Seeler,
For me it IS about history. .. but not as in a historic event. It tells of the history of Jews and their faith. It is about transformation. It is a story about how ithat happened. It is about morality and justice making an appearance.

First off, I don't look to the Bible for history - that is, facts.   I look at the story of the exodus much like I look at some of the other great myths, legends, sagas of events that may have happened in the mists of time - told and retold in the oral tradition, and surviving to be passed on because they contain truth - truth about who we are as a people.

 

The story of the exodus to me seems foundational to the Hebrew people and their culture and religion.  And that is foundational to our Christian culture and religion.

It is repeated over and over in the Bible, perhaps best in Deuteronomy 26: 5ff

"A wandering Aramea was my ancestor ... " Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you ...

 

Descendants - not from kings and rulers, but from wandering herdsmen and slaves.  Blessed with riches to share with others - widows, orphans, outsiders, aliens.   A covenant relationship with God and all of creation - a responsibility to practice hospitality 'remembering that you were slaves in Egypt' - a responsbility to provide for those unable to provide for themselves - a love one another - and to be filled with gratitude. 

 

 

Seeler if Judaism stands on two pillars, Creation and Exodus, and if the Exodus is supposed to be "myth", what should we think about the Creator? Is God myth too and just a story to relate to as a people?

 

 

News flash: Creation is even more surely myth than Exodus is.
.
And yes, of course God is a construct, for the reasons you list and more. Why this particular god was created is more up for debate.

Here's an interesting utube clip regarding the very real possibility that the ancient Egyptians used wireless technology for transmitting electricity and communications through the pyramids, and that the arc of covenant, which Moses apparently took with him during the exodus, was the key component to generating this electricity.

 

Waterfall - I do not think of God as a myth.  I believe that people (and perhaps animals) have felt and experienced the Holy which we call God down through the ages.  I also believe that we are limited in our comprehension and by our language, and that we cannot fully understand or explain the Holy.   Through our myths, poems, psalms, stories we learn something of how people before us have experienced their relationship with God. 

When I look at the Exodus it reminds me that we carry on with traditions even when we are not actual physical witnesses . We do this with our Easter. Many do not believe it actually happened but accept that it can have meaning for Chrisitianity. It is the inspiration and the "Pillar" of Christianity it would seem. We have our communion with the wine and bread in remembrance. Our spiritual remembrance that Jesus saved us and is with us still. The Jews it seems have their Pesach, with their Sedar meal, one of the holidays that honours the exodus. (sorry SG if I've oversimplified) Freedom is maintained spiritually by remembering that God is always taking one "out of Egypt".

 

Still, I would have to really stretch my imagination to think any of these traditions didn't have a beginning. Much like the tradition of Purim that began after Esther saved her people.

 

To me yes, the truth continues within the telling of the story, but I do believe that the exodus did happen in order to sustain it. Just as I believe Christ's death happened as was recorded.

 

 

 

 

 

I always thought the pyramids were built for a greater purpose than just tombs. I don't think we really know yet what they are, but they did always remind me of nuclear power plants.

 

I've always wondered how legend would have described and developed over these monuments if they hadn't survived for over 5,000-10,000 years. Would we have even believed they really existed? Or would we merely regard the ancients as a bunch of storytelling goat herders? Right now we still don't know how they built the pyramids. For us it's an impossibility, just like the Exodus.

No we don't, but I believe the answer to this question is concealed in the overwhelming evidence that the placement of the pyramids were an attempt at mirroring an image of the 3 stars of the constellation Orion*, aka Osiris, the god of rebirth. In other words, they were built with extraterrestrial technology! But that pushes the realms of many belief systems.


* these 3 stars also played an important role as representing the 3 wise-men during the birth of Jesus. These 3 stars point to "the star", Sirius, aka Isis, the mother of God. But I digress ...

For sure!

 

Time travelling aliens. How would they know to build in a spot into the pyramid for the Ark of the covenent for their cool lighting system unless they were able to travel into the future.

 

The ark was built after the Exodus from Egypt.

 

It was a long time ago, but didn't Spock figure out a way to use the sun as a slingshot to go back in time to save the whales - thus saving the entire world???

 

Very plausible.

Ha, ha, ha.. good point re when the arc was built. I personally haven't taken too much stock of when or how the arc was built and whether or not it was ever part of the pyramid, but I do, nevertheless, believe the great pyramids were built with the help of "the gods". And it does seem very plausible that they were used for generation of electricity.

Hi Chansen-- If you don't mind me saying . You have no Ground to stand on. As you can see by Neo  video. How flat and wide Egyp really is. That 1500000000 could have been in march over a mile wide. A road 30 ft wide ? were did you get that from as you stated on the other thread.?HA HA. Where do you thing Egyps got there pyamids? I think could be they took those 2-3 thousand Chariots they had. That is after finding them when they droped down from the sky. Just Like Man did. They lifted them up and took them home. There we go we sort of get two birds with one stone ,if you will? Ha Ha.

I see this whole story of the exodus of the Jews from egyptian enslavement as representing the Age of Aries, which the world was several centuries into in 1400 BC. Aries the Ram signifies new beginnings and resurrection, Aries marks the time of true Spring for our planet, as it happens for 2,000 years, once every 26,000 years.


The worshipping of the bull that occurred while Moses was talkin' to God, showed how people were still hung up on the past, a time about 600 years earlier when the Sun was crossing through the constellation of Taurus the Bull during the spring equinox.


The time of Christ marked the vernal equinox of the "greater" year, and thus the end of animal sacrifices, bull and rams mainly, which were always symbolic in nature, only to be replaced with a human sacrifice, which was still symbolic in nature.


Christ predicted He would reappear during this age, the Age of Aquarius. I think all of us personally are expected to sacrifice some part of our lives this time.

A coworker brought up the other day- how is it that similar pyramids- the Aztec and Mayan and Egyptian- were built on other sides of the world but were so similar. I'm sure there's a logical explanation but I don't know what it is. There are differences in when they were built and what they were used for. My friend thinks there was collective consciousness at work. Not wireless technology but some phenomenon that connects them. I don't know enough to challenge that idea or not. Similarly, aboriginal cultures share some common practices around the world. I would think it has something to do with migration and ideas being passed from tribe to tribe- not a phenomenon occurring all at once. When we look back, the difference of a few hundred or even 1000 years may seem like it happened all at once- but in lived years, is actually a long time for migration and changes and ideas to take shape. (hey that's biblical- 'a day is 1000 years'!) - and that way we think of time when looking back on it could be relevant to the Exodus story. Maybe it isn't a historical point in time- but a wise story about human empires, civilizations, and migration.

IMO, God is not a myth but human beings create myth to make meaning in their lives to explain their relationship to God. We shape God into our myths.

Hi seeler,

 

 

I see the history of a specific people.  A seminal moment in their development as a nation and how they tie all of that to God.

 

How accurate is that history?  I expect it is as accurate as any history written at the time by any other political entity.

 

The point of the history is not actually what happened to the nth degree.  The point of the history is to place the nation in relationship to other nations and in relation to the God they worship.

 

In those stories I see both pettiness and generosity.  I also find a God who is both predictable and unpredictable.

 

Some days I see myself clearly and other days it takes a lot of work.

 

Some things continue to mystify me.

 

Grace and peace to you.

John

To me, both Genesis and Exodus are stories of expulsion from a homeland. In Exodus there is a promise of a new land, but in Genesis there is not, unless we interpret the veiled reference that eating from the Tree of Life could have kept us in paradise as the possibility of a return to paradise.

 

To me, the meaning of both these stories is that we reap what we sow, and sometimes are the victims of accidents of fate, but what we make of life is up to us. Thus, both the "promised land" and the "return to paradise" are up to us to create (with God's help, of course :-)

 

 

 

The meaning of the Exodus (again historical or not - small scale or large) for me is that every story has exodus, wilderness and redemption. It is a key part of all plots. In the Newer Testament it is used as allusion and a typology. The word redemption is rooted significantly in the exodus. The same is true of covenant, inheritance, church...

 

For me it is an Historic event and it did really happen ----

 

Defination of the word exodus  ----

 

 ex·o·dus 

 (ks-ds)

---

 

 

The Book of Exodus defines this for me -----It is a new beginning for Israel ----it comes after the death of God creration in the Garden ---so in Genesis we have our exsistance in  God's world and our exit out of God's world ---Exodus which means a depature to me is our journey of departure out of bondage and back into God;s freedom ----So this was the forming of a new Israel ---a new creation ---It gives us the accomplishments of the promises made before Abraham ---It establishes the decrees that were afterwards observed by Israel ---

 

But the most important thing of this Book to me is ----It starts the process of man's journey back to being reconciled back to God and the coming of the New Covenant of Grace which will be available to all people through His Son Jesus Christ ----

 

Peace

 

 

Thank you unsafe for expressing your thoughts on this.

 

 

Hi seeler

 

Your Welcome ---Have a great day and week ----

In the memory of Exodus, as recited in the Jewish Passover, and echoed in the Gospel of the Nazarene Jesus, who is called the Christ, I find a way out from under the oppression of the man-god Pharaoh.  Or any man-god by which Empire is authorized and mandated to conquest. Where might is considered to be right.

 

Potent metaphors by which what cannot be expressed is made present. In the hope of insight adequate to the diverse challenges of faithful living in the shadow of Empire.

 

The story begins with a people who have mortgaged their possessions and themselves to survive in the realm of Pharaoh. The labour of this people is exploited and its persons are oppressed, by taskmasters without pity.

 

God comes into the story as a response to the sorrowing cries of the exploited and the oppressed. As a comforter first, and then as a liberator.

 

As it is written:  "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their task masters, and I am concerned about their suffering."

 

The narrative provides a paradigm by which we may examine the structures of power by which exploitation and oppression are engendered. Further, we may notice that such structures of power have no future. Each rises and falls in its turn. Each imagines itself immune to this cycle of rise and fall ("The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say to yourself, 'Who can bring me down to the ground?' Obadiah 1:3).

 

 

Moses knows about the pending collapse of Pharaoh's Empire. He forms a centre for the longing of the enslaved community. From that centre, he mounts a campaign to convince Pharaoh of his folly. Pharaoh is not convinced (a contrast to the King of Nineveh who heard the warning of Jonah?).

 

Moses, who follows in the way of God made known to him as mandate and responsibility, leads the exploited and the oppressed out of Pharaoh's social economy by pointing to a new social economy across a river and through a desert. The river is crossed and the desert journey of transformation is commenced.

 

What does the story offer? Each will have to wrestle with it and receive the blessing intended by the author.

 

Open to alteration and adjustment, I am persuaded the story invites us to consider our own predicament under the totalising trajectory of Calvinism in bed with Capitalism.

 

The experience of exploitation and oppression is common in the earth. There is a great cry reaching into heaven. The suffering of mothers and their children in all the earth. Including the streets and lanes of the neighbourhoods where our Churches languish for lack of a vision..

 

There is good news and we have opportunity to pronounce in and through all our relations. A massive redistribution of power by which all vertical aspirations are leveled and horizontal distribution made manifest in the living experience of a living people.

 

Exodus, a vacating of the economies of greed and avarice. A time of transformation consummated in the realization of our unity as human being in and through the natural order.

 

 

Last word, today, to Bob Marley:

 

 

George

 

 

 

 

Who would've guessed that ancient people's could build a breeder reactor/cold fusion device?

 

May wonders never cease...

 

Spock, set phasers to SUCK!

 

*cue bob marley*