Numbers, the third book of Moses, fourth overall in the New Testament, takes its name from the fact that God asks Moses to conduct an census of all the Hebrews he's led out of Egypt. Each of the twelve tribes of Israel (descendants of Jacob's twelve sons, in other words) are counted. For the record, Judah's family was the most productive in the fruitful-and-multiplying business, with Dan coming in second. Joseph's was a comfortable middle-of-the-pack performer. Levi's brood is not counted, though, since the Levites are quickly tapped as the keepers of the first temple, God's switch in exchange for the strict tithing of all first-borns he'd previously called dibs on.
I'd just like to say it's amazing what a little time will do. Sure, the twelve tribes had a significant role in Jewish history, but in Genesis you'd hardly know that any of the brothers besides Joseph would have had a positive role to play at all. They sold him to Egypt, after all, and tried to convince their father that he was dead.
Then again, the Hebrews after Egypt were not exactly ones to appease God or refrain from grumbling.
Speaking of the temple keepers, they seem to have been presaging Samson in God's edict that they not cut their hair. He'd already requested his people not round their beards or trim their sideburns, but this is going a step further. It didn't give the Levites superpowers, and they were allowed to shorn themselves without consequence eventually, but the idea that those closest to God were also the hairiest clearly was one that had some legs to it.
A lot of Numbers also reiterates things previously experienced in the other books, which can sometimes be a little confusing. Either that or some of the same grumbling and near-smiting occur again. There's a new one with a fire that consumes property until Moses prayed, but there's also the return of quail, or perhaps its debut. There are also many cultural rules outlined.
The best numbers in Numbers, weirdly enough, read like a preview of the later Twelve Days of Christmas, twelve days in which gifts are presented to bless the budding temple.
Some additional early prophesying occurs with the otherwise obscure figures of Eldad and Medad, which leads to more grumbling and eventually the premature death of Miriam, the wife of Aaron, who is exiled for a week by way of penance for her role in this latest round of discontent. Aaron himself does not so long after.
Somewhat related, but God officially declares that Moses and all his generation will not see the promised land for themselves because of their continued wickedness (Moses not so much because of his wickedness, but because he couldn't possibly live long enough to usher the next generation; he remains a humble and awesome dude). God appoints Joshua and the less famous Caleb as the succeeding stewards.
God swallows up a couple of negative nellies into the ground, straight to Sheol (Hell) to prove he still has a few tricks up his sleeve, and fear tactics remain one of his favorite past-times. It doesn't quite stick, however, and so he unleashes a massive plague on his people.
The Nephilim are mentioned again, but are still not actually explained.
Numbers continues.
Showing posts with label Aaron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aaron. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Exodus 31-40, Leviticus 1-27
Aaron takes on the rebellious sibling mantel as these passages from Exodus begin, helping the Hebrews cast their graven cow while Moses converses with God, only to blame it on everyone else and a huge coincidence (!) when his big brother asks him about it. Not surprisingly, Aaron is not spoken of in such favorable terms from this point onward.
What's really interesting here, however, is the contrast between how God and Moses react to the situation. At first, God is ready to go old school Genesis on his chosen people, to smite them out of existence and keep Moses around as another Noah, or Abraham. Moses talks him out of it. And then does his own smiting. It's interesting on a number of levels. In Genesis, Abraham has to do a fair bit of negotiating with God in order just to save Lot. Here, and as perhaps a running commentary on a remarkable partnership overall, he has no qualms taking Moses' sage advice. Which, again, Moses then personally undoes.
A lot of these trials the Hebrews put God through seem to be a reflection on all the plagues he visited on the Egyptians earlier, a test of faith, and on the whole they manage to pass (somehow). If you want to know the ways in which other peoples just didn't measure up, or why the flood or sacking of Sodom and Gomorrah happened, this might be a good place to look. A little later, as Leviticus outlines a lot of things that are called abominations, it's mighty tempting (and in fact one of the parts of the Bible people seem to have paid actually read) to assume those were the reasons he chose.
But. And perhaps I'm about to commit blasphemy or something, but. I think I have a revision to the ten commandments. I mentioned before that earlier when they were gone over the specific phrase "ten commandments" was nowhere to be found. There were in fact a lot more than ten originally. And when they're reiterated again as God is helping Moses fashion the tables again after he's smote them in his rage, there's further source for confusion, because there's a reference that suggests when this is done only the first of the two tables is redone, but it can just as easily be interpreted as God himself redoing the first one and Moses the second. And there's even the possibility that the ten and most important commandments are not exactly the ones everyone knows.
This is my argument. The phrase "ten commandments" comes after a list that very specifically goes over the terms of worship God has been talking about with considerable emphasis already. In fact, these terms are repeated so often it may be very easily understood if you want to go against millennia of tradition, that these are the rules most important to him. Since they're not as concisely outlined as the first time God explains his rules, I have to guess exactly how they work, but here goes:
What's really interesting here, however, is the contrast between how God and Moses react to the situation. At first, God is ready to go old school Genesis on his chosen people, to smite them out of existence and keep Moses around as another Noah, or Abraham. Moses talks him out of it. And then does his own smiting. It's interesting on a number of levels. In Genesis, Abraham has to do a fair bit of negotiating with God in order just to save Lot. Here, and as perhaps a running commentary on a remarkable partnership overall, he has no qualms taking Moses' sage advice. Which, again, Moses then personally undoes.
A lot of these trials the Hebrews put God through seem to be a reflection on all the plagues he visited on the Egyptians earlier, a test of faith, and on the whole they manage to pass (somehow). If you want to know the ways in which other peoples just didn't measure up, or why the flood or sacking of Sodom and Gomorrah happened, this might be a good place to look. A little later, as Leviticus outlines a lot of things that are called abominations, it's mighty tempting (and in fact one of the parts of the Bible people seem to have paid actually read) to assume those were the reasons he chose.
But. And perhaps I'm about to commit blasphemy or something, but. I think I have a revision to the ten commandments. I mentioned before that earlier when they were gone over the specific phrase "ten commandments" was nowhere to be found. There were in fact a lot more than ten originally. And when they're reiterated again as God is helping Moses fashion the tables again after he's smote them in his rage, there's further source for confusion, because there's a reference that suggests when this is done only the first of the two tables is redone, but it can just as easily be interpreted as God himself redoing the first one and Moses the second. And there's even the possibility that the ten and most important commandments are not exactly the ones everyone knows.
This is my argument. The phrase "ten commandments" comes after a list that very specifically goes over the terms of worship God has been talking about with considerable emphasis already. In fact, these terms are repeated so often it may be very easily understood if you want to go against millennia of tradition, that these are the rules most important to him. Since they're not as concisely outlined as the first time God explains his rules, I have to guess exactly how they work, but here goes:
- This one is more or less the same as the original, having no gods before God.
- Tear down the altars of the gods of others.
- Thou shalt not make graven images.
- Feast of unleavened bread.
- First-borns belong to God (which would make sense given the last plague against Egypt).
- An ass and a lamb first-born together.
- All human first-borns to be redeemed, which may indicate the covenant of circumcision.
- Keep holy the Sabbath.
- Three holy festivals throughout the year.
- Guidelines concerning sacrificial offerings.
I may be smited before I get a chance to read the rest of the Bible. I know this. Carry on.
Then the ark of the covenant is put together as previously outlined, and takes about as much time to accomplish as it took to describe. Repetitions of this nature, such a common aspect of the Bible to this point, bear the mark of oral tradition, and also maintaining awareness for the specific details later generations intended to follow active.
That's how Exodus ends.
Leviticus is a reiteration of the rules for living previously described in Exodus, plus a few additional guidelines and even some more of God smiting people (Aaron's sons). There's some of this that was clearly carried on for many generations after, both by Jews and Christians, although I may further court blasphemy by suggesting it's hard to pick one guideline over another when all of it was clearly geared toward the specific living conditions of that time. The extended look at leprosy, for instance, suggests that Moses very clearly understood the sorry state of medicine in his day. There was nothing else to do but shun the seriously sick, because otherwise there was the risk of contaminating everyone, and that would not be a great way to keep everyone alive. When Jesus later undoes a lot of what Moses set up, such as the way he treated leprosy or some of the basic rules of how to live (not to mention the revision of the most important commandment) he's advancing the cause of civilization past what it had been before his time. He's providing an update. He's the new Moses, among other personifications, as well as the new Adam, born of the new Eve, which is one way Christians have a hugely positive female role model where so many of the early Old Testament women, such as the original Eve, seemed like such sorry examples to follow, and helped justify thousands of year of gender suppression. When you read the Bible, in other words, it's a considerable case of logical fallacy to assume that all the conditions of an earlier time can be directly translated to your own. Do Jews still sacrifice bulls? Maybe I don't know enough about Jews today, but I don't think so. They're very good for tradition, but that doesn't seem to be like one of those traditions they still follow. This is not to say all the rules to be found here are invalidated, but that you can't just assume that because it's there you have to take it for its word. Yet Jews and Christians have been doing that, selectively, for an incredibly long time. There's even the foundation for Christian confession, later echoed, after a kind, by Jesus. The rules against incest, by the way, were probably freshly in the minds of the Hebrews, having escaped Egyptians whose rulers practiced this to such an extent pharaohs up to and including King Tut were physically deformed because of it. It's not just bad morally, but genetically.
That's Leviticus in a nutshell. There is a random reference to someone named Azazel, which may be the first named indication of Satan's existence beyond the serpent in Genesis's Garden of Eden, but as in a lot of the information to be found in the early books it seems like implied knowledge, the way you might reference the Sox winning the Series today. Chances are good most people would know what you're talking about if you say that in conversation. In a thousand years? Sorry, Boston fans, that will probably not be the case anymore.
One further meditation before we move onto another book of Moses. Since I've already been making all these connections between Old and New Testament, a lot of people tend to see a disconnect between the presentation of God between them. Given that Jesus is presented as the son of God and in fact God himself, and that he can display many of the same attributes as the God of Abraham, I don't find this as much of a stretch. When God speaks with Jesus, he never comes right out, but hides, the way he does around Moses, since otherwise would be deadly to anyone else. There's also the transfiguration, which is another event very similar to what we're told about God in his relationship with Moses.
It can challenge your faith to read the Bible, if you reading the Bible. You begin to see holes in the logic. If you must believe everything, you may choose to believe nothing at all, because there's certainly that possibility. As a whole, however, as I'm reading, I'm seeing how the answers you need to overcome these challenges are in there already. The God who smote the earth in a flood was talked down by Moses later. God is never presented as perfect. He believes he's made a giant mistake several times. He knows he has very real rivals. (You may want to read Neil Gaiman's American Gods for a theory as to what happens to a god when people stop believing in them.) And yet he kindles a special relationship, gives mankind every chance to redeem himself. And if you're a Christian, you see that he takes the definitive move a little later to do the redemption himself. Jews and Christians disagree on a lot of points. Maybe as I continue to read I'll better understand how Jews decided to forgo the leap of faith that led to Christianity. In a lot of ways, their promised land exists today in Israel. Do, or did or will, they have the mighty ruler they prophesied as their messiah? Who knows?
The journey continues.
Friday, December 6, 2013
Exodus 16-30
Hey, so did you know Moses was married and had kids? No? Well, that's another of the marked differences between Exodus and its predecessor Genesis. The remarkable thing is that Aaron, although less famous, still has about equal billing, as I've suggested before a lot like an improved Jacob/Esau situation.
Another thing I haven't mentioned yet but keeps coming up is the significance of repeated numbers. Here, besides all the sevens and forties that stretch back to Genesis, is the emphasis on three, which is another thing the New Testament borrows (actually, all three numbers, although the three days bit is easily the most important one).
As the action picks up, the Hebrews have commenced with their bellyaching and Moses discusses this with God, who comes up with the idea of manna, which also supports his seven day pattern. Less famous are the quails that serve as dinner with equal regularity as the appearance of the manna in the early morning hours. Then they grumble about water and God gives them that, too.
And then they go to war, the episode that involves Moses holding his arms up and then having them propped up so his side prevails. This marks the first references to Joshua, who will eventually become his successor. As I was saying, in Genesis, Joshua would have been his son, or at least have been introduced earlier or at any rate less randomly. Then comes a good bit revolving around Jethro, the father of Moses' phantom wife. What follows is basically the institution of the priestly order, at least as Christians would understand it.
Then God scares everyone by appearing as thunder and lightning, and then what is supposed to be the Ten Commandments. Except maybe slightly later in Exodus they're reduced only to the first ten in terms of general importance, because although those are certainly the first and featured, there follow many more. Many more. In fact, some of them appear to be clarifications for some of the first ones you know already, all sorts of rules governing what constitutes acceptable (!) murder and what doesn't, for instance. Actually, the whole thing is like setting up the basic rules of a society, like the pillar inscribed with the code of Hammurabi, which predates Moses by some five hundred years. (The Bible, incidentally, is first codified perhaps a thousand years or so after its initial events take place. So the things we know from roughly the time of the Dark Ages is the kind of memory the Jews would've sustained until making an official account of it.)
And then God gives Moses incredibly (incredibly) detailed instructions for the famed ark of the covenant (or, the title object from Indiana Jones's first adventure, Raiders of the Lost Ark). In a sense, this is an echo from another ark entirely, but again, incredibly detailed. Noah's ark did not come with nearly these many instructions, although to be fair it was only meant to have two of every creature and not God himself within it. This also serves as the foundation of Jewish temples and Christian churches, even down to the necessary vestments to be worn by the priests or rabbis within them.
And, certainly, God bless anyone who has the fortitude to read through all of it. Although again, these passages also clearly allude to other gods besides God Almighty, the Lord as acknowledged even by God himself. When he calls himself a jealous god, now you know why.
Another thing I haven't mentioned yet but keeps coming up is the significance of repeated numbers. Here, besides all the sevens and forties that stretch back to Genesis, is the emphasis on three, which is another thing the New Testament borrows (actually, all three numbers, although the three days bit is easily the most important one).
As the action picks up, the Hebrews have commenced with their bellyaching and Moses discusses this with God, who comes up with the idea of manna, which also supports his seven day pattern. Less famous are the quails that serve as dinner with equal regularity as the appearance of the manna in the early morning hours. Then they grumble about water and God gives them that, too.
And then they go to war, the episode that involves Moses holding his arms up and then having them propped up so his side prevails. This marks the first references to Joshua, who will eventually become his successor. As I was saying, in Genesis, Joshua would have been his son, or at least have been introduced earlier or at any rate less randomly. Then comes a good bit revolving around Jethro, the father of Moses' phantom wife. What follows is basically the institution of the priestly order, at least as Christians would understand it.
Then God scares everyone by appearing as thunder and lightning, and then what is supposed to be the Ten Commandments. Except maybe slightly later in Exodus they're reduced only to the first ten in terms of general importance, because although those are certainly the first and featured, there follow many more. Many more. In fact, some of them appear to be clarifications for some of the first ones you know already, all sorts of rules governing what constitutes acceptable (!) murder and what doesn't, for instance. Actually, the whole thing is like setting up the basic rules of a society, like the pillar inscribed with the code of Hammurabi, which predates Moses by some five hundred years. (The Bible, incidentally, is first codified perhaps a thousand years or so after its initial events take place. So the things we know from roughly the time of the Dark Ages is the kind of memory the Jews would've sustained until making an official account of it.)
And then God gives Moses incredibly (incredibly) detailed instructions for the famed ark of the covenant (or, the title object from Indiana Jones's first adventure, Raiders of the Lost Ark). In a sense, this is an echo from another ark entirely, but again, incredibly detailed. Noah's ark did not come with nearly these many instructions, although to be fair it was only meant to have two of every creature and not God himself within it. This also serves as the foundation of Jewish temples and Christian churches, even down to the necessary vestments to be worn by the priests or rabbis within them.
And, certainly, God bless anyone who has the fortitude to read through all of it. Although again, these passages also clearly allude to other gods besides God Almighty, the Lord as acknowledged even by God himself. When he calls himself a jealous god, now you know why.
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Exodus 5-15
Before I go much further, I should note that Exodus is not only where God becomes known as Yahweh, but also the Lord.
Moses and Aaron are now busy at the work of convincing the Pharaoh of Egypt to let the Hebrews, or people of Israel (at this point a person rather than a country) go out into the wilderness to pray. They aren't even asking for freedom, just a chance to pray. It's Pharaoh's stubbornness and pressing the issue that leads to the title event, and further wandering toward the promised land. Since the time of Abraham they have been living in the lands of others, whether it be Philistines or Canaanites, and until the Egyptians at least to the point of Joseph they have only been able to win the good graces rather than full cooperation of their hosts. Always the struggle. I think the point of the Egyptian bondage might actually be to explain why Egypt never really expanded like other empires. Clearly one of the most notable of the ancient civilizations, leaving a clear and lasting legacy, but in the end not quite like the Greeks or Romans. God says several times that he's making Pharaoh "harden his heart" and make the situation worse in order to make a lasting impression on Egypt. Unlike, say, Romans and the emerging Christian faith, it's not exactly that the result of all this is to make Egyptians into a Hebrew nation.
It's very interesting, too, that although described as Hebrews and therefore part of the Abrahamic tradition, the people Moses and Aaron free are not apparently all that aware of the specifics of their faith, especially how much they're supposed to care about God. This may explain all the bellyaching that will follow, not to mention the Golden Calf episode, or perhaps merely denote that once again, the chroniclers of the Moses tradition were fully aware that there were other gods acknowledged even by God himself, who also makes reference to the Egyptian pantheon whose components have survived to this day in a mythology many people still know plenty about.
The genealogy work I was looking for early finally does show up. Although similar in almost every respect, it's still not really as comprehensive as the family lines described in Genesis. Readers of the Bible may have to wait for the even more exhaustive lineage ascribed to Jesus in the New Testament.
Also at this point God does not seem to need an intermediary of any kind to speak with Moses, although this will be necessary again later. They talk just like anyone else did in Genesis.
Then the inducements begin:
And finally, Pharaoh follows the edict to "let my people go," and the title event finally occurs. But that still not being enough, and perhaps not enough to explain the curious lack of forward momentum on the part of Egypt itself, Moses then parts the Red Sea and then allows it to crash down on the pursuing Egyptian military.
And then my favorite part of this section, which is perhaps the first psalm, a poem about everything that has just occurred, the great victory. It's really pretty awesome and deserves more recognition than I'm currently aware it gets.
Moses and Aaron are now busy at the work of convincing the Pharaoh of Egypt to let the Hebrews, or people of Israel (at this point a person rather than a country) go out into the wilderness to pray. They aren't even asking for freedom, just a chance to pray. It's Pharaoh's stubbornness and pressing the issue that leads to the title event, and further wandering toward the promised land. Since the time of Abraham they have been living in the lands of others, whether it be Philistines or Canaanites, and until the Egyptians at least to the point of Joseph they have only been able to win the good graces rather than full cooperation of their hosts. Always the struggle. I think the point of the Egyptian bondage might actually be to explain why Egypt never really expanded like other empires. Clearly one of the most notable of the ancient civilizations, leaving a clear and lasting legacy, but in the end not quite like the Greeks or Romans. God says several times that he's making Pharaoh "harden his heart" and make the situation worse in order to make a lasting impression on Egypt. Unlike, say, Romans and the emerging Christian faith, it's not exactly that the result of all this is to make Egyptians into a Hebrew nation.
It's very interesting, too, that although described as Hebrews and therefore part of the Abrahamic tradition, the people Moses and Aaron free are not apparently all that aware of the specifics of their faith, especially how much they're supposed to care about God. This may explain all the bellyaching that will follow, not to mention the Golden Calf episode, or perhaps merely denote that once again, the chroniclers of the Moses tradition were fully aware that there were other gods acknowledged even by God himself, who also makes reference to the Egyptian pantheon whose components have survived to this day in a mythology many people still know plenty about.
The genealogy work I was looking for early finally does show up. Although similar in almost every respect, it's still not really as comprehensive as the family lines described in Genesis. Readers of the Bible may have to wait for the even more exhaustive lineage ascribed to Jesus in the New Testament.
Also at this point God does not seem to need an intermediary of any kind to speak with Moses, although this will be necessary again later. They talk just like anyone else did in Genesis.
Then the inducements begin:
- rod-into-snake
- Nile-and-other-water-into-blood
- frogs
- gnats (the first one Pharaoh's magicians couldn't duplicate)
- flies
- livestock plague
- boils
- hail
- locusts
- three days of darkness
- death of the first-borns (carried out by God himself)
And finally, Pharaoh follows the edict to "let my people go," and the title event finally occurs. But that still not being enough, and perhaps not enough to explain the curious lack of forward momentum on the part of Egypt itself, Moses then parts the Red Sea and then allows it to crash down on the pursuing Egyptian military.
And then my favorite part of this section, which is perhaps the first psalm, a poem about everything that has just occurred, the great victory. It's really pretty awesome and deserves more recognition than I'm currently aware it gets.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Genesis 41-50, Exodus 1-4
The grand sweep of Genesis concludes in Egypt as Joseph talks his way out of trouble, interpreting the Pharaoh's dreams and attaining a position just below him in importance. Joseph's brothers come to him and he hides his true identity from them, repeating another pattern in the Bible to this point. He pushes it just far enough to have his kid brother Benjamin placed in the position God had Abraham place Isaac. Different circumstances, same general need to play the ultimate test.
The points I really want to stress, however, are how Joseph and his brothers echo Cain/Abel and Jacob/Esau and even the later Moses/Aaron, and just perhaps Jesus, whose single existence comprised the dual nature of God and man. Which of the two sides wins in the struggle? The point is never really the victory, because victory is sometimes not even possible, but rather to strike a contrast between them, and illustrate God's relationship to man and therefore man's relationship to God. More narrowly, Joseph may simply be called a predecessor to Jesus, how he relates to the Pharaoh, how he represents both himself and his people. His people, by the way, who continue to live, by choice, in exile, but always preferring in personal matters their own. By the end of Genesis, Jacob has died and then Joseph dies, but not before, as Jacob has done before him, prophesying about the future, or in other words the fulfillment of the covenant God has been making with Abraham and his descendants for all prosperity and a land to call their own.
Then begins the second book of the Bible, Exodus, and with it a swift contrast in the fortunes of Hebrews in Egypt. The old pharaoh who came to rely so favorably on Joseph has passed away and the new one greatly fears the shear number of Hebrews living within his kingdom, so he subjugates them rather than allow his fear of a revolt or uprising to come to pass. Like Jesus later, all the male offspring become subject to genocide, but the Hebrews prove crafty and avoid the inevitable fate of their kind, saving their little boys, and of course famously in the case of Moses.
He's sent in a basket down the river and ends up in the Pharaoh's palace, and grows up a regular Joseph, until he remarks on the oppression of his own people, and then goes into exile, finds his birth family, and then incidentally runs into a bush lit by an angel and then inhabited by God, who charges him with the salvation of the oppressed Hebrews, who are suddenly keen to begin looking for that promised land. He doesn't feel up to the task of doing the speaking for himself, so he asks if it's okay that his brother Aaron do it for him. God says it's okay.
The way God presents himself is a key difference, by the way, between Exodus and Genesis. God even gives himself a name, which is later translated for simplicity's sake to Yahweh, although the basic statement is that he is God because he's the only being in creation who's always "is."
What's really notable here is how definitive the transition from Genesis to Exodus really is. Although the circumstances around Joseph serve as a bridge, Exodus makes no attempt at the same kind of genealogical comprehensiveness as Genesis. Moses is left pretty much to appear at random. He is descended from Levi, marking the first point this particular son of Jacob is considered significant, much less in a positive light.
It's just as if Exodus originally stood apart from Genesis, or that it was composed first and Genesis second, like a prequel, to explain where the Hebrews came from in the first place and how their faith developed, or a justification for the new emphasis on finding a homeland, which makes Genesis to become the first work of prophecy in more ways than one in the Bible, assuming there's an equal chance it developed first. It seems as if Moses came about independently, certainly within the awareness of the Abrahamic tradition but separate from it, which is why in the early parts of Genesis some knowledge is implied whereas in the later parts it's inferred. Moses is the start of the Jewish traditions still practiced today. That's why the first books of the Bible are dedicated to him so completely, even Genesis, where he doesn't even appear. The way Christians view the Old Testament is how Jews view Genesis in regard to Moses. He's the whole reason anyone should care about it. Pretty shocking, when you consider how significant most of that material is, at least culturally.
The points I really want to stress, however, are how Joseph and his brothers echo Cain/Abel and Jacob/Esau and even the later Moses/Aaron, and just perhaps Jesus, whose single existence comprised the dual nature of God and man. Which of the two sides wins in the struggle? The point is never really the victory, because victory is sometimes not even possible, but rather to strike a contrast between them, and illustrate God's relationship to man and therefore man's relationship to God. More narrowly, Joseph may simply be called a predecessor to Jesus, how he relates to the Pharaoh, how he represents both himself and his people. His people, by the way, who continue to live, by choice, in exile, but always preferring in personal matters their own. By the end of Genesis, Jacob has died and then Joseph dies, but not before, as Jacob has done before him, prophesying about the future, or in other words the fulfillment of the covenant God has been making with Abraham and his descendants for all prosperity and a land to call their own.
Then begins the second book of the Bible, Exodus, and with it a swift contrast in the fortunes of Hebrews in Egypt. The old pharaoh who came to rely so favorably on Joseph has passed away and the new one greatly fears the shear number of Hebrews living within his kingdom, so he subjugates them rather than allow his fear of a revolt or uprising to come to pass. Like Jesus later, all the male offspring become subject to genocide, but the Hebrews prove crafty and avoid the inevitable fate of their kind, saving their little boys, and of course famously in the case of Moses.
He's sent in a basket down the river and ends up in the Pharaoh's palace, and grows up a regular Joseph, until he remarks on the oppression of his own people, and then goes into exile, finds his birth family, and then incidentally runs into a bush lit by an angel and then inhabited by God, who charges him with the salvation of the oppressed Hebrews, who are suddenly keen to begin looking for that promised land. He doesn't feel up to the task of doing the speaking for himself, so he asks if it's okay that his brother Aaron do it for him. God says it's okay.
The way God presents himself is a key difference, by the way, between Exodus and Genesis. God even gives himself a name, which is later translated for simplicity's sake to Yahweh, although the basic statement is that he is God because he's the only being in creation who's always "is."
What's really notable here is how definitive the transition from Genesis to Exodus really is. Although the circumstances around Joseph serve as a bridge, Exodus makes no attempt at the same kind of genealogical comprehensiveness as Genesis. Moses is left pretty much to appear at random. He is descended from Levi, marking the first point this particular son of Jacob is considered significant, much less in a positive light.
It's just as if Exodus originally stood apart from Genesis, or that it was composed first and Genesis second, like a prequel, to explain where the Hebrews came from in the first place and how their faith developed, or a justification for the new emphasis on finding a homeland, which makes Genesis to become the first work of prophecy in more ways than one in the Bible, assuming there's an equal chance it developed first. It seems as if Moses came about independently, certainly within the awareness of the Abrahamic tradition but separate from it, which is why in the early parts of Genesis some knowledge is implied whereas in the later parts it's inferred. Moses is the start of the Jewish traditions still practiced today. That's why the first books of the Bible are dedicated to him so completely, even Genesis, where he doesn't even appear. The way Christians view the Old Testament is how Jews view Genesis in regard to Moses. He's the whole reason anyone should care about it. Pretty shocking, when you consider how significant most of that material is, at least culturally.
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