Winston Churchill stressed in his 1931 article that Moses is among the preeminent figures in the Hebrew Bible. Throughout the history of Western civilization, Moses not only maintains a prominent position in the monotheistic tradition— particularly respected by adherents of Judaism, Christianity and Islam— but also stands as a figure of influence in secular life through his example as a leader of the ancient Israelites.

According to Jewish tradition, Moses is considered to be the greatest prophet. So significant is Moses to Judaism that, in his Thirteen Principles of Faith, the great Jewish philosopher, physician and rabbi Moses ben Maimon— popularly known as Maimonides, or by the Hebrew acronym Rambam— includes as the seventh fundamental principle that Moses was the greatest prophet who ever lived and that no other prophet could comprehend God better than Moses. A thousand years earlier, the ancient rabbis said, in the very first verse of Mishnah Pirkei Avot (a Mishnaic tractate known as “Sayings of the Fathers” or “Sages”), that Moses received the Torah from Sinai and passed it on to Joshua, who passed it on to the Elders, who passed it on to the Prophets, and that the Prophets passed it on to the Men of the Great Assembly.

“This introductory sentence describes the chain of tradition leading up to the sayings in Avot,” observes William Berkson, who notes that “Avot was put in nearly final form around 200 CE by one of the last and greatest sages in the book, Yehuda [Judah] HaNasi,” who made Avot a significant part of his “compendium of post-biblical legal rulings known as the Mishnah, meaning ‘recitation’ or ‘repetition’.” Berkson notes, the later “Talmud, meaning ‘study,’ is a collection of extensive commentaries on the Mishnah, known as Gemara, ‘completion’ together with those portions of the Mishnah that have been commented upon.” Hence, the laws of the Torah were described as transmitted to the Jewish people from Divine instruction to Moses at Sinai, and passed down through the generations. Moses was pivotal in this chain that transmitted the Torah down to the rabbis, which underscored their authority in subsequent Jewish tradition.

Judah HaNasi, the leading rabbi of his day, had redacted the Mishnah, a document that traditionally remains the repository of the Oral Law.