Moses: A Life

Lawgiver and liberator. Seer and prophet. The only human permitted to converse with God face-to-face. Moses is the most commanding presence in the Old Testament. Yet as Jonathan Kirsch shows in this brilliant stunningly original volume Moses was also an enigmatic and mysterious figure--at once a good shepherd and a ruthless warrior a spiritual leader and a magician a lawgiver who broke his own laws Gods chosen friend and hounded victim. Now in Moses: A Life Kirsch accomplishes the wondrous feat of revealing the real Moses a strikingly modern figure who steps out from behind the facade of Sunday school lessons and movie matinees.. Drawing on the biblical text and a treasury of both scholarship and storytelling Kirsch examines all that is known and all that has been imagined of Moses. In these vivid pages we see the marvels and mysteries of Mosess life in a new light--his rescue in infancy and adoption by an Egyptian princess; his reluctant assumption of the role of liberator; his struggles to wrest his people from the pharaohs dominion; his desperate vigil on Mount Sinai. Here too is the darker more ominous Moses--the sorcerer the husband of a pagan woman the military commander who cold-bloodedly ordered the slaying of innocent people; the beloved of God whom God sought twice to murder.. Jonathan Kirsch brings both prodigious knowledge and a keen imagination to one of the most compelling stories of the Bible and the results are fascinating. A figure of mystery passion and contradiction Moses emerges from this book very much a hero for our time.