An Educated Man: A Dual Biography of Moses and Jesus - Softcover

Rosenberg, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1582437289 ISBN 13: 9781582437286

Publisher: Counterpoint, 2011

Synopsis

From this prize-winning and best-selling author comes a magisterial new project: a dual biography, weaving together the preeminent figures of Judeo-Christian civilization and overturning the conventional view of Moses and Jesus as humble men of faith.

Rooting the biographies of Moses and Jesus in their historical contexts, Rosenberg reads their narratives as cultural rather than religious endeavors. He charges that both Moses and Jesus were educated” men, steeped in the literature and scholarship of their day. There were no old or new testaments for them, but rather a long history of writing and writers.

When professors quote Moses in university courses, or pastors quote Jesus in sermons, they routinely neglect to inform us that Jesus himself is quoting the Hebrew Bible, often in the manner that Moses once quoted Egyptian medical texts. The remarkable ability of both men to recall and transform a wide range of sources is overlooked. Where did they get these profound educations?

Part biography, part critical analysis, An Educated Man further challenges us to envision what defines an educated man or woman” today and how an understanding of our religious history is crucial to it.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

An Educated Man overturns the conventional view of Moses and Jesus as humble men of faith.  David Rosenberg charges that both Moses and Jesus were "educated" men, steeped in the literature and scholarship of their day.  Where did they get these profound educations?  Part biography, part critical analysis, An Educated Man challenges us to envision what defines "an educated man or woman" today--and how an understanding of our religious history is crucial to it.

From the Back Cover:

Praise for David Rosenberg:

"An Ancient Hebrew poet as if writing today, with a strength of mind, wit, and intelligence."
--Donald Hall

"Welds together all the available genres to make a prose poem, neither epic nor romance nor tragedy nor comedy yet all these at once."
--John Barton, The New York Review of Books

"An intelligent, poetic, and most genre-bending mind."
--Barbara Probst Solomon, The Washington Post

About this edition

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1582437289
• ISBN 13: 9781582437286
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272