Rewriting Moses: The Narrative Eclipse of the Text

(Paperback, NIPPOD)

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Exalted for centuries as a hero and author of the Bible, Moses is inseparable from biblical tradition itself. Moses is also an inherently ambiguous figure and a perennial focus of controversy, from ancient disputes of priestly rivalry to modern issues of class, gender and race. In Rewriting Moses, Brian Britt analyses elements of polemic and ideology in the Moses of the Bible, of film, novel, visual art and scholarship. He argues that the biblical Moses lives within writing, while the post-biblical Moses lives more often in biography. Yet later rewritings of Moses refract biblical traditions of writing in surprising ways. Rewriting Moses provides an original account of the Freudian insight that traditions preserve what they repress. This is volume 14 in the Gender, Cutlure, Theory series and is volume 402 in the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplements series.

Reviews

'an eclectic mix of traditional historical methods with recent hermeneutical and ideological approaches....Britt is a skilled critic and moves seamlessly between film, art, literature, and the biblical text itself.' Brian D. Russell, Expository Times, 01/11/2005 * Expository Times *

Author Bio

Brian Britt received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School and is currently Associate Professor and Director of Religious Studies in the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.