{"collection":"Texts of Islam","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_isl_pro_mos17_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_isl_pro_mos17_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_isl_pro_mos17_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/isl/pro/mos17.htm","summary":"This is an Islamic exegetical text \u2014 a commentary on Quranic verses \u2014 narrating the story of Moses leading the Israelites from Egypt toward the Holy Land (Palestine and the broader Levant), drawing primarily on Surah Al-Baqarah and Al-Ma'idah. The central argument is that Moses's sole intention was to restore the Israelites to the ancestral lands of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but their repeated cowardice and disobedience \u2014 most starkly in refusing to fight the \"giant people\" and declaring \"go thou and thy Lord and fight! We will sit here\" \u2014 earned them forty years of circular wandering in a confined stretch of Sinai desert. The text follows the wandering's mechanics in detail: at night the people would travel toward their destination, only for the earth to rotate and return them to their starting point, until nearly all died, leaving only Joshua ben Nun and Caleb ben Jephunneh to lead the next generation into the land. Distinctively, this appears to be a Shia Islamic commentary: it repeatedly frames key Quranic episodes through a Shia theological lens, arguing, for example, that God's command to \"enter the gate prostrate\" was actually an order to honor the future sanctity of Muhammad and Ali ibn Abi Talib, and that those who died in the plague were specifically those who would never accept Ali's leadership. The text also contains a polemical anecdote in which Ali outmaneuvers a Jewish interlocutor by drawing an unflattering comparison between Israelite faithlessness to Moses and Muslim disputes over Ali's succession. Overall, it reads as a learned but partisan retelling that uses the biblical\u2013Quranic Exodus narrative to reinforce Shia doctrines of prophetic succession and the special status of the Prophet's household.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"The Prophets, Their Lives and Their Stories: Moses: Moses Only Wanted to Get Them Into The Holy Lands","tradition":"Texts of Islam","translated_text":null,"word_count":2491}