Elena Narinskaya: Exodus stories and their reception in Abrahamic Religious Traditions: A case study of stories of Moses in Jewish, Christian and Muslim sources

Moses is an inspirational prophetic figure in Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious traditions. This study journeys through the Abrahamic faiths of Oriental persuasion and illustrates their respective depictions of the Moses’ stories. Each step of the research examines the stories of the Prophet Moses in the biblical narrative of Exodus, in the exegesis of the Palestinian Jewish Midrash, the Christian writer Ephrem the Syrian and in the passages of the Qur’an. The research shows the relationship between the four primary sources and consequently between the religious traditions, which they represent. Hence, the proposed research explores into the question of continuity of the Abrahamic religious traditions and their common heritage in Syria, Palestine, Arabian Peninsula region in Antiquity/Middle Ages (from the third to the seventh century CE). In exploring the differences and similarities between the Hebrew Bible, Jewish rabbinical commentaries, Syriac Christian exegesis and the Qur’an, this study seeks for a deeper understanding of the Prophet Moses in the religious history of humanity. In doing so the study offers a collaborative portrayal of the figure of Moses from the point of view common to all three of the Abrahamic religions. The overall attempt of this research is to consider the exegetical writings of the Midrash, Ephrem the Syrian, and the Qur’an under the umbrella term of the common tradition of biblical exegesis of Abrahamic oriental heritage. This study explores the varying perspectives of each of the religious traditions, and also unites them in their common endeavour to interpret the figure of Moses in relation to the biblical narrative of Exodus, as well as in relation to the respective religious traditions of each other. This research describes a two-way process of exegetical endeavour between the studied sources. On the one hand, the exegetical writings of the Midrash, Ephrem, and the Qur’an are presented in this book as being inspired by the original biblical narrative of Exodus. On the other hand, their exegetical accomplishments feed back into the biblical narrative about Moses, enriching it with new insights, colours and depths. Consequently the study in this research steps into the area of overlap and influence between the original sources and describes different levels of collaboration between them.