Exodus Plagues

And here’s another thing from Murphy on the Exodus plagues: “The Pharaoh’s magicians had proudly imitated Moses’ conjuring: they can turn rods into crocodiles too. But was it wise to demonstrate that they can as powerfully invoke a plague of frogs as the prophet of Yahweh? They are on automatic pilot. Locked into mimetic rivalry with Moses, the magicians lose their sense of survival.”

At its best, Murphy’s book is identifying the broad and almost slapstick humor of the Bible (her chapter on Exodus is very good in this way), which shows that the tone of the Bible is closer to the cartoonish comedy of ancient myth and the kind of Indian myth analyzed by Levi-Strauss than to the refined and crystalline mythologies of an Edith Hamilton.