Moses, Man of the Mountain was published by J.B. Lippincott in November 1939 and is Hurston’s most ambitious and least conventional novel — a retelling of the Exodus story in which Moses is reimagined as a figure from African American folk tradition: a conjure man, a hoodoo doctor, a wielder of power that is simultaneously divine and earthly. The enslaved Hebrews speak in black American vernacular; Pharaoh sounds like a plantation owner; the liberation from Egypt is simultaneously the biblical Exodus and the African American journey from slavery.
The Novel
Hurston’s Moses is not the reverent figure of Sunday School but a complex, powerful, ambiguous man. He is raised as Egyptian royalty, discovers his Hebrew origins, kills an overseer (the Exodus text’s “Egyptian”), flees to Midian, and returns to lead his people out of bondage. But Hurston emphasizes what the biblical text only hints at: Moses’s power is magical. He is a conjurer — trained by Jethro (his father-in-law, reimagined as a master of hoodoo) in the art of commanding nature.
The Hebrews speak in black American dialect — “I done told you and told you” — which is not a joke but a serious artistic choice. Hurston is arguing that the Exodus story belongs to black America, that the enslaved people who identified with the Israelites were not merely borrowing someone else’s story but recognizing their own.
The novel’s second half — the forty years in the wilderness — is dominated by the ingratitude and stubbornness of the freed people, who want to return to Egypt because slavery was at least familiar. This section reads as allegory: the difficulty of sustaining liberation, the pull of dependency, the gap between political freedom and psychological freedom.
Context
The African American identification with the Israelites is ancient — dating to the earliest spirituals (“Go Down, Moses,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”). Hurston literalizes this identification: her Moses IS a black folk figure, his power IS hoodoo, his people ARE the enslaved. The novel simultaneously honors the folk tradition and transforms it into high art.
The book also draws on Hurston’s research into African connections to the Moses story. She was aware that Moses appears in Islamic tradition, in Ethiopian Christianity, and in various African religious systems — always as a figure of power and liberation. Her Moses is a syncretic figure: Hebrew prophet, African conjurer, and American freedom fighter in a single person.
Reception
The novel received mixed reviews at publication and has remained Hurston’s least-discussed major work. Its mixture of vernacular comedy and theological seriousness confused critics who expected either a conventional historical novel or a straightforward allegory. It fits no category comfortably.
Scholarly reassessment has been ongoing since the Hurston renaissance of the 1970s and 1980s. The novel is now recognized as a uniquely ambitious work — nothing else in American literature attempts what it attempts — even if its success is uneven.
Collecting Moses, Man of the Mountain
First edition (J.B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1939): Blue cloth binding with gold lettering. Dust jacket with dramatic illustration.
Identification points:
- J.B. Lippincott imprint
- “FIRST EDITION” stated
- 351 pages
Market values: Fine copies in dust jacket bring $2,000–$5,000. Published between Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), during Hurston’s most productive period.
Without jacket: $400–$800.
Signed copies: Virtually unknown on the market.
As with all Hurston first editions, the combination of literary significance, physical scarcity, and the dramatic narrative of her rediscovery (from pauper’s grave to canonical status) creates powerful collecting interest.