Christian Moses: From Philo to the Qur'an

During the first six centuries of the common era, Christianity had to reexamine and modify its relationship with the Jewish tradition, addressing issues such as biblical and parabiblical texts, God's nature and purposes, prayer patterns, ritual practices, ethical norms, religious authority, and presenting a religious "face" to the surrounding culture. This volume of essays explores the changing perception of Moses in Christian eyes, from a scriptural record that Jews would have recognized to the philosopher par excellence, the forerunner of Plato, the archetype of the lawgiver, and the model shepherd of the people of God.

Format: Hardback
Length: 368 pages
Publication date: 30 July 2019
Publisher: The Catholic University of America Press

Christianity was constantly forced to reassess and adapt its relationship with the Jewish tradition during the first six centuries of the common era. This process involved a number of preoccupations and challenges, including the status of biblical and parabiblical texts, the nature and purposes of God, patterns of prayer, ritual practices, ethical norms, the acquisition and exercise of religious authority, and the presentation of a religious "face" to the different culture that surrounded and in many ways dominated both Christians and Jews.

The essays in this volume were developed within that broad field of inquiry, and indeed make their contribution to it. For, among the many issues already mentioned, there was also that of persons. What was Christianity to do, not just with Adam or Noah, say, but with Abraham, David and Solomon, the great prophetic figures of Jewish history—and, of course, with Moses?

As we move, chapter by chapter, across the early Christian centuries, we see Moses gradually changing in Christian eyes, and at the hands of Christian exegetes and theologians, until he becomes the philosopher par excellence, the forerunner of Plato, the archetype of the lawgiver, the model shepherd of the people of God—yet all on the basis of a scriptural record that Jews would still have been able to recognize.

Written by a range of established scholars, younger and older, many of them highly distinguished, The Christian Moses will appeal to graduate and senior students, to those rooted in a range of disciplines—literary, historical, art historical, as well in theology and exegesis—and to everyone interested in Jewish-Christian relations in the early centuries of the common era.

Weight: 682g
Dimension: 235 x 160 x 27 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780813231914