Between Pharaohs and Nomads | 147- For these ideas: Lincoln Steffens, Moses in Red: The Revolt of Israel as a Typical Revolu-
tion (Philadelphia: Dorrance and Co., 1926); Thomas Mann, The Tables of the Law (1944; Phi la-
delphia: Paul Dry Books, 2010). - John Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism in the Nineteenth Century: England and Ger-
many (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1984), 21, 29. - MRC vii.
- In some ways this position identifies Buber with eighteenth-century German neolo-
gist scholarship, which held that one could salvage history from the “myths” of the Penta-
teuch; Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism, 56. However, the movement of “tradition-criticism”
to the forefront of biblical studies during the period of Buber’s work on the topic may have
retroactively rendered his method less “conservative” (Buber cites many of the most promi-
nent tradition critics). Buber occasionally agrees with Wellhausen, such as by assenting to the
Pentateuchal order of events (Exodus, wandering, settlement, monarchy). Douglas A. Knight,
Rediscovering the Traditions of Israel, 3rd ed. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), 54;
67–69, 172. - N.B.: Buber is careful to avoid the type of conservative apologetics wherein scholars at-
tempt to demonstrate the historicity of biblical personalities (e.g., Darius the Mede in the book
of Daniel); John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 554. - MRC 74.
- Ibid., 15 (my italics). The Hebrew word rendered as “saga” is aggada (c f. Moshe, 1–7),
which in its rabbinic sense has neither an English nor a German equivalent. However, Buber
uses it in a mundane sense, to mean Legende, or Sage, as given in the German (WZB 16–23). - Peter Sloterdijk, Derrida, An Egyptian: On the Problem of the Jewish Pyramid, trans.
Wieland Hoban (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2009), 47; cf. Régis Debray, God: An Itinerary,
trans. Jeffrey Mehlman (New York: Verso, 2004). - Relevant is Gershom Scholem’s “whimsical” definition of Zionism “as a movement
against the excessive inclination of the Jews to travel.” The whimsy masks a clear divide be-
tween Scholem’s vision of Zionism and Buber’s, which, from Buber’s perspective, may readmit
a significant quotient of Egypt into the affairs of Israel; Scholem, “What Is Judaism?” in On
the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism in Our Time and Other Essays, ed. Avraham Shapira, trans.
Jonathan Chipman (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1997), 116. - Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Ca m-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 7. - In reply to critics, Assmann claimed that he never wanted to “revoke” the Mosaic dis-
tinction, only “sublimate” it; Jan Assmann, The Price of Monotheism, trans. Robert Savage
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 120. - MRC ix.
- Assmann acknowledges that the Mosaic distinction is not merely about quantifying the
number of gods as “one” rather than “many,” but about the notion of true and false in religion.
But he neglects to examine the diverse attitudes one might take towards such truth and falsity. - MRC x; WZB 14; Moshe viii.
- Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 152–3.
- “To every worldly empire belongs a certain relativism with respect to the motley of
possible views, ruthless disregard of local peculiarities as well as opportunistic tolerance for
things of no central importance.” Carl Schmitt, Roman Catholicism and Political Form, trans.
G. L. Ulmen (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 5–6. - Buber’s claim for this gains some historical justification from the rootedness of the form
of the literary version of the Sinai covenant in Hittite vassal treaties; Collins, Introduction to
the Hebrew Bible, 122.