THE STORY OF MOSES

Neither a ""biography"" nor a retelling of the Pentateuch but the sequence of events in the life of ""a man and not a god"" that closely follows the Bible and also draws upon the most modern scholarly sources. Miss Klagsbrun uses only dialogue from the Revised Standard Version, excises most of the prohibitive catalogues and concentrates on building a sense of the man; special from birth, vulnerable as a young man, stiff-necked in his encounters with the Pharaoh, winningly human as he leads a group of sometimes grumbling, sometimes happy people through the desert. What little things the author adds elucidate contemporary living patterns, where the Bible is ambiguous she either chooses a preferred strand or emphasizes the more likely alternative; a few times she refers to Joshua (where the Bible does not) to make the handing over of power that much more acceptable at the close. Moses emerges as a remarkable man, the first to lead a people to monotheism, one of the first to set down a humane code which, the author adds, surpassed the earlier laws of Hammurabi with which he must have been familiar. An informed, informative and imaginative presentation.