Literature as Politics: The Exodus Narrative with Angela Roskop Erisman (Hybrid event)

The life of Moses begins in crisis, as his mother places him in a pitch-covered basket and abandons him to an uncertain fate in the river. The abandoned infant motif is attested in literature from across the ancient world, but the book of Exodus evokes a specific text: the birth legend of Sargon the Great. Scholars have long recognized the connections between these two texts. This talk will offer a new idea about why ancient Israelite scribes turned to this ancient Mesopotamian work of political allegory as a model for the Moses story and explore the implications for how we understand the exodus, as well as the character of its hero.

Angela Roskop Erisman is a scholar of the Hebrew Bible who specializes in the Torah. She earned her PhD at HUC-JIR Cincinnati in 2008. Her first book, The Wilderness Itineraries: Genre, Geography, and the Growth of Torah, won the Manfred Lautenschläger Award for Theological Promise in 2014. Her second, The Wilderness Narratives in the Hebrew Bible: Religion, Politics, and Biblical Interpretation, will be published in November 2024 by Cambridge University Press.

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