It seems as though Hollywood just can’t get enough of the Torah these days.
With Noah only recently being a box office hit, the latest attempt at biblical commercialism, Exodus: Gods and Kings, is due for release here today. The same director who brought us the epic battle sequences of Gladiator, Ridley Scott, has now attempted a faithful translation of the Exodus story to the big screen.
For Jews and Christians, a faithful translation would be based on the Torah. But what about Muslims? How does the Islamic narrative in the Quran differ from that of the Judeo-Christian version?
The Exodus story begins with the oppression of the Israelites by a new Pharaoh. The Quranic version does not focus on the oppression of the Israelites as such, but on Pharaoh’s evil act of splitting up the people into different groups and oppressing a minority. In both traditions, the Pharaoh orders all Hebrew baby boys to be killed. To save her baby, one mother hides him in a small boat on the river. In the Torah, the Pharaoh’s daughter finds him; in the Quran, it is Pharaoh’s wife that does so.
The Islamic lens seems to zoom out from the Torah’s focus on the Israelites. This makes sense, considering the fact that Islam considers itself as the universal religion of humanity, bringing with it a set of laws for all mankind. This is in contrast to Judaism, which views the Torah as the historical documentation of the Hebrew people, with an exclusive legal system borne out of an everlasting covenant made between God and the Children of Israel.
In both books, God’s voice from a burning bush gives Moses the inspiration to plead with Pharaoh to let his people go. Both books tell of Moses’s hesitation to take on this divine mission, referring specifically to his speech impediment.
One of the most interesting, yet bizarre, differences within the Islamic narrative is the appearance of Haman in the story. In the Quran, Haman is the chief counsellor in the court of Pharaoh. In Jewish tradition, he was in fact the main protagonist in the Purim story that took place almost a thousand years after the Exodus. Indeed, it was partly due to such differences from biblical narratives found in the Quran that many Jews rejected the new religion of Islam.
Nevertheless, both Exodus narratives mention a series of plagues — the Torah expounds on all ten; the Quran refers only to nine. In both books, the Children of Israel escape through a passage dried for them in the sea, leaving the Egyptian troops pursuing them to drown. In the Quran, however, Pharaoh repents by saying, “I believe there is no God except the God in whom the Children of Israel believe”, but it is too late.
Moses’s ascent up Mount Sinai is described in both books, as his receipt of commandments from God. Not for the first time, the Quran seems to borrow from a famous Jewish midrash by stating that the mountain was “raised over the heads of the Israelites” before they accepted the Torah. This is the same Torah that the Quran claims was later corrupted.
When Moses returns from the mountain, his people are dancing around a golden calf. In the Torah, he breaks the tablets in anger. In the Quran, however, Moses (in untypically Jewish fashion) places the tablets down calmly before speaking to his people. After forty difficult years of wandering, the people enter the land of milk and honey.
In both the Christian and Islamic traditions, the Exodus story represents God’s punishment as a result of disobedience to God. The “stiff-necked” Israelites worship the golden calf and refuse to enter the Promised Land, causing God to curse them with forty years of wandering in the desert.
Christians and Muslims use these failings of the Israelites in this story as yet another example of why, they claim, God later broke His original covenant with the Jews. Further, it is within this same recounting of the Exodus that the Quran repeatedly speaks to the Jews; “O Children of Israel, remember My favour that I bestowed upon you in Egypt, that I preferred you over all the worlds.”
In contrast, the Jewish narrative tries to focus on God’s forgiveness, leadership, and protection. We see the relevance of the Ten Commandments today, as the foundation of moral law. The beauty of the Jewish covenant with God is that it embodies everything about humanity. We learn that even in our darkest hour, when it seems as though our disobedience to God has taken us off the path, we have the brightest hope, and a chance to get back on it.
This is the real message of the Exodus. Let’s see if Hollywood can match it.
