This course traces the remarkable career of the great figure of the biblical Exodus and Sinai traditions from prophet to impostor to figment of literary imagination. Readings include Philo of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, the Qur'an, and Sigmund Freud, and we will ask ourselves why an epistemologically and historically discredited biblical narrative still engenders creative, though contradictory, readings and retellings, ranging from Cecile B. Demilles' moralistic Ten Commandments to Zora Neal Hurston's "hoodoo man."