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 analyzes elements of polemic and ideology in the Moses of the Bible, on film, in novels, 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 fourteenth volume in the Gender, Cutlure, Theory series and is volume 402 in the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplemens series.

Author Biography

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 Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.