The star of the new Ridley Scott movie about Moses, "Exodus: Gods and Kings" (release Dec. 12), described Moses earlier this Fall (as reported in the Hollywood Reporter) as "a very troubled and tumultuous man" who was "likely a schizophrenic and was one of the most barbaric individuals that I ever read about in my life." Though these comments by Christian Bale show insensitivity to contemporary communities for whom the figure of Moses is deeply important, he has picked up on an important feature of the stories surrounding Moses: they are saturated in ancient experiences of trauma.
Of course, we have no way to ascertain whether Moses personally suffered from trauma. He lived long before history was written down in Israel and the stories about him are shrouded in centuries of later tradition. That said, we do know that the biblical books about Moses (Exodus --Deuteronomy) were completed in the wake of ancient Israel's deepest crisis, hundreds of years after Moses: when the holy and supposedly invulnerable city of Jerusalem had been destroyed, its kingship ended, and its populace sent into seeming permanent exile in Babylon.
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