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. https://huc.edu/libraries/library-events/library-event-registration/

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