Bible: An Islamic Perspective: Moses

Moses, a volume in The Bible: An Islamic Perspective series, examines the career and impact of this commanding prophet as found in the Biblical record, the Qur’an ( where he is, mentioned more times than any other Biblical figure), and the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions which have collected about him. In following Moses’s story, we shall encounter familiar characters such as Aaron, Pharaoh, Jethro, Korah, Balaam, Joshua, and even Esther. While reviewing the more famous events in Moses’s life: his birth, his flight to Midian, the theophanies that led to the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, the crossing of the sea, the wandering in the wilderness, the ten commandments, and the golden calf, we shall take many side journeys into Judaic and Islamic tradition. Problems such a location of the Red Sea crossing and the Holy Mountain. Moses’s nationality, his speech defect, the Kenite hypothesis, and the nature of his miracles are investigated. A section is devoted the journey of Moses described by Josephus and the Qur’an. The book ends with the burial of the man about whom the Deuteronomist wrote: “there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses.”