By Julia Olson
Assistant Editor
The Klau Library on the HUC Cincinnati campus will be hosting “Literature as Politics: The Exodus Narrative” with Dr. Angela Roskop Erisman, Tuesday, December 3 from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. Dr. Erisman earned her Ph.D. in Bible and Ancient Near East from the Hebrew Union College’s Pines School of Graduate Studies on the Cincinnati campus. She has served as Managing Director of Hebrew Union College Press and Editorial Director at The Marginalia Review of Books. She has written several books focusing on the Wilderness Narratives and the book of Numbers. Dr. Erisman will be speaking about the birth narrative of Moses and its close relationship with the birth legend of Sargon the Great, said to be the founder of the Akkadian Empire. Both heroes begin their tales with the “abandoned infant” motif, and both are floated down a river in a basket coated in pitch. Biblical and ancient Near Eastern scholars have long recognized connections between the two texts. Erisman’s lecture will offer a new theory about why the Israelite writers of the Bible sampled parts of the famous Mesopotamian story as a model for the Moses story. Erisman will explore what the relationship between the stories means for how we understand the story of the exodus as well as the character of Moses. The event is an in-person/online hybrid event, so those who want to attend virtually may do so. Registration information can be found on the Klau Library website.
