Customer Reviews

Moses: Making of Myth & Law : The Influence of Egyptian Sex, Religion and Law on the Writing of the Torah

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First of all, this book is written for people who are familiar with the Torah. Ide moves systematically through each of the five books and analyzes everything from who Moses was, to how the stories were created, to why Moses did certain things. Almost every page is half-covered with footnotes, many of them in Hebrew and Greek.

The book explains how Moses got his name (from the sun-god Ra-moses), how the Moses story was created and used in various cultures and religions, and how or why certain things were added in each book, particularly Numbers and Deuteronomy. Ide reveals the Hebrew leaders as religious zealots who lied to and manipulated their people in order to retain power and continue living like kings off the sacrifices and offerings of their people. He does this, however, quite academically, and these conclusions are easily drawn with the mountains of primary-source evidence Ide lays out.

This was my first experience with Ide, and he's shown himself to be an accomplished researcher, writer, historian and linguist. He regularly quotes original languages, even hieroglyphics. His conclusions seem to be academic, not bias-motivated, which I consider very important in religious studies. This book is a must-read for anyone who is a Christian, Jew or just interested in Judaism.