Content area
Full Text
Die Tora des Mose: Die Geschichte der literarischen Vermittlung von Recht, Religion und Politik durch die Mosegestalt, by Eckart Otto. Berichte aus den Sitzungen der Joachim Jungius-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften E.V., Hamburg 19/2. Hamburg: Joachim Jungius-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001. Pp. 74. euro12.90 (paper). ISBN 352586311X.
Eckart Otto, respected for his stimulating books and essays on the Pentateuch and its connections to the ancient Near Eastern intellectual and political world, offers in this too brief tract a persuasive argument that the image of Moses served the various tradents of the Pentateuch, in part, as a device for political opposition to Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian rule. Standing in the central European (primarily German) tradition of redactional analysis of the Pentateuch, Otto moves from questions of the purely literary development of the text to larger historical ones.
Framing the discussion are a brief introduction to the idea of the book (pp. 5-6, which includes a disavowal of the search for the historical Moses) and an abbreviated conclusion that connects the political speculation of the Pentateuch's tradents to early modern political philosophy and the birth of the idea of human rights (pp. 58-60). An excellent bibliography, chiefly of German works, closes the volume. The core of the book consists of four lengthier chapters exploring "literaturhistorische Voraussetzungen einer Geschichte des literarischen Mose im Pentateuch" (pp. 6-11), "Mose als Antitypus zum neuassyrischen Großkönig im spätvorexilischen Juda" (pp. 11-33), "Mose als Kristallisationsgestalt judäischer Identität in spätbabylonischer Zeit" (pp....