Lord of Abraham, and believe that he, as the most learned and powerful among them, is destined to lead them to freedom. During these same years he takes in an aged blind priest of Aton, who teaches him about that sun deity. Akhenaton, under the influence of the Hebrews in Egypt (128),2 decided that his people had too many gods and, accordingly, reduced them all to the single “solar disk,” the source of all life and energy (147). The priest, Nesaton, who believes that it was an error to give the deity a name, also urges Ptahmose to practice what amounts to yoga—calm breathing exercises that clear his consciousness so totally that he can experience “alliance with the divinity” (191)—a practice that Ptahmose undertakes from time to time, gazing out at the “Grande Verte du Nord” (the Mediterranean). After eight years Ptahmose has begun to tire of his life in Lower Egypt: the nagging of Miriam, whom he has met and brought from Memphis (the novel includes nothing further about their earlier acquaintance); the Hebrews who criticize him for not listening to “the voice of blood” (232); the demands of Pharaoh for greater speed; his concubine’s turn to sorcery. A trip to survey the lakes from Suez down to the Red Sea, where he learns about the fords across the Sea of Reeds, gives him a glimpse of desert freedom. Then his mother’s death breaks his last tie to his Egyptian past; the priest of Aton dies, removing his spiritual bond. At

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that point he encounters a new overseer from Memphis, who does not recognize him or understand his gentler manner of command. Ignoring Ptahmose’s direct orders, he beats his slaves brutally, and Ptahmose kills him: “The spirit of justice had armed his arms. The spirit of justice came from the Lord” (234). The killing goes unnoticed for some time, and Ptahmose, to relieve his dissatisfaction, even resorts to drugs. Then his deed is exposed, and Ptahmose decides from one moment to the next that he needs to flee. Leaving on horseback, he makes his way across to the eastern desert, where he joins a caravan of traders returning to Ezion-geber (on the Gulf of Aqaba) from the Gulf of Suez. When his bravery and skill save them from a group of marauders and earn him the title “king of the demons,” the family adopts him but urges him to change his name—from Ptahmose to Moses—because the Egyptians are hated by the desert people. In Ezion-geber he meets Jethro, who lives with his daughter Sephira in an encampment outside the port city and recognizes a mysterious quality in the stranger. Moses and Sephira—without the legendary encounter at the well—feel an instant attraction, are soon married, and their son Gershom is born. Meanwhile, Moses observes Jethro making judgments in his capacity as tribal chief. Jethro explains that the judge simply applies the law. And where does the law come from? From the gods. “They speak within us when we have silenced out own voices” (309)—virtually the same message that Moses heard earlier from the priest of Aton. After three years with Jethro’s tribe, Moses is out one day with his servant Stitho, inspecting the pasture lands. While Stitho naps to recover from the great heat, Moses sees a thorny bush burst into flame and, astonished, hears a voice proclaiming itself to be his Lord and ordering him to liberate his people in Egypt. (Again, the author notes [432– 33] that this encounter could not have taken place on Mount Horeb or Sinai because they are some three hundred kilometers from Ezion-geber and the Midianites.) Although Moses regards the burning bush as “surnaturel” (337), when he reports the incident to Jethro, the chief informs him that the incident was not miraculous but a known phenomenon of the desert.3 But he acknowledges the significance of the event: “I don’t know the voice and I wasn’t deceived when I told you that you had been chosen by the gods” (355).

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Moses still is not convinced of his calling, but when he goes down to the port on one of his usual visits to get news about Egypt from the sailors, he is greeted by his brother Aaron, whom he had briefly known in Memphis and who has been sent by a dream to seek Moses. (Again, there has been no prior mention of their acquaintance.) Aaron reports that the Hebrews eagerly await his return: thanks to his kindly treatment and his killing of the overseer, he has achieved near-legendary status. Moses, still unconvinced, sends Aaron back and asks him to report by letter. The first letter is not encouraging: only eight of the thirty-seven chieftains came to a meeting to discuss Moses’ mission and their liberation. While he waits for further reports, Moses makes an exploratory trip to Canaan to see the Promised Land for himself. Then a second letter reports that thirty-three chieftains, dissuaded earlier by corrupt overseers, are now excited at the prospect of his return. Moses writes to the pharaoh, his half brother, announcing that their God has demanded the liberation of the Hebrews and warning him that “all the jailers of His people would be subject to His wrath if the jailers do not accede to His will” (371). Pharaoh does not accede, and in the following weeks the sailors report on the successive plagues that have struck Egypt—from the reddened Nile to the death of young children from mephitic fever. (The author’s notes again assure us that all the “miracles” have natural explanations.) Aaron writes to report that the pharaoh has now implored the Hebrews to leave Egypt. Moses, sending word that he will meet the Hebrews at the Sea of Reeds, immediately sets sail around the peninsula from Ezion-geber. The first volume ends as Moses leaps from the boat to embrace Miriam and Aaron on the shore and then, sitting on the shoulders of two men standing nearby, hails the ecstatic Hebrews with outstretched arms. With few exceptions we are dealing here with a pure adventure story, set mainly in Egypt, which has little to do with the skimpy narrative of Exodus. Messadié uses for his French audience the legend, by now familiar to readers in German and English, that Moses was the product of an illegitimate union between an Egyptian princess and a Hebrew slave, but he omits entirely the myth of the basket found in the rushes of the Nile. Rather than the military episodes with which other novelists have filled the early years, he sends his Ptahmose to Goshen, where for eight years he

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supervises the Hebrews with a gentle hand and picks up rudiments of a monotheistic religion and exercises his innate sense of justice. Then, at a much younger age, twenty-three, he flees from Egypt and makes his way across the Sinai peninsula to Midian, skipping Mount Horeb and Mount Sinai altogether. Three years later he does not return to Egypt but conducts his entire liberation campaign by letter: the plagues are not described but reported almost in passing as having occurred. With the exception of the mysterious voice, all the “miracles” are given perfectly rational explanations. Messadié’s informed and readable presentation, nevertheless, adds nothing significantly new or original to our understanding of Moses. In the second volume, The Founding Prophet (Le Prophète fondateur), the narrative tactic changes sharply, because the biblical account now provides a distinct narrative framework. Accordingly, the author closely follows the sequence of events from the crossing of the Sea of Reeds to Moses’ death at Mount Pisgah, but he radically alters the action, accounting in the notes for his various changes. The crossing of the sea is accomplished by way of two ten-foot-wide fords that Moses noted earlier on his surveying expedition to the region, and the 27,000 Hebrews—far fewer than the 600,000 usually estimated—are all on the eastern shore by dawn the next day, when a storm sends a tide from the south that capsizes the chariots of the pursuing Egyptians. From this point on the novel amounts to a litany of complaints of the Hebrews and rebellion by Korah, Dathan, and their associates, punctuated by Moses’ own outbursts of wrath. As they make their way south along the sea (without the benefit of pillars of smoke and fire) Miriam and Aaron nag him to create a visible symbol of their Lord. To lessen the constant complaints of hunger and thirst Moses teaches the people to fish with nets and dig wells. From time to time they are able to buy supplies at settlements they pass or caravans they encounter. Only Joshua and his growing young army, who equip themselves on Moses’ instruction with homemade spears, provide relief and support. After two months and the defeat of the Amalekites the wanderers reach Ezion-geber, where Moses is reunited with Sephira and Jethro urges him to organize the tribes before going on. But the presence of his beloved Sephira leads to more frequent quarrels with the bitter and heckling Miriam and Elisheba. As they proceed north from the gulf through

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the Negev desert, Moses decides to make a longer halt so that the people can become unified and solidify their wavering faith. But the settlement leads to promiscuity between the young Hebrews and the Midianite women. Alerted by a great storm, Moses goes to a nearby mountain (identified in the notes [378] as Har Karkom), where he is startled by sudden flames and an exploding stone (produced, we are informed [379] either by a meteorite or ionization of the storm clouds) that burn his face (his transfiguration). Then “the Master of the Universe” (205) orders him to halt, saying, “I have infused it [the Law] within you. Now write it. It is the Law of My people. It will be eternal” (206). Moses comes down from the mountain, burned and exhausted. But when he returns the next day he finds a piece of slate from the shattered stone and a piece of flint, with which he engraves the Ten Commandments that he later recites to the assembled people. Then he goes back up the mountain, where he has a succession of visions revealing the details of the Ark and Tabernacle (based, the notes tell us [382] on Moses’ memory of the royal coffin of Tutankhamon), which Bezalel later constructs “to materialize the presence of the Lord among us” (234), even though the Hebrews are reluctant to part with their gold. Meanwhile, the local Midianites have brought their own statue of Apis, the bull, and encourage the Hebrews to celebrate Baal with them. When Moses discovers this, he punishes the offenders with ten lashes each (and not with the death of three thousand described at Exod. 32:28)—and does not commit the sacrilege of breaking the Tables of the Law. When Miriam accuses him of a lust for power and wanting to be the pharaoh of the Hebrews, he objects: “It is not the taste for power that animates me; it is the purity of the Lord, justice and the splendor of the Lord” (241). After the rebellion of Korah and his followers, which is punished not by death but by banishment, Moses (in a ten-page chapter) dictates the laws and ordinances to the judges, who write everything down on papyrus purchased at Kadesh—so that it will be light enough to be easily carried. When several women gathering manna are bitten by serpents, Moses has a great brazen image of a serpent constructed and the problem goes away. “Was it the protection of the Lord? The power of the bronze serpent? Or perhaps the fact that the brief season of love for the descendants of the animal that had seduced Eve had ended?” (277).

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Moses sends the spies to Canaan, who report back about extensive encampments of Egyptian troops in the land—a fact not mentioned in the Pentateuch despite historical information regarding their presence there (395). It is decided to approach Canaan from a different direction, but on the way north Aaron’s sons die of food poisoning—they ate poisonous herbs (302)—and the sadness soon causes the deaths of Elisheba and Aaron. On their arrival opposite Jericho, they defeat the Amorites and occupy the city of Heshbon, where Moses has the fortifications strengthened and inhabits the palace with his family. King Balak of the neighboring Moabites, deliberating an attack on the Hebrews, sends for the prophet Balaam. But Balaam, no fool on a talking ass but a true prophet, visits Moses, in whom he recognizes a kindred spirit, and warns Balak against his warlike plans. Meanwhile emissaries arrive from the Hebrew tribes that had originally remained in Canaan—tribes that Joshua trains militarily so that they can collaborate from within when he leads the invasion from Heshbon. (The author cites specialists [405] who estimate that the capture of Canaan would not have been possible without the support of those Hebrew populations.) Having named Joshua as his successor, Moses, without having struck the rock and being punished for it, then dies at age forty-three—from cardiac problems stemming from the lifelong intensity of his emotions, especially his fits of rage (407). Messadié’s “reconstituted” Moses differs more drastically from the biblical prophet than any other fictional Moses we have encountered, especially in the second half of his career—from the fords at the Sea of Reeds by way of the meteorite and spontaneous fires on the Negev mountain to his early death. He is a Moses whose biblical wrath has been intensified by the doubts and complaints he must constantly endure but, at the same time, one whose punishments, tempered by his profound sense of justice, are often much less severe than those reported in the Pentateuch. Going well beyond the usual rationalizations of the various miracles, the author has sought to reinterpret almost all of Moses’ actions in the light of modern psychology and the most recent biblical scholarship. Messadié’s two volumes provide an entertaining and informative account against a reliable historical background for the Exodus—an account, however, that can hardly serve as an introduction to the Bible as

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a profound religious text and as the foundation of monotheism for three religions.

M      E      The German writer Wolfram, Prinz zu Mondfeld (b. 1941), an acknowledged authority on historical ship models (e.g., as editor of the twelvevolume Enzyklopädie des historischen Schiffsmodelbaus, 2006–), grew up in an atmosphere dominated by Egyptology. His mother was a trained Egyptologist and scholar of religion; he himself studied history, archaeology, and Egyptology at the University of Munich—he acknowledges his teachers there, Professor Hans Wolfgang Müller and Dr. Jürgen von Beckerath (895)4—and also traveled extensively in Egypt and the Sinai peninsula. We are therefore hardly surprised to encounter in his massive novel, Moses, Son of Promise (Mose, Sohn der Verheissung, 1999), an often overwhelming degree of Egyptological lore: introductions of figures that sound like abbreviated CVs; elaborate descriptions of ceremonies, medical practices, and Egyptian incestuous marriage arrangements; lengthy depictions of the topography and architecture of ancient Uêset (Luxor and Carnak) and Akhet-Aton (Amarna); and a detailed account of the sculpting of the famous bust of Nefertiti (429– 30). The novel amounts to a detailed history of the last half of the famed Eighteenth Dynasty: from the later years of Amûn-Hotep (Amenhotep III) to the first year in the reign of Eje (Ay) or, according the author’s own chronology, from 1340 to 1311 BCE and during the years of the Trojan War, which is mentioned in passing. (Throughout, these rulers are designated as kings and not as pharaohs since, as the author explains in his appendix [853– 54], the term, introduced during the reign of Rameses II, was not yet current in the Eighteenth Dynasty.) The principal characters are all historical figures, whom we see in a sometimes unaccustomed light: King Akh-en-Aton (Akhenaten), a weak-minded schizophrenic, is introduced to the teachings of Aton by his ambitious uncle Eje (the later King Ay), who concocted the deity based on Hebrew religion as a part of his own long-range Plan; Nofret-ête (Nefertiti) is a scheming serial killer who poisons three of her competitors for the queenship and arranges to

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have others (such as Akhenaten’s short-lived successor, King Smenhkare) murdered; and “Moses,” the chosen successor to the throne, who plays a relatively minor role until the last pages of the work. This bloody history of palace intrigue is recounted as dictated over the years by Amûn-Hotep, son of Neby (called Hotep), a young captain in the elite troop of war charioteers, who eventually becomes chief of the general staff of the Egyptian army and, through his close personal connection with the royal family, is in a position to witness the crucial events of the period. It is suggested that he, through an affair with the daughter and second wife of King Amenophis, is the father of Tehuti-Mose, the legitimate successor to the crown of Egypt—but who becomes the biblical Moses. In any case, he is charged by the young queen, who dies in childbirth, to watch over her son. Since it is suspected that the mother was poisoned, the child is smuggled off for safekeeping by the Hebrew Nun, Hotep’s friend and fellow officer, who takes him to spend his first years among the Hebrews in the Nile Delta town of Hat-uaret (Avaris). Five years later Amenhotep has died, and Akhenaten has ascended the throne and moved the capital to the new city of Akhet-Aton (Amarna). Moses, as he is now known by his friends, accompanied by his childhood friend Joshua, can now return safely to Men-nôfer (Memphis), where he first receives the fourfold education fitting for the crown prince—administration, science, religion, and military—before graduating to the “House of All Knowledge” at Chemenu (Heliopolis), where he studies such advanced subjects as astronomy, medicine, and law both divine and human. Akhenaten serves as a gentle king, but his policies—no violence for the military and all government money appropriated for the elaborate palaces and temples of his new city—soon bring Egypt to the brink of destruction as the land loses its control both south (in Kush) and north (in Canaan). At age fourteen Moses, as the presumptive successor to the throne, is married to Akhenaten’s daughter Maket-Aton, who soon becomes pregnant. Even at this age, we learn, Moses begins to assert himself as crown prince and possesses the hereditary royal gifts of prophecy and healing. Indeed, Hotep’s beloved Beket-Amûn, a daughter of Amenhotep and a famous prophetess, already foresees his glory lasting even when Egypt’s palaces, statues, and pyramids have fallen to dust. In the meantime, Queen

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Mother Teje, Amenhotep’s widow, has claimed her entitled role as her son’s chief wife in order to keep Nefertiti from that power. When she dies— another victim of Nefertiti’s poisons—she makes Akhenaten swear never to give the queen’s crown to Nefertiti (who therefore dons the blue hat familiar from her renowned portrait bust). When Maket-Aton dies in childbirth, Nefertiti’s guilt is discovered: thirteen bottles of monkshood (wolfbane) are found in her rooms. She is banned for life to a remote palace, and Akhenaten offers Moses the throne, crown, and scepter. But Moses, dismayed by all he has seen, indignantly rejects them: “I don’t want them! Your crowns are stained by the tears of your subjects! Your throne is soiled with the blood of those who had to die for the purity of your theory of Aton! Your sceptre stinks of intrigue, betrayal, and murder!” (504). Disappearing for more than a year, Moses wanders from Kush in the south to Canaan in the north. When he returns with Joshua and two others he reports on his travels, where he met the priest Jitro (Jethro). His secret observations reveal, among other things, that corrupt officers secretly pulled back many of the troops in Canaan and usurped the money. When Akhenaten is close to death, Moses, the obvious successor, still refuses the crown but remains in the eyes of all the legitimate successor and continues to play that role publicly. After the king’s death he remains firm: “This battle for power disgusts me in the depths of my soul! Too many have been sacrificed to this madness for me to be able to bear these crowns. These crowns, they have been dishonored by the crimes committed for their sake!” (609). But when the young Tut-anch-Amûn becomes king, Moses agrees to remain as his highest officer of justice. While Nefertiti again tries unsuccessfully to instigate a revolt, the new king leads a successful campaign against the Hittites and Amorites to drive them out of Canaan and restore order in those provinces before withdrawing. Back in Egypt, Moses and Hotep, accompanied by Beket-Amûn, visit the oldest and most highly regarded temple of Ra in Onû (Heliopolis), where they are acquainted by the High Priest with one of the most ancient pyramid texts: “There is only one god!” (687). But when Moses suggests that perhaps Akhenaten was not so wrong in his theory of Aton, the priest objects vehemently: because he placed a heavenly body in place of god; because he sought to make something incomprehensible understandable; and because he created a god after his own image. God’s true name, he learns, is “I-Am!” (689).

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Moses continues his life in Egypt as adviser to the king, as a renowned physician, and as a lawyer, but he spends part of each year with the High Priest in Heliopolis, where “his life is shaped by his belief in a single, almighty, eternal god” (704), with which he first became acquainted as a child among the Hebrews. Then he and his friends undertake a trip to the Sinai, where Jitro leads their explorations. He falls in love with Zippora, who soon shares his tent and becomes pregnant. Accompanied by six friends, including Zippora, he ascends Mount Horeb, saying, “I still don’t know how and why, but I know that this mountain will be my destiny” (725). As the sun rises on the third morning, he raises his hands in prayer to “God, Thou hast created everything!” But he still doesn’t know his own destiny. When they return to Egypt, King Tut-ankh-Amûn has died—from a cobra bite intentionally inflicted by his wife, we later learn—and Eje has quickly installed himself as king, with the murderous widow as his queen. Many of the remaining pages are taken up with confessions and explanations. Nefertiti confesses that she did indeed poison and incite murders—but not of Moses’ young wife, her daughter, who died a natural death in childbirth. Then Eje summons Moses and exposes his great Plan: he concocted the entire fiction of Aton, from ideas he read in Hebrew documents, in order to get Akhenaten under his control (and through his daughter Nefertiti, the king’s third wife). He wanted to put Moses, the true heir, on the throne because he felt that Moses would restore Egypt to its former glory; in return, he expected Moses to elevate him, after his death, to divine status in keeping with the name he had given himself in accordance with Hebrew texts he had studied: Eje or “I Am.” When Moses contemptuously rejects his offer, Eje tries to have him killed. Moses escapes to the Sinai. But Hotep and his beloved BeketAmûn, who also heard Eje’s Plan, are not so lucky: they are murdered by Eje’s followers as they lie on the terrace of their home. A brief epilogue (825– 29) picks up where the even briefer prologue ended: an unnamed man—a onetime Egyptian prince who has won a reputation among the desert people as a great physician—encounters the wonder of a burning bush but fails to understand. Continuing that scene, the epilogue recounts how a voice now identifying itself as “I-Am” speaks to Moses and, in words essentially recapitulating the biblical passage, commands him to lead his people out of Egypt.

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In his appendix, which includes an eight-page bibliography ranging from J. H. Breasted and Arthur Weigall to the most recent studies in Egyptology (but not including Assmann’s Moses the Egyptian), the author tells us that he researched his material for almost forty years (894), and the authentic details—of ceremonies, architecture, battles, genealogies, mythologies, the burial and tomb of King Tut (737– 53)—bear ample witness to his erudition. It must be left to the professional Egyptologists to decide how much credibility can be ascribed to the chronology of the novel and to the author’s theory that Moses was actually the son of a historical Egyptian princess—and the great-grandfather of the famous Rameses II. Mondfeld states that he purposely omitted the “spiritual” aspects of the story in order to focus on its worldly side and, especially, the psychology of Moses. “How does a young man for whom all the possibilities of power lie open come to reject the crown of the mightiest rulers of the world known at that time, in order to choose the small, insignificant group of people of Israel and to shape them into his ‘people of God’?” (862). In the process he has written a highly readable historical novel— almost a page-turner!—but one that has absolutely nothing to do with the biblical account of Moses. While the history has a factual basis, the life of Moses (or Crown Prince Tehuti-mose, son of King Amûn-hotep)— plausible or not—is wholly invented. Indeed, Moses is introduced almost peripherally in the first five hundred pages of the novel.

A M     M     R    In the afterword to Moses in Sinai (2002) Simone Zelitch notes that although she cites passages from Exodus, Numbers, and Job, “this novel is scripturally accurate only in coincidence with [her] imagination” (268). In fact, her novel is less biblical than any work considered up to this point. For her innovations, Zelitch—the author of two previous novels and a college teacher of creative writing—turned to the techniques of the magical realism familiar from the works of such Latin American writers as Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez, producing a fantastic world in which Miriam is a shape-shifting witch in whose footsteps water wells arise, frogs speak, the dead on a battlefield are transformed into loaves of yellow bread, and jinn talk to a Moabite prince. The result is a

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disjointed and often improbable amalgam of Bible, Jewish legend, and Arabic folklore. The book opens with a weird mêlée of legend and myth, beginning when the babe Moses, saved by Princess Bityah, is making the legendary choice between a burning coal and a gold coin. It jumps to the pharaoh’s dream of a black fish who whispers to him that a son will be born who will drive the Hebrews out of Goshen into the wilderness of Sinai. Then the blind prophet Balaam informs him that a newborn son will make his life a short one. The narrative backtracks to a scene in which Prince Merneptah spies on his naked sister as she draws the basket from the river. The pharaoh punishes his young son when he realizes that he has designs on his sister. The chapter closes with Bityah’s handmaid, who is sure that she had seen that day “a girl, ugly as a toadstool, the notorious Miriam, queen of the witches” (14), among the rushes at the river. We learn that the witches rule in the tribe of Levi and that Miriam, abandoned by her mother, steals the afterbirth of her brother Aaron in order to gain control over him. Amram, for his part, after depositing the basket in the Nile, flees to Sinai and there has a vision of his newborn son, who asks him the question that recurs leitmotivically throughout the novel: “Why are you a slave?” (21). Aaron flees home to become a servant in the temple of Seth, where he learns to speak through the copper tube from which the words of the deity allegedly emerge. When Jochebed goes in search of him, she stabs a crone who laughs at her and tries to kill Miriam, who vanishes, leaving behind the first of the mysterious wells that arise in her presence and later sustain the wanderers in the wilderness. Meanwhile, Dathan and his brother Abiram become assassins and kill the slavemaster’s steward. While all this is going on, the young Moses dreams: “I played and the water broke in two” (41). When his nursemaid tries to poison him, she dies instead, and Miriam appears (in one of her sudden mysterious manifestations) to inform him that he is actually a Hebrew. Later Moses is accidentally shot by an arrow of Prince Merneptah, who mistakes him at night for a quail, and the two boys become friends. When Moses kills an overseer, a Hebrew helps him conceal his body in the marsh reeds. It turns out to be Amram, who says, “I am a slave because my heart is pulled into many directions. I need a master for my heart” (69). Moses tells him, “My

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heart has a master,” who calls him by name and ordered him to kill the overseer. While Moses and Amram set out for Sinai, Bityah and Merneptah meet in their search for Moses. Merneptah’s friendship turns to hatred when he hears Bityah call Moses her husband. In Sinai Moses drives away the shepherds at the well and is taken in by Jethro, who teaches him law from the clay tablets heaped up in his tent—law that he learned from Balaam. When Zipporah lifts her veil to kiss Moses, she announces that they must now marry. Back at the palace, Bityah goes mad with grief, and the pharaoh forbids Merneptah to see her or speak of her. When he persuades Bityah’s Ethiopian maid to poison his father, Merneptah becomes Pharaoh and marries Bityah. In Midian Moses and Zipporah remain childless for many years, but when a son is born, she names him Gershom because Moses has remained strange to her: “our souls are strangers” (101). Jethro dies, but Moses has learned from him to carve the laws in clay tablets. Meanwhile, Dathan, imprisoned for his earlier killing, is working with an assortment of other slaves in the Egyptian turquoise mines, where Miriam makes her appearance and, for a year, services them all sexually. When Moses goes to Mount Sinai with his sheep, he hears a voice. He didn’t know the voice at all. It did not hesitate and it did not forgive. Yet there were those reeds on fire where his father had waited for him once, and the voice came from inside, or were the sparks, or were the goats. Everything knew his name. (111)

The voice orders him to “return to Egypt, so that Israel’s children might go out and serve me in the wilderness” (111–12). Even though Moses finally agrees, the voice refuses to state its name. When Moses looks down from Sinai, he sees the road to Goshen, which somehow leads, by a weird geography, by way of Midian, where Zipporah circumcises the screaming Gershom and sprinkles the departing Moses with his blood. (This is the last mention of his family in Midian.) Back in Egypt, Moses fetches Aaron from the temple of Seth, where he is now the chief servant and provides the voice of the deity. Straightaway we hear of a series of miracles in Goshen: overseers are transformed into speckled asses, chains fall from ankles, coal turns to gold, and so

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forth (126). Yet when Moses and Aaron go among the people proclaiming their new god, none of the Hebrews believe them. They go to the pharaoh, and the pregnant Bityah, recognizing him, again proclaims her love, infuriating Merneptah, who rejects their request. Miriam, flying in and out of Bityah’s room, gives her a magical potion to open her womb. All the water turns to blood for three days, and Merneptah summons Moses and Aaron again but again refuses their request. When frogs, gnats, flies, and locusts devastate the land, even the priests urge him to let them go. Hearing that Bityah is suffering the pangs of childbirth. Merneptah goes to her quarters and at first thinks it is Miriam attending her and then believes that he recognizes the physician. “It was then the Pharaoh realized that the man who was drawing forth the head of his son was not his physician, but the Angel of Death” (146). Enraged at the death of his firstborn son and exhorted by the Angel of Death, he mounts his chariot and drives the Hebrews to the Red Sea, where they cross safely while the waves close over his head. As the Hebrews proceed into the desert, Aaron dresses himself in splendid priestly attire and has himself borne in a litter; Miriam “big as a house and black as a pot” (153), sings and dances wildly while Moses, trying to run away from the whole mob, walks far ahead. The Hebrews, meanwhile, sate themselves with water from the well of Miriam, which follows her “whether she took the form of fish, toad, heron or woman” (156). They are assaulted by a group of escaped miners led by Dathan, but when they recognize Moses as the stranger who freed them, they join the migration. The attacking Amalekites are “befuddled” by steam and smoke streaming from Moses as he holds up his arms, and “they ran straight into stones which seemed to meet their heads” (171) as the Angel of Death swoops them up and heaps them onto Moses’ outstretched arms. In the course of the march the Hebrew women feel themselves liberated and become pregnant, but the people fear to follow Moses when he goes to Mount Sinai for answers and orders. During his absence, Miriam, assuming the shape of the skilled Hannah, creates the golden calf as frogs fly around singing (194). Moses, meanwhile, is bewildered and angered by God’s command to build a splendid tabernacle and holy garments for Aaron. “If Moses had a knife for engraving, he would have driven it through his own heart” (197). He turns away from God defiantly, shouting, “We are holy and free!” (198). When he returns and sees Aaron in

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his finery, he almost kills him; instead, he orders the worshippers of the golden calf to die from drinking the gold-drenched water. Afterward, when the despairing Moses wants simply to die because he does not know even the name of God, God offers to let him see his back but not his face. But, peering through the rocks, he saw only “the back of an old, stooped man in a robe who moved slowly forward” (203). The story now moves rapidly to its conclusion. During their years in the desert the people are burdened by an excess of laws: “in stone, in clay, carved into tallow or thick squares of acacia wood. Laws tumbled from carts, were pinned to door posts, dried in the sun baked in any handy fire. There was no end to the number of laws and all of them must be followed” (209). Looking at the ark, Korah decides that Moses and Aaron have God imprisoned and dreams of opening the box to free God. When he criticizes Aaron, Aaron uses a trumpet, as he had done in the Egyptian temple, to pretend to be the voice of God. Moses insists on a trial between the two camps of believers, and the earth opens to swallow Korah and his 250 followers. When Miriam, “great, black and old” (247), dances among the dead, she too is swallowed by her well of water. Then Aaron dies, and Moses “watched years pass, dumb with anger, living on bread and hatred” (256). Finally, after Balaam foretells the glory of the Israelites to King Balak (who, we learn in an inserted story, is actually his brother), Moses remains behind on Mount Nebo as the Israelites follow Joshua across the Jordan. He is left with a young ox bound for sacrifice on a nest of burning coal. (The burning coal, of course, is supposed to balance the coal chosen by the baby Moses in the opening chapter.) Moses realizes that he could strengthen himself by eating the meat, climb down Nebo, and join Israel on the west bank. But “what would he say?” (267). As the novel ends, Moses thrusts his hands into the burning coal to rescue the sacrificial ox, which he dreams of filling with his own blood and bearing on his shoulders into Sinai. “Burning, he would carry the ox so far into the Sinai that nobody could follow, or separate their mingled bones, or know their names” (267). Zelitch’s novel, in the last analysis, is a playful fictional experiment whose magical realism contributes nothing to our understanding of Moses, of his faith, or of his laws. Even his leadership is questioned since he is followed blindly and mindlessly by the people and the God that he tries to escape.

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O M   ’ T    Carole Dagher’s The Secret Testament of Moses (Le testament secret de Moïse, 2011) resembles a thriller of the genre defined by Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code more than the literarizations of Moses considered up to this point. Dagher, a Lebanese Maronite journalist and political analyst who has written widely on Near Eastern affairs for various journals, television stations, and research institutions (including the Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding at Georgetown University), has also published a trilogy of historical novels dealing with Lebanon. The “secret testament” of her novel is not, as the title might suggest, a fictional autobiography of Moses like those by Samuel Sandmel, Joan Lawrence, and Georges Nataf discussed in chapter 5. As finally revealed at the end of the novel, it comprises a brief (three-page) manuscript allegedly written by Moses on Mount Nebo at the end of his life. But the novel itself is not so much about the meaning of the testament as the fascinating search for it by the protagonists of two temporally separate framework narratives that enclose it and that display certain postfigurative elements. The inner framework concerns a young twelfth-century Norman named Arnaud de Cussy, who is drawn to set out for Jerusalem—not for the military purposes of the Crusades, but from a mystical attraction. On the way he visits a friend of his father in Carcassonne, an alchemist who introduces him to the foundational text allegedly written by Hermes Trismegistos, the Emerald Tablet or Tabula Smaragdina, which provides several key statements involving the elements that recur leitmotivically throughout the novel. On the ship to Palestine he meets Geoffroy, a Knight Templar who becomes his close friend and companion. Arriving in Jerusalem in 1174, during the reign of the leper-king Baldwin IV, he is dismayed by the political intrigues of the capital and delighted when, as a reward for saving the king’s life at the battle of Ascalon, he is made “seigneur de Val Moyse” (60)— that is, governor of the fief known as Valley of Moses that lies on the eastern banks of the Jordan and the Dead Sea. In that capacity he rescues a caravan of Bedouins who live secretly in the mountains near Mount Nebo. Accompanying them to their village, he is surprised by their words of blessing, “Foi de Moïse”

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(Faith of Moses, 82), and, in the blissful security that he feels in the mountains beneath the sky, has a mystical experience triggered by their fire: the alchemist’s fire that warms without consuming and transforms the earth (83). He falls in love with Maïssa, the chieftain’s lovely granddaughter, and soon marries her—a marriage that he keeps hidden from his intolerant companions below and the scheming courtiers back in Jerusalem. Said to display the mystical “air” of which the alchemist had spoken, Maïssa accompanies Arnaud up Mount Nebo, where she discloses to him the secret of her tribe. Descendants of the biblical Jethro, their ancestors left Midian and came to Moab, where they discovered the tomb of Moses and the manuscripts of his testament. Later she conducts him to the cave containing Moses’ tomb and the manuscripts, which he is unable to read because he is unable to decipher the ancient language. For many years they live happily together in the mountain retreat, and Arnaud goes down once a week to attend to his official affairs. Then, in the confusion following Baldwin’s death and the defeat of the Knights Templar by Saladin at the Battle of Hattin in 1187, the chieftain entrusts the manuscripts to Arnaud when the tribe makes its way south into the deserts of Sinai. After the surrender of Jerusalem, where Arnaud is seriously wounded, he asks to be transported to the Sinai to search for his wife and their child. A Coptic priest, Father Philippe, escorts him to the monastery of Saint Catherine, which lies at the foot of Moses’ Mount Horeb. Fearing his imminent death, Arnaud conceals Moses’ manuscripts in the Sanctuary of the Burning Bush at the monastery and writes a farewell letter to his wife, which he entrusts to the Coptic priest, who is going on to Egypt. In his letter, written in French, he stresses the parallels between his life and that of Moses. He came to Jerusalem, he writes, for the tomb of Christ and discovered that of Moses (176). Like Moses, I loved a daughter of Jethro. Like him, I traversed the desert. I likewise took my place on the other side of the Jordan. And for me, too, the Holy Land was a promise not realized. Moses died at the gates of the promised land, the land that my brothers from the Occident have sought to appropriate. I too would have felt myself to be a colonist [colon], a stranger, had I not married you. (177)

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He adds an alchemistic interpretation of his life, in which he has retraced Moses’ path: “In the course of my wandering I have encountered fire. Like Moses. The fire that consumes and the fire that warms. Two fires are entirely different: the one destroys, the other causes rebirth” (177). He tells her that, together in their love and the birth of their son, they discovered a fifth element, the tree that has its roots deep in the earth. He now says that he has discovered a sixth element: faith, which connects us with heaven, with immensity, with divine love, and whose symbol is the ether. Although the concluding lines leave us with the assumption that Arnaud dies at the monastery, we later learn that he survived, departed with Maïssa, who came in search of him, and presumably lived happily ever after. This inner narrative is embraced by an outer framework set in the present. John de Coussy, professor of religious anthropology at Columbia University, has been attracted to Cairo by the email from a young woman who says that she discovered among the papers of her deceased father a letter written in 1187 in Old French that seems to be from an ancestor of his. (Father Philippe, unable to deliver it to Maïssa, hid it in the crypt of his Coptic church in Cairo, which was later sold to the Jewish community for a synagogue; when Colonel Nasser seized power and many Jews emigrated, the synagogue was closed, and her father, clearing the premises for the Ministry of the Interior, found the papers among the documents left in the crypt.) When John reads the letter, he realizes that Arnaud de Cussy was an ancestor of his own family, which had emigrated to New York with a slight change in the spelling of their name. Fascinated both personally and professionally by the story of Moses’ secret testament, John determines to follow Arnaud’s footsteps in his effort to rediscover the manuscript. He is accompanied part of the way by the young Egyptian woman, Mariam, with whom predictably he soon falls in love. (At a certain point she tells him that he is destined to go on alone.) Their research is tracked by the secret services of Egypt, Israel, and Jordan for rather vague reasons: lest their findings cause “a diplomatic incident” through a discovery that might be “politically inopportune” (248). Following hints in Arnaud’s letter, John goes first to Jerusalem and then to Mount Nebo, where his Bedouin chauffeur conducts him to the cave allegedly containing Moses’ burial place. At the entrance he notices a

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small stele with an inscription in Arabic: “To you, the peace of Aïn el Quadis” (the source of the saint), dated 1240 (235). It turns out that the stele was placed there by none other than Arnaud’s son Rohan—and hence another of John’s ancestors—and dated for the year of a truce between the Saracens and the foreign occupiers. Following further clues, he makes his way toward Aïn el Quadis, the Arabic name for the biblical Kadesh, in Sinai. But along the way he encounters an aged mystic, who claims that he foresaw John’s coming in the fire and the stars and that John is destined to “solve the grand mystery” (262) by discovering the manuscripts hidden by Arnaud. The secret, he learns, is to be found under “the tree”—the alchemical symbol of love, which in his letter Arnaud called “the essence of all, the secret of fire and of life” (178). The tree, John realizes, is not at Kadesh but rather at Mount Horeb, where Moses encountered the burning bush. He sets out for Horeb and is taken in by the monks at the monastery of Saint Catherine, where he seeks to unravel the mystery. He learns from ancient records that his ancestor had indeed been brought there by the Coptic priest and then departed with his wife. But where are the manuscripts? Eventually, while assisting in the monastery gardens, he recalls a line in the Emerald Tablet: “truth surges from the tree and the ether” (282). It occurs to him that the manuscripts must be hidden in the chapel of the Burning Bush behind the old tiles representing fire and ether. Following his discovery of the manuscripts, where Arnaud had hidden them eight hundred years earlier, John ascends Mount Horeb and, as the sun rises, experiences his own burning bush: “The acacia is in his field of vision. Its branches filter the light and reflect it through a thousand rays. The sun now shifts its position in the sky; it is behind the bush, whose foliage glitters as though from thousands of sparks” (295). And he feels the fire that warms without consuming. He now understands that love is the power that, according to the opening words of the Emerald Tablet, is both above and below. Following this revelation he descends the mountain with the determination to confide everything to Mariam. “And they will together share the sun, the tree, and the ether” (295). The two frameworks amount to a plausible medieval romance paralleled by the account of a contemporary scholarly research trip, cleverly connected by alchemical motifs and the kinship of the two protagonists.

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But the vague threats from security forces do not bring into the narrative the same kind of danger and excitement that we are accustomed to expect from thrillers of the genre. And the goal of the two quests turns out to be a letdown. The great message of Moses’ testament is one already encountered in a few earlier novels (e.g., Jobab’s return to the desert in Rudolf Kayser’s anti-Zionist Moses’ Death of 1921). “My brothers believe that they are going into the Garden of Eden, but they are deceived. They have just left it. Their Garden of Eden was the desert, there where the manna of the Lord nourished them, and the water of His source refreshed them” (290). But to the extent that Moses’ testament is autobiographical and that the adventures of Arnaud and John are postfigurations, Dagher’s highly readable novel deserves a place in my survey.

I             P   I have already had occasion to discuss three novels from the first years of the century: Simone Zelitch’s Moses in Sinai (2002), Marek Halter’s Tsippora (2003), and Carole Dagher’s The Secret Testament of Moses (2011). The year 2012 produced two more: Friedrich Zauner’s Exodus: A Moses Novel and Herman Wouk’s The Lawgiver. Zauner, born in 1936 in Rainbach im Innkreis (in northeastern Tyrol), has become through his many radio plays, dramas, and novels one of Austria’s best-known writers. In 2004 he began creating a series of works for the annual Rainbacher Evangelienspiele, a counterpart to the Passion Plays performed across the Alps in Oberammergau. Beginning with the Passion, he produced plays about Job, Ruth, Abraham, and David, among others. But, arriving at Moses, he decided to turn the material into a novel rather than a work for the stage. The short (170-page) novel lives fully up to its title, Exodus: A Moses Novel (Exodus: Ein Moses-Roman): the migrating Hebrews receive as much attention as does their leader. Roughly a quarter of the first book, “The Departure” (“Der Aufbruch”), is devoted to the actual journey of the Hebrews as they march, led by the column of smoke/fire, from Ramses to the sea. The author provides detailed descriptions of the people and their cattle, their hardships, their fears and complaints. Book 2, “The

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Trip through the Wilderness” (“Die Wüstenwanderung”), continues with the same emphasis on the journey itself—the manna, the quail, the water from stones, the battle with the Amalekites—until the Exodus reaches Mount Sinai, where Moses proclaims the Ten Commandments. At that point the novel ends, adding only a brief chapter (166– 72) sketching the events from the time of the exploration of Canaan to Moses’ death on Mount Pisgah. To this extent the novel is very much a vivid collective portrait of the Hebrew emigrants, conveyed in noneloquent and often repetitive language, such as the following dialogue, where several unnamed wanderers are “killing time with conversation” (97). “A land, he said, flowing with milk and honey.” “That’s what he said.” “Moses.” “Aaron.” “With milk and honey.” “Yes, yes.” “That’s what they said.” “Yes, yes.”

On many other occasions the speech is reduced to repeated “hmmm, hmmm, hmmm.” While this perhaps contributes to the realism of the narrative, it hardly makes for engrossing dialogue. As for Moses, the events of his life are not expanded beyond the bare framework of incidents provided by the Book of Exodus, many of which are altered in minor ways. When the princess gives the foundling Moses to Miriam to take to a Hebrew nurse, the family feels it necessary to hide him and then dress him as a girl for several years before taking him back to the princess, even though one would expect him to be shielded by royal protection. During the briefly related sojourn in Midian (26– 35) Zippora goes looking for Moses on Mount Horeb but doesn’t believe his account of the burning bush and the staff transformed into a serpent. Later, when Moses comes down from Mount Sinai to find the people celebrating the golden calf, he reads them the Ten Commandments (156– 58) but waits until the next day to shatter the two tablets. And when Joshua sees the misery and disappointment in Moses’ face, he speaks to him

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in words essentially identical to those with which Moses at Numbers 14:13–19 appeals to Yahweh, when he pleads with him to forgive the people for whom he has done so much, lest his enemies ridicule him for bringing the people out of Egypt only to abandon them in the desert. In general, Joshua plays a much larger role here than in the biblical narrative—it is he, for instance, who writes down the laws and ordinances to be communicated to the Hebrews—while Jethro, Zippora, and Aaron are reduced in significance. Zauner’s version displays absolutely no ideological bias, political or religious. It focuses principally on the psychology of Moses, whose faith and uncertainty often express themselves in (unbiblical) song rather than monologue or debate. The miracles are taken for granted, from the burning bush to the parting of the waters, when the column of fire, with a shrill sound, “sucks up all the water of the sea of reeds, like a whirlwind that that sweeps the sand across the desert” (85).

With Herman Wouk’s The Lawgiver (2012) we encounter something wholly different. In the preface to his novel the ninety-seven-year-old Pulitzer Prize –winning and devoutly Jewish writer (b. 1915) confided that, for some sixty years — ever since he wrote The Caine Mutiny (1951)—he had believed that there was “no greater theme for a novel” than the life of Moses and that he had from time to time placed notes and pages toward that project into a file labeled “The Lawgiver.” In 2009 he hoped finally to take up the project seriously but “sank into despair, hit bottom hard, and the bolt of lightning struck: WRITE A LIGHTHEARTED NOVEL ABOUT THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF WRITING A NOVEL ABOUT MOSES.”5 The Lawgiver is that novel. We hear a bit, to be sure, about Wouk’s project for a novel titled Aaron’s Diary, “a truly new world picture of the Lawgiver, half-seen through a veil of awed respect by Aaron, who’s been dragged into greatness late in life by his kid brother, Moses” (196). And we are given a few glimpses into “Notes Toward a Screen Treatment on The Lawgiver” by a young scriptwriter, a rabbi’s daughter, Margolit Solovei: “bursts of hard action, huge time lapses—that’s how the Torah tells it” (40). She sees Moses as “at once

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holy and pathetically human and yet formidable as Caesar” (21), as she knows him from the narrative that she has known since childhood from her father’s teachings and then rejected when she left her Hasidic home at seventeen to make her way in the secular world. Otherwise the novel revolves wholly around the film project itself, from its initial conception by a producer backed by an enthusiastic Australian uranium tycoon to its successful completion with rave reviews in Daily Variety and Time. On the basis of his own experience Wouk offers devastatingly satirical snapshots of Hollywood moguls, venture capitalists, and East Coast lawyers, along with gentler portraits of life on the Australian sheep farm of the novice actor chosen for the role of Moses and fond depictions of New York Jewish life through the eyes of Margolit and her friends from Bais Yaakov schooldays, their romances, and their plans for a dual wedding at a Hasidic enclave in the Borscht Belt. The almost wholly Jewish story is told not as a straightforward narrative but through epistolary devices ranging from handwritten notes (printed as such) through journal entries, office memos on letterhead stationery, and newspaper clippings to recordings of phone calls made on international flights and Skype transcripts. The two principal figures are the aspiring scriptwriter Margolit, who hopes desperately to win the commission for the film, and Wouk himself, along with his beloved wife and agent, Betty Sarah Wouk (BSW), whose approval of the script is required by the producers. The result is a lively and humorous satirical romance that, despite its title, has almost nothing directly to do with Moses. Wouk gives no indication that he is familiar with the two-hundredyear history of literarizations of Moses in the various literatures surveyed here, several of which implicitly refute his assumption of “the impossibility of writing a novel about Moses,” nor is there any hint whatsoever of the various theological and ideological interpretations of the Books of Moses that have enlivened the past three centuries. In fact, the only antecedent cited is the 1956 DeMille film The Ten Commandments, which is mentioned several times with contempt. Wouk’s novel provides a fitting conclusion to my consideration of “uses and abuses of Moses” because, so to speak, it wipes the slate clean, leaving tabula rasa—not to say shattered tablets—for the next wave of writers who presume to ascend the mountain of tradition for their encounter with Moses.

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In the summer of 2013, during the interval between the decennial performances of the renowned Passion Play at Oberammergau, a stage version of Moses was presented at Oberammergau’s Passionstheater with a text by the German Turkish (and Muslim) author Feridun Zaimoglu, music by Markus Zwink, and various stage effects. The play was received with only moderate enthusiasm, and at least one reviewer felt that this Moses appeared not so much divinely inspired as, rather, a terrorist after the fashion of Al Qaeda.6 Later that year the Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group premiered a ballet titled Moses(es), which was based loosely on Hurston’s novel and employed poses allegedly taken from African fractal geometry.7 Has Moses in the early twenty-first century been relegated to the comic book scenes depicted with respectful Jewish humor in Yaakov Kirschen’s Dry Bones Passover Haggadah (2013)?

Conclusion If we look back from the summit of Mount Pisgah, rather than gazing forward with Moses into the Promised Land, what do we see? Can we detect any landmarks, such as the oasis of Kadesh or Mount Horeb or the Sea of Reeds, that outline our route across the wilderness of poems, narrative poems, essays, dramas, novels, and operas through which our path has led? Like other ancient icons of history and myth, Moses constitutes an animate seismograph through whose reception we can trace many of the characteristic shifts in the cultural landscape of the past two centuries. Near-legendary figures from antiquity, about whom we have relatively few firm details, are not bound by the same constraints that limit the literary or historical treatment of more recent and well-documented personages. The Mesopotamian Gilgamesh, for instance, to whom Moses has been compared by various writers since Peter Jensen and Friedrich Delitzsch, has been heralded by some of his contemporary literary admirers as gay, as a spokesman for a green ecology, and as both a Freudian and a Jungian archetype.1 This very adaptability constitutes the lure of such figures. What is the special appeal of Moses? Apart from his three signal traits — leader and liberator of his people, lawgiver, and prophet of a monotheistic deity—various other aspects have intrigued writers. Temperamentally, as we become acquainted with him in the Bible, he is a man of emotional extremes, ranging from short-tempered violence and impulsive murder to constant self-doubt and a problematic relationship both to his people and to his God. His story leaves open many questions that have challenged chroniclers of his life from the Alexandrians to the present. What was his youth like as the adopted son of an Egyptian princess? What was her name? 307

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(Amense, Bint-Anath/Anath-Bithiah, Bitja/Bathiya, Iphis, Merit/Merris, Sitra, Tachait, Tchésoup, and Termuthis are among those that we encountered.) What were his educational, military, and sexual experiences? What was his early relationship to the future pharaoh with whom he presumably grew up? What were his emotions when he was informed about his Hebrew origins? What did he learn in the course of his wanderings through the Sinai peninsula—indeed, how did a royal prince from a sophisticated urban capital survive in the wilderness? What was it like on Mount Sinai or Mount Horeb on the various occasions when he encountered Jahweh? What about his many years among the Midianites? Did he have an Egyptian source for his monotheism? And what about his legal system? Was he influenced by Babylonian or Egyptian codes? Writers have found countless openings to explore, and many of them, as we have seen, filled the two brief verses covering Moses’ life between his rescue from the Nile and his slaying of the overseer (Exod. 2:9–10) with lengthy and imaginative accounts of his education, erotic encounters, and military adventures. Others have gone beyond that to question the facts as presented in the Bible. Who were his parents in actuality? How did the “miracles” really take place? Was he murdered by his own people, as several writers since Ernst Sellin and Freud have supposed, or was his soul borne off by angels according to the Talmudic tradition? One moment in Moses’ life in particular has repeatedly inspired poets from J. G. Herder by way of George Eliot and Rainer Maria Rilke down to Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Moses’ death. In still other cases — notably those in which Moses is “viewed askance” but including others from Chateaubriand down to Joan Grant—Moses has been reduced to a secondary figure in his own story as others move into the foreground. As a result of this biblical indeterminacy, the story of Moses has provided not only a project for Talmudic speculation but also a framework for the most varied ideologies: what I have called its uses and abuses. Indeed, few iconic figures have been as thoroughly theorized as Moses: not simply by Freud but by the various recent scholars mentioned in chapter 1. For many writers he was primarily a revolutionary hero: a Napoleonic figure tearing down the absolute monarchies of the past (August Klingemann); a representative of the revolutionary spirit against the repression of the 1840s (Harro Paul Harring); a symbol for Hungarian opposition to the Habsburgs (Imre Madách) or for Ukrainian liberation

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(Ivan Franko); and ultimately the spokesman for a general theory of revolution (Lincoln Steffens). Gradually this sweeping spirit of revolution was channeled into more specific ideologies. Moses sometimes appeared as an incisive critic of sociopolitical circumstances: before World War I in the works of Heinrich Hart, Victor Hahn, and Carl Hauptmann and immediately thereafter in the plays and novels of Anton Wildgans, Rudolf Kayser, and Vinzenz Zapletal. To emphasize this aspect, writers between the two world wars—Lawrence Langner, Lincoln Steffens, Werner Jansen, and Zora Neale Hurston—employed a typically contemporary vocabulary of government, labor, and business to expose the modern relevance of Moses’ biblical concerns. Occasionally he was presented specifically as a protosocialist (Heinrich Heine, Lincoln Steffens, Howard Fast). During the National Socialist years in Germany he was co-opted as a mouthpiece for Nazi racial theories—Adolf Hitler, Werner Jansen, and Gottfried Benn—and at the same time, in sharp contrast, portrayed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Thomas Mann, and Manuel van Loggem as an opponent of Nazi ideology. In the works of Frances Harper and Zora Neale Hurston, Moses emerged as the exemplification of black liberation that later became virtually a commonplace in the aura surrounding Martin Luther King Jr.— for instance, in the 1969 oratorio Go Down Moses: On the Life and Death of Martin Luther King, by the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Mendt and the composer Dieter Nohl, that was produced in communist East Germany— or in the memorial rhetoric accompanying Nelson Mandela’s death and funeral in 2013. Following initial impulses in the works of Harper and Hurston, his story was sometimes recast as an example of feminist ideology (Marek Halter, Judith Tarr). And while Heinrich Heine and Thomas Mann detected an artistic temperament underlying his nature, Lawrence Langner and Louis Untermeyer stressed Moses’ hostility to art. While Moses, since the mid-eighteenth century, has frequently been treated musically in religious oratorios, it was not until the nineteenth century that he began to engage literary attention more generally. This notice, evident initially in Germany, England, and France, was due, as we have seen, to the widespread Egyptomania that spread across Europe following Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt and Champollion’s deciphering of the Rosetta stone. Occasionally the biblical story simply provided the framework for actions that focused less on Moses than on subplots of

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youthful love. That first wave of excitement and literary works was paralleled a century later by the often rapturous enthusiasm and fictions that followed the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb and its riches.2 In addition to the fascination with Egypt, various exotic theories excited thinkers and writers as they began to look more closely at the story of Moses. Friedrich Schiller, following the teachings of Karl Leonhardt Reinhold, popularized the idea that Moses was exposed to monotheism in the Egyptian mystery cults—an idea that was immediately taken up by an age obsessed with cults and secret societies. The belief that Moses had an Egyptian source for his monotheism—a belief that was later invigorated by the findings at Amarna and the rediscovery of Akhenaten’s religion of Aten — attracted writers from August Klingemann and J. H. Ingraham down to such post-Freudian writers as W. G. Hardy, Howard Fast, Judith Tarr, Wolfram zu Mondfeld, Franco Ferrucci, and Gerald Messadié. Goethe’s emphasis on Moses’ violence and his murder of the Egyptian firstborn was taken up a century later by Thomas Mann, Robert Graves, and Gottfried Benn among others. Other writers, such as Thomas Mann, Julius Leibert, Poul Hoffmann, and Georges Nataf also took for granted the theory advanced by Brooks Adams that Hammurabi was Moses’ source for the much of the content as well as the form of his legal code. In the late nineteenth century the Old Testament research of such scholars as Julius Wellhausen and Eduard Meyer, who argued that the “Books of Moses” could not in fact have been written by Moses, coupled with the theory advanced by Sir James Frazer, Eduard Meyer, Eduard Stucken, Otto Rank, and others, that important motifs of his legend, such as the rescue from the Nile, were simply based on widespread myths, further loosened the biblical constraints around his story and liberated writers to creative invention: for example, that Moses was born of mixed parentage (Graves, Jansen, Mann, Untermeyer, Leibert, Grant, Kolb, Messadié) or, indeed, of pure Egyptian blood (Freud, Nataf, Mondfeld); or that he was himself murdered (Loggem) or committed suicide on Mount Pisgah (Kolb). In the late twentieth century, finally, when the Egyptological and Old Testament scholarship appeared to have been exhausted, writers turned for fresh inspiration to such radical ideas as Immanuel Velikovsky’s theory of natural catastrophe (Poul Hoffmann), Charles Pellegrino’s account of Queen Hatshepsut (Orson Scott Card), or Ahmed Osman’s iden-

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tification of Moses with Akhenaten (Judith Tarr) to lend new life to an old story. It is worth noting, in this connection, that the identification of Moses with Akhenaten, which was introduced by a few writers, especially after the book by Ahmed Osman, found no parallel in the many novels about Akhenaten and Nefertiti, which began to appear after Freud’s popularization of his name and life. One of the earliest, and certainly the most successful, was Mika Waltari’s The Egyptian (Sinuhe egyptiläinen, 1945), which introduces several motifs familiar from the legend of Moses. The narrator, Sinuhe, is found like Moses in a reed basket in the Nile; the general and subsequent pharaoh Horemheb learns from a burning bush that he is destined for great deeds; and later he goes before his troops like a pillar of cloud or fire. But Moses himself is never mentioned, nor are the Hebrews. Moses has not been adapted exclusively for sociopolitical purposes. I noted earlier (chapter 4) that the growing secularization of the story precipitated a reaction on the part of several Jewish writers to recapture Moses for their own faith in the striking Jewish Renaissance of the 1920s and then again in the 1950s and later (Elie Wiesel, Sholem Asch, Aaron Kramer, Julius Leibert, Samuel Sandmel). Rudolf Kayser took a conspicuously anti-Zionist stance in his Moses, while Arnold Schönberg, who converted to Christianity and then returned to Judaism, presented Moses as a passionate spokesman for Zionism. These various and often contradictory “abuses” led, perhaps inevitably, to Herman Wouk’s conclusion that it is possible to write only a lighthearted novel about the impossibility of writing a novel about Moses. Jewish writers were not the only ones to co-opt Moses for their purposes: Methodist missionaries have been conspicuously active, from Charlotte Tucker down to Arthur Southon and Dorothy Clarke Wilson. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the leading minister of Germany’s Bekennende Kirche, used the death of Moses for his own moving testimonial before dying at the hands of the Nazis, while Orson Scott Card presented a Moses whose views were fully consistent with Joseph Smith’s Book of Moses. In many of these cases — and including writers as diverse as François-René de Chateaubriand, Charlotte Tucker, Georg Ebers, August Strindberg, Otto Borngräber, Israel Zangwill, Vinzenz Zapletal—Moses is introduced explicitly as a prefiguration of Jesus and Christianity. Still others—notably

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Ernst Bacmeister and Robert Graves—used Moses as a tool for a radical criticism of religion and the Bible, occasionally going on to claim that Moses actually invented his god. The religious purposes for which Moses has been adapted vary as drastically as do the sociopolitical goals. The extent of Moses’ appeal is suggested by the many lands and languages whose authors have written about him: Hungary (Imre Madách), Sweden (August Strindberg), Norway (Edvard Munch), Ukraine (Ivan Franko), Denmark (Harro Paul Harring, Poul Hoffmann), the Netherlands (Manuel von Loggem), Italy (Franco Ferrucci), and, most recently, Lebanon (Carole Dagher), among others. By far the majority (over thirty in each case) have come from Austro-Germany and Anglo-America. Following their prominent representation in the early decades of the nineteenth century (Hugo, Vigny, Chateaubriand), and with the notable exception of Edmond Fleg, French writers have been conspicuously absent down to the recent past (Nataf, Messadié, Dagher). This national distribution is due in large measure no doubt to the fact that much of the significant Old Testament scholarship was produced by mainly Protestant Austro-German and Anglo-American scholars and rapidly assimilated by writers in those countries. Over half of the writers have been Protestant (including such converts from Judaism as Georg Ebers and Walther Eidlitz) and the majority of the others Jewish or nondenominational. The Catholic representation, confirming the church’s downplaying of Old Testament figures in its medieval art, has been conspicuously small: several of those who were born Catholics, like Anthony Burgess and Thomas Keneally, left the church, and only Vinzenz Zapletal is conspicuously Catholic in his rendition. A significant number of writers, regardless of the religion into which they were born, were professed nonbelievers (e.g., Voltaire and Nietzsche). This demographic survey, finally, should not overlook the fact that twelve of the almost ninety authors, from Harper down to Banks and Zelitch, are women—a fact that helps to account for the feminist slant that has emerged from time to time. This virtually unsurveyable variety of ideologies, religious beliefs, and biblical-historical theories has come down to us in an equally diverse number of literary forms. Fiction predominates by far. While the century preceding World War I produced many dramatic and poetic versions, the twentieth century has seen mainly novels. Since World War II, with the exception of Christopher Fry’s play, Aaron Kramer’s dramatic ballad, and

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Anthony Burgess’ verse narrative, the more than twenty works considered were novels—often of considerable length. Several pre–World War I writers selected the medium of the poetic narrative (Frances Harper, Imre Madách, Heinrich Hart, and Ivan Franko); others—from Hugo and Vigny down to Zangwill, Lasker-Schüler, and Bonhoeffer—have turned to the pure lyric, especially to express the poignancy of Moses’ death. The fiction embraces straightforward historical novels as well as postfigurations. The tone of these works has ranged from the wildly improbable to the ponderously erudite, from the tediously serious to parody, especially in the postfigurations of Twain, Nietzsche, and Munch and in Ferrucci’s comic fiction. It is hardly surprising, then, that this satirical impulse led finally to Herman Wouk’s humorous novel and Kirschen’s comic book Haggadah, with its mixture of fun and seriousness. It is astonishing that so few of the writers have cited or apparently been aware of the vast inventory of literary treatments of the subject: Robert Graves’ acknowledgment of Isaac Rosenberg and Rilke’s of Herder are rare exceptions. Most authors refer only to historical or theoretical sources, while some explicitly emphasize the alleged originality of their initiatives. If, finally, we consider the high points of frequency and intensity encountered in the course of this survey, our observations are borne out by the graphs generated by Google’s Ngram Viewer for “Moses” (English), “Mose” (German), and “Moïse” (French) in the period 1800 – 2000. An initial highpoint in Germany around 1800 parallels the intense interest generated by the initiatives of Schiller and Goethe and the early studies of Old Testament scholars. In all three languages we note an apex shortly before 1820, paralleling the excitement of Egyptomania and foreshadowing the poetic works produced in France during the 1820s. Thereafter, apart from upswings in the 1820s and 1840s, the line in French falls off sharply and fails to record the several works published again around 2000. In English two minor surges occurred in the 1880s and again in the 1920s, indicating public awareness, first, of novels by Tucker, Mark Twain, and others and, later, of the works of Langner, Graves, Steffens, and Untermeyer, as well as the discovery of King Tut’s tomb. These upticks were followed by a huge leap in the 1950s, generated by the recognized surge of religious activity in the United States and stimulated by DeMille’s blockbuster film. In Germany a minor wave in the early 1920s suggested attention to the works by Werfel, Kayser, Eidlitz, and others; this was followed

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immediately before 1940 by a major crest resulting mainly from the controversy surrounding Freud’s publications. Both English and German, finally, end relatively strongly around 2000, reflecting the growing popularity of the theme that was evident around the turn of the millennium. In sum, for the reasons suggested above, the figure of Moses has lent itself to a much broader spectrum of ideologies and literary forms than most other iconic figures from antiquity. Moses has attracted writers for over two centuries less for religious reasons than for the fascination of his mysteriously ambiguous character and the very sparseness of his biography with its dramatic highpoints, which leaves the ground open for the most varied interpretations and the imposition of the most discrepant beliefs: in the terminology of this book, finally, for the most diverse “uses and abuses.”

Gazing back at the responses, both critical and literary, that Moses has evoked over the exactly two hundred years between August Klingemann’s drama and Herman Wouk’s novel, and including many of the major writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, one can hardly avoid being overwhelmed by a powerful sense of awe. How else can one react to the colossal personality that has elicited comparisons, whether accurate or not, embracing such extremes as Adolf Hitler and Martin Luther King Jr. and ranging in tone from tragic poems on Moses’ death to the comedy of Franco Ferrucci and Yaakov Kirschen? Thinkers from Goethe and Schiller by way of Brooks Adams and Sigmund Freud down to the academic theorists of the late twentieth century have sought to come to grips with Moses, but they have been able to do so only by focusing on one aspect of his life and temperament while ignoring others. A few of the writers have perhaps come closer to an all-embracing portrayal—not through theory but through the sheer breadth of their depictions. What we shall find, when we turn from our retrospective overview to enter the promised land of the future, is anyone’s guess. Will writers continue to strive to encompass the magnitude and grandeur of that legendary leader-lawgiver-prophet, or will they, like Herman Wouk, throw up their hands in despair at the hopelessness of the project?

N O T E S

Introduction 1. Bösch, “Moses und Hitler: Brüder.” 2. Meyers, “Genesis and Genocide, Hitler and Moses.” 3. Britt, Rewriting Moses, 29. 4. Eckart, Der Bolschewismus von Moses bis Lenin, 7– 9. 5. Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1:165. 6. Herman Rauschning, “A Conversation with Hitler,” in Robinson, ed., The Ten Commandments, ix– xiii, here xiii. 7. Churchill, Thoughts and Adventures, 299– 311. 8. Wiesel, Messengers of God, 174– 205. 9. Micha Brumlik, “Moses und der Exodus gehören zu den Lieblingsthemen unserer Geistesgeschichte,” Die Zeit, December 30, 2014, 56. 10. David Brooks, “A Long Obedience,” New York Times, April 15, 2014, A23. 11. Handelman, Slayers of Moses, xiii– xiv. 12. Walzer, Exodus and Revolution. 13. Goldstein, Reinscribing Moses, 2. 14. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 9. 15. Callahan, The Talking Book, 98. 16. Trible, “Bringing Miriam out of the Shadows,” in Feminist Companion to Exodus to Deuteronomy, 166– 86, here 181. See also in the same volume J. Gerald Janzen, “Song of Moses, Song of Miriam: Who Is Seconding Whom?,” 187– 99. 17. Frankel, The Five Books of Miriam. 18. Johnson, Moses and Multiculturalism, 98. 19. Murdoch, Did Moses Exist?, 492. 20. I cite the work in my own translation from the text in Freud, Studienausgabe, 9:455– 581. Freud’s study has been treated at length by various critics. Among those cited earlier, see Handelman, Slayers of Moses, 129– 52; Goldstein, Reinscribing Moses, 66–136; Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 144– 67; and Johnson, Moses and Multiculturalism, 57– 76. Of these, Handelman and Johnson are mostly theory and not useful for Moses, Assmann provides the most reliable analysis of the work, and Goldstein locates the work in the larger context of Freud’s interest in Moses. 315

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See also Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 3:362– 74. For more recent opinions, see Bodenheimer, Wandernde Schatten, 151– 67; and the contributions to Ginsburg and Pardes, New Perspectives on Freud’s “Moses and Monotheism.” 21. Sellin reiterated this theory in his more widely consulted Geschichte des israelitisch-jüdischen Volkes, 1:94: “He was murdered by his own people as a martyr of his faith.” 22. For the most recent research on Jahweh as a “weather god,” see Tilly and Zwickel, Religionsgeschichte Israels, 75– 81. 23. For an authoritative overview of recent scholarship on many of these issues, and notably the “classic ‘red herring’” of Moses and Akhenaten and the “myth” of the Exodus, see Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 365– 94, 408– 22. 24. See Beal, ed., Illuminating Moses. 25. Vol. 4 of Josephus, Works. 26. Vol. 6 of Philo, Works. 27. Gager, Moses in Greco-Roman Paganism, 80–112. 28. Vol. 2 of Quintilian, Works. 29. Juvenal and Persius, Works, 466 (in my modified translation). 30. Gager, Moses in Greco-Roman Paganism, 113– 33. 31. Vol. 1 of Josephus, Works. 32. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 23– 54. 33. Van Seters, “Moses,” 6203. 34. Schlosser, “Moses,” 283. 35. The Koran, 502. 36. Reilly, “Moses.” 37. Auerbach, “Figura,” 52– 53. 38. Curtius, Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter, 453– 57, here 457 (“Die altchristliche Dichtung”). 39. Cyprianus Gallus, Heptateuchos, 61. 40. Sedulius, Paschal Song and Hymns, 8–10. 41. Springer’s introduction to Sedulius, xviii. 42. Oeuvres complètes de Saint Avit, Évèque de Vienne, 66– 89. 43. See Schlosser, “Moses,” 283– 85; and Weitzmann, Studies in the Arts at Sinai, which details the appearance of Moses in Byzantine art from the sixthcentury St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai down to various Crusader icons. 44. Krauss and Uthemann, Was Bilder erzählen, 203–14; and De Capoa, Old Testament Figures in Art, 152– 201, which is richly illustrated. See also such specific studies as Aliprantis, Moses auf dem Berge Sinai.

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45. Mellinkoff, The Horned Moses in Medieval Art and Thought. 46. Luther, Tischreden, pt. 2, 97, 90– 91. 47. Here I follow Czapla, Das Bibelepos in der Frühen Neuzeit, esp. 257– 86, 342– 62. In both cases I cite the texts, which I have not been able to locate, according to the extensive quotations provided by Czapla. 48. Czapla, Bibelepos, 281, where the entire sixty-three-line prooemium is quoted. 49. Quoted by Czapla, Bibelepos, 352. Bollinger is not mentioned in the standard histories of German literature of the period. 50. One such, “Auszführung der Christglaubigen ausz Egyptischer finsternisz,” is reproduced in Czapla, Bibelepos, 361. 51. Quoted by Czapla, Bibelepos, 358. 52. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 55– 90, devotes a chapter to the discussion of Spencer’s analysis. 53. See Ziolkowski, Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus. 54. See Bayer, “Moses: In the Arts.” 55. Mitchell, Voltaire’s Jews and Modern Jewish Identity. 56. Voltaire, “Moïse,” in Dictionnaire philosophique, 320– 25. 57. On Herder’s general view of Moses, see Hartwich, Die Sendung Moses, 81– 94. 58. Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, 312. 59. Herder, Werke, 3:239– 49, here 241. 60. Many scholars at least down to Freud believed that the Jahweh of the burning bush was a local (Midian) volcanic deity. See, for instance, Luther, “Die Persönlichkeit des Jahwisten,” 105– 73, here 121: “Jahwe ist seinem Ursprung nach ein Vulkangott.” 61. Herder, Werke, 3:251. 62. In Engel, Philosophen für die Welt. 63. Herder, Werke, 5:72. 64. See Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 3:466– 73 (“Samael chastized by Moses” and “God kisses Moses’ soul”). 65. Herder, Werke, 5:99–101. 66. On Schiller and Reinhold, see Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 115– 39; and Hartwich, Die Sendung Moses, 29– 39. 67. Ziolkowski, Lure of the Arcane, 65– 98. 68. Schiller, Sämtliche Werke, 4:783– 804. 69. I can attribute Barbara Johnson’s accusation of Schiller’s anti-Semitism in her brief and wholly misguided discussion of this lecture—Moses and Multiculturalism, 82– 83—only to her theoretical bias and a generally anti-German slant.

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70. In Sämtliche Werke. 71. Goethe, West-östlicher Divan, 1: 229– 48. 72. Boyle, Goethe, 103. 73. It is worth noting that a century later a similar response led Julius Wellhausen to his acceptance of the documentary hypothesis. In the introduction to his Prolegomena to the History of Israel, 3, he confides that when, as a student, he turned to the laws of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, “it was in vain that I looked for the light which was to be shed from this source on the historical and prophetical books. On the contrary, my enjoyment of the latter was marred by the Law,” and “I began to perceive that throughout there was between them all the difference that separates two wholly distinct worlds.” 74. On Goethe’s anticipation of nineteenth-century historical criticism, see Hartwich, Die Sendung Moses, 95–108.   . Nineteenth-Century Evolutions 1. De Wette, Lehrbuch, 204 (§163). 2. A handsomely illustrated introduction for the general reader is Vercoutter, The Search for Ancient Egypt. 3. See Brier, Egyptomania. 4. Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire. 5. See the editor’s afterword in Klingemann, Theaterschriften, 177– 85. 6. Schulz, Die deutsche Literatur zwischen Französischer Revolution und Restauration, 2:579. 7. I refer throughout to Klingemann, Moses: Ein dramatisches Gedicht in fünf Akten. 8. See the illustrations in Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 130– 35. 9. IAO is sometimes explained as an early form of the Hebrew tetragrammaton YHWH. 10. Lyndsay, Dramas of the Ancient World, 65–100. 11. Ziolkowski, Scandal on Stage, 27– 36. 12. Hugo, Poésie, 1:141– 42. 13. Hugo, Légende des siècles, 78. 14. Vigny, Poèmes antiques et modernes, 19– 22. 15. Fernande Bassan, “Introduction,” in Chateaubriand, Moïse, V–LVII, here VI. 16. Ibid., XXXII–XXXVII. 17. Sabaoth, a word that does not occur in the Pentateuch, is the term for “divine army,” as in the phrase “Lord of the Hosts.”

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18. The texts of both operas are conveniently available in Rossini, Tutti i libretti di Rossini, 523– 43 (Mosè in Egitto) and 818– 59 (Moïse et Pharaon). The four-act French opera is also available on DVD in a 2003 production at the Teatro alla Scala conducted by Riccardo Muti (Arthaus Musik, 2010). 19. Thanks to his international connections Harro Harring is mentioned in biographical dictionaries in many countries and languages. I follow mainly the entries in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 10 (1879): 641– 43; and Neue Deutsche Biographie 7 (1966): 701– 2. 20. Harring, Werke, 1:iv. 21. For a discussion of Moses in a biographical context, see Goldstein, Reinscribing Moses, 20– 39. She does not locate Heine in the broader literary context of contemporary Moses poems and plays. 22. Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift, in Heine, Sämtliche Werke, 7:15–146, esp. 42– 66. 23. Sammons, Heinrich Heine, 302. 24. The only available version—Madách, Moses: Dramatic Poem in Two Parts (2003)—is not a translation of the original but of the stage dramatization by Dezsö Keresztury, which rearranged the structure of the play, corrected some ambiguities, and omitted some unnecessary parts (129). The English translation of this adaptation, by Ottó Tomschey, is, unfortunately, so stilted and unidiomatic that quotation would often seem like ridicule. 25. See the entry in Herzberg, ed., Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature, 515. 26. Author’s appendix in Ingraham, The Pillar of Fire, 381. 27. Cited by Boyd, Discarded Legacy, 79. 28. Ibid., 85. 29. Ibid., 87. 30. All citations from Harper, The Complete Poems; here 163. 31. Boyd, Discarded Legacy, 79– 89. 32. Harper, Moses: A Story of the Nile (1869). I cite the text according to Complete Poems, 34– 66. 33. Johnson, Moses and Multiculturalism, 42, points out that Harper “wrote many poems about mothers—slave mothers in particular.” Otherwise her chapter on the poem (39– 45), citing many passages, deals mainly with her stylistically incisive but conceptually irrelevant observation that Harper seems “unduly preoccupied with lips” (39): “lips parted to allow nourishment in or speech out, lips kissing babies or sacred ground, lips curled in defiance, and lips telling traditions from generation to generation” (45). 34. See the careful analysis in Boyd, Discarded Legacy, 92–109.

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35. See Baker, George Eliot and Judaism; Irwin’s introduction to George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda Notebooks, xxvii– xlii, and the notes to the poem in The Complete Shorter Poetry, 2:65– 66. 36. All quotations from The Complete Shorter Poetry, 2:67– 71. 37. I have seen only the piano reduction of the work, which has rarely, if ever, been performed: Rubinstein and Mosenthal, Moses: Geistliche Oper in acht Bildern. 38. For a list of oratorios, see Stieger, Opernlexikon, Teil I, 2:833– 35. For an authoritative discussion of the works, see Leneman, Moses: The Man and the Myth in Music. Leneman discusses ten oratorios and six operas: the three that I consider plus Il Mosè by the Italian composer Giacomo Orefice (with a libretto by Angiolo Orvieto) and two further works of indeterminate genre, Lorenzo Perosi’s poema sacra Mosè (1901) and Kurt Weill’s The Eternal Road (1936).

 . Postfigurations of Moses 1. Ziolkowski, Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus. 2. See Giberne, A Lady of England. 3. See notably Baker, George Eliot and Judaism; and Irwin, Daniel Deronda Notebooks. 4. Qualls, “Signaling through Parable: ‘Daniel Deronda,’” mentions the analogy (204, 218) but does not develop it. 5. See the editor’s introduction to Eliot, Daniel Deronda, x. 6. The parallel, frequently mentioned in criticism, has been most exhaustively explored by Collins, “Huckleberry Finn: A Mississippi Moses.” 7. Collins, “A Mississippi Moses,” 88. 8. See Eichel, Das deutsche Pfarrhaus. 9. Nietzsche, Werke in drei Bänden, 2:884. One of the few studies that discuss the role of Moses in Nietzsche’s thought is Otte, “Der Vater, die Söhne, das Gesetz: Was Nietzsche und Freud mit Moses verbindet.” 10. Nietzsche, Werke, 2:614. 11. Ibid., 2:336, 431. 12. Hartwich, Die Sendung Moses, 177. 13. On Nietzsche’s predilection for biblical references, see Mieder, “‘My Tongue—Is of the People’: The Proverbial Language of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” esp. 196– 200. 14. I cite the German translation that appeared in Eggum and Woll’s catalog of caricatures, Alpha und Omega, 61– 76. For an informative discussion, see

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Storskog, “Moses Revisited: August Strindberg’s and Edvard Munch’s Dramatic Use of the Figure of Moses,” esp. 187– 89. 15. This document is frequently cited and reprinted. I cite here the version from chalupacabra.livejournal.com27728.html. Retrieved July 25, 2013. 16. On Schönberg’s Jewishness, see Ringer, Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew, esp. 1– 21. 17. See Freiberg, Arnold Schönberg in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, 110–11. 18. On his painting, see Freiberg, Arnold Schönberg, 55– 66. 19. Letter of April 20, 1923; in Schoenberg, Letters, 88. 20. Letter of October 16, 1933; in Schoenberg, Letters, 202. 21. The play is available today both in the original German and in English translation in Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute 17 (June– November 1994): 161– 329. The entire double issue is devoted to the play and also contains useful articles and appendixes. 22. Lazar, “Arnold Schoenberg and His Doubles,” 73. See also Bodenheimer, Wandernde Schatten, 129– 39. 23. Goldstein, Reinscribing Moses, 142– 49, suggests that Aruns’s plan is based on Theodor Herzl’s project to establish a Jewish state in Uganda and that, therefore, Aruns’s New Palestine is located in Africa. 24. Letter of May 26, 1933, to Jakob Klatzkin, who was trying to help Schönberg with the publication; see Letters, 181. 25. See “Translator’s Introduction,” in Mahfouz, Children of Gebelaawi, vii– xxi, here vii– viii. 26. Kokoschka, Dichtungen und Dramen, 108–10; original emphasis. 27. Ziolkowski, Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus, 170– 80.

 . Fin-de-Siècle Variations 1. See Ziolkowski, Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus, 31– 41. 2. In the following paragraphs I follow Eissfeldt, The Old Testament: An Introduction, esp. 158– 70. 3. Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel,1. For a concise presentation of Wellhausen’s ideas see Britt, Rewriting Moses, 64– 68. 4. Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 438, where the entire entry is reprinted (427– 548); original emphasis. 5. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 16:860– 61. 6. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative.

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7. Meyer, Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme, 451n. 1. 8. Stucken, Astralmythen der Hebraeer, Babylonier und Aegypter, 431. 9. This aspect has been pursued more recently by such scholars as Ackermann, “The Literary Context of the Moses Birth Story,” who argues that the Moses story displays conspicuous differences vis-à-vis other birth legends. 10. Ziolkowski, Gilgamesh among Us, 23– 28. 11. Jensen, Das Gilgamesch-Epos in der Weltliteratur, 2:1029. 12. Hart, Das Lied der Menschheit, 1:XI. 13. All citations refer to Hart, Das Lied der Menschheit, vol. 3. 14. “The Mysticism of World History,” in Strindberg, Selected Essays, 181– 222. 15. Storskog, “Moses Revisited,” 184. 16. I owe this observation to Storskog, “Moses Revisited,” 187. 17. I have used the German translation, “Die Egyptische Knechtschaft,” in Strindberg, Historische Miniaturen, 3– 28. 18. See Stephen Shumeyko’s biographical sketch in Franko, Moses, 5– 21, here 19. For a recent summary of Franko’s use of biblical themes in his various works see Lanovyk, “Franko, Ivan.” 19. Translator’s Preface, in Franko, Moses, 23– 27. 20. On the Ukrainian familiarity with the Moses analogy, see Ševcˇenko, Ukraine between East and West, 192. 21. Quoted by Bodenheimer, Wandernde Schatten, 45– 64, here 45 and 51. 22. Quoted in Soergel and Hohoff, Dichtung und Dichter der Zeit, 2:51. 23. Schmidt, Otto Borngräber, 5. 24. Ibid., 45. 25. Rilke, Sämtliche Werke, 2:102– 3, 758. 26. Otto, Mose: Geschichte und Legende, 115.

  . The Jewish Renaissance 1. Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany, 4. 2. Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers, 32– 57, 185– 214; and Brenner, Renaissance, 142– 52. 3. Brenner, Renaissance, 21. 4. Review by Theodor Hampe in Das literarische Echo 9 (1907): 1339. 5. The only information I have found is in the brief entry in Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon des 20. Jahrhunderts, vol. 13 (Zurich: Saur, 2009), 511.

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6. Zangwill, Blind Children, 129. 7. Lasker-Schüler, Werke und Briefe, 1:166– 67. 8. From the volume Der Gerichtstag (1919), in Werfel, Das lyrische Werk, 219– 21. 9. Rosenberg, Moses: A Play, 85. I cite this edition, which includes a facsimile copy of the rare first edition along with photocopies of the manuscripts and proofs. 10. Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, 250– 53, here 250. 11. See Martin Taylor, “Moses and War,” in Rosenberg, Moses, xi– xvii. 12. See the facsimile in Rosenberg, Moses, 25– 26, with a transcription on xvi. 13. Cited by Bodenheimer, Wandernde Schatten,120; and for a full and thoughtful analysis of Kayser’s theory of modern Judaism, 119– 25. 14. Kayser, Moses Tod: Legende. See in connection with this work, in addition to Bodenheimer, Wandernde Schatten, Wacker, Poetik des Prophetischen, 436– 39. 15. Wacker, Poetik des Prophetischen, 438, suggests that the mountain as the border between desert and promised land symbolizes Moses’ position as mediator between God and humankind. 16. Here I disagree with Wacker, Poetik des Prophetischen, 439, who assumes that Jobab returns to his people below; the text states clearly that he goes “zur Wüste hinab.” 17. Ziolkowski, Modes of Faith, 83–118.

. Moses Viewed Askance 1. See Ziolkowski, “Re-Visions, Fictionalizations, and Postfigurations: The Myth of Judith in the Twentieth Century.” 2. “A Word to the Reader,” in Sandmel, Alone Atop the Mountain. 3. Lawrence, The Scapegoat: A Life of Moses. Apart from the dust jacket, I have been unable to find any biographical information whatsoever about the author, even her birthdate. 4. The author informs me (in an email of January 23, 2014) that he invented the name, basing it on that of the renowned female pharaoh Hatshepsut (“Hatchepsout” in French) so as to give the unnamed princess “a name that may sound Egyptian.” 5. I refer to the enlarged English edition, freely adapted from the Italian original, Il mondo creato (1986). I am indebted to Eric J. Ziolkowski for this reference, which otherwise occurs in none of the studies of the Moses theme.

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Notes to Pages 161–191

 . Politicizations of the Twenties 1. Britt, Rewriting Moses, 14, includes it in his list, “Selected Modern Moses Fiction/Literature.” 2. Letter of 1927; cited in the appendix to Wildgans, Sämtliche Werke, 4:555– 56. 3. Ibid., 557. 4. Breasted, The Dawn of Conscience, xv. Emphasis in original. 5. From the volume Schlaf und Erwachen (1935), in Werfel, Das lyrische Werk, 464– 66. 6. Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay, vii. 7. Adams, The Emancipation of Massachusetts. 8. The play is rarely discussed or even cited in the critical literature. Scott Langston devotes several pages to it in his chapter, “Exodus in TwentiethCentury America,” 442– 45. But it is not mentioned, for instance, by Wright in Moses in America. 9. Zapletal, Mose, der Volksführer, 6, v. 10. Wright, Moses in America, 17– 26. Wright provides an excellent discussion of Steffens’ sources as well as the book’s highly critical reception, but she does not analyze the work as such and does not consider the various contemporary literary parallels. 11. See Palermo, Lincoln Steffens, 114–17, here 116. 12. Wright, Moses in America, 34– 40. 13. Jansen, Die Kinder Israel: Rasseroman, 5. 14. See Lennig, Gottfried Benn, 111–16. 15. Benn, Gesammelte Werke, 1:214– 22. The essay first appeared in Benn’s essay volume, Der neue Staat und die Intellektuellen (1933). 16. I refer here to the American translation, The Life of Moses, which appeared simultaneously with the French original (Paris: Gallimard, 1928). 17. See, for instance, the reviews by Margaret Cheney Dawson in the Bookman (December 1928) and Amos Wilder in the Outlook (November 21, 1928). One of the few recent treatments of the novel, which has been largely ignored in criticism, is Britt, “Contesting History and Identity in Modern Fiction about Moses,” 94 – 95. See also the excellent contextualized discussion by Sammons, “Retroactive Dissimilation: Louis Untermeyer, the ‘American Heine,’ ” esp. 221– 22. 18. Untermeyer, From Another World, 51. 19. Untermeyer, The Recollections, 111. 20. Untermeyer, From Another World, 320.

Notes to Pages 194–209

325

21. The title poem of Untermeyer’s collection Burning Bush (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1928) is a love poem that, like Kokoschka’s play of the same title, has nothing to do with Moses. 22. Heuer, “Lissauer, Ernst.” 23. I cite the text according to Arnold Schönberg, Moses und Aron: Oper in drei Akten. The opera has aroused extensive commentary. For the libretto, see esp. Goldstein, Reinscribing Moses, 149– 67; Bodenheimer, Wandernde Schatten, 139– 50; and Kerling, “O Wort, du Wort, das mir fehlt”: Die Gottesfrage in Arnold Schönbergs Oper “Moses und Aron.” 24. See especially Assmann, “Die Mosaische Unterscheidung in Arnold Schönbergs Oper Moses und Aron,” who distinguishes neatly between Moses’ focus on the “absolute” and Aron’s fixation on God in a temporal and historically determined form.

 . Fresh Starts in the Forties 1. In this connection, see Leben nach Luther: Eine Kulturgeschichte des evangelischen Pfarrhauses (2013), the catalog accompanying the extensive exhibition of that title at Berlin’s Historisches Museum, held October 2013– March 2014. 2. Ziolkowski, Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus, 182– 224. 3. See “Author’s Introduction,” in Hurston, Moses, Man of the Mountain, vii– viii. 4. Wright, Moses in America, 53– 55. 5. Hurston, The Complete Stories, 117– 21. 6. I cannot agree with Wright, Moses in America, 64, when she argues that Moses is “what Hurston and her peers termed a ‘mulatto’”—a term that is more specific in its meaning (one white and one black parent) and often has negative associations. 7. Gates, Afterword to Hurston, Moses, 289. 8. Wright, Moses in America, 82– 83; and McDowell’s foreword to Hurston, Moses, 10. 9. Wright, Moses in America, 69. 10. Ibid., 70– 78. 11. Johnson, Moses and Multiculturalism, 77, is under the mistaken impression that Hurston wrote “one of the few full-length portraits of the man Moses.” Her chapter (77– 81) is concerned mainly with Hurston’s text “as a response to Hitler” (81).

326

Notes to Pages 209–220

12. Britt, Rewriting Moses, 39, generously—too generously?—attributes the lack of harmony and resolution in her Moses to Hurston’s “postmodern” intent, “before anyone heard of ‘postmodernity,’” to undermine “the great-man tradition.” 13. See Lackey, “Moses, Man of Oppression: A Twentieth-Century African American Critique of Western Theocracy,” 583– 84. 14. The U.S. edition, to which I refer, was published fifteen years later. 15. Buber, Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant, 79. 16. Auerbach, Moses, 52. 17. “Annotations on New Books,” Religion in Education 14 (1946): 32– 36, p. 36: “Mr. Hardy seems to share Freud’s view of religion as ‘a useful illusion.’” 18. In Die Entstehung des Doktor Faustus, in Mann, Gesammelte Werke, 11:155. 19. Hatfield, Thomas Mann, 121. 20. Notably since 1984, when Vaget, in his Thomas Mann: Kommentar zu sämtlichen Erzählungen, 286, could still claim that Das Gesetz “clearly does not belong to the texts preferred by Thomas Mann scholarship.” Subsequent decades have produced such works as Makoschey, Quellenkritische Untersuchungen zum Spätwerk Thomas Manns, 19–121; Golka, Mose—Biblische Gestalt und literarische Figur, which provides a detailed survey of studies up to 2007 (13– 37); Mann, Das Gesetz: Novelle. Mit Kommentaren von Volker Ladenthin und Thomas Vormbaum; and many essays and chapters in works on Mann. 21. Robinson, Editor’s Foreword to The Ten Commandments: Ten Short Novels of Hitler’s War against the Moral Code, v. 22. Mann, Gesammelte Werke, 11:151. 23. Ibid., 11:154. The title of the story as it appeared in The Ten Commandments, in a translation by George R. Marek, was “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” It was subsequently translated by Helen Lowe-Porter under the more familiar title “The Tables of the Law” (1945). The first German edition appeared in 1944 in Stockholm and Los Angeles. 24. Ibid., 11:154. 25. Makoschey, Quellenkritische Untersuchungen, 58– 82, reproduces Mann’s extensive research notes for the novella. 26. Golka, Mose — Biblische Gestalt und literarische Figur, 75 –177, provides a detailed recapitulation of the novella with references to the relevant biblical passages. 27. Pace Johnson, Moses and Multiculturalism, 84, who mistakenly claims that “Mann solves the problem of Moses’ lineage and multiculturalism in a way that, surprisingly, was not attempted by anyone else.”

Notes to Pages 221–239

327

28. In this connection, see esp. Frederick A. Lubich, “‘Fascinating Fascism’: Thomas Manns ‘Das Gesetz’ und seine Selbst-de-Montage als Moses-Hitler,” 553– 73. 29. See Makoschey, Quellenkritische Untersuchungen, 99–114. 30. Mann, Gesammelte Werke, 11:154. 31. On Mann’s use of Aton in the Joseph novels, see Makoschey, Quellenkritische Untersuchungen, 89– 92. 32. On Mann’s knowledge of and use of ancient religious notions, see esp. Hamburger, Thomas Mann: Das Gesetz, 77– 85. 33. For Mann’s debt to Auerbach, see Makoschey, Quellenkritische Untersuchungen, 52– 57, 86– 87, passim. 34. Vaget, Thomas Mann: Kommentar, 277, 281– 82. 35. Hartwich, Die Sendung Moses, 224– 26, senses the general influence of Nietzsche but only as an implicit presence without specific detail. He sees Mann’s “poetic-theological criticism of the law” as a “staging” (Inszenierung) of Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals in law, religion, and art. 36. When contextualization is mentioned, as in Hamburger, Thomas Mann: Das Gesetz, 203– 4, it is almost exclusively German and contemporary. 37. Dewulf, Spirit of Resistance, 176 n. 91. 38. I cite the significantly abbreviated (386 pp.) version, Mozes (1968), which differs in no significant respects from the much longer (758 pp.) first edition, Mozes: De wording van een Volk (Amsterdam: Amsterdamsche Boek- en Courantmij, 1947). The later edition, which omits much Egyptian background that is not relevant to the Moses story, is more tightly organized and, in many cases, more sharply formulated, but the key passages are essentially identical. 39. Bonhoeffer, Gesammelte Schriften, 4:613– 20. 40. The Firstborn, in The Plays of Christopher Fry, 3:7– 84.

. Denominational Moses 1. See Ahlstrom, Religious History of the American People. 2. Wright, Moses in America, 90– 92. 3. E. Ziolkowski, “Literature and Religion.” 4. Umansky, “Asch’s Passion,” provides a detailed account of Asch’s tribulations resulting from his Christian trilogy. 5. Umansky, “Asch’s Passion.” 6. See in this connection, Tumanov, “Novelizing Myth in Sholem Asch’s Moses,” which deals specifically with several such inconsistencies.

328

Notes to Pages 241–283

7. Siegel, The Controversial Sholem Asch, devotes only three pages to the novel (191– 94). 8. Preface to Card, Stone Tables, x– xi. The novel is based on the play with music by Robert Stoddard, which was first performed in 1973. 9. I am indebted to Alan Keele of Brigham Young University for insight into the standing of The Pearl of Great Price in Mormonism. 10. Pellegrino, Return to Sodom and Gomorrah, 224– 28.

  . The Fifties and Beyond 1. Britt, Rewriting Moses, 18 n. 14, remarks that it “strongly resembles Dorothy Clarke Wilson’s Prince of Egypt,” but I can find absolutely nothing in common in the two works. 2. See Grant’s web site,www.joangrant.net. 3. Among the few exceptions, see Den Store Danske Encyklopaedi, online version; and such online reference works as the Danish Wikipedia (da.wikipedia .org). Retrieved September 8, 2013. 4. Bent Bjenning-Nielsen, Kristeligt Dagblad, February 9, 2008. 5. Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision, 47– 76, 93–100. This was not Velikovsky’s only fanciful and controversial theory. In Oedipus and Akhnaton: Myth and History (Garden State, NY: Doubleday, 1960) he argued for an identification of the Greek myth with Egyptian history through the persons of those two figures. 6. Hoffmann, The Burning Bush, v. 7. Kramer, Moses: Poems and Translations, 31– 51. 8. In his online Australian Biography: www.australianbiography.gov.au /subjects/keneally/bio.html. Retrieved December 18, 2013. 9. Burgess explains his literarization of musical effects in detail in his essay “Bonaparte in E Flat,” in This Man and Music (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983). These include sonata form with several themes, harmonic variation by frequent repetition, a “fugal” treatment of the flight from Russia, and waltz rhythms of language in the scherzo.

 . Toward the Twenty-First Century 1. Gerald Messadié, Moïse I: Le Prince sans couronne, 9. 2. Messadié disagrees with Freud and others who argued conversely that the Hebrews, through Moses, were influenced by the teachings of Akhenaton.

Notes to Pages 284–310

329

3. The author assures us in his note (433) that there is indeed an ornamental fragrant plant, the “fraxinelle” or “false dittany,” that secretes an oil whose vapors can burst into flame in extreme heat. 4. Wolfram zu Mondfeld, Moses, Sohn der Verheissung, with illustrations by Axel Bertram, Bastei Lübbe Taschenbuch, Bd. 14631 (Bergisch Gladbach: Gustav Lübbe, 2001). 5. “Epilogue,” in The Lawgiver, 230. 6. Michael Weiser in the online feuilleton Kultur Vollzug, www.kultur -vollzug.de/article-46225/2013/07/07/viel-pathos-wenig-erkenntnisgewinn-beim -suffigen-sandalenkino/. Retrieved July 17, 2013. 7. Reviewed in the New York Times, December 6, 2013.

Conclusion 1. Ziolkowski, Gilgamesh among Us, 91– 95, 123– 35. 2. See in this connection Montserrat, Akhenaten: History, Fantasy, and Ancient Egypt.

C H R O N O L O G I C A L O F

1764 1782– 83 1787 1790 1797 1812 1820 1822 1822 1827 1831 1839 1853– 55 1854 1859 1861 1866 1869 1876 1878 1883– 85 1884 1887– 89 1889 1896

W O R K S

L I S T

T R E A T E D

Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique J. G. Herder, On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry (Vom Geist der ebräischen Poesie) J. G. Herder, “The Death of Moses” (“Der Tod Moses”) Friedrich Schiller, “Moses’ Mission” (“Die Sendung Moses”) J.W. Goethe, “Israel in the Wilderness” (“Israel in der Wüste”) August Klingemann, Moses (Moses) Victor Hugo, “Moses on the Nile” (“Moïse sur le Nil”) David Lyndsay, The Plague of Darkness and The Last Plague Alfred de Vigny, “Moses” (“Moïse”) Gioachino Rossini, Moses and Pharaoh, or the Passing of the Red Sea (Moïse et Pharaon, ou Le Passage de la Mer Rouge) François-René de Chateaubriand, Moses (Moïse) Harro Harring, Moses in Tanis (Moses zu Tanis) Victor Hugo, “The Temple” (“Le Temple”) Heinrich Heine, Confessions (Geständnisse) Joseph Holt Ingraham, Pillar of Fire Imre Madách, Moses (Mózes) A. L. O. E. (= Charlotte M. Tucker), Rescued from Egypt Frances Harper, Moses George Eliot, Daniel Deronda George Eliot, “The Death of Moses” Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (Also sprach Zarathustra) Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn Heinrich Mosenthal/Anton Rubinstein, Moses: A Spiritual Opera in Eight Images (Moses: Geistliche Oper in acht Bildern) Georg Ebers, Joshua: A Story of Biblical Times (Josua: Eine Erzählung aus biblischer Zeit) Heinrich Hart, The Song of Humankind III: Moses (Das Lied der Menschheit III: Mose) 331

332

1903 1903 1903 1905 1905 1905 1906 1907 1907 1911 1913 1915 1916 1918 1919 1919 1920 1921 1923 1924 1925 1925 1926 1926 1926– 27 1927 1928 1928 1930 1931 1932 1932 1933

Chronological List of Works Treated

August Strindberg, Through Deserts to Ancestral Lands (Genom öknar till arvland) Israel Zangwill, “Moses and Jesus” Henry Dobbs, Korah Edvard Munch, “The City of Free Love” (“Den fri Kjaerligheds By”) Ivan Franko, Moses (Moisei) August Strindberg, “The Egyptian Bondage” Carl Hauptmann, Moses (Moses) Otto Borngräber, Moses, or The Birth of God (Moses oder die Geburt Gottes) Victor Hahn, Moses (Moses) Oskar Kokoschka, The Burning Thorn Bush (Der brennende Dornbusch) Else Lasker-Schüler, “Moses and Joshua” (“Moses und Josua”) Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Death of Moses” (“Der Tod Moses”) Isaac Rosenberg, Moses H. Rider Haggard, Moon of Israel Brooks Adams, The Emancipation of Massachusetts Franz Werfel, “Moses’ Prayer” (“Das Gebet Moses”) Anton Wildgans, The Call Rudolf Kayser, Moses’ Death: A Legend (Moses Tod: Legende) Walther Eidlitz, The Mountain in the Wilderness (Der Berg in der Wüste) Lawrence Langner, Moses: A Play Robert Graves, My Head! My Head! Vinzenz Zapletal, Moses the Godseeker (Mose, der Gottsucher) Vinzenz Zapletal, Moses, Leader of the People (Mose, der Volksführer) Lincoln Steffens, Moses in Red Arnold Schönberg, The Biblical Way (Der biblische Weg) Werner Jansen, The Children of Israel: A Novel of Race (Die Kinder Israel: Rasseroman) Louis Untermeyer, Moses Edmond Fleg (Flegenheimer), The Life of Moses Ernst Bacmeister, Maheli versus Moses (Maheli wider Moses) Ernst Lissauer, The Way of the Mighty One (Der Weg des Gewaltigen) Arnold Schönberg, Moses and Aron (Moses und Aron) Winston Churchill, “Moses: The Leader of a People” Gottfried Benn, “Breeding I” (“Züchtung I”)

Chronological List of Works Treated

1939

333

Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion) 1939 Zora Neale Hurston, Moses, Man of the Mountain 1939 Arthur E. Southon, On Eagle’s Wings 1940 William Faulkner, “Go Down, Moses” 1942 W. G. Hardy, All the Trumpets Sounded 1943 Thomas Mann, The Table of the Law (Das Gesetz) 1944 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Death of Moses” (“Der Tod des Mose”) 1946 Christopher Fry, Firstborn 1947 Manuel van Loggem, Moses: The Origin of a People (Mozes: De wording van een Volk) 1949 Dorothy Clarke Wilson, Prince of Egypt 1951 Scholem Asch, Moses 1952 Joan Grant, So Moses Was Born 1953 Julius Leibert, The Lawgiver 1956 Leon Kolb, Moses, the Near Easterner 1956 Poul Hoffmann, The Burning Bush (Den braendende tornebusk) 1957 Poul Hoffmann, The Eternal Flame (Den evige ild) 1957 Aaron Kramer, Moses: A Dramatic Ballad 1958 Poul Hoffmann, The Bronze Serpent (Kobberslangen) 1958 Howard Fast, Moses, Prince of Egypt 1968 Manuel van Loggem, Moses (Mozes) 1973 Samuel Sandmel, Alone Atop the Mountain 1975 Thomas Keneally, Moses the Lawgiver 1976 Anthony Burgess, Moses 1976 Elie Wiesel, “Moses: Portrait of a Leader” 1986/1996 Franco Ferrucci, The Life of God (as Told by Himself) 1988 Joan Lawrence, Scapegoat 1991 Arnulf Zitelmann, Moses: The Man from the Wilderness (Moses, der Mann aus der Wüste) 1995 Judith Tarr, Pillar of Fire 1996 Georges Nataf, Moses: An Autobiography (Moïse, autobiographie) 1997 Orson Scott Card, Stone Tables 1998 Lynne Reid Banks, Moses in Egypt 1998 Gerald Messadié, Moses I : The Prince without a Crown (Moïse I: Le Prince sans couronne); Moses II: The Founding Prophet (Moïse II: Le Prophète fondateur) 1999 Wolfram zu Mondfeld, Moses: Son of Promise (Mose, Sohn der Verheissung)

334

2002 2003 2011 2012 2012 2013

Chronological List of Works Treated

Simone Zelitch, Moses in Sinai Marek Halter, Zipporah: The Bible in the Feminine (Tsippora: La Bible au féminin) Carole Dagher, The Secret Testament of Moses (Le testament secret de Moïse) Herman Wouk, The Lawgiver Friedrich Zauner, Exodus: A Moses Novel (Exodus: Ein MosesRoman) Yaakov Kirschen, The Dry Bones Passover Haggadah

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Ackermann, James S. “The Literary Context of the Moses Birth Story.” In Literary Interpretations of Biblical Narratives, edited by Kenneth R. R. Gros Louis, 89– 95. Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1974. Adams, Brooks. The Emancipation of Massachusetts: The Dream and the Reality. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1919. ———. The Law of Civilization and Decay: An Essay on History. New York: Macmillan, 1895. Ahlstrom, Sidney E. A. Religious History of the American People. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972. Alcimus Avitus. Oeuvres completes de Saint Avit, Évèque de Vienne. Edited by Ulysse Chevalier. Lyon: Librairie Générale Catholique et Classique, 1890. Aliprantis, Theologos Chr. Moses auf dem Berge Sinai: Die Ikonographie der Berufung des Moses und des Empfangs der Gesetzestafeln. Munich: TuduvVerlagsgesellschaft, 1986. Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. 56 vols. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1875–1912. Asch, Sholem. Moses. Translated by Maurice Samuel. New York: Putnam’s, 1951. Aschheim, Steven F. Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982. Assmann, Jan. “Die Mosaische Unterscheidung in Arnold Schönbergs Oper Moses und Aron.” Musik und Ästhetik 33 (2005): 5– 29. ———. Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Auerbach, Elias. Moses. Translated by Robert A. Barclay and Israel O. Lehman. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1975. Auerbach, Erich. “Figura.” In his Scenes from the Drama of European Literature, 11– 79. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New York: Meridian, 1959. Bacmeister, Ernst. Maheli wider Moses. Berlin: Bühnenvolksbundverlag, 1932. Baker, William. George Eliot and Judaism. Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1975. Barton, Bruce. The Book Nobody Knows. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1926. 335

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I N D E X

Ackermann, James, 322n.9 Adams, Brooks, 173; The Emancipation of Massachusetts, 164– 66 Akhenaten, 12, 96, 311. See also Ikhnaton Alcimus Avitus, De spiritalis historiae gestis, 15–16 “A. L. O. E.” See Tucker, Charlotte Maria Amarna (also Akhetaten or AkhetAton), 96 Asch, Sholem, 237– 38; Moses, 238– 41 Assmann, Jan: “Mosaische Unterscheidung,” 325n.24; Moses the Egyptian, ix, 12, 190 Astruc, Jean, 94– 95 Aton, hymn to, 163, 225– 26 Auerbach, Elias, Moses, 213–14 Babel and Bible controversy, 97 Bacmeister, Ernst, 138; Maheli versus Moses, 138– 42 Bahrdt, Karl Friedrich, on Jesus, 19 Barton, Bruce, The Book Nobody Knows, 189 Benjamin, Walter, 272 Benn, Gottfried, 188; “Breeding I,” 188– 89 Bible, rationalizations of, 19– 20, 29 Bollinger, Ulrich, Moseis, 17–18

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, “The Death of Moses,” 228– 30 Borngräber, Otto, 112; Moses, or the Birth of God, 112–15 Bösch, Jakob, 1 Breasted, James H., The Dawn of Conscience, 6, 163– 64, 192 Britt, Brian, Rewriting Moses, 1 (quoted), 326n.12, 328n.1 Bruch, Max, Moses, 70 Buber, Martin: I and Thou, 140; Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant, 213–14 Burgess, Anthony, 268– 69, 328n.9 (chapter 9); Moses: A Narrative, 268– 71 Callahan, Allen Dwight, The Talking Book, 5 Card, Orson Scott, 245– 46; Stone Tables, 246– 49 Chagall, Marc, 238 Chateaubriand, François-René de, 41– 42; Moïse, 41– 45 Churchill, Winston, “Moses: The Leader of a People,” 2– 3 Collins, Billy G., 78 Dagher, Carole, 298; The Secret Testament of Moses, 298– 302 Delitzsch, Friedrich, 97

347

348

DeMille, Cecil B. See Ten Commandments, The De Wette, Wilhelm Martin Leberecht, 29– 30; “Introduction to the Old and New Testament,” 30, 95 Dobbs, Henry, 136– 37; Korah, 137– 38 documentary hypothesis, defined, 29– 30, 94– 95 Drews, Arthur, The Christ Myth, 97 Ebers, Georg, 133– 34; Joshua: A Story of Biblical Times, 133– 36 Eckart, Dietrich, 1 Egyptomania, 30, 38, 49, 177, 309–10 Eichhorn, J. G., 29; Introduction to the Old Testament, 24, 95 Eidlitz, Walther, 130; Mountain in the Wilderness, 130– 32 Eliot, George, 66– 67; Daniel Deronda, 75– 77; “The Death of Moses,” 67– 68 Ezekiel the Poet, Exagoge, 19 Fast, Howard, Moses, Prince of Egypt, 264– 66 Faulkner, William, “Go Down, Moses,” 91– 92 Feminist Companion to the Bible, A, 5 Ferrucci, Franco, The Life of God (as Told by Himself), 156– 59 Five Books of Miriam, The, 5– 6 Fleg, Edmond, Life of Moses, The, 189– 90 Franko, Ivan, 105– 6; Moses, 106– 8 Frazer, Sir James, The Golden Bough, 96 Freud, Sigmund, Moses and Monotheism, 6– 9, 204– 5

Index

Frischlin, Nikodemus, 17 Fry, Christopher, The Firstborn, 230– 32 Gager, John G., Moses in GrecoRoman Paganism, 11 Ginzberg, Louis, The Legends of the Jews, 191 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 24– 25; “Israel in the Wilderness,” 25– 26 Golding, Louis, In the Steps of Moses, 204 Goldstein, Bluma, Reinscribing Moses, 5, 319n.21, 321n.23 Golka, Friedemann, 326n.26 Grant, Joan, So Moses Was Born, 251– 52 Graves, Robert, My Head! My Head!, 173– 76 Grundmann, Walter, 203 Haggard, H. Rider, Moon of Israel, 161 Hahn, Victor, 118; Moses, 117– 22 Halter, Mark, 142– 43; Tsippora, 143– 45 Handel, Georg Friedrich, Israel in Egypt, 19 Handelman, Susan A., Slayers of Moses, 5 Hardy, W. G., 215; All the Trumpets Sounded, 214–18 Harper, Frances E.W.: on Moses, 63– 64; “Moses: A Story of the Nile,” 64– 66 Harring, Harro Paul, 49, 54; Moses in Tanis, 50– 54 Hart, Heinrich, 98; Mose, 98–102 Hartwich, Wolf-Daniel, 327n.35

Index

Hauptmann, Carl, 109; Moses, 109–12 Heine, Heinrich, on Moses, 54– 56 Heptateuchos, 14 Herder, Johann Gottfried, on Moses, 20– 21 Herzl, Theodor, 108– 9, 117 Hitler, Adolf: on Hebrew Bible, 1, 207; Mein Kampf, 187 Hoffmann, Poul, 258; Moses trilogy, 258– 63 hoodoo, 205 Hugo, Victor: “Le Temple,” 39– 40; “Moïse sur le Nil,” 38– 39 Hurston, Zora Neale, 205; “The Fire and the Cloud,” 205; Moses, Man of the Mountain, 206– 9 Ikhnaton, 7, 163 Ingraham, Joseph Holt, 59; Pillar of Fire, 59– 63 Isis, temple at Sais, 22, 32 Jahweh, as volcanic deity, 8, 222, 225 Jansen, Werner, 183– 84; The Children of Israel: A Novel of Race, 184– 88 Jensen, Peter, Das Gilgamesch-Epos in der Weltliteratur, 97 Jesus, postfigurations of, 203 Jewish Renaissance, 117, 311 Johnson, Barbara, Moses and Multiculturalism, 6, 317n.69, 319n.33, 325n.11, 326n.27 Josephus, Flavius: Against Apion, 12; Jewish Antiquities, 10–11 Kayser, Rudolf, 127– 28; Moses’ Death, 127– 29 Keele, Alan, 328n.9 (chapter 8)

349

Keneally, Thomas, 266; Moses the Lawgiver, 266– 68 Klingemann, August, 31; Moses: Dramatic Poem in Five Acts, 31– 36 Kokoschka, Oskar, The Burning Thorn Bush, 91 Kolb, Leon, 252– 53; Moses, the Near Easterner, 252– 58 Kramer, Aaron, 263; Moses (dramatic ballad), 263– 64 Lackey, Michael, “Moses, Man of Oppression,” 5 Langner, Lawrence, 166, 173; Moses: A Play, 166– 73 Lasker-Schüler, Else, “Moses und Josua,” 123 Lawrence, Joan, The Scapegoat, 150– 52 Leibert, Julius A., 241; The Lawgiver: A Novel about Moses, 241– 45 Lepsius, Karl Richard, 31 Liedersammeltheorie, 29 Lissauer, Ernst, 195; The Way of the Mighty One, 195– 98 Loggem, Manuel van, 223; Moses: The Genesis of a People, 223– 28 Luther, Bernhard, 317n.60 Luther, Martin: on Moses, 17 Lyndsay, David, 38; The Plague of Darkness and The Last Plague, 36– 37 Madách, Imre, 56; Moses, 56– 58, 319n.24 Mahfouz, Naguib, 87; Children of Gebelaawi, 88– 91

350

Mann, Thomas, 218–19; The Law, 218– 20; sources, 221– 22 Mendelssohn, Moses, Samples of Rabbinical Wisdom, 20 Messadié, Gerald, 282; The Founding Prophet, 286– 89; The Prince without Crown, 282– 86 Meyer, Eduard, The Israelites and Their Neighboring Tribes, 93, 96 Meyers, William P., 1 Michelangelo, 221 mnemohistory, 12, 190 Mondfeld, Wolfram, Prinz zu, 289; Moses, Son of Promise, 289– 93 monotheism in Egypt, 7– 8, 63, 310 Mosenthal, Heinrich, 68; Moses (libretto), 69– 70 Moses: in antiquity, 10–13; in art and architecture, 16; in Bible, 9–10; compared to Hitler, 1, 221; doubts about his composition of Pentateuch, 94, 310; in eighteenth century, 19– 21; as exemplification of myth, 6– 7, 96– 97, 310; in feminist ideology, 5, 309; as Gilgamesh, 97, 307; historicity denied, 93; ideological uses of, 1– 9; in Jewish Renaissance, 117, 311; in Lutheranism, 17; in Middle Ages, 13–16; in Nazi Germany, 203; oratorios about, 70; popular appeal of, 307– 8; as prefiguration of Jesus, ix, 65, 228; in rabbinic tradition, 13; in Renaissance, 18; as revolutionary icon, 58, 308– 9; sources of his ideas, 310; use by denominational writers, 311–12

Index

Moses(es) (ballet), 306 Moses (Oberammergau stage version), 306 Moses the Lawgiver (TV miniseries), 266, 281 Munch, Edvard, 82; “The City of Free Love,” 82– 84 Murdoch, D. M., Did Moses Exist?, 6 mystery cults, appeal of, 22, 24, 30 mythic patterns, 6– 7, 96– 97 Nataf, Georges, 152; Moses, Autobiography, 152– 56, 323n.4 Nefertiti, bust of, 163, 311 Nietzsche, Friedrich: on the Bible, 80; On the Use and Abuse of History for Life, 9; Thus Spake Zarathustra, 80– 81 Osman, Ahmed, Stranger in the Valley of the Kings, 277 Otto, Eckart, 116 Paulus, Heinrich E. G., 29; Life of Jesus, 93 Pellegrino, Charles, Return to Sodom and Gomorrah, 246 pentateuchal criticism. See documentary hypothesis Petrie, W. M. Flinders, 31 Philo of Alexandria, Life of Moses, 11 postfiguration, defined, ix, 71– 72 Prince of Egypt, The (animated musical film), 281– 82 “Professorenroman,” 133 Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 11

Index

racial theory of Nazis, 184, 188– 89, 208 Rank, Otto, The Myth of the Hero’s Birth, 6 Redford, Donald B., 316n.23 Reimarus, Hermann Samuel, 18, 29, 93 Reinhold, Karl Leonhardt, The Hebraic Mysteries, 21– 22 Renan, Ernest, Life of Jesus, 94 Rilke, Rainer Maria, “The Death of Moses,” 115–16 Robertson, John M., Christianity and Mythology, 97 Rosenberg, Alfred, Myth of the Twentieth Century, 188 Rosenberg, Isaac, 124– 25, 173; Moses, 124– 27 Rossini, Gioachino, Moïse et Pharaon, 45– 49 Rubinstein, Anton, Moses, 68– 70 Sandmel, Samuel, 146; Alone Atop the Mountain, 146– 49 Schellenberg, Ernst Ludwig, The Foreign Body in Christianity, 203 Schiller, Friedrich, 21; “Moses’ Mission,” 21– 24 Schönberg, Arnold, 84– 85; Der biblische Weg, 85– 87; Moses und Aron, 198– 202 Schweizer, Albert, Quest for the Historical Jesus, 93 Sedulius, Paschale Carmen, 14–15 Sellin, Ernst, Mose und seine Bedeutung für die israelitischjüdische Religionsgeschichte, 7, 316n.21

351

Smith, Joseph, The Pearl of Great Price, 246, 248 Southon, Arthur E., 210; On Eagles’ Wings, 210–13 Spencer, John, 18 Steffens, Lincoln, 180– 81; Moses in Red, 181– 83 Strauss, David Friedrich, Life of Jesus, 29, 67, 94 Strindberg, August, 103; “The Egyptian Bondage,” 105; “The Mysticism of World History,” 103– 4; Through Deserts to Ancestral Lands, 104– 5 Stucken, Eduard, Astralmythen (Mose), 97 Tarr, Judith, 276– 77; Pillar of Fire, 277– 80 Ten Commandments, The, 56, 189, 210, 233, 266, 281, 305 Tucker, Charlotte Maria (“A. L. O. E.”), 72; Rescued from Egypt, 72– 75 Tutankhamun, tomb of, 163, 191 Twain, Mark: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 77– 78; Tom Sawyer Abroad, 79 typological analogy, 74– 75. See also postfiguration Untermeyer, Louis, 325n.21; Moses, 190– 94 uses and abuses, defined, 9, 308, 314 Vaget, Hans Rudolf, 326n.20 Velikovsky, Immanuel, 328n.5; Worlds in Collision, 258 Venturini, Karl Heinrich, on Jesus, 19

352

Vigny, Alfred, de, “Moïse,” 40– 41 Voltaire: on Jesus, 93; on Moses, 19– 20 Wacker, Gabriela, 323nn.15–16 Walzer, Michael, Exodus and Revolution, 5 Waltari, Mika, The Egyptian, 311 Weitzmann, Kurt, 316n.43 Wellhausen, Julius: “Israel,” 95; Prolegomena to the History of Israel, 30, 95, 318n.73 Werfel, Franz, “Prayer of Moses,” 123– 24 Wiesel, Elie, “Moses: Portrait of A Leader,” 3– 4 Wildgans, Anton, The Call, 161– 63 Wilkinson, Sir John Gardner, 31 Wilson, Dorothy Clarke, 233; Prince of Egypt, 234– 37

Index

Witter, H. B., 94 Wolf, Friedrich August, 29 Wouk, Herman, 304; The Lawgiver, 304– 5 Wright, Melanie J., Moses in America, 206– 7, 324n.10, 325n.6 Zangwill, Israel, “Moses and Jesus,” 122– 23 Zapletal, Vinzenz, 176– 77; Moses, Leader of the People, 178– 80; Moses, the Godseeker, 177– 78 Zauner, Friedrich, 302; Exodus: A Moses Novel, 302– 4 Zelitch, Simone, 293; Moses in Sinai, 293– 97 Zionism, 85, 108, 128– 29 Zitelmann, Arnulf, 272– 73; Moses, The Man from the Desert, 271– 76

                is professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at Princeton University.