Abstract
This commentary on Exodus, like its 2003 predecessor The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis, is, as its title indicates, more of a distinctive reading than a commentary in familiar scholarly mode.
Kass characterizes his distinctive approach as ‘philosophical’, where ‘philosophical’ means: ‘the activity – epitomized by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and their descendants – of whole-hearted pursuit of the truth about the world and our place in it, in search of guidance for how we are to live. This book results from my efforts to read the Hebrew Bible in this spirit, the same spirit in which I read Plato’s Republic or Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics – indeed any great book – seeking wisdom regarding human life lived well in relation to the whole.’ Moreover, ‘if there is wisdom in the Hebrew Bible, it should be available not only to Jews and Christians but to all’. Thus we are invitingly presented with the Hebrew Bible as a classic of the human condition.
More controversial is Kass’s mode of reading, in which extensive modern scholarship (with which Kass appears to have a somewhat scattergun acquaintance, predominantly with Jewish writers) on the possible origins and nature of the text is excluded from consideration. Strikingly, ‘I force myself to read it as for the first time, ignorant of what happens later in the story… In reading about any episode or interpreting any passage, I try to admit into evidence only what I have read before in Genesis or in the preceding parts of Exodus.’ Possible ancient tradents of traditional material, or returning readers who read with familiarity with the material, disappear from view. As a thought experiment, this can be worthwhile. But it makes for an idiosyncratic reading, where many hard-won scholarly insights are set aside.
I particularly regret the absence of questions about literary genre, with its corollary of what kinds of reading the biblical text does and does not most fruitfully sustain. Consider, for example, Kass’s reading of Moses’ turning aside to see the burning bush in Exodus 3:3: ‘Recognizing that the sight defies both experiential and rational expectations, Moses is mentally disposed not only to pay attention but also to seek an explanation: moved by both wonder and curiosity, he turns aside not only to see but also to seek the cause. Unlike Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses wants to know the why of things [with endnote on Hebrew words for ‘why’, especially maddu’a and its rarity in Genesis]. He turns away from shepherding, a matter of leadership and rule, toward questioning and understanding, a matter of truth, to be sought for its own sake’. When does close reading become over-reading?
The book is long. Some 600 pages of thoughtful, often insightful, but also often eccentric content, is followed by a further 100 pages of endnotes, mostly substantive rather than bibliographic, which makes reading the book awkward. A more focused presentation might perhaps expect a larger readership.