Finding an Ancient Dramatic Adaptation of the Book of Exodus

Actual physical evidence of an ancient work long familiar to historians was only recently discovered among a trove of discarded Egyptian papyri—thanks to a project that employs thousands of volunteers and advanced computer algorithms. Adam Lusher writes:

The volunteers . . . helped discover a fragment of a long-lost rendition of the book of Exodus, written in the style of a Greek tragedy by a little-known author called Ezekiel in 2nd-century BCE Alexandria.

“Before, we had only known about this work because it was quoted by the [4th-century CE] Church father Eusebius,” said Professor [Dirk] Obbink, [one of the project’s directors]. “We didn’t know for certain that a text existed: Eusebius might have made it up or misremembered it.

“Now we have a real copy, a long speech by Moses, in iambic trimeter, telling the history of his life and how he was discovered as a baby in the bulrushes. We can put some flesh and bones on a lost work of literature, one that was presumably performed long before Charlton Heston.”

Read more at Independent

More about: Egypt, Exodus, History & Ideas, Moses, Theater

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF