Moses and Multiculturalism

By Barbara Johnson and Barbara Rietveld

Literary Criticism : Semiotics & Theory

University of California Press
Publication date: February 2010

ISBN: 9780520946101

Digital Book format: PDF (Adobe DRM)

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Countering impressions of Moses reinforced by Sigmund Freud in his epoch-making Moses and Monotheism, this concise, engaging work begins with the perception that the story of Moses is at once the most nationalist and the most multicultural of all foundation narratives. Weaving together various textsâ¿¿biblical passages, philosophy, poems, novels, opera, and moviesâ¿¿Barbara Johnson explores how the story of Moses has been appropriated, reimagined, and transmitted across cultures and historical moments. But she finds that already in the Bible, the story of Moses is a multicultural story, the story of someone who functions well in a world to which he, unbeknownst to the casual observer, does not belong. Using the Moses story as a lens through which to view questions at the heart of contemporary literary, philosophical, and ethical debates, Johnson shows how, through a close analysis of this figure's recurrence through time, we might understand something of the paradoxes, if not the impasses of contemporary multiculturalism.