Hero’s Journey or Exodus? Part 1

Joseph Campbell and the Book of Exodus offer contrasting models of the spiritual journey.

You may have noticed, as I have, that it has become popular in recent decades to talk about spiritual journeys. 

I’m not sure my grandparents would have, nor my parents. They would have talked more about piety. Many today, however, have thrown out the language of piety. They talk about spiritual journeys.

One reason may be that ours is an era of religious ferment. People are exploring many religious options different from the one they were raised in. 

Many more are holding up their religious convictions for reconsideration. They are on a spiritual quest. The words “spiritual journey” offer a feeling of openness, flexibility, and readiness to change–qualities today’s generations admire.

Today two different models for the spiritual journey compete for our attention: the hero’s journey and the biblical story of the exodus.

But what is a spiritual journey? What happens on it? Where does it lead? These are questions we may not always stop to ask. 

Today two different models for the spiritual journey compete for our attention: the hero’s journey and the biblical story of the exodus. Though they share some features, they are not exactly the same thing. They understand a spiritual journey in different ways. They do not aim for the same destination.  

In this posting, I will look at the model offered by the hero’s journey. In my next posting I will look at the contrasting model offered by the story of the exodus. 

The Hero’s Journey as Spiritual Journey

Joseph Campbell, 1904-1987

The form of the spiritual journey as a hero’s quest has been popularized recently in the writings of the late Joseph Campbell (1904-1987). A scholar of world mythology, he presented his view in several books, most notably The Hero with a Thousand Faces. He also discussed it in his famous TV interviews with Bill Moyer, which were transcribed in the book The Power of Myth. (Another compelling presentation of the hero’s journey is found in Robert Bly’s book Iron John.)

Campbell identified this kind of spiritual journey in numerous myths from a variety of world cultures. He called it the monomyth, the most basic myth of mankind, because its structure and pattern were repeated in stories and myths from cultures around the world. 

He summarized the myth in this way:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

He identified 17 steps that were customary in a hero’s quest story. I will not describe them in detail. If you wish to explore them, you can do so by clicking on the Wikipedia entry and diagram on the quest. I will just highlight a few important stages in the hero’s quest.

The quest begins with a man or boy (and usually it is a man or boy in the mythological stories, although women and girls can go on quests too) being called to go on an adventure. 

That call is usually associated with the hero becoming aware of a major lack in his life. He may not yet have fully grown up and become mature. He faces life challenges, but does not have the power or knowledge to meet them. Or he lives in a society that is also immature. It may be torn apart by conflicts or disordered. His journey may in fact begin with an act of injustice that separates him from his family and home.

The man sets out on a quest for something he needs to either live more healthily in his world or master it. The quest takes him out of his known world into an unknown world. On his quest he encounters mentors and tempters. He faces various tests and challenges. Usually he experiences some kind of an abyss experience, which Campbell calls entering into the belly of the whale.

Ultimately he experiences a transformation, usually coming after an encounter with a person of incredible power. This person may be divine, but often brings an experience of unconditional love. The transformation involves a unification of divided aspects of his life, a unification of his bodily and the spiritual dimensions, a gift of wisdom, or a transformation of consciousness, in which compassion becomes prominent.

He has now achieved his goal. He begins a return home. The return trip may have its various dangers and temptations, but the hero has strength to make it.

He returns grown up, mature, healed, with gifts of wisdom and power. He is free to live without fear. He is master of two worlds. He also returns home with a boon for the society in which he grew up. With his new knowledge and powers, he is able to help heal or transform his society and restores justice. In most of these stories, it is important to note that the hero returns home, returns home that is if he has met the challenges of the quest successfully. 

The Gilgamesh Epic

Gilgamesh depicted on an Assyrian palace wall

This model has deep roots in the ancient world. One of the earliest examples is the epic story of Gilgamesh. This is a poetic epic that comes from the Sumerian civilization that flourished in Mesopotamia around the start of the 3^rdmillennium B.C.

Gilgamesh is king of the Sumerian city of Uruk. He is a lusty undisciplined king, delighting in warfare and sexual pleasure. His rule creates chaos in the city, and the citizens complain to the gods for relief. 

The gods create a companion for Gilgamesh, a wild man named Enkidu, to distract him from his tyranny. The two men become fast friends, engaging in all kinds of shenanigans out in the wild fields. Enkidu, however, is killed, and Gilgamesh is confronted with the reality of death. He becomes obsessed with finding the secret of immortality.

He begins a long and complicated journey. It brings him ultimately to Utnapishtim, the one mortal and his wife who survived a great flood and were given the gift of immortality by the gods. Utnapishtim directs Gilgamesh to a garden where the plant of immortality grows.

Gilgamesh picks the plant but on his return home, it is eaten by a snake. Having lost the gift of immortality, Gilgamesh returns to Uruk with wisdom, understanding that immortality is not given to men. He becomes a model king for Uruk.

The Lion King

The hero’s quest is a theme we often encounter in modern movies. One excellent example is that beloved Disney masterpiece The Lion King.

In that movie, the lion cub Simba is driven out of his father’s kingdom by a wicked uncle after the uncle murders Simba’s father, the rightful king. In exile, Simba is befriended by a warthog and meerkat, with whom he lives into early adulthood.

He then encounters the lioness Nala whom his parents had originally intended to be his wife. She calls him to return to his father’s kingdom, which has become a wasteland under his uncle’s tyrannical rule. 

After many refusals, Simba does, but he returns not as a weak lion cub, but as a full-grown lion warrior, with the gifts and powers to do the task for which he is called.

The Story of the Buddha

If you wish to look for a more historical and less fictional exemplar of the hero’s quest, the best example is the life of the Buddha, the course of whose life follows the hero’s quest quite closely.

Image of the Buddha depicted in an old Buddhist monastery in Afghanistan

The historic Siddhartha Gautama is an Indian prince born into a princely family near Nepal in the 6^th century B.C. His father tries to protect his son from all contact with the evils and sorrows of the world.

But as a young man, during a chariot ride outside the palace, he encounters successively an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and an ascetic. These encounters pop his psychological and social bubble, and Gautama decides to abandon his royal life and family and become an ascetic, searching for the answer to human suffering.

He becomes an ascetic for many years, until he experiences an enlightenment while meditating under a tree. This enlightenment transforms him. He decides to use the gifts given to him in this enlightenment to return to the world to become a teacher and preacher. From his ministry arises the whole movement of Buddhism that has left an indelible impact especially on the east Asian world.

Let me make a few comments on this model of the spiritual journey.

Myths as Symbols of Human Experience

First, Campbell interprets the mythological story’s elements as symbols of what happens to a human being spiritually and psychologically as he or she moves towards spiritual wholeness. The myths talk about spiritual and psychological experiences any of us might have in our own lives.

For example, when the hero moves from the known world into the unknown world, that can represent a person’s moving out of his conscious mind into the unconscious realm of a human personality. Campbell builds upon some of the insights of Carl Jung, who interpreted myths in similar ways.

The myths talk about spiritual and psychological experiences any of us might have in our own lives.

The hero’s quest is an appealing story of individuals overcoming hardship and trial and achieving salvation. Salvation comes in the form of integration of their fractured life or personality. Salvation also brings with it powers and wisdom so the hero can be a master of his life and destiny. 

The hero does not earn his salvation entirely by his own efforts. His wisdom and powers are often gifts given to him from a numinous source, sometimes a god or some other transcendent power. There is a strong element of grace at work in these myths.

Salvation as a Transforming Experience

The key to his salvation is a powerful transforming experience. For the Buddha it was that moment of enlightenment as he sat under the Bodhi tree. After this transforming experience, the hero is never the same.

One thinks of the irrevocable change that occurred for the apostle Paul after his Damascus Road vision of Christ.* One can also think of people who have had a powerful spiritual experience that they might describe as being born again in the language of the Protestant revival movement.

The focus of this model of the spiritual journey…is decidedly on the transformation of the individual rather than on the transformation of a people.

The transformed hero returns gifted with wisdom and powers that his disordered society desperately needs. He is able to bring order and justice and healing to the world. I think the Buddha is a superb example of the hero’s quest activated in a historical person’s life. After his enlightenment, the Buddha preached and practiced a message of compassion for other suffering human beings.

The focus of this model of the spiritual journey, however, is decidedly on the transformation of the individual rather than on the transformation of a people. Social reform begins with transformed individuals. Society may be transformed, but it will be primarily through the compassionate actions of transformed individuals. In this respect the trajectory of this model is more individualistic than social.

The Circular Character of the Hero’s Journey

Another feature about this model for the spiritual journey is the circular character of the quest. The hero leaves home in search of some kind of healing or transformation. When he does find it, he returns home an emotionally and spiritually mature human being, who now can use his powers and gifts to bring order and healing to his community. 

In fact, Campbell has diagrammed the 17 steps of the journey into a circle.

The circle begins at the hero’s home. It ends with the hero’s return home.

I find this circularity fascinating because it mirrors the circular way in which the ancient world (in which this myth arose) tended to think of historical time. 

Religious life in the ancient Mediterranean world, as well as in many other parts of the ancient world, such as the Maya in the Americas, was deeply rooted in the cycles of nature—the cycle of day and night, the cycle of the solar and lunar years, the cycle of the repeating seasons, and the cycle of life and death among both animals and humans.

These cycles were critical to the fertility of the land, on which ancient life depended. As a result many ancient religions were focused on ensuring these cycles should continue without interruption. Religion tended to be fertility cults.

We must remember this as we encounter the myths of a dying and rising god that we meet in the ancient Near East. Those myths gave theological justification to the cults themselves.

The Sumerian myth of Dumuzi offers a good example. This myth arose about the same time as the Gilgamesh epic. In it a minor god named Dumuzi is married to the great goddess Inanna, one of the principal gods of the Sumerians. 

There are various versions of the myth. One says that Dumuzi was having terrible nightmares, and his sister Gestinanna interpreted them as attacks of demons. Dumuzi tries to hide from the demons as a gazelle among his sister’s sheep. But the demons find him and carry him off to the land of the dead in the underworld. Gestinanna eventually finds him there and persuades the gods of the underworld to let her brother return to earth for six months in each year, while she remains in the underworld until he returns. 

Another version of the myth tells how his wife Inanna is angry with her husband because of his unfeeling behavior to her. She asks the demons to take him off to the underworld. There he remains six months out of the year, during the hot, sterile months of summer. He returns to earth around the autumnal equinox, bringing renewed fertility to vegetation, herds, and people. 

The myth of Dumuzi and Inanna is clearly a fertility myth. Variations of it are found all through the ancient world, for example in the Babylonian myth of Tammuz and Ishtar, in the Greek myth of Adonis and Aphrodite, and in the Asia Minor myth of Attis and Cybele, which was so popular in the Roman world. 

The Cyclical Character of Time

In these ancient myths we find expressed the ancient understanding of time as circular or cyclical.

What counts most in this ancient mindset is the moment of origin for the world. In that initial act of creation the gods created the divine structure of the world and the divine structure of human society. In that divine structure of society, the king becomes the intersection point between the world of the gods and the world of human beings.

The world remains harmonious and ordered in so far as human beings respect and obey that divine order, created at the time of creation. The king plays the important role in maintaining that divine order.

Home was where it all began, and returning home was the goal…historical time was seen as flowing in an endless cyclical course.

Each year at their New Year festivals, these ancient societies sought to return to that first day of creation and re-affirm or re-establish that divine order. In these annual festivals, people returned to their spiritual home in order to re-affirm it. Home was where it all began, and returning home was the goal. This meant that historical time was seen as flowing in an endless cyclical course.**

Now this mindset had a very practical impact on the society. It meant ancient societies tended to be deeply conservative. The annual reaffirmation of the divine order also included a reaffirmation of the divine social order of semi-divine king, nobility, and peasantry. 

This was the order established by the gods at creation. It was to be reaffirmed each year at the New Year’s Festival. As a result, the way ancient societies were structured and operated seldom changed in any radical way.

Author’s Note: In my next posting, Part 2 of this discussion, I will explore the contrasting understanding of a spiritual journey offered by the story of the exodus.

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* Described in Acts 9:1-18.

**Mircea Eliade, a Romanian scholar of the history of religions, gives an insightful analysis of this ancient mindset in his book The Myth of the Eternal Return, first published in English in 1954. I am deeply indebted to this book for my insights into the ancient mindset.

Exodus: Ratified in Blood

The covenant making at Sinai ends in a ritual ceremony.

Mosaic of the sacrifices of Abel and Melchizedek in the Church of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy. 6th century.

Beginning with chapter 19, the Book of Exodus recounts the making of the covenant between God and the people of Israel. That account extends over the next five chapters. It includes the giving of the Ten Commandments and the laws that scholars now call the Book of the Covenant (chapters 21-23). 

The account comes to its conclusion in chapter 24, which recounts the formal ratification of this agreement between God and Israel. That ratification ceremony contains details that will resonate into the New Testament. 

That ratification begins with Moses reviewing with the assembled people the words God has spoken (the Ten Commandments) and the ordinances he has given Moses (the Book of the Covenant, chapters 21-23). These are the specific provisions of what we might call the contract between God and Israel. Will the people of Israel accept them?

The ratification ceremony contains details that will resonate into the New Testament. 

The people respond unanimously: All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do (Exodus 24:3).* By these words, the people have announced their consent to the covenant God offers. Negotiations (if I might call them that) have come to an end. All that is left is the official ratification. By analogy to procedures we would follow today, the contract has been laid out on the table. Now all the participants must sign and seal it.

“Signing” the Covenant

That “signing” (again if I may call it that by analogy) occurs through a ritual ceremony. Israel builds an altar and sacrifices on it oxen as a burnt offering. Moses takes some of the blood of the slaughtered animals in basins and dashes it against the altar. This seems to represent God’s ratification of the covenant. 

Then he takes more basins of the blood and dashes it on the people, saying: See the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words (Exodus 24:8). This splattering of blood seems to represent the people’s ratification of the covenant. Now we might say the covenant has been signed by both parties–in blood. 

Israel is now–by their own consent–committed to being God’s people and to the mission of being a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, as God proclaimed that mission in chapter 19. This mission will have significance for the whole world. What it will mean, however, for Israel will only become clear as Israelite, and then Jewish, history unfolds. 

This ratification in a bloody sacrifice may strike many readers today as distasteful and primitive. It seems to have been expected in the ancient world, as we read of accounts of other covenant “cutting” (as it was called) in other ancient nations. It was followed in the ratification of the covenant between God and Abraham recounted in Genesis 15. There Abraham cuts a heifer, a ram, a turtledove, and a pigeon into halves and lays out the halves in parallel lines. In a mysterious event during the night God passes between the two lines, signifying his ratification of the covenant he has made with Abraham. 

We should also keep in mind the significance blood can have in many cultures. In American mythology when we talk about two friends becoming blood brothers, they signify that by each friend puncturing a vein in his wrist and then mingling his blood with the other’s. They are now committed to the welfare of each other for life.

Once this ratification ceremony is complete, God summons Moses, Aaron, two of Aaron’s sons, and 70 elders of the people to ascend Mount Sinai. There they are given a ineffable vision of God. We are not told just what they saw. The text says they saw beneath God’s feet a transparent pavement of sapphire.** The wording may suggest that all they saw of God was his feet, but we cannot be sure. What is amazing about the vision is that all of them live, for it was the rule that no one could see God and live. They have been granted an experience of enormously condescending grace. 

After that they all enjoy a celebratory feast on the mountain. One thinks of the kind of feast that concludes a wedding ceremony. 

Resonances in the New Testament

As I said earlier, this account has resonances in the New Testament. At the Last Supper, Jesus takes bread and wine and serves them to his disciples giving these elements new meaning. We need to note especially the words Jesus uses as he hands the cup to his disciples. They vary slightly depending upon which gospel account we are reading. But here they are:

Matthew 26:27-28

Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 

Mark 14:23-24

Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.

Luke 22:20

And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.

1 Corinthians 11:25-26

In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

In all these four accounts Jesus associates the cup of wine with his death. And he gives significance to his death by linking his death to the blood that was used in the Exodus account to seal and ratify the covenant between Israel and God. He says that his death will usher in a new covenant. 

We who are Christian have heard these words so many, many times in celebrations of the communion service that we can lose touch with what Jesus is saying. By his death, Jesus is ratifying a new covenant. But just what is this new covenant? 

Proclaiming the New Covenant through the Eucharist

It is a new development in the old covenant God entered into with Israel at Mount Sinai. In this new covenant God opens up the exclusive covenant he established with Israel to embrace the Gentiles as well. The exclusive covenant with Israel becomes a covenant universal in scope. We Christians are wrong to say the new covenant replaces the covenant God has with Israel. Rather the new covenant preserves that covenant, but now enables Gentiles to share in its benefits and responsibilities.

The one who seems to have first grasped the full significance of this development is the apostle Paul. He expounds upon it throughout his letters, but most especially in his Letter to the Galatians and his Letter to the Ephesians. And in this development God was fulfilling his promise to Abraham that in him (Abraham) that all the families of the earth shall be blessed (Genesis 12:3).

The Eucharist proclaims the message of Christianity. We call it Gospel…

It is this new development in God’s covenant with Israel that we Christians commemorate in our repeated celebrations of the communion service, which Christian tradition calls the Eucharist. The word Eucharist comes from the Greek word eucharisto, which means to give thanks. In the Eucharist, we give thanks to God for the astounding blessing that God has conferred upon humanity in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. 

The Eucharist proclaims the message of Christianity. We call it Gospel (god spell in old English or good news in modern English). In Jesus God was at work to open up the exclusive covenant he made with Israel at Sinai (the old covenant) to embrace all of humanity (the new covenant).*** Now all of humanity can share in the privileges of the covenant and also in its responsibilities of being a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. 

The death of Jesus becomes the sacrificial blood that signs and seals that new covenant. As a Christian, I can only respond: Thanks be to God!

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* The people had previously said these words in chapter 19:8 when Moses first reveals to the Israelites God’s intention of establishing a covenant with Israel. But they speak in ignorance. They do not yet know any of the specific provisions of the covenant. After chapters 20-23, with the Ten Commandments and the Book of the Covenant, they now know something of the specifics of what they are agreeing to. When they speak in chapter 24, they speak, therefore, from a more informed basis. This gives much more heft to their promise.

** There is an allusion to this transparent pavement in the vision the elder John has of God’s throne room in heaven as recounted in Revelation 4. There John sees the pavement in front of God’s throne as something like a sea of glass, like crystal (Revelation 4:6).

*** The Latin word used to translate the Hebrew word for covenant (berith) is the word testamentum. It is the origin of the English names we give to the two parts of the Christian Bible: the Old Testament and the New Testament. 

Exodus: Exercising Care in Using God’s Name

The third commandment is about much more than careless profanity.

Moses with the tablets of the Law, by Gustave Doré, French, 19th century

Chapter 20 of Exodus gives us the Ten Commandments (as Christians call them) or the Ten Words (as Jews call them). The ten commandments have played a huge role in Christian instruction, such as the many catechisms that theologians have composed to instruct believers in the doctrines and morality of Christian living. 

Those catechisms have provided extensive exposition on the meaning of the commandments and their application to daily living. I do not want to add to that mass of words. My readers can explore that exposition by turning to the many catechisms that they will find in traditional churches, both Catholic and Protestant. 

One of the most popular in my own Presbyterian circle has been the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563. Questions 41-81 of this catechism contain a detailed explanation of each of the commandments. 

Instead, in this posting and the next, I will comment on just two of the commandments—Commandment 3 and Commandment 10*. The first, because a frivolous interpretation of it drains it, in my opinion, of its more serious meaning. The second, because it stands apart from all the others by its focus. 

The third commandment reads: 

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name (Exodus 3:7).

When I was a child, parents and Sunday school teachers drilled into me that this commandment prohibited any kind of profanity. Especially that meant any swear words that used a variation of name of God or of Jesus. For example, we could not say the word Gee (it was regarded as an abbreviated form of Jesus) nor Yikes (it was regarded as an abbreviation for Christ). If we did as children, we found our mouths washed out in soap. 

We find throughout Exodus–and for that matter, the whole Bible–a concern with protecting the good name of God.

For good measure, the prohibition was extended to any other swear words, especially words referring to sex or bowel movements. I grew up in an environment largely free of foul language. It continues to influence my speech to this day.

A Deeper Interpretation

But I’ve come to believe that this interpretation of the commandment distracts us from a more serious violation of the commandment.

We find throughout Exodus–and for that matter, the whole Bible–a concern with protecting the good name of God. Like all of us, the God of the Bible shows a concern with his reputation in the world. His work in liberating Israel is motivated in part by the purpose that God’s name be proclaimed throughout the earth. That is said explicitly in Exodus 9:16, when God tells Moses to say to Pharaoh: 

But this is why I have let you live: to show you my power, and to make my name resound through all the earth.

We find an echo of this thought in Psalm 135. The psalm contains a celebration of what God did to liberate and lead Israel out of Egypt. The psalmist concludes that celebration by saying:

Your name, O Lord, endures forever,

            and your renown, O Lord, throughout all ages. (Psalm 135:13)

Isaiah sees word about what God has done on behalf of Israel as triggering a curiosity or longing to learn more about this God. In Isaiah 2, the prophet foresees a time when all nations will stream to Jerusalem. Why? Because…

Many peoples shall come and say,

‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

            and to the house of the God of Jacob,

That he may teach us his ways

            and that we may walk in his paths.’

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,

            And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. (Isaiah 2:3)

The word-of-mouth spread of the news of what God has done on behalf of Israel is expected to cause astonishment in other peoples. They will be moved to ask questions about this God. 

Nothing is more inclined to turn people away from God, to reject and despise God, than the linking of God’s name to attitudes and behaviors that misrepresent the character and purposes of God…

In this sense we might say that evangelism will not be a deliberate mission of Israel. Rather it will be a by-product of other people hearing and talking about the story of Israel in what might amount to casual conversation. This happens all the time when we share excitedly with one another some tidbit of news we have heard (“Have you heard that….”).

Advertisers say nothing works so powerfully as word-of-mouth endorsements of a product from family members, friends, and colleagues. We trust such endorsements because we trust the people giving them. The same is true in matters dealing with the spirit. 

Nothing is more inclined to turn people away from God, to reject and despise God, than the linking of God’s name to attitudes and behaviors that misrepresent the character and purposes of God, especially when we link the authority of God to some social or political ideology we espouse. When we cite God’s will as authority for some such ideology, we need to be quite sure we are understanding God’s will correctly.

A Case in Point

A good example of what I mean was reported in a recent issue of The Washington Post.** A columnist was commenting on the oral arguments that went on in the Supreme Court over whether the new Texas law on abortion was constitutional. Many saw this case as a direct challenge to the Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade. 

Outside the court demonstrators assembled in vocal protest of or in support of abortion. Metal barriers divided opposing sides. The columnist reported that the two sides tried to outshout each other. One woman opposed to abortion used a bullhorn to drown out the others. 

She screamed at those who support abortion in these words (according to the columnist): Maybe some of you should have been aborted, you wicked, nasty, disgusting, ungodly–I don’t even want to call you women! You are bloodthirsty animals! This is what happens when you allow women to emasculate men! God hates you! In the name of Jesus Christ, shut your vile, sick mouth!

I shuddered when I read that. Personally I don’t favor abortion. But to scream at someone who supports abortion that God hates them and that in the name of Jesus Christ, they should shut their vile mouth is a direct violation of the third commandment, as I see it. It is defaming the character of God. In my theology, God does not hate anyone, nor does Jesus order any person to silence their voice. This kind of talk brings disrepute upon the proclamation of the gospel. I recoil in horror at this misuse of the name of God.

The third commandment targets this kind of practice by which we malign the name and character of God when we clothe our misunderstandings and willful purposes in the language of divinity.

A Legacy of Skepticism

I experienced this disrespect for God’s name frequently as a child when I grew up in the church. Many a minister in a sermon thundered from the pulpit about some issue or action which he demanded that we practice because it was God’s will or which he denounced as a violation of God’s will. This is in fact standard content in many sermons. As I grew more mature in my faith, I came to believe that so many of them were dead wrong in their understanding of God. 

… a preacher should feel some sense of fear and trembling when he or she mounts the pulpit and sets out to declare the word of God for the assembled congregation.

This has left me with a deep legacy of skepticism. One who expresses how this unintended consequence happens is the Biblical scholar Terence E. Fretheim. Here is what he says about the third commandment:

A central issue at stake for God is the declaration of this name to the world and the effect the hearing of that name will have on people. Will they be drawn to it or repelled by it or remain indifferent to it? If that name has been besmirched in some way by the manner in which it has been used by the people of God or by the practices with which it has been associated, then the divine intentions may fall short of their realization.***

This is not to say that preachers have no right to claim the authority of God as sanction for some of the things they say. There are some clear indications in the Bible about God’s will, and the Ten Commandments are examples. But it seems to me that a preacher should feel some sense of fear and trembling when he or she mounts the pulpit and sets out to declare the word of God for the assembled congregation. How easily we can unwittingly deceive ourselves and mislead the people of God. 

Jesus, too, is aware of the great danger arising from careless speech about God as well as from our hypocritical actions. After instructing his disciples that they must change and become like little children in order to enter the kingdom of God, he then goes on to warn them of misleading those who seek to enter the kingdom. He says:

If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes! (Matthew 18:6-7)

A Proper Reticence

Another way we can disrespect the name of God is when we use God’s name in empty phrases or in easy religious talk. I often wonder if people are even aware of what they are saying when they spontaneously say “Oh, my God” in a casual conversation. Often it strikes me as nothing more than an empty phrase, although unconsciously they may be acknowledging a divine presence of which they appear unaware in their daily living. 

Another example is the kind of testimony giving that is a common practice in the churches where I grew up. A genuine testimony to God’s action in one’s life can be a powerful experience for a listening congregation. But too many of the testimonies I heard in church as a child struck me as cliched and vacuous. They were often an occasion for people to demonstrate how pious they were. 

Reticence in using the name of God seems to me one way we can honor the Third Commandment.

I recognize that I need to be cautious in making this criticism. People may use cliched language because it is all they have available to express their genuine experience. When that is the case, the genuineness is likely to come through in the tone of the voice. But too many testimonies do not pass the test of genuineness for me. 

As a result, I have become highly reticent in attributing things that happen in my life, good or bad, to God. It is not that I believe God is not at work in the events of my life. Rather it is that I am highly skeptical of my ability to discern what is of God and what is not. The way of wisdom, it seems to me, is to be careful in what I say. 

Reticence in using the name of God seems to me one way we can honor the Third Commandment. Devout Jews set what I regard as an instructive example for many Christians. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the proper name for God is spelled YHWH. Whenever Jews encounter this name in the text, they do not pronounce it. Instead they substitute the word Adonai (My Lord). 

This has been such a long practice that scholars do not know for sure what is the proper pronunciation of the name. They speculate that it is Yahweh. And some English translations adopt that pronunciation. But it remains speculation. No one knows for sure. So reticence is proper.

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* Different faith traditions number the commandments in different ways, by separating some and uniting others. I follow the enumeration in my faith tradition, which is Reformed and Presbyterian. 

** Dana Milbank, ‘Roe’ is dead; the Roberts Court’s ‘stench’ will live forever, a column in The Washington Post, December 2, 2021. Page A23.

*** Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus: Interpretation Commentary. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1991. Page 228.

Exodus: A New Creation Story

The crossing of the Red Sea carries echoes of ancient creation stories.

Note: This blog post was originally published on September 27, 2018. I repost it here because of its relevance to our journey through the Book of Exodus.

Ancient creation myths, whether Mesopotamian or Egyptian, often shared a common feature. They assumed that the structured order of the world as we know it arose out of an aboriginal watery chaos. 

That chaos was formless and often depicted as malevolent. It needed to be tamed before the created world could emerge. That taming occurred through a titanic battle between divine forces. 

The destruction of Leviathan by the French artist Gustave Doré, 19^th century.

A representative example is the ancient Babylonian creation myth known as Enuma Elish. In that myth, the watery chaos is personified in a female divine figure named Tiamat. Her opponent is the male head of the Babylonian pantheon, the sky god Marduk. 

In a ferocious battle the two gods fight to the death. Marduk prevails. He kills Tiamat, carves up her body, and out of the pieces creates the world in which we live. Creation emerges out of an act of supreme violence. (Also don’t miss the misogynist tones to the story.)

Biblical Imagery Echoing Ancient Myths

Echoes of this widespread understanding of the creation of the world are to be found in the Bible. The ancient Israelites probably picked them up from the common cultural environment which they shared with other ancient societies. 

Genesis does not duplicate the theme of battle as the prelude to creation. But we should not miss the detail that when God begins to create the world in Genesis 1, God begins not by creating out of nothing. Instead he speaks to a vast formless, watery and dark void. The taming of this void begins with the divine words, Let there be light (Genesis 1:3).¹

Creation continues the next two days with the division of the waters into the sky dome and ocean. Then emerges the dry land out of the oceanic waters, with its proliferation of vegetation. The land becomes the platform for the advanced creative work of God as God calls into being animal life, and ultimately human beings.

We also find echoes of the ancient theme of the chaos monster in the Old Testament figure of the great sea monster Leviathan (also known as Rahab). A number of poetic passages in the Old Testament celebrate God’s victory of this monster.²

One example is Psalm 74:12-14:

Yet God my King is from of old,
    working salvation in the earth.
You divided the sea by your might;
    you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.
You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
    you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.

Another example appears in Isaiah 27:1. Here the author uses the imagery of the chaos monster to symbolize the forces of chaos that God will subdue in the future. What lies ahead in the future is a new creative act that echoes the old story.

On that day the LORD with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea. 

The Israelites were not sailors like the Phoenicians. For this reason they tended to regard the ocean as something fearful, if not terrifying, especially when the ocean rose up in ferocious storms. The imagery of the Leviathan resonated with them, and it came to be the symbol of all the forces of chaos that might threaten their lives, whether foreign invasions, natural disasters like earthquakes, or the breakdown of social order

The Red Sea Crossing as a New Creative Act

What I had not come to recognize until recently is how imagery from these old creation myths as well as from Genesis 1 echo through the account of Israel’s crossing the Red Sea (see Exodus 14-15).³ That crossing is the climax of the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. 

When the Israelites encamp on the shores of the Red Sea, it appears that the old forces of chaos are about to engulf them. At their rear waits Pharaoh’s armies, poised to attack. If Pharaoh cannot enslave them, he will at least slaughter them. Chaos will reign on the battle field.

Ahead of them lie the waters of the Red Sea. These waters block any escape. The Israelites’ fate, if they move forward, is to drown in the oceanic waters. 

The threat of chaos lies behind them. The threat of chaos lies before them. They seemed to be doomed.

But they have not counted upon the creative power of God, the God who has tamed Leviathan in the past and will do so again in the future. Instructing Moses to stretch his rod out over the sea, God summons mighty east winds (note again the echo of the mighty wind/Spirit that blows over the watery void in Genesis 1:1) to divide the waters. Out of that division emerges dry land over which the Israelites cross into freedom. Land has emerged out of the waters, as in the creation story of Genesis 1.

When God ceases the winds blowing, the chaos waters return, drowning the Egyptian army. Chaos has engulfed its own, as the song of Moses in Exodus 15 celebrates. 

The crossing of the Red Sea then can be seen as a new creative act of God, an act that creates the new people of Israel. Their new life as the people of God begins. There will be much more to do before Israel grows up into a mature nation. This echoes how the creation of the world progresses by more and more advanced stages in Genesis 1. But it all begins with a divine act of taming the waters of chaos.

Christian Resonances

This imagery should resonate with Christians as we think about the sacrament of baptism. Baptism is the act when God chooses each one of us to become a part of his people, the people who form the church. That act of initiation begins with a ritual of water. 

In an extended sense baptism is the Christian crossing of the Red Sea.⁴ We symbolically drown and then are raised up to new life.⁵  It is also an act of new creation, a rebirth. Out of the waters of chaos all of us are lifted up onto the dry land of the Kingdom of God.

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1. Genesis 1 may in fact be conducting a polemic against the Babylonian myth. God tames the chaos not by an act of violence, but by his sovereign word. 

2. Several examples: Job 26:12, Job 41:1-11, Psalm 74:12-14, Psalm 89:10, Isaiah 27.1, Isaiah 51:9.

3. I want to acknowledge that I received this insight from an essay written by Dr. George Athas of Moore Theological College. The essay The Creation of Israel: The Cosmic Proportions of the Exodus Event can be accessed on Academia.edu.

4. This connection between baptism and the exodus event is very explicit in some early Christian baptismal liturgies. The language of the liturgies is filled with allusions and imagery drawn from the Israelites’ exodus. 

5. This symbolism is most vivid when baptism is performed by immersion. 

Exodus: Name of Faithful Mystery

How are we to understand the enigmatic name of God that God reveals to Moses?

At the burning bush on Mount Sinai, God calls Moses to become God’s agent in working the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. As I noted in my last post, Moses resists this call with all his might. He wants to convince God that God has chosen the wrong man.

Moses’ second objection and God’s response has been one of the most commented-upon passages in all of Scripture. Moses says to God that when he comes to the Israelites and tells them God has sent him, they will want to know the name of the god who sent him. All Moses knows at this point is that he is the God of our ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 

Apparently Moses thinks this will be too vague of a response. He wants a more proper name. After all, the Egyptian gods have proper names: Osiris, Isis, Horus, Seth, Bes, etc. So what is the proper name of Israel’s God?

Just what is going on in this objection is hard to say. Scholars disagree in their interpretation. Is Moses’ concern one of a prudent man, who is anticipating problems ahead? Is it an objection coming from doubt on Moses’ part? 

Is it an effort by Moses to get some theological knowledge that really is superfluous to his mission? (When he gets to Egypt, no Israelite ever raises the question of God’s name.) Or does it involve a false assumption about the God that Moses is confronting? Moses may be thinking God is just another god on the same level as the other Egyptian gods, so God must have a proper name to take his place in the divine assembly. 

Whatever the source of Moses’ objection, God does not put him down for raising it. Instead God responds by giving Moses what he asks. But the answer eludes full intellectual comprehension. 

…we cannot fully understand God in the present; our full understanding of God is one that awaits his full revelation in the future, a revelation that will be disclosed in his future acts.

The Enigmatic Name of God

God responds to Moses by saying: I am who I am. At least that is how the New Revised Standard Version translates the enigmatic Hebrew phrase: ’ehyeh ’asher ’ehyeh. Other valid translations are: I will be what (who) I will be; I will cause to be what I will cause to be; or I will be who I am, or I am who I will be. 

As we see, there are multiple meanings built into God’s response. But there is a distinct suggestion that we cannot fully understand God in the present; our full understanding of God is one that awaits his full revelation in the future, a revelation that will be disclosed in his future acts.

The renowned commentator on the Book of Exodus Brevard Childs says of God’s response: The formula is paradoxically both an answer and a refusal of an answer.* And for all of us who prize unambiguous clarity, God’s answer can be baffling and maddening.

God then condenses this strange phrase into two words: I AM. Moses is to tell the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you. Even in this shortened form, the enigmatic quality of God’s name remains.**

The Hebrew spelling for the name God reveals as God’s name–the Tetragrammaton.

God then goes on to reveal his proper name which the Israelites are to use in all their worship. God’s name is YHWH (Exodus 3:15). When the Israelites speak of or to their proper God, they are to use this name. For this is the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of their ancestors.

This name, too, is an enigma. Ancient Hebrew texts wrote only in consonants. The scribes omitted the vowels, which a reader added to the text when he read it aloud. So we do not know the proper vowels that would be added to this name when spoken aloud. The name ultimately came to be regarded as so sacred that no one said it, except the high priest who pronounced it once a year during the Day of Atonement festival. 

When the priesthood died out after the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D., all certain knowledge of the pronunciation was lost. Scholars today speculate it was pronounced Yahweh. You find that usage common in many modern English translations. But that pronunciation is speculative. 

What Jews have customarily done when they encounter the letters YHWH in the Hebrew text is they substitute in pronunciation the Hebrew word Adonai. When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek in the two centuries before Jesus, the translators translated Adonai as Kyrios (which means Lord). English translators have followed the same practice, always translating YHWH as LORD (usually spelled in capitals).

Reflections on the Name

Let me say a few things about this revelation of the name of God as it relates to our life as believers today.

First of all, the name of God is not one that humans give to God, as the Egyptians gave names to their gods. It is a name that comes from God himself. God reveals his name to us. Adam is given the right to give names to all the animals in paradise (Genesis 2:20). But Adam is not given the right to name God. God will name himself. 

The giving of names usually implies some implicit hierarchy. Parents name their babies, not the other way around. Moses and the Israelites will never be in a position of superiority to compel God to act because they have given God his name. Manipulation will never be appropriate in Israel’s relationship to God. It is why magic is so incompatible with Biblical religion.

As I look at Biblical religion, I see an understanding of God as a presence that is always present in everything, but is not everything. This presence is never an impersonal It, but a presence who manifests personal qualities.

Yet at the same time, God’s revealing God’s name opens up the possibility of relationship. God invites relationship by giving the Israelites a name by which they can call upon him, address him, and lament to him. I like the way Thomas E. Fretheim, another commentator on Exodus, puts this. He says:

Naming makes true encounter and communication possible. Naming entails availability. By giving the name, God becomes accessible to people. God and people can now meet one another and there can be address on the part of both parties. Yet, because name is not person, there remains an otherness, even a mystery about the one who is named.***

A Name that Invites Relationship

Our relationship to God then is not with an indistinct, diaphanous being whom we are never quite sure is there or not, nor with a God who is so diffuse that God is in everything but never distinguishable (as in pantheism), but with a distinct presence whom we can address by name. 

I use the word presence deliberately. As I look at Biblical religion, I see an understanding of God as a presence that is always present in everything, but is not everything. This presence is never an impersonal It, but a presence who manifests personal qualities. God is one who makes, who speaks, who calls, who questions, who rebukes, who promises, who intervenes, who heals, who rescues, who acts, who loves. Yet God is a presence who remains beyond our control and manipulation. 

That is why I am always drawn so strongly to the thought of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber who describes our relationship to God not as an I-It relationship, but as an I-Thou one. We relate to God always as a You, not as an It.****

About ten years ago a group of friends and I spent an evening watching a new film that has been recently released. It was titled O My God.

In it filmmaker Peter Rodger travels to 23 different countries to interview a diversity of people. They include children, religious leaders, celebrities, a British princess, fanatics, and the average man on the street. He asks them all the same question, “What is God?”

His purpose, he says, is to explore whether it matters what we believe. “What is this entity that goes by the name of God,” he asks, “that seems to bring about so much friction, hurt, and pain?” So he decides to travel around the world and to ask people what they think.

Now if you are trying to understand the mysterious power that religion plays in people’s lives, I think that is the wrong question to ask. It implies that religion is primarily an intellectual exercise. It deals with the intellectual entity, as Rodger calls it, that we call God. 

I submit, however, that this is the wrong question to ask if you are trying to understand the power of religious faith as it comes to us in the Bible. There we might more properly say the question we encounter is not “What is God?” but “Who is God?” 

This is in the end the question, I suggest, that Moses is asking when he asks God’s name. The answer God gives is a name that invites relationship and a relationship that orients us into the future. Moses and Israel will come to know God ever more fully as they journey with God into their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. It is an invitation to faith. 

Likewise for us, too, we will only fully know who God is, as we walk into the future in relationship with this God who will be fully revealed only when the Final Day arrives. On that day, as devout Jews believe, we will all be able finally to pronounce the proper name of God aloud.

______________

* Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974. Page 76.

** Following the lead of Albert Einstein, modern cosmologists consider time as well as space to be malleable parts of the universe. Neither is absolute. As creator of the universe (as Christians believe), God is then independent from both time and space. God lives in an eternal Now, with no past or future. That’s why I find it fascinating that the Exodus revelation reveals God as the I AM. Exodus and modern cosmology seem to be traveling down the same road. 

*** Thomas E. Fretheim, Interpretation: Exodus. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1991. Page 65.

**** Buber’s thought is presented in a classic theological/philosophical work that is titled in English translation as I and Thou. It was first published in German under the title Ich und Du. The word Du in German is the singular form of You, but it is usually reserved for use in relationships that have some sense of intimacy, such as the relationship between husband and wife or parent and child. In Elizabethan English the word Thou had the same association. It is not then pure archaism when the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer both use the word Thou in addressing God. The translators are trying to capture something of the subtle spirit of Biblical religion.

Qoheleth and the Trinity

If love is real, what does that say about the meaning of the universe?

If you are prone to depression, then you might be wise not to tackle the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament. The author is billed as the Preacher (Qoheleth in Hebrew.) As a revered sage, he reflects upon his life obsession with discovering the meaning of life.

The Great Sage: Augustine of Hippo in his study by Sandro Botticelli, 1480.

His conclusion is disappointing. Vanities of vanities!, he concludes, all is vanity (Ecclesiastes 1:2). The Hebrew might be more accurately translated as “mere breath” or “a puff of wind.” Nothing lasts. What is here today is gone tomorrow. And in example after example he drives that point home.

So what’s his advice for wise living?

This is what I have seen to be good: it is fitting to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of the life God gives us; for this is our lot. (Ecclesiastes 5:18)

 This conclusion is the fruit of his lifelong pursuit of wisdom. He has read deeply. He has observed the world of both nature and human beings. He has applied all his rational powers to trying to understand it. His approach parallels that of most philosophers and scientists today.

The Dead End Search for Meaning

He comes to the same conclusion as many of them do as well. Years ago I read a book titled Why Does the World Exist? byJim Holt.* The author seeks to penetrate the mystery of existence by interviewing a number of distinguished philosophers and scientists, including Nobel laureates.

His interviewees offer a number of answers, some of which mirror those of various philosophers down through the ages. But what I found most curious was the number of cosmologists and physicists who said the end result of all of their scientific explorations was the conclusion that the world was meaningless. There is no discernable reason why the world exists.

It reminded me of something that the philosopher Bertrand Russell once wrote.

Even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home… that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temper of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.**

 One gets the idea that Qoheleth would fit right in in the halls and classrooms of modern academia and scientific labs.

In an intellectual world in which only rational conclusions are accepted as valid, it seems to me that Qoheleth and his companions present a perfectly persuasive argument. The law of entropy suggests that a form of death is the irreversible fate of all that exists in the universe. And if you take up the task of trying to answer why evil exists, then you are probably hammering the nails into the coffin of meaningfulness.

But What About Love?

I was reading Ecclesiastes recently, as I have many times before. I noticed something peculiar this time. The author is convinced that God is real. But the author’s favorite image of God seems to be that of the judge. This leads to the book’s final note of advice:

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil. (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)

What is strikingly missing from the author’s reflections is any perception of God as a God of love. The theme of love is missing throughout the book. And I find myself wondering if that lack accounts for the author’s such dismal conclusions.

If love is real–and human experience says it is, even if in all the partial and broken ways we experience it­–then there is a force at work in the universe that cannot ultimately be captured by human reason or scientific instruments. And may the meaningfulness of the universe be ultimately grounded in that reality? I would like to suggest that is not a phantom assumption.

Love Grounded in the Triune Character of God

I suggest that on the basis of the orthodox Christian assertion that God is triune–a Godhead that is not a singular, motionless monad, but a Godhead who is a unified, yet complex network of presences, presences that Christians have labeled Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

When we confess that God is love, we are saying more than that God relates to creation–and to us–in love. We are saying that God is love within God’s own very being. The doctrine of the Trinity makes that very clear when it asserts that what constitutes the very being or life of the Godhead is the eternal dance of giving and receiving that goes on among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That dance is itself love.

Meaning is to be found and experienced within all our networks of love, but most especially in the network of love that constitutes the divinity. If God is love, then the universe that comes from him and is sustained always by him is grounded in love. And that will give the universe and human experience its ultimate meaning.

We may not be able to fully express what that meaning is in words, but we can be confident that when we experience love, we are experiencing in a deeply existential sort of way the meaning of our own lives as well as the meaning of the whole universe.

If all this is true, then Qoheleth’s search for the meaning of life takes on a whole different complexion. Let us indeed eat, drink, and be merry, but in the sobriety as well as the intoxication of love in all its many dimensions.

Writer’s Note: I recognize that I am likely to be vastly misunderstood in what I say if my reader limits his or her understanding of love to erotic love alone. When I talk of love, I have in mind the full spectrum of love as the Christian tradition has understood it. That includes erotic love, but even more importantly compassionate love, service love, and sacrificial love. For the Christian tradition, the highest expression of love was the love of Christ who  accepted the suffering of the cross for the sake of the salvation of the world.

_________________

* Jim Holt, Why Does the World Exist?, New York: Liveright Publishing Company, 2012.

** Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not A Christian,  Simon And Schuster, New York, 1957, p. 106.

 

The Third Authority

Israel’s wisdom tradition offers a third source of revelation.

Whenever I have read the Old Testament, I have sailed hastily through the Book of Proverbs. It didn’t seem to offer much beyond strange musings about Lady Wisdom and then a chaotic collection of proverbs. Nothing tied together for me. I decided it was not worth much of my study time.

Then I read the newly published book, A Life that Is Good: The Message of Proverbs in a World Wanting Wisdom by Biblical scholar Glenn Pemberton (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018). He turned my attitude about Proverbs around 180 degrees. For one, he illuminates some of the repeated themes that weave through the book, themes that deal with living the good life as understood by ancient Israel’s sages.

Israel’s wisdom traditions were not primarily speculations about God, but reflections on what it means to live the good life. The good life is understood as more than a moral life. It is also a life that is healthy, stable, and successful. It is much more concerned with what we today would say are secular matters than religious, although the sages always see the good life grounded in a fundamental fear or reverence for God (see Proverbs 1:7and 9:10).

The source of their reflections is not the revealed word of God in Israel’s scriptures, but insights gained from observations of daily life and experience. Israel’s sages are also highly sensitive to wisdom coming from cultures and peoples outside of Israel. For example, scholars have noted that one section of the Book of Proverbs (22:17-24:22 ) draws extensively from the Instruction of Amenemope, a literary work of wisdom sayings from ancient 13^thcentury B.C. Egypt.*

Three Sources of Authority

Pemberton offers one insight that was particularly striking to me. He says that in ancient Israel three sources of authority were recognized when talking about God and life with God. They held equal positions in Israel’s theological discussions.

The first source was what we might label the written word of God, contained in the Torah, the Five Books of Moses. The Torah told the origin stories that constituted Israel’s identity. They also held the laws and regulations that governed Israelite behavior and worship.

The authorized interpreters of Torah in ancient Israel were the priests. They had responsibility for teaching Torah to Israelites. By the time of Jesus the scribes had largely supplanted the priests in this role, while the priests concentrated on ritual.

The important matter is to note that when an ancient Israelite asked how he or she should behave, the priest would point to the revealed Torah for answers.

The second source was what we might label the oral word of God. It was the word of God that came through dreams, visions, inspirations, or even the direct voice of God. It was the special province of Israel’s prophets.

Pemberton describes the prophets as resembling prosecuting attorneys. They were primarily concerned with challenging Israel for its failures in keeping God’s covenant, especially in fulfilling the two great commandments to love God with all our being and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Their favored way of delivering their word was through oral sermons, oracles, and enacted parables.

The third source was what we might label the observed word of God. This was received through a careful study of God’s creation and especially the ways human beings lived in that creation. It was the special province of Israel’s sages.

Pemberton says that this wisdom coming from the sages was also regarded as part of God’s revealed word. “They accept these insights [coming from their observation] as normative and God-given, just as the prophet regards a vision and a priest regards Torah to be God’s message.” [Pemberton, page 9]

What this means is that theological discussion in Israel appeals to three and equal sources of authority: the written word of God, the oral word of God, and the observed word of God. The three supported, counter-balanced, and supplemented each other.

Attestation of the Three Authorities in Scripture

As evidence for this, Pemberton appeals to three passages in the Old and New Testaments. The first comes from Jeremiah. The prophet has offended the public with his largely negative message that Jerusalem will indeed fall to the Babylonians. In reaction some of the populace plots to silence him. He will not be missed, they say:

“Come, let us make plots against Jeremiah—for instruction shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, let us bring charges against him, and let us not heed any of his words.” [Jeremiah 18:18]

What Pemberton notes in this passage is the combination of priests, wise men, and prophets as sources of God’s word. None is given priority over the other.

This same linkage comes in a passage in the prophet Ezekiel. It likewise denounces the complacency of the Judahites as they face disaster before the Babylonians. Says Ezekiel:

Disaster comes upon disaster,

                        rumor follows rumor;

they shall keep seeking a vision from the prophet;

instruction shall perish from the priest,

                        and counsel from the elders. [Ezekiel 7:26]

Here again we see priest, prophet, and sage as equal sources for guidance from God.

Lest we think this is a purely Old Testament perspective, Pemberton then quotes Jesus in his denunciation of the hypocrisy of Pharisees, saying:

Therefore I send you prophets, sages, and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town, so that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth….[Matthew 23:34-35]**

Commenting on this tri-fold division in Israel’s mindset, Pemberton concludes: “The prophets, priests, and sages of Israel all served the same God. The Lord simply used them to provide a more robust theology, a fuller picture of the life of faith, and a sharper image of the God who is larger than any one portrait.” [Pemberton, page 14]

A Christian Application?

Pemberton goes on, however, to suggest that this three-fold source of authority may also provide a fruitful pattern for theological thinking among Christians. Who among persons or groups today most resemble each of the three ancient interpreters? For successors to the priests, he suggests pastors and preachers who look to Scripture for God’s word and guidance.

As for successors to the prophets, it becomes a bit trickier. Most Christians today do not generally trust persons who claim to see God or hear God speak directly to them. Rather he suggests we see the prophets’ successors as those who speak out on the prophets’ chief concerns which center on faithfulness to God and justice issues in society.

Lastly as successors to the sages, he suggests we might turn to counselors, therapists, and scientists who rely primarily upon personal experience, careful observation, and accumulated knowledge for their insights.

This last suggestion raises an important question for most Protestants. With our fundamentally Protestant conviction that all authority for theology rests in the Bible and in the Bible alone, Pemberton asks, how will we respond when modern-day sages show up at our doors? “Would we toss them aside as secular and irrelevant advocates of situational ethics? Or would we welcome them to the table? I regret to inform you that Proverbs will not let this question go unanswered.” [Pemberton, pages 13-14, italics his]

I will admit this is a question that I have seldom thought about before. Yet I can see that how we respond will indeed have a deep impact on how we do our theological thinking and preaching.

_________

* It is also worth noting that another piece of Old Testament wisdom literature is the Book of Job. It tells the story of a righteous man living in Uz. He is not an Israelite. Yet the issue under discussion in the book–why do the righteous suffer?–is one of the most troubling and profound not only in Jewish thought, but also in all human experience.

** As I read these passages I was reminded of the canonical structure of the Hebrew Bible. It is divided into three portions:

• The Torah: The five books of Moses
• The Nevi’im: The prophets (consisting of the historical books and the classic prophets),
• The Ketubim: The writings where we find Israel’s literary works of wisdom (Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes) along with the Psalms and other assorted writings of the Hebrew Bible.

 

Paul’s Pious Phonies

Paul’s critique of religious hypocrisy has a contemporary bite.

The word hypocrisy derives from the masks that actors once wore in drama.

You don’t get very far into the apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans before you encounter his sharp critique of hypocritical Jews in chapter 2. Paul is severe on his fellow Jews who seem to elevate their noses as they assess the many failures and flaws of the Gentiles. We might call them Paul’s pious phonies.

These Jews take great pride that God’s Torah has been given to them. They therefore know God’s will. This gives them a sense that they hold a superior responsibility for instructing others in that truth. We hear that attitude coming through in this question posed by Paul:

…if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law [Torah] and boast of your relation to God and know his will and determine what is best because you are instructed in the law, and if you are sure that you are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth, you, then, that teach others, will you not teach yourself?

Who do you think you are when you judge and condemn others, asks Paul, when you yourselves commit the very same sins? All you are doing, he contends, is storing up God’s judgment on yourselves.

A Pointed Message for Christians, Too

It’s a pretty devastating critique. Christians, however, have no reason to feel self-satisfied. If Paul were to visit most churches today, he might level the same charge against a good many Christians. We Christians have no grounds for feeling superior over our Jewish cousins, let alone unbelievers.

Many of us, like the Jews Paul critiques, hold this idea that we are in possession of the Truth, with a capital T. Therefore we have no hesitancy in telling others how to live. I know this because I grew up in just such a church environment. I was constantly being told what I should believe and how I should behave. Church members harbored no doubts about the truth because they were self-proclaimed Bible believers.

But many did not live by the standards they proclaimed, especially the very stringent standards they proclaimed about our sexual lives. Just witness the many TV evangelists over the last 40 years who have been caught up in sexual scandals. The same could be said about financial scandals or irresponsible fundraising.

It gets worse as we broaden our vision beyond the evangelical world in which I grew up. Just take the continuing revelations of sexual abuse that are rocking the Roman Catholic Church. Nor is it just ethical breaches we must note. We can also cite the extreme bitterness shown in local church and denominational fights over power to control church administration and to define doctrine. The picture is not pretty.

The consequence of this Jewish behavior, says Paul, is that the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles. They violate the third commandment by making wrongful use of the name of the Lord. They bring a blemish on the good reputation of God.

The same can be said for Christian hypocrisy. Many atheists and agnostics cite the hypocrisy and judgmentalism of Christians as the primary reason they have no time for religion. It also underlies the attitudes of many today who claim to be spiritual, but not religious. Trust in religious institutions and religious leaders is low. It is not hard to find some of the compelling reasons why.

This should be a serious concern as Christians assess their own behavior as well as hold church authorities accountable.

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Photo credit: Frank Kovalchek.  Reproduced by Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.

 

 

Let All that Breathes Praise the Lord

Exuberant music must have filled temple worship.

The angelic choir from Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece, ca 1430.

If we are to believe the Old Testament psalms, exuberant music must have filled the air during temple worship.

Psalm 33, for example, issues its call to worship with these words:

Rejoice in the LORD, O you righteous.

            Praise befits the upright.

Praise the LORD with the lyre;

            make melody to him with the harp of ten strings.

Sing to him a new song;

            play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.(Psalm 33:1-3)

Psalm 150 mentions the array of musical instruments that were used: trumpets, lutes, harps, tambourines, strings, pipes, and cymbals. Other psalms (e.g., Psalms 47, 95, 108,  150) bear witness that people joined in with singing, shouting, clapping, and dance. What an amazing sound must have arisen from the temple’s courts.

I am particularly struck by the mention of dance, something usually absent from Christian worship today. We must keep in mind that the people did not sit in pews when they came to worship at the temple. They would have stood in the temple courts and walked around during the sacrifices.

As the music mounted, I can well imagine that the people would have spontaneously begun to sway and move with the rhythms. We are even told that King David broke into ecstatic dance as a liturgical procession carried the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6:14-15).

In fact, I wonder if temple worship did not resemble more what happens in exuberant African-American worship services than in most of the churches I attend where worshippers sit motionless and rigid in hard, wooden pews.  African-American choirs sway and move in rhythm as they lift their voices in song.

A few other Protestant groups have also been noted for their physical movement in worship. It is the reason the Shakers got their name. Outsiders were struck by their practice of rhythmical movement in their worship times.

Today charismatic Christians sometimes revive the practice of dance. I once attended a charismatic Roman Catholic wedding. At the end of the ceremony, the bride and groom did not race down the aisle as at most weddings I attend. Instead they led the congregation in a joyful dance weaving up and down the church’s three aisles. Most of the congregation stood in bewilderment. A few joined them, including myself. I thought their dance expressed the joy of the ceremony we had just witnessed.

Outside of Christian circles liturgical dance has often formed part of worship. One thinks of the circle dances performed by native Americans or by African tribal cultures.

Were Reformation reforms truly reforms?

During the Reformation church leaders of the Reformed tradition insisted that all practices of worship should have explicit scriptural sanction. It is the reason that Reformed congregations limited all singing in the church to the singing of metrical psalms. When hymn writers like Isaac Watts began to compose fresh, new hymns, many Reformed congregations were scandalized. They saw no place for “human songs” in divine worship.

I find it curious that with their insistence that all worship practices have scriptural warrant that Reformed church leaders never approved of the use of dance in worship. It certainly had scriptural warrant too, if we listen carefully to the psalms.

Probably that was because the Reformed tradition put such a premium on the service of the Word. Worship was centered around the reading of Scripture and its explication through the sermon. It was worship geared to the ear, not the feet. As a result, Reformed worship became very wordy and non-physical.

Though the Reformers may have thought they were purifying worship, in my opinion they were, in fact, impoverishing worship. They left no place for the body and the senses in worship. For me that comes across as a great loss, not an improvement.

I, therefore, welcome the return of exuberant music and dance into Christian worship. By temperament I gravitate to the majestic music of J.S. Bach, George Frideric Handel, and Wolfgang Mozart. (Their music, too, can be exuberant. Just listen to the Sanctus in Bach’s B-Minor Mass and you cannot help let your soul soar.)

But I also appreciate the role that rock bands, folk music, and jazz can play in worship today. They too are a way for people to praise the Lord in voices and styles expressive of who they are.

So in a time when many congregations fight battles over worship styles and music, I say, Let exuberance flourish. That is one message of the psalms. Let all who have breath praise the Lord!

Added Note:With all that I have just written about the role music, clapping, and dance played in temple worship, there is also some evidence in the psalms and elsewhere in the Old Testament that periods of silence may have been a part of temple worship, too. Whether Psalm 62 is the voice of an individual or a group may be debatable, but Habakkuk 2:20 seems to be a very explicit reference to a role that silence played in the temple service:

But the LORD is in his holy temple;

                        let all the earth keep silence before him!

Worship today may need times for silence just as much as it needs times of joyful exuberance. We can think of silence and exuberance as the yin and yang of Christian worship.

When Faith Doesn’t Stick

Transmitting one faith to the next generation is always a chancy endeavor.

The Bible gives us precious few details about the family of Moses. We know his wife’s name is Zipporah. She is the daughter of a priest of Midian that Moses meets in the Sinai desert. They have two sons. Their names are Gershom and Eliezer.

We know they did not succeed their father as leader of the people of Israel. That fell to a family outsider, Joshua. Also in a short genealogical reference in 1 Chronicles 23:15-17, we learn that Gershom had a son named Shebuel, and Eliezer a son named Rehabiah. But that is the last we hear anything about Moses’ descendants, with one exception.

In the Book of Judges we encounter one more mention of another grandson of Moses. His name is Jonathan. The brief mention is a curious one.

Unsettled life in Israel during the era of the judges

The era of the judges in Israel was an unsettled one. The Israelites had entered the land of Canaan after their 40-year trek through the wilderness. They begin to take possession of the land. That process, however, comes across as a fluid and unsettled. Tribal boundaries were not yet fully delineated.

The religious life of Israel was also fluid and unsettled. The Biblical text suggests that adherence to the aniconic (prohibiting images) monotheism of the Sinai covenant was not yet firmly established everywhere. Israelites frequently adopted religious practices as well as the gods of the Canaanites. Syncretism was more properly the order of the day.

The migration of the tribe of Dan

Chapter 18 gives us a window into both of these realities. We read there an account of the migration of the Hebrew tribe of Dan, which seeks out a new patrimony on the northern border of Canaan. There they attack a peaceful people living in a town named Laish. They slaughter the residents, burn the city, and rebuild it as their own. They rename it Dan.

Image of a Canaanite storm god aside a bull.

It’s a rather grim story. The Danites come across as murderous bullies. This witnesses to the widespread violence of this era in Israelite history.

On the route to their raid, the Danites invade the homestead of a man named Micah. There they rob him of a cast-metal idol along with some other religious objects. They also give the free-lance Levite priest who serves as Micah’s chaplain an offer he can’t refuse. They carry both to their new city, where they set up the idol in a shrine for themselves and appoint the Levite as priest.

In verses 30-31 we learn that Micah’s chaplain is Jonathan, Moses’ grandson. The text then says that Jonathan and his descendants continue as priests at Dan for several hundred years.

This stray mention startles us. Moses’ grandson and his descendants have been set up as priests to serve a graven image.* One wonders how the Danites justified their action. It is possible that they did not see this idol as a rejection of the worship of the God of Israel. They may have just been following in the same mindset as the Israelites did in the exodus story when they set up the golden calf at Mount Sinai and worship it as a material representation of God. But were they not falling into the same deviance that those earlier Israelites had fallen into?

They also co-opt a member of the family of Moses in the process, just as the earlier Israelites had co-opted Aaron, Moses’ brother, to make the image for them.

One also wonders how the Moses of the Torah would have reacted if he had lived to see this development. We read in Exodus 32 the rage that Moses showed when the Israelites under Aaron had erected a golden calf at Mount Sinai and made it the object of their worship. It was a serious breach of the covenant, for it violated the very first two commandments of the Ten Commandments. Surely Moses would not have been tolerant of this violation of the covenant by his grandson.**

How do we account for Jonathan’s deviance from his grandfather’s way?

I call it a curious story because a reader of the Bible does not expect to find that a grandson of Moses would be skirting on the edge of his grandfather’s strict monotheism. How do we account for this?

One answer might be that the historical reality of early Israel was different from the picture we get in the Torah. Israel’s monotheism may not have been as settled in the beginning as the Torah suggests. Judges may give a more accurate picture.

But the story of Jonathan may also reflect a common reality in the life of faith. Transmitting one’s faith to future generations is never a sure thing. Even the spiritual stature of Moses could not guarantee that his descendants would continue to walk in the pathway of his faith.

This can be a consoling thought to all parents and grandparents who have watched their children or grandchildren abandon the faith in which they were raised or choose to walk a religious path far different from that they were taught. History offers many examples of when the process of faith transmission fails.

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* We get the sense that the author recounts this fact because the shrine at Dan later became a shrine/temple that rivaled the temple in Jerusalem. As a result the Danite shrine has a reputation in the Old Testament as a site of illegitimate worship.

** That a member of Moses’ family should have been connected with this deviant worship center at Dan may have caused something of a scandal for those who wrote and compiled the Old Testament. Maybe that is why in the ancient manuscripts, Jonathan is sometimes said to be a grandson of Moses and sometimes a grandson of Manasseh. Also when we read the mention of Gershom and his sons in 1 Chronicles 23:15-16, we do not find Jonathan listed. Was Jonathan omitted from the genealogical reference deliberately?