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Moses stuck by his original namesake, unshakeably believing the laws had indeed been given on the mountain and he never supposed the Exodus was anything but historical fact. But he found nothing shocking or un-Jewish about Spinoza’s assertion that the lawgiving had to be understood in the context of its time and place and was intended for the governance of an uprooted unruly people. Unlike Spinoza, however, he believed that the historicity of that legislation did not make it redundant when circumstances changed. Mendelssohn also demoted the drama of revelation on Mount Sinai to secondary ...more
The Story of the Jews Volume 2: When Words Fail: 1492--Present
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