Language:
English
Year of publication:
2019
Titel der Quelle:
Hebrew Union College Annual
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2019) 257-270
Keywords:
Moses
;
Moses Death and burial
;
Bible Appreciation
Abstract:
Does Moses meet his end? The question doesn't yield an easy or immediate answer. Instead, this uncertainty in Moses's biography launches rich interpretive inquiries in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that involve meditations on the possibility of immortality. Much is lost – including commonalities – in limiting these meditations to positions, but I will begin by stating that Judaism imagines Moses's immortality through Jewish history entwined with study of the Five Books of Moses; Christianity sees his final days as suggesting a form of translation that prefigures resurrection; and Islam interprets this uncertainty in terms of a prophetic realm accessed by Muḥammad during his revelation. To further simplify, all of the traditions that embrace Moses imagine him as both dying and enduring. In this way the traditions are faithful to the text of Deuteronomy, which also hedges its bets on the death of Moses. The question of Moses's afterlife in Christian and Islamic traditions folds into the notion of Jewish revelation as both foundational and incomplete. As we explore these traditions, a modern question can come into view: what happens to the mortal/immortal prophet in the context, not just of religious interpretation and tradition, but of nationalism? More specifically, what effects do Jewish, Palestinian, and Jordanian nationalism have on the meaning of Moses and his end, and how do persistent interpretations of Moses's end undergird nationalistic narratives?
DOI:
10.15650/hebruniocollannu.90.2019.0257
URL:
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