Serena
Isreal in the Wildnerness
Posted on: 10/01/2009 23:40
I was just thinking about Isreal in the Wilderness for 40 years. Lifespans were not that long then. If I was a kid who had been born in the wilderness I probably would have thought God was not real. As an adult I would have left Moses (he must be lost wandering in circles for 40 years) and gone to join another tribe. They did grumble "why did you not leave us in Egypt....the slavery was better than this" Yet the slavery was not. They had to work seven days a week, they were starving and they were beaten and humiliated.
Still I am thinking this story is a metaphor because for God to ignore His people for 40 years most of them would stop believing in Him.
So I do not know what it means only that it can't be real.
Any interpretations out there?
Comments
stardust
Posted on: 10/02/2009 00:54
Hi Serena
When it comes to the Old T. I often look for Jewish interpretations. This isn't what you expected but I am pleasantly surprised by it and I hope you will be too. Sorry, its rather l-o-n-g.....
Quote:
What does Passover mean to you?
Passover for me is the great Jewish myth, and I don't mean myth in the sense that it didn't happen, that it's not true. I mean it in the sense that it's a great story that is always true, whether it happened or not exactly as the Bible describes. Jews find meaning in their own existence through the Rorschach of projecting themselves into this story.
The story of Exodus is undeniably a powerful metaphor -- the idea of moving from slavery to freedom, from exile to redemption -- that's been applied to religious, historical and political contexts. You have described it as a journey of personal transformation. How do you see it that way?
As a therapist, I use the symbols and the allegories of the Exodus as a map of the process of transformation -- how people develop and evolve their identity over time. Every single symbol in the story corresponds to stages in this process. For example, it shows both our desire for change and our resistance to it; it also shows how life forces us to change, and how if we don't continually change and grow, we die.
How do those themes arise in the story itself?
In the beginning of the Book of Exodus, we have a family of 70 people going to Egypt because of a famine, and they settle in Goshen -- the land of Goshen is at first this very fertile, nurturing environment where the [Jewish] people can grow into a nation. But over time it changes, and what was once a nurturing womb for growth becomes this oppressive society where they are enslaved. It's clear that they have to get out of there, and eventually Moses leads them to freedom. We can see that as a symbol of how we often develop life structures, relationships or even careers where we thrive for some period of time, and there is room for a lot of growth, just like the fetus in its mother's womb can grow and be nourished, but then eventually it gets to be a tight space -- the Hebrew word for Egypt, in fact, is Mitzrayim, which literally means a tight place, a place of constriction.
You write that the Jewish mystics saw Egypt in this way, not only as a geographical place but as a symbol of constrictive consciousness. So what did they see as a way out of that state? Or did they?
There is a tension between the part of us that wants to just stay in the known, stay in the old, even if it's uncomfortable, even if there is no room to move or grow, and the part of us that wants to change. But there are a number of forces that can cause us to break free. One is pain itself. Feeling the discomfort is a great impetus to change. Another is believing that change is possible, finding hope. I can't tell you how many people come in to therapy and really don't believe that they can change; they think that how they have been is how they will always be.
It's interesting, though, that in the Exodus story, the Jews end up wandering for 40 years in the desert after leaving Egypt, and the ones who were the former slaves never actually make it to the Promised Land. It's only the next generation that arrives in Israel. Isn't that kind of a depressing notion? What does it say, from a psychological perspective, about the possibility for making change in one's life?
You know, Rabbi Hanoch of Alexander, who was a Hasidic master, said it was easier to take the Jews out of Egypt than to take Egypt out of the Jews. Similarly, it's often true that people move on and leave [bad] situations, but then they go and recreate them, because the deeper dynamic that got them there in the first place hasn't really shifted. People change their outer circumstances, but their inner landscape remains unchanged. Deeper work really has to address the images, the deep-seated images, we have of ourselves.
You also write that the Exodus in Jewish mysticism is seen not just as a one-time historical event but as the ongoing healing journey of the soul from the narrow confines of the ego to the promised land of the spirit. Does that mean we don't actually transform ourselves?
No. I think the mystics say that we have to come out of Mitzrayim, out of this constriction, every day of our lives. And, like I said, religious Jews circle this myth. They live in relation to this story as an archetype every day of their lives. So you wake up in the morning and you look in the mirror, and you say, "Ah. Here I am! Estelle. I've got my whole identity with me." But if I take the time, as I did before this interview, to just sit down, close my eyes, say a prayer, open myself to spirit, then my identity begins to expand, and I remember that I'm not just Estelle, the personality, that I'm a soul, that I'm an embodiment of the Divine, and I move from what Jewish mystics say is "small mind" to "big mind." And in that other state, the bonds of the self, the small identity that limits us and dictates who we think we are, it frees up -- it's sort of like a zooming out that you would do with a camera, but it's zooming out all the way to infinity, all the way to eternity, beyond time, beyond space. And in that moment of deep meditation, or prayer, anything becomes possible, because you are rising above the workings of time.
Is that just a mental shift that one makes through meditation or prayer or ...
It's the goal of all spiritual practice. That's the secret meaning of Passover
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/04/06/findrelig040609.DTL&type=printable
graeme
Posted on: 10/02/2009 07:28
1. don't assume the slavery in Egypt ever happened.
2. Don't assume they saw slavery as we do. If The Bible is to be believed, the Israelites quite happily kept slaves, and also sold members of their own families into slavery. In a time of great uncertainty and want, slavery can have had its attractions.
GordW
Posted on: 10/02/2009 09:02
The 40 years, according to the text, is to ensure that none of those who rebelled against YHWH in the wilderness would make it to the PRomised LAnd. BUt I think stardust hits on something about societal change when mentioning that this also means no one who was in bondage in Egypt would get there.
AS to people abandoning Moses, probably it would have happened but not as much as we would think now. We have to remember that this group (which almost certainly was not an entire nation) may well have been a nomadic tribal people. That provides a very different mindset about "wandering aimlessly".
ANd there is nothing in the text to suggest that GOd was ignoring the people. Quite the opposite in fact.
stardust
Posted on: 10/02/2009 15:11
GordW
If you read the story literally its quite a horror story. My grandson, 12, is Jewish. He goes to his grandfather's to celebrate the Passover. I'm not sure what he learns but I know some Jews ask the kids to relate the plagues. He lives with me so I used to try and tell him a bit about Judiasm and the bible.
No way am I going to talk about passover and the plagues, first born babies killed, blood on the door, the angel of death, all the people killed crossing the sea etc. not even as a myth or story. I don't think it would give a child a very good impression of God. I'm not Jewish so it means I ( or his gentile grandpa ) could have been killed crossing the Red Sea.
Something did happen and Moses may have been real but I doubt the story happened the way it was passed down. Its surely been embellished to make it more dramatic. I don't think I'll be going into the desert anytime soon to have a baby. Can you imagine it?
Still having said all this there are people, Bediouns (sp), living in the desert around Israel. I've no idea how they manage. Maybe they are mostly hermits with no families. I don't know!
Dcn. Jae
Posted on: 10/02/2009 15:30
Any interpretations out there?
Personally, I believe it's an actual historic event.
Mate
Posted on: 10/02/2009 16:44
According to Jewish scholars, among them Israel Finkelstein at the University of Tel Avive and Neil Silberman as well as others I have googled at the university in Israel, the Exodus as written did not happen. There is not one shred of evidence anywhere in Egypt or in the desert.
It has been linked to the expulsion of the Hyksos from the Nile Delta. Brueggemann in "Old Testament Theology" even questions the existence of Abraham, Issac, Moses etc.
But I do think stardust has given a good account of the story. It reminds me of Marcus Borg's commen quoted from a first nations elder: "I don't know if the story actually happened this way but I do know this, that the story is true." Truth does not have to come in or as historical accuracy.
Shalom
Mate
Witch
Posted on: 10/02/2009 16:51
Adding to Mate's comment.
If the isrealites were held as slaves in Egypt, we should see some evidence. There is a wealth of archeological evidence for many people of many different cultures held as slaves by the Egyptians, often in numbers of only a few individuals. yet there is no evidence of the Isrealites.
The lack of evidence where such should exist, is an excellent basis to conclude that the Isrealites were never captive in Egypt.
Dcn. Jae
Posted on: 10/02/2009 17:26
The lack of evidence where such should exist, is an excellent basis to conclude that the Isrealites were never captive in Egypt.
Please see http://www.christiananswers.net/q-abr/abr-a027.html
Mate
Posted on: 10/02/2009 17:37
I never said there were no "Israelites" in Egypt. The Hyksos were their ancestors who were expelled from the Nile delta.
At any rate I do not put a lot of stock in an obviously religious site. Generally they start out with their hypothesis and then look for any evidence that might seem to support it and ignore the evidence that does not.
As far as the treck through the desert for 40 years goes the sites they were to have stayed in have shown absolutely not one shred of evidence they were there. Brueggamann's book was published in 2008 and "The Bible Unearthed in 2001. These contentions are supported by Jewish archaeologists and scholars at the University of Tel Avive.
At any rate what is important is not that the stories are or are not historical but the fact that as stardust has shown they are true in many ways.
Shalom
Mate
stardust
Posted on: 10/02/2009 18:35
Aquaman
Your link is interesting. I enjoy digging around trying to find answers impossible 'tho it may be. I don't write anything off 100%. Further light may come along in the years ahead. The Exodus could have been a miracle needful for that particular time. Just because we don't see gigantic miracles like this today doesn't mean they were never possible.
A link that tries to prove it and then refutes it:
See also Deuteronomy 1:31; 2:7
"Thou gavest also thy good spirit to instruct them, and withheldest not thy manna from their
mouth, and gavest them water for their thirst. Yea, forty years didst thou sustain them in the
wilderness, so that they lacked nothing; their clothes waxed not old, and their feet swelled not."
Witch
Posted on: 10/02/2009 18:50
The lack of evidence where such should exist, is an excellent basis to conclude that the Isrealites were never captive in Egypt.
Please see http://www.christiananswers.net/q-abr/abr-a027.html
Do you have anything from a site which does not have an agenda which must find Isrealites in Egypt at all costs?
Are any of the findings mentioned peer-reviewed by mainstream archaeology?
I'm afraid this example is a little like going to "Answers in Genesis" to get accurate information on evolution.
Dcn. Jae
Posted on: 10/02/2009 21:51
Not off hand, but I'll do some... er... digging.
Oh, I have done that before.
Mate
Posted on: 10/03/2009 16:53
"The Bible Unearthed" by Finkelstein and Silberman.
I will see if I can find the university site in Israel.
Shalom
Mate
Mate
Posted on: 10/03/2009 17:27
On the Exodus from Egypt
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history/Ancient_and_Medieval_History/250...
http://www.bibleandscience.com/archaeology/exodus.htm
http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/doubtingexodus.htm
http://history.memphis.edu/murnane/Redford.pdf
http://nowscape.com/mormon/moses-news.htm
There are many more but this should suffice.
Shalom
Mate