Thursday, December 26, 2013

J. Wright on the birth of Moses

DR. JACOB L. WRIGHT: The Birth of Moses: Between Bible and Midrash: A Supplementary Approach (TheTorah.com).
What we witness in this brief study is the extent to which rabbinic tradition stands in direct continuity to the formation of the biblical text. The earliest biblical account of Moses’s birth responds to questions about his origins. A later preface responds to the problems posed by the older account, and both texts in turn provoked new attempts by the rabbis to solve the remaining problems in the text. In this way we can trace how the multilayered pearls of our tradition evolved from the agitating sands of time.