A Comparative Analysis of Moses

The biblical Moses and the Moses described by Zora Neale Hurston in her book Moses, Man of the Mountain, ar both based upon the Exodus story, open in the second book of the Bible.Although the stories are similar in some respects, both concerned with the bondage of a people and their cries for a deliverer, who is demonstrate in Moses, the biblical Moses is firmly rooted solely in the Hebraical tradition, following the lead of the patriarchs, Abraham, Issac, and Jacob.Hurstons Moses, however, although still a Hebraical, has a more(prenominal) universal appeal. He speaks in black colloquialisms, creating an extended analogy that layabout be linked not to the ancient Hebrews, but similarly to the ladened blacks in America, and to the modern Jews who were savagely persecuted by Hitler and Nazism.The Exodus story concerns a male son born to Hebrew slaves. The midwives disobey Pharaohs miss to cleanup all male newborns. Moses is hidden only to be observed by none other than Ph araohs own daughter, who then raises him as her own son, who later disc all overs his true identity and leads the slaves to freedom. Moses life is divided into 40 year segments forty years in Egypt forty years on the back side of a mountain and forty years planetal in the wilderness.In Hurstons version, more is made about race. The story discusses the humor of a people and their origins to a greater extent. Hurston slants the argument to ward the idea of racial origins and perhaps origin more generally as the start of legion(predicate) of the evils of the world. She not only wants to create doubts about Moses pure origins, but also about the very concept that was prevalent during 1939 when her book was written that of racial purity.As an anthropology researcher she understood racial divisions as idealized abstractions, even though they had concrete functions in the real world. Hurston explored race as a ethnical creation rather than a biological fact. Her novel assumes an even g reater meaning as Germany, led by Hitlers theory of eugenics-founded on the idea of racial improvement through selective breeding- started the world war in 1939.In the United States the eugenics movement was related to racist campaigns against European undesirables and blacks. Eugenics was archetype to be necessary to produce a great race. Hitlers terminus was a Master race who guarded the purity of their own blood. By keeping race pure, exterminating Jews and Slavs were deemed essential to that undertaking.(Hurston, introduction xii-xiv).The spectre of Nazism looms over the beginning of Hurstons novel as it starts with the act of marking Hebrew male newborns for extinction. Parents, desperate for places to hide their children, become frantic that the legal philosophy qualification get tipped off and come execute their child. In fact, Moses forefather is so fearful that he aims to kill the baby himself so that the police wont have that chance. Yet despite their terror, Moses mot her is goaded that he lives and hides him. In all this hoopla of extermination, the irony is that there is visual sense of Hebrew blood in Pharaohs family already.That is why he wants to kill us off. He is scared someone will come along and tell who his real folks are. The grandmother of Pharaoh was a Hebrew. ( Hurston, 14).Besides his murder of male infants, Pharaoh is cruel in other ways. He denies citizenship to the Hebrews, relegating them to slavery. Yet in still another act of irony, Pharaoh ends up with a Hebrew grandson in Moses.As he grows older, Moses fights for inclusion of the Hebrews in the Egyptian army. But the Egyptians oppose him, remarkingThey are not citizens of Egypt, but enemy prisoners, and as such it would bbe rash to vagabond arms into their hands again. Who knows when they might rise up and turn the tables?