The story of Moses has roots deep in the Hebraic imagination and Jews are proud to call it their own. Their minds have been especially busy with it in the last few years as the old narrative of persecution and injustice has repeated itself.

Now [in "Moses: Man of the Mountain"] Zora Neale Hurston has told the story of the law-giver from the point of view of another race, also once enslaved and persecuted, and it has lent itself so aptly that it has become a fine Negro novel. Miss Hurston has made a prose tapestry that sparkles with characteristic Negro humor though it never loses dignity. With a cunning that never lessens her integrity she has laid a new emphasis here, assumed a different motivation there, and the tale has emerged as honest and as strong as ever—and wholly alien to its racial origin. Naturally a comparison with Roark Bradford's stories of Negro figures in Biblical tales suggests itself, but Miss Hurston's characters are less naive than those of "The Green Pastures." They have much the same humor, the same directness, but they are more sophisticated and more wise—as befits a serious novel. Moses and Aaron and Miriam and Zipporah are characters in whose changing relationships any novelist could well delight.

The most exciting thing about this exciting book is its serious use of Negro speech rhythms to tell the story. That Negro song is the most powerful influence on American music is a truism few deny. Readers have long admired the homely and poetic figures of speech which environment and temperament have inspired in American Negroes. But not many of us are aware of how much our native language has been enriched by the distinctive inflections and sharply defined rhythms of the talk of black Americans. The prose of Miss Hurston, who is an accomplished scholar as well as a sensitive artist, teaches us to realize the contribution her race is making to American expression.