Najman on Moses

PROFESSOR HINDY NAJMAN: The Ancient Practice of Attributing Texts and Ideas to Moses (TheTorah.com).

Ancient scribes would write as if Moses was the author, or they would claim that a tradition was originally stated by Moses, but they did not intend to convey a historical fact with this description. Instead, they meant that a given tradition was “authentically” Jewish, or God’s will and that Moses would have approved. I call this phenomenon “Mosaic Discourse.”

Professor Najman gave her inaugural lecture at Oxford University at the end of last month. It was titled, "Ethical Reading: Transformation of the Text and the Self." For more on her work, see here.